Love Without Exceptions

Transcript

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[0:00] So our reading today is for Matthew 22, verses 34 through 46, and you can follow along in the bulletin or at home in your own Bible. And a little word of introduction before we go to that, we're going through the lectionary right now in case it wasn't clear. We finished that really fun sermon series on Jonah, and then we went back into the lectionary, which kind of goes through the church year. And the church year is ending. This is the season after Pentecost, and it begins again in Advent. Advent is the beginning of our church year, liturgically, our lectionary year, our liturgical year. And so as we go to the end of the church year, we're actually going to the end of the story in the Gospels. And so we're having a lot of stories, and in this case, this is a Matthew year. There's three years in the lectionary, it recycles, and one year is Matthew year, one year is Luke year, one year is Mark year. And... Okay. And then the Gospel of John is actually interspersed between many of them, which is kind of interesting. And so we're getting towards the end of the story, and so we're actually all the way up to the cross, but not all the way to the cross. So there's a bit of repetition because in the Easter season, of course, we have a lot

[1:13] of similar passages, but it goes even beyond these into the passion, into the passion of Jesus. So here we are again, Matthew 22, Jesus has entered Jerusalem triumphantly. He's gone. He's gone to the temple, and he's having a confrontation with religious leaders at the temple. It's a time of great energy, a time of great conflict. You can just feel the air is crackling with this sort of anticipation and probably a lot of anger, and there's just a lot of things going on. A lot of things are getting decided in this moment. It's a really sort of intense moment that we don't really need. We don't... My goodness, I didn't realize all this was in there. Okay.

[1:54] So I got distracted. I apologize. There's a bunch of weird things that are sitting down here that I don't think you need to see, like my cup full of my hot chocolate. Okay. So we're in conflict again during the Passion Week. There's this exchange with the religious leaders, and this reading, as you'll see, it references an encounter that Jesus had had just in the passage before this, which we didn't preach because it gets skipped over in our lectionary, an encounter with the Sadducees where Jesus is asked, basically, who are people married to in the resurrection? Because they didn't believe in the resurrection. He affirms that the resurrection is real, so he does do that. But now they're going to attempt to get Jesus to say something controversial about the law. So they're moving on to a different topic, the law, which is important to them, everybody who is listening. A little background is that the rabbis of the time had counted 613 different laws in the Scripture. 613.

[2:55] And they had memorized them. They had memorized them all, which is a feat in itself. I don't think we could do that. We're not good memorizers like they were. They had memorized 613 laws. 248 of those laws were what we would call positive laws. They told us to do something. So they would start with, you shall do this or that. And then, of course, the opposite, the 365 other laws were negative commandments. You shall not do this or that. Now, if you think about it, if you have 613 laws, you're going to have to do this or that. And you memorize them all and you meditate on them all. One of the questions that often comes up, I think naturally, is, well, which one of these is the most important of all these laws? Which one comes first on the list of the most important laws to keep? The king of the laws, if you want to say it that way. One strategy they had, they would kind of follow these sort of logical processes. One strategy they had was to say, well, if I break all the laws, what do I do? If I break all the laws, which breaking of the law will have the biggest consequences for me? And whichever one has the greatest consequence after I break it, that one must be the greatest of all the laws. And so if I steal versus if I kill, well, there's different consequences, right?

[4:13] Or if I blaspheme or do a sacrifice in the wrong way or worship an idol, there's different consequences. Of course, there's no end then. Because then somebody could say, well, who's to say this consequence is worse than that consequence? So they never really resolved it, although they came close. So they wanted to trap Jesus. They wanted Jesus to actually pick sides because amongst them even there were different opinions about which one was the greatest. And so either Jesus would say something wrong about the law or he would throw his hat in on one side or the other. And thus, they could chip away at his authority. And what's great about Jesus is he never really joins people's sides when they're in trouble. He never really joins people's sides when they're in conflict with each other. He doesn't do that. There's a man comes to him and says, help me tell my brother to split the inheritance with me. And Jesus wants nothing to do with that. He doesn't want to be involved in this conflict between these brothers. He says, you just need to follow me. Forget about that other stuff. That's not important. And so he's not going to choose sides even in this debate. He's going to give his own answer, which is Jesus' answer.

