David Stockton 7/4/21 David Stockton 7/4/21

Love Your Enemies

We’re going through the Sermon on the Mount and we’re kind of coming to the end of this little mini-series within the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus gives six examples of the greater righteousness that he wants us all to live into. And he talks about anger and lust and divorce and keeping your promises and bearing false witness and how to love each other and not respond in resentment, but deal with people correctly.

Series: Sermon on the Mount
July 4, 2021 - David Stockton

Good morning, good morning. Happy Fourth of July! Whoo hoo! Living in America. It’s good living in America. I lived in another country. It’s nice living in America. A lot of great things here and it is really good, it’s worth celebrating, for sure, what we have. And I’m thankful to be in America. I’m also thankful to be in church and able to share the word of God and learn from the word of God with you today.

It’s funny how these things happen. We’re going through the Sermon on the Mount and we’re kind of coming to the end of this little mini-series within the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus gives six examples of the greater righteousness that he wants us all to live into. And he talks about anger and lust and divorce and keeping your promises and bearing false witness and how to love each other and not respond in resentment, but deal with people correctly.

Then today our sermon is on loving your enemies. And it’s the Fourth of July and America is the way it is. I was like, “aye-aye-aye.” On one hand, we’re super clever to figure out how to be so strategic in the way we’re planning these things. That didn’t happen. This is all by default. And if we knew this was coming we probably wouldn’t have planned it this way.

But with all that being said, I’m going to sit down for this message, so that what I say feels a little less offensive, maybe. In first service they gave me a little chair. I was literally sitting in a stool way down here for the whole intro. And I could not get over how awkward it felt. And finally I said something and Nick Orso ran up and got me a big boy chair. So I’m feeling a little bit better.

But maybe I needed to start so low and be so unoffensive, and even look like a little kid, because first service, they’ve got problems, you know? Maybe.

Jesus actually was sitting down when he preached this message. He was sitting on a hillside with his people he was calling to him saying, “Hey, come follow me. And if you follow me, let me tell you what it’s going to be like.” And he was sharing with them. So it was real encouraging, Jesus kind of saying, “Stick with me and this is what’s going to happen.” And today he does talk about loving your enemies.

I need to start out asking if you can feel the tension. Can you feel the tension in America? Can you feel the tension in church in America? Can you feel the tension in your own families? Maybe even in your own soul?

If you can’t, how about this? Mask or no mask? Vaccine or no vaccine? Conservative or liberal? Woke or not woke? Racist or anti-racist? Affirming or not affirming? Love is love or homosexuality is a sin? Now can you feel the tension? In case you didn’t you feel a little more tension? Yeah.

Well, if none of that has really stirred up the tension, then what if I say the name Patrick Beverley? Teaching on loving our enemies, got to say Patrick Beverley.

For those of you who don’t know Patrick Beverley, he plays for the Los Angeles Clippers and was enemy number one for the Phoenix Suns basketball team. I literally wrote this out. His defense and cheap shots and trash talk and flagrant fouls will not be quickly forgotten by any Suns fan. However, there’s consolation for all of us because we won!

And I do mean “we,” because I was very strategic about what I would say when I was watching their games as if not to jinx them in any way possible. I actually have — I’m going out on a limb here — I have Kawhi Leonard shoes. But he was injured and so when I played basketball last time, I decided it was okay to wear them because he was injured. If he was not injured, I would not have worn them. I would have found some other shoes to wear. Okay. Nobody’s with me anymore.

But if we would have lost, oh, the hatred and tension would have been even more palpable. Basically, think like Phoenix needed this win for us to be able to walk forward in unity. We actually have a men’s retreat, and I’m speaking at it pretty soon. And I was like, Man, if the Suns can pull off this championship, this men’s retreat is going to go so well. If they can’t, we really got to deal with a lot of unity problems, you know?

But in this tension, in this reality that we go through, and obviously I’m joking about all of these things with the Suns and all that, it’s fun and all of that, but it has its place. And Patrick Beverley and all, I’m sure he’s just doing his job. And I don’t like the way he’s doing it and stuff like that.

Anyway, there’s this picture that came to my mind when I was in a worship time recently and about to speak to a group. And if you don’t know, this is Nebula and this is from Avengers Infinity War. Basically, this lady is being tortured by her dad because he betrayed her. It’s not a real prodigal son father story. It’s much the opposite.

But this image, what it is is, basically, he has this power over her, and when he squeezes his hand it pulls her apart. Like, literally, you can see the parts of her head being pulled apart, and her arm being extended. And what I felt like the Lord was saying is that so many people are walking around with this kind of tension. They feel — if they’ve hung in there at all — if they haven’t gotten drunk every day, or found other ways to ignore or escape the pain — if they stayed in the relationships that are so difficult for them because all these medial, political or theological differences, they feel like they are fragmented. They feel like they are fractured, literally. As if their heart is being pulled apart and it is not whole anymore. It hurts. It has been such a prolonged disruption that they’re barely making it.

Yet that tension of being in relationships and loving in a way that costs you something is the love that Jesus is calling us into. He’s calling us into that tension as priests called by his name with one hand holding on to heaven and one hand holding onto earth. There’s a tension. There’s a pull. We’re standing in the gap in a way that does cause a lot of challenge and pain. That’s why we need each other. That’s why we need biblical counsel. That’s why we need Life Groups. That’s why we need mentorship. That’s why we need the Spirit of God every single day, to be at his feet in quiet and stillness so he can bring us back to wholeness. So that we can love in the way that we’re supposed to. That’s a little bit of what Jesus is trying to teach us when he tells us to love our enemies.

And just so we know that this isn’t just happening out in society, this isn’t just a Republican/Democrat situation, but this fracturing is actually happening inside the Church. It’s not unsusceptible to it.

This guy wrote an article, and if you’re trying to deal with some of that world where you’re having divisions theologically or within the Church and you want some good information on that, this article is so good. Just email me and I can send it to you.

It’s a guy named Skyler Flowers, he’s a pastor in Mississippi or something like that, somewhere down south. This is what he says:

New fractures are forming within the American evangelical movement, fractures that do not run along the usual regional, denominational, ethnic, or political lines. Couples, families, friends, and congregations once united in their commitment to Christ are now dividing over seemingly irreconcilable views of the world. In fact, they are not merely dividing but becoming incomprehensible to one another.

Can I get an amen? Anybody feeling that tension? I am. Majorly.

It’s into this space that Jesus says this in Matthew 5:43:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

This is the way he kind of rounds out the six examples of what the greater righteousness is. He’s trying to teach us something about God’s love and the love that he’s trying to lead us into. He’s trying to teach us a little bit about his worldview and the worldview of those who are following him.

And again, his disciples, when they heard this, those who had gathered, they didn’t hear this and then feel beat up afterwards. In Matthew 7:28, I’ve said it so many times already, when they heard this, it says that they were amazed at his words. And that they were amazed because he spoke as one having authority, unlike the Pharisees.

And basically what they were saying is, when they heard this, they felt like this was amazing that he actually believed they could live into this. And that he had so much substance to what he was saying that they could actually follow him, stay close to him, and he would get them there. That was the response that they had to these words.

Again, I appeal to you, as you hear this and as it hits you— wherever you might be — please hear the tone of Jesus’ voice, please see the look in his eyes as he’s saying this to you, just saying, “If you will stick with me, if you will take my hand, if you will tuck your life right in here behind me and go with me, you will see this stuff show up in your life. And more importantly, the people around you who God has called you to love, they’ll start to see this stuff show up in your life.”

We brought testimony after testimony of people coming up and saying, “I was here, I took Jesus’ hand, and it took a year, it took five years, it took ten years, it took whatever, and now I’m here and this stuff is showing up, even to those around me,” saying, “The Lord has shown up.” And it’s been fun. It’s been good.

This is the last of those. Be perfect. So I want to unpack a few of these phrases, and then ultimately I want to talk about love, a biblical view of love, the love of God, the love that Jesus is wanting to produce in our lives and have us live into.

Here he says, “Love your enemies and pray for the persecutors.” And basically this is that greater righteousness that he’s calling us to. Not a shallow love. Not a love those who love you, but loving those who are hard for you and difficult for you.

This is only possible, remember this greater righteousness is only possible with the blood of Jesus that he gave freely, that washes us clean of all of our unrighteousness. We have to remember every day as we fall, as we falter, and as those around us do as well, that the righteousness of God is and always will be stronger than the unrighteousness of man. That is one of the best news of the gospel.

That’s the whole point of the resurrection. Man’s unrighteousness — we did our best to get Jesus down in that grave — but God’s righteousness was greater. And Jesus rose from the dead. So it’s his blood that gets us there, but it’s also his Spirit living inside of us that empowers us to walk in this way, in this greater righteousness.

So, in this aspect of loving your enemies, he says if we love them we will be children of our Father in heaven. I thought that was an interesting phrase, that somehow when we live into this type of love it’s identifying ourselves as children of our Father in heaven. Jesus alluded to this in kind of a little bit of a way when he said that, “They’ll know you’re my disciples by your love for one another. They’ll know that you’re kind of with me because you’ll be so good at loving one another.”

Here Jesus is saying that if you’ll love your enemies, you’re actually kind of living into his aspect of being part of the family of God. And this is challenging for us. But God loves the whole world. God loves everyone. He delights in every person that he has created, even the ones you hate. He loves them. He delights in them. He looks at them and he sees a bit of his own reflection. They carry that Imago Dei, that Image of God. They were formed from the same dirt as you were — all of them. They were endowed by the breath of their Creator in the same way that every single of one of us was. Whether they’ve chosen to do good with that or evil, it doesn’t change the fact that they are still a person that God made, that God loves, that God has a good plan for, that Jesus died for. And that’s really hard to believe sometimes. It’s really hard to receive sometimes.

But then Jesus goes on and says, “Not only are you living into that family of God, that kind of universal love of God,” but he’s saying, “Just remember that God sends his rain on the just and the unjust, that God lets his sun rise on the evil and the good. That basically, God every day is giving good gifts to the most evil person on the planet by giving him life or giving her the sun or the rain.”

That kind of love, that kind of unconditional, benevolent love is very hard to grasp and understand. But that’s who our God is. It’s who Jesus is. If we follow him, he’s wanting some of that love to stir up in us. That’s a challenge.

And then he goes on to say, “If you love those who love you…” is the next phrase… “What good is it if you love those who love you? What good is it if you greet your own people?” What an interesting way to unpack that. Love your enemies. That feels safer. That’s broad. It’s like, Whoa. Think of our enemies. Think of the Hitlers out there. That was like dubbed out. When I said Hitler. We don’t even say that name here. That was cool. But anyway, like, it’s like we talk about enemies and oh, those evil people over there. It kind of removes it.

But then Jesus brings it so close to home when he says, “What good is it if you only greet your own people?” And this is where my sermon is like, oh, no. Fourth of July. No. Because I started thinking about who my enemies were and it was like, “Ah. I don’t know if I have enemies. I mean, come on.” But then, if I think about the people who I would consider not my people, the people who I disagree with, particularly medically, politically or theologically, oh, I’ve got some of those people. Oh yeah, I’ve got some of those people. Ooh. The tension. Tension.

But that’s what Jesus is saying here. And I love the word greet, which is so interesting. Because in the Greek, the word greet basically has a little bit of a spectrum to it. It could mean enfold in your arms, which is a pretty serious greeting, you know? Like French greeting or something, I don’t know. In Europe they’re always kissing each other or something. But this is like greeting in that way. But then there’s also another kind of other side of it where it’s salute. And I’m like, okay. I love how Jesus gives us a little bit of like, “Okay, maybe you can only salute right now. That’s okay. When you’re dealing with somebody you disagree with, that’s not your people, that’s on the other side of the political aisle, or the other side of the Covid aisle, the other side of the theological aisle, maybe it’s hard for you. Maybe all you can muster is a salute.” He said, “I’ll take that and we’ll work on the ‘enfolding in your arms’ later.”

But it just got so real when you put it in that context. Because we’ve had a lot to divide over. And the demonization that we have begun to practice, not just as Americans, but as Christians, is super intense and I think super grievous to the Spirit of God.

I was asked what my sermon title was today and I said, “Love Your Enemies,” because it’s general and nice and all of that. But I think if I was really going to pin it down, I feel like then Spirit is saying that we need to stop demonizing people. That’s the first step toward loving our enemies. Just because they wear a mask or don’t wear a mask, doesn’t mean they’re a demon. And your little jokes about it, or your little comments, Jesus hears them. And I think it really does grieve our Father’s heart just as if my kids are belittling each other or demonizing each other.

And I get that there’s deception out there. I get that there is right and wrong, good and evil. No doubt about it. But we’ve got to be careful with the way we’re talking about God’s family, God’s kids, and dealing with them. And we need to be willing to greet even people who are not our people. This is where that confirmation bias — you know we just love hearing what we love to hear.

Jesus isn’t necessarily saying you’ve got to go and fold them in your arms all the time, but we need to at least salute them. Salute them from afar. Sometimes that all you can do. “Hey, kid, bye, that’s all I’ve got, man.” It’s okay.

