0:0 - Our text this morning is Luke 6, as we continue on through Luke.
0:7 - But to you who are listening, I say, these are the words of Jesus, but to you who are listening, I say, are you listening?
0:22 - I've heard it said before, I know you can hear me, but are you listening?
0:29 - There's a difference.
0:30 - Listening is hearing, but willing to learn, willing to change, willing to have a message permeate our heart and soul.
0:44 - Let's pray before we continue reading this text and ask God to help us to listen.
0:53 - Lord God, you have a message for your people.
0:57 - You have a word that is for us individually and completely in unity together.
1:6 - And God, that is incredibly complex.
1:10 - And only you can teach in that way.
1:13 - So we ask God that as your Holy Spirit is active and present as it was in the writing of scripture, the translation over many years, and as it is reflected on here this morning, God, we ask that you minister to us through your Holy Spirit here today.
1:31 - We ask that we are able to listen, that we are willing to be changed and willing to really take to heart what it is that you have for us.
1:42 - In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
1:48 - All right, let's keep reading the words of Jesus this morning.
1:51 - This text comes to us from, it's kind of like a mini Beatitudes, which we often focus on from the Book of Matthew because it's longer, but we're looking at it through Luke as we've been working through Luke.
2:3 - And so we have a short pithy address from Jesus where he's just kind of getting to the point and giving us really direct messages for us to reflect on this morning.
2:16 - But to you who are listening, I say, love your enemies.
2:22 - Do good to those who hate you.
2:25 - Bless those who curse you.
2:28 - Pray for those who mistreat you.
2:32 - If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.
2:40 - If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.
2:45 - Give to everyone who asks you.
2:48 - And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
2:55 - Do to others as you would have them do to you.
3:2 - If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?
3:5 - Even sinners love those who love them.
3:8 - And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?
3:12 - Even sinners do that.
3:14 - And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you?
3:21 - Even sinners lend to sinners expecting to be repaid in full.
3:27 - But love your enemies.
3:29 - Do good to them.
3:31 - And lend to them without expecting to get anything back.
3:37 - Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the most high because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
3:46 - Be merciful just as your father is merciful.
3:52 - Now these next few verses that I'm going to read are kind of, if you're looking at it in your Pew Bibles, you'll see that there's a division between this and the next section.
4:2 - And that happens, it's not the inspired, the subtitle headings that we find in scripture are not part of the inspired word of scripture.
4:11 - They're just kind of put in there.
4:13 - So the original text finished with the verse I just read.
4:17 - But as I was studying the text, I realized that these words really belong with this text and are important for the message of this text, even though they start another section.
4:30 - So do not judge and you will not be judged.
4:36 - Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.
4:39 - Forgive and you will be forgiven.
4:42 - Give and it will be given to you.
4:45 - A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.
4:52 - For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
4:59 - This is the word of the Lord.
5:8 - All right, it's pretty straightforward, and it's a concept that we hear a lot, love your enemies, right?
5:16 - It's not necessarily a hard one to really just hear.
5:20 - We've heard it a million times, but when you see it read and expressed and explained, and you start thinking about the implications, maybe it's one of those things that's easy to say, but hard to do.
5:34 - One of the first questions that I had as I was wrestling with this text and wondering about it was, who is your enemy?
5:45 - Who is your enemy?
5:49 - Well, the text actually tells us a little bit about who our enemy is.
5:53 - It refers to someone that harms you, someone that mistreats you, someone that hates you, someone that steals from you.
6:3 - So, who is that for you?
6:8 - I think for the ancient Israelites, the idea of the enemy was pretty common.
6:14 - We see it throughout the entire Old Testament.
6:16 - It's often foreign nations or those that they are at war with or that they are being oppressed by.
6:22 - So for them, they might define it as other religions or even those with a slightly different religion, let's say like the Samaritans, or maybe it was the Romans.
6:34 - But for us, I wonder, who is your enemy?
6:39 - Who would you call an enemy?
6:43 - Think of those that have or are able to and do harm you or mistreat you.
6:51 - Those that you are in conflict with.
6:55 - Those that you are feeling pain because of your interactions with them.
7:4 - I wonder if for many of us, we might then have to define the people in our lives as enemies as some of those that are closest to us.
7:18 - Who is it that hurts us?
7:20 - Who is it that causes us pain?
7:24 - Maybe it's a spouse.
7:27 - Someone who you have opened yourself up to.
7:32 - And with only a few short words, they can hurt you immensely.
7:39 - And maybe because of their own hurt and struggle, they do that.
