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I just want to say it's really fun um before I get up to before I got up to preach this morning, I just got to look around the room um while Landon was leading that last song and it's a lot more fun to teach a group of people who you can tell want Jesus. So uh it's really fun to watch you guys worship. And uh I'll just say week week after week I get the best seat in the house because me and the band up here get to actually see you guys going after it and pursuing Jesus as you worship, and uh it's a beautiful thing. And so I don't know, I guess I'm less nervous than I was because I got to see that you guys are here not uh to be impressed, but you guys are here for the Lord, which is really encouraging. So don't give yourself a round of applause because that'd be weird, but I'm giving you one inside myself. I said don't do that. I'm just kidding. Um this morning, uh we are continuing uh our study of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. And uh really, it's one verse today. So my goal is to hopefully get you guys out of here so you can beat everyone else to lunch. I'm just kidding. That's not really my goal. But I'd also got applause for that, which is impressive. Um we're gonna be doing one verse today, and I'm gonna just go ahead and read it for you guys. This is Jesus in Matthew chapter 7, verse 12. This is what Jesus says to us. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. For this is the law and the prophets. Alright, so this is definitely for me the shortest bit of text that I've ever been assigned to teach on, or the shortest bit of text that I've ever preached on. And it's significant because the Sermon on the Mount takes up basically three chapters of our Bible. It's almost 110 verses of Jesus' teaching. And what we're talking about this morning is less than 1%, okay? It's it's this tiny little snippet of all the things that Jesus said as he's on that mountain teaching people on that day. But what's amazing is that Jesus attaches this huge importance to what he's saying here. He says that this statement, this commandment to treat others the way that we want to be treated, he says that this sums up that if we do this, if we understand what he's truly telling us to do, then we will have understood something pivotal about the entire Old Testament. We'll understand the heart of God in his law, the heart of God when he spoke through his prophets. He says, if you can get this one command, you understand the Torah. You understand the Old Testament if you get this. And on first glance, to a lot of us in this room, at least myself, it's kind of hard to see past the surface of what Jesus is saying, right? And the reason is because each one of us in our life, if you've been alive for longer than five minutes, you've heard this before, okay? You've heard this teaching which is universally called the golden rule, right? We're all familiar with the golden rule. Our parents probably taught it to us. It was probably on a poster in our classroom when we were growing up going to school. Um we've heard it so many times, okay, that it's easy when we read the scripture or somebody's reading it out to us, we just kind of like be like, oh yeah, that's right. That's where that came from. Right, Jesus said that, cool. I'll try to do that better. All right. And we don't really engage past the surface because familiarity can breed this apathy to really engaging what Jesus is actually saying. And to do so, I think, would be to pretty catastrophically miss the point of what he's trying to teach us. All right. Does anybody know what the word aphorism means? Okay. If you don't, it's totally okay, because I didn't know what an aphorism was on Monday of this week. I just found it out so we can all learn together. So an aphorism is sort of like a maxim. Um, it's like a pithy, kind of like really simple phrase that one can say that kind of like in a really simple way kind of describes this overarching, like self-evident truth about life. So here's an example of an aphorism, okay? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? You've heard that one before. Or uh, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Okay? And I found this one this week, which I thought was really funny. It does not matter what the temperature of the room is, it's always room temperature. All right. Um these are all aphorisms, right? Just kind of statements that it's like, you know, it's really easy to remember, it's something that describes life really simply. And if we're not careful, if we're not careful, we can turn the golden rule into just another one of those, into just another saying, another aphorism, another maxim. Right? If somebody tries to fit it on a doily or something, or if it's in a framed picture in Mardell's, okay, it probably means we've turned it into an aphorism. We're not really engaging with it, right? I'm not dissing Mardell's. I just like life way more. I'm sorry. Um, okay. So we have this tendency, really just as human beings, but um, even we as Christians have this tendency to take teachings, right, like this teaching, the golden rule, that require quite a lot of us, right? They they demand a lot of us, and we kind of pull their teeth out until it's easily tamed, right? And we can just fit it onto a coffee mug, right? It's a human, it's part of