[5:18] So pay attention. As we read this, when Jesus is asked what is the greatest law, he gives a very good answer. So let's go to our reading. Matthew chapter 22, start at verse 34. And I'm actually going to skip verses 41 through 45 because we're not preaching on that today. And we'll just save time that way. So the reading is Matthew 22, starting at verse 34. It goes like this.

[5:45] When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the law. And the prophets.

[6:30] No one was able to give him an answer to a different question, nor from that day on did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. Well, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus name. Amen.

[6:52] So I want to do it a little differently today. I want to actually go through this verse by verse. We sometimes do this and it's a shorter passage so we can do that. We'll draw out some important points from each verse and there are. And then at the end we'll sort of try to pull it together. And if you're taking notes at home, I'm going to give you some explicit points about what to take notes on that I think are important. So that will help you. And if you don't take notes, you can start taking notes. You could take notes at home. There's some points that come out of each one of these verses that are really powerful and really useful for us because they're scripture, of course. So we're going to go through this verse by verse and let's start with verse 34. And you see where it says that the Pharisees had gathered together. Another way you could read this though is that it says that they all gathered together because it's talking about them as one sort of large group. And perhaps they didn't have such a cohesive leadership as maybe the Sadducees did or the Herodians did. But nonetheless, they all knew each other. And if they even disagreed, they could all agree that they didn't like Jesus. So they all gathered together.

[7:57] And I want us to sort of envision this scene. That Jesus had already stumped the Pharisees with questions about paying taxes. They had a short-lived collaboration with the Herodians that was the supporters of the ruling family. That didn't last when Jesus told them about paying taxes. The Sadducees had come and tested Jesus on the resurrection.

[8:19] And now the Pharisees are like, okay, let's get everyone together. Call all your co-workers. Call all your cousins. Get them over here. Get them here to the temple courts. Let's give Jesus one more sort of test. And let's see if we can really get him in trouble. And as we'll see later, they even appointed one person among them who was an expert in the law to lead the questioning. And so you can imagine that there were hundreds of these Pharisees all gathered in one place facing off against Jesus. It's kind of a powerful image, right? And here's Jesus standing there. And maybe 12 apostles behind him, even though they were all there with him. And this group of 13 people is facing this group of hundreds of people, hostile people, right?

[9:07] And to my mind, it draws attention to the courage of Jesus. Here he is, just 13 people, facing hundreds of angry people who want to see him destroyed. And he's cool as a cucumber, basically. He faces them. He answers their question. He engages with them. If there's any fear in him, it's not recorded here in the scriptures that we have, right?

[9:35] But I think it's more than courage. I think it was just that Jesus was obedient to the Father. And he had a goal in mind, which was to go to the cross. And when your focus is on something like that, then you're not, you don't have time to be afraid. Actually, you just go and do what you're supposed to do. And I think when we're the same way, when we live with purpose that God gives us, we may encounter opposition. We may encounter people who don't want us to succeed. But that doesn't have to stop us, and it doesn't even have to slow us down. Because we're not doing it in that moment for approval for ourselves. It's not our own project. It's not our own goals. It's not. It's not something I'm going to do in that moment to advance my own ego or to make myself feel better. If I'm doing something like that, like I'm building a project for myself, that's when I can get defensive. That's when I can get a little tentative. But if I'm following what God tells me to do, I'll just keep doing it because he's responsible for what happens. I don't have to worry about those things.

[10:44] And any resistance I would get isn't really about me. It's about God. People are opposed to what God is doing. All I have to do is be faithful and obedient to what God is asking me to do. So that's, I think, the situation that paints the scene. Jesus facing hundreds of hostile people, and yet he isn't afraid or daunted because he has a task that God has set before him. Now let's look at verse 35. We see that one of them was a lawyer. They didn't want to take any chances. They appointed one person to speak on their behalf. One person who was brilliant, perhaps, who was going to sort of kind of dispute with Jesus what the law said, which law was the greatest. One way to translate this word is an expert in the law or a lawyer or a scholar. The Greek word is nomikos. It's from the word nomos, which means law. And so this was a person who was skilled and well-read in the law. They were used to debating the law. And so this is like, you know, the master. Person that you would send in to sort of have this argument with somebody, and they would often win, right? Now, here we get an interesting sort of side note, sort of a commentary from Matthew as sort of a, sort of as an omniscient narrator. It says that they did this to test him.

