Love Will Transform the World

And then we have a donation box in the back of the sanctuary. You can set that. And also a welcome bag in the foyer if you’re wanting to grab one of those on your way out. This morning, I’m going to ask some families to come forward at this time. We’re going to be doing a very special thing.

Go ahead and come on up. Yeah, you come on up to the stage here. We’re going to be doing a child dedication commitment right now. So this is a very awesome special thing. We’re going to talk a little bit about the importance of why we do this as a church.

First I want to introduce you to everybody who’s here. So, first we have Jacob and Emily Bib. Their son Leo Bib. Leo was born on October 24th, 2024. And with the Fox family, we have George and Kirsten Fox.

And Alex is our little guy here and Miriam with them. Alex. Yeah. Go ahead. Alex was born October 15, 2025 and Miriam September 30th, 2021.

And so, one of the things I like to share about this and the importance of this is as a church, we get to come alongside them at this time and show our support, our love for them. We get to model what it looks like to to pray for them and to show them again what disciplehip looks like because disciplehip begins in the home and go and come on up. I know we have one more who’s going to join us at this time. But yeah, we talk about dedication because we’re saying we want God to be involved with the raising of our little one here. Little ones in the case of the Fox family.

And good to see you. This is Zoi Romero and her daughter is Aaliy was born on October 22nd, 2023. So, I’m going to read a portion from scripture, and this is from the book of Deuteronomy, way back in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6, where God basically lays out this is the plan for how you’re to raise your children in the Lord, to know him, and it’s he talks about talking about the Lord, teaching them the word. Says this in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk with them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise. And so you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

And so again, God’s plan is that parents not youth ministry workers, not children’s ministry workers, but parents would be the dis the primary disciplemakers. And the disciplehip happens and begins in the home. Again, this is not a guarantee of their salvation. And and what we’re doing here is we’re committing them to the Lord. For the parents are dedicating themselves actually, but also they’re dedicating the children, saying, “Lord, as we pray for our kids, as we teach them the word of God, as we live out the gospel before them, we are trusting that you will do the work of salvation.”

And so, we’re going to have a commitment now at this point. This is a for all of the the parents, your answer will be I do. So first is do you testify that you have personally received the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior? >> Do you desire that your home be a home where your savior is the central figure where his word is honored, read, and obeyed? >> I do.

>> Do you give your child to the Lord today anticipating that they will someday receive Christ? >> They do. Do you therefore promise before God that as their parents you will give your time, energy, devotion, and prayer to instill within them an appetite for spiritual things regardless of the sacrifice this entails? >> Amen. And so with that, I’m going to offer up a prayer to the Lord for these families, for these parents, and for these little ones.

Let’s pray together. Gracious heavenly father, you are the the father of all these families. And the church we recognize is really a family of families. And God, as we are coming alongside these parents, we want to say we’re here to support you. We love you.

We’re going to pray for you as a church. And we’re going to be rooting for you as you disciple your little ones in the knowledge of the Lord, the grace of Jesus Christ. And I pray that Lord, you would help these parents recognize the importance of not only talking about you and your word, but praying in front of these kids. Help them see the importance of of even letting their kids see them repent and and letting them see them value Jesus above all else. And I pray that that would be true of all the families in this church that we would as a community of families be committed to help one another in that step of guiding our kids to the fullness of faith in Jesus.

It’s in his night mighty name we pray. Amen. >> Thank you. And we before you leave, we have a little gift for each of you. So Pastor Steve had this tradition of writing a 13th birthday letter to all of the kids, meant for them to read when they’re 13.

And I’m just following that idea. I stole his idea, so I think it’s a great one. So that’s included in there as well. Thank you. Such a sweet thing.

Would you guys please join us and stand for worship? >> Are you hurt and broken within? Overwhelmed by the weight of your sin, Jesus is calling. >> Have you come to the end of yourself? Do you thirst for a drink from the well?

Jesus is calling. Oh, come to the altar. The father’s arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Leave behind your regrets and mistakes.

Come today. There’s no reason to wait. Jesus is calling. Bring your sorrows and trade them for joy. From the ashes, a new life is born.

Jesus is calling. >> Oh, come to the altar. The father’s arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, come to the altar.

The father’s arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, what a savior. Isn’t he wonderful? Sing hallelujah.

Christ is ris. Bow down before him for he is Lord of all. Sing hallelu. Christ is risen. Oh, what a savior.

