Sabbath: Waging Love
Image © Pacific Press
Sabbath Afternoon
Read for This Week’s Study: Isa: 55:1-7; Isa: 55:6-13; Isa: 58:1-12; Isaiah 58.13-14.
Memory Text: “If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday” (Isaiah 58:10).
A Jewish cantor (worship leader) and his wife who lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, began receiving threatening and obscene phone calls. They discovered the calls came from a leader of an American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Knowing his identity, they could have turned him in to the police. But they decided on a more radical approach. When they learned that he was crippled, they showed up at his door with dinner! He was utterly flabbergasted. His hatred melted before their love. The couple kept visiting him, and the friendship grew. He even thought of becoming Jewish!
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry … ?” ( Isaiah 58.6-7, NRSV). Ironically, the couple in Lincoln kept such a fast by sharing their feast with a hungry oppressor, thereby setting him free from his own bonds of unjust prejudice!
Let’s learn more about this important spiritual principle as depicted by the prophet Isaiah.
Study this lesson to prepare for Sabbath, March 13.
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Great story. Expressions of love and kindness with the help of the holy spirit can truly only change other peoples hearts of hate. This message rings especially true in todays world with current events. Like Jesus not just "turning the other cheek", he actually prayed for those men torturing him while he was on the cross. "Father, Forgive them, they know not what they do." WOW! That's the ultimate example. I pray that we can resist our natural reaction of retaliation as I think that is one of Satan's greatest weapons by making us want to hurt and hate others when we are in pain and have been treated wrongly. Try to think about that and PAUSE and PRAY, the next time you are in that situation.
On our local community Facebook page a war of words erupted between two people who are apparently neighbours, over a bit of car activity. It wasn't an accident but one person perceived that their rights had been violated and had reacted and from there the war escalated until it became a public free for all on Facebook. It was embarrassingly entertaining and I wished that I knew the people well enough to throw in a circuit-breaker.
Unfortunately in our modern world, individual rights, free speech, payback, and trolling coupled with ever available public media make a toxic mix. The world loves a good stoush! And even in our own Christian experience we often react when we feel we have been insulted for our beliefs or our freedoms (privileges) have been violated. Taking it on the chin is not something that most of us do easily.
When I was teaching an inservice course, I had a young Polynesian lady who was my technical assistant. She would help me out in the tutorials and workshops and was very good at her job. One of the students made a racist remark to her one day and she wanted to react to it. She came to me for advice and I told her to let me handle it. The opportunity arose for a quiet word with the offender by himself and he felt quite mortified about what he had done and made an apology to the lady. There is a time to stand up and make public statements, but rather than reacting, a quiet word by an intermediary is often a much more effective approach.
This title should make us take a pause and think about we treat people who have hurt us. Our human instinct is to hurt those who have hurt us. "Eye for an eye." Jesus gave us the perfect example on the cross by forgiving those who were hurting Him. The biggest battle that we will have to fight is against ourselves.
We usually get human satisfaction when we get revenge, or we see someone who had hurt us going through hard time. Let us pray and forgive those who have hurt us. Let us pray for them so God can open their eyes to see that when they are hurting us, they are hurting God. Saul was trying to kill David for no reason, however; David had the chance to kill him. He didn't do that. We all have to agree that some people have hurt us, but also we have hurt others intentionally or unintentionally.
John 13: 35 " By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another (NIV)." Our uniform is love. If each disciple displays that love in their lives, the church will be full with people looking for it. Blessings everyone
What empowers man to act in the way Isa.58:6-7KJV describes? What causes man to turn from his wicked ways to the ways directed by Heaven? Man cannot do the ‘right’ thing within himself, so what happens when we become willing to lend our bodies a daily sacrifice to live and do differently than what our flesh tells us to do?
Isa.58:10-11KJV gives the answer: ”And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, thy darkness be as the noon day: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou salt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”
Just to use these few short verses will provide ample food for thought to help us understand how we wage spiritual warfare by Love and the effect it has on us!
The Holy Spirit’s mission field is every saved soul first and foremost. The ground of the living soul’s heart and mind will need to be worked, tilled and watered and kept free from weeds and rocks to bring about the fruit to be shared with others.
I think that at the core of all philosophy and theology is the simple fact that “It is right to do right”! To understand this will take away the power of the ifs – ands – and buts of reasoning; to just do the right thing because it is right to do right is all we need to understand! Who sets the standard for right? The Creator God!
On the other hand, if we engage in intelligent conversation with a non-Christian, it is important to understand clearly the meaning of those many oh so familiar words like ‘works’, ‘faith’, ‘love’, and ‘sacrifice’ in the Light of Salvation and Sanctification.
Brother Aston always reminds us that his ‘educated’ friends do not speak our Christian language, that we need to learn to speak spiritual truths by using words a person unfamiliar with Christinity would understand; to speak through loving acts is one way to speak, but we also need to learn to comfortably speak using our mind and our own words to express spiritual Truth.
In his article about faith and works, Brother Earnhardt stated: “Grace-filled hearts perform grace-filled works”, and uses 2Cor.5:10 as a guide for the reader’s thoughts to contemplate the statement’s meaning.
The meaning of ‘being saved to do good works’ vs. continuing to do bad works is found in the word ‘Salvation’: 1. Preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss; 2. Theology: deliverance from sin(iniquity) and its consequences, believed by Christians to be brought about by faith in Christ.” (Oxford Languages).
I find it imperative that Christians reach full and complete understand of biblical terminology to so aid us when speaking about our Salvation using our own words. In my opinion, this is the purpose of our bible studies. It would be great if we could do a ‘word study’, but since we cannot do this, I encourage everyone to delve into studying to form a more complete understanding of important Truths contained in ‘buzz’ words so familiar to ourselves. The Holy Spirit will help to grasp fully the meaning of words like Salvation, Works, Love, Faith etc. Maybe Brother William might lead out this ‘word-study’ using his blog contribution as a platform.
‘Waging Love’ is a great title, because we are admonished to stay faithful, ‘fighting’ to remain in Christ through our Faith and not loose contact with Him by going our own ways. Everything I read about the Work of Salvation being done in the faithful believer tells me that we remain always God’s mission field; after accepting His Way of Light and Love, He focuses us on staying on it.
Only when His loving Grace and Mercy has filled His vessel to overflowing with compassionate understanding are we actually prepared to humbly direct this flow of blessings to those we come in contact with – it is the quite, humble, unassuming, servant who speaks the loudest.
The interesting part about this heaven produced fruit of our Salvation and Sanctification is that it increases in volume and its flavor becomes bolder as it is given away - every time we make room for Christ in us to engage in His loving, considered ways, our love for man and our faith in our Lord and Savior will increase.
The Lord is the creator of love, before we start practicing to love we need to ask him to create the heavenly blessed love in our hearts.