[12:14] They did this to test him. And so we have an understanding of the motive of the people who are doing this, right? And Jesus also confronts them about their motives in previous passages like this where he says, why are you trying to test me, right? So there's this motive is, is, it's not just to see if he's smart, right? It's not just to learn from him, to learn something new. It's, it's a test, but it's designed to get him into trouble. And so here, and if you're taking notes, I would say, take a note of this is that our motive. When we come to Jesus is an important question. Our motive. They're not seeking knowledge. They have a great teacher in their midst. What an opportunity. They're not asking because they really want to know. But because or or because they think they could learn something new. But because they want to destroy him. Here they are with this greatest teacher in their midst. And they're missing an opportunity.

[13:12] To really learn something new and amazing. That's, I think, maybe the tragedy of Holy Week, of the week of the Passion, is all the missed opportunities that people had to actually learn something new that was life-giving. Now, in God's grace, Jesus teaches even in these moments. Other people were there to record it so that we do get the benefit of it. Even some of these people in this crowd who were opposing Jesus probably came around and did get it. Praise God. So that speaks to the grace of God, that even in our bad motives, God will do what God will do. And good things may come of it yet if we are open to it. But motive matters. It matters to Jesus, and Jesus keeps on seeing through them. And I think one question we could ask is, what motives do we have when we come to God? What are our motives? Are we sincere in wanting to learn what we don't yet know? What is our motive? What is our motive when we open the Scriptures? Is it to win an argument? Is it to use the Scriptures like a weapon or a symbol to put other people down? What motives are we using when we come to the Lord asking questions? Are we trying to get God to say something we want Him to say? Either so we can discount it, because we know He'd say that anyways, kind of like Jonah.

[14:35] I knew you were generous and kind and loving. Or so we can go ahead and do what we want. But I'm not going to do what I wanted to do anyways, right? Here's something that's easy for me to do. I have, say, an idea. I have an idea. I'm pretty connected to it. I think I'm right, you know, pretty sure that it's true. And it's kind of like confirmation bias, right? This idea that I think the world is a certain way, and so I'm only really going to seek out information that confirms the bias I have about it. And I'm going to do it. I'm going to selectively discard information that comes my way that tells me the opposite of what I believe. It's a dangerous way to think. It's a very sort of tunnel vision way to think. I think it happens all the time. I know it happens to me all the time. I can confess to that.

[15:29] And so this can be true even in my dealings with other people. I know I've said this before, but say that there's somebody I don't like. I'm going to give you a. That's the confession. I love a lot of people, but there's some people I don't like. That's just I can't help that. I can't help that. I could only pray that God would remove it. And God does. See, this is the thing. There's there's sometimes I think, oh, you know, there's somebody I don't like. And the best moments, I would say, is when God shows me something about that other person that contradicts my view of them. They might go and do or say something that's absolutely wonderful. And then I have this choice like, oh, I dislike this person. But now they're acting in a very admirable way. And now my choice is I could say, oh, well, they just got lucky once. You know that they're really not like that. It just looks the optics were good that moment. Or I could say.

[16:34] Maybe I was wrong. Or maybe people are more complex than I give them credit for. And they're both. At times can be mean to me and other times they can be quite noble because they're people and people are complex. So.

[16:50] What is my motive when I approach God? What is my motive when I approach other people? Am I only looking for confirmation of what I already believe? Am I looking to trap other people? Am I looking to get God to say what I want God to say? Am I filtering the scriptures to just the parts that confirm what I believe and what I love to say? You have to be careful with that. What is my motive? Motive matters. Jesus cares about our motives. He cares about the motives of the Pharisees. He cares about our motives. And how good are we at letting information in that contradicts our own goals, our own projects, our own preconceived notions?

[17:33] And to be a disciple is to be open to what God has for us and to let God transform our minds. Which is an amazing concept. So. Jesus cares about our motives. And he also cares enough to listen even to the questions that are asked out of bad motives. Because even he can redeem those questions. This is how redemptive Jesus is. He redeems people and he redeems questions and he redeems our motives if we let him. And so Jesus in this case he gives the right answer even though the question was asked with a poor motive. And so here's the question. We find it in verse 36. We're going on to verse 36 now. And the question of this is, Teacher, which commandment is greatest? And literally you could say it says, Which commandment is great? That's the Greek word Megale. Which should be familiar to us because mega is a prefix that always means big or biggest. And if you need an illustration of this, go to Costco this afternoon and buy a giant pack of toilet paper. And you'll get a mega pack, right? You can get mega things.