Isn’t he wonderful? Sing hallelujah. Christ is ris. >> Oh, come to the altar. The father’s sons are open wide.

Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, come to the altar. The father’s arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Bear your cross as you wait for the crown.

Tell the world of the treasure you found. >> Amen. This next song we’re doing is how deep the father’s love for us. And child dedication is a really neat way to proclaim that that these fathers, these parents, the mothers, the fathers are proclaiming Jesus’s love. And that’s just so incredible to have that image of a family where we’re a family, but we also have a father who loves us and we get to demonstrate his love.

So, as we sing this, let’s just reflect on that. How deep the Father’s love for us. How last beyond all measure that he should give his only son to make a wretch his treure. How great the pain of searing loss. The father turns his face away as wounds which are the chosen one bring to glory.

Behold the man upon the cross. My sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice. Call out among the stars. They wash my s that held him there.

Until it was a callish. This tide red has brought me. I know that it is finished. I will not boast in no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. I should gain from his reward.

I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart. His words have made my son. Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give him an answer.

But this I know with all my heart. His words have paid my ransom. He is jealous for me. Loves like a hurricane. I am the tree bending me the weight of his wind and mercy.

And all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory. And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are. And oh how he loves us so. Oh, how he loves us. How he loves us so He is jealous for me.

Loves like a hurricane lying in the tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. When all of a sudden I’m unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me. And oh, how he loves us so. Oh, how he loves us. How he loves us so we are his portion.

He is our prize. Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes. Embrace is a notion we’re all seeking. And heaven meets earthlike unforeseen kissing. My heart turns by the inside of my chest.

I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way that he loves us. Oh, how he loves us. Oh, how he loves us. Oh, how he loves. As he loves us.

Oh, how he loves us. Oh, how he loves us. Oh, how he loves Oh, he loves us. Oh, how he loves us. Oh, how he loves us.

Oh honey. And father, as we are thinking about your fatherhood at this time, we’re thinking about the ways that you love us with undeserved love. We ask that you would just speak to us by your spirit. We are your children and we want to hear from you. We want to learn from you.

We want to grow more like your son, Jesus Christ. And it’s only through the power of your word that that can happen. So I pray that you’d give us soft hearts and ready ears for the message we’re about to receive from you in Jesus mighty name. Amen. Thank you.

May be seated. Kids are welcome to take off for children’s church at this time. And the rest of us, you can meet me in Luke chapter 6. Luke chapter 6. Awesome to see all the kids.

Last week I mentioned that part of being a Christian is believing that Jesus was right about everything. And so that means that it’s taking his words to heart. And you know sometimes we can read a portion of the gospels. We can read even the sermon on the mount or sermon on the level and we can run it through this mental filter where we it’s almost like we think you know these are great words for an ideal time or or these are great ideas but then practically we we don’t live them out or we don’t see how they speak directly and relevantly to our lives. But my hope is that as we look at Luke 6 together this morning, we’re going to see that what Jesus said about love is very relevant and it’s powerful.

In fact, it’s powerful enough to transform the world. As we’ll see, it’s already doing that. It has done that. And Jesus is continually transforming people from the inside out. Even today, 2,000 years later, as much as people point out hypocrisy in the church, I believe that one of the greatest evidences for the power of Jesus is transformed lives of Christians.

I believe that when you look at people he has radically changed from the inside out, that tells us he really is who he claimed to be and he really did come here to make us new. Many of you here have a story like that. There was a time in your life maybe where you felt very empty. You were not at peace. Maybe you were angry at people or angry at the world, angry at God.

And then something happened. Jesus showed up and he changed everything. And suddenly you were filled with a love that had never been there before. And and it was brought home to you that this God who made you is not some distant deistic God way out there in the universe. He’s near and he loves you personally.

And for some of you, this message will be a little bit of a a wakeup call as a reminder that as Christians, we are not called to sit on the sidelines. You know, Jesus has called every single one of us to participate in his mission to rescue the world. And we get the privilege of of because of God’s grace, because of the Holy Spirit, we get to be a part of the advance of his kingdom. We’re privileged to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And so, we’re called to make it our mission to show the world the love of Jesus, which is a supernatural love.

It’s something we can’t do on our own, but it’s what we’re called to. Our series is called Jesus Came for You. And that’s very important for you to understand. I can tell you that the thing that has transformed my life more than anything else was when it was brought home truly to me that Jesus loves me personally. That despite of all my sin and all my failures and all the reasons Jesus could have had to kick me to the curb, he loved me.