7:43 - Maybe you find yourself in a difficult place with your spouse.
7:47 - And if you're honest, in a very safe place, you would have to define your spouse as your enemy.
7:56 - Or what about a parent?
8:0 - Parents are authority figures in our lives.
8:2 - They have a lot of impact on us.
8:5 - And they're also wounded and hurt people.
8:7 - And they live out of that woundedness and hurtness.
8:11 - And hurt people hurt people.
8:15 - Our parents can be our enemies.
8:19 - Or what about our siblings?
8:21 - As children, certainly we see it on a regular basis where siblings become enemies.
8:27 - And this is part of growing and learning.
8:29 - But as adults, we see it as well.
8:33 - Sometimes there is a rift that happens inside families where siblings are not able to understand each other, to see eye to eye, and it hurts.
8:45 - And if we're in a safe place and we're honest, we might have to say that our siblings are our enemies.
8:56 - Or what about our co-workers?
8:59 - Or what about our boss?
9:4 - I think enemies for us can get very, very personal.
9:11 - This text can land incredibly close to home.
9:16 - And the message that we hear in this text is to love our enemies and to show mercy to our enemies, to be merciful.
9:30 - What's interesting about this, and I don't want to get too deep into this, I'm gonna try to keep myself very brief on this, but I spent some time this week reflecting on the story of the Good Samaritan, which has a similar message of love and mercy.
9:46 - But the question in that story is not who is your enemy, but who is your neighbor.
9:54 - And I think there is a lot of overlap in our lives between those that we would call our neighbors and those that we would call our enemies.
10:6 - At times, those who are our neighbors are also enemies, and at times, our enemies are also our neighbors.
10:13 - And yet, the call from Christ is the same for both.
10:18 - Love and have mercy on enemy and neighbor.
10:25 - In other words, have love and mercy for all.
10:33 - Now, what does this look like as we think about it?
10:37 - What does it look like?
10:40 - Our text says, when you receive a slap on the cheek, to turn the other cheek also.
10:48 - If something is stolen from you, don't even demand it back.
10:52 - If anything, give more.
10:57 - How does this take shape inside our personal relationships?
11:2 - What does this look like inside relationship?
11:8 - How much are we called to have compassion for those who hurt us and harm us?
11:15 - And how much are we supposed to simply, because of the good news of the gospel in us, let it go, turn it over, and submit to what is happening?
11:33 - All right, I'm wondering right now, if my justice seekers out here, and I know you're out there, I can think of some of you.
11:41 - I've been thinking of some of you this week.
11:44 - I'm wondering how you're feeling right now.
11:47 - Those of you who have a keen sense of justice.
11:52 - You're thinking of scenarios in which this plays out in your mind as I did this week.
11:58 - Because I struggled this week with this.
12:2 - Because if this is the call for mercy, where is justice?
12:12 - Let's play out one scenario.
12:16 - An abusive relationship.
12:19 - I'm not gonna go beyond defining it that way.
12:23 - You can imagine many abusive relationships.
12:26 - And one person cries out for help.
12:31 - They go to the church and say, help me.
12:34 - And the church says, okay, how do we help?
12:36 - And they pick up their Bibles and they flip to Luke chapter six, and they read our text this morning.
12:44 - And what is the response?
12:47 - As a Christian, you're called to submit.
12:52 - Turn the other cheek.
12:54 - Take the high road.
12:56 - Accept what is happening to you.
12:58 - In fact, the text even goes on to say, don't judge.
13:1 - So maybe those in the church might say, well, we're not supposed to judge.
13:8 - It's not our place to discern what is happening here.
13:15 - I don't think that's the lesson.
13:18 - I don't think that fully summarizes what we're trying to learn from this text.
13:25 - Although there is good word in here about seeking the goodness of everyone, that would be an improper use of the text.
13:38 - Now, this is why we are so blessed to have the entirety of scripture.
13:42 - If we only had these few verses, it would shape the way that we function in different and unhealthy ways.
13:49 - And this text has been used in unhealthy ways in the past.
13:56 - But we have more scripture than just this text.
14:2 - We have more, which is good for us, which is helpful.
14:6 - And so, what I'd like to do now is move to another.
14:8 - I spent some time thinking this week, okay, if this is a good message, a true message, yet there's the risk and danger of misinterpretation or misunderstanding, well, then scripture itself, as the authority, should be able to help us to discern more.
14:26 - It's not to say we have to be careful with understanding scripture.
14:29 - It's to say, no, the solution is more scripture to find more stories.
