We've been spending the summer months going through the Sermon
on the Plain, which is the Gospel of Luke's account of what
we often call the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and we're
going to continue to look at a section of that sermon this
morning. Before we get into it, let me
start with a continued invitation that you heard the
announcement for Church on the Park.
That is not just a time for us to meet as one big church family
and be together in the park and and maybe bring some friends
that wouldn't normally come to a church building.
This is also an invitation for some of you to get baptized to
give your life to Jesus in a way that is declared to all those
who would be in witness of that and even inviting you to that
makes me think of the very first person that I got to baptize as
a pastor. So I'll share the story with
you. The first mission trip and kind
of season and ministry that I got called to was in Amsterdam.
I did a summer in Amsterdam living and working with a
Christian hostel where people would come and we just
ministered to travellers. And we're actually ministering
to another man who worked there, just as, you know, a cleaner.
And he was not a believer. His name was Sanko, and he was
from the Sierra Leone. He'd come to to Amsterdam
seeking refuge, and he just started hanging out with all of
us. And so naturally, as we were
there to tell people about Jesus, we started inviting him
to prayer times and Bible studies, and we would invite him
to become a Christian. And his journey always stood out
to me because he would answer very honestly.
I'm only 20% Christian. When we first invited him to
give his life to the Lord, he said 20%.
He said, Sonko, you, you can't be 20% Christian.
And he said, OK, I'm going to keep going.
But he'd come to the prayer times in the Bible studies and
as the months went on, he would grow in his devotion.
But very honestly, we asked him again and he said, I'm 50%
Christian now. 50% said no, Sonko, you can't be 50%
Christian. And this went on until finally
he came so close to the gospel and, and accepting it that he
was ready to be 100% Christian. And in that moment he said, I
want to get baptized. I want to be 100% for Jesus.
And so we went to Vandal Park in Amsterdam and we waded into a
little lake and we baptized him. And that's really what the
invitation is all about to give your life fully devoted to
Jesus, every area of your life buried with Christ in the water,
resurrected with him in the newness of life when you come
out of the water. And so I, I mentioned that just
to, to stir in some of your hearts that you need to be fully
devoted to Jesus and you need to made that make that known.
I also think of it as a point of conviction for my own life.
Because if you follow Jesus, if you've given your life to the
Lord, you would know that you can't say you're 20% following
Jesus. You can't be a 40% Christian.
And yet, if we're really honest about what it means to follow
Jesus, to be a fully devoted disciple of Christ, and to read
his words as commands over our life, if we are really honest,
we would admit there's things about following Jesus that we're
not quite ready to fully commit to.
There are things that to follow Jesus will take you down such a
narrow gate of devotion to follow Him in spite of every
other invitation of the world and desire of the flesh that we
all come to places in our life, even post baptism when we're not
fully following Jesus. And if we were honest, we would
say I'm only 50% today. And I mention all of that
because that reality is not tested as much anywhere in the
commands of Christ than the one we'll look at today.
To really follow Jesus, to be a true disciple, means that you
are willing to go places you would normally not go.
You are willing to allow him to lead your life to areas you
normally would not be LED. It would not be a natural desire
of your heart to go there. And today's Scripture is the
most challenging scripture to obey and maybe the best test of
your devotion to Jesus. So read along with me in Luke
chapter 6, starting in verse 27. He says, But I say to you who
here love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless
those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you.
GK Chesterton once said Christianity has not been tried
and found wanting. It has been found difficult and
left untried. And this passage of Scripture
might be the best expression of that reality.
There are going to be moments in your devotion to Jesus by the
very nature of following him against your own desires, where
he's going to press you beyond where you would normally go.
And this, the most radical command of Jesus is your
devotion to him is tested not in how you love your friends, but
how you love your enemies. And so today we're going to talk
about what that looks like and how we could possibly overcome
our reluctancy to have this verse be real in our lives.
So to do that, let's start by every so often in this sermon
series, we've kind of cross cross referenced over to Matthew
to see what he said in the Sermon on the Mount.
Notice in Luke, he says, but I say to you, he's making a
contradiction to a teaching that would have been common in the
day. And in the Matthew account, we
get a better idea of what that teaching was.
Same thought, the same moment of the sermon.
But in Matthew chapter 5 verse 43, he says, you've heard that
it was said in old that you shall love your neighbor and
hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your
enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate
you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute
you. One of the themes of the Sermon
on the Mount is Jesus correcting bad interpretations of the word.