And lastly he says, “Be perfect.” And the word perfect here obviously is a huge challenge to us. And I don’t want to take away too much of what Jesus is saying here, because Jesus does have high hopes for us. But the word in the Greek is teleios, which means a little bit more like complete. Be complete. And we can take that a step further and be mature. Like this is something that God is wanting us to grow into.

Jesus’ followers will be complete in their love for others. Whether they deserve it or not, whether they agree with you or not, whether they have done absolute evil or not, there is a reality of love that God wants us to do. And it’s going to take a lot of maturity to love in those hard places. A lot of maturity to handle that tension.

Going back to basketball, whenever I think of the word maturity, I think of Michael Jordan at the free throw line, at the end of the game in a stadium that’s not his own, just how intense those moments are, and yet his basketball maturity was in a place where he could just do exactly what needed to be done in that moment.

The goal for us is that Jesus wants to grow us up. And the people that are so similar to him, so filled with his Spirit, that when we’re faced with those super intense moments, what comes out of us is love — his love.

So we need to define what love is. Think of the person who has hurt you so bad, or who is currently trying to ruin your life when you think about loving your enemy. If you can’t think of anyone — hallelujah! That’s awesome. It’s wonderful. In Jesus’ day, they could think of them. It wasn’t hard for them to think of them. The fragmentation happening within Judaism in that day was intense. Within the Jewish community there was so much division and hatred for the other. Within the nations surrounding them, Samaria which was part of them, so much ethnic hatred and division. And all of that was just underneath this massive hatred and division of the Roman Empire, where basically the Romans were citizens and had rights as citizens — everybody who wasn’t a Roman citizen was basically just worthless and their lives didn’t matter.

When Jesus was talking about loving your enemies, for them it was a little easier to come by maybe than us. And I’m not trying to say that’s true of you. You might be very easily coming up with enemies. But in that context he’s saying we need to love each other.

So now, think of the person or persons who have disagreed with you. Jesus says we need to love them. In fact, he says that if you don’t love them, you have a lesser or Pharisaical, counterfeit righteousness that won’t help you into the kingdom of heaven. He’s serious about this.

So what does it mean to love practically? St. Thomas Aquinas — I love this. I use this all the time I love this definition of love. Kind of weird to say, but ..

To love is to will the good of the other.

Real simply. That’s where love is a choice more than an emotion. If you haven’t figured that out yet, figure it out right now. It’s an act of our will. Emotions can follow. But emotions are not in charge of whether that decision is made. But to will the good of another and if you look at love in that context, it becomes a little simpler. To get to a place where in my heart of hearts, as I’m considering or as I’m confronted with my enemy, that ultimately, at the end of the day, my prayers, my speech, my conduct toward this person is in line with this definition of love where I really do will the good of them. I want them to find God’s plan for them and to flourish in what God has for them in my heart of hearts.

There’s another guy, Francis Turretins, and he was trying to unpack a Jonathan Edwards or John Wesley, I forget which one of them — sorry. I mixed myself up now. But anyway, this is a little bit of trying to unpack what he was saying about God’s love. And what he did was he divided God’s love into three different aspects: Love of complacency, love of benevolence and love of beneficence.

These are just old English words, so bear with us here. But complacency, not at all what we mean before, but it actually means to delight and the play on that is that you’re so comfortable in that person’s love. Like, why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? You have this complacency that you settle into every time this person is near. Again, old English whatever. But basically it means that you delight in this person.

This is what’s so amazing about the love of our God. He delights in every single person. His goal, his hope is that we would have every tribe, every tongue, every nation gathered before him. Of all their different political beliefs. Of all their different maybe even theological beliefs to some extent. All under the supremacy of Christ.

I’m not saying there is multiple ways of heaven. Jesus is the only way to heaven. Absolutely. But we all come to Jesus with different kind of baggage. Different opinions and beliefs and theologies that need to be submitted to the greater council of Christ. But we all come and God’s plan is he wants it all represented under the blood of Christ. Not just one color. Not just one creed. Not just one faith. Not just one denomination. He wants it all. It absolutely has to come through the very narrow door that is Jesus Christ. No doubt about it. It’s only his blood that gets us in.

But we’re going to all get to heaven, a bunch of us, and we’re going to get their with some great disagreement in a lot of earthly things, a lot of nonessentials. We might not even be sure what are essential and nonessential. We have different lists there, too. But God delights in everyone. Like, literally, every morning when everyone wakes up on the earth, God’s like, “Oh, I like that one. Do you see this one, what he’s doing? I put this little weird thing there. I love that weird.” He put it in all of us.

So that’s an aspect of God’s love that I think is extremely difficult for us. I’ve seen people that are a little more like this in their love, and they’re amazing to be around. And I’ve seen people who have zero of this in their love, and they’re kind of fun to be around because they’re hilarious how they talk about people and how much they don’t like people. So I think they’re funny, too. It’s something we’ve got to grow in. But this is something I think in some ways it’s not directly what Jesus was talking about in this passage.

But love of benevolence. This is to will the good of the other unconditionally. This is what I was talking about with Thomas Aquinas, that God really does have a good plan for everyone. And that’s his will that non should perish but all should come to everlasting life.

And love of beneficence. This one’s a little different. But this is where delight and the will come to action. This is to act kindly toward another. And os this is a little bit fuller definition of a biblical perspective of love, that God is wanting to grow us up in each one of these things.

Maybe you’re good at one of these things and you’re not at the other two. You need to hang on to Jesus and see what he can do.

Then we have 1 Corinthians 13 definition of love that is so different than anything American or Valentine’s Day or Hallmark Channel, whatever. “Love is patient, love is kind.” What I think is interesting is that it rejoices in the truth at the same time. Then he finishes that all up saying, “Love always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres.” No matter what the other does. No matter what at the feeling is. This is the way God loves us and this is the way he wants us to love his children.

In this, it was interesting because then my mind started to go into all these ethical dilemmas and scenarios. Should Dietrich Bonhoeffer have tried to assassinate Hitler? Did he unpack these scriptures correctly or not? It’s Fourth of July. We’re going to pray for the military. Aaah! How do we unpack these things in a nationalistic type way? Have mercy, Lord. And again, I am not that brilliant. And there have been a lot of brilliant people who have written a lot of brilliant things, and they are not quite sure what to do. And I get all of that. And I would like to have conversations, and I hope this message actually stirs some of those conversations.

But what I can offer to you is what I think Jesus would say. How in the world could I have the audacity to say what Jesus would say? Well, because he told us some stories that he used to illustrate the kind of love that he longs for. Actually, one time he was asked by someone about loving, or like what I should do. And Jesus said, “Well, you should love your neighbor. That’s the greatest commandment.” And he said, “Who’s my neighbor?” And so Jesus answered what it means to love your neighbor in that context. But interestingly enough, he told the story of the Good Samaritan, right? So the Samaritan is the enemy of the person asking the question. In multiple ways. The Samaritan represents the enemy.

So basically, Jesus, who’s so sneaky and just kind of like undoing people all the time, he answers the question about what it means to love your neighbor by showing this person how the enemy loved the neighbor. He uses the enemy as the example. And in this story you have a guy who was walking down the road and he gets beat up by thieves and robbers and left for dead on the side of the road. And then a priest comes by and has things to do so he kind of goes to the other side of the road and carries on.

Then a Levite, who basically was supposed to be a priest. He comes by and again, he’s got the same situation where it’s like, “Oh, it’s almost the holy day. I can’t really get unclean if that guy’s dead so I’m moving on.”

Then a Samaritan, the hero of the story, and you get the connotation a little bit by Jesus that this Samaritan is someone who’s a true Samaritan, he’s been marginalized. He’s been outcast. Maybe hurt, abused, oppressed in some way. Yet he’s walking down this road and he looks and sees a Jew beat up on the side of the road and he goes to him. He tends to his wounds and he gets him up on his donkey and takes him to the next town. He puts down money to make sure the guy’s got a place to stay so he can heal. He gives a little extra money so the guy’s got some food. And he says, “I’m going to be back to check on him in a little bit.”

Then Jesus said, “Who loved their neighbor?”

In this Jesus was doing something extremely, extremely challenging. He probably sat down when he said it. Because this is the kind of love that he’s asking us to live into. And, yes, we need to will the good of the other, but then we need to be looking for those opportunities that God’s going to put in our path to actually do something about that will.

So I had to unpack this, because I have some situations in my life. I have a guy who’s basically said he cannot walk with me anymore because of a theological stance that I have that we’re divided on. I don’t think it’s a salvation essential issue, but it’s one that I’m definitely not anywhere and he said he can’t walk with me anymore. And this is a good friend.

And I have another situation where I’ve been kind of friends with a guy who’s homosexual. And I was there the first time I found out he was homosexual because I was asking him about his girlfriend and he answered weird. And I was like, “So do you have a boyfriend?” And he was like, “I just broke up with my boyfriend.” So we were able to engage in that situation and kind of talk about how the struggle and the pain that he’s going through and kind of minister in there. He knows where I stand and I know where he stands. He was genuinely kind of asking the question, “Can I honor God as a homosexual?” And I was like, “Uh, I don’t think so. But I still can be in a relationship with you and still be friends and we can still embrace each other.”

And then years go by and he ended up getting engaged to that same person he broke up with and he’s super excited about it. He’s now convinced that he can honor God as a homosexual and he wants to show the world how to do it. So sometimes all I’ve got is the salute. It’s a little tougher. But I still want to live into the relationship as God sees fit. So if an opportunity comes to show love or kindness I want to be ready there. I don’t want my heart to have gone cold.

Then I’ve got another person who is a pastor of a church here in Phoenix. We’ve been getting to know each other more and more. We’ve had some great times together. He’s awesome in a million ways. Loves Jesus deeply. We finally got to the end of our last conversation. I was asking him questions and listening and basically found out that he feels like the best way that I could really kind of support him and serve him and what the Lord’s calling his church to is to get super politically motivated and active and inline with what he believes is important politically. And I was like, “Oh…” My heart just sank a bit because the conversation ended. He doesn’t know where I stand. I know where I stand. And we’re very, very in opposition politically.

But this question came up in my spirit. Can we serve each other and serve alongside each other so that Christ can be magnified in our city even though we differ politically? And I was just kind of stuck. Then I felt this other question come up in my spirit, which maybe wasn’t so much from my spirit, maybe more from God’s Spirit. Is the unity of the Spirit more powerful than the disagreements or divisions in politics? And I didn’t want to answer that question. But the answer is yes, obviously. The unity we have in the Spirit has to be more powerful and stronger than any of our political divides.

And then there was another question that came. If we can’t do this in the Church, why are we praying for this to happen in society? We’ve got to start with the family of God first. It’s where the Awakening is always supposed to start. So we’ve got to live into some tension. And we’ve got to find a love that is not ours. Because ours is not going to endure the tension. We’ve got to tap into a love that made the world. A love that sent his own son to die for the sins of the world. A love that is so consistent. A love like that Samaritan, who’s ready.

And the second example of love that Jesus gives us is the story of the Prodigal Son. This is that same love of God expressed, where the son came to the father and said, “I don’t want to be your people anymore. I disagree with you. I think you’re wrong. I think you’re old fashioned. And I want my inheritance from you, because to me, it’s as if you are already dead.” And the father says, “Okay,” and gives the son the inheritance. The son leaves the boundaries. Leaves the perimeter of what the father has given him and goes out and spends the money in the way that he wants to.

And we follow the story of the son a little bit. But I want to talk about the father, because I’ve always been intrigued. What was the father doing while the son was away. And the only way we can guess what the father was doing while the son was away was to know that someday, on a random day, not a day that the father knew, the son was walking home and the father had seen him a long way off. So in some ways, that means to me that every day I think the father went to the edge of his boundary, the edge of his property, knowing he couldn’t go with his son into all the sin, but he was not going to stay so far away, he was not going to pull to the other side, but he was going to say, “I will go all the way to the edge and I will look with a longing, with a prayer, with a hope in my heart, with love in my heart, hoping that one day I might see you coming back home.”

And in this story he did. When the son got there and the son had the whole plan, “Father, I’ve sinned against you and I’ve sinned against heaven,” the father interrupted and said, “No, no, no. We’ll get to all of that stuff. But right now what you need to know is I love you and I never stopped. I never will. And you belong right here and here’s a robe and here’s a ring. I’ve been coming out here every day and I can’t tell you how happy I am that you came home.”

That’s the heart that should be in the followers of Christ — even to someone who basically left you for dead. We’ve got to be careful we don’t create walls for the people that have left. The Church is a place where some of that deconstruction, healthy deconstruction should happen so people don’t have to go and do it in the world. So we need people like Jesus who are willing to go eat with tax collectors and sinners. People who are willing to go to the edge of the boundaries, into the margins with the love of God. Secure in their understanding and orthodoxy, but not afraid to go into those spaces where people are really struggling, trying to figure out what’s true, what’s up and what’s down, what’s right and what’s wrong.

I’m not telling you I know how to do this perfectly. But I’m trying in a few relationships to continue to live into this. To break it all down, I think we should will the good of our enemies or those who are not our people or disagree with us. When presented with an opportunity, we should try and do good for them somehow, some way. If it can be an envelopment in your arms, great. If it can just be a little salute, hey, take what you can get.

