Turn your Bible to Luke chapter 6, Luke chapter 6. And we are just kind of walking our way through the Book of Luke. And this is a fascinating part of—in fact, Luke 6 is one of my favorite chapters of the whole book. And the reason is because this is when Jesus really begins to unpack some of his most spectacular teachings. I mean, this is when Jesus begins to say things that just wrecked people’s lives that challenged people’s lives. And in Luke chapter 6, this is the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain, depending on who you hear the description from. But He’s probably in front of a crowd, maybe this size or maybe bigger. And He’s probably backed up on the Sea of Galilee, or He’s up on the side of a hill, taking advantage of the natural terrain as an amphitheater. And He just stands there and begins to teach. He doesn’t have a podium. He doesn’t have notes in front of Him. He just begins to talk. And out of Him comes these unbelievable world-changing truths.
Now, I told you last week I’m skipping over the Beatitudes, which is Four Beatitudes in the Book of Luke in Luke chapter 6 because Pastor Glenn Packiam is going to cover that on April 3rd. He’s going to look at the Four Beatitudes that we found on Luke chapter 6. So I’m skipping over that on purpose. So we’re going to pick it up today in verse 27. And the title of this talk today is, The Best Thing Possible for the Worst Person Possible. The Best Thing Possible—In fact, I want you to write the title down because that’s the talk. That’s it right there in one sentence, in one phrase. This is what I want you to walk away with today.
Now, when I read Luke chapter 6, I want to be very candid with you and very honest. I actually asked the Lord if I could skip over this part of the Bible because what I’m about to read to you is so counter-intuitive to everything you feel, everything I feel. When someone wrongs you or someone opposes you, when you have an enemy in your life, everything about you wants to respond in the natural. And Jesus now is about to confront us and challenge us if we’re really, really serious about being Christ followers. A lot of what Jesus says in these next few chapters is going to be completely counter-intuitive. I mean it’s going to go against everything you want to believe. And so I said, “God, can I just skip over Luke chapter 6?” And He would not give me permission. So I’m going to just dive right into this. So I’m just going to tell you. I’m going to read this and everything inside of you is going to go, “No! No! No!” And God says, “Yes! Yes!” So are you prepared for this? Are you ready?
All right. Luke chapter 6 verse 27 — “But I tell you who hear me. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you.” You got a knot in your stomach getting out of your body. You got a knot there just kind of growing, the growing sensation inside of you that no, no, no, no. Then it goes into even more detail about it, though. Listen to this. He doesn’t take His foot off the accelerator at all. I mean He is about to drive this home into our hearts.
“If someone strikes you on the cheek—on one cheek, turn to him the other also.” Growing up, I used to tell my dad, “Daddy, it doesn’t really say what to do after the second punch, though. So can I hit him back after the second one?” Bad theology, though. “If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you. And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.”
Then He summarizes what He just said, which I think is an awful name for this, the Golden Rule, the Great Commandment, the Golden Commandment. Listen to what He says, “Do to others before they do it to you.” I just want to make sure you read along with me here, right, because that’s what we want to say, right, do unto others before they have a chance to do it unto you. Be proactive. No, He says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” not as they do to you, not like they do to you. Treat others the way you want to be treated. That’s kindergarten, but it’s really—I’m telling you as adults, we have to be reminded of that all the time.
All right. Then this whole teaching is kind of broken up into two segments. So the first segment is verse 27 through 31. Then He takes it up even another notch in verse 32. He even—He doesn’t let the foot off the gas anymore. Look at verse 32 — “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners.”
Let me stop here for a minute. I’m going to give you some good advice, I believe. Pam and I love to give. We love to bless. We love to give to people when God directs us that way. But we have a rule in our house. We don’t make loans to people. We give to people. And I tell you that would probably salvage a ton of relationships in this room if you would learn just to give for the joy of giving. Don’t ever give your friends or family a loan because all that does is set you up for disappointment, right? What if they don’t pay you back? Now suddenly, the relationship is broken. The relationship is damaged. Instead when you see a need, give without any expectation of ever getting a dime back. And I promise you, if you can keep your heart clean like that, you’ll see relationships get stronger. You’ll see God bless you. There won’t be as much fussing and fighting. And God would just bless, bless, bless you if you’ll give without any expectation of repayment.
