On Friday, I went to get an oil change, and the guy who owns the place is a pretty staunch conservative who isn’t afraid to speak his mind and is probably willing to lose a few customers if they don’t like his opinion. And the lady sitting a couple of seats over from me was reading a book by Ted Cruz. And we happened to get into a discussion about the book and the world around us, and how we have to be bold and courageous to–when necessary–speak up for the truth in a world that seems to have fallen for lies.
I’m reminded of how it will be in the Last Days. 2 Thess. 2 talks about how the world will be when it’s time for the Antichrist to step into power.
It says: “9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
This is just me, but I believe that delusion is the world and some churches twist scripture to fit secular humanist worldview so people can use that as an excuse to live however they want.
I’m going to talk about the fear of man today, and I’m going to pull a lot of quotes from gotquestions.org. I hesitated to add this to an already long sermon today, but couldn’t help myself because it was so good.
Here’s what they have to say on this topic:
The fear of man has replaced biblical conviction in some so-called Christian circles today. Public opinion has overridden the clear teaching of Scripture on many social issues. Entire denominations are caving to the fear of man, and it has become a snare to them. The desire to be viewed by the world as progressive, enlightened, tolerant, or politically correct is a snare Satan has used to reel people into his way of thinking. The need to be liked and accepted has become more important than the Word of God to many professing believers.
You can see this desire to be liked and accepted for being progressive, enlightened, tolerant, and so on has crept in all over the place. Like I said to my friend on the Facebook conversation, you can’t escape it. It’s in our movies, our music, our TV, our college campuses, sports…you name it.
And I think it has resulted in the world repeating The Tower of Babel. You probably know the story, but have you really examined it? It’s worth studying. It’s not just about how we got our diverse languages, it’s about something more–it’s about mankind’s pride, thumbing their noses at God–saying, we don’t need you, we’re fine on our own. As Sinatra sang, “We’ll do it our way. We’ll be our own gods.”
And God said, “Nope. I’m separating you so that the world cannot again unite in sin.” This was only about 100 years after God destroyed the earth with a flood. And they were back at it again.
So here we are now, as the world has gotten a lot smaller, we have become like Babel, exalting ourselves, full of pride, uniting in sin rather than uniting in Christ.
Paul describes even the world he lived in like this to the Roman church, and again, I’m paraphrasing this:
They do not acknowledge or honor God, nor are they grateful to Him. Their thinking becomes futile; they cannot reason, and their hearts become dark, lacking the light of God (verse 21). They claim to be wise but are actually fools (verse 22). They worship the creature (or the created–this could mean actual idols or a sexual desire) rather than God the Creator (verse 23).
And so God had enough and gave them over to three things: 1) “To sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another” (verse 24). Giving their hearts’ sinful desires free rein, the wicked degraded themselves in sexual immorality. 2) “To shameful lusts” (verse 26). Both men and women abandoned the natural sexual functions and committed homosexual acts. 3) “To a depraved mind” (verse 28).
The result is that the depraved mind without God will naturally do evil and will work out the full extent of its depravity. Name your pick of Old Testament examples again.
So what do we do about it? Worry? Cower in a corner? Become like the Amish and seclude ourselves from the rest of the world? Some people do these things…or would like to. But I don’t believe that’s what God is calling His people to do.
As Paul said to Timothy, “7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. 8 So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me as his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.”
So you’re probably wondering if I’m ever going to go to a scripture verse this morning. I am, believe it or not. If you have your Bible, we’re going to look at a few short verses in Colossians, Chapter 3. I’m going to read a few verses from there, to begin with, go to 1 Cor. 13 later on, and then to close, I’m going to go back to Col. 3 and read a few more verses. So Colossians 3, 1 Cor. 13, and then Colossians 3 again. You can bookmark in 1 Corinthians or Colossians, however, you would like to do it. But first, Col. 3:12-14.
As you’re turning there, let me go back to that sermon on the rift that I talked about earlier, and pull a couple of quotes from there. The first one is by Timothy Keller.
He said: “Truth without love is imperious self-righteousness. Love without truth is cowardly self-indulgence.” Both are selfish.
Not long ago, I spoke about the song “Amazing Grace” and a little bit about John Newton, the man who wrote it. He once said: “Our natural temptation is to say what we should not say, or to not say what we should say. One is cruel arrogance, the other cruel cowardice, and neither is love.”
So what did Paul say to the Colossian church? Let’s take a look:
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
When asked what the greatest commandment was, in Matthew 22, Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
And in the Gospel of John, during the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples this: 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
So, you’re probably thinking, okay, this is just another nice ‘love one another’ sermon. Yes, but…there’s more to this sermon than that. It’s what Paul said to Timothy. More often than not, in this day and age, our ability to spread the gospel of course requires love, but it may also require something else: courage. We can’t be Christians and live like the Cowardly Lion.