We should, on occasion as the Spirit leads, we should even create opportunities. We should try and put ourselves in places that are hard and the tension is real. Not so often that it’s killing us, but from time to time. And maybe take somebody with you.

I love what one of my teachers, Dan Riccio says:

Learning to live with extreme tensions can be decades long as a process. But also, I feel like there is grace for us to take one step at a time.

He’s saying this out of his own pain and his own experience.

So I just want to take a minute now and pray. I want to pray for our enemies. And if that word applies, go ahead and start there. But if you’re not sure how to use that word enemies, you could pray for those who are not your people, those who are on the other side of you with some sort of ideology, maybe even theologically.

Now, just so you know, I’m super theological. I’m big on theology. I thin kit’s so important. I love it. That’s the place where I have the hardest time dividing with people. So I’m not trying to say there aren’t real essential things. But I’m saying there are a lot of things that are not essential that we make way too important — more important than Jesus does, I think. So you can pray for those people. Let’s just be still for a minute.

Jesus, we thank you that you love us just the way we are, but you love us enough to not leave us the way we are. What our nation needs is you. The only thing really worth uniting under is your name, Jesus. I pray that your name would really be magnified in America. And Jesus, I also want to echo your prayer for your church, for your people, that we would be one, that we would be willing to living within that tension to see you glorified and you’d raise up prophets and pastors and preachers and leaders in the church that would really help us see how to get there.
Lord, I pray that you would really help us to do our part to stop the demonizing. Thank you that you didn’t demonize us, Lord, but instead you reached out and gave your life for us. We do pray that America would be great, great in all the economy of heaven’s measurements, Lord. We pray that your great wisdom would fall upon our nation and that true justice would show up here, Lord. Another great move of love would flow out of your church, Lord, and build your kingdom right here. Thank you, Lord. Amen.

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Guest User 2/21/21 Guest User 2/21/21

A Man After God's Heart

Series: A Kingdom Divided
February 21, 2021 - David Stockton

It’s a day for a new sermon series. We’re going to be going into the book of 1 Kings, if you want to grab a bible and turn there, or flip there or scroll there, whatever you do on your phone. 1 Kings. It’s in the Old Testament. Not everybody in the world calls it the Old Testament, but it’s definitely a part of the library of scriptures that we hold to as being very important and relevant. We think it’s inspired just like the New Testament. We’re so thankful that we have the New Testament to help us interpret the Old Testament in order to make application of it today.

We’re going to be in 1 Kings for a little while and learn from some ancient writers and some ancient prophets and see what the Lord was doing in that time. Because I think it actually is very relevant for our time today.

It’s a good time to be a Christian, even though it might not feel like it. As the world around us, at least in America, society seems to be less interested and less excited about the ways of God through the library of scriptures and Christian doctrine and Judeo-Christian ethic. It actually is a time where Christianity shines brightest, whenever there’s an adverse situation it finds itself in. I’m not saying it’s the most enjoyable for Christians. But the more adverse, usually the more powerful Christianity shows itself to be. So it’s a great time to be a Christian.

It’s a good time to be part of Living Streams. We’re kicking off a bunch of new things. We’ve got our Explore class going on right now. Some new people being added to the number of people who are knitting their lives together here. We have a bunch of Life Groups, which are our primary discipleship vehicle. We always make sure that everybody who comes on Sunday mornings for this hour, that they remember that following Christ really is not a one-hour a week deal. Being part of a church community is going to be very shallow, empty and maybe even trivial if you are only a one-hour a week type part of the community. So make sure you find other ways to connect with people outside of this. And obviously serve the Lord outside of this, as well.

That being said, 1 Kings is where we’re going. It’s going to be a fun book. The challenges that we’re facing today are real and are large, but the bride of Christ is alive and well all over the world. I got some letters in the mail this week from non-profits, Christian non-profits. I was just sitting there thinking about these and how they represent so many others—churches around town, churches around the world, Christian organizations around town, around the world that are fighting for what’s right, that are fighting for the unborn, that are fighting for justice, that are fighting to make sure our homeless, our elderly, or people with addictions or people in sex trafficking, that someone is really advocating and fighting for them.

I just think the challenges are so great and the sadness is so real, but it really is cool to see that there are so many people, you and I included, that are actually trying to see the kingdom of God come and his will be done right here on earth as it is in heaven.

So I was encouraged. I was discouraged and encouraged at the same time, if that makes sense. Okay, it’s going to be a little tight this morning. I get it. No problem. No problem.

You know I make fun of second service a lot, right? Everybody’s with me on that? Like, first service I was thanking them so much for being first service, I said, “I don’t thank the second service people for anything really.” And I’m going to say this, too. I tell people who are guest speaking here that, just because second service doesn’t laugh or give them any kind of feedback, doesn’t mean they aren’t with you. They really are.

And I know you guys are. As I was watching you worship, I was feeling like the Lord was saying, “These are people are hungry. These people want to see me move.” So I know that’s true. But sometimes I wonder with you guys. Sometimes I wonder.

Anyway, 1 Kings was written by Jeremiah, tradition tells us. Jeremiah was a prophet of God. He was actually called the Weeping Prophet, because he lived in a time of Israel and prophesied to the people in a time when they had great prosperity, but for some reason they did not really continue to serve the Lord. What Jeremiah saw—I want to put a few images in your mind—was basically like that old adage we hear all the time about the frog that you put in the boiling pot of water. I know it sounds weird. But I’ve heard, I’ve never done this because it seems a little mean. But if you take a frog and put it in a boiling pot of water, it’ll jump right out because it’s hot. But if you take a frog and put it in a cold pot of water and then you turn up the heat, it will actually die because it will never actually notice what’s happening and it will burn to death or something. People talk about it all the time as a good illustration. Man, it’s brutal.

But anyway, so that was one thing that I want you to see. That’s what was happening in Israel’s day when Jeremiah was prophesying. He’s like, “The water’s getting hotter! Do you understand? The water’s getting hotter!”

And the people were like, “Ah, Jeremiah and his hot water stuff.”

And they just never would listen until, eventually, Israel found itself in exile, taken over. The Assyrians took over the north and the Babylonians took over the south. They basically had seen their people be ripped from their own land. The temple of God was destroyed. And now they were living as slaves in another place. And Jeremiah watched all that happen.

Another image that comes to mind is, I don’t know where it came from, I feel like it’s Jack and the Beanstalk or something. You’ve got the big giant and they didn’t know how to beat the giant, so after he fell asleep they tied him up. And then, when he woke up he couldn’t do anything. And that’s the idea of this big giant that’s so powerful, but as it falls to sleep, it’s susceptible.

Which made my mind then go to Samson because I’m a Bible guy. And I was thinking about Samson who had all this power and strength and was able to deliver the people of God in great ways. But he didn’t take seriously the Nazarite vow that he had committed to. He was playing around with it. He was with Delilah. He started to even mention his hair. “If you tie my hair up I’ll be weak like anybody else.” He just kind of slowly but surely compromised. He didn’t think it was a big deal but, ultimately, I think he started to feel so secure in his own strength and wisdom that he wasn’t sure he really needed all that hair. So he told her, “If you cut my hair I’ll be weak.” Then one of the saddest verses in the Bible happened. It says he woke up, the Philistines were upon him, and he had no idea that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him.

And Jeremiah was constantly calling to the people of God, “You’re going to wake up one day and not realize that the Spirit of the Lord has departed from you.” And it wasn’t just a spiritual thing, but it was a real, practical thing, as well, as they watched the armies besiege them and take away all their young people, and, ultimately, take away everybody to become slaves in Babylon.

Then, also, the image of Jesus when he’s teaching about the parable of the sower, and he talks about the goodness that was there and then it gets choked out by the weeds. Little by little, the choking happens until, ultimately, all the good seed, all the goodness that had been there has died out.

So this is why Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet, because he was just continuing to see this decline. So he’s writing this book probably during the time of the exile; so all of that has now happened. He prophesied against it. Now that it’s all happened, he started to write a book, the annals of the kings or the history of that time period. And he’s talking about what happens. And he talks about what kings helped the people follow the Lord and what kings didn’t help the people. And there are very few that actually helped the people follow the Lord.

And this was probably circulated after they had come back from the exile, back to Jerusalem, back to Israel to kind of build back better, so to speak. And there in that place Jeremiah said, “I want to make sure everyone knows this.” And it was circulated, this book of First and Second Kings so people would be reminded how they got to that place of exile, that they would never forget the slow and steady decline that took place. They’d take heart next time to know there were divisions; because there are divisions all over this book. It’s a nation divided, a people divided.

Then all the secularization that came, where they never stopped worshipping Yahweh, they just started adding other things. It would be like in this place; if one day you saw there was no cross there, but instead there was some other sign of some other religion up there. You would be like, “I think Living Streams might have changed a little bit. I think something’s a little different here.” And you would be right. That should be a real indicator you should go somewhere else.

But what they did is, they never took down the cross, so to speak. They just put something else over there, and maybe a little something else over there, and it just was slowly, it became this kind fo pluralistic idea. “If one God’s going to give us goodness, then how about all these other gods? Maybe we can get all the goodness they can give us.” Not realizing that the God of the Bible is a jealous God. He doesn’t want to be one of our many wives. He says, “It’s all me or I’m out.”

And this is the state of Israel at this time. The divisions include—for those of you who are bible students some of this might ring a bell and if it doesn’t, you should probably read your bible more—but Saul versus David. We have that division of the people, where Saul was a guy who kind of started out all right but then he started to care more about what the people thought than what God though. And God said, “I’m getting rid of this guy because I want someone who’s going to be in here that only cares what I think.” That’s why David was called a man after God’s heart. Even when public opinion was going the opposite way, David said, “No, we’re going this way.”

David versus Absalom. Davis was king and his own son, Absalom rose up a coup and tried to take over power. So we have that here.

Adonijah and Solomon in this time period, and that was actually in chapter 1 where David’s two sons kind of were fighting for power after David passed away.

Rehoboam versus Jeroboam. And this comes that, Solomon, after he passed away, Rehoboam was his son. And Rehoboam decided that, instead of listening to the older elders and advisers and kind of going easy on the people and easing in and earning a voice with them, he listened to the younger people who said, “If you really want to be strong, you’ve got to impose taxes and you’ve got to tell these people who’s the boss right now.” So he did that. He just imposed taxes. He tried to really be strong and the ten tribes of the north said, “Nah. We’re good.” And they just broke off and made Jeroboam their king. Super confusing. I wish they could have had different names, because I never know. Was it Jeroboam in the north or Rehoboam in the south? Come on. I mix the names up.

But Rehoboam was Solomon’s son and he maintained power over the two southern tribes; whereas Jeroboam maintained power over the northern ten tribes. Then we now have a divided kingdom, which we’ll talk more about later.

Israel versus Judah. The name of the northern ten tribes remained Israel, but name of the two southern tribes became Judah.

Jerusalem versus Samaria. Jerusalem was the capital of the southern tribes, and that’s where God was worshiped. That’s where his temple was; whereas Samaria was the capital of the northern ten tribes, and Jeroboam didn’t want his people going to worship in Jerusalem, so he built his own temple and basically his own form of worship, worshiping Yahweh but not in the ways of Yahweh. Very bizarre.

Yahweh versus Baal. Monotheism versus polytheism, like we discussed. They didn’t stop worshiping Yahweh, they just added other gods.

Do we want to be like the other nations? Or are we good with being set apart from the other nations? This is always a constant question to Christians. We don’t like being the alternative community. We don’t like being countercultural. We want to be like the other nations. We want to be cool. We want to be hip. But as soon as we do that, we lose. We lose. We lose so much.

More taxes versus less taxes was actually a big theme in this book, which is funny these days, right? You guys aren’t laughing at that? Why aren’t you laughing at that? April 15th, how are you doing?

God’s ways are old fashioned versus God’s ways are right and true, was a big debate in this time. It was a huge debate in this time, as we’ll see in just a minute.

So, ultimately, you have the nation of Israel was in slavery in Egypt for four hundred years. The Lord brings them out with a great deliverance. He gives them a land and he starts making them into a nation. And you have all this wonderful time where God is their king. But the people want to be like the other nations so they say, “Give us a man king.” God’s like, “It’s not going to be good. Men aren’t that cool. Women, you’re not that cool, either.” But he felt like they were rejecting him as king, but he said, “I’ll give you what you want.” So he gave them Saul as king. When he passed away David became king. And when he passed away Solomon became king. And then that’s where that divided kingdom. So three kings of a united kingdom and then like twenty-five different kings within the divided kingdom. And First Kings helps us understand that whole process.

Are you with me? You’re like, “Is this school or is this church?” It’s both. It’s church school, maybe. I don’t know.

I want us to notice this one more moment. Because you’ll have some of these revivals. We’re all praying for revival. We want an awakening in our America. We want awakening in our church, where people will just really run back, will catch the vision for the righteousness of God, will hunger and thirst for that above everything else so that we won’t be tossed to and fro by all the winds of doctrine and all the people claiming to have the high moral ground right now. Yes, that’s what we want.