He pursued me and he wanted me. And so if you’re here and you don’t yet know about Christianity, you’re still exploring it, you’re still trying to figure out what is this Jesus guy all about, you need to know this. First of all, Jesus loves you. He loves you with an undying love. And this is not about you being religious enough.

That’s what we’re going to see from this passage. This is about experiencing a God who meets us where we’re at. And he loves us. We get excited about Jesus because he loved us enough to die for us. How many of you have a friend who you know is willing to die for you?

Jesus is that friend. Jesus is that friend above all else. Now, the word love has unfortunately lost some of its power, some of its depth in our culture because of the way we use the word. We say things like, “I love pizza.” Or, you know, “I love this great outfit on you.”

or you know I love this new show on Netflix, right? And then we also say I love my family, which is interesting. We’re using those same words and we mean something totally different. And it’s the same with the word hate. We use the word hate when we’re talking about an outfit we don’t like or when we’re talking about anchovies.

We say hate. And because we use it in such a casual way, sometimes what Jesus says here about love and hate, it doesn’t register fully because we’ve been looking at this from a casual perspective. But Jesus is describing a love here that is active and real and lifechanging. This isn’t just a love that feels warm fuzzies. This is a love that actually does something for the good of others.

So would you stand with me as we read together from God’s holy and perfect word Luke chapter 6. And the question I believe Jesus wants us to be asking from this passage is the big question. What if enemy love is the church’s most potent weapon against the polarization, anger, and hatred that marks this age? What if this is the antidote to what we see in the world? Jesus says this verse 27, “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.

Give to everyone who begs from you. And from the one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them?

And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same? And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to get back the same amount. But love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great and you will be sons of the most high.

For he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful even as your father is merciful. Thank you. You may be seated. So let me fill in some of the background here.

Once upon a time for Israel, Israel was at the height of its glory. It was known as basically the top ranking nation in the Middle East during the kingship of David and then following David, Solomon, his son. But then fast forward a few hundred years and the nation has just continued to spiral downwardly morally until eventually God judged them. He said, “I’m going to judge you just like your these pagan nations were judged. You’re going to be judged.”

And they go into exile and they’re under the the rule and oppression of these foreign invaders for hundreds of years from one empire to the next until eventually came the Makabian revolt. Now, Mattathias Makabe and his son Jude the Hammer at this time they rose up and they fought back against that empire that had conquered them at that time. Time and they they overruled this conqueror named Antiochus Epiphanies. Antiochus had forced the people into pagan worship. He had desecrated the temple of God and Judah the hammer was able to reestablish the law of God.

Reestablish the temple and true worship of God. Everything was good. Everything was amazing for Israel at that time. But not for very long because then came the Romans. And you can imagine just like after you’ve been given something and then it’s quickly taken away, how much anger must have been intensified in these Jewish people knowing we were given freedom and now once more it’s been taken away by these Roman oppressors.

The Romans not only taxed them, they bullied them. A Roman soldier could come up to a Jewish man and say, “Hey, I need your cloak. Give that to me.” He could come up to a woman and say, “I need you to carry this burden for me. Now walk a mile.”

They could do that because they were the ones in charge. And so the Jewish people were dreaming of a Messiah who would finally relieve the burden, finally sit on David’s throne and cast down their oppressors. And it’s in that time when there was so much expectation. They were so hopeful. Jesus starts talking about a kingdom.

And he says, “This is what it will be like when God invades the world and his rule is established. This is what it looks like. Things are going to be different and everybody’s waiting. Is he gonna like Judah Makabe, is he gonna raise up this army? Is he gonna sit on the throne like David?

What’s going to happen? And then Jesus says this, “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.” The Jews would have been shocked at what Jesus said. That’s not what they wanted to hear.

And even today, people are still trying to figure out exactly what Jesus meant. See, it just doesn’t fit with how we think. We think that if we get wronged, we get to wrong back. We get to even the score. It’s only fair.

Jesus wasn’t calling them to any violent revolution like the Mcabes. He was saying, “I’m calling you, my followers, to do the opposite of what your flesh wants to do. You’re going to want to hit back. You’re going to want to fight back. You’re going to want to strike back.

And I’m telling you, pray for your enemies. Bless those who wrong you. Do good for those who hate you. He says, pray for your enemies. In your notes, we’re called to pray for those who have wronged you.

