SCRIPTURE: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8 KJV)
QUOTE: “Faith is the power, obedience the sacrifice, love the means, Christ the reason”. – Boyd K. Packer
NOTE:
He embraced the outcasts: Jesus demonstrated the love of God by accepting the castaways of society. This provoked great disdain from the religious establishment. But Jesus was much less squeamish than most about embracing the sinful and sickly, the unseemly and unimportant. Luke 5 offers a good example. Shortly after accepting Jesus’ invitation to follow him, Levi (later known as Matthew) “held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them” (v. 29). On the social-ethical scale of the day, tax collectors landed somewhere between a pimp and something that crawls out from under a rock. An upstanding individual would not associate with them at all. But Jesus not only talked to Levi, he asked the man to become his disciple.
ILLUSTRATION:
So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper. And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,…..” Luke 14:21-26
REFLECTION:
Is your choice of love encompassing or selective?
TWO YEAR BIBLE READING: Numbers 25, Psalm 89