Now, if they give it back to you, wonderful. That’s a blessing. Then give it away to somewhere else, all right. But if they don’t, let it go. In fact, I just felt it this morning. There’s some of you sitting out here right now when I said that, you said, “Yeah, but you don’t know how much I gave him. They told me they would pay it back, but they did not.” I’ve got new from the Lord for you. They’re probably not going to pay you back. Just let it go. Forgive them. Let it go. This is what Jesus is saying. Just let it go. Quit fussing over it. Quit gnawing at your teeth at night. Quit grinding your teeth over this. Let it go.
All right. Let’s keep going here. This is really good. And it’s really fun to read this. Wooh! So much fun. Verse 35 — “But love your enemies. Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to get anything back.” Then here’s the promise. I just gave you the promise. I got ahead of myself. “Then your reward—whose reward—your reward will be great. And you will be sons of the Most High because He—He’s talking about God here—God is kind to the ungrateful.” Let me ask you a question. Were you a sinner when you were born again? That’s not a trick question. I mean how messed up were you when you found God? Tell me, how many of you were really messed up like me? Raise your hands. Take off your church mask. I mean how many of you were awful, awful when God found you, right? Awful!
I’m so thankful that when I was the ungrateful, snotty nosed, arrogant, rebellious, punk kid, God found me. He was a giver to me when I was not grateful for the gift. God was a giver when we were ungrateful for the gift. We didn’t even know it was a gift. We didn’t want the gift. We were ungrateful for it. In fact, many of us, including me, rejected the gift over and over again. We didn’t want it. We were ungrateful, arrogant, rebellious. He says because He’s kind though to the ungrateful and the wicked. How many of you were wicked? Let’s just get real honest. How many of you were just plain wicked when God found you? All right. Good. I have fellow wicked people born again now.
And then He sums up this half of the teaching — “Be merciful just as your father is merciful.” Notice how He summed up. He summed up the first half of the teaching with “do to others as you would have them do to you,” which means treat others the way you want to be treated. So He takes it on a person-to-person level, right. And then He sums up the second half of this teaching with “treat others the way your Father treats you and them.” Now He takes it to the God level. He said let me tell you the real reason why I want you to treat those who hate you so well, why I want you to say nice things about people who don’t say nice things about you, because that’s how God treats you. The reason I want to give mercy, the reason I want to be more merciful is because I need mercy. I need mercy. We all need it, don’t we, and yet we don’t give it away so often. But we want it. We need it. We hunger for it. Be merciful just the way God is treating you as being merciful.
Now, I want to pause here for a second because I don’t want—I’m really going to attack, I am really going to confront and challenge this idea of moralism that has got itself rooted into our church culture in many, many church cultures, all right, including here at New Life probably. And the idea of moralism means if you follow the rules, God likes you. If you don’t follow the rules, God doesn’t like you.
Now, I believe in following the rules. Parents don’t panic. I believe in rules. But that’s not how we get right with God. Following the rules does bring blessings. Following the rules does open up the door for God to bless us. Not following the rules brings curses. I know that. But the point is that does not make us right with God or not. What makes us right with God is faith and believing and receiving a free gift of salvation being adopted into a big messy family. That’s what this is about.
So when I read this—I don’t want you to just add this to your list of rules and say, “Okay, God, because I’m good at following these rules … ” No, He’s talking about relationships. He’s talking about being part of a family. Some members of the family are going to be messy sometimes, and not messy. But God said, “This is not a rule to follow. This is a heart condition I’m after.” So it’s a condition of a heart.
By the way, you can smile at people and treat people well and hate them with your heart. I can follow all those rules. Yet if I despise you on the inside, I have not done what God said to do. I can treat you kind. I can say kind words to you. I can do nice things for you. I can give you money. But if I hate you in this inside of my heart, that’s the point God’s making. God said, “Listen, I want you to love sincerely. Love deeply. I want you to let go of bitterness, let go of this un-repentance. No, love deeply from the inside out.”