Now, why would Jesus say this? Usually, we pray for things we want. What if we don’t want God to bless those who have wronged us? What if we want them to suffer? What if we want them to pay their dues and know what it’s like to experience what we’ve experienced?

Jesus understood something significant about prayer. He knew that as you go to the Lord and you lay out your case before him and you you talk with God about what you’re suffering and where you’re feeling the pain, God enters into that place with you and he experiences with you where you’re at. Many of you know what it’s like to feel the sting of rejection and betrayal. You know what it’s like to be wronged. Just think of the guy that recently belittled you or the the woman who said something that hurt your feelings.

Jesus is saying, “What they did was wrong, but I want you to pray for them. Take them before my father in heaven. Lift them up to the throne of grace.” Jesus isn’t talking about praying that God would simply change them. He’s saying, “Pray that God would actually bless them, that he would make things good in their life, that he would forgive them, that he would show his love to them, that they would feel so welcomed by the father.

That’s what I want you to pray for your enemies.” Jesus understood that over time, it’s very hard to continue hating someone if you are constantly bringing that person before the throne of grace. And sometimes, you know, when you’re not feeling like you want to pray for somebody, that’s that’s okay. That’s okay to start there because sometimes you might be praying for somebody and it’s through gritted teeth. That’s a first place to start.

Sometimes you’ll pray your prayer will sound something like, “Lord, I have no idea how to love this person. I feel no love for this person, but I want you to bless them. I want you to show your love to them.” And as you pray, you’re bringing your heart more and more into alignment with God’s heart. You’re saying, “I don’t know how to love this person, God, but I want to.

I want to learn what it’s like to love my enemies like you did. I want to learn what it means to to see them the way you see them.” And as you do that, you start to look more like your father who is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. I think it’s significant that Jesus says to do good to haters, but to pray for abusers. See, a wife who’s being abused by her husband should get out of that situation immediately.

She shouldn’t think, “I need to stay here because that’s what God calls me to do.” No, she should get away. She should get to safety. But what what she can do is pray for her abusive husband. She can ask the grace of God to break through his hard heart.

And through prayer, we’re transformed from passive victims into active people who bless our enemies. It’s radical because it goes against our natural instincts to want to pray and bless those who hurt us. Jesus continues by zeroing in on specific examples. He says in verse 29, “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.

Give to everyone who begs from you and from the one who takes away your goods. Do not demand them back. So here’s what he’s saying in your notes. Do good to others when it makes zero sense. Zero earthly sense.

Jesus is saying, I’m calling you to show the world a different and better way of life. I want you to show them what my love looks like when it’s in fleshed and lived out. And he knew in many ways this is going to look pretty bizarre. People are going to raise their eyebrows. They’re going to think this is insane that they would want to love people in this way.

Most of us have a hard enough time loving our friends and family. And now Jesus is saying you got to love your enemies. He had just called the twel apostles to be his close followers. They would be with him for at least two years, maybe three. And they would see Jesus live this love out in front of them, loving his enemies, following Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension.

He would send them out. They would be the ambassadors for his kingdom. They would be the ones who proclaim this new love from heaven. He says, “This is what it looks like to be my follower. Do good to others and bless others when it makes no earthly sense.”

Now, the Jewish people had a passage that they were familiar with, Leviticus 19:18, which says,”Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” But the Jewish rabbis at this time taught that the neighbor in that passage is your Jewish neighbor. That’s who you’re to love, your Jewish neighbor. Your enemies, the foreigners, you could hate them.

That’s what they taught. Now, we need to understand the context of what Jesus is saying because for example, he says something that sounds very radical. He says, “When you get struck, turn the other cheek.” Many have thought that this means Jesus is saying Christians are no longer allowed to defend themselves ever when they’re being attacked. But Jesus wasn’t saying you need to become human punching bags.

He was saying, “I am calling you to lay aside all personal vengeance. You’ve been wronged. I want you to not try to write that wrong by striking back.” It’s important to know that at this time in culture, a backhanded slap across the right cheek was seen as this degrading insult. It was an honor shame culture.

And when you when you did a backhanded slap, that was a way of saying you’re beneath me. But if you are to turn your cheek and you say, “Okay, you’ve struck me on the right cheek. Now here’s my left,” what you’re doing is you’re forcing them now to hit you with the open-handed slap, which in that culture would have been a way of saying, “I’m exposing the injustice of what you’re doing. I’m calling you out and I’m actually disarming you because you’re saying we’re now have to be treated as equals. It’s not a degrading thing anymore.”