human nature, and we can do the same thing as Christians. I mean, you'll even notice, right, the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Uh, which is, by the way, only half of it. But we'll see that this is a really popular teaching, not only in the church, but it's popular in all of society, right? Um, if I was uh, you know, if you look out into society and you see what people have a problem with problem with with Christianity, you know, people have a problem with our sexual ethic, they have a problem with our opinion on the safety of human life, our definitions of marriage. Like, there's all of these hot button topics that people really have a problem with the teaching of the church on, but people don't picket the golden rule, right? Nobody's outside of our church right now with signs and be like, don't, how dare you treat people like you want to be treated? This is terrible, right? That's not a controversial statement. Nobody pickets the golden rule. But if you'll notice in society, or even when we in the church sometimes uh teach this, we leave off this really important part, right? We just kind of forget about that pesky law and the prophets part that Jesus mentioned at the end, right? So when society hears the golden rule, they don't like to mention that part where Jesus says, this fulfills the law on the prophets. They like to just say, you know, do unto others, you'd have them do unto you. And the way that most people kind of uh internalize that is that it means something like be more polite, right? Be a friendlier person, right? And and that's all that it's saying. Just treat people in a polite way or treat people kindly, which is not bad. I'm not saying we should all be rude, okay? But Jesus isn't just giving us advice on how to be polite people, right? He is tying, treating people as we want to be treated to the heart of God in the law. He's directly tying this to the Old Testament. He's saying, Do you want to be a lawkeeper? Do you want to understand the heart of God for your life? Well, this is what it means. This is what it means to understand the heart of God, to actually live this out, to treat other people as you want to be treated. This is a supernatural life, right? This is a life that is centered on the gospel, and this is the kind of life that pleases God. Now, the golden rule, I'm just gonna call it the golden rule because it's easier uh than repeating it. As it's taught here by Jesus, right? This same ethic, this same rule is actually taught in cultures all over the world, right? This was actually even around before Jesus came on the scene. Uh, Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest religions, had a version of this rule. Confucius, who came before Jesus, had a version of this rule. Buddhism, ancient Indian religions, Greek writings all contain this teaching in some form, okay? Which just goes to show that God has written in many ways his law on the hearts of man. But even the people that Jesus was teaching this day on the mountain, this would not have been a new teaching even for them, right? Because the generation before Jesus, there was a really smart guy named Hillel. Alright, if you've never heard of Hillel, that's okay. He's only important uh to know that he was a very um well-respected, well-thought-of Jewish theologian who um is really one of the most important um Jewish theologians in all of history, right? He answered this exact same question, right? Someone was coming along the street one day, and they saw Hillel. This guy's a Gentile, not a believer in God, and he thought he was gonna be really snarky, okay? And he looks at Hillel and he says, Hey, Hillel, um, if you're so smart, how about you stand on one foot, and while you stand on one foot, sum up the Torah for me, right? Can you do that? And what Hillel didn't say was he wasn't like, ah, there's 600 laws, how can I possibly do that? He doesn't say that. He says, Okay, I'm gonna sum up all the Torah for you while I stand on one foot. And this is what Hillel said. Whatever is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary. Go and learn it. Okay? So this is very well known to the people that Jesus was teaching. Hillel said, Don't do hateful things to your neighbor. And if you do that, that's the whole Torah. The rest is commentary, go and learn it. So, in Jesus' day, the people that Jesus was talking to, it was a culture and uh a religious culture that was very, very concerned with avoiding sin. Very, very concerned with avoiding transgressing God's laws. He took it incredibly seriously, and they were so serious about it that over time the religious leaders had come up with these systems, these ways to make sure that people didn't accidentally break God's law, right? So they kind of added these little rules and regulations to people's lives that weren't explicitly in Scripture, but they go, okay, we're gonna add this on, and if you do these things, then we'll be sure, we'll be safe that you don't accidentally break one of God's commandments, okay? And that was rooted in a desire not to break God's laws, right? And actually, um a lot of the cultural things that we see when we look at a super conservative Jewish person in today's world, even comes out of that same impulse. Um, couple of examples. In Exodus 35, 3, in God's law, it says, it is prohibited to light a fire in your house on the