So there were times where that took place in First and Second Kings. One of them was on the top of a mountain called Carmel. There was Mount Carmel, and they were up there. And Elijah is the prophet of Yahweh. He feels like he’s the only one left because of the gross secularization by the king and his wife Jezebel. And they basically brought in the worship of Baal as a mainstream thing.

So Elijah calls then prophets of Ball to a duel, a battle. So he’s up on the top of Mount Carmel and opposing him are four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. And all the people have gathered around, and the setup is in First Kings 18:21, it was in our video too.

Elijah went before the pope and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal is God, follow him.”

So he sets up this mighty duel. I wish I could do this, but I don’t know. But he says basically, “What we’re going to do is we’re going to both make a sacrifice, and whatever God answers by fire will demonstrate that he is the true God and we should follow him.”

So Elijah is up on this mountain and says, “You guys go first.” So the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal gather together animal sacrifice. They put together their altar and they start doing their Baal worship type stuff. They get to the point where they’re just screaming and crying out and they start cutting themselves because they want to show how sincere they were in their worship. They’re doing all these things and it just goes on and on and on.

And Elijah is sitting there watching, all the people are watching, and there’s no fire coming, nothing happening. Then Elijah says to them, “Maybe you should just scream a little louder.” Seriously, Elijah is talking trash. I didn’t know you were allowed to do that, but you are. And then that doesn’t change anything and he’s like, “Oh, you guys. Maybe he’s in the bathroom or something. Maybe just keep going because he’ll come back out if he’s in the bathroom.” I’m not joking. This stuff is in there.

And then nothing happened and eventually they give up and Elijah says, “Now my turn.” So he just puts some stones together in a very Mosaic law kind of way. He prepares the sacrifice just like ordained in the the law of Moses. Then he actually says to everyone, I don’t know why, just to show off, he says, “Why don’t you go get all the water you can find,” even though they were in a drought, “and pour it all over the sacrifice. Actually dig a trench around here and let’s fill it with water too.”

And then he just prays a real simple prayer. “God will show them? Will you show them?” And fire comes out of the sky and consumes all of the water, consumes the sacrifice. And there’s this moment, momentary sad to say, but a moment where the people’s hearts were once again turned back to the Lord. They got to see that, got to experience that. Their hearts were turned back to the Lord momentarily. Momentarily.

So there are these moments of revival that happen in here, which are so encouraging. And that’s what I’m praying for us in our day and age, that we will somehow be inspired by God to go and create moments in people’s lives where they can see the reality of the power and goodness of God. I’m not saying you should go and challenge somebody on the top of Square Peak to some sort of sacrificial fire deal. I’m saying we should listen to what the Spirit is leading us to do and we should go for it with all of our hearts. We should be bold and courageous, whatever it might be, and God will show himself faithful.

First Kings chapter 2 is where we are going to begin, because First Kings chapter 1 is kind of a weird fight. It looks like in First Kings chapter 2, as we read this, that there was a peaceful transition of power, but actually in First Kings chapter 1 you realize it wasn’t that peaceful. Then if you keep reading in chapter 2 and3, it still wasn’t that peaceful. A lot of challenge for who wants the power there.

First Kings chapter 2:

When the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge to Solomon his son.
2 “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, act like a man, 3 and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses. Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go 4 and that the Lord may keep his promise to me: ‘If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’

So this is his charge as he’s telling Solomon, “Hey, I’m about done here. And I want you to become king.” He says to him, “I’m going to go the way of all the earth.” There’s a humility there, an understanding, this is the destiny of us all, that our strength is failing, our strength is not enough. And he says to him, “I want you to observe all that the Lord has commanded you. And I want you to walk in it. I want you to obey what the Lord has commanded you. Don’t just observe it. Don’t just be a hearer, but be a doer as well. Observe all the Lord has commanded you in the law of Moses, all the decrees, all the laws, all these things.”

And as you’re reading it, you just get more and more bored. All these words. These are the most boring words in the world: decrees, commands, laws, requirements, right? Ugh. And in the law of Moses? “Oh, Dad, don’t be talking about Moses again. Moses is so old.” This is probably about four hundred or five hundred years after Moses was around, that David is charging his son as king, “Follow the way of Moses. Remember all of those words, those laws, those decrees that are found in the book of Moses, in the Torah. Observe those. Learn those. Get them into your soul. And then walk them out.”

You can imagine a young man who has grown up his whole life in a palace. All he’s ever known of Israel is that it’s a world power. Prosperity galore. Victory over all the other nations. Immense popularity for his dad, the king. And here David’s telling him, “You need to keep real close watch to all of those old, old, old laws and decrees of Moses. And not only jus observe them, but do them. Walk in them. They will be a guide for you. They will bring you to prosperity.”

And obviously I hope you get what I’m getting at here. There is a real challenge right now in our society to say, “Those things, that Judeo-Christian ethic, that library of scriptures, that’s old news. That’s antiquated. In fact, that’s oppressive.” It’s the same thing that David was saying to Solomon. “Don’t listen to that. Don’t listen to that. Maintain these things. This is what will lead you to preparing.”

And I’ve said before the Judeo-Christian ethic that has been kind of the shaping of this nation and other nations, whenever the Judeo-Christian ethic is applied to a society, it creates the most freedom and the most flourishing. And yet, for some reason, we want to get rid of it.

And David is saying, “As for me and my house, we listen, we observe, we obey these things. We don’t consider them old and antiquated. And Solomon, if you will do this, you will experience prosperity.”

Now, I know for many of us in the church, we hear that word and that sounds great. We want to prosper. But we’ve got to be so careful to interpret prosperity through the New Testament and what God is actually saying. I’m not saying that God doesn’t want to give you riches, doesn’t want to help you with the American Dream and all those things, what God has. But the prosperity promised by God has a lot more to do with the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, meekness, gentleness and self-control. It has a lot more of being able to overcome the challenges that you face, than never having to face a challenge.

Please hear me, you guys. Following Christ does not get rid of all of the challenges, but it gives you the strength, by the power of the Spirit, to overcome the challenges. And then you wake up the next day and, guess what? New challenges. Because some people are starting to think, “If I really can’t seem to get free from this thing, then maybe God isn’t real and he doesn’t really love me.”

No. God sometimes will heal you and set you free from something completely, but oftentimes he gives you the strength that you need to overcome every single day. And for those who persevere, for those who hang on, there is the reward. But the prosperity is the strength that you need. The prosperity that he gives you is found in Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He leads me beside still waters and green pastures. He leads me and is with me in the valley of the shadow of death. It’s not that he doesn’t ever take us through those things. My cup runs over even in the midst of those situations.

One of the things that I think is the best gift of all that he can give to an American is peace, enough peace so they actually sleep at night. It just seems to be one of the biggest banes on our society. So many of our challenges and problems are because people can’t sleep anymore. They’re too stressed out. They’re too busy, too distracted. Their brains don’t know how to shut down so they can actually sleep. That’s part of the prosperity. The Bible actually says, “He gives his beloved sleep.” You get good sleep, all of a sudden it’s like, “Hey, life’s not that bad anymore.”

It’s one of the things we really found out with the homeless community. One of the best things we could do was give them a space where they could come take a nap. They’d wake up from that nap and they could think a little clearer, feel a little stronger. They’re more at peace. We were able to do that with that house over on the west side of the campus.

But these are the prosperities that God wants to bring. And the kind of prosperity, when you’re on your death bed and you look back and these are the things you’re really thankful for. What you did in your relationship with the people that you love. That’s the prosperity he gives us. Not even to mention what happens in the next life.

But this is the call of David. And he wants Solomon to be a man after God’s own heart. Seek God. Search God. Find out what makes him happy. Get a vision for the righteousness of God. And just so you know, the law of Moses is really helpful. But don’t just get a vision for it. Then walk in it. Be obedient to it. And it’s going to take faithfulness as he says down here:

If they’ll walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul. Faithfulness. Doing the things of God real consistently. I think this is what encourages me in the church at this time. It is the power that’s represented even in just this room. If all of us will just do the little things faithfully, that will be a lot of things that will make big impact.

So God right now is calling each of you, who is his bride, to do some things. To walk in some things faithfully. And if you’ll do that, the bride will show itself strong. That’s what David is trying to get Solomon to do, to be a man after God’s own heart.

To kind of recap that, David was a man after God’s own heart when he sought to do what was right in God’s eyes more than what was right in the eyes of the people around him, or in his own eyes. So David, it’s tricky. Because, when we say David was a man after God’s own heart, he also made a ton of mistakes. But this is when he was a man after God’s own heart. When he cared about what God wanted.

And there was a challenge. Think about that story, when he’s standing before Goliath, and all of the people, all of the army is there. And David walks up there. And he just knew in that moment what God was up to, what God was thinking. Everyone else there was either scared or unsure or confused. Even the king, Saul was just like, “I don’t know what to do here.” All of the people in the army were like, “I don’t know what to do.” David’s brothers were like, “David what do you think you’re going to do? You can’t take this guy on. You just want to be out here and get in the action. Spoiled brat.”

He was the youngest. I was the youngest of three boys. They always called me a spoiled brat. I might have been.

But nobody in that whole army, nobody in all of that was catching and willing to do what God was saying to do, except for this young man named David who just took off running down that valley, flinging his little slingshot, and defeated the giant. He caught what was in God’s heart in that moment.

And that was a great thing. That’s the way he started out. But if you remember, at one point David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then tried to cover it up by murdering Uriah, her husband. Definitely not after God’s own heart. He lost his way.

But then Nathan the prophet came to him and said, “What you’ve done is wrong.” And in that moment when David’s heart was pricked, when David realized that he had been busted, at that moment he wanted to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord and he confessed and he repented.

And then another time David was taking a census and it was kind of filling him up with pride. God had told him not to number the army. And he does this. And God’s against him and people are dying. And David catches it and figures out what to do. And then he knows he’s supposed to go buy this field and make a sacrifice and do all this type of stuff. And, as he’s about to buy the field, the guy’s like, “Dude, you can just take the field. You’re the king. You don’t have to give me any money for this field.”

And he says, “No, I want to pay full price for this field. I don’t want to skimp or compromise at all in what God is asking me to do.”

So there are all these moments when David was doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord. And those were the times when he was a man after God’s own heart. And for us, that’s what we need to be doing.

The world around us is claiming the high moral ground through its clever and cunning humanistic philosophies and ideologies. But they are just castles made of sand. We need a hunger for the vision for the righteousness of God so we can hold the line by observing what the Lord God requires and walking in obedience. That is where freedom and flourishing are found. Sorry, Cardi B. The best fruit isn’t always forbidden. It just feels that way because it’s only found through a lifetime of faithfulness to God and his ways.

So that was the first way that David was a man after God’s own heart. Now let’s read this strange next passage. Verse 5. So David gives this charge to Solomon and now he’s saying:

5 “Now you yourself know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me—what he did to the two commanders of Israel’s armies, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. He killed them, shedding their blood in peacetime as if in battle, and with that blood he stained the belt around his waist and the sandals on his feet. 6 Deal with him according to your wisdom, but do not let his gray head go down to the grave in peace.
7 “But show kindness to the sons of Barzillai of Gilead and let them be among those who eat at your table. They stood by me when I fled from your brother Absalom.
8 “And remember, you have with you Shimei son of Gera, the Benjamite from Bahurim, who called down bitter curses on me the day I went to Mahanaim. When he came down to meet me at the Jordan, I swore to him by the Lord: ‘I will not put you to death by the sword.’ 9 But now, do not consider him innocent. You are a man of wisdom; you will know what to do to him. Bring his gray head down to the grave in blood.”
10 Then David rested with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David. 11 He had reigned forty years over Israel—seven years in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem. 12 So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established.

So here in this interesting thing, David is giving a charge to observe and obey the things of God. Do what is right in the eyes of God. Don’t fall prey to doing what’s right in the eyes of yourself or the people. Seek first what God is having you do.

And then the second thing that I think shows kind of another picture into the life of David. He was a man after God’s own heart because he was willing to deal with the little foxes that destroy the vineyard. That phrase actually comes from Song of Solomon. Solomon actually wrote these words about the little foxes that destroy t he vineyard. And here David is basically saying, “Okay, Solomon, when you come into power, when you have the authority, you’re going to have to consistently and constantly deal with insurrection. You’re gong to have to consistently and strongly deal with divisions. You’re going to have to constantly watch out for the little things and deal with them when they’re small so they don’t cause huge problems.”

Now David did not do this well in his own house. He didn’t deal with Absalom well. He didn’t deal with the rape that happened within his own children. He didn’t deal well even in this situation, with Adonijah and Solomon and their war. But he also did deal with things often. And this is a sign of him saying, “Solomon, when you come in, there are a few things you need to deal with right away so they don’t become massive problems.”

Now Joab was his general. Joab was the person in charge of all of David’s army. But Joab’s heart had turned, and David had seen it, but David hadn’t done anything about it. So he said, “Solomon, you’ve got to make sure and deal with Joab, or you’re going to have a big problem.”

And sure enough, as you read these passages, it happened. And David in his life, we know he tended his own soul. He was quick to repent when he found out the things that were wrong, both in his own life, and in the nation around him. Both when it was his fault or somebody else’s fault. David was quick to deal with the little foxes and not let them take root.