He’s calling them to creatively assert their dignity. That’s what that’s about. That’s why he says, “Turn the other cheek.” He’s saying, “I want you to resist them nonviolently. I want you to show them the error of their ways in creative ways.”

So, what does this practically look like today? Well, let’s say your your boss steals credit from you for something you’ve done or makes you look foolish in front of others. Now, the natural tendency, what everybody would want to do in that time is start scheming and look for ways to get back at that boss, put him in his place. And Jesus is saying, in that situation, I want you to not cower, not play the victim. I want you to actively love your boss.

I want you to look for ways to encourage him. I want you to find out why he’s having a bad day. Go the extra mile. Learn his story. Become his friend.

He can’t degrade you if you are the one who’s coming alongside you or come alongside him to befriend him. What about if a family member or a friend betrays you? Again, the normal thing to do would be to withdraw, maybe ghost that family member, keep score, gossip behind their back, and just undermine them in in a thousand different ways. And Jesus says,”I calling you to no longer do normal. I don’t want you to do what’s normal.

I want you to do what what goes against everything in you at times. I want you to turn the other cheek. I want you to to lay down your desire to get even. It could mean praying for them. It could mean reaching out to that family member before they’re ready to apologize and saying, “You know what?

I want you to know I love you. I care about you.” and never asking for them to to meet you halfway, but just going the way all the way to meet them. In a world of cancel culture, it’s refusing to cancel someone who’s trying to cancel you. It’s loving in response.

So, this is the ethic of the kingdom. It’s about constantly putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Jesus says, “Whenever someone wrongs you, this is what I want you to do. Think about it. What’s it like in their perspective?

If I was in their shoes, what is it that I would want? He says, as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. Now, that way of living makes no sense to most because it completely overrides that natural thirst for vengeance. And I think that that desire for vengeance, that that desire to settle the score, I think that’s one of the most powerful urges in the human heart. And Jesus is saying,”I want you to put that desire to death.

Lay it aside and go out of your way.” We’ve heard the statement, “Hurt people hurt people.” And Jesus is saying, “I’m calling you to a way of life that that ends that cycle.” Instead of always repaying evil for evil, I want you to repay good for evil. This is what we call the golden rule.

Now, some people think it’s a very old-fashioned rule. It’s not practical. It doesn’t work in the real life. You can’t do that. But just like everything Jesus taught, it’s as relevant today as the day he said it.

And as far as we know, there were other versions of the golden rule in the ancient world, but by and large, they they always put things in the the negative. In other words, they would say things like, “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.” That’s actually very similar to our cultures law of tolerance because our c culture would say you know don’t judge me and I won’t judge you. Don’t tell me what to do and I won’t tell you what to do. We’ll just stay out of each other’s way.

But Jesus said I want you to actively love others the way you would want to be treated. I want you to treat others that way because this is how God loves us. In your notes. Remember, you were God’s enemy when Jesus found you. We won’t learn to love our enemies until we see that God loved us first.

Even when we were in active rebellion against him, the Bible says it was in that time when we were dead in our sins. We had committed cosmic treason against the king of the universe. We had gone our own way and rejected his way. And it’s at that point that God said,”I want to seek out reconciliation with you. Here are my terms of peace.

My son will pay the debt you owe.” He says, or says in Romans 5:10, “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” See, it took the death of Jesus to put away our guilt and sin and reconcile us to the father, to make us friends, to turn enemies into friends, even family members. This is a supernatural kind of love. And this is God’s love invading the hearts of those few disciples at the beginning and setting them up on a trajectory so that they could transform the world around them.

Pass on this love to others. Show people there’s a different and better way. Scholars have pointed out that Jesus’s command to love your enemies was the most popular command in the early church. For the first 300 years, it was quoted more than any other. Love your enemies.

In English, we have one word, love, that translates at least four different Greek words. You’ve got stoay which is natural affection like familial love. You’ve got aos which is romantic love. But then there’s fileia which would be the the love of friendship. Jesus here uses the word agape.

Agape is unconditional love for those that aren’t necessarily worthy. It’s based on a commitment to love another person for their own good. Is not based on them being lovely already. And this is how God loves you and me with agape. It’s love rooted in God himself.

Martin Luther said something like, “God loves you not because you were lovely. Instead, you are lovely because God loves you.” In other words, your relationship with God is based in his love for you. It’s not based on how well you’ve loved him. It’s not based on how good you are or how cute you are or how well you’re doing.

