Shalom Chaverim. Willkommen Sie. It is already the 40th session. Hallelujah! It has been almost one year since Beit Yeshua Gemeinde started the gathering on the 27th of June, 2020. I think we have to celebrate our first year. But we will talk about this later together.
From last week, we are learning how to build a community of Radical Disciples. Last week, we learned that our community should be based on God’s self-giving love or the Radical Love of God. (See PPT). We have also learned that living in the Radical Love of God is God’s command and we don’t have any other choice but loving people no matter how they behave, or what they are. We don’t have any right to hate or dislike anyone, but we only have the duty to love them.
How can we live as Radical Disciples? Well, I can put this question in a more direct way. How can you love your enemy? In our real lives, we meet many different people. Among them, there are some people that I never want to cross again, or I just want to erase from my memory.
Thus, we are in a dilemma because Yeshua has commanded us to love our enemy. We learned that Yeshua took away our right to hate anyone. Then, how can we love our enemy in our real lives? It sounds like an impossible mission, but we have to carry out Mission Impossible - not with Tom Cruise, but with the Holy Spirit.
To understand how to love our enemy, first of all, we have to define who our enemy is. Who is our real enemy? There are two kinds of enemies. One is someone who drags you to evil to make you rebellious against God, or makes you stand against God. The other is people who do not behave properly, really bothering you, or making your life painful.
As God’s love is radical, his forgiveness is radical, too. God in us will help us to have “Radical forgiveness” for any sinner. And this forgiveness begins from your “Kenotic love: Self-giving Love.” Frau Corrie Ten Boom said, “I try, I fail, Let God do, He will make it happen.”
I told you last week the story of the atomic bomb of God’s love through Pastor Shon, who adopted the murderer of his two sons as his son. We also know the story of Frau Corrie Ten Boom from Holland. They are not heroes. They are ordinary people just like us. They are not so different. They just lived the way God commanded them to live. It is also the command for us.
Tell me something. There were 12 disciples of Yeshua. They have transformed the world by bringing Yeshua. There are more than 12 here. How is it impossible for us to transform the world? What is the difference between those 12 disciples and us? What is the difference between those Christian heroes and us? They had Yeshua as we have.
But Yeshua was all they had.
They lived in God’s Radical Love, and became a messenger of God through their life in God’s Radical Love.Love is the ultimate power of transformation of the world because God is the source of power! God is Love!