For us, we need to be those who are watching out for the little foxes trying to destroy the vineyard of our souls, our households, or the institutions that we’re a part of. It’s so easy for us to allow certain little compromises or hold on to different sins or weights that this world offers us. We can become dull and numb to the deceiver and the destroyer and not realize our hearts are being turned away from the things of God.

It was interesting this last summer. I felt like we were really all called to search ourselves and search our institutions to see if there was racism, or systemic racism there. That’s a good thing for us to have to do, to search our souls and search our hearts. And I know a lot of people have landed in different places. But I remember in that search I didn’t see a lot of racism in my own life and I didn’t see much racism or systemic racism in the institutions I’ve been a part of, not to say those things aren’t real and those things don’t exist; but what I did find very clearly was greed and pride. I found a lot of deception. And so I’ve really spent the rest of the time just saying, “Lord, okay, help us figure some of that stuff out.”

And greed, pride and deception can lead to all kinds of things, including racism and injustice in those regards. The scary thing was I started to see some of that stuff seep into the church, as well. And so part of the motivation for this is I want us to be able to kind of go though this time, as the kings saw this decline, as they saw the idolatry kind of come and take root, I want to be able, for us as a church, to be able to go into these times and really discover what is taking root in our lives. What idolatry have we allowed to come in? So that we can name it and we can get rid of it.

That’s our call as believers, to be consecrated, to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. We have to watch out for the little foxes that are trying to take root.

So, as we conclude I want to talk about what some of those little foxes might be for you and for me. Greed shows up in little ways, a little fudging on your taxes, a little skimping on your giving to the Lord. Relying on your savings and securities instead of trusting in the Lord.

The writer of 1 Kings wanted to really make sure and help us remember that it took Solomon seven years to build the temple for God, and it took him thirteen years to build his own palace. So when Solomon was weighed in the balance by Jeremiah the prophet, he saw something that wasn’t quite right.

What God wants us to do is to build his kingdom. The reason he’s given you a brain, the reason he’s given you a body, the reason he’s given you a beat and breath, the reason he’s given you resources, talent, treasure, time, is so that you would build his kingdom. But are we doing more building of our own kingdom? It’s real easy to check. If you look at your time, if you look at your talent, if you look at your treasure, and how those are invested, it’s pretty easy to see which way you’re weighted.

And I know it might seem like, Oh, tithing is such an old thing. The New Testament doesn’t even talk about it. It talks about giving, for sure, and it’s way more than a tithe, but these simple practices defeat the greed in our lives. They keep greed from being able to take root in our lives. And I’m serious, if you think this is me just trying to get you to give to this church, please don’t. But give somewhere. Give to some church or something somewhere. I think this is a really good place and I know the integrity is really strong here, but I just know how important it is for us to fight against greed, because we are sitting in a very prosperous situation.

And we know the love of money is the root of all evil, so we ask the question, do we love money? We don’t need to ask that question. We love money. You love it. I love it. And we just have to constantly watch out and make sure it doesn’t become a first love, a love above God.

And then pride. Pride shows up in an unforgiving spirit or an unwillingness to say, “Sorry.” Pride shows up in unhealthy ambition and striving. It shows up in seeking first your kingdom and satisfaction before God and others. It shows up in hatred or belittling of others. And even if it’s just small in your life, you’ve got to pay attention to it. You’ve got to take it before the Lord.

And what’s awesome about this is the Lord has given us practices to counteract these things. For instance, worship in the place of worry. It’s always a good place to start with the scriptures. Jesus said what chokes out the good seed, the weeds that choke it out are the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth. That’s what Jesus said,

And how do you counteract the worries of this life that we’re full of? Worship. Every time you feel worry coming on, you get to your knees and you start worshiping. You remember that the big challenges or the big struggle that you face, you take it and compare it to who God is and allow that thing to shrink and become what it’s supposed to be. Worship is a powerful thing. It’s a very powerful thing. And it doesn’t just have to do with singing songs, by the way.

In the place of greed we can give. And we talked a little bit about that. If you feel like you’re a little greedy or you’re a little unsure whether you’re greedy or not, it might be a good time to start giving generously or giving faithfully or giving sacrificially.

That was one thing, as our church, we mentioned before, we qualified for the PPP, but thanks to all the giving, we were able to pay for all of our staff and not tap into our reserves. So we went through this long process and the elders decided the only we could absolutely, 100% assure ourselves that there are no little greedy foxes at all is, let’s just give it all back. So we gave it all back. And I’m not saying everyone should do that. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, as for us, that was one way that we knew we could make sure that greed was not going to have a place in Living Streams. We need to take those assessments.

And one last thing is distractions. That was something that came up. And I know the Lord has kind of checked me a little about distractions. That Wordscape. Has anybody played that little app? Dude. I’m into it for some reason. It’s just like relaxing, but then it’s not. I get all stressed out because I’m like, “I don’t know what that one word is.” And the next I knew I was playing it a lot.

That’s one silly thing, but think about all the distractions at our fingertips these days. We really need to be those who are cultivating silence and solitude, just like Jesus did. And if we’re not actively cultivating those in our lives, we’re way too distracted.

Let’s pray:

Lord, we thank you for your word that doesn’t let us stay stuck, that doesn’t let us find our way back to slavery. And I pray that we would not just hear it, but that we would really receive it deep into the fibers of our being and we would walk in it, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.

We’re going to finish with communion. But everyone’s going to take it on their own. Just want to create a little time for you and Jesus to be one on one today. To remember his broken body. To remember his shed blood. To kind of recommit your life to him or, if this is the first time you’ve ever committed your life to him you can do that by receiving the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus in this way. But talk to him about whatever little foxes might be there. Confess those things and ask him to give you the strength to overcome them. If some shame has come in through something that’s been said today, remember the blood that cleanses you and forgives you, as we sing this last song, take this time with the Lord.

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Guest User 2/14/21 Guest User 2/14/21

Extravagantly, Relentlessly Loved

Series: As For Me and My House
February 14, 2021 - Don Worcester

And if you ever get introduced, make sure it’s Veronica introducing you. So a weird praise report, I found a gift card just the other day. I don’t know if that connects to anything here, but, Praise God! I’m going to go spend it this afternoon.

Welcome to our online community. Wish you were here. But some of you are in different time zones and different zip codes. Thank you for being with us and bless you, and I hope that we’re a blessing, too.

So this weekend, some couples did a Marriage & Go experience from Living Streams. Don and Renee Worcester put that together. It’s couple that I know. Here’s what Marriage & Go is. We’re hosting it. Living Streams is hosting it between — some folks did it this weekend, but it’s going to be live on the Living Streams website until February 28. So that’s two more weeks. Here’s the deal.

If you have a chance to get away somewhere, what the Marriage & Go is designed to do is: if you can get a little time and a little space, last spring we had a whole bunch of folks who we were going to get to be with in person, and then Covid changed everything. One of the pastors that we were going to be with said, “Hey, could you possibly put something together that would be fun, engaging and helpful, and you could package it?” And I just go, “Wow, I don’t think we can. But we’ll pray about it.”

So we prayed about it. We got some other people praying with us. We got a team around us. And we started putting together some different elements, kind of with an idea that we could deliver this kind of via the internet. So if you have an internet connection, if you have wifi, we put the whole package together. So there’s teaching in there. There are activities in there. There’s other engagement things for couples. And if you can get away, there are four major sessions and if you can get somewhere, that’s awesome. But we’ve had couples that have done Marriage & Go on their back patio after their kids went to bed, over the course of a couple of nights. You can decide. I had one couple that did it in their car because they have five kids and that’s the only place they could kind of get away from their kids.

It’s going to be on the website until the 28th. Here’s the thing. If you need a little wellness shot for your marriage, this just might be a little something to just affirm and confirm good things that are happening. If you’ve got a few things going on and you’re a little. Stuck, or a little sideways, we’re going to have some conversations that could really be helpful. And if you’re just stuck and going on the rails, maybe this would just kind of give you the beginning of a fresh start. Marriage & Go. It’s on the Living Streams website. If you take a look at it, see what you think.

Okay. It’s Valentine’s Day. I want to tell you that I remembered that today was Valentine’s Day. How many people here remembered that before today, that it is Valentine’s Day. Yes. God bless you. I see your hand. Not as many from the guys. But I will tell you, the very first year we were married—Renee and I have been married twenty-five years—and the first year we were married, I got to February 14th, and quite frankly, there’s a whole bunch of things I did that day, but it did not occur to me, maybe in the back of my brain, February 14th, what is that? I don’t know. But when I walked in the door at the end of the day, and Renee had this beautiful table set, it just looked lovely, and she looked lovely, and there was a Valentine’s card right there. And I walked in, and my ADD distracted brain goes, “It’s Valentine’s Day!” Okay? It’s hitting my brain just as I’m getting a hug from my amazing, beautiful, thoughtful wife. And I kind of panicked. Okay? I mean, so busted!

I’m just looking for anything to distract. I go, “Oh, you got me a card!. Yeah, I couldn’t find a recycled card that I thought would capture my feelings, so I just wanted to share them.” I am just making stuff up. I am so totally busted. I’ve got nothing, right? And she’s got dinner and she’s got the rest of it, and I go, “Okay, so I guess in your tradition, you celebrate Valentine’s Day on the actual day. Is that what you do? You know, we’ve never even talked about this. That’s so interesting. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with, if you want to do it today. I wish we’d talked bout it.”

I mean, I am just trying to not look like what I am—a totally clueless, brand-new husband who dropped the ball. And she was so gracious. You know, she goes, “Okay. Yeah. Did you want to keep running with this whole theme, or do you just want to have a nice dinner?”

I go, “Okay. I totally forgot everything.”

She goes, “Yeah, yeah. It’s pretty clear. Okay. I love you. I’ll bet you’ll do better next year. Let’s have dinner.”

So gracious. So kind to sort of kind of just invite me in in this gracious way. You know, there’s something gentle and good about the kind of love that draws us in, even when we drop the ball. Particularly when we drop the ball. Today is St. Valentine’s Day. So when David said, “Can you preach on February 14,” my brain now, many years later, goes, “That’s Valentine’s Day.”

So I do want you to know that there really is a St. Valentine. He lived in the third century in Rome. He was a member of the clergy at that time. Claudius II was really bent on building up his forces at that time. Claudius came to this observation that bachelors fought better than married men. And so, in an effort to kind of keep his military strong, he banned marriage. He said, “None of you guys can get married. We want to keep you focused on being a soldier. Marriage gets you all distracted.” So he banned it. It was illegal in Rome during Claudio II for people to marry.

As a member of the clergy, Valentine said, “Well, I’m going to continue to marry people. If they’re in love and they’re ready to make a commitment…” He was warned to not do that. This was really against the law and Claudius had been really clear about that. He continued. He would not repent. He would not relent. He was arrested and ultimately beheaded because he just wouldn’t back down.

Here’s the thing. It wasn’t that Valentine was in love with love. He was not. He wasn’t in love with love. He was in love with God. And he felt like he was walking out and working out the call of God on his life to say, “Two people that love each other and are committed, that is a good, holy thing. I’m going to continue to do that.” He wasn’t in love with love.

He was also kind of, not necessarily, I think he thought love was awesome, I don’t know if he would have a love is love tee shirt, but he would certainly say what John tells us, that God is love. However great love may be, that he would say, “God is love.” Right? It’s not that God is loving as a quality or characteristic, that he is the very source of love. He’s the very definition of love. It’s not a quality about him, it’s actually him. He is the definition, if we want to know what it is.

Valentine sort of had this foundation that motivated him and pulled him. Romance is great. Romance kind of really took off in Europe in the 1800’s, when there was a lot of industrial revolution going on, saying, “Life is all about work.” And the enlightenment was saying, “No, life is all about thinking.” This idea of going, “Yeah, but we have hearts and relationships.” So romanticism sort of emphasized those things, it was a pretty significant movement. There is part of that in our culture. Romanticism and tenderness and affection, those are really good features of a relationship. But they’re not always a sufficient foundation for a relationship. But they’re really good features, right?

In Revelation chapter 2, John is writing to the churches and he kind of says in writing to the church at Ephesus, “You’ve been really faithful. You’ve been consistent. You’ve served. But here’s the one thing. You’ve lost your first love.” And he doesn’t say, “No big deal. DOn’t worry about it.” He actually says, “You’ve lost your first love and that kind of affection and love and those elements,.”

He goes, “I don’t want that to be expendable in your relationship. I don’t want to have a church that loses that love. If I have a church that loses love, it’s not a church. I don’t want your relationships to just be like the church at Ephesus to go, ‘We’re faithful. We’re good roommates. We’re doing this”

He goes, “How’s your first love? How’s your tenderness? How’s your connection?” Those elements that he says, “Hey, you know what? Go back. Actually repent and reconnect to that.” Because there is something about our hearts being connected that God goes, “That’s essential. That’s good. Don’t be casual to that.”

Now Valentine also lived in a very secular culture. He was a spiritual man living in a secular culture. In the secular culture of first century Rome, and probably a lot of our experience as well, there aren’t sacred things. There aren’t spiritual things. There are just things. There are just bodies. There are just needs. There are just ideas. And whatever is real in the world is just whatever we can see right here. Just a material world. So meaning, or purpose, or sacred, is really just some outside concept that’s not real.