It’s based on the fact that God has chosen to love you. So unlike stoay, agape is not natural in any way. We were once alien. We were foreigners to the covenant of Israel. We were outside of God’s family.

He brought us in. It’s not natural. You don’t earn it. It’s not based on romantic attraction like aeros. Aeros is like when we say a man and woman fell in love with each other, right?

Well, you don’t fall into agape love. You deliberately choose to love someone with this kind of love sometimes despite how you may feel about them. It’s not based on prior friendship like file because it’s not only for friends. Agape is the love that you would have even for your worst enemies. In the ancient Greek literature, there’s very few references to agape.

They love to talk about aeros and file primarily, but those were the natural affections. Agape, they didn’t really have a good place for it because it didn’t really make sense. Their gods didn’t respond to humans that way. And so, Christians come along and they see this word agape. Jesus uses this word and his followers use this word and it’s like they fill out the meaning of it.

This is the word. It’s it was waiting for Jesus to explain the meaning of it to the world. This is similar to today when our culture talks about love. It’s almost always going to be feelings-based. It’s all about the emotional buzz someone gives you.

We see it in movies like the line, “You had me at hello” or or in a a song like you’ve lost that loving feeling, right? Couples headed for divorce will often say, “We just don’t have feelings for each other anymore. The spark has faded.” Our culture talks about love like it’s this wave of romantic feelings that just kind of washes over you and overwhelms you and you’re just kind of this passive recipient of it. This is leagues away from the unconditional agape love that Jesus is calling us to embody towards others.

And see, the thing about feelings-based love is it’s always going to let you down when reality hits. When things don’t go well in life, when people don’t turn out to be everything you thought they were, it’s very easy to give up on people because the emotional buzz is gone. The feelings that were there originally, they’re gone. But let me put it this way. Aren’t you thankful God doesn’t love us in this way where the moment you’ve sinned just one too many times, he hits the eject button on the relationship?

Praise God. Jesus loves you and me with an unconditional agape love where he already knows everything you’re going to do. He already knows all your mistakes and failures. He already knows about your sin. And he says, “Yeah, I know.

And I love you unconditionally because of who you are in my son. You belong to my son. You belong to me.” God didn’t just have warm feelings toward us. The Bible says God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He didn’t just send us love letters from heaven. He came into this world and he lived it to the point of dying on the cross. And Jesus says, as you love in this way, you can expect a reward. Secondly, in your notes, or fourth, I should say in your notes, live with an eternal perspective on the coming reward. In verse 32, Jesus says, if you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you?

For even sinners love those who love them. So this is reciprocal love. Reciprocal love is easy. He says even sinners do that. You know even the mob boss is going to send birthday cards to his mom.

This is this is something easy. Everybody wants to love back people who love them. I’m calling you to something higher. I want you to love those who don’t love you. At least not yet.

Our culture promotes aeros and felia. When you hear those love songs on the radio, when you watch maybe a romantic comedy and it’s all about love, this love that almost guarantee it’s about either aos or file. Only when you get to worship songs, Christian songs, praise songs, do you get to agape? You get to this non-conditional, not reciprocal, not based in emotions kind of love. It’s a commitment to act for the good of others, even those who are maybe difficult in your life.

Jesus says, “When you love even your enemies, your reward will be great. You’re going to be sons of the most high, children of God. You’re going to look like your father because your father is kind to the ungrateful.” People every day ignore God, blasphe God, reject God. He keeps giving them sunshine.

He keeps giving them rain. He keeps giving them food. He’s kind to those who don’t care about him. He loves those who ignore him. He says, “That’s the kind of love I’m calling you to.”

The reason agape love is so rare in this world is that you can’t love this way if you’re living for this world. If your hope and your meaning in life is all bound up in this life, in this world, you cannot love with agape love because there’s going to come a point where you’re going to see this does not benefit me. Not in this life, but there’s a reward to come. That’s what Jesus says. That’s the motivation to keep living out this love.

If you’re living for a kingdom that lasts forever, that changes how you’re going to love. If you follow a king who is willing to die for his enemies, that’s going to transform the way you think about loving others. Not long ago, Christianity Today ran this incredible story of a man named Yasir Eric. Yasir grew up in an extremist Muslim household among other extremist Muslims. It was in the late 1990s in Sudan.

