The Father's Heart

6 · Peterson claims that God's concern for the poor was codified in Israel's founding laws, preparing to cite Levitical legislation

He instructed the nation of Israel from the very creation, from its very creation, when he's giving down its rules, some provisions for this.

7 · Peterson reads and exposits Leviticus 19:9-10, explaining the gleaning laws as evidence that God commanded provision for the poor and sojourners from Israel's inception, and that this ethic set Israel apart from surrounding cultures who reserved leftovers for their gods rather than for the needy

Leviticus 19:9 reads like this: When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of the vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God.

So we see from the beginning God desired that we would have a heart for those in need, and he wanted that to be expressed through his people. He wanted them to be the nation, an example to the nation around them of what it was to look out for others. That was not common in that time. You didn't care about foreigners. Most of the foreigners were ready to invade you and attack you.

You didn't care about them. You were wary of them. I read that anybody else, some of the older cultures had that same rule. But they reserved all the leftovers to sacrifice to their gods. Nobody was leaving it for strangers and poor people.

So right from the beginning, God used this demonstration of caring for the poor in need to separate his people from those other people in the world.

8 · Peterson cites Psalm 82:3-4 to identify the specific vulnerable groups God calls his people to protect: the weak, fatherless, afflicted, destitute, and oppressed

Later in Psalm 82, we see a more specific group that God's asking us to care for. Psalm 82:3 says this: give justice to the weak the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. As we see here, God's heart— he wants us to be— our heart as well is to really look out for those that are in greatest need in our society and to protect those who are oppressed.

And that's what he wants for the Christian's heart. That's what he wants our heart to be.

9 · Peterson asserts that Christians are privileged to participate in God's work on earth—not because God needs us, but because he graciously invites us into partnership with him

Now, one of the greatest privileges we have as a Christian is being given the opportunity to be used by God to accomplish his will on earth.

Now think about that for a minute. We have the opportunity to be a part of what God himself, the God of the universe, is doing here on earth. That's an amazing thought. It's not that he needs us to accomplish anything. He doesn't need us.

He can accomplish everything by himself, but he gives us the opportunity. He gives us the invitation. He says, hey, come be a part of what I'm doing. Come be a part and walk with me and be a part of what I'm doing.

10 · Peterson exposits 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, arguing that just as God invites Christians to participate in gospel proclamation (despite being fully capable of saving without human agency, as he did with Paul), so he invites Christians to participate in his care for the needy

Perhaps the most significant example of this is God desiring to help have us help him spread the gospel, the message that we as sinners can be reconciled back to God through Jesus Christ.

Now listen, God doesn't need us to help him reconcile sinners. We see this in Paul. He revealed himself to Paul. He saved Paul. He didn't involve anybody else.

Nobody had to witness to Paul. But his desire is to use us to do that, that his message of hope would go through the world through us.

This is very clearly seen in 2 Corinthians 5. It says, all this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors of Christ. God is making his appeal through us.

That's a daunting phrase, isn't it? God has decided to make his appeal to the world of the gospel of Jesus Christ through us. That's an invitation. It's an invitation. God's saying, look, I want you to be a part of this process.

I invite you to be a part of this process.

11 · Peterson draws a parallel between God's invitation to participate in gospel proclamation and his invitation to participate in caring for the needy, citing the Jerusalem council's instruction to Paul and Barnabas to remember the poor alongside their evangelistic mission as evidence that these two concerns were united from the church's earliest days

And in much the same way, God allows us to be part of his care for those who can't care for themselves. That's his heart. And he says, hey, "Come be a part of what I'm doing here. People have found themselves in dire circumstances.

Care for them. Come be a part of this." We see this from— this was a priority right in the beginning of the New Testament church. When Paul and Barnabas are being set aside to go take the gospel to the Gentiles, they said that the only thing the Jerusalem church asked them to do in their evangelism was to look out for the poor as well. And Paul said that's the very thing we wanted to do. So we see from the earliest days of the church beginning that one would hand in hand with the gospel is care for those in need because that's the heart of God and I want you to be that extension for me.

12 · Peterson narrates his experience serving meals to poor Guatemalan children on behalf of the local church, observing how the children's overwhelming response to the missionaries' presence revealed they understood they were being loved—not merely fed—which stirred their hearts

So one of the elements of this trip that Brayden and I were on was just to, very simple, was to serve a meal in these very poor villages to a group of children on behalf of the local church. You could tell that the kids recognized that foreigners were there to see them because the minute you drive up, they just kind of mob you, you know, and they're hanging on you all day and you're playing with them. And when you leave, they're hanging on the bus on the way out, you know. And I was thinking to myself, why is that? Why?

