SPEAKER_02: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: And blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_02: Almighty God, to you who all hearts are open, all desires know, and from you know the secrets are hidden.
SPEAKER_02: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily actify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_02: Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the Spirit to think and do always those things that are right.
SPEAKER_02: That we who cannot exist without you may by you be enabled to live according to your will.
SPEAKER_02: Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: As you're being seated, our children, grades five and below, are invited to Godly play in the back with Mrs.
SPEAKER_02: Kimberly.
SPEAKER_04: Reading from 1 Samuel.
SPEAKER_04: Now the Philistines gathered their encampments for war.
SPEAKER_04: They were gathered at Soko, which is part of Judah, and they encamped between Soko and Azekah in Ephizdama.
SPEAKER_04: And Saul and the Israelites were gathered and encamped in the valley of Eli, and they organized ranks to engage the Philistines.
SPEAKER_04: Now the Philistines were standing on this hill, and the men of Israel were standing on this other hill with a valley between them.
SPEAKER_04: And there went out from the camp of the Philistines a man apart, a champion.
SPEAKER_04: Goliath was his name of God.
SPEAKER_04: His height was six cubits and a span, over nine feet tall.
SPEAKER_04: A helmet of bronze was on his head, and he was clothed in scale armor.
SPEAKER_04: The weight of the bronze armor was five thousand shekels, or one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and greaves of bronze were on his legs, and a javelin of bronze between his shoulders.
SPEAKER_04: The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and the iron tip of his spear weighed six hundred shekels or fifteen pounds, and his shoe barrier bearer went before him.
SPEAKER_04: Now David was the son of an Ephraithite man of Bethlehem and Judah, and his name was Jesse, and he had eight sons.
SPEAKER_04: And the man was, by the days of Saul, old and going as mortals do.
SPEAKER_04: Now the three eldest sons of Jesse set out and followed Saul to the battle.
SPEAKER_04: The names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, Abinadab his second, and the third Shemmah.
SPEAKER_04: David was the youngest, the three eldest followed Saul.
SPEAKER_04: David would come and go back from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_04: And the Philistine came forward morning and evening and took his stand for forty days.
SPEAKER_04: And all the men of Israel, in seeing the man, fled from his presence and were very afraid.
SPEAKER_04: The Israelites said, Do you see all this as a man who is coming forward?
SPEAKER_04: He is coming forward to insult Israel.
SPEAKER_04: What will happen is the man who smiteth him, the sovereign will make rich, great riches, and he will give him his daughter and make his family free in Israel.
SPEAKER_04: David said to the men who were standing with him, What shall be done for the man who smiteth this Philistine and taketh away the reproach from Israel?
SPEAKER_04: For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the ranks of the living God?
SPEAKER_04: The people answered him according to those spoken words.
SPEAKER_04: Thus shall it be done for the man who smiteth him, the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_04: Psalm one hundred and eight, verses one through six, eleven through thirteen.
SPEAKER_04: Read responsively, responsively by half verse.
SPEAKER_04: That too.
SPEAKER_04: Wake the harp and lyre.
SPEAKER_04: I will give thanks to you, ancient one, among the peoples.
SPEAKER_04: For higher than the heavens is your faithful love.
SPEAKER_04: Be exalted above the heavens, God.
SPEAKER_04: That those whom you love may be delivered.
SPEAKER_04: Have you not rejected us, God?
SPEAKER_04: Grant us help from the adversary.
SPEAKER_04: God, we shall try to be a reading from Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, be strengthened in the Redeemer and in the strength of his power.
SPEAKER_00: Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: For our struggle is not against blood and the flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the overlords of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, take out the armor of God, so that you may be able to resist on that evil day, and having done everything to stand.
SPEAKER_00: Stand, therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Find on your feet preparedness to proclaim the gospel of peace.
SPEAKER_00: With all of this, take the shield of faith, in which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
SPEAKER_00: Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, the Word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Yet I say to you all, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of the one in heaven who begot you.
SPEAKER_01: For the Son, which belongs to God, rises on the evil and on the good, and God reigns on the righteous and on the unrighteous woman or man.
SPEAKER_01: For if you all love those who love you, what reward do you have?
SPEAKER_01: Do not even the tax collectors do the same.
SPEAKER_01: And if you greet only your sister and brothers, what more are you doing than others?
SPEAKER_01: Do not the Gentiles do the same.
SPEAKER_01: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly sovereign is perfect.
SPEAKER_01: This is the gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_01: Happy Sunday, everybody.
