Well, if you're anything like me, you saw Matt and saw a man that looked wise up here in the pulpit and then proceeded to see a young man come right after him for the sermon.
So sorry ahead of time, uh, but it's good to see you.
Again, my name is Sam.
I'm the student pastor.
I've been here for uh four years, and I'm I'm honored to be with you this morning.
So to open up, why are some people so hard to love?
Whether you're a Christian or not, you know that some people come very easy to love, and then others are amazingly hard to love.
And maybe someone's coming to mind for you.
We live in a culture that says things like love is love, and yet the same culture, the moment somebody says something off, cancels them.
No place for forgiveness, no second chances, no space for love, as God has defined it.
And so, what on earth is the role of the Christian in a culture like this?
During the month of July, we've been going through this series that we've been calling kingdom fruit, fruit of the kingdom.
And here's the big idea.
As someone is caught up in the bigger story, as someone is caught up in living their life through the lens of the kingdom of God as the center point, their lens on themselves, the world, and others will be changed.
And the primary heart of this is that we are citizens of a different kingdom.
We don't belong primarily to the United States that we do now.
There is another kingdom that we ultimately belong to, and so what we've been seeing is that as a person and as a culture and as a group of people are seeing the world through this lens, things change.
Because our primary identity is that we belong to King Jesus, and that come what may, we belong to him.
And so, as we do that, we'll see how that impacts us as we operate in the world today.
The first week, Pastor Matt walked us through the first fruit of the kingdom piece.
In this sermon, Matt talked about the reality that we live in a very, very anxious age.
We don't have to look far to see.
It's an election year.
Donald Trump was shot in the head eight days ago.
We don't have to look far or wide to see that the day we live in is unsettled.
So, man, how can the people of God respond to this?
How do we respond as a people?
As Matt talked about, we can be a people who seek first the kingdom of God, who seek his righteousness, and allow that peace to take deep root in our hearts.
Because no matter what happens this year or in the years to come, King Jesus is on the throne.
And there's no greater peace than knowing that the God of the universe, the one who knows you and loves you, is in complete control.
And then last week, Keel walked us through the second fruit of the kingdom, humility.
Humility, as Keel argued last week, is not thinking that we're the worst or hating ourselves.
That's not humility at all.
Humility is rather having a right reaction and response to God and his kingdom.
And what that means is that you and I aren't the heroes of the story.
And so, as Keel talked about last week, we're actually invited into the relieving reality that we don't have to hold everything together, that we don't have to be in control, that we can allow God to be God and see ourselves rightly in that.
And now this morning we're hitting the third fruit of the kingdom that we're doing in this series, which is love.
And we'll see that the love of the Bible, as God defines it, is a little different than the way that our world does.
So if you have your copy of God's word, I'd invite you to turn to Luke 10 that we just read.
This will be a familiar story to many of you, as we just saw, but I've been praying this week that it would be fresh to us this morning, and we'd perhaps see the gospel in a more sweet way.
While you're turning there, I'd love to share a story with you a couple months ago, or a couple weeks ago, sorry, uh Grace and I flew up to Hartford, Connecticut and drove about an hour down 95 to this little beach town called Old Saybrook, right there on the coast.
There's a few pictures that will uh cycle through of us.
This is a place that I've gone every year my entire life.
One of my favorite parts about the town is that it moves at such a slow place.
Like everything closes at 7 p.m.
Seriously, in July, 7 p.m.
Every year I always find myself exhausted when I get there.
I always find myself tired.
I always find myself especially tired of the really fast pace that I move at and really ready to go slower.
And this year, especially, I went into the trip exhausted, just ready for a break, ready to slow down, be with grace and my family, and let the space of this slowness open up my heart to be refreshed in the gospel, in my belovedness, in my father's arms.
And so in the weeks leading up, with that in mind, I wanted to find a new book to read.
I wanted to find a book about God and faith, but one that wasn't overwhelmingly heady and theological because I spend way too much time doing that in seminary.
And so I wanted something really light and devotional and easy to read.
And so I picked up uh Abba's Child by Brennan Manning.
I don't know if you've read it.
I spent each morning in Connecticut pouring over these pages with a fresh cup of coffee at this little wicker wooden table with a view of the ocean to my left, and I was just letting these pages wash over me.
I found myself each morning just brought to tears as Brennan would tell stories, as he would remind me that I am beloved and cherished by the God of the universe, and not me and my put-together self, me and my messy self, and my unable-to-hide self, and my childlike self.
In the fourth chapter of the book, Manning he's fleshing out what it means to live as children of God, children of Abba, children of the good father.
And he's going into this idea of love, of forgiveness, of compassion.
He's getting into this idea that God's children overflow with gospel compassion.
And he tells this story where this author, he's living in New York, he has this moment where this one person was very hard to love, and then they became a little easier to love.
