“For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:11-18 ESV)
I believe this morning that the Lord is giving me a picture of the persecuted church worldwide, including here in America, but I have this sense that he is pointing me to the persecuted church in Gaza among the Palestinian people who are suffering great persecution at this time. For if I can believe what I am reading in multiple news sources – and the news media does speak so many lies – the government of Israel and of the USA is currently murdering innocent people in Gaza and they are displacing others with a purposeful intention of capturing Gaza for themselves for nefarious purposes.
But when I say “church” I am not meaning the institutional church which is under the thumb of the government, so much of which has compromised truth and righteousness in order to win the world to their gatherings. For those are institutions of human origin which are being marketed to the people of the world just like other human-based businesses. But when I say “church” here I am meaning the spiritual body of Christ made up of all those who honor Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives, who are walking in his ways and in his truth, and who are no longer walking in deliberate sin.
We are the persecuted! Why? Because we are actually living the gospel that we claim to believe, and we are literally following the Lord (Owner-Master) we claim as our Lord and Savior. And we are walking in freedom from the slavery to sin that our Savior freed us from via his death on that cross, and via his resurrection from the dead. For we are those who take God and his word to heart, who believe him, and who are making it our practice to do what he says we are to do as his people. So we are the ones Satan is coming after to try to deceive us or to murder us to shut us up.
And one of the main reasons that we are being persecuted is because we are loving other humans with this agape love which prefers what God prefers, which is what is holy, righteous, godly, morally pure, upright, honest, faithful, and obedient to our Lord and to his commands. This is not claiming absolute perfection, but that obedience to our Lord is our practice and sinning against the Lord and against other humans is not what we practice. And we are those who are spreading the truth of the gospel to others, and not the lies, who are calling others to forsake sin and to obey our Lord.
Now not all of us are being physically persecuted. Not all of us are currently under the threat of death for sharing the truth of the gospel. That time will come for us, but we are not there yet. But we are being rejected and cast aside and falsely accused of what we did not do or say. We are being ill-treated, even by others who profess faith in Jesus Christ, even by some pastors of “churches.” And we are largely being ignored by others who profess faith in the Lord who have bought into a cheapened and altered gospel message which is intended to pacify people in their sins.
But when we continue to share the truth of the gospel, and to refute the lies of the enemy, and to call to other humans to forsake their sins and to follow our Lord in obedience to his commands, despite how we are being treated in return, then we are loving like Jesus loved, for that is how they treated him. And when we love other people enough to care about their needs and to minister to them and to their needs while still sharing the truth of the gospel and while still refuting the lies of the enemy, we may still be persecuted, for that is how they treated Jesus after all the good that he did for them.
But please understand here that the love this is speaking of is not human love, but it is self-sacrificing and God-honoring love which puts the needs of others above oneself in order to meet those needs, even despite being hated and rejected by some (or many) in return. And this includes their spiritual needs but not to the neglect of their physical needs (not wants, not desires). For human love may feel good, but it is fluctuating, and it can easily turn to hate. Agape love, on the other hand, is steady regardless of circumstances. And this agape love is going to consider your real needs (necessities).
Therefore, Christian, if we are to love like Jesus loved and loves us, we are not going to murder others just because they are different from us. We are not going to call for their deaths out of a preference for another group of people who, as a people group, do not believe in Jesus Christ, and thus do not believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – Father, Son Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit. For these people do not honor the God we profess as our Savior and Lord. And so they are God’s enemies. But we are not to murder or support the murdering of anyone, not even our enemies.
Hear My Cry
By G. M. Eldridge
When my soul is worn and weary
And my eyes are filled with grief,
When my hands in desperation
Reach to heaven for relief,
Would I find the words there waiting
If I had the strength to start?
Could a mortal tongue interpret
All the sorrow of a heart?
Spirit, search me in my weakness,
And discern this growing gray.
Intercede in understanding,
Hear the things I cannot say.
Hear my cry, heav’nly Father,
You have known my ev’ry pain.
You have seen all my sorrow,
Hear my cry once again.
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