[18:43] Megale. Which commandment is Megale? And that doesn't just mean great in this context. It means great above all the rest. Which one is the greatest of them all? And this is the question that they had spent a lot of time on. This is the question that they hoped Jesus would either get wrong or Jesus would pick a side between them and thus kind of divide the loyalty to him. There's all sorts of motives going on here.

[19:10] And so it's that question. It's that old question of the 613 commandments. Which one is the greatest? And I think the other thing that Jesus does here is even though there's an academic question with a poor motive behind it, Jesus always has a way of bringing even obscure academic things like this straight to the heart of a person and straight to the heart of what's happening in the moment. This is Jesus's power. There's an example of this in John chapter 4. You may remember the woman at the well. And Jesus is probing into her personal life a little bit. He's making some statements about her that he couldn't possibly have known unless he was the Messiah. And she deflects him by starting a miniature theological conversation about which mountain is the most holy. The Mount Gerizim where they were right at that moment. And where we were at that moment. We went on our trip to Israel. And hopefully if we go on another trip to Israel we'll go back there because it was fascinating. Mount Gerizim in Samaria.

[20:17] Or Mount Zion where the temple was located. Which of those is the greatest? It was another kind of which is the greatest kind of dialogues. And Jesus answers her, it does not matter where you worship but how you worship. You have to worship in spirit. And in truth. And so even if an academic question and the motive was to distract away from my personal life which was embarrassing. Jesus says he can have this ability to bring it back to the reality. It doesn't matter where you worship. It matters how you worship. It matters who you are. And we're talking about who you are in this moment. In that story of the woman at the well in John chapter 4. So it's the same thing here. There's an academic question with the intent to trap him. But Jesus turns it into a life giving lesson for anyone who can listen. Some of them can't listen because of their motives. Because of their confirmation bias. But maybe some of them can listen. And to those he is speaking.

[21:24] And he's beginning to teach. Even if we come to him with wrong motives. And he does that in verse 37. And he says this in verse 37. Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. That's the first and greatest commandment.

[21:43] Now you may be thinking to yourself because you know the scripture. And a lot of you really do know the scripture. You may be saying well what about the strength? Isn't the strength in there is missing from this list? And you're right. The word strength is missing from here in Matthew chapter 22. But you will find it in Mark chapter 12. And in Luke chapter 10. There's a similar exchange in both those books and chapters.

[22:09] And they include the word strength. So instead of three things there's four things with which you are to love God. Now one thing that people have tried to do. Not so much about the difference between these lists. But to take this list. And to try to develop what we would call a sort of a comprehensive Christian psychology. And say well what makes up a person? Right? And so we could even take the list that Jesus has. Both here in Mark 12 and Luke 10. And say well you're supposed to love God with all your heart. The Greek word is kardia. It's the inner core of who you are. Sort of your emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Also you should love God with all your soul. The Greek word is psike. Which is our identity or our life. Kind of this. Kind of who you are. Then the mind is dianoia. The part which thinks and reasons. That needs. That's a different part of who you are. And then finally the strength which is the word iskus. You don't have to write these down. But you know. It's interesting where these come from. It's our ability to do things. Our strength. Our ability to accomplish things. And that could be fun someday maybe. Kind of develop a comprehensive Christian psychology of who we are. With all these different words.

[23:23] Heart, soul, mind, and strength. But really what I want us to take from this today. Is it doesn't matter that the word strength is missing here. There's another way of saying. Heart, soul, and mind. Or heart, soul, mind, and strength. Is the totality of who you are. All the elements of who you are together as a whole. Whatever way you choose to count them. And you could even add other words to this list. That describe who you are as a person. Okay. It doesn't matter. What matters is that it's all of you. All of you. Every part of you. Is to love God completely. That's the simplest message of all. It's from actually from our first reading. That you are to love the Lord your God. With the entirety of your being. That's what Jesus is getting at. That's the law. And that is a law. That is one of the laws of the 613 that they were asking about.