Listen to this story.
He says, understanding triggers the compassion that makes forgiveness possible.
Author Stephen Covey recalled an incident while riding the New York City subway one Sunday morning.
The few passengers aboard were reading the newspaper or dozing.
It was a quiet, almost sleepy ride through the bowels of the Big Apple.
Covey was engrossed in reading when a man, accompanied by several small children, boarded at the next stop.
In less than a minute, chaos erupted.
The kids ran up and down the aisle, shouting, screaming, and wrestling with one another on the floor.
The father made no attempt to intervene.
The elderly passenger shifted nervously, stress became distress.
Covey waited patiently.
Surely the father would do something to restore order, a gentle word of correction, a stern command, some expression of paternal authority, anything.
None was forthcoming.
Frustration mounted, and after an unduly generous pause, Covey turned to the father and said, Kindly, sir, perhaps you could restore order here by telling your children to come back and sit down.
And the man replied, I know I should do something.
We just came from the hospital.
Their mother died an hour ago, and I just don't know what to do.
Can you imagine?
How do you respond in that moment to this?
There's this man broken with grief over the horrible news he just heard.
All the while he has these small children, he's probably been calculating all morning how he's gonna make it work for them.
He's probably in shock, probably walking around a bit like a ghost, thinking about all the years that are coming of loneliness.
And then he gets on this bus, his kids go crazy like they always do, but he's on his own now.
He clearly doesn't have the energy to quiet them down, and meanwhile, all these cranky Yankees are upset at him.
They have no idea what he's going through.
They're just mad that his kids turn their quiet Sunday morning ride into a disruption.
And this disruption in their bus ride is just far too much for them to handle.
If only these people could love him.
And then Manning closes with this conclusion of this quote.
He says this the heartfelt compassion that hastens or quickens forgiveness matures when we discover why our enemy cries.
The father's inaction begins to make sense.
Him sitting quietly all of a sudden adds up, your frustration is quieted, and compassion is set aflame.
So how on earth can we be a people set on fire by compassion and love?
People that love without measure?
Because people are so hard to love so often, aren't they?
So how can we have the strength to love the people who are disrupting, that are frustrating, that are hard, the people that speak ill of us, the people on the other side of whatever spectrum you want to name, to love those that everything in us doesn't.
How do we love these people?
Pick up with me here again in Luke 10.
It says this, and behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
And he, Jesus, said to him, What is what's written in the law?
How do you read it?
And he answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.
And he said to him, You have answered correctly.
Do this and you will live.
Lawyers love justice.
And rightfully so.
Justice is a good thing, it's a gift of God's grace.
And we find this man approaching the Son of God, deity wrapped in flesh, and he tries to test him.
I've always been told, maybe by mentors or movies, to never sign a contract without a lawyer presence, because lawyers are really good at finding the holes in a contract.
And here's this man trained in the law, knows how to dot his I's and cross his T's.
He's really good at details, and he's trying to find a loophole.
And the really hard part is that he really knows his Bible.
He knows the two great commandments to a T.
Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
It's a good question.
And Jesus responds, tell me, lawyer, what's written in the law?
You know that part of the Bible that's your favorite, the law?
That would have been the best thing Jesus could have possibly said to him.
That's my favorite part.
Yes, you're right.
Hey, what does it say?
How does it tell you where eternal life comes in the law?
And this man, like any good lawyer, he knows the details.
He knows the answer.
He's ready for the answer.
Love God, love your neighbor.
Amen.
Go in peace.
So Jesus responds, You answered rightly.
That's the right answer.
Well done, lawyer.
Pat on the back.
You know the law.
Now go do them.
Go fulfill these commandments and you'll live.
And maybe that's a promise of salvation.
Go, lawyer, follow the law.
If you do that, you will live.
And wouldn't it be great if this man just said, sounds great, Jesus, I'll do it.
And wouldn't it be great if, gosh, if we responded quickly in obedience?
But Luke goes on.
Verse 29.
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
See, the foundational problem with that question is this.
To ask Jesus who the neighbor is, is to assume that there is someone who's not, that there is a non-neighbor.
Yeah, Jesus, the law sounds great.
Love God, love people, love my neighbor.
But who again is that?
Who's my neighbor?
This question is saying, hey, Jesus, you you and me both know, man, if we're honest.
That there's somebody that I can, I don't have to love them.
I don't have to love them.
I can be right in my own eyes to reject them, to not give them grace.
And frankly, his question to Jesus, it makes sense if I'm honest with myself.
The command to love people without measure, without prejudice, and without border is impossible.
If I'm honest in my heart of hearts, I'm like this lawyer.
And I really love finding out who the non-neighbor is.
God, isn't there someone that even you, God, would agree?
I don't have to love.
There has to be someone who isn't worthy for me to call neighbor.