For Valentine, as a spiritual man in a secular world, those things are real. Right? The secular culture just says, “Hey, this is just a marketplace. Love and relationships and sexuality are just an open market. We shouldn’t restrict it. We shouldn’t restrain it. We should just let it happen. We should just buy and sell.” That’s what the Romans did.

And here’s the thing. When we take things and reduce them down to just this secular world, flesh, we lose so much. It’s a reduction of what God has. If we’re working in that small world where we have to go, “Hey, go out and prove your value. Go out and prove your beauty. Go out and prove your significance.” If we’re living in a secular wold that says we’ve got to earn it, we’ve got to prove it, we’ve got to win it, we’ve got to deserve it, that can be exhausting, on any given day, to prove that you’re beautiful or valuable or smart or funny or capable or athletic. That can be exhausting that we’re constantly working for love. That’s not enough. That’s not it. The word of Christ says you don’t work for love, you work from love.

I’m going to pull something out and I want you to guess where this came from. Anybody? Yeah. You know what? I hear a bunch of right answers. Nobody said a lemon factory. That’s weird. A lemon factory. Nobody said a lemon kit. Right? Like, everybody looked and said, “Oh, that’s a lemon. It came from a lemon tree.” Right? And here’s the thing. This lemon wasn’t manufactured by my tree. The lemon tree doesn’t have to prove it’s a lemon tree. It doesn’t have to be popular. As far as I know, my lemon tree has no followers on Facebook. I don’t know where it gets its self esteem. I mean, no followers on Facebook. Right?

But the lemon tree didn’t manufacture this. Here’s the thing. I’ve never heard my lemon tree kind of god, “Whew. I’m tired.” It does not appear to be exhausted from producing lemons. The lemons are coming out of something that’s alive inside of the tree. It’s the fruit of the tree, right?

And, as far as I can tell, my lemon tree doesn’t even need lemons. Like, what does a lemon tree need lemons for? It’s producing hundreds of them. It doesn’t need them, right? And here’s the thing. The fruitfulness that comes out of our lives, you know what? It’s not for us. God produces fruit out of our lives. You go, “Well, what do we need the fruit for?” Well, there’s other people that need fruit. We just get to give it away, to go on. And there’s seeds to grow another lemon tree inside.

I’d say the manufacturing of our value, the manufacturing of our work, it goes, “prove it, show it, win it, wow us,” that’s a kind of secular pressure that comes on us. That is not the good news. There’s something very different, but it doesn’t intuitively make sense to us because Paul tells us that it’s really not of this world. Beyond this romantic notion, and beyond this secular notion, there’s this other kind of relenting worldview, this relenting truth.

It’s hard to recognize this in our world, because it’s not from here. And in Galatians 1:11& 12, the church in Galatia was struggling with some of these same things. All these alternative gospels of where the good life is. So Galatians 1:11&12:

11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Paul is kind of saying, if you’re really going to embrace this gospel love, this relentless love, you need to know it’s not of human origin. It won’t make sense through the framework of this culture. Romantically, practically, intellectually. It won’t make sense. It’s not from here. If you’re going to be gripped by this bigger love, it’s going to feel a little alien, because it is. Because it’s not from here. Paul goes, nobody taught me this. This wasn’t handed down from a tradition. And he didn’t learn it.

When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” They said, “Well, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah.” And then, here’s the big question. He looks at them and goes, “Hey, who do you say that I am?”

I think everybody freezes for just a minute on that question. “Who do you say that I am?” And then, out from Peter, who’s kind of impulsive, he goes, “You’re the Messiah. The Son of God.” And then Jesus goes, “Peter, no man taught you that. You didn’t read a book on that. You’re not in a program on that. You didn’t go to a seminar on that. You didn’t educate yourself into that position. That wasn’t an observation. That’s not a speculation.” He goes, “My Father revealed it to you. He opened up your heart to something and showed you.”

And if God gives us a new revelation, that may be the beginning of a transformation. When God takes a truth and opens it up inside of us, that’s revelation. And that can open up spaces in us that can transform us from the inside out.

What is the gospel truth? What is this bigger truth that goes beyond romance and goes beyond a secular understand? Here’s the gospel truth. And here’s why the world goes a little sideways. The gospel truth, the gospel proclamation, declaration over all of us is this: We are each so completely broken, broken on the inside, broken. And we are completely, extravagantly, relentlessly loved and pursued by God.

Well, which one is it? And you go, “It’s both.” Unless we have both, we won’t have anything. It’s both. We’re really broken. And God wants to enter the brokenness and do something beyond what we can do. And that is, in this world and in our own lives, it’s hard to picture how we can connect to our brokenness and then connect to any kind of sense of love from God. And I think our culture kind of promotes that idea. You kind of go, “Hey, if you’re broken, you’ve got to go get cleaned up and then you can maybe qualify for something. Maybe you can put in a spiritual application somewhere and see what you can get.” And that’s not the gospel, that you can clean yourself up and do it.

My oldest son works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He supervises a salvage yard. It’s a very big, active yard. They buy scrap metals and other things from all over the state, and even around the United States. But here’s the basis of a salvage yard. Whatever value all of these things had, and it’s a wide collection of things, but whatever value they originally had, they’re broken. And now they’re going to a salvage yard. They’re going to get parted out. There’s something inside those computer boards. There’s some metals you can melt down and extract. It’s an airplane engine, but it’s got all kinds of precious metals if you take it apart and pull them out.

Here’s a broken thing that maybe has a part that’s valuable. I think, because we’re broken the world tells us, “You know your best option? Just part yourself out, because you’re broken. And you know what you’re hiding. Maybe there’s a part of you that you can trade out. Maybe there’s a part of you that someone wants, but just go ahead and part yourself out.”

People sell stuff cheap at the scrap yard. You know what? Some of us have given ourselves away or sold ourselves cheap, too. And God does not look at us that way. God doesn’t take that perspective. If you didn’t hear Alec Seekins’ message last week on enemy love, man. Do yourself a favor and listen to a message on enemy love. And listen to Alec’s story about what happens when relentless love catches up to the brokenness of people. Something not of this world, right? There’s a bigger, more powerful message.

When people are just parting themselves out, when people are being torn apart and literally scrapped, that is a lie of the culture. That is a lie sometimes of our own hearts. That’s the guilt and the shame inside of us. But this bigger truth, that Jesus comes and he goes, “You know what? I’m not trying to salvage some part of you.” The gospel is not about salvage. The gospel’s about salvation.

Salvage is about picking through a broken thing and finding something valuable. But salvation is about a healing of all of us. Right? Jesus says he’s the Messiah who’s come to bind up broken hearts, not scrap them. He’s come to open our eyes to see new things. He’s come to release us from the places that we’re hurt and hiding, and he’s got the key. And he’s come to go, “You know what? I’m going to give you your life back. We’re going to start again. I’m going to restore you.” That’s salvation, not salvage. It’s good news. But that’s God’s news to us. That’s not something we can generate for ourselves.

My youngest daughter, Abigail, turned eighteen recently. I was so sad and so excited about that, because I do not know how this little baby girl got to be eighteen, but she did. And I’m excited. She has collected snow globes when we go places, which is a very fun little tradition. This particular snow globe is from Nashville. There’s a really cool giant guitar that is bigger than the skyline of Nashville. It’s very cool. We got this back.

Here’s the thing about a snow globe. Every part of a snow globe is essential and important. The globe is critical in a snow globe. It kind of matters. You need the globe. The snow is critical in a snow globe. You’ve got to have snow in a snow globe. The water lets it kind of shimmer and float and do all that. So you need the water. And the really cool icon, the really cool image in the center, man, that’s cool. That’s Nashville, and apparently it’s snowing in Nashville right now. All of it is essential.

God is not interested in salvaging part of our lives, cracking us open and taking out the middle. God goes, “Man, I gave you a body. You know what? No matter what you’ve done with your body—guess what? It’s precious to me. And I gave you a heart and I want to restore and redeem and bind it up. It’s precious. And I gave you a mind, and how you think and how you understand matters to me. I want to engage you, and I want to help you understand and think. And I gave you a soul.”

And here’s the deal. Our souls are always hungry for the light. Our souls are always hungry for the light. And there’s a lie that tells us we’re supposed to conquer sin in the dark so we can somehow get to the light. And that is a lie from the pit of hell. Scripture never asked us to conquer sin in the dark, because we can’t. It’s a lie. We’re not designed to be in the dark conquering sin. We’re designed to confess sin in the light. That’s what we’re designed for. That’s what wholeness looks like. That’s what the good news, that’s what love looks like, the love that enters that.

In 1 John 1:7-9, it says this:

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Part of what happens, when we bring that brokenness, when we say, “I’m not going to hide this. I’m not going to try to figure this out. I’m not going to be doing this on my own and working it out so I can somehow present myself. I’m going to just say, ‘God, I’m a mess. I’m just going to open the door to your love and your grace and your mercy.’”

When we do that, when we kind of acknowledge,”You know what, I’m not doing well. This is not working out. My heart is broken. I have been hiding this.” When we open that door and the love of God floods in, something really different can happen in our lives. And part of that something is healing. And part of that something is power. And part of that something is hope. But it brings us to a different presence. It makes us present to his presence. And when we get present to his presence—which is powerful and beautiful and capable—something on the inside can really also begin to heal. It can really also begin to believe. It can really also believe to be connected, to go, “God says all of who I am is important.”

If you’ve scrapped yourself out, I want you to know, God wants you back. If somebody took something from you, God purchased it and he’s giving it back. If you gave something away and you’re carrying guilt or shame, God goes, “You know what? I brought that back to you.” Because that’s who he is. And he wants you to know who you are.

The sin and the brokenness never has the last word. God has the last word. And if he buys you back, you’re bought back. And if he says you’re clear, you’re clear. And if he says you’re good, you’re good. And if he says you’re beautiful, no matter what you’ve heard or thought or what anyone else has said, he’s right. Letting that truth get to our hearts and our lives, letting our souls have that truth, man, that opens up something beautiful.

When our kids were young, it must have been fifteen years ago because Abigail was three. She was on my hip. We went on a hike in Colorado. And we hiked back a mile or two to this waterfall. And it was a pretty good waterfall. It was coming off of a glacier. But there was a relatively shallow pond that you could walk out towards the waterfall. So we initially were just going to take a picture of the waterfall. You know. Worcesters, waterfall, cool. But Jacob and Emma started taking their shoes off. They went into the water, you know. And then they started venturing closer to the waterfall. And so, the two fo them were heading out on the waterfall, and then Abigail wanted to go. So I put her on my hip and I went out. None of us planned on going in the water. We just had our regular clothes on, but still. The waterfall, there’s something compelling about a waterfall. Something sort of like draws you in.

So we’re being drawn into this waterfall. We get all the way out to it. Jacob and Emma are doing this thing where they’re starting to touch it. And it is cold and loud and thundering. And you can see this, “I’m excited and I’m scared. This is great.” All those things. And Jacob finally turns to me and goes, “Dad, can I go in?” And I go, “Do you want to go in?” And he kind of had this “Yeah. No. Yeah. I do. I…” He goes, “Will I be okay?” And I go, “Don’t know. I’ve never been in this waterfall.” Which is another I don’t know. Right? And Emma is right on his shoulder, behind him, and he’s still pausing. “I don’t know.” Something is going to happen. Right? And then he just turns and he goes, “I’m going in!” And he steps in.

I heard the scream and then he disappeared into the waterfall. And he’s inside the waterfall somewhere and everything else. And I don’t know that he was in a long time, but he came out of the waterfall and man, he was very present. He was very alive. He was still screaming, I think, when he came out. Emma only hesitated minute. “If he can do it, I can do it. I’m going in!” She went in, screams, disappeared. Giant waterfall going on.

Abigail, the three-year-old, is watching older brothers and sisters go in. And she’s looking, and she’s got this same kind of perplexed, and I’m going, “She’s three, and I really don’t know what will happen if we go in the waterfall.” But she’s kind of got the look. And I go, “Abigail, do you want to go in the waterfall?” And she just tightens up her grip on me. She said, “Yes.” She just holds me tight. I go, “Let’s go.” And we stepped into the waterfall.

If you haven’t stepped into a Colorado glacier waterfall in a while, it’s a little brisk. A little abrupt. I think I heard myself screaming, and I think I heard Abigail screaming. And the waterfall’s coming down. It’s cold. It’s pounding. Visually, you are underneath and it is flooding you. We’re screaming. But no one can hear us. I can feel her gripping me. She just got a good grip and said, “Yeah. Let’s go in.”

Maybe you have to hold on to God a little stronger to go, “Take me in.” But here’s what happens. That’s holiness. That’s holiness that hits us and rinses us and revives us and brings us back. It’s holiness. That’s not some abstract concept. Eugene Peterson, in his book The Jesus Way, talks about what a poor definition we have of holiness. What a horrible idea we have of holiness. That it’s bland. That its stiff. That it’s restrictive. And he says in his book The Jesus Way:

But holiness is in wild and furious opposition to all such blandness. The God life cannot be domesticated or used. It can only be entered on its own terms. Holiness does not make God smaller so that he can be used in convenient and manageable projects. It makes us larger so that God can live out through us extravagantly, spontaneously. The holy is an interior fire,…

And I think of a beautiful waterfall.