Even when we were growing up, if we stood for Christ, we got a few chuckles that we had to deal with. “You carry your Bible around school?” “You listen to Stryper?” “Swear for me. Do it.”
And it took a lot of courage not to cave in.
Now, it’s going to require even more courage. Instead of laughs, we may get hit with hatred. See how it’s evolved within the past 30-40 years? It’s as if we’re the bad guys now because we don’t go along with the crowd. It used to be that we weren’t part of the in-group because we didn’t smoke, drink, chew, and “don’t go out with girls that do.” But now, the peer pressure–whether you’re still in school or you’ve been out of school for decades–it’s a little scarier…in some ways because we’ve got to be prepared to face certain harsher stereotypes head-on. The stereotype is no longer the nerdy next-door neighbor on The Simpsons, it’s that we don’t love one another. They think we’re racist, sexist, homophobic hatemongers. At least some people do.
Let’s, by our boldness, show how we can be true Christians by our love. Those in the Progressive Left churches would add not just love, but ‘love and acceptance.’ As we’ll read in 1 Cor. 13 in just a moment, acceptance is not in the definition of love. And I’m not going to get into that, but the concept of ‘acceptance’ the way the Left believes requires no acknowledgment of sin, forgiveness, and repentance. So no, ‘love and acceptance’ is not Biblical, it’s what I meant earlier about twisting scripture as an excuse to live how you want.
Remember how Jesus treated the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery? He loved them but didn’t accept their lifestyle. It took a lot of boldness in that culture for Jesus to show compassion toward both women, for fear of the backlash He would receive; and yet he also used compassion when he told them to “go and sin no more.” We have to be bold to show compassion, and we have to be bold to stand for truth.
Before I go on, just so you know, I pulled a lot of quotes from gotquestions.org today–you’ll get sick of hearing me quote them, just as a warning. But let me read something to you from them regarding the fear of man:
Proverbs 29:25 says, “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.” A snare is a lure or a trap. Fishermen sometimes use snares to catch fish. Hunters use various kinds of snares to trap game. And Satan uses snares to trap human beings (Jeremiah 5:26). One of those snares is the fear of man.
And let me read this to you once again, (2 Tim. 1:7-8): “7 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. 8 So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me as his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.”
So today, I would like to focus on how to live out our faith in love, with boldness, in a culture that has a completely different worldview than we do. How do we demonstrate it? And how do we answer tough but legitimate questions? How do we deal with false accusations based on assumptions and stereotypes? With boldness and love; with courage and compassion.
It seems rather contradictory to be courageous and compassionate at the same time, doesn’t it? We tend to think of courage as powerful and compassionate as gentle. How can we be both? How can we be lovingly bold?
Jesus said this to his disciples: 16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” Think about how the Sanhedrin came after Jesus and how he responded to them. He was innocent, yet he had to be shrewd in answering them. And talk about bold, in the very next sentence, Jesus says: “17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues.”
Now that’s bold.
But what about love?
In the very first sermon I wrote back in 2015–almost a decade now–was called, “Love is a Verb,” and it was based on an old DC Talk song that is more than 30 years old now. But in the sermon, I described how love isn’t a feeling or a platitude. The Biblical definition of love is made up of verbs–action words.
What is the actual Biblical definition of love? You probably have this memorized by now, and if you don’t it would be a good thing to do (along with our Bible passage this morning and Galatians 5:22-23–the Fruit of the Spirit).
But let’s read 1 Cor. 13 again.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
So first, what we see here is that love is not a feeling, it’s how we treat one another in spite of our feelings.
That’s why the first word here is ‘patient.’ Love is patient. Let that sink in. Then it goes on to ‘love is kind.’ Ever blow your kindness on someone because they test your patience? Do you see how love is a verb? Look at the other ones–what love is not. Love is not envious, boastful, proud, dishonorable, self-seeking, easily angered, unforgiving, or delighting in evil.
Did you catch that last part? Love does not delight in evil–therefore loving someone does not mean you accept them ‘as they are’ or ‘for who they are,’ necessarily. You love them in spite of who they are. Just as Jesus does with us, and like I said, just as he did with the woman caught in adultery and the woman at the well.
A great example of this today is prison ministry. You go into a prison because you love the inmates regardless of what they’ve done, hoping that through Christ’s love displayed through you, they will make a commitment to Christ, and therefore, a great, powerful, positive change will occur in their lives.
But that change is not just in His forgiveness but also in His continual transformation as well. And we have to be bold enough to explain that, if we have to, to someone who doesn’t want to change. Have you ever met someone who wants forgiveness but not repentance? Now, it’s up to them whether or not they choose to repent, but we have to be bold yet loving–gentle yet strong–in telling them, ‘This is it. This is how it goes. This is what’s required of all of us. This is what it means to truly follow Christ.’
Here’s what gotquestions.org has to say about our part in this.