Everyone look at these first four phrases in verse 27 and verse 28 and I want you to notice that Jesus said this and that Jesus was not wasting His words. He was not simply repeating Himself. Jesus was talking about an inside out transformation that has to happen in our lives. So the first thing He says in verse 27, I think, is love your enemies. Love your enemies. And notice that that’s an internal process. This word is agape. The word love there is the agape love which means to love them from a social sense to be from a kindness. Be kind. Be a friend, a real friend. It’s an internal work that has to start first. It’s—Loving your enemies has to be a decision you make. It’s not just an emotional response to something. It’s a decision I’ve made in my life to be a man who loves; not a man who hates, a man who loves. A man that—That has to work starting in my heart first, though. Not just with my words, not just with my actions, it has to start with my heart. Love your enemies.
Now, I mean, this is a big question here, okay. Here’s a bigger question. When Jesus was saying this, He was saying this to a crowd of people who were under the tyrannical rule of the Roman Empire. They were literally being colonized and enslaved by Romans. So they had a real enemy. We’re in the great Republic of the United States. We are—We do have enemies, foreign and domestic enemies, for sure. But I’m talking about on a real person-to-person level. If I ask you, do personally have an enemy close to you? Now, we can all paint big pictures of maybe some evil regime out there that hates America. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about do you have a person in your life that is an enemy; a real enemy, who opposes you, hates you, says bad things about you. Do you have an enemy?
Most of us don’t. And I’m grateful for that. Most of us live in this very sterilized culture. And most of the people we hang out with are people that we like and they like us. But if God is calling us into public ministry, if God calling us to be salt and light, let me just tell you ahead of time, okay. Here’s what Jesus said. This is the promise, the sobering promise of Jesus. People will hate you. People will despise you. People will say awful things about you. Listen, if you want just to be liked, then I can tell you you’re not going to do anything great for God. I’m just telling you. I mean that.
If you want just to be liked and to hang around other people who like you and to be liked all the time, you’re never going to risk anything great for God because I’m telling you the moment you risk anything great for God, you will be opposed, violently, vehemently opposed. They will hate you, despise you, say awful things about you, call you awful names. And there’s nothing I can do about it except prepare you and encourage you and come along beside you and tell you I told you. There’s nothing we can do about it.
The gospel is offensive, you all. I’m telling you the gospel is offensive. And we’ve watered it down to something that didn’t cost us anything. Listen, this cost us everything. It’s going to cost you family members, maybe. It might cost you your reputation. This gospel message is offensive. It confronts people at their core. You can’t get away from that. If we can water it down, if you want, I can come up here and water all this down for you, or make it really sweet, make it like corn syrup to you, but listen; it’s not the gospel all the time. It’s not. I wish I had better news for all of us, because I got the crosshairs on me as much as anybody. I got big crosshairs on me. I’ve just got to get over it. People are not going to like me. And I’m a guy that likes to be liked. I do like to be liked. I’m normal. I’m human like you. I like to be liked. It’s just not possible for me to do this and be liked all the time by everyone.
Love your enemies like a choice. You’re going to love them, though. Then He says, He gets to the physical realm now. He says, “Do good to those who hate you.”Now this phrase moves the teachings of Jesus from our hearts, to our hands and feet. Now there are—He says, “Listen. Look for every opportunity to do something good for the people who are your enemies.” Do good, physical. This is actually—You can’t just stand around and talk about it, theorize about it, be philosophical about it. He says, “No, listen. Every opportunity you have to do something, do good.”
So we open this Dream Center. You what’s going to happen? People who hate us will come there for help and I am so thankful. I can’t wait. People who despise Christians will come there because we’ll help them. We’re going to love them. And they may even curse us while we’re helping them in the dream center. They may say awful things about us while they’re sitting there, getting their free medicine and that’s exactly what Jesus said we should do.
I want to prepare you for those of you who will volunteer, for those of you who are going to serve at the Dream Center. You’re not as—you’re not always going to be thanked. They’re going to—Some of them are going to take advantage of us. They will take advantage of the system. They will come and get the free care and walk out and not say thank you. They’re not going to send a sweet note to say thanks all the time. And sometimes the very people you served will turn and bite you later. But this is what He says, “Do good.” Listen to Proverbs 25 — “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat.” He didn’t say if your family, your friends, or people you love. If your enemy is hungry, give him food. Cook him a meal. Cook them a meal. “If he’s thirsty, give him water to drink.”