Sabbath day. Okay? Sabbath day, extremely important to God. Breaking the Sabbath was punishable by death in ancient Israel. And on the Sabbath day, God said, Don't light a fire in your house. Okay. So in my study this week, I wouldn't have thought of this, but several commentators have said, the reason that God prohibits lighting a fire in the house is because in that day, the primary housekeeper, the one responsible for keeping the home, the one responsible for cooking the food was actually the woman, the wife, the mother in the home. And so on the Sabbath day, what God didn't want to happen is all the dudes sitting around playing dominoes, and then the wife is in the kitchen still working. It's like, oh, I've still got to cook. Great. My day of rest isn't me making tacos for everyone. And y'all are getting to pray and do all this cool stuff. Okay, God's like, no. The Sabbath is for everyone, the Sabbath is for all people. And so I want to protect everyone. I want everyone to not have to work on the Sabbath. And that was the heart behind that law. So, as a way to make sure we don't accidentally light a fire on the Sabbath, if you are in Israel and you are an observant Jew, you probably have a refrigerator, okay? You know, when you open the refrigerator, what happens? Light. Well, it gets colder in your house and you pay more for electricity. But the light comes on in the refrigerator, right? What happens is there's this little switch that kind of goes, you know, and you open the refrigerator and the light comes on and you close it, the light goes back off. Y'all know how refrigerators work. Parker's nodding. Okay, so what you'll do if you're a super observant Jew in Israel is you'll take a piece of tape and you'll tape the refrigerator in the on position, okay? So the light just stays on all the time. So on the Sabbath, you don't create a fire. You don't cause a light to come on, okay? Crazy, right? No one else thought it was crazy? Okay, here's another example. Um, if you are in Israel on the Sabbath and you try to go into an elevator, it will take a very long time to get to where you're wanting to go because pushing an elevator button on the Sabbath is considered work, okay? And the reason it's considered work is because the Jewish teachers had come up with this regulation that to make sure you don't work on the Sabbath, you can't bring anything to completion. You can't complete a task on the Sabbath. And they have considered that completing the circuit in the light is completing a task. So if you're to press the button, that would complete an electrical circuit, and that's not allowed. So the elevator opens and closes and goes up one floor, and it opens and it closes and it goes up another floor, and that's what it does all day. So if you're like, if you're on the bottom and it's at the top, you have to you just have to wait for the elevator to come back down, right? They're that serious about not accidentally breaking one of God's Sabbath commandments, right? So Hillel, when he is asked to explain the Torah, okay, he this is a guy whose mindset is we want to be very careful not to transgress God's laws, which is a which is very good, right? That's a very good mindset. Hillel says, rightly, the spirit of the law is not to do any wrong to your neighbor, right? We don't want to do that. We don't want to sin against someone. But Jesus, right? Jesus takes this further. Jesus is gonna take this command out of the realm of avoiding sin, and he's gonna change it to an act of pursuing righteousness, to pursuing goodness, okay? There's a cool book called Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, which I read some of this week, and it's really cool because it helps us see Jesus' ministry in his ancient Jewish context. But the writer said this uh about uh the golden rule, and they're gonna start off talking about Hillel, okay? They say, those who follow this teaching, meaning Hillel's teaching, could achieve a minimum standard of conduct, keeping them safely within the boundaries of the Torah. But listen to Jesus' answer. He says, Love your neighbor as yourself. By flipping Hillel's formulation, Jesus compels us to focus on the maximum, pointing out the goal of following God's will. The difference between Hillel's approach and Jesus' seems subtle, but it is revolutionary. Most of it, most of us can find it in our power to avoid being hateful. But how hard it can be to love our neighbors as ourselves. Okay? Jesus is going to take God's law. He's going to take God's commandment, and he's going to go past just having the attitude of merely avoiding a bad behavior or just avoiding a bad action. Think about what Jesus has said even a couple of chapters previously. You know, he talks about murder and he talks about adultery. And he says, if you think you're out of being guilty of murder just because you haven't physically killed someone, you're not right. Because murder begins in the human heart. If you're angry with someone, if you hate someone, that is the same as being guilty of killing them in God's eyes. That is the heart of the law. And he says, adultery, it's not merely the act of committing adultery with another person. Lust, right? If that begins in your heart, if you are lusting, if you're desiring someone else that's not your spouse, that's where sin has begun, right? It's not merely this avoidance of