He was taught to hate Christians from the word go. At 15, a new kid shows up at his school named Zacharia who was a Christian from South Sudan. And as soon as he found out, this guy is a follower of Jesus. He made it his aim. I’m going to ruin this man’s life.

I’m going to take him down. Whatever it takes. And he put together a group. And at night, they ambushed Zachariah. And Yasir says he took great pleasure in battering this young man, leaving him there crying for help, bleeding and bruised.

For the next two years, Yasir’s daily prayer was that Allah would destroy Zachariah. Now, here’s where the gospel strikes like lightning. Zachariah survives and instead of nursing hatred to Yasir, which is perfectly natural. That would be perfectly normal to hate someone who did that to you. He prays faithfully year after year for Yasir.

Fast forward several years. Zachariah’s prayers have been working in the unseen realm. Yasier ends up having this conversation with somebody and that surfaces that past guilt. He remembers what he did. Soon after that, he has a dream.

Jesus visits him and offers him the love that he was mocking that enemy love that he said that’s a joke. Yasir then prays to Jesus and for the first time he sees Jesus in a new light. He says Jesus if you are real if this is true I want you to change everything for me. He surrenders his life and things did change very quickly. The first thing he noticed his family disowned him.

He was kicked out of the family. He had to live in a different area. Fast forward several years again at a gathering of Christians. Who does Yasir run into but Zachariah who is scarred but he’s alive. And he tells Yasier, you know, I have been praying for you.

Praying over the years that Jesus would reveal himself to you and with scarred arms they they embrace and he says now I know my prayers have been answered and today Yasir travels the world preaching that enemy love that rescued him. Only Jesus can do that. Amen. >> We serve a God who transforms enemies into friends and brothers. People who hated one another or at least one hated another person, he transformed them.

So, as we consider what Jesus is saying to us here this morning, we got to ask the question, okay, who is my enemy? Many of us would like to say, I don’t have any enemies. But Jesus isn’t talking about cartoon villains. He’s not talking about some distant corrupt politician. Jesus wants us to take this very personally.

He wants us to make it real as he does with all that he says. He says, “Think about somebody who has personally wronged you. Somebody who’s lied about you, somebody who’s yelled at you, abused you, belittled you, made you feel worthless, whoever that may be, those are the real world enemies that Jesus is talking about.” See, as long as you think of enemies as this this, you know, big evil villain in the distance, you know, someone who’s not personally interacting with me, then you’re letting yourself off the hook because it’s so easy to say, “Oh, yeah. I I can I can show love to that person.”

Jesus is saying, “I want you to have this register with your heart. Who is it that has wronged you? Who is it that hurt you?” That’s the person I’m talking about. The person who has most made you feel small and worthless, that is your enemy.

In the gospel, Jesus literally practiced everything he preached here. Whatever he calls his followers to, he did that in the fullest extent. He said, “Give to everyone who begs you.” And Jesus gave sight to the blind man who begged for him. And he didn’t demand any payment.

He said, “Do good to those who hate you.” On the night he was betrayed, Jesus got down on his knees and he washed the feet of Judas who he knew would betray him. And later on, he would heal the ear of a man who was there to arrest him. He said, “Turn the other cheek.” Jesus would allow himself to be struck repeatedly by the religious leaders and Roman soldiers.

He said, “Do not withhold your tunic.” Well, at the cross, he gave up not only his cloak, but even his tunic when they stripped him bare at the foot of the cross. And he said, “Bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you.” And while he was there hanging on the cross, bleeding, dying for us, the people there were blaspheming him. They were yelling at him.

They were cursing him. What did Jesus do? He prayed for them. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. He prayed for his abusers.

See, if you commit your life to Jesus, you’re following one who loved perfectly. He lived all of this out and he gives us his Holy Spirit so that we can now live this supernatural transformed life of love. This is where the church will stand out in a world full of hate. Finally, in your notes, practice love in community and by the spirit. You look at all the New Testament letters, you could kind of sum them all up as having the same theme.

Practice love in community and by the spirit. Show love to one another. Put it into practice with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And as you do that, you become this city on a hill that that shines brightly out to the world, this love of Christ. And people will be intrigued.

People will wonder why is it that they love their one another so much. He knew that as people are redeemed from their sin, as they put their faith in him, what they’re really set free to is they’re set free to love. This is how Jesus wanted his church to be known through sacrificial agape love. If we want to follow Jesus’s command to love our enemies, we have to ask ourselves some straightforward questions. What are some ways I can do good for my enemy?