And one of them came from Leviticus chapter 19 where it
says you shall take no vengeance, but love your
neighbor as yourself. And so from that portion of the
law we actually find in Jesus day an add on in addition to the
teaching where the teachers of the day were saying love your
neighbor, hate your enemies. And just as aside, this is
typically how bad teaching goes. Bad teaching is usually some
version of the way we wish things were.
We we wish it said to love your neighbor and hate your enemies
because that comes quite naturally to our hearts.
That is the natural human instinct that that is something
that you can see way beyond the sanctuary of those devoted to
Jesus this morning, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
That is the way of the world around you, to love the people
that come naturally to your affection and to hate those who
you would want to separate your life from anyway.
So in Jesus day it looked like love your neighbor and hate the
tax collector. A constant reminder that our our
promised land is occupied by Rome and we're waiting for the
revival of the Kingdom of David. We hate their presence and what
they represent. Love your neighbor, hate the
prostitutes and the sinners. A constant reminder that one of
the problems with the promised land is all these people who are
defiling it. They're the issue.
They're the they're the the problem with with our land.
Or love your neighbor and hate the Gentiles.
Very common attitude in that day was to love the people of God
and to distrust and disassociate with those who are outside of
the covenant. And we can probably find some
modern day parallels. A 21st century version of love
your neighbor and hate your enemy by might sound like, you
know, love your neighbor and just hate the Democrats.
Everything wrong with our country is because of them.
Or conversely, wherever political party you stand, you
can just point the figure the other way.
Love your neighbor and hate the Republicans for all of their
corruption and greed. That's the real problem.
But of course it has to go deeper than that.
It has to hit more personal than you choosing some enemy that is
this far off distant category that you don't have to interact
with anyway. And so right now, if we could
take a moment to just allow the Holy Spirit to stir in your
heart why this verse is challenging to you.
I know in our sanctuary right now there are people that are on
the other side of a broken marriage, which means there are
ex spouses that probably had some ammunition to why the
covenant of marriage was broken. Love your neighbor, which
includes the one who betrayed you, cheated on you, lied to
you, stole from you. There's probably some business
partnerships that have gone awry.
There's probably some friendships that you can think
of that were once your best friends and now they would be
considered your worst enemies. And so for this sermon to be
effective, this sermon has to have real people.
Some of them might be part of your family.
Some of them might be people that you sit across the table
from or ride to church with. The idea is that Jesus wants you
to live this out in such a real way that it pushes you beyond
what would normally be comfortable.
And I want to point out once again, as we've done throughout
this series, what it is not saying Jesus is saying love your
enemies. He is not saying simply don't
hate them. Many of you would like to test
out of this sermon because the people you're thinking of that
have broken your heart, who actively hate you or the other
categories that we'll look at curse you spitefully use you.
You've said, well, I've overcome bitterness.
They, they no longer keep me up at night with thoughts of
vengeance. I no longer think of them and
wish I'll upon them if I see them, I'll just turn the other
way. And I, I, I never talk bad about
them. You found yourself in a
religious neutral. But Jesus doesn't say simply
don't hate your enemies. He actually says to actively
love them, which is one of the ways that we hope to turn this
command up to take us beyond where we would normally go.
So what does it mean to love them?
Well, we actually get very detailed commandments that are
associated with what Jesus means when he says love.
He says do good to those who hate you.
There is a very important Kingdom principle that we will
find when answering the question what does it mean to love them?
And finding the very next statement out of the commandment
is to do good to them. There is a principle that we
must have in our theology and the way that we practice our
following of Christ. And it is this.
We must do good things even if we don't feel like it.
Jesus does not tell us how to feel about our enemies.
He doesn't tell us what emotion we should direct their way.
He says do good, which means the principle of His Kingdom is that
your feelings will follow your obedience.
That as you actively do good to someone, the emotions associated
with love that we often commonly wrongfully associate as the only
marks of love will follow. And this is one of the upside
down natures of the Kingdom of God.
Right now. You live in a culture and you
are part of the human condition that wants everything to be
guided by your feelings. The the culture wants your
feelings to be the guiding principle of your life, which is
why you get mantras like if it feels good, do it.
If it feels good, follow that feeling and whatever action
needs to take place after that is yours to choose.