[24:29] And just as a side note. I want you to go to the church website today. I'm not even going to say the name. I'm just going to give you the address of it. Because I think you should search for it. Did you know we have a church website? We have a church website.

[24:42] Look it up on Google. Just type Foothill Covenant Church. You'll find it. And on the website is an embedded version of our blog. Did you know that we have a blog? We do. We have a blog. And inside that blog is a link. And in that blog today. This morning. I've linked. I've posted a link to something called My Heart Christ's Home. Now I'm going to show you a link. My Heart Christ's Home. It's by Robert Boyd Munger. A Presbyterian pastor. He wrote it in 1951. It's beautiful. Take a look at it. Read it this week. Read it to your children. It's a very well done way of getting to this idea that the entirety of who we are belongs to God. And it uses a house as a metaphor. It's really smart. Okay. So check that out. Go to the church website. You'll find an embedded version of our blog there. The very first thing you'll find on that blog is a book. It's a link from the Navigator's website to a PDF version of My Heart Christ's Home. That's your assignment this week is to read that. It's about what does it look like to give every part of me to God, the entirety of who I am. All of who I am is to love God. But there's more. As he says in verse 38 now, verse 38, this is the greatest and the first commandment and another one is like it.

[26:03] You shall love your neighbor as yourself. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now there's two parts here that I want to focus on real quick. First we should love our neighbor. And the Greek word here for neighbor is plesion. It's not the only word for neighbor. What's nice about Greeks often there's only one word that has to carry several meanings. In this case, there's a lot of words for neighbor. And this of all the words for neighbor is the one that has the largest scope, the largest radius around you. There's other words for neighbor that actually literally mean the person that lives right next door to your house or somebody who's closely related to you or something like that. And Jesus doesn't use that word. He uses the word for those that you could possibly say neighbor about that are the furthest from him. And it points to a sort of a more expansive view who the neighbor is.

[26:56] And we'll get into that later. But he also says you should love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. As yourself. That's important. Super important. Okay. I find out that when I don't love myself and we are to love ourselves, which sounds a little selfish and if you grew up Scandinavian like me, it almost seemed like a bad idea because you're not supposed to think too much of yourself or to think that you're any better than anyone else and that's all true or to think that you have anything to say that's particularly good or that you've ever done anything very exceptional.

[27:32] The Norwegians have a term for this. This is called the Jante loven and there's this town called Jante and all the people in this town kind of have this law. The lov is the law and these are the laws. You're not supposed to think of yourself too highly. You're not supposed to think that you have too much or are too great and so on. But you are to love yourself. You're to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

[27:55] And I find that when I don't love myself, it's harder for me to love other people. I think those are related internally. In terms of me, it may be different for you. I don't think I'm alone though. And so learning to love myself, being okay with who I am, with my limitations and my strengths, the features that God has made in me, that helps me to give other people a great deal of grace and love if I'm okay with myself. And being okay with myself is a lifelong journey. There's no doubt about it. I'm not done at all, but it is work that God has given me. And when I love myself, I'm okay with myself. I'm able more to love other people well. And so this is part of my discipleship is to love myself. So the love of self is not a bad thing. It's not a selfish thing. It's a valuable thing. And I think maybe a good question is to say, what does God see when He looks at me? What does God see when He looks at you? He sees all my flaws. Yes, He sees all your flaws. Yes, but He also looks at me and loves me. I want you to look at Mark 10.21. Mark 10.21. Look it up a little later. Write it down. Mark 10.21. Jesus, it says, looks at a man and loves him.

[29:16] He loves him despite this man being somewhat misguided in the moment. Jesus loves him anyways. He looks at him and loves him. It's a very powerful short verse in Scripture. Should I love myself? Less than God loves me? No. Should I see myself as less than God sees me? Absolutely not. So we should love ourselves. And that enables us, I think, to love our neighbors well. So now look at verse 40. Jesus wraps it all up. He says, all the law and all the prophets hang on, and by that He means depends on, these two laws. If you keep these two laws, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

[30:07] So remember verse 42. He says if you remember them for how great you are. So remember them for how great you are. So remember them for how great you are. them. So all these laws, it's not like shaking it out and they all find their right place, their right categories, if you start with the two at the top working together. So keep these and you'll do the right thing. Have you noticed in our prayer of confession when we have communion, have you noticed that there are two confessions? There's really only two confessions and you're going to hear it again next week. So pay attention next week when we do communion. We confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart and we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. So even our confession is geared towards these two laws and our laws to keep are these two laws and when we break them, the only confession we need to make is that we have broken these two laws. So you only really need to confess two things. Now it's good to confess specific things because that can help you. It can help your spirit. But theoretically, all you really need to do when you go to confess your sins is to confess to two things, not loving God and not loving your neighbor as yourself.