14:37 - I thought about a lot of different things.
14:39 - I thought about the story of the Good Samaritan.
14:42 - I thought about the story where in Luke chapter 22, where Jesus heals the ear of the man that when they come to arrest him, one of his followers steps out to protect Jesus and lobs off the ear of this one person coming to challenge Jesus and Jesus is enough and he heals him.
15:3 - I thought about that text.
15:5 - These are good texts to reinforce the message and idea of what we've learned here, but it doesn't help us to be cautious about finding the justice in the story as well.
15:20 - I landed on a story found in John chapter 8, and I landed on it too late to get it up on the screen for you, but I'll read it from my Bible here, and you have Bibles in your row that you can read as well.
15:34 - Then they all went home, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
15:40 - At dawn, he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.
15:48 - The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.
15:53 - They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus' teacher, This woman was caught in the act of adultery.
16:0 - In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such woman.
16:3 - Now what do you say?
16:5 - Now they're using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him.
16:11 - But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger, and when they kept questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.
16:26 - Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
16:30 - At this, those who heard him began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there.
16:41 - Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where have they gone?
16:44 - Has no one condemned you?
16:47 - No one, sir, she said.
16:49 - Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared.
16:52 - Go now and leave your life of sin.
17:0 - All right, we have a text where someone has done something.
17:4 - There's actually a lot of debate about whether or not this woman was the perpetrator of something wrong or if she's the victim of something wrong.
17:11 - And honestly, I'm not so sure it matters because every perpetrator is a victim and every victim is a perpetrator.
17:25 - So you may resonate more with the victim or the perpetrator, but either way, we can see ourselves, all of us should be able to see ourselves in this situation because we're all victims and because hurt people hurt people, we're all perpetrators.
17:44 - She's caught in something that's wrong.
17:50 - And they want to condemn her, which is what the verses, the later verses of our text say.
17:57 - When you look at the later verses, they say this, do not judge and you will not be judged.
18:4 - And it's hard to know sometimes what that means.
18:7 - It's not discernment.
18:9 - There's a difference between discerning right and wrong and casting judgment in this context.
18:18 - We have to be careful how we use this.
18:20 - And the next sentence, and scripture's great for this, because often it repeats itself and it gives us more clarity on what's being said.
18:27 - So it says, do not judge and you will not be judged.
18:30 - And then it says immediately following, like in other words, do not condemn and you will not be condemned.
18:39 - So you see something that's wrong, it's not appropriate or your place to cast a stone.
18:50 - It's not appropriate or your place to pronounce a judgment because you are not qualified for that, because you are broken and you're imperfect and you're going to get it wrong.
19:5 - You're going to get it wrong.
19:9 - And in this story, we also see justice because a stone is not cast against this woman, which is mercy.
19:19 - It's mercy, but there's justice because Jesus meets her right where she is and looking at her as the only one who can cast a stone, he does not.
19:30 - And then he confronts her sin.
19:34 - He confronts her sin and says, leave your life of sin.
19:40 - Justice and mercy belong together.
19:45 - Anytime you have mercy without justice, something is broken.
19:52 - Anytime you have what we might call justice without mercy, something is broken.
19:58 - Now, what's the formula for this?
20:0 - Or how do we achieve this?
20:2 - As we in our own lives discern where to step in with right and wrong, where and how to help in circumstances of abuse or struggle or suffering, how to show compassion and have mercy on those that are hurting, or those that are hurting us.
20:20 - How do we do it?
20:23 - Well, the key is to look at the very best example that exists of justice and mercy wrapped together.
20:31 - I think often we look at the Old Testament and we think, okay, this is like the god of judgment.
20:36 - This is the god of justice.
20:37 - He's always talking about vengeance and he's talking about retribution and he's talking about being jealous and making things right.
20:44 - And then we get to Jesus and we think, okay, well, Jesus, in Jesus we have this god of grace and this god of mercy, this god that makes everything right.
20:57 - And if you see, if you see a direct split, if you see the god of the Old Testament and the god of the New Testament as different gods, as like a god who changed, like he used to be kind of punitive and vindictive and revengeful and then through Jesus, the whole gospel story changed and now it's all about grace, nothing but grace.
21:19 - Grace covers all.
21:21 - Mercy for everyone and everything under every circumstance with zero consequence.
21:28 - That's a broken understanding of scripture and the gospel.
21:34 - The interesting thing is, this message of Jesus to love enemies, it's not even a new message.
21:40 - It's not even a new truth.
21:42 - It's actually said directly in the Old Testament.