That's how you get the phrase follow your heart.
That is another way of saying what do you feel like doing?
What do you? What is the emotional response
you get when you think about doing something?
Follow your emotions and your actions will will line up
accordingly. You also get this in the
negative. You'll hear people say to one
another I no longer have feelings for you.
I've lost the feeling and because the feeling is gone I
will now separate my actions from this relationship.
But the upside down Kingdom says that your obedience leads your
feelings and you know this to be true.
In reality, if you just think about what works in your life,
you know this to be true. Here, I'll, I'll, I'll give you
a couple examples. Maybe you can relate to them.
I don't often feel like eating healthy.
In fact, I, I have to overcome the temptation to just eat
whatever I want all the time. I, I have the appetite of a dog,
I'll just eat what's in front of me and I'll gobble it down and
I'll eat whenever I can. And yet, when I discipline my
body and I allow my healthy and eating habits to lead, good
feelings follow it, it actually feels much better to eat healthy
and not overeat and have it a a nutritious diet.
And down the list for areas of discipline, I don't often feel
like working out. I often feel like hitting the
snooze button when it's time to get up and work out.
And if I let my feelings dictate when I worked out, I would never
ever move a muscle and down the list.
I wake up and I don't feel like making my bed, but every morning
I overcome the feeling of initial laziness to make it.
Because if I did it, I would eat everything.
I would never move a muscle and my house would be a mess and my
I would feel horrible. But if you can allow your
obedience to lead your feelings, you actually get to experience
the health benefits of all of those decisions.
And the reality continues into your spiritual life there.
There's all sorts of spiritual disciplines that I hope that you
know every Sunday are the basic applications of every sermon
that you should spend time with God in his Word on a daily
basis. And I am a pastor of a church
and I can just go 1st and confess and admit what you
probably have all felt from time to time that you don't always
feel like reading your Bible. And when I wake up, sometimes I
feel like grabbing my phone before my Bible, and sometimes I
try to read my Bible on my phone and I'm just completely LED away
by my emotions to follow all the notifications that are waiting
for me. I don't always feel like
praying. And yet when I do, I get to the
the amazing spiritual benefit of the promise that in His presence
is the fullness of joy. The joy is in the presence, not
before it. Prayer is a discipline, and if
you wait till you feel like praying to do it, you're
probably going to have a very indiscriminate prayer life.
And all of this is especially true with the command that hangs
over your head as a follower of Jesus to love people just the
the the relationships that exist right now.
The most principle and basic calls on your life to be a
loving person will require discipline more than emotion.
Husbands, love your wife like Christ loved the church and lay
down your life for her. Do that even if you don't feel
like it, in fact, especially if you don't feel like it.
Wives, bless your husband, support them and care for them
and encourage them overcome your emotion to do so.
And down the list. Parents, discipline your
children and raise them up in a godly house home.
Pray for them, teach them to pray.
Teach them in the Bible, especially when you don't feel
like it. And if we need discipline to do
that in the most primary offices of our life, we are especially
going to need that when it comes to the great command to expand
the borders beyond what we're comfortable with or what we
naturally want to do, which is to do good to your enemies.
I love the way CS Lewis puts it. He says do not waste time
bothering whether you love your neighbor or in this case, your
enemy. So don't waste your time
wondering if you love them, act as if you did.
As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets to
life. When you are behaving as if you
loved someone, you will presently come to love them.
When your obedience to the call on your life to love your
neighbor as yourself rules your life, regardless if you feel
like it, the secret to life is God will allow the emotion to
follow. Do good to those who hate you.
Paul says to the church in Rome. Repay no one evil for evil.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Amen. This is such a great temptation
of our life to respond in kind, to allow someone's evil towards
us, to turn into a cycle of eye for an eye and tooth for a
tooth. But one of the other themes of
every time we gather together in our sanctuary to open the word
is that we are called to be holy, which means set apart,
which means the people of God look different than the people
of the world. You want to know one of the
great ways you can do that? Repaying evil with good.
To be someone who is kind and good and charitable to someone
regardless of how they treat you.
In other words, to kill people with kindness. 1 commentator
says this isn't to say kill them like they're no longer a threat
to your life. It is to say kill them so that
they are no longer an enemy. Kill your enemies by making them
friends. This is a great mark of the
people of God living different than the people of the world.
And So what does it look like to do good to your enemies?