[31:40] And that would cover all the sins that you may have committed. Let's skip ahead to verse 46, like I did in the reading. And we see that this time of confrontation is over. Jesus has answered so well. Jesus has not picked sides. Jesus has given the correct answer and a wise answer. And some of them actually, even in that moment said, oh, he is right. We have nothing left. We're on the wrong track now. We're not going to be able to trick him in any way. And so they leave. Nobody was able to trap him or get him into trouble or to say anything wrong. Instead, he was given this beautiful opportunity in front of hundreds of people to preach the true gospel. And so Jesus is the one who's going to do that. And so he redeems the moment and he redeems the question and he redeems the moment by preaching into brokenness. And thank God Jesus is like that because he will do the same thing for us. And luckily, some of the people heard it. Some of the Pharisees heard it and definitely some of the apostles heard it and some of them took notes and now we can hear it too. So that's good. So they go on their way. The Pharisees leave. They're very pragmatic. They're like, this is not working. We're going to stop spending time on this. Let's regroup. Let's find some other

[33:04] way to get rid of him. Less public, more secret, not in the daylight, but in the cover of night. And so we know that they do that right after the Passover meal that Thursday night and they get someone close to Jesus to betray him. And so their methods, they have their motive and the motive is the same, but the methods change from a public confrontation where they thought they could trap him into a very private and nefarious way. And so they're going to do that. And so they're going to do that. And so they're going to do that. And so they're going to do that. And so they're going to arrest him and bring him before the authorities so that he could be crucified. And so in the end, they get what they want, but they didn't really get what they hoped for. And only Jesus in the resurrection is able to then use that as something that proclaims the gospel even further. So even Jesus can redeem brokenness and acts of violence. And he does that by proclaiming then the resurrection of the dead.

[34:00] And so the motives are still there to get Jesus and they do. Now, you may say, well, this is great. We've had a teaching today that's really quite simple. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And that's right. I mean, that's completely right. There's nothing more to it than this, but there is actually. But you could say in your mind there's really nothing more to it than this is quite a simple idea. And it is. It is quite straightforward.

[34:31] I'm supposed to love God with all I am and love my neighbors as myself. But in this season that we're in now, and I'm talking about the season we're in with an election looming in just a few days, with racial injustice and violence in our cities in the last four or five months, and just the general tenor of how the world is now with COVID-19, I think we really need to spend some time on the word neighbor.

[35:00] We need to spend some time on the word neighbor. Who am I to love as neighbor? Who is my neighbor? Well, if you're to love your neighbor as yourself, and Jesus chooses this word placement, which is the most expansive of all the words he could have chosen for a neighbor. The one that has the sort of the widest radius if you like. Who is my neighbor? And Jesus gives us at least two good answers for this. And this is where maybe I even want you to take notes a little bit more. And this is where maybe I even want you to take notes a little bit more. And this is the end. But if you remember if you remember but this is where it all kind of comes together.

[35:33] There's two good answers that Jesus gives. One is in the Sermon on the Mount. He says that your enemy is actually your neighbor because you are to love your enemy and pray for them. So there's really nobody who's not your neighbor. The whole world is your neighbor. Even your enemies are your neighbors because you are to love your enemies as you love yourself.

[35:53] The person you don't like, the person you disagree with, the person you can't stand. Maybe they're going to vote differently than you or they see the world differently than you. It doesn't matter. You have to love them. That's what's commanded.

[36:05] You got to love your neighbor, love your enemy as yourself. You know, maybe they are the real enemy, like they actually want to start a war, a real war against you. You may remember 9-11 if you're old enough to remember that. My nephew Martin was much younger then, but he... He... He said something really profound to my brother-in-law. After 9-11, he said to his father, shouldn't we pray for Osama bin Laden?