SPEAKER_01: You have heard it say unto you, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus said.
SPEAKER_01: You have heard it say unto you, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
SPEAKER_01: People were saying that.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus' response is, but I say unto you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you know, there are some scholars that believe that this is Jesus' sort of unique contribution to first century Near Eastern theological thought.
SPEAKER_01: That nobody was saying this.
SPEAKER_01: We can't find any records of anybody in the Near East that is saying this thing.
SPEAKER_01: It was an extraordinarily new and difficult teaching.
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't get much more Christian than this, does it?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even people who don't go to church, didn't go to church, who kind of grew up in our Christian society, if you ask them, tell me like a Christian aphorism, or well, what does it mean to be a Christian?
SPEAKER_01: They probably likely, if they name a few things, is gonna say, Well, love your enemy.
SPEAKER_01: Guys, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I've even seen it on a pillow.
SPEAKER_01: Now, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_01: You may have a pillow embroidered in your house on your couch right now with red letters on a white pillow that says, Love your enemies.
SPEAKER_01: I've seen it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but this is how saturated we are in the love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it means to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's a core teaching.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that we hear it so much that we often forget, like, how absolutely ridiculous it is.
SPEAKER_01: Like, really, like, really, Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Like, love your enemy and pray for those that are per Love your enemy, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: Like, Jesus doesn't say love the people that annoy you.
SPEAKER_01: He's not saying when you're driving down I-45 and you get in that left lane to pass, and somebody decides to go 45 miles an hour.
SPEAKER_01: That's just really annoying.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe a borderline enemy, maybe.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You guys know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's so aggravating, right?
SPEAKER_01: But that's not what Jesus is talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Not an enemy.
SPEAKER_01: An enemy is somebody that hurt you.
SPEAKER_01: An enemy is somebody that has hurt somebody you love.
SPEAKER_01: An enemy is somebody who is taking something from you.
SPEAKER_01: An enemy is somebody who's betrayed you.
SPEAKER_01: An enemy is somebody that you're scared of.
SPEAKER_01: An enemy is somebody who maybe holds a belief that you think are dangerous.
SPEAKER_01: This is hard.
SPEAKER_01: It's so hard, in fact, that Martin Luther, when he came across this in his writings, right, the Sermon on the Mount in general, but this section, chapter five in particular, where you get these sort of, you've heard it say unto you, but I say these teachings of Jesus, he came to a conclusion where he said, Yeah, the only reason this is in here is because it's impossible.
SPEAKER_01: And that God and Jesus put it in there to show us how impossible it was to reveal to us the depths of our own inability and shame and worthlessness.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like truly, he called it the Council of Despair.
SPEAKER_01: That it was meant to create despair within us so that we get so far down on the bottom that we feel so bad about ourselves and so inept that the only choice that we have is to turn to God for God's love and grace.
SPEAKER_01: That was the conclusion that Martin Luther came to.
SPEAKER_01: It's one of the reasons why I'm not a Lutheran.
SPEAKER_01: Truly, because I don't see the world at the you've you've heard Mike and I preach, you've heard me preach long enough to know that the white knuckling through life and believing in our own wretchedness and shame is is not the lens through which I understand the gospel, like the anti-shame, right?
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to push back into that imago day.
SPEAKER_01: But this is how difficult this is.
SPEAKER_01: Martin Luther said it's impossible.
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_01: So what we end up doing, most of us, is we sentimentalize it.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You know, from the same word that makes us feel like a good feeling.
SPEAKER_01: So it's just like we think it just means be nice.
SPEAKER_01: Be nice.
SPEAKER_01: Take that person that you hate, because I mean that's what Jesus is pushing up against, the person that's betrayed you or hurt you or you think is dangerous, and take all that resentment and anger and hurt and pain and vengeance inside of you, and push it really far down.
SPEAKER_01: And then when you see him, you say things like, bless your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Just be nice to him.
SPEAKER_01: Just be nice.
SPEAKER_01: You know.
SPEAKER_01: It's so hard to believe that people are made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: And it's so hard to believe that people can become more than what they are.
SPEAKER_01: See, I think that's ultimately what this is about.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus says, love your enemy and pray for those who hurt you, he's calling us to participate in the same love that God is showing the world because it's who we were designed to be.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't just white knuckle it, pull it together, get through it.
SPEAKER_01: We know this because at the end of this reading today, Jesus says, I want you to be perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Now, it's easy for us in our culture to think in perfectionism that that means flawless.