a quote unquote sinful action, but sin begins in the human heart. We're gonna take it past just avoiding sinful actions, and we're gonna take it further, okay? And Jesus has the authority to say these things because Jesus is actually the one who wrote the Torah through man, right? Jesus is God. Jesus is the word of God. He is the one who came to fulfill the law. And what fulfilling the law doesn't just mean, although it does, is that he um fulfilled every commandment. Jesus lived a righteous life. Like he was the perfect man, the one who did everything that the law demanded. But not only that, in his context, what fulfilling the law meant was to fully explain it to the people, was to bring it to be fully understood. And because Jesus is the word of God, he gets to speak with authority on the subject, right? And Jesus gets to teach us what God meant. What does the Torah, what is the law of God truly mean? Alright. So if I were to lock, um, who shall lock in the I'm gonna lock Paige Trimble. I had to pick somebody. I'm gonna lock Paige Trimble in a room for a year, okay? And I'm trying to do him a favor. I'm gonna say, Paige, I want you to not sin for a whole year, okay? And my method for you not sinning for a whole year is you're not gonna have any human contact, so you can't sin against anybody. It's gonna be so easy, alright? You'll get you'll get meals, there'll be a shower, like everything you want. Boggle, it'll be great, okay? Now, if I lock Paige or anyone else in this room, myself included, in a room for a year with no human contact, guess what? You'd still find a way to sin. You just would. And the reason is because you bring your heart into the room with you, right? We bring ourselves wherever we go. Sin is more than just avoiding, right, hurting someone else. Sin is actually within the human heart. And Jesus is interested in more than just a people who can avoid overt sin behaviors. Although, of course, that is important to God, right? Of course that's important to God because sin is what separates us from Him. Our sin against one another, against God and against ourselves, is the reason that Christ had to come rescue us. It's the reason that Christ had to die in our place, okay? Sin is incredibly, it's an incredibly big deal. But a life that God wants us to live, a life that pleases God, is not a life living live lived. Lived is the word. Living isn't a word. It's not a life lived in frozen fear, right? Not doing anything for fear of accidentally sinning, okay? That's why if you go to a monastery, it doesn't mean you're going to live the holiest life ever, right? Because you're still a person. God doesn't want us to live separated from the world, right? Because that doesn't fix our problem. The life that pleases God is a life lived proactively in the world, rooted in the grace of God, and empowered by his Spirit, okay? That's the kind of life that God wants his people to live. Paul says it this way in Romans 13. Own no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. The golden rule, as Jesus teaches it, is not simply teaching us to avoid sin, but it's teaching us to pursue righteousness. Not just to avoid sin, but to pursue righteousness. So, now that we know Jesus' teaching, right? We've heard what he said, what do we do? Well, naturally, what we should do is we should try to keep it, okay? As God's people, it's like, okay, Jesus said to do something, we would like to try to do that thing. Okay. But just like the people of Jesus' day, we are tempted to amend the law. Although, you know, here I may not be literally adding regulations onto your life, although some churches do that and be very wary of that, okay? I'm not trying to add on regulations, but us as human beings, as people, it's tempting to qualify kind of the things that Jesus said. To have our own internal, unspoken code of morality or conduct that we can kind of use to justify ourselves or kind of kind of like subtly amend what Jesus said, like, well, if I just do this, then I'm kind of doing what Jesus wanted, okay? There's three things that we can kind of do to mangle the golden rule a little bit, even though we don't know we're doing it. One is we can view it as a transaction. We can come at this rule, this commandment with a transactional mindset that say, um, you know, whatever I do for others, I really am expecting them to do it back for me. Right? And if we're honest, if we're really honest, okay, think about some of the motivations behind the things that we truly do in life. Very few times in my life have I done something nice for someone else where it wasn't because I kind of wanted something back, okay? And that is not what Jesus is saying is the root of the golden rule. We don't live it out with the expectation of receiving something in return, okay? We treat others as we want to be treated, because doing so is in a way its own reward. But also there is no promise of reciprocation. There is no promise of reward in this life. The only thing that is promised is that if we do this, there will be a reward awaiting for us in God's kingdom. Like after we die, okay? We receive our joy in the fact that you know we have fulfilled our purpose as human beings. We've we've lived under the law of God. It's not a transaction between us and other people. Think about um, think about earlier in Jesus' sermon, okay? He uses two examples. He