Part Two of Old Paths

Returning to Old paths is getting longer so I have put it into parts here is part two.
Another path we are to walk down is the path of love. In fact this is a command. We are to love one another. Love your neighbor as yourself. Now that is a real hard thing to do. For if you are a Democrat how can you love a Republican and vise versa. In the Bible I find a clear-cut statement that is not hard to understand; hard to accept maybe, but not hard to understand. It is found in I John 4:20-21. It reads, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from Him That he loveth God love his brother also.”
I think many times we say we don’t understand the Bible simply because we don’t want to accept what it says. It has always been amusing to me to hear someone sing, O How I love Jesus on Sunday and on Monday cuss the person in the car in front of them on the way to work. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth, so says the apostle John.

The church today needs to return to the old path of compassion. There is not real compassion in the church today. Oh, I know someone will scream, “Look what we did for this one or that one”. But while that may be momentary compassion real compassion is caring for someone without thought of reward. I know a man who goes out of his way to help his neighbors. He watches their houses when they are gone, cares for their animals, and looks in on them if they are sick. He simply cares for people. This man is a rare and sadly a vanishing breed today. To my knowledge this man has never once thought of any reward or gain for himself. This is the kind of compassion that the church should have. Jesus wept when He saw the multitude that had come to listen to Him preach without bringing a lunch. So He fed them. I laugh when on Sunday morning the preacher is inspired by the Lord and starts to run over the pre appointed stopping time that the multitude start to get hungry and are sure they will lose their place in the food line, or serious malnutrition effects will attack their bodies. It’s long about this time that compassion for the lost or what the Lord has to say is replaced by the passion for a steak, and, “We need to talk to that preacher for keeping us in church so long”. If the church only had compassion for the lost and for those who might have come seeking help from the Lord, Oh what a place the church would be if the membership were on fire for the Lord you couldn’t run them off. But today we only have the church open four hours a week. I guess people don’t need God the other 164 hours that week. I remember right after I got saved I couldn’t get enough of the Word. The only place I knew to get it was at the church. So every time the doors were open I was there. I was hungry. I later found out the meals I was receiving were not as wholesome as they appeared. I’m still hungry, but now my meals are harder to come by. When Jesus was preaching people came from all over the territory to hear Him. Well you say He was the Lord sure people would come to hear Him. He is still the Lord yet few come to hear what He has to say. Fewer still truly believe what He is saying. He had something to offer those on the hillside, bread and fish. Yes but He also had something they all wanted, the truth. He still offers that today. People are just not as hungry.
Today what most want is the bread and fish not the truth. I’ll bet if Jesus was to come to a hillside in your town and start to preach that very few would stop to hear him. In fact he would probably be asked to move on and to stop creating a traffic problem. He would not be very popular with those in authority.
Especially the religious authority, but then He wasn’t popular with authority when He did speak on a hillside outside Jerusalem. So I guess not much has changed. People still are hungrier for steak than they are for the Word.
Tune in next week for part three.