21:46 - Exodus 24, all the way back in the second book.
21:48 - If you come across your enemy's donkey, ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it.
21:53 - If you see a donkey, if someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there.
21:59 - Be sure to help them with it.
22:0 - So help for someone who hates you.
22:2 - And Proverbs 25, wisdom literature.
22:5 - If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat.
22:10 - If he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
22:13 - So this idea of loving the enemy is not a hot take or a new look at things from Jesus.
22:21 - It's just, I think he's redefining who the enemy is.
22:26 - It's having us really wrestle with who this is in our lives.
22:30 - Seeing ourselves as the enemy and seeing those that we're in close relationship with as the enemy so that we can have compassion on them.
22:40 - What is the solution?
22:42 - How do we reconcile this idea of justice, which is things made right, things connected and whole again, and mercy, which is washing things clean and offering a blank slate or a new start.
23:3 - The best example that we have of justice and mercy held together is found on the cross.
23:11 - You see, humanity fell into sin.
23:16 - Humanity made choices that separated them from each other and from God, creating the opportunity for sin to permeate this entire world, to wreck all of creation.
23:34 - And God says this needs to be made right.
23:38 - And through his infinite grace and wisdom and mercy and justice, he says, You can't make it right.
23:46 - So I'm going to.
23:49 - I'm gonna be the one that fixes this.
23:52 - I will bring myself to sacrifice myself, to give of myself.
23:59 - He comes to this earth as Jesus Christ.
24:2 - Jesus lives a life that is perfect, that is holy.
24:5 - He's the only one that should and could condemn all of us and tell us how horrible and how far we've gone wrong, and yet he does not.
24:17 - Through lessons like what we read this morning, through stories of healing someone who comes to arrest him, the images of the Good Samaritan telling us to love our neighbor, and ultimately allowing himself to be put on a cross and killed for sins and crimes that he didn't commit, so that he could redeem and restore us in relationship with him, so that we could see how much God loves us, how far Christ is willing to go to set things straight, is exactly perfect justice and mercy.
25:3 - So what does that call us to?
25:7 - How do we live intentionally into that?
25:11 - Well, this is tough.
25:13 - Because this is where we have to live a life where we're called to be like Jesus, but also not try to be Jesus.
25:22 - This is hard.
25:23 - This is hard to figure out what it means to live like Jesus, but not be Jesus.
25:31 - The work of salvation, the work of rescue, the work of redemption, the work of cleansing is done by Christ and Christ alone.
25:41 - And it's done.
25:42 - It is completed.
25:44 - No matter what you are facing today, no matter what kind of enemies you have against you, Christ has already gained victory over that.
25:55 - That is the good news.
25:56 - It's already happened.
25:58 - Victory is sure.
26:1 - We're just not seeing and feeling it yet.
26:6 - But our call is to live like it's true.
26:10 - To live in such a way that we give evidence to the fact that evil cannot win, it cannot destroy, and it must submit itself to the redeeming power of Christ.
26:25 - The battle has been won.
26:27 - And we're called to live into that intentionally.
26:32 - Now, a word for us as people who promote the gospel and who live into it when we encounter situations of abuse and struggle.
26:44 - We are, through Christ, able to discern the difference between good and evil.
26:51 - And there is appropriate ways to step into situations of abuse and promote justice.
27:0 - The one thing we have to remember, and this is the hardest part, is that there is a perpetrator and a victim, always inside every human relationship.
27:15 - This is where our compassion and our mercy can come from when we fully understand this.
27:22 - And when we try to live into reconciliation and embracing that truth inside every story.
27:28 - Now, is that easy?
27:30 - No.
27:31 - Do we mess that up?
27:33 - Yes, we do.
27:34 - Thankfully, we're not left alone in this, because the Holy Spirit is active and present in the world today, is teaching us and showing us what it is to understand the difference between good and evil, and we're called to live into that.
27:50 - And I'll pray for you as you seek to do that in your lives.
27:53 - Let's pray.
27:57 - Lord God, you have calls for us to love those that fight with us, those that hurt us, those that cause us harm.
28:13 - And God, it takes real wisdom and grace to know how to do that.
28:19 - In such a way that we don't become perpetrators of abuse ourselves.
28:25 - And God, I ask that your words penetrate our heart.
28:32 - And Holy Spirit, that you give us the ability to discern exactly what it looks like to live this text out with integrity, with goodness, and with an appropriate balance of justice and mercy.
28:48 - Lord God, go before us.
28:50 - In your name, Amen.