Now this is verse 22 — “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head and the Lord will reward you.” Now He’s not saying He’s going to fry his brain. That’s not what God is doing here. This is being completely misinterpreted. Yeah, that will just drive him nuts! If you’re doing good just to drive somebody nuts, listen, go back to point number one. Love your enemies. Here’s what —you know what that means, burning coals on his head? You want the phrase ideology, the Hebrew is really saying? It’s going to cause him to wonder. Why are you helping me? After all the awful things I’ve said about you, you’re helping me. Why are serving me? You know I hate you. Why are you doing this? Why? I—This is baffling me. I cannot get my hands around this. I cannot figure this out. The more I curse you, the more food you bring to my house. The more awful things I said about you, you just keep blessing me. I am totally confused. That’s what he’s saying.
And really, we only have three choices. Let me give you the three choices real quickly. The three choices you have when someone opposes you, you have three choices, all right, and you can make any of these three choices. Number one is you can love your friends and hate your enemies. That’s choice number one. And that’s what most of us choose to do because that’s the easiest thing to do. Love your friends and just hate your enemies. Most cultures do that. That’s why there’s called war. We love our friends and we hate our enemies. And it causes countries to go to war because we hate them. We love our friends and we hate our enemies that’s choice number one. Choice number two is get into a crazy cycle of vengeful acts, just get into a crazy cycle. You hurt me. I’m going to hurt you. You say something about me. I’m going to say something about you. And you get into this crazy cycle of vengeful acts.
Or we can choose to follow what we just read. Here’s choice number three. We can have transforming and I call them transforming initiatives. We can choose to be kind. We can choose to love. We can choose to cook and clean and serve and help and bless. And I really do believe the Scripture in Proverbs says this. If you want to transform the culture, if the church really is going to be relevant in the 21st century, if we are going to leave this building and really go out and be salt and light, we have to look for opportunities to have transforming initiatives. To love those who don’t love us, serve those who would not ever say something kind about us, we are—we’re going to be a people of love. We’re going to be a people of peace. We’re going to be a people of grace. We’re going to take it with us. We’re the carriers of his presence everywhere we go; transforming initiatives. You want to see radical community change. You want to see neighborhoods come to Christ. You want to see radical transformation in a city. We have to be serious about transforming initiatives. And it may seem very—it may seem like it’s simple, a little clinic. There’s transforming initiatives it’s serving and loving and blessing.
And then He says this, this is really good. “Bless those who curse you.” So it starts with the love, this internal thing, then it turns into these physical acts. And then what happens is our mouth always betrays our heart. Do you know that? You want to know what is in someone’s heart? Listen to them. They’ll tell you what it’s in their heart. Our mouth always betrays our heart. So what comes out of us then has to be blessing. They curse, we bless. They curse, we bless. They curse us, we bless them. Every time they curse us, we’re going to bless them. And they’re going to stand there going, “Wow! Every time I curse you, you’re going to bless me?” “Yeah, every time you curse, I’m going to bless you back. Every time you say something awful, I’m going to say something nice, because my heart has already been won. I’ve already made the decision on the inside to love so I can’t go back now, right. My mouth is always going to betray my heart.”
And I also know the power of words. Listen, don’t ever discount how powerful words are. Listen to Proverbs again 18:21 — “The tongue has the power of life and death. And those who love it will eat its fruit.” Most of the fruits we’re eating in our lives right now are from the words that we have sent out, we’ve planted, seeds that we planted, the seed. By the way it says, and we’re going to talk about it in a few weeks in Luke chapter 8, it says, “The seed is the Word of God.”