says, Um, somebody has sued you for your shirt, which pretty petty. Somebody sues me for my shirt. I'm like, probably could handle that outside the courtroom. But he said, Somebody sued you for your shirt, okay? Don't just give them your shirt, also give them your jacket. All right, you didn't have to do it. You didn't have to do that, but go above and beyond what is required of you and give more. Okay? He also says, say you're walking down the street and somebody demands that you walk a mile with them, okay? In that day, a Roman soldier in that culture could look at any like Jewish man and say, You are going to walk with me for the next mile and you're going to carry my stuff. And that was as far as he could compel him to go. After a mile, the Jewish guy's like, I did my duty. I'm going to leave now. Okay? That was the thing that was done. And Jesus saying, if your enemy comes along and says, Walk with me for a mile and carry my stuff, don't just do that. He goes, double it. Walk with him for two miles, right? Because the person that has received the grace of God, the unmerited favor of God, who has received the riches of Jesus, the riches of his Holy Spirit, can give and live their life in a manner that becomes grace, right? We know what grace is. Grace is receiving something that we have not deserved. The forgiveness of God, undeserved. The Holy Spirit living in us, completely undeserved. And what God is saying is that our life in the world is to extend that grace that we have received from Jesus to other people. Not to get something back from them. Okay, first of all, because we won't probably, but because we have received it from God. And also, if we're expecting that every nice thing we do for somebody else is going to compel them to do that back, like pay it forward kind of thing, okay, we're kind of living in fantasy land. Because literally, two chapters previous, this is what Jesus said in Matthew 5. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. So what does it mean on my account? It means you're following me. You're doing what I command. You are actually loving other people as you want to be loved, treating them like you want to be treated. Jesus says, guess what? A lot of times when you do that, people are gonna think you're stupid. They're gonna take advantage of you. They're gonna revile you. They're gonna talk about you behind your back and be like, man, that guy is so weak. I'm gonna keep taking advantage of him. Right? We don't always get, oh my gosh, what a giving person. I shall do this right back to you, right? Because we live in the real world, okay? The reward of living out the golden rule is not always people treat us great. Sometimes it's people treat us worse, okay? But we're not doing it for transaction. We're not doing it to get something from someone. We're doing it because we have received something from God. Alright. We don't live for payback on earth, okay? Because we know we have our heavenly reward. Secondly, the gold rule is not meant to be transactional. It's also not meant to be limited in its scope, okay? When Jesus says the word, whatever you wish that others would do, what he's actually saying is anything at all, like in everything whatsoever that you do, anything that a person does, everything, all right? It's not only limited to certain types of activity. It's not limited to stuff we do on Sunday. It's not talking about just church activities, it's not talking about giving huge checks to organizations, and it's not just talking about buying the guy behind you in line Starbucks coffee, okay? It's talking about everything in life, from the large to the small, the totality of our life, in every interaction, as God's people, what God wants for us is to love and treat others in a sacrificial and gospel-centered way. And he doesn't just say when you've had enough sleep the night before, okay? Jesus didn't say if you're feeling well rested, do this. He doesn't say if you feel like you know you have enough money and you've got your finances under control. He doesn't say if you're feeling super spiritual today, okay? In everything whatsoever, the call of a Christian is a call to serve. It's the call to cast off self-absorption, self-love, and to serve the people around us. It's like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, said when Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die. And maybe that means literally giving his life for Christ, but it also means when Christ calls us, he calls us to come die to ourself, to our self-absorption, to our self-idolatry, right? For putting ourselves first. That is what has to die when we come follow Jesus. So that is the root of our love for other people. It's actually putting them first, okay? And it can look a lot of different ways. Like, literally, it's only limited by your imagination, right? The scope of living out the golden rule is only limited by our creativity. Like, is your neighbor out of town and their grass looks terrible? It's like, mow it. Or if somebody, you know, can't afford their electricity bill, it's like we pay it. Or for me, you know, when my daughter, you know, peas the bed at 3 a.m., I don't scream at her. Usually. Um, but like it can be the big or the small, right? That's too real, sorry. That's too real. Um this commandment encompasses all of life. It encompasses everything we