SPEAKER_01: That God wants us to just be flawless.
SPEAKER_01: That's the whole point.
SPEAKER_01: Don't make any mistakes.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone got perfection stuff?
SPEAKER_01: But that word telos, actually, I've talked about it before, comes from the word telos, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing where it means purpose, the thing that you were designed for.
SPEAKER_01: Like an acorn has a telos of an oak tree.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, you were designed to be the image and likeness of God in the world.
SPEAKER_01: Our essence, we were made in the image of God, but that word likeness, it's an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_01: It actually kind of means pattern.
SPEAKER_01: The other day, Eleanor was like playing with this thing and she was like really focused.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh, that's Becky Steele's kid.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever looked at somebody as a child and you saw their eyes or their ears or their behaviors or their hand gesticulation or their voice tone, and they were like, that's Steve's kid.
SPEAKER_01: That's what a likeness is.
SPEAKER_01: Is that our life is patterned.
SPEAKER_01: We were designed to pattern our life in a way that is a reflection of the God who made us.
SPEAKER_01: That is what God is calling us to and towards.
SPEAKER_01: So he says, be perfect if God is perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Be the end.
SPEAKER_01: Move towards the end.
SPEAKER_01: Become who you are as God is.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus is challenging us to do, challenging them to do.
SPEAKER_01: And there's something about praying for our enemies.
SPEAKER_01: There's something about loving them that helps us participate in that becoming.
SPEAKER_01: It makes us more alive.
SPEAKER_01: It's redemptive.
SPEAKER_01: And as I was thinking about like that redemptive piece of it, like Jesus isn't just giving us a rule to follow.
SPEAKER_01: He's inviting us into our own healing and the healing of the world.
SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about the word redeem, and I couldn't stop thinking about coupons.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not, I mean, it's not wrong, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like, because the root of redemptive or redeem actually means to buy back.
SPEAKER_01: When you look at the Latin, it just means to like to buy something back, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like it's in place.
SPEAKER_01: Like you, the there's a cost to something.
SPEAKER_01: It basically means to pay a cost in some way, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's a bit transactive, but it gets at the point that there's a cost to things.
SPEAKER_01: And when we sentimentalize love for our enemies, it's cheap.
SPEAKER_01: And this is hard because it costs us something.
SPEAKER_01: So I was thinking this week, like, what is it about this love of enemy?
SPEAKER_01: What is it about this praying for those that hurt me?
SPEAKER_01: What does it cost me?
SPEAKER_01: And the first thing I thought was it it costs me, well, my own sense of self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can't be the only one who likes to be the good guy.
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I'm right, they're wrong.
SPEAKER_01: I'm good, they're bad.
SPEAKER_01: In my self-righteous world where there are enemies, there are people that are bad, and I want to be the hero.
SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, my identity as a good person and as a good Christian necessitates having a villain, having an enemy, having the people that are bad that I push up against.
SPEAKER_01: I have to sacrifice it and make it more complicated.
SPEAKER_01: I don't get the simple solution of walking around and sorting people, and boy, do I like to sort.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought it also cost me a sense of safety.
SPEAKER_01: Because I have to be vulnerable.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's my PSA.
SPEAKER_01: When I say that love of your neighbor and love of those who hurt you like cost you a sense of safety, I am not saying that anybody, anywhere, at any time, should put themselves in an environment where they are physically being harmed or psychologically being harmed.
SPEAKER_01: That is not what Jesus is saying.
SPEAKER_01: He's not saying just go back in and take another licking.
SPEAKER_01: Love them.
SPEAKER_01: That is not what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is clear about boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: He's clear about safety.
SPEAKER_01: What I'm saying is, is when I open myself up and I love people who have hurt me, it makes me feel vulnerable because they may do it again.
SPEAKER_01: And there's this lie, this belief that I have that if I hold on to my hate and my anger and my vengeance and my revenge, then that's gonna keep me safe.
SPEAKER_01: And it's gonna keep the people that I love safe.
SPEAKER_01: And then the last thing it's gonna cost me is sort of this weird sense of control.
SPEAKER_01: Like in some ways, I hold on to this anger and this vengeance and this hatred that's inside of me because, well, I think that if I hold on to it enough, I can force people to behave a certain way, and I can force justice in the world.
SPEAKER_01: I can combat other people's hate with my own hate, and that's gonna work.
SPEAKER_01: It gives me a sense of control, like I'm contributing to the creation of justice in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And I have to I have to give that up.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it costs me to love my enemies, the people who have hurt me, the people that scare me, the people that I think are dangerous.