So when someone curses you, the most powerful thing you can do in response is to speak blessings back, send back the blessings to God. And if you’re quoting the blessings of Scripture back over them, quote back to them the blessings of Scripture. And something powerful is happening in the Spiritual realm when you do. And it goes against everything you want to do, everything about your nature who wants to say something bad back to get into the +crazy, the vengeful cycle or the crazy cycle of vengeance. And then it says, “When you bless them, bless those who curse you,” which is verbal, very verbal coming out of our mouth. And then it moves it to an entirely different realm when He says, “Pray for those who mistreat you. Pray for them,” pray for them, which takes it now into this spiritual realm. We start with this internal work, which then leads to physical acts, which leads to words of blessing, which now turns into this spiritual—this thing that happens now in the heavenly realms. Prayer is powerful.
So I’m going to tell you how I pray for people who oppose me, right. God gave me a very specific way to pray not long ago. And I just wrote it down. I just wrote this down because I was really wrestling with this. I want to be man who lives out those Scriptures. I don’t want to preach them and not live them, right. I want to be a man who preaches that and lives that, but that’s hard to live that, what I just read. Luke 6 is hard to live. That’s hard. That’s difficult. So I said, “Lord, I want to know how to pray. Okay, you told me to pray for those who mistreat you. So, Lord, how can I pray? It’s got to be simple for me, God. I’m not complex. So make it very simple for me, all right.”
Here’s how I pray. I’m going to read it to you because I wrote it out. “Father in heaven, may the work of the Holy Spirit continue in me.” And I’m going to tell you why I pray that way in just a minute, okay. “May the work of the Holy Spirit first continue in my life. May the work of the Holy Spirit continue in me. And may the works of the flesh come to nothing.”
Now, and here’s the problem. I think a lot of us are hypocritical when we pray for other people. We pray for other people to have these radical changes. God change them. God correct them. God do something in them. And we don’t pray for ourselves. So when I begin to pray for people, people that were opposing me or people who didn’t like me, when I begin to pray for them, I realized I was praying more passionate prayers about them than I was for myself. And God stopped me in the middle one morning. He said, “Brady, won’t you pray that prayer that you’re praying for them; why don’t you pray it for yourself first?”
Remember the whole thing about taking the speck out of your own eyes so you can get the log jam out of your brother’s, kind of deal. First, pray for the condition of your own heart before you start praying for someone else’s heart to change. So I’d say, “Lord, let the work of the Holy Spirit that you’re doing in me, let it continue. Let the work of the Holy Spirit continue in my life first. And Lord, let the works of my flesh—hey, can we all confess in here? We all have flesh. Is that right? We’re all tempted really with the same things? We’re all tempted in our flesh. We want to act in our flesh. We want to say things that are fleshly instead of spiritual, right. We all have that temptation.
So I say to God, “God, let the works of my flesh come to nothing. Let them fall to the ground with nothing on them. But let the work of your Holy Spirit continue, Lord. And then I pray for them. And I say, “Lord, may the work of the Holy Spirit continue in them. Whatever you’re doing, Lord, I can’t see it. It’s unseen. I know you’re working in an invisible realm sometimes. I don’t see all the work that you’re doing. It’s not evident that you’re working in their lives, but I know you are. I know you’re there. I know you’re with them. I know you’re consuming them from the inside out the same way you do with me.” And listen, all of you don’t know the work that God is doing in my life. You don’t know it. You don’t see it, maybe, all the time. But I can tell you the Holy Spirit is working in me. So I suspect he’s working in all of us together.
And I say, “Lord, let the work of the Holy Spirit continue in them. And the let the works of their flesh come to nothing.” And this is how I end it. I say, “Now, Lord, may your blessings overtake them and your favor be poured out on them.” So pray for yourself. By the way, I pray that God’s blessings would over take me. God, I pray your favor would overtake me. But then I pray for them, the same way I pray for myself with the same intensity.
And notice what will happen here, okay. If you’re praying for yourself with the same intensity that you’re praying for them, you know what happens? Your heart is the one that gets set free. And it’s just hard to be bitter and unforgiving when you’re praying that intensely for your own heart. And you’re aware of what’s happening in your own soul. It’s just hard to become a bitter, unforgiving person then. It makes it harder and more difficult to become this bitter, unforgiving person if you’re intensely praying for the condition of your own heart.