Once again, I, I realized that in this short time that we have
together on Sunday, the most powerful work that will happen
through this sermon is for those of you who hear, as Jesus says
in the beginning of this command, for those who hear, the
Holy Spirit will bring to mind a specific person that you can
begin to practice this sermon on.
And I hope some specific good things that you can do for that
person. So without exhausting a list of
good ideas, writing them letters, sending them flowers, a
phone call of reconciliation, pulling weeds, mowing the lawn,
any good thing that you can think of, There's actually 2
concrete examples of doing good that Jesus is going to present
to us. That we can all do starting
today, and you won't even have to interact with them.
It starts with the posture of your heart and the words of your
mouth. He first says to do good.
You bless those who curse you. So what does it mean to bless
someone who curses you? I don't usually appeal to the
Greek because I don't speak Greek and the translations into
English are great, but every once in awhile we get a word
that in Greek we actually still have an English.
So see if you can recognize the root word that Jesus is is using
when he says bless. The Greek word is euloguejo and
it literally means to speak good words.
And if you've ever been to a funeral, you've heard this Greek
word when someone stands up to give the eulogy.
So you understand this concept that Jesus is getting at a
eulogy is the moment in a memorial of someone's life when
in remembering them, you're highlighting all of the best
things and you're staying clear of all of the worst things.
You're allowing that moment of memory to be a time to remember
the good things that they did as a member of the family, as a
friend, as a Co worker. A eulogy at a funeral is a great
way to see someone be blessed and as a reminder, you would
never stand up during a funeral and highlight all of people's
things they got wrong in in the funeral moment.
It is not the time to go off about how bad they were as a
parent, or all the bad advice they gave or the failed ventures
of faith that they had. The eulogy is the moment to
highlight someone's best. And so think of that when you go
to obey this command with the person you have on your heart
and your mind. What does it mean to highlight
their best? And as promised, I hope this
sermon takes us to a few dead ends where we have to cry out to
God. I don't know.
I don't know how to proceed in following Jesus for that person
because when I think of them, I think of nothing good.
So let's let's just get some starter, some starter blocks for
what it means to highlight someone's best.
Spend some time seeking God's perspective on anyone in your
life and you will find something that God values in that person.
Every enemy that exists in our minds and our hearts as we think
through this sermon bears the image of God.
Every person that we might possibly be thinking of right
now was fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together
in their mother's womb by a God who made them for a purpose.
Good works for them to walk in that He prepared beforehand.
He has good thoughts towards them, and the Bible says that
God desires none to perish. No, not one, even this person.
He desires all to come to the saving knowledge and the Amazing
Grace of his love and the power of His redemption.
So you begin to see this person as an object of God's design in
your life to teach you how to highlight the best in someone in
the hardest of circumstances. If you get God's perspective,
you will see something good about every person on your list.
And as we continue to qualify those that you may think are
unqualified in your heart for a message like this, let's
consider just for a moment what it means for those who are to
receive this blessing. It's for those who curse you.
To curse someone is to wish harm on you, to insult you, or to
speak evil over you. Very simply, to curse as an
opposite of a blessing where you highlight the best.
To curse is to hope for the worst, and I don't have to teach
you what this looks like. All of you have hearts that are
deceitfully wicked, and you've all probably had moments of
short interactions or long-suffering type
relationships where you've known what it's like to just feel
angst against someone else. And if you'd like practicing
this, just drive around Boise on I-84 during rush hour from 3:00
PM to 6:00 PM and someone will do something so stupid and an
idiotic that you can't help but point it out to the heavens
above. If there's nothing good about
the growth, it's that we all get to practice patience and
repentance when we drive. We know how to curse.
It's easy to curse people, and that's easy for people to curse
you. You've all done something to
contribute to bad driving and the sinful nature of this world.
But God's people are different. Where the world curses, God's
people bless. Where the world sees the worst
and hopes for the worst, we look for the best and hope for the
best. And let me just take a moment,
as we can often do, as Jesus teaches the expanding nature of
his love, it pushes off beyond where we would normally go.
This sermon will should give you a how much more moment if Jesus
wants you to bless and not curse those who hate you?
How much more should we bless and not curse those who you're
called into a covenant relationship with in the family
of God, in the households of God represented in the sanctuary in
the marriage covenant before God.