do, right? To treat the people around us as we want to be treated in small and large. Okay, last. Last thing. I think this naturally flows from that. Is that the uh the golden rule is not meant to be exclusive, right? It's not only for certain relationships in our life, okay? It's meant to apply to everyone, to everyone that we're around, right? It doesn't only apply to a certain group of people, it doesn't only apply to Christians, okay? It applies to Christians around us and non-Christians. People that are friendly and unfriendly, our family and strangers, straight people and gay people, Democrats and Republicans. Like, there is no person in our life that we are expected to not live this way towards. And especially, most especially, Jesus wants us to think about living this way towards our enemies, to the people that actually hate us. You know how earlier Jesus says, love your enemies? What does it profit you if you literally just love the people that like you? That's not what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. We are called to treat other people as we want to be treated, from the people that are our closest friends to our worst enemies. That is what it means to be a Christian. Grumpy neighbor, our uh, you know, when our kids are being really disobedient, we're not in the great place with our spouse, when somebody's let us down, when there's a person fighting with us at work for a promotion that we want, like in any situation, doesn't matter who it is, that is the person that Jesus says, that's who I want you to love. That's who I want you to love like you would love yourself. You know, a lot of us we've mastered, maybe it's just because we're southern, like we've mastered politeness culture, like in the South, in Texas, particularly. Like, if we're around somebody, it's like, hey, how's it going? Oh my gosh, how are the kids? Great, good to see you. Then they leave and we're like, oh my gosh, that person is so lamblo. They are such a jerk. Did you hear what they did at that other thing that other time? And we just like we are so good at putting on the friendly face, right? The friendly face, the politeness, the kindness, and then turning around and literally just, man, talking so bad about people, okay? That is not what it means to treat others the way we want to be treated. It just isn't, okay? It doesn't just mean to their face we are kind or to their face we are polite. And I'm preaching this to myself, okay? I'm a human being too. This is the tendency of the human heart is when we're not around people, we can be really, really mean. And I think that this even applies to those moments, okay? You know, if if everyone in your life could see, like on the screen behind you, like, or on behind me, um, you know, the worst impulses of your heart, what you've truly said about people, right? We would probably all move. Right? And God sees that. God sees that. And there's grace for it, but that is what the golden rule is meant to apply to, okay? The seen and the unseen. Now, I could um in the sermon here and be like, um, hey, do better, guys. That's the goal. You know, just do this more. Don't do it, don't do it less, do it more. Okay. And if I were to do that, I would really be letting you guys down and doing this church a huge disservice. Because anytime that someone preaches a lesson or teaches something that's that's really centered on morality or a commandment, okay, and if we don't remind you that this is actually impossible, then I'm doing you a disservice. The golden rule is impossible to keep apart from the power of God. Absolutely impossible to keep, apart from the power of God, the Holy Spirit living in us, making us literally, actually, a new creation, which is what happens when we become Christians. We literally become a new thing. We receive a new heart. I said earlier, if we were to lock Paige in a room for a year, or me in a room for a year, or anyone in a room for a year, alright, that doesn't fix the sin problem that's in our flesh, right? What we need is a new birth. We need new life. We need God's power because sin is insidious, right? It's got its claws in each one of us from the moment we're born, right? We are all sinful by nature. And the golden rule, when Jesus speaks this on the mountain, he's not saying this expecting everyone there to be able to follow it perfectly. He's not. Because Jesus is smarter than that. The golden rule is a mirror. Because Jesus says, here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to make the law and the prophets and the Torah as simple as possible. Okay, literally. Do one sentence. If you can do this one thing, you will have gotten it. If you can love other people as you want to be loved, if you can treat them like you want to be treated, you will have understood the law and you will have kept it. And guess what? No one's ever, ever done it. Because he can't. Nobody that Jesus talked to that day has ever been able to do this. We haven't been able to do it. As simple as Jesus makes it, one verse in the Bible, we can't do it. Can't do one verse. Apart from the power of God. But like I said, the golden rule, it's actually for believers. Because followers of Jesus are the only people that have the power to even do it. We're the only people that actually can do this because we're the only people that have the Holy Spirit of God living in