And then what happens when your heart changes? Your words get softer. The things you do for people are sincere now. You sincerely want to help somebody. You sincerely want to bless somebody. It’s sincere now. It’s not fake. It’s not spiritual. It’s not hypocritical. It’s sincerely I love you, sincerely I bless you, sincerely I want to help you, and I sincerely pray for you. So Jesus when he’s talking to this—How is it that Jesus—how can He say such things? Well, the reason is because Jesus was not just trying to give them a set of rules. He was trying to help them understand who His dad was. And a lot of us have the opinion that God is mad and angry and distant. And Jesus was trying to say, “Listen that’s not who my dad is.”
Let me read you a description of the dad here, okay, the dad that Jesus is trying to point us to. Psalms 103:8 says, “The Lord—”this is David writing this, King David—“the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse nor will He harbor His anger forever. He does not—”here’s one of my favorite Scriptures in the Bible—“He does not treat us as our sins deserve.” Amen. Can somebody say amen to that? Can somebody be grateful along with me that we don’t get treated the way we deserve? That would be justice. We beg for mercy and what we get is grace. We get something better than mercy. You know that? We get what we don’t deserve. That’s grace.
Mercy means that you don’t get what you do deserve. Grace says you’re going to get something you don’t deserve. Grace, it’s a good thing. I like it. And he says, “For as high as the heavens—” and I love the sweeping big language here—“for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. As far as the East is from the West so far as He removed our transgressions from us, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.” This was the God that Jesus was trying to point us to. This was the father that He said “This is how my dad treats you. I know my dad. We’re one. This is dad.” Listen, this is why now you can treat others the way they don’t deserve. This is why you can say nice things about people who don’t say nice things about you. This is why because I’m trying to point you to something bigger than just you. This is not about you and them. This is about being a representative and ambassador of a God in heaven who—This is how He feels about you. So this is how you should feel about others.
So Jesus said, “Talk this through now,” in Luke chapter 6; fast forward to Luke chapter 23, though. Jesus was about to live it out. Now I want to point—I want to really clarify something because sometimes we read these words that Jesus said on the cross. And we forget what happened to Him before He speaks these words.
The Roman army, the Roman culture, the Roman soldiers, had perfected the art of crucifixion. This was the most brutal most violent way to kill someone slowly. If they liked you and wanted to kill you, they would cut your head off because it’s an instant death with no pain. If they wanted to send a message—by the way, the Roman culture ruled out of fear and intimidation, fear and intimidation. The Romans would come into the culture whatever country they took over and they would keep their rule by literally causing fear and intimidation. And the way they would cause people to fear is they would make people witness these crucifixions.
So before Jesus ever got to the cross, He had beaten with his fist. He had thorns driven into His skull. And He had been whipped with a cat of nine tails. Forty strikes whacked His body. It was torn to pieces. His back was bleeding and flesh is gone, it’s awful. Then they take you and lay you down and they drive these nails in both of your hands. And most people believe that there was a little platform that you stood on and that’s not the case. There was no platform to stand on. They put your feet like this, down, and sometimes your ankles would break. Then they would drive the spike through both of your feet and drive you down, so the only thing holding you up on this cross, the weight of your body—
So if you’re a 200-pound man, the only thing holding you up there are these three nails and the strength that you can somehow muster to keep your body up, because the way you would really die was you wouldn’t bleed to death. You would suffocate, because at some point your arms would give way, your lungs would collapse, and you would suffocate. And the only way you could talk is by pulling yourself up on the cross. And it’s talking and then letting yourself down, pull yourself up, talk, down. So simply reading these little sweet words of Jesus, “Oh, Jesus was a forgiving God,” He was in agony. We have watered the story down so much we forget the amount of strength that Jesus had to give in His body just to say these words.
So look at this in Luke 23:33 when they came to the place called the Skull. There they crucified Him. See that’s what we read. They don’t go into all the details. They don’t go into all the details. So we think He’s just kind of hanging out. No, He’s in agony. And one of—and He says—with criminals on each—either side of him, one on the right, one on the left, Jesus—here’s what Jesus does. “Father, forgive them.” Can you imagine the pain of pulling yourself up by those nails and talking? He says, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” And then listen to this, they don’t even respond well. The whole time He’s talking, look what it says next. “And they divided up His clothes by casting lots.” Nobody fell at their feet and repented and no big revival broke out. In fact, they’re down there throwing dice for His clothes.