And I'll say we, we are living in a time where a fundamental
way we can be separate and and holy for God's name's sake is to
be thriving families, raising up children in the way they should
go Covenant marriages that are faithful and enduring.
And so those things by nature will be under attack.
So practice this with each other.
Husbands highlight the best. Don't think the worst wives 2
husbands highlight bless your husband highlight his best
parents to children, children to parents.
May we practice our piety at home.
How much more should we do all of these things inside the
family of God? So one thing you can actively do
is you can bless people in your heart the way you speak about
them. And the second thing he says you
can start today. Pray for those who spitefully
use you. Jesus has been very clear in all
of the ways that He qualifies your enemy.
He doesn't want anyone left off the list of how we are going to
love them. He wants this without exception.
If they hate you, they're included.
If they curse you, they're included if they spitefully use
you. So just to expand it even
farther, let me share a few definitions from other
translations of what it means for someone to spitefully use
you. The NIV says those who mistreat
you. The NLT says those who hurt you.
The ESV says those who abuse you and commentators say this
includes exploiting, manipulating, humiliating,
threatening, insulting, emotional, physical, spiritual
mistreatment. Without exception.
We are agents of the love of God to everyone.
And I understand that I have used some words that can
sometimes feel heavy and burdensome in the way that we're
called to interact with people, words like emotional, physical,
and spiritual abuse. We are to love them.
And I will give a disclaimer so that we can be shepherded well.
There are healthy and wise moments where spiritual counsel
and sometimes legal counsel will set up protective orders so that
people do not continually threaten your life.
And so I would not be shepherding you well if I didn't
encourage you at times to have good and healthy boundaries
against life threatening abuse. It is good to have protective
orders in place. I don't want you to go through a
cycle of physical harm unto death.
But when it comes to this command, there are no boundaries
where there are good, legal, physical and even relational and
social boundaries. There are no boundaries inside
your prayer closet, he says. For those who spitefully use
you, you are commanded to pray for them.
Every person that could be considered an enemy on the list
can be and should be an object of your prayers.
So once again, we come to a moment, we say, Lord, what does
this look like? How am I supposed to pray for
someone who's been so hateful and spiteful and abusive to my
life? Well, let me encourage you in
just some practical ways to have a healthy prayer life.
One of the great things we can always be praying for is wisdom.
James says if any of you lacks wisdom, let him pray and God
will give it liberally without reproach.
And so one of your beginning prayers for anyone you feel like
you're at a dead end with can be the prayer for wisdom.
Lord, what does it mean to love this person?
How am I supposed to do good to this person?
Lord, give me wisdom that I might follow your lead on how to
even interact with this person. A prayer for wisdom Another
powerful prayer that you can start with is a prayer for
forgiveness. One of the biggest challenges is
the hurt and the pain that needs to be resolved.
It's a burden you should not carry.
Where there is a need for forgiveness, there is a need for
someone to pray that the God of forgiveness would begin to make
that work happen. Corey Temboom who is a life that
could be studied on how to love your enemies.
A woman who went through a Holocaust concentration camp and
survived to learn how to forgive the guards that tortured her
wrote in her book. You never so touched the ocean
of God's love as when you forgive and pray for your
enemies. You want to experience a
powerful prayer Experience the prayer of forgiveness for those
who have hurt you, mistreated you, spitefully used you, and
cursed you. And what about the prayer of
salvation? It is maybe the beginning prayer
for all of us, for anyone of you who believe your relationship
with God. Cries starts with a cry, a
prayer to ask for forgiveness, to confess of your own life that
you were once an enemy of God, dead in your sin, in need of a
Savior. What a powerful moment it is in
your own spiritual life when you learn the prayer of salvation
and that powerful moment when necessary for those who have
hurt you who would be qualified enemies who don't know God.
What a powerful way to shift the hurt and the pain away from your
relationship and towards a relationship with God.
To pray for your enemies salvation is to see them as an
object of God's mercy and grace and power of redemption.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who who lived in the same time as Corey
Temboom World War 2, lived in Germany trying to understand how
to live with such a oppressive government, said through the
meeting of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side and
plead for him to know God. The power of prayer to turn
enemies into friends. And so this is where the Gospel
of Luke ends the command. And I find it so helpful to make
one more reference point to Jesus teaching in the Gospel of
Matthew in this very same section.