They don't know us, you know. You go to a lot of places and people that don't even— they're afraid of you. They're scared of you, right? These kids are so excited to see us. And I think it's because they knew in their hearts that we had come from a long way away just to see them, just to see them.

And it stirred their hearts. It wasn't that we're just coming and feeding them a meal. They get a meal the next day. No, it's because we were showing them love of God and it stirred something in their hearts and it filled their hearts.

13 · Peterson extracts the theological principle from the illustration: God invites the church to be the means by which he demonstrates his love to those in greatest need

And God is calling us, his church, to be— that means by which he directly shows his love and cares for the ones who are the most in need around us.

He can do it without us, but he's giving us that invitation to bless people in his name with that kind of wonderful work.

14 · Structural marker introducing the second major section: the sanctifying impact of Christian service on the servants themselves

Point 2: it's also about us. Excuse me.

15 · Peterson returns to James 1:27 and links it to Matthew 22:36-40, arguing that James's command to visit orphans and widows is part of the broader biblical call to love God and neighbor, which Jesus identifies as the summary of all the law and prophets

We follow God's command to care for those in need It's not just for their benefit, but he uses it to sanctify us, and he uses it to sanctify and grow in us the things he wants to teach us. Going back to our text in James 1, it starts with, 'Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.' Now, James was relating caring for orphans and widows to pure and undefiled religion. So what's the broader picture of that religion? Well, if religion is essentially how we're supposed to pursue God and how God instructs us to live in pursuit of him, then I think Matthew 22, where Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, helps us kind of understand this a little bit. When one of the Pharisees, who's a lawyer, asked Jesus in Matthew 22:36, he says, teacher, What is the greatest commandment in the law?

And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. Now the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. We're familiar with this verse, but Jesus is making it clear to us the outward expression of obeying God's commandments to us is loving others.

And that's what the Christian life should look like, really. Devotion to God and committing ourselves to love one another.

16 · Peterson argues that God uses the command to care for orphans and widows as a starting point to cultivate the heart to love our neighbor—their obvious need naturally stirs compassion, and following through on that compassion begins to change us and develop the heart God desires

So I believe that what God is doing in James 1 is to help us to start fulfilling that command to love your neighbor. He puts before us two groups of people, the orphans and the widows, whose Need stirs our hearts just naturally, right? And when we follow through on this admonition from God to engage and help them, it begins to change us.

And we start to cultivate this heart, the desire to do this very thing, to love our neighbor.

17 · Peterson testifies that his missions experience confirmed the theological principle—loving strangers on the trip bound his and Brayden's hearts to them through the work of God, which led to the realization that if God can bind hearts together with people met only once, this must be how he intends Christians to live with those in their everyday lives

Now I can tell you that this absolutely happened on this missions trip. Brayden and I's heart were changed just loving these kids, the pastors and their families that we didn't know and we'd probably never see again. Just engaging, being willing to do that, we felt something stirring in our hearts, like what's going on? And it really started to change us.

Colossians 3 says this, it says, when we love one another, it binds us together in perfect harmony. Think about that for a minute. When we love one another, God binds us together in perfect harmony.

And we can think that, well, you know, that's just for our spouse or our friends. Like, no, God's saying when we love one another. And we kind of felt that every day as we were loving these kids. We felt bound to them. It moved you.

You felt something stirring in you. And it planted the seed of realization in our hearts, and that was this: if God can bind us together with people we meet only once, It must be how he wants us to live with those he's put in our lives every day.

18 · Peterson acknowledges that loving people in everyday difficult relationships is often harder than loving strangers in obvious need, and poses the question of how Christians grow in the capacity to love increasingly challenging people—setting up the application progression that follows

And so I want to take a minute to just stay here because if Jesus is saying essentially, listen, the effective Christian life, oh, to obey God is loving one another, then we probably need to learn how to do that. And if we're kind of postulating here that God's helping us to to get started by helping us to love those in need that's maybe easier to love, then what does it look like to grow in that? 'Cause let's be honest, sometimes loving those in our everyday lives are actually more difficult than loving those in need, aren't they? Especially some of the more challenging relationships we have. But we see that's what God's calling us to do.

So what does that look like?