SPEAKER_01: And like, what this is such a hard thing, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't stop but think about this story from John, John 7.
SPEAKER_01: And stay with me.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you see the connection.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to jump around too much.
SPEAKER_01: But in John chapter 7, there's a story where it says that this group of men drug a woman into the temple where Jesus was teaching and put her at Jesus' feet.
SPEAKER_01: And like because she was like notoriously full of sin, like she deserved to be stoned according to them.
SPEAKER_01: And they wanted to get Jesus' opinion on it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what's interesting, right, is that it says the rain falls on the just and the unjust.
SPEAKER_01: Like, we don't get to know whether her behaviors were what she was doing.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus actually doesn't sort of adjudicate that.
SPEAKER_01: Like, this isn't us like saying, well, we're gonna forgive people because they deserve it.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that big of a deal.
SPEAKER_01: No, we want justice, we want boundaries, right?
SPEAKER_01: We want a sense of righteousness that we're moving towards in the world.
SPEAKER_01: But they take this woman and they put her in front of Jesus, and we don't get much of the details.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus stands between the woman and those that are gonna stone her, and he says, You who is without sin, cast the first stone.
SPEAKER_01: He makes it more complicated, the reality of God's love and justice in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And one by one, each one of those men drops their stones.
SPEAKER_01: And now here's the kicker.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus turns to her, and I imagine he like helps her get up, and maybe, you know, stands there for a second and he looks at her with love.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what he says?
SPEAKER_01: He says, Now sin no more.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_01: Like he says, I will not abandon you, but I also will not abandon the person that you can become.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see the connection with our enemies?
SPEAKER_01: What Jesus is saying is that can we still see the people that other people are capable of becoming?
SPEAKER_01: Have we lost our ability to look at somebody that we think is an enemy and say, and you can be so much more?
SPEAKER_01: And it's love that does that.
SPEAKER_01: It's not hatred, it's not vengeance, it's not violence.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder.
SPEAKER_01: Who do we have in our life right now?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's this middle ground, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's so easy for us.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, notice that Jesus didn't say hate or be lukewarm or love.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't give us three options.
SPEAKER_01: Like, there is an option that forms us into the likeness of God.
SPEAKER_01: And we can sit here and say, Well, I don't have any of that hatred, I don't have any of those enemies.
SPEAKER_01: I just stick my ears in, I'm good.
SPEAKER_01: Not me, not me, not me.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is saying that it's a part of this human condition and reality that we're in.
SPEAKER_01: And that there's something about engaging it that makes us more who God designed.
SPEAKER_01: It it heals us.
SPEAKER_01: And what does it give us?
SPEAKER_01: I think it gives us the freedom to not let other people determine who we are going to become.
SPEAKER_01: We are people that are becoming, and we become the way that we behave and the things that we do.
SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, waking up at one o'clock in the morning and thinking about all of the ways that you think somebody else deserves to be punished, or taking pleasure in the harm that happened to one of your enemies, that's Schaden Freud, like, oh yeah, they got what they deserved, or rehearsing all of the ways that you're gonna get them back, holding on to that is not making us become more like God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not making us become who God designed us to be.
SPEAKER_01: And we are imprisoned to that.
SPEAKER_01: And I think Jesus is inviting us to freedom, to free ourselves from letting our hatred determine who we become.
SPEAKER_01: Letting our enemies and their actions determine who we are becoming.
SPEAKER_01: So maybe at some point this week, you take a moment and you, you know, bring somebody to mind that does that thing inside of you.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do it right now.
SPEAKER_01: Please don't do it right now, actually.
SPEAKER_01: Don't know how it's gonna go.
SPEAKER_01: But maybe at some point you just bring to mind that person that that does that thing inside of you.
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, don't fabricate feeling, don't drop any of your boundaries, don't justify or, you know, explain away any of their actions, right?
SPEAKER_01: Just sit with that person.
SPEAKER_01: And then say, I refuse to let your actions determine who I am becoming.
SPEAKER_01: And then pray for them.
SPEAKER_01: Pray that whatever hurt and wound, brokenness, pray that that gets healed, pray that justice might reign and that they might experience truth, and then they might fully come to understand that they were made in the image and likeness of God, and that God has a desire for them to become more whole.
SPEAKER_01: And that whatever pain they're living in is not the way that God designed it to be.
SPEAKER_01: Because the sun rises and the rain falls, and God loves.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, We can do that too.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.