[36:37] Because aren't we supposed to pray for our enemies? And my brother-in-law was like, ah, these kids are too smart, you know? That's hard. Because who would want to pray for that? I mean, you could maybe say a prayer with a bad motive and say, dear Lord, we pray for Osama bin Laden, that he gets punished, he gets found and punished for all the crimes he did. That's not a very sincere prayer for his well-being. I mean, maybe a better prayer would be, pray that he would come to realize that violence isn't the answer. Pray that he would come to know Jesus. I mean, those are good prayers, right? There's a difference, right?

[37:13] And so my brother-in-law said, you're right. You know, you're five years old, but you're right. So he was actually older than five, but not that much older. So they prayed for Osama bin Laden that night because they were commanded to. So I love that about my brother-in-law, my sister, my brother-in-law, they trust. They trust and obey the scriptures. Out of the mouths of babes. So isn't it great when children quote scripture and it trips us up? And I hope for many of those times. And actually, even my children have done that to me. And I laugh. It's a great moment. I wish for more of them. And I also kick myself a little bit when it happens because I'm like, wow, these kids see it better than I do.

[38:00] So if you remember some of our great behavior to make sure that he himself is righteous. And again, Jesus redeems a bad motive and tells a life-giving story instead. And so he tells the story, and I'm not going to tell you the story of the Good Samaritan, but all he says is a certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and the rest we know, right? With the rest we know. So here's the difficult challenge in this. As hard as it is, the world is my neighbor. The world is your neighbor.

[39:03] And that's hard because I don't have the bandwidth to help every person in the world. I think that's just reality, right? I cannot help every person in the world. I don't have the resources. I don't have the time, right? When I love someone who's dear to me, near to me, my heart will break when they suffer injustice. My heart will break when they're ill. My heart will break when they're hurting. But I'm not called to do something that's impossible for me. I don't think God is calling me to have my heart break for every person in this world because I would break in half and I would die in seconds. It's not possible. What is possible? And I think it's possible for me, and I think it's possible for you. And if you want to take notes, take notes of this now. It is possible to be open to those people that God, if you want to remember them for some time. I remember some people remember them for some time. They may be very different from you. They may have different views than you. They may even not like you. You know, they could even be enemies to you. But it's possible to be open to hearing about the needs and problems of people who live far, far away from me. Physical place doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're on Mount Gerizim

[40:44] or on Mount Zion. Where you worship doesn't matter. You, how you worship matters in spirit and in truth. Where your neighbor is doesn't matter. How you neighbor them does matter. How you respond to the people that God sends into your life.

[41:03] And I'm good at ignoring those things that come along. I'm good at that. I don't have time. I don't have energy. They don't deserve it. I can come up with a great number of excuses for why I'm not going to love or help that person or listen to their cries.

[41:20] I have my own projects. I have my own projects. I have my own needs. I have my own thing that I need to build. And I'm not interested in what God wants me to do. But here it is. There's an attitude of obedience to what God is calling me to do. And if I have that obedience, then I will open myself up to the suffering of others. And God will direct me in how I am to love them. Not where, but how I am to love them. So I'm going to tell you where I am right now. In these last months, I'm hearing two things from God.

[41:58] Neighbors that God is trying to send into my path. The first is that there's the pain of racial injustice in our country. And the plight, the second is the plight of developing countries that don't have the resources to deal with COVID-19. Those are two things that God is sending into my comfort to make me uncomfortable. And those are two things.

[42:27] I'm having some thoughts. I'm having some thoughts. I'm having some thoughts. I'm having some thoughts. something that would neighbor them, love them as I love myself. So he's telling me something. He's telling me where to listen. And you know what? I just talked about myself, but I'm not talking about you. You may be hearing something else, and you need to listen to that. God may have a different list for you, a different set of people coming into your hearts. And whatever it is, listen to it. Be open to it. What we need to do is be obedient. What we need to do is do what God calls us to do, to love our neighbors. And here's the great thing. When we are obedient to God's commands, we don't need to fear when there's thousands or millions of people opposing us. We just need to listen. We just need to obey. We need to put one foot in front of the other and trust in the God who loves us. So much that he would give his son for us. Following God's will, being obedient to his command gives us courage to face any number of people. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. We ask that first and foremost, you would open us up to hear and see the neighbors that you're sending into our lives, and then to have the courage and the obedience to the

[44:15] Lord. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.