And I just wonder who might come to mind for us this morning.
Who could we justify ourselves to not have to love?
Who in our minds is the non-neighbor?
Last fall, we took our students through the Old Testament book of Jonah.
And in this book, God calls Jonah to go preach the gospel to Nineveh.
But the big problem is that that is the prime example of the non-neighbor to Jonah.
The Ninevites were the farthest reaches for Jonah.
So what does Jonah, God's prophet, do?
He runs away.
No thank you.
Look at this.
I found this picture of the map of the world at the time of Jonah.
So you can see there, that's the entirety of the ancient world at this time.
So Jonah would have rather literally gone to the farthest point in his mind of the world than preach the gospel to this city.
You can see Nineveh was just a little bit to the east of where he was.
It's like 600 miles, 400 miles, whatever it is.
But then Tarshish, the place he flees to, is on the other end of the world for him.
That's how far he wanted to go instead of preaching the gospel to these people.
And the reason is because the Ninevites were the non-neighbor to him.
We learn later in the book that Jonah is angry at God.
And he's not angry at God because of God's justice, he's angry at God because of God's mercy.
He hates the fact that God is merciful.
He loves that God is merciful to him, but he hates that God would be merciful to the Ninevites.
The whole reason he didn't go to Nineveh is because he knew that God would forgive them.
He knew that God would forgive them.
And that was the worst news in the world to Jonah.
So Jonah would rather go to Tarshish, 2,500 miles away, because we love God's grace for us, but not for them.
So here we find ourselves with this lawyer, and he, like us, wants to be right before God.
He wants to be justified.
To be justified was a legal term for a lawyer, would have been familiar, where all legal claims for a person were completely done away with.
All charges dropped.
That's what we find by faith in Christ.
That no matter where you've been, what you've done, no matter what you're presently struggling with, by faith in Christ, your slate is wiped clean.
But did you notice the language of the lawyer in verse 29?
Desiring to justify himself.
For a lawyer, that would have made no sense.
A guilty party standing solo before a judge would have had no possibility of getting off clean.
He would need someone outside of himself to defend him for any possibility of justification.
And yet, this lawyer, so caught up in his own self-righteousness, even what he knows to be logical is put to the side here.
And then, beginning in verse 30, Jesus responds to his question, Who is my neighbor?
Look at verse 30 with me.
Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.
Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and he sat on his own animal, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
And the next day he took out two deneri and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.
Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?
He said, The one who showed him mercy.
Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.
So Jesus, as he often did, he responded with a story, a parable.
This lawyer, desperate to be justified by his own doing, desperate to find a loophole, comes face to face with the Son of God who knows his heart.
So Jesus tells a brilliant story.
Hey, there's this unnamed man, comes close to death from some robbers left on the side of the road, desperately in need of somebody to come save him.
And then Jesus ironically says, by chance, because he knows nothing happens by chance, but by chance a priest shows up.
Sure, the lawyer was thinking, perfect! The religious guy's here, like me.
He's gonna save the day.
He'll surely help this poor man.
But no, Jesus gives us a brilliant flip, tells this lawyer that the priest, the one he would have expected to save the day, he doesn't.
He offers no mercy.
In fact, the priest actually goes to the other side of the road because the disruption is just too much for him, the love too costly.
Surely our lawyer friend would have been discouraged to hear this.
Maybe a little red-faced, a little shameful, probably frustrated.
And then Jesus continues, a Levite shows up, and to this lawyer, this would have been another great news for him.
Ah, yes, the tribe of Israel from the Old Testament was set apart to be the priestly tribe.
Another great option, because he's a lot like me, religious.
Yeah, I know the, I know the priest dropped the ball at Jesus, but surely the Levite's gonna come through.
But again, no, this man, this Levite, the one who knows God and his word, passes by.
Doesn't help the man in need.
The love is too costly again.
And then Jesus continues, but a Samaritan.
We live in a culture, in a world of buzzwords, where even a word or a phrase can trigger you into anxiety or anger of us versus them.
And whoever the most extreme version of them is to you is exactly who the Samaritan is to this man.
Samaritan.
This word has become to us something of a positive.
The good Samaritan story, the one we're reading.
Samaritan's Purse, Samaritan Medical Center.
To us, the word Samaritan has become associated with this story in Luke 10.
But to the Jews, the Samaritans were half-breed religious sellouts who don't really care about God.
In this time, Jews would literally pray in the temple for God to not forgive the prayers of the Samaritans, forgive the sins of the Samaritans.
So to this lawyer, Jesus hits the bullseye.
This is exactly who he had in mind when he asked Jesus, who was my neighbor?
This was the assumed non-neighbor for him.
And this is exactly who Jesus pointed to as the hero.
Not only did the Samaritan help him and give him grace and help, he actually pays for a hotel room and gives the innkeeper two days' wages, and then he says, Hey, if you spend more to take care of him, just Venma request me, I'll pay it.
