For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17 NIV)

Jesus was willing to become one of us, to erase the differences between us and himself, and speak to us words of truth and grace. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be like him. We, too, must cast aside differences with others, get to know them, and speak to them in truth and grace, as Jesus did. We cannot offer truth and grace to others without a close relationship to them. Intimacy and discipleship are intertwined; we can’t offer truth to others without understanding their life situation and how they’ll relate to the truth. And we can’t speak with others in grace without loving them.

Hear Pastor Simon Liversidge’s complete sermon on this topic, entitled

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

.

Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him.

(John 1:38-39 TNIV)

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip. (John 1:46 TNIV)

After the came and saw, they believed. That’s it. Jesus does not say that to be with him you have to understand him first. He doesn’t say you have to come to church first. He doesn’t tell you to start doing this and stop doing that, then you’ll see. It’s not an invitation to become a religious fanatic or accept any particular doctrine.

It’s an invitation to a relationship with God. Jesus invites us, saying, “Come and spend time with me.”

If you are disciple of Jesus, it’s not necessarily your job to try to convince others about complex theology or beliefs. Just invite someone to come and see what God is doing in your life, in the life of your friends, and in the church.

If you’re not a follower of Jesus, just come. And see. No strings attached.

For more,

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

James Appel has lots of friends at The Place. James is the medical director of Béré Adventist Hospital, in Tchad, Africa.

James keeps a blog and his posts will really move you outside the very comfortable world most of us live in. James and his wife Sarah definitely need our support, encouragement, and prayers. Send James a note by commenting on one of his blog posts or donate time, money, and stuff through Adventist Health International.

But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28, TNIV)

All of us have heard those words of Jesus before, but there’s a subtle point that’s often overlooked–“DO good to those who hate you.” To do good to someone means to continue to interact with them. Often, as Christians, we surround ourselves with the like-minded to avoid the company of those who can’t stand us.

And, that absence might make us thing we’ve licked the “love your enemies” thing. Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Holocaust survivor, wrote and preached often of forgiveness. Here, she tells the story of her first actual encounter with one of her Nazi captors after the war:

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, a former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” He said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggles to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I prayed, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

Corrie thought that she had forgiven her enemies until she actually met one who she couldn’t bring herself to forgive. The only way she could overcome was to surrender her hate to Jesus. It’s a humbling lesson for all of us when we consider all those who’ve wronged us in our lives.

One of our small groups covered the issue of Christians and alcohol the other night. As many of you may know, the official Adventist denominational position is “Since alcoholic beverages . . .are harmful to our bodies, we are to abstain from them . . . .” The issue arose not from the perspective that alcohol use is good, but is the Adventist church overreaching Biblical truth, in order to reinforce the health and temperance message of Ellen White? After all there are many references to wine in the Bible and Jesus’ first miracle described in the gospels was the turning of water into wine at the wedding at Cana.

Interestingly, it’s the publications from official denomination sources that acknowledge the difficulty of some passages. See this article from the Adventist Review and Beer and Wine: The Bible’s Counsel from the Adventist Biblical Research Institute.

Even more interestingly, it is the personal ministries of well-known Adventists that argue most strongly for an absolute position on all Biblical references. See Samuele Bacchiocchi and Doug Batchelor’s Amazing Facts tract.

All argue, however, that the negative effects of alcohol in our lives are so great one wonders why some of us come so strongly to its defense.