Now, we we live in a world that’s full of sinners. So, there is somebody who’s wronged you. There’s somebody who’s been an enemy to you. You may think, “I don’t have any enemies.” And Jesus would say, “No, but they’ve been an enemy to you.”

That’s the person you need to love. That’s the person you need to forgive. Who is it that you need to speak a blessing over? What would that look like if you did that? How can you pray for that person?

The more Christ is ruling in your life, the more you will want to love enemies and those who have mistreated you, you’ll want to do good to them. And this isn’t because justice doesn’t matter. God loves justice. He is the God of justice. But what you’re doing when you’re loving those who have wronged you is you’re saying, “God, I recognize that it’s not my job to settle every score.

That’s your job. I’m going to leave room, the Bible says, for the wrath of God. I’m going to leave room for you to deal out judgment and justice. That’s not my job. My job is to love my enemies and to do good to those who hurt me.

And you can remember that God has forgiven you infinitely more than you’ll ever have to forgive anyone. We’ll close with this question here. How might this passage be worked out in your life? Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. See, God wants us to be specific.

When we read these commands, we see this what sounds like this daunting assignment to love our enemies. He wants us to personalize it, to not put it into the theoretical realm and and think, “Yeah, that’s a beautiful idea for someone else.” No, he wants us to own it and say, “This is who I am. And this is what I’m called to be doing in the world. Let’s pray together.

Father God, we thank you that you loved us when we were enemies. We were rejecting you. We were going our own way and you loved us. You showered us with your grace and your mercy. And you sent Jesus, your only begotten son, to suffer the penalty we deserved, to die in our place, to conquer death so that we could rise to new life with you.

Lord, I know that this is not possible for me on my own. Naturally, this isn’t who I want to be, but in Christ, I know this is who I’m called to be. And Lord, I ask that you would work in my heart and the hearts of each person here. Help us to see that this supernatural love is what life is all about. This is what we were made for.

This is what will transform the world. Not doing what is normal, but doing what is bizarre in the eyes of the world. This enemy love that you’ve had for us. Thank you, Jesus. We love you.

We pray in this in your mighty name. Amen. Well, amen. If you wouldn’t mind standing with me, let’s close out in worship. I could just sit.

I could just sit and wait for all your goodness. Hope to feel your presence. I could just stay. I could just stay right where I am and hope to feel you. Hope to feel something again.

>> I could hold on. I could hold on to who I am and never let you change me from the inside. I could be safe. I could be safe here in your arms and never leave home. Never let these walls down.

You have me higher. You have me deeper. And I’ll go where you will lead me, Lord. You have called me higher. You have called me deeper.

And I’ll go where you will lead me alone. Where you lead me. You lead me alone. I can hold on. I could hold on to who I am and never let you change me from the inside.

I could be safe. I could be safe here in your arms and never leave. Never let these walls. You have called me higher. You have called me deeper.

And I’ll go where you will lead me, Lord. You have called me higher. You have called me deeper. And I’ll go where you will lead me. Where you lead me.

>> I will be yours. I will be yours through all my life. I will be yours. I will be yours for all my life. >> I will be yours.

I will be yours for all my life. So let your mercy I will be yours, Lord. I will be yours for all my life. So let your mercy light the path before me. You have called me higher.

You have called me deeper. I’ll go where you will lead me. You have called me higher. You have called me deeper. The glory you will lead me below.

Cuz you have called me higher. You have called me deeper. And I’ll go where you will lead me belong. You have called me higher. You have me deeper.

I’ll go where you will lead me. You lead me. You lead me. Oh, you lead me. You lead me.

Amen. Great job leading us in worship. Thank you. And I’m gonna say it because we’re all thinking it. The gem by is a nice touch.

Thank you, Randy. So next week we have our hymn sing which is going to be at 400 pm on Sunday. So next week going to be back here after the service on 4 pm. VBS signups are today in the breezeway. If you’re interested or or might be available for that, let Becky and the crew know.

And also we have a baptism class right after the service. So that’s going to be right across the hall here in room 102. If you have given your life to Jesus Christ, whether it was today or it was in the past sometime, and you haven’t yet been baptized, it’s time to get baptized. And we want to encourage you to do that. And we’ll have a class that’s gonna walk through the meaning and importance of baptism.

So I invite you to join us for that. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Thank you.

>> Thank you guys.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 9,028 words.