19 · Peterson outlines the first step in the love progression: moving from loving strangers in obvious need to loving people we know well whose needs are less obvious, which requires asking deeper, more vulnerable questions about their struggles rather than remaining in comfortable surface-level conversation

Maybe the next step in our maturity towards loving others is just look at the people we know well, the people that are around us every day, but maybe their need's not so obvious. When you look in the immediate context of people you do life with, your friends, your coworkers, the people in this room, do you know what their needs are? Do we ask what your needs are? Loving each other in this context might require us to initiate a conversation that's a little bit more intensive than we're used to.

You know, it's really easy to say, hey, how about that Michigan-Ohio State game? Woo! It's a little harder to say, hey, how's your marriage? What are you struggling with right now?

You know, but the— and it's a little uncomfortable to say that, isn't it? But those create contexts for us to love each other by opening up about what we're struggling with so we can care for one another, so we can serve one another.

20 · Peterson outlines the second step: loving people in the periphery of daily life whom we see but don't know—neighbors, coworkers, parents at kids' activities—which requires overcoming timidity, stepping out of the Christian comfort zone into unbelievers' lives, and being open about Christian identity in order to discover their needs and care for them

Maybe the next step of progression after that is relationships with people in our everyday life that we don't really know. This could be coworkers you don't know, neighbors, fellow parents that your kids' sports, just people kind of in the periphery of your life that you don't really know but you see every day. Loving this group may be overcoming the timidity of getting to know them. Crossing that boundary. It'll probably be being comfortable with non-Christians and kind of living their life.

We get really comfortable in our kind of Christian bubble sometimes, and we get really uncomfortable with unbelievers in that sense. And maybe being open about being a Christian in a way that we're not used to. But by doing so, you can get to know them and their needs and begin to love and care for them.

21 · Peterson narrates his experience at the gym with an initially unapproachable man (called "Joe") who corrected his squat form

Just a thing that God brought across my door recently in this last year. Raul and I work out at a gym here, and it's kind of an old gym.

Not a lot of people go there. And we were working out one day, and I hear— I'm doing a squat, squatting lots of weight, probably 100 pounds. And I know I'm huge, but— and I just hear this voice say, "Your feet are wrong." And I'm like, God? And this guy I'd never seen before kind of come out of the woodwork, and he worked there, and he just, your feet are wrong. This kind of tough-looking dude, like a little older than me, kind of a scowl on his face, kind of unapproachable, and just walked away.

I was like, wow, that was weird. And the Lord was like, opportunity. Like, okay. So the next week came back, and I called him over. I was like, hey, am I doing this wrong?

He's like, yeah, you're doing this wrong. He helped me out a little bit. I'm like, all right. I said, hey, my name's Todd. This is Raul.

What's your name? Joe. His name's not Joe, but. So he walks away. Next week, Joe, what's going on, man?

What'd you do this weekend? Partied. All right, all right, good. And every week a little bit more. Hey, man, where are you from?

What's your story? And he just began to open up, this guy that I'd never seen talk to anybody. Open up a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And before long, he was just kind of hanging around as we were working out. And we're talking to him.

He's opening up. And it was uncomfortable. We're just— he's talking about partying and chasing women. And we're like, "Yeah, that's great." Yeah.

But after a couple of months, the guy that never talked to anybody literally walks around our entire workout just talking to us. And one day he said, hey, what's that on your shirt? What does that mean? And I looked at my shirt. I was like, oh, it was a shirt someone had given me that said something about working out in Jesus that I never really figured out what it meant.

And I was like, I don't really know actually. But I said, well, what do you think of Jesus?

And that just— and he gave me an answer and we started talking about it. It was rough. You know, but it just opened up a context and now we can talk about those things. It's not always easy. One time he just gave me the hand like this.

I didn't know that was a thing anymore, but apparently it is. Gave me the hand like, stop talking to me about that. But here's a guy that didn't know, that didn't want to talk to anybody, but just by showing him the love of Jesus that we just cared about who he was, we now spend an hour a week with him. Talking, sharing life together a little bit, and who knows what the Lord's gonna do. But that's our responsibility.

His responsibility is change the heart, but our responsibility is just to try to turn strangers into friends.

22 · Peterson cites Luke 6:27-28 to identify the ultimate goal of Christian love: loving enemies—those who hate, curse, and abuse

So where does God want us to get to in our ability to love others? What's kind of the end goal of this? Luke 6:27 says this: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. I don't know about you, but that's a tough list. I read that, I'm like, wow.

23 · Peterson applies Luke 6:27-28 by identifying categories of enemies Christians encounter (personality conflicts, morally objectionable lifestyles, actual persecutors) and arguing that God calls Christians to love even these people because their greatest need is the gospel, and showing love when they expect judgment creates the context to share that gospel

But that's where God wants us to get to the point where we love people who seem unlovable to us.