It says: Spiritual boldness can appear to be opinionated or extroverted, when in fact the bold person may feel great trepidation. Such boldness comes from the Holy Spirit who compels a person to speak the truth in love even when it may not be welcomed. Healthy boldness can be compared to a woman who is terrified of snakes but sees one on her porch. She is frightened, but she will not let it escape because it is dangerous…even while she is shaking violently for fear. It would not be accurate to state that this woman enjoys confrontation. Instead, her boldness in killing the snake comes from a determination to do what is right to protect her family regardless of her fear. Spiritual boldness pursues the truth, works to destroy lies and error, and speaks what is right regardless of how terrifying such action may be.
So that’s an example of what spiritual boldness in love is supposed to look like. But what is it not supposed to look like? Well, I think we’ve all either seen or experienced examples of this–maybe we…let’s admit it…have been human and even been ‘Jerks for Jesus.’ Or maybe just plain jerks.
Gotquestions goes on to say: “Worldly boldness, on the other hand, can become pushy or confrontational. It thrives on popular approval and often ignores caution or sensitivity…The book of Proverbs often connects rash boldness with folly.
“Foolish people are so blind to their own errors that they shamelessly brag about it. They are bold in proclaiming their erroneous viewpoints and even bolder in carrying them out. Boldness is (to paraphrase Prov. 11:22) no more fitting for a fool than jewels are fitting for a pig.”
So boldness requires love. In fact, everything requires love. Just look at the verses that precede what we read out of 1 Cor. 13.
I’m not going to go back there, but I am going to go back to a verse that I referenced at the beginning of this sermon: Eph. 4:15. Let me read that to you again.
It says, “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” Okay, and let me pull from Gotquestions.org on that verse as well.
It says, “Rather than be spiritually immature and easily deceived, we are to speak the truth to one another, with love, so that we can all grow in maturity. We are to train one another in truth—the foundational gospel truths, truths about who God is and what He has called us to do, hard truths of correction—and our motivation to do so is love.”
It goes on to say that: Jesus “came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). As His followers who are being conformed to His image (Romans 8:29), we should also be characterized by grace and truth.
Now again, this sermon emphasizes how to answer in love, with boldness, questions from those whom we might think may respond harshly. Now, you’re probably sick of me quoting from gotquestions.org by now, but here are a couple of last quotes from them:
The first one says this: This fear is an anxious need to receive affirmation from those around us. The fear of man manifests as people-pleasing, compromised values, peer pressure, and a choice not to share our faith. The fear of man can be a snare when we allow it to influence our decisions. Rather than obey the voice of the Holy Spirit (John 10:27), we opt for avoiding unpleasant interactions. It’s easier to heed the fear of man than to invite the possibility of consequences. Consider the bold words of Peter when he and the other apostles were ordered to stop preaching in the name of Jesus: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). The first disciples did not allow the fear of man to keep them from doing what God had called them to do.
The second one says: “Importantly, we are also called to love those who do not know Christ. The best way we can show love is to share with them the truth of the gospel…Peter wrote, “In your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).
We share the gospel because we love the people for whom Christ died. We speak God’s truth because of His love and in a way that clearly and unapologetically communicates both truth and love (1 John 4:10–12).”
So how do we do that? How do we clearly and unapologetically communicate both truth and love? If you still have your Bibles bookmarked to Colossians 3, let’s go back there again. If you don’t have your Bibles bookmarked, I’ll give you a minute to turn there. And as you do, let’s look at what Biblical love looks like in a practical, everyday sense.
Now it all depends on the circumstance. If you’re like me, I spend a lot of time talking with others through the keyboard. That’s how I do things. Some of you speak with your mouths, which is great, because 70-90 percent of communication is non-verbal, meaning it’s in your tone, your inflection, and your body language. People can see that and experience your demeanor in person, but not always through the keyboard.
Some in-person love languages that we can show others include:
- Words of Affirmation – “You’re more beautiful than a taco.”
- Quality Time – “Let’s make tacos together.”
- Receiving Gifts – “I bought you some tacos.”
- Acts of Service – “I made you these tacos.”
- Physical Touch – “I want to hug you like a taco.”
So let’s go back to our passage out of Colossians 3, and we’ll start with verse 12 and read through the rest of the chapter as we close. Keep in mind, that Paul is speaking to a church congregation on how they ought to act towards one another, but we can apply this (mostly) to those outside the church as well:
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. 16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Can we admonish (or correct) someone who is not a Christian through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs? Sure. That’s what we have Spotify and YouTube for. Share with them the gospel through music. It works for a lot of people, I know it did me. I wouldn’t be standing here at this pulpit today if it weren’t for Christian rock music. So boldly share what you have–music, books, DVDs–not just your own words. Share with them your time, physical gifts/spiritual gifts, and your acts of service. By this type of love, they will know that we are truly Christ’s disciples. And they will experience true Christian love. Hopefully, we can knock out those bad stereotypes and be true salt and light to the world; and through that love, they may come to a true, bold, wonderful, beautiful, life-changing relationship with Christ.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Pexels from Pixabay
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