…a passion for living in and for God. A capacity for exuberance in the presence of God. Holiness is the most intense experience we can ever get out of sheer life, authentic, undiluted, firsthand living, not life looked at and enjoyed from a distance.

When God’s love captures and renovates our brokenness, we’re on holy ground. We’re in a waterfall of grace and love that washes us, cleanses us, revives us. And I’ll tell you what. Things heal on hot ground. Things restore on holy ground. Things connect on holy ground. And it’s not holy boring. It’s holy awesome.

When Isaiah had his encounter with the holy in Isaiah chapter 6, he has this event. He’s going in to sacrifice to God and then the whole temple is filled with the glory of God. So he has this up-close, personal encounter with God. In Isaiah 6:5, here’s what he says. When you get that close to the waterfall. When you get that close to holy:

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

Isaiah is in this situation. The revelation of the glory and holiness of God is there. And he goes, “I’m a dead man.” What happens when you touch the holy? What happens when you enter the waterfall? And then he has the angel with the live burning coal coming to touch his lips.

7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

I think Isaiah thinks that coal is going to burn him up. But when God touches us with holiness, it burns up the sin in us. It burns up the guilt. It burns up the fear. Maybe he thought the holiness was going to burn him out. But it didn’t. The holiness actually animates us. It burns out everything that’s not from God, which is all the stuff we don’t need and all the stuff that doesn’t make us alive. And then he says this:

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

The guy who was terrified and said, “I’m a dead man,” after he is touched by the furious love of God, he isn’t afraid of his sin anymore. Isn’t afraid of his capacity anymore. Isn’t afraid of going anymore. And when God says, “I wonder who should go,” there’s his hand up. “Send me. Not because I’m perfect, but I am broken. I’ve been bought back by a love that’s perfect. You can send me.”

If there’s a place that you’re hiding this morning, if there’s a place that you’re stuck, a place that you’ve given away, we’re gong to have people up. Man, don’t be fighting int he dark. You’re not meant for the dark. God welcomes us to the light. We don’t have to be afraid of his grace and mercy. We can come as we are, where we are and let him minister. If you’re hiding, don’t hide. If you’re hiding, let that love come and touch you.

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Guest User 2/9/21 Guest User 2/9/21

We Will Love Our Enemies

Series: As for Me and My House

Alec Seekins

My name is Alec Seekins. Living Streams has been my home since I was three years old. Like he said, he was my youth pastor when I was a wee laddie. I was as pudgy back then, so maybe “wee” is the wrong word. I’ve been here my whole life. Up until about year ago, I spent time volunteering or working in our youth ministry, hanging out with these guys quite a bit. I spent a chunk of that time as our mission pastor as well. Living Streams is the only church my wife has ever known. She came here and to the Lord a little bit later in life.

About a year ago we quit our jobs. We packed all of our extra stuff in our parents’ spare bedrooms in their houses. We went to an island in southeast Asia, where we didn’t have any friends and we didn’t know the language—just to the follow the Lord. And I kind of followed my wife into this ministry where we were working in anti-sex trafficking, trying to connect with women and build friendships and relationships, just to see what the Lord might do. If there were some women who were hoping to get out and to see if maybe we could help them make that happen.

When we showed up for that, I think we really were prepared to experience the love of God for the victims. That’s something we had seen enough of the lord taking people that have been kicked around little bit, people that people think are too scarred and too dirty. Sinners, people that are the lowest. We had really seen the Lord do some cool stuff with people who believe that they are lower than everyone else, people who everyone else believes are lower than them.

So we expected to build those kind of mutual friendships that the Lord so loves to use. Not those “I’m up here and you’re down there” kind fo relationships, but just like real friendships, laughing and sharing life together—those things that the Lord uses to bring healing and life and fullness to everyone involved. We expected to see that. And we were shocked to see how quickly we saw that. I was talking to someone last night.

And I don’t know how much of it was the culture of where we were or how much was the Holy Spirit going before us. But we didn’t find a lot of barriers to building relationships with these women very, very quickly and to calling them friends very quickly, to celebrating birthdays and sitting down and laughing with them and playing games with them. And also, just having serious conversations with them and sharing struggles and sharing joys with these women. Like I said, I think we really were prepared to experience the love of God for the victims when we got there.

What we were not prepared for was to experience the love of God for the violators. I don’t think we were ready for that at all. I don’t think we were ready to have pimps and traffickers that we called “friend.” I don’t think we were ready to have violators that have meaning to us, that we care for. I don’t think we were ready to celebrate birthdays and exchange gifts with people who were actively engaged in something I think we could all rightly call evil. But the love of God is a lot bigger than my heart. It’s just so much bigger.

The way I’ve been thinking about it is, like in my life, I don’t know when I’m going to used to the reality that God’s love is bigger than I think it is. It feels like, every once in a while I turn a corner and I see a new facet of his love and I’m like, “Whoa. Where did that come from? There’s no way that was there before.” But also, there’s no way it hasn’t been there forever. And then I think that’s it. I’ve seen the fullness of the love of God. That’s as big as it gets. There’s no way it could be bigger than that. Then I see there’s another corner and I turn it and it’s just bigger. Eventually I hope to just figure out that his love is just bigger. I hope to be amazed but not shocked at the greatness of his love and the power of his Holy Spirit.

I didn’t say this last service, but I just want to say this. If there’s nothing else that you hear me say today, I would just say, please figure out how to hear the voice of God and then just obey and follow. Whatever that means. If that’s crazy, if it’s mundane, there’s so much richness in following the Lord. I never thought I was going to see the things that I saw the Lord do this last year, and yet I’ve seen them and it’s amazing, and it’s beautiful.

In March, as we know, things got a little weird. And on this particular island where we were, about 60% of the economy is tourism. So, as you can imagine, it dried up real quick. And these women that we had come to love and call friends, there was this bitter sweet situation for them, and for us as we engaged in a relationship with them. On the one hand it was sweet, because these women we had come to love and call friends, they were no longer being purchased quite so frequently by men who didn’t know their true value. But it was bitter because they were no longer able to purchase food quite so frequently for themselves.

So the ministry we were working with over night decided to shift gears and try to figure out how to meet this immediate physical need and, in the course of it, continue to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. So we pivoted and starting trying to bring food to these women. And I really want to thank Living Streams, because you guys funded about 80 to 90% of the project that came out of that. And for three months, 80 women, and whoever was peripheral to their lives, every single week got these giant bags of fruit and veggies and proteins and rice. And it opened doors that literally led to actual freedom, both physical and spiritual. And I think those doors are still being walked through. So there’s no way to really even count the impact that you guys had on the kingdom.

So there was this one particular brothel that we would go to, among all the brothels that we would go to on a weekly basis. And for some reason, there we just had a lot of favor. We had more and more and more significant relationships. And our relationships were growing deeper and deeper and we were even occasionally having conversations about Jesus and about freedom in this particular brothel.

And in this brothel, there was a pimp. And we’re going to just call her name Grace, which I know might be a little surprising, but actually there’s a significant minority of the pimps who are women. And Grace had the kind of presence that you might imagine from a pimp. She had a very oppressive and heavy and aggressive presence to her. When she walked in the room, you could see shoulders kind of tighten up, and when she walked out, you would see an emotional, almost spiritual sigh of relief when she wasn’t there anymore.

And Grace was personally responsible for deceiving, trafficking, capturing and pimping out a number of our friends. And I remember on one particular day when we were there—we would often play games with the women at this location. A lot of the kind of games that we would play with the youth like Ninja, and that weird water bottle game where you throw it around, and ultimate spoons and stuff like that. And we were playing this game where we throw a water bottle around and Grace decided she wanted to join the game. So, obviously, a good number of the women who were on the fence decided they no longer wanted to play the game.

As we were playing this game, I remember connecting with Grace. And I remember feeling like the Lord was saying, “Hey, I want you to really develop this connection here.” And I saw her laughing and having fun for the first time. And she was overjoyed when she won because we let her win. Yeah. It was definitely a “let the Wookie win” kind of a situation. I just remember feeling the weird dissonance in my heart, of loving this woman who was actively engaged in oppressing and violating friends of mine. But it was the love of God and there was nothing I could do about it. Because his love is just so much bigger than my heart.

And I even realized later that day that this is the same woman who had been kind of pushing against Colleen a little bit in a weird, passive-aggressive way, walking around saying, “This is my wife,” on a day when I wasn’t around. (Which is very upsetting to hear.) And, fortunately, my wife is strong and capable and knew how to say, “Huh-uh,” in a way that didn’t rock the boat too much. But there was nothing I could do about this love that was creeping up.

Let’s rewind a little way back. I remember before shut-down there was a prayer meeting we were having. We always had these long prayer meetings before any outreach. And I felt like the Lord started to tell me that he wanted me to begin praying for pimps that they would go from being captors to liberators. So I started praying that prayer on a regular basis. I prayed it for a few months. But I really need to be honest with you guys. It didn’t matter how boldly the words were coming out of my mouth every time I prayed that prayer, there wasn’t that much bold going on on the inside.

On a really good day, all that was happening in my mind and my heart was something like, “God, I know you can do this, but you’re not going to.” And on a bad day is was more like, “God, do you do this? Are you good enough? Strong enough? Powerful enough? Real enough to do this kind of stuff? I’ll just pray anyway.”

But Jesus wasn’t joking when he talked about mustard seeds. He knew what he was saying when he said, “Just a little bit of faith can move mountains into the oceans. And just a little bit of faith can take captors and turn them into liberators.” And I’m so grateful for that reality.

So fast forward back up a couple of weeks after that interaction, playing a game with Grace, and all of a sudden at that location, we hear something crazy is going on. And we don’t know. There was some drama and we’re concerned it might have had something to do with some conversations we might have had with someone about Jesus or freedom. So we thought maybe we need to lean back a little bit. And the next thing we know, Grace and about half the women from that brothel have disappeared.

No one is responding to text messages or phone calls, and we’re super concerned about it. And then, after a few days, we hear back from a couple of women who are saying, “Hey, Grace just took us all and we’re scared and we want to go home.” And we start to get a trickle in of conversation. On one particular night, maybe a couple of weeks after they had all initially disappeared, a few people from our ministry team started hearing back from Grace and all at the women with her at the same time. They were texting and they were saying, “Hey, we want to talk. We want to meet. Can we talk right now? Not tomorrow. Not in the morning. Right now. Where we can we meet? When can we meet? Where are we meeting?”

So our friends dropped their plans for that evening and they went to meet with Grace and these women and they found that what had happened was Grace had had some sort of a disagreement with one of the other pimps, and Grace said, “I’m going to take these women and I’m going to start my own brothel.”

So she took these women and she tried to start her own brothel, but then she failed. And she had this thought, “Maybe I need to be done.” And she knew that our ministry had been an off ramp for women in the past. She knew she couldn’t wait for the morning. Her resolve might change. So they reached out and they had this meeting. Our friends began to talk with them about what freedom might look like and what Jesus looks like and what freedom in Jesus might look like. Then they began to pray. They began to worship. And the Holy Spirit came down in that room and started moving in the hearts of these women who barely even knew his name.

And the Holy Spirit planted something in Grace’s heart that night that really took root. And that oppressive spirit began to be replaced with a joy and lightness. To make a long and beautiful story—that is still very much in process—short, we were able to find a place for these women to live. We were able to find legitimate income for them. Grace was actually able to get a job with a local pastor for a few months where she was working in his Corona side gig and getting bible study and discipleship every morning along with the rest of the staff. These women got hungry for the word of God.

Grace, when we would talk about the word of God, or when we would pray or worship, she would have this weird, goofy smile on her face, and would almost rock for the joy that was in her. And we knew that this was real, because the women around Grace were starting to relax around her, and starting to feel comfortable letting her know when they were leaving, instead of trying to slip out like they were before.

And then, eventually, they started inviting us into this home to do like a little mini church with them every week to worship and pray and talk about the things that they were giving over to Jesus this week. And I got to see the power of God in a way that I’ve never seen it before, because God gave us the love for an enemy.

In Matthew 5, Jesus says this,

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

I read this passage a couple of weeks ago as I was starting to prepare for this message. And all of a sudden, what Jesus is talking about, that reward that you get—it brought a whole new light for me. I’ve known for a long time it’s not this weird, flimsy theology of prosperity gospel that you do what Jesus asks and then boom there’s a bonus at work, or a raise, or you find a bunch of miracle money. I’ve actually, some of the few legitimate miracles that I’ve experienced in my life was miracle money. And the money itself was pretty lame. The promise that God gave was way more meaningful. And I’m still holding on to that. The money disappeared years ago. It didn’t last that long. Money tends to not last long. But that promise is still sticking around.

So I started thinking that, maybe the rewards that are eternal that the Bible talks about, maybe I could just imagine them like there’s this room that the Father’s preparing for me. In that room there’s this treasure chest that’s kind of closed. And every time the Lord’s like, “Here’s a gift for you,” he hides it in that treasure chest. And one day, after Jesus comes back, I’m going to go into that room, I’m going to pop open the treasure chest and be like, “Oh, that’s the reward you gave me on that day. Oh that’s so cool. What an awesome mystery that’s not a mystery anymore.”