Maybe someone whose personality severely clashes with yours. Maybe someone whose lifestyle is unbiblical and really just turns you off. Maybe someone who actually persecutes you.

Ultimately, God is calling us to sanctify our hearts to the point where when we see that, love bursts out of our heart for them, for the sake of the gospel, because that's their greatest need. And by loving them, especially when they expect judgment from us, and the world expects judgment from us in this day, it does.

But when we show them love, it's not only an example, of the grace that we've been shown in the gospel, but creates a context to share the hope of the gospel that we have with them.

24 · Peterson summarizes the progression of love (from those in need to friends to strangers to enemies) and returns to James 1:27, arguing that while the full scope seems impossible, God graciously provides a clear first step: visiting orphans and widows

So if that's the kind of the scope of loving your neighbor, loving those in need, loving your friends, loving strangers, loving your enemies, if you start with Luke 6, it's a pretty tough road. It seems like an impossible task, but God in his kindness gets us started down this path. With a clear first step: visit orphans and widows in their affliction.

25 · Structural marker introducing the third major section: how caring for those in need serves gospel proclamation

Point 3: It's about the gospel.

26 · Peterson anticipates and addresses the objection that caring for the poor is merely a cultural norm unconnected to gospel witness by arguing that Western culture's concern for the vulnerable is itself the result of Christian influence rather than innate human compassion

Now you might say, okay, does this really convey the gospel to people? I mean, you guys throw that term around all the time. You know, gospel, gospel, gospel. Is it really demonstrating the gospel?

I mean, isn't it part of the culture to care for others? I mean, I see it all the time. Non-Christians support orphans and do good deeds, and they're certainly not worried about the gospel. And I would agree, it'd be a good argument. I agree it's part of our Western culture to care for those in need, but I'd submit to you that's because our culture has been influenced by Christianity, not because it's innately part of our humanity.

27 · Peterson uses the example of the church's support for J

I don't know, those of you who were here when we raised the money for JP's village in India during the pandemic, did you ever wonder why A church 12,000 miles away needed to send money to send food to starving people? Do you ever think about that? Did their government not know they were starving? No, they did. Did their government not have any money to help them?

No, they did. Were there no people in the village that could afford to help them? Oh, there's plenty.

So why? Why was nobody helping? I submit to you it's because apart from God's heart to care for those in need, man's sinful heart only cares about themselves. Throughout world history, even to this day, outside of Christian culture, there's a severe lack of ownership and responsibility in societies in general for those in need, orphans and widows in particular. When J.P. was here, he was sharing with me that if you become a widow in India, especially at a young age, The way he put it was, you have a hard life.

The culture just doesn't care. Remarriage is kind of looked down upon. There's really no motivation by anybody to help them find meaningful work. And so they just live a very, very difficult life going forward. Same for orphans in India.

Most of the orphanages there are run by Christian organizations. Government really doesn't have many orphanages. There's the institutions that don't have— why don't they care for their own people?

This isn't unique to India either. Apart from God, it's just not the heart of sinful man to care for those less fortunate around them.

28 · Peterson argues that when Christians show mercy to the neglected, it becomes a testimony to the gospel because it mirrors God's mercy to undeserving sinners—we owed God nothing but judgment, yet he sent Christ to die for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8), and when we extend mercy to those society neglects, it demonstrates that same gospel pattern to both recipients and observers while opening hearts to hear the message

But this is an opportunity for us. So the impact is when Christians show mercy and care for those in need around them, it becomes a testimony to them of what God has done for us. We're sinners against God.

God doesn't owe us anything. He didn't owe us mercy. He would have been perfectly righteous and just to let all of us pay for our own sins and die a death that would lead us to hell. But instead, God says this in Romans 5:8, but God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We were all living sinful lives, running from God, but in his mercy, he had compassion on us.

And though he owed us nothing but righteous judgment, he sent Jesus to die for the sins we committed that condemned us to death, that we might be reconciled to God. So likewise, when we have mercy and care for those in the greatest of need, those whom society down through time has really neglected, it's a testimony of the mercy that God has shown God has for us and that he desires to show them through the gospel. And not only is it a demonstration of the gospel for those who are affected, but for all those who are looking on and seeing what's happening. And it also opens up people's hearts to hear the gospel.

