A CONDESCENDING CLERGYMAN

 He stands behind the pulpit at the ready to make his dramatic, sarcastic, and condescending statement to the flock. He, dressed as if he's ready to mow the lawn,  begins, "You can't walk up to someone on the street and say (at this point, he puts on a mocking, false, high pitched voice) "Jesus loves you and God loves you."

He goes on to declare, "Paul never said (putting on the false, mocking voice again) "Hey, guys, Jesus loves you!" He doesn't stop there: "I challenge you to find that statement anywhere in the book of Acts that the apostles said, "Jesus loves you." 

That's true but you can't find that any apostle walked up to someone on the street and said, "Hey, it's a sin  to have an abortion." 

His sermon is a belief of many Calvinists, the idea that God's love isn't for everyone. During a question and answer period, a woman asked R. C. Sproul that very question, "Is God's love for everyone?" His answer was, "No." 

However, what do we find in the book of Acts? We find Acts 17:1-4: "Now when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. ² And according to Paul’s custom, he ^[a]visited them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, ^3 [b]explaining and ^[c]giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.” ⁴ And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a significant number of the leading women."

Is suffering and dying not an evidence of love? Or, what about these statements in John 10:11; 15:13; I John 3:16; and Romans 5:8:

1. “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

   
   
2. Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.

   
   
3. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.
    
   4. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
    
   Then there's the most popular verse in the Bible, John 3:16: "For God so loved THE WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son . . ."
    
   5. In addition, we read in I John 2:2: "And He Himself is the propitiation ("satisfaction") for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the WHOLE world."
    
   6. We conclude the list with I John 4:8: " The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love."
    
   The Bible is soaked with statements of God's love. It was that love that sent Jonah to the Ninevites. 
   
    And over and over again, we find God's statements to Israel that He loves them with an everlasting love. Hosea 11:1; Isaiah 43:1, 4a; 54:10; Ps. 47:4
   
    
   It was Jesus' love for Jerusalem that brought Him to say, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who have been sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling."
    
   To quote the lines from the hymn, "If That's Not Love:"
    
   He left the splendor of Heaven
   Knowing His destiny
   Was the lonely hill of Golgotha
   There to lay down His life for me
   

   And if that isn't love
   Then the ocean is dry
   There's no stars in the sky
   And the little sparrows can't fly
   
    
   Condescending politicians are infuriating as are those condescending men of the cloth who make such an outlandish statement. A professor at Dallas Seminary would tell the members of the graduating class, "You all are  pathetic. It's going to be years before your maturity catches up with you education." We would hope that the spiritual maturiety of  aforementioned member of clergy would soon catch up with his education.