But I don’t even think of it that way anymore. Because I feel like I’m holding some of those rewards in my hand today. I feel like those rewards are continuing to grow in value. And there’s going to be a day when their value is going to skyrocket. When Jesus comes back to say, “Behold, I make all things new.” And the value is going to be more significant of an increase than anybody who bought stock in GameStop last year. It’s a big deal. Jesus knows what he’s doing. He’s got some good rewards for us.

And Jesus says, “What reward, if you love those who love you? Maybe they’ll buy you lunch after you buy them lunch. Maybe you show up for them at a really hard time, and later in life they come into some money and they buy you a free car. That’s pretty cool.” But lunch is gone in a couple of minutes, if you’re a fatty like me. And a car is gone in a few years.

But I have this friendship with this amazing, redeemed woman that we’re calling Grace. And I got to see the power of God at work in an enemy, in a way that I never imagined I would see the power of God. Paul elsewhere says that our battle is not against flesh and blood, it’s against spirits and principalities. Usually when we read that verse, we read it as a spiritual call to arms. And it is that. But lately, I’ve been focused on our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our enemies are not really our enemies.

I think that, if we think we have enemies that have flesh and blood, I think it’s very likely that we’ve actually been deceived by the real enemy, that our enemies are just decoy enemies. That if we think people, any people, regardless of what evil they do, or what wrong things they believe, if we think they’re the enemy, I think we’ve been deceived by the very same enemy that deceived them into believing or doing the things that we find so reprehensible. We’re missing the real fight. If evil people are our enemies, it’s the spirits that are deceiving them.

And the way we fight the real enemy is not with fists or with Facebook, but it’s with enemy love. It’s with sacrifice. It’s with turning the other cheek. It’s with walking an extra mile with an oppressive authority who’s forced you to carry their burden for one. It’s with giving our shirt to people who would steal our coat. That’s how we fight the real enemy.

I think our enemies are actually like the redemptive power of God pressed into something like potential energy. Like a spring that’s been pressed down, waiting to be released so it can come into life. Or like a battery that’s been hiding in a drawer alone, waiting to be plugged into some device of God and bring it to life. Because God is wanting to take your enemies and show off his power and his goodness in the midst of their darkness.

One of the greatest joys, I think, of my life to date, is that I have another story to share with you this morning, of another captor turned liberator. We’re going to call him Bapok. That’s just a common honorific in this particular part of the world, on this island.

Bapok, he’s a really big, bad guy. Bapok is not just a pimp who owns a decent-sized brothel in the second largest red-light district that we know of. There’s usually about 150 women working there on any given night. Bapok is also part of the association of pimps in that area. Bapok is also part of the local mafia, and he’s also a low level government enforcer. You don’t mess with Bapok for good reason.

When we started going there, early on last year, we met Bapok and we met his wife. She was really hungry for something good and clean and right in her life. So she would invite us and chat with us longer than anyone else. We would talk with her for hours. It wasn’t long before she was inviting us in for meals. It wasn’t long before both of them were asking us to pray for them over and over and over again. I’ve never prayed for anyone more than this couple, because they continually asked for it. We built relationship and we were invited to birthday parties.

Then there came a point in our relationship where we trusted them so much, and felt the next step was actually to invite them to our home, where we sleep, for a meal. And we prayed about it. We talked together, me and Colleen, and we talked to our oversights in the ministry. And we felt like, yeah, this is where the Lord was leading. Because we just loved them that much and we just trusted them that much.

And we began to see the Lord change their hearts. And we began to see the way they interacted with the women who were under them changing and holding them with more of an open hand. Letting them leave if they wanted to leave. We learned about the fact that Bapok actually had cancer, has cancer. Because of at the state of health care over there, it’s just unclear whether he’s just got months or many more years to live.

There came a day where there was a woman from another brothel in that red light district who had upset her pimp somehow, so he kicked her out on the streets and blacklisted her. She ran to Bapok for safety. And Bapok harbored her at their place. Then that other pimp took Bapok to the association of pimps to bring his grievance before them, and said, “This man is harboring a woman that I blacklisted. Do something about it.”

And Bapok addressed the association of pimps and he said this. He said, “We have been living in sin our entire lives. I don’t know how much longer mine’s going to be. How am I going to get clean?” He said, “I don’t really care what you do or say. This woman’s going to be safe with me until she’s ready to go home.” And that was the end of the situation. That woman was safe with him until she was ready to go home.

Then, a little while later, Bapok and his wife made a really significant, earth shattering decision. They decided that they were going to enable all of their women to go home. As soon as they had all gone home, they were going to close down their doors, and they were going to reopen as a community center, where kids could come and hear about Jesus, and learn English, where they could get tutoring in the morning. There’s hopes this next year to put something like a little clinic in there.

And then, a week later, the boat started rocking. And Bapok’s wife had a dream in the night. And she heard a voice after that, saying, “I have medicine for your husband.” So she got up early in the morning before the sun was up. She didn’t tell her husband where she was going, and she went to a Hindu temple to pray for a day and a half. And then, as you can imagine, that upset him. It caused some issues between the two of them. Our whole team that was heavily involved in community with them was really concerned. What’s going on? She’s hearing from these other spirits right at that time when it felt like something really good was happening.

But I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, “You know, this isn’t another spirit she’s hearing from. She just doesn’t understand what I’m saying.”

So we went to their house and I asked her, “Would you tell me about the dream you had?”

She said, “It wasn’t just a dream. I had a dream and then I woke up and I had a waking vision. Then I heard this audible voice.”

And I said, “The Holy Spirit, I think, is the one speaking to you. So would you tell me and I’ll ask the Holy Spirit what the meaning is?”

And the dream was essentially this vision of her, this dream of her on top of this giant, beautiful valley with waterfalls and rainbows and all this kind of stuff. And it was the Holy Spirit telling her, “I’m calling you into the kingdom fo heaven. This is the kingdom of heaven and I want you to enter into it.”

And then she woke up from that and she went outside. It was still dark, like two or three in the morning. And she saw a light that had no light source. And she went to the light, and as soon as she got to the light, it disappeared. And she didn’t see a light bulb or anything that made any sense. And she was so confused. And this was the Holy Spirit saying, “You’ve been pursuing me, but that’s not how it works. I pursue you. You surrender to Jesus. You let Jesus come after you and that’s how you enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

And then the voice that she said she heard said, “I have medicine for your husband.” That’s the Holy Spirit saying, “I have medicine but it’s not necessarily for his body. I have medicine that he really wants for his spirit to be cleaned.”

And a week later, they were both in the hospital. Him with complications from his ongoing condition, and her with typhoid. One of our friends from the ministry went to go visit them. In the course of that visit, Bapok’s wife gave her life to Jesus. Right after that, so did he. And a few weeks later, it was two days before Christmas, and that former brothel hosted a Christmas party. Sixty women from the surrounding community showed up. And they heard the story of the birth of Jesus, and they heard the gospel. And they heard the testimony of one our good friends about how Jesus saved her from the sex trade, and then he saved her from sin and death. And there was weeping in that former brothel, but the kind of tears that come from hope.

Jesus is pretty powerful. Jesus has a very different way of dealing with evil than our natural inclination. Our natural inclination, our best efforts on our own, they just fall short. And they’re just lame. And they tend to just make the problem worse. You hit me in the cheek, I’m not turning the other cheek. I’m hitting you back in the face. That’s what I want to do. You come at me with a sword, I’m coming back with a sword, or a gun, if I can find one. But Jesus didn’t fight with a sword. He fought with a sacrifice.

And I know that that is really controversial right now. But it’s not new. It’s always been offensive. It’s always offensive. It has always been offensive to love the enemy. It has always been hard to turn the other cheek. It has always felt like just lying down for evil. But we’ve seen Jesus’ way start to take root in some really powerful ways. Over the last couple of hundred years, for some reason or another, there have been more and more men and women who have followed Jesus in this way of enemy love. And it has made a marked difference on goodness, righteousness and justice here on earth.

We’ve seen men and women like Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu. People like Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce, Rosa Parks. And even people like Mahatma Ghandi, who don’t follow Jesus, but just take his words really seriously. And it has made a notable difference for goodness in the world. Because the way of Jesus is powerful. Because enemy love is tapping into the love of God. And he knows what he’s talking about. He’s not messing around when he says it’s time for us to turn the other cheek. It’s time for us to love our enemies.

I have been watching through my phone this last year and the last couple of weeks, as I’ve gotten here, as this strange divide is kind of welling up around us in our culture. I’m not here at all to say there isn’t truth and there isn’t a lie, that there isn’t good ideas and good ideologies, and bad ideas and bad ideologies. But I think if we’ve landed on either side of the strange divide, I think we’ve landed on the wrong side. Because Jesus has never been on the other side of his enemies.

When Jesus showed up in the Old Testament to talk to Joshua and Joshua said, “Are your on our side or on their side?” And Jesus said, “Nah. That’s not how it works.”

When the Pharisees would ask him, “Is it this or this?” And he would say, “No, it’s that.”

When the Scribes would say, “Is it this situation or is it like that?” He would say, “You just don’t get it.”

And we’re doing the same thing right now in our culture, saying, “Is it me? Or is it me?” And Jesus is saying, “No. If you’re on the other side of your enemy, you’ve missed it completely. You should be on the same side of your enemy. Not to say you agree with them or follow them in wickedness, but you should be standing next to your enemy and loving them, even if it hurts. Even if it costs you your life.”

And if God himself would reach across that strange divide of sin and death to love us, to save us, and to even die for us, then what are we doing drawing lines in the sand that end with anything else but us standing up and saying, “Neither do I condemn you.”

Jesus has laid out a very different way.

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Guest User 10/20/19 Guest User 10/20/19

Radical Hospitality

There’s this phrase: What would Jesus do? It’s a good phrase; but one of my friends says it’s totally insufficient and actually a really heavy burden if we just leave the question like that. He says the true questions is: What would Jesus do if he were me, and he lived in the context that I live in today? It’s a little longer thought process, but it’s more valid.

Marty Caldwell
Series: Church Around the Table

Ryan Romeo:

Good morning, Living Streams Church. David is out. He is in his second home, if you know David. He is in Belize right now, a place he loves. We always joke on staff. We feel like we’re one of two kids he has, and Belize is like that second kid. He’s over there, which is awesome. We’re so excited for him. He’s going to be back here next week.

Right now it’s my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker, Marty Caldwell. Marty’s with Young Life. He’s been to over eighty countries. He travels the world talking to young people. If you know anything about Young Life, for us it’s such a big deal. We love Young Life. I was a big part of Young Life growing up. So please join me in warmly welcoming Marty Caldwell.

Marty Caldwell:

Thanks, Ryan. By the way, David was part of the seeds planted that helped us get Young Life started in Belize. And they had their first weekend camp just a few weeks ago. There’s an inner connectivity in all of this.

Good morning. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. I do want to say this: If you’re going, “I am not thinking that’s going to come out of my mouth, it’s not in my spirit. There’s a sadness, or there’s a loss, or maybe there’s a sickness in me.” — I want you to know, in the kingdom of God and in a family like Living Streams, when you’re on this side, this is the day that the Lord has made, “Let us lament and have peace in it” is equally important.

It’s not a smiley face on the lament. If you read the Bible, there’s a lot of lament in the Bible—sadness and sorrow. And we’re not afraid to enter into that. And we’re not afraid to welcome you into that. If you’re in here and, “This is the day the Lord has made and let me lament,” you get to lament. Because this is part of God creating larger hearts, a more compassionate people. And even the ability to have both of these things: joy, celebration, worship and victory—absolutely. Equally: compassion, gentleness and lament.

We are a people that God is making to have bigger hearts. We can do both of these things at the same time. But usually, it’s a little more one or the other. I just want to say one thing: If you’re here with a spirit of lament: welcome, welcome, welcome. Holy moly. You got out of bed this morning and you went to church in sorrow. That’s courage. That is courage. And I just want to say I’m impressed. Welcome. You don’t have to raise your hand. You just sit with this.

But if you’re here on this side, I mean, same thing. There’s no greater welcome over here or over there. The Lord has made this day and we are gong to rejoice and be glad in it. But we are not afraid to enter into the lament and show compassion to those who are in that spirit today. That’s the reality of the kingdom of God and Living Streams is a place to express that. Welcome into it.

This morning, what I want to do is to talk about the radical hospitality of Jesus. I don’t know. Hospitality is one of those words that needs a better marketing group. Because, for the most part, hospitality is one of those boring, ordinary words. Well, yeah, like some flowers or candles, you know, maybe some cookies, baking, sort of ordinary. By the way, I think actually there are lots of elements of hospitality that are ordinary; but in today’s world, which is so divided, so polarized, so “us/them,” that the radical nature of the hospitality of Jesus, and the radical nature of the hospitality of the body of Christ, is absolutely, stunningly subversive and radical.

So it may have some ordinary actions to it, but it is always a response of our hearts realizing that the God of the universe welcomes us. So if you would, pray with me:

Lord, we