Whatever the cost is, I'll cover it.
Not only that, he anointed the wounds with oil and wine.
And Jesus ends the story.
Hey, lawyer, who proved to be the neighbor?
And the lawyer, he's a smart man.
He knows the answer.
Certainly sad about it though.
The one who showed mercy.
And then Jesus says the most frustrating thing to this lawyer, hey, you go and do likewise.
Jesus' brother James would say that faith without works or action is no faith at all.
And so this lawyer, hey, it's one thing for me to tell you the story so you know it in your head.
It's another thing, lawyer, for you to go do it.
Knowledge is one thing.
Another thing is to take this knowledge and go as a changed man.
Now, what does the story about the Good Samaritan have to do with the kingdom of God and us?
Our fruit of the week, again, is love.
And what the story of the Good Samaritan, one that's familiar to you, shows us is that love has no bounds.
Gospel love does not measure before it's given, it doesn't count the cost before it's poured out.
Gospel love does not ask if someone is a neighbor, it assumes that all people made in God's image are a neighbor.
The most important mark of a Christian is love.
A kingdom person, a kingdom citizen is one who will overflow with compassion.
Jesus in John 13 says this by this all people will know that you are my disciples.
By what?
If you have love for one another.
He doesn't say that people will know you follow Jesus by your church attendance or by how good of a religious person you are.
He says people will know because you love one another.
And in order to do that, you have to receive Jesus' love for you.
You have to see yourself as one beloved.
You have to see that you were the person in the story that was left alone, far on the side of the road, far from God.
Much like the story of the prodigal son, just five chapters later in Luke, squandered the wealth, abused the privileges, and maybe you're finding yourself this morning seeing an impossible task before you.
God, how can I love people?
How can I pour out love to people?
I can hardly believe sometimes that you love me, God, so how can I give that to others?
I love that part of the prodigal son story.
He's so far gone.
Perhaps to the religious folk, he would have been defined as a non-neighbor.
He's so far away from his father that he's forgotten what his father is like.
He begins rehearsing this little monologue, Father, I've sinned against you.
Maybe, maybe if I come back and I earn it enough, you'll love me again.
And yet, you know what the love of God looks like.
It's like when the son returns home.
What does the father do?
He sprints down his driveway, collapses into his son's arms.
Boundless love.
And beloved, that's how he feels about you.
I want to close by sharing just a few gospel applications for us as a people as we think about this fruit of gospel love.
So two points here.
The more secure we are in our identity as those beloved by God, the freer we will become to love people, especially those who are hard.
And then number two, the more we see ourselves as being lavishly forgiven and loved by God, the more lavishly we will be able to love and forgive others.
It begins with our own identities growing radically secure as those beloved by God.
That's where it begins.
And lastly, there's just a couple gospel contemplations for us this week.
I was thinking about from the story we just read.
Number one, where am I tempted to create a non-neighbor and thus qualify them as unlovable?
Number two, where can I let the love of God invade my own heart in deeper ways, freeing me to love others more lavishly?
And then number three, what insecurity is keeping me from loving certain people?
The prodigal son's story is the perfect explanation of what the love of God is like for you.
It's lavish.
It forgives all wrongs.
As far as the East is from the West, so are your sins forgiven in God.
And Jesus, you are always welcome and invited into this love, into this embrace.
I would invite you this morning to collapse into it once again.
I don't know what your week looks like.
I don't know what your months have looked like.
Maybe you haven't been in church in months or years and you're finding yourself exhausted this morning.
Maybe you wandered this week.
Maybe you gave no thought to the things of God, or maybe you stumbled in that big sin again.
You just are tired of fighting.
Let this love fill your cup.
Let it astonish you.
Let it empower you to love like he does.
And the reality of this series that we want to hit on is that kingdom people aren't perfect, they're messy, they're not sinless.
But kingdom people are a people enamored by this love that they've received.
God invite us as a people to lavish that love on others.
Let's pray together.
Lord, I thank you that you have shown us that you love us.
Lord, thank you that for us this morning as an exhausted and weary and messed up people.
Lord, you show compassion to the very ones like us.
We find ourselves this morning, Lord, just tired, maybe of ourselves, maybe of the ways that we continue stumbling, maybe of the doubts that keep wrestling and pouring through our minds, maybe work, maybe relationship.
Lord, in all of it, I'm grateful that you meet us exactly in the state that we're in.
Lord, I just pray that for each of us today, uh, that your word would have spoken clearly.
I pray that we would continue to be enamored by this love that we've received in Jesus.
I pray that it would free us as we go into our world and our workplaces and our schools and our jobs.
I pray that we would be a people that are enamored by the love that we've received.
Show us that you love us.
Show us that we're safe and secure and beloved by you.
Pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.