The reason I’m telling you this—I’m not trying to—The reason I’m telling you this is that because a lot of times these words that I’m talking about, our words to other people, and I know this. A lot of time our words are spoken through intense pain that we’re going through. We’ve been hurt. We’ve been wounded. But even in the midst of our wounding and our hurt, Jesus is modeling something for us. It would have been easier for Jesus to be quiet. It would have been less painful for Jesus just to be quiet. Instead through His pain, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” And it’s all he could get out of His mouth before He had to let go. He can’t breathe.
Luke verse 39 — “So one of the criminals who hung there hurtled insults at Him. ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save Yourself and us.’ But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said. ‘Since you’re under the same sentence, we are punished justly.’” And that’s the first time the criminal ever said he was guilty right there. I did it. I’m guilty. “‘For we’re getting what our deeds deserved. But this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’”
Listen, it would have been just as easy for Jesus to ignore this guy. Right? This guy, he’s a criminal. And now up to the last minute, he wants to get off the hook. Who knows what this guy has done? Who knows how many people this guy has harmed? Who knows how much destruction this guy has caused in his city? It was pretty bad because they were crucifying him. This guy had done something horrible, awful, and most likely his victims were standing right there. And they were grateful that he was getting what he deserved. And Jesus had every right just to ignore this guy. I mean, Jesus was in an agonizing pain himself. And he was innocent. Instead Jesus, one more time, pulls His body up to get some air in His lungs and He says, “I tell you the truth, today you’ll be with me in paradise.” You’re going to get something you don’t deserve.
We all got something none of us deserve, right. So a lot of times our words have to be spoken through intense pain. Jesus says, “Listen, I’m not just here to give you some kind of philosophical idea to go and drink coffee and talk about. I’m going to model something in front of you. I’m going to do it. I’m going to show you what it means to do what I just told you to do in Luke 6. I’m going to show you right now what it means. You’re not always going to feel like you’re supposed to do the right thing. Sometimes those—the words, the deeds, the actions that you’re going to have to do are going to be very painful for you.” He said, “But in the midst of your pain will you not let your heart get contaminated. No matter how awful the pain may feel, guard your heart and say the right thing.”
Let’s make a choice in our hearts right now. We’re going to love. The default is love. What’s the question again? The answer is going to be a love answer. What’s the question? I’m going to love you with my word. I’m going to love you with my deeds. I’m going to pray for you fervently. I’m going to let my heart stay pure so that my words are pure, so that my deeds are sincere, so that something can happen and transformation can happen in the spiritual realm when I pray.
Are you getting this? Let me put that up there one more time. I want you to really get this. There has to be an internal change for any of this to start. There was an internal change which means that I make the decision in my heart to be a man of love, which leads to physical and verbal change. What you do for them will be sincere because your heart is sincere. What you say about them will be sincere because my heart is sincere. And then it leads to the spiritual victory that you’re so longing for, right. You want the spiritual victory. We’ve got to start back three steps back. Our heart has to be love. The default is love. Default is love, which leads to physical and verbal. Physically, we’re going to do things for you every time I get a chance. I’m going to say nice things about you every time I get a chance, because I am believing for that spiritual victory in my life and in yours.
This is how enemies become friends. This is how a ragtag group of Christ followers in the 1st century totally changed the Greco-Roman culture in which they were enslaved because they are the ones who would go out and find the babies floating down the Nile River and swim out there at their own danger and rescue those babies and then raise them as their own. Most of them were baby girls, because girls were not valued in their culture. So every family could have one daughter. If you had more than one, it was an economic liability. So infanticide was very common in the Greco-Roman world. They take these little babies and just throw them out in the river. That’s how they got rid of them. So before they would drown, the Christ followers would swim out there. And by the way, there’s crocodiles in the Nile, man-eaters. They would swim out there and grab those baby girls, bring them back into their house and raise them as their own.
