Before I work on that text with you for a minute I want to rehearse some of what we talked

about this morning by asking this question, what keeps you and me from loving the outcast? What are the hindrances that need to be overcome?

And by outcast, I mean anybody that's hard to love.

Anybody that's hard to love.

You may find rich people hard to love.

This text is talking about poor, crippled, lame, blind, that kind of people, tax gatherers,

sinners, not all sinners are poor, tax gatherers were not poor.

So anybody that's hard to love, how do you overcome obstacles to love them?

Now, we've seen several obstacles that need to be overcome.

In chapter 14,

verses 7 to 11, we saw the love of human glory. They are angling for the best seats, which is an issue

that lies behind the indifference to the man with drops in versus one to six.

So we saw the love of human glory.

When you have a love affair with your own status

and people noticing you and saying nice things about you and always trying

to get into the limelight or associating with important people so that the importance and the significance sort of rubs off on you.

And this is just the mindset you have.

Then you tend to be indifferent and callous and unobserving and unenergetic about taking

up with the unimportant because it doesn't work, it doesn't work for what your life is really all about, namely getting glory for yourself.

So that's one big obstacle.

That's in every human heart and some have triumphed over it more than others by the grace of

God and we're all in the process if we're

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