Because none of this is possible by just being a better person
and trying harder. Jesus will continue this
teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew by giving us a
vision of how all of this starts.
It doesn't start by seeing someone who went out and tried
it with bold faith like Corey Temboom.
He actually says in Matthew chapter 5 that in doing this,
you'll be sons of your Father in heaven.
For he makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends
rain on the just and on the unjust.
In other words, if you want to see the source of how loving
enemies and blessing those who want nothing to do with you
works, look to how God cares for his creation.
The sun rises the the rain falls on the evil and the good, on the
just and the unjust. In other words, there's not this
portion of creation where all the good people live and that's
the land that God blesses. And then there's this place of
creation where the bad people are and God wants nothing to do
with it and he's abandoned. Many times people ask the
question, why do good things or bad things happen to good
people? But what this begs the question
for is why do good things happen to evil people?
Why is God so gracious to a world that hates him?
Why does God allow the wicked to prosper?
Why does God give sun and rain and all the same blessings of
creation to everyone, regardless of the devotion to him?
It's because God loves those who don't love him.
God gives grace and mercy to His enemies, to the just and the
unjust. And aren't we glad?
This is not a message to say that as the people of God, we
are here because we have earned our right to be here.
If you can think back to the moment of your salvation, you
can think back to the moment when you yourself were the
beneficiary of the kindness of God that led you to repentance.
The gospel begins with a message that God loves his enemies.
In just a moment, we're about to take communion.
Communion is a moment to remember how all of us got into
the Kingdom, that it was the blood of Christ in the cup, the
body of Christ broken for us that we remember in the bread.
And as he hung on the cross, we get a picture of the gospel
bringing us in by the love of God.
So before we take this, let me give more imagery to what we're
about to remember. We're in the Gospel of Luke.
As the story continues, Luke 23, we give a vivid picture of
Christ on the cross. It says in Luke chapter 23 verse
33 that when they come to the place of Calvary, there they
crucified him and the criminals, one on the right hand, on the
other on the left. And as he's hanging on the
cross, paying the price for the sins of the world, the gospel
gives this detail. And the people stood looking on,
but even the rulers with them sneered, saying He saved others,
let him save himself, if he is the Christ, the chosen of God.
The soldiers also mocked him, coming and offering him sour
wine and saying, if you're the king of the Jews, save yourself.
And as they mock him and as they curse him, as they hate him and
betray him, it says that Jesus said, Father forgive them, for
they don't know what they do. The gospel is that we were
enemies of God. Our sin was placed on his cross,
our sin yelled crucified. Our sin and our love for the
world are turning our back on God, mocked him and betrayed
him. And in our sin, in our prodigal
state, in our wayward living, God pled on our behalf and said,
Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. To receive this message that you
must love your enemies is only possible to receive the gospel
that you have been loved as an enemy, that on the cross Christ
declared enemies loved by the Father.
And this is where the whole sermon takes us back to the very
beginning. We all want to follow Jesus as
much as we're comfortable. We all want to pick up and
follow Him, pick up our cross and follow him into the
sanctuary and get an encouraging message for our life and go live
life with the borders of our choosing, where we love our
friends and we hate our enemies. But Jesus ends this message by
saying if you love those who love you, what reward do you
have? Even the tax collectors do that.
To follow Jesus means you must follow Him beyond what you would
normally do. You must allow His love to
become your love. You cannot have Christianity
without Christ. You cannot choose the boundaries
of how far the love of God can flow through your life. 50%,
sixty percent, 80% of the people I know I'm going to love to
follow Christ is to love like Christ.
So we sang a song to start this sermon, and I will pray this for
all of us as we end it. May we surrender all, all of our
lives, all of our boundaries, all of the bitterness that we
hold in our hearts for someone that has hurt us, all of the
things that we want Christianity to look like, and none of the
things that we don't want to surrender all says Lord, I want
to know the power of your forgiveness so radically in my
own life that he who is forgiven much can love much.
And I want to know the love that you have for even my enemies.
This sermon is meant to do 2 things.
To point you to the cross. That the whole model for all of
this would be seen in Jesus love for you and 2nd to humble all
self righteousness. That none of this is possible
inside your own heart. But to receive Christ and the
power of the Holy Spirit is to receive the power to love even
the enemy. Thanks for joining us today.
If you would like to watch the full service, check out the link
in the description. For next steps and to learn
more, visit calvaryboise.com.