29 · Peterson returns to the Guatemala trip, narrating how loving the children opened their hearts to hear Scripture taught by his son and other team members, and generalizes the principle that demonstrating love to those who don't expect it creates unprecedented receptivity to spiritual truth

Going back to Guatemala, we found that we spending time with these children, just loving on them, and it just seemed to open their hearts.

I remember going around the corner of this one building and all the kids were sitting on this patio quiet. I was like, what's going on? And I go around. And my son and a couple girls are just teaching them about the Bible. And they're just transfixed hearing God's word spoken to them.

Now you might say, well, you know, that works well with children. But I know that we've all seen that when we demonstrate the gospel by loving people, especially those that don't expect it or feel they deserve it, it stirs their hearts. And they begin to open up and they're willing to hear from us like never before, just even that example I gave.

30 · Peterson recounts how J

And we've shared this before, but I want to share it again because it's impactful. When we gave JP that money to feed his starving village during COVID and he went around and taking that food to those people, people that had persecuted him, people that never spoke to him because they were Hindu, people that wouldn't have anything to do with him, and they would ask, why are you doing this for us?

Why? They knew how they treated him. And JP would respond, because this is how God treated me. He gave me grace through Jesus that I didn't deserve from him. And likewise, I bring you food that you feel like you don't deserve from me.

And as he shared, it just opened up people that he longed to speak to about the gospel for years. And all of a sudden, they were willing to hear. They were willing to hear. Why? Because he just cared for them in a very, very basic way.

31 · Peterson transitions to the direct appeal for Rancho 3M, describing how the school subsidizes 80% of tuition for poor Mexican families who recognize that Christians in the U

So last, we have an opportunity this morning to hear a way that we can participate this Ranch of Three Am. As Dean will explain, along with being a children's home, Ranch of Three Am is also a school for the orphans living at the ranch as well as those living in the very poor, war-torn town of Guadalupe, Mexico. But because of help from U.S. churches, this school has been able to provide the best education in the town. If you've ever been there, you know what it looks like. It just looks like a tornado has blown through it.

But every year when poor parents bring their kids to enroll in the school, they understand that up to 80% of their child's tuition is being paid by someone else, which is the only reason they can attend. And they know the answer to the question, Who's doing this for my child? Is it Christians in the United States are doing that? And they know that we don't owe them anything. So why are we doing it?

We're doing it because that's the way God loved us and we're demonstrating that to them. And as the school, as the kids go to school, they learn that it's because of what Christ has done for us that we have a heart to show them that same love in a practical way. And that way we're demonstrating the gospel really to the whole town.

32 · Peterson summarizes the sermon's argument by connecting the congregation's spiritual orphanhood (Ephesians 2:12) and God's adoption to the call to care for earthly orphans, reiterating that when Christians obey this command, God uses it to sanctify their hearts toward neighbor-love, love even of enemies, and to demonstrate the saving gospel to both recipients and observers

So in summary, just as we sang, we're all orphans in a sense. We were without God and without hope in this world, as Ephesians 2 says.

But God the Father, in his mercy, he adopted us and he rescued us from our sins. And so God invites us to participate in his care. For the fatherless and those in need who in an earthly sense are lost and without hope, out of a heart for what he did for us. And when we were enemies of God, he set his love upon us and reconciled us. And so when we obey God's command to care for those in need, it begins to sanctify our hearts towards loving our neighbors, which is our call, even our enemies, to love them as we ourselves have been loved by God.

And when we do these things, it's a demonstration to those that are affected and those who are looking on of the gospel of Jesus Christ by which they can be saved.

33 · Closing prayer thanking God for salvation, the Spirit's work in conforming hearts to God's, and the opportunity to serve practically and spiritually, with a petition for growth in love across the full spectrum from needy to friends to enemies

Let's pray.

Oh God, thank you for saving us. Thank you for giving us your spirit that helps our hearts to be like yours. Thank you for the opportunity to be used by you in very practical ways to care for those in need. Or in even spiritual ways in spreading the gospel. Help us to grow in our love for all of those around us, from those in need to our friends to our enemies.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

34 · Peterson introduces Dean from Rancho 3M, commending his 20-year service and transitioning to the ministry presentation

Now Dean's going to come up, um, from Rancho 3M. Dean has been the executive director for 20 years.

Um, he's really— him and his wife and his family really have given their lives to move down to this little town to serve these orphans for so many years. It's been a pleasure to work with Dean, and I just welcome him. He's already here, but we can welcome him anyway.

Thank you. Where's the mic? Here it comes. Thank you. Do you want your water?

Thank you. All right, good morning. It is an absolute joy to be