us. And that's the key. If you want to live this kind of life, a life that puts others first, you need the power of God. Doesn't matter how hard you grit your teeth or squeeze your hands or try, it will not work because the heart is the problem. To finish, I just want to talk for a minute about how awesome Jesus is. Because we as human beings have never had a moment where we perfectly treated others the way that we really want to be treated. There's always something in us. There's always some angle, always some sin lurking behind our actions, right? We've never had a moment where we perfectly love others and treated them the way we want to be treated. And Jesus never had a moment where he didn't do that. Not a moment. He was perfect. Okay? We've never had a moment where we loved God with all of our heart and our mind and strength. Never once. And Jesus never had a moment where he didn't, right? This Christian life that we talk about every week, it's only possible because of Christ. It's only possible because he did it first. He made a way for us, right? He purchased our forgiveness and our freedom. And then he sends the Spirit, the power of God, the power that raised him from the dead to live inside you personally. Alright? This Christian life is impossible unless Jesus does that. And he has done that. It is possible for us who are believers in Christ, in some measure, to actually live this out. It is possible by the power of God to put others first. But what we need, if you're not a Christian, is you need a resurrection. And if you are a Christian, we need to depend on the power of God. And if we do that, it's going to change the world around us. Here's a quote by Charles Spurgeon about what happens when God's people live out the golden rule. This is what he says. Oh that all men acted on it. And then there would be no slavery, no war, no sweating. Amen. I don't know what he means, but I don't like sweating. No striking, no lying, no robbing, but all would be justice and love. What a kingdom is this which has such a law. This is the code, Christian. This is the condensation of all that is right and generous. We adore the king, out of whose mouth and heart such a law could flow. This one rule is proof of the divinity of our holy religion. The universal practice of it by all who call themselves Christian would carry conviction to Jew, Turk, and infidel with greater speed and certainty than all the apologies and arguments which the wit or piety of men could produce. What the world needs, what our communities need, what our neighborhoods need, what the city of Austin and Buda and Manchak and Kyle and St. Mark, anywhere, okay? What the world needs is not our awesome arguments. What the world needs is people living out supernaturally changed lives. The golden rule, treating others as we want to be treated, is a powerful argument that Jesus is risen, that Christ is alive, because he is. And one of the ways that we show that to the world is by doing things that the world can't do. Yeah, sometimes it means the miraculous, right? But I think no less miraculous is to see a person who, empowered by God's Spirit, simply puts others first. Because as easy as we make it seem, it's actually impossible without the power of God. And if we were to do that, if we were to live those kind of lives to the people around us, especially our enemies, the world, I mean the world would change. It just would. Our neighborhoods would change, our houses would change, our workplace, our city. There isn't, there isn't a strategy that Satan has against that. There's nothing you can do to stop God's people walking by the Spirit. There's nothing, there's no weapon against love. It just isn't. And the power to do that is inside of us as a Christian. We need only ask. Let's pray. Lord, yours is the power. Within us, we bring nothing to the table to live this kind of life. We just don't have it. And God, admitting that is the first step to actually receiving the power to change. God, thank you so much that Jesus, you didn't come and just say, here's more rules, and leave. But God, you came and you gave us power. You gave us your Holy Spirit to change us. And God, there is hope in that. We can actually read this and not just respond in despondency and sadness, but we can say, No, I am new. I have the power that raised Christ from the dead alive in me. And I have the the ability to walk in newness of life. And God, I pray that we would do that for the good of your kingdom. Pray that in Jesus' name. Alright. So we're not done. We're gonna do a few more things. This is a time to respond, to consider what God may have said to you this morning, to pray, to process, and if needed, um, to seek prayer and counsel. There's gonna be um men and women in the back, right? This corner back here, that um would love to pray with you, would love to talk with you, would love to process with you whatever God is teaching you or or or anything else at all. And there's also gonna be a chance to respond to God by taking communion, to remember his death and resurrection, the blood, the body broken and spilled for us. To remember that. Just a reminder it's only for Christians. So if you're not a Christian, don't do it. Um but if you are, it is a powerful um way to remember and to worship. Um let's take these next few minutes, these next few songs, and uh consider and respond.