And when the Romans and the Greek saw these, they say, “Listen, it’s just a girl. It’s just a little girl. Why are you rescuing a little girl? It’s just girls. They’re useless. They’re worthless.” They’d say, “Oh, no!” These Christ followers would say, “Oh, no! This little girl that I’m holding in my hands, this is the crowning achievement of all the God’s creation. This is why Christ came for this little girl. I’m going to raise her as if I birthed her myself.” And so over the course of time, it was those little girls who have been rescued out of the Nile, some of those little girls became the greatest women of faith in the 1st century because they had been rescued.
You understand something here. This is what I’m talking about, all right. We can stand there and watch the people drown in the river and say awful things about the people who killed them, or we can swim out in the river and go get some girls. This is exactly what Chris is calling us to, to give our lives away and don’t care. The default answer is what? Love. What’s the question because the answer is going to be love.
I’m kind of passionate about that. So I’m going to pray before I go into whole another sermon this morning. Can we pray together? Let’s ask the Lord. I can’t do anything for you except speak this to you. But the Holy Spirit certainly can do great things in all of our lives this morning, if all of us would allow it. Just ask yourself. What is the default? Where is my heart right now with people and things, people who opposed you? And chances are, you have been violated, you have been mistreated. And I understand that. And I know the pain of that. But what’s the default answer? How are you going to respond? What’s going to come out of your mouth when you talk about it, because our mouth always betrays what? Our heart. Our mouth always betrays our heart. I can tell what’s inside of people by listening. And I want my words to be kind. I want my words to be merciful because I want my heart to be kind, right?
So would you ask yourself this morning, have you really, really forgiven, released them? Have you—Do you trust that God is a God of justice? And whether He makes things right now or if He makes them right at the end, God is going to bring all things to justice, right? So just be a people who love them. Let’s usher in this new Kingdom of Heaven that’s coming. All creation longs for things to be made right. This is what it says in Romans, that all of creation is groaning, groaning, wishing that everything was right, wishing that there was justice. Right? We all want justice. So that’s—it’s a good thing to want justice. But we just can’t become mean in the process. We can’t become this aggravated mean people. We’ve got to be loving and kind and put that love to work with our hands and our feet and our words and our prayers.
So let’s pray together that we do that this morning. And I can only pray for my heart. But I’m asking you to pray for your heart. What’s the default? Love? So, Father, we thank you so much. We thank you for challenging us, for what a challenging set of Scriptures we just read together, for it’s hard to do that. We say to you. You know that, Lord. You know how hard that is, how difficult it is for us to be live that out. But I pray this morning that we would live it out, that it would be more than just conversation. It would be a heart transformation in us, through us.
Father, I pray now in Jesus’ name that all our words would be kind, that we would do good, that we would put our hands and our feet around this, that we would pray fervently for those around us. And Lord, let us not be discouraged or distracted when we’re misunderstood or hurt. Let us not be discouraged. Guard our hearts from discouragement or distraction. Just help us to stay focused right where You are. Help us to stay focused right on You. Let us keep our eyes on You. You’re the author. You’re the perfector of our faith. So, Lord, let our eyes look to You and you alone in this day in these hours, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let’s all stand this morning. I want those of you who pray and come down to the front, be ready to pray. And the reason I want you down here is because I think there’s people sitting out here today who’re—you’ve never really heard God explained that way. You thought God’s mad at you. I think it was actually encouraging to some of you when you saw people’s hands raised and saw all those ex-wicked people. They’re now somewhat nice. Listen, God—If the Holy Spirit spoke to you this morning and you’re away from God, you’re not following Christ, let us pray for you. Just come in and let us pray for you. There’s no form to fill out, nothing. We just want to pray for you, for anything. If you’re sick, and you’re praying for healing, or if you’re marriage is a mess or whatever, listen we’re all a bit messy in here, okay. So we’d love to pray for you. And then if you’re a guest, Guest Central is right there. If you’re new to New Life, come over there and let us meet you and let us see you, okay. We’d love to hang out with you and introduce ourselves, all right? Let’s pray together one more time.
Father in heaven, let us love our enemies sincerely, deeply, in Jesus name, Amen. All right. I love you. If you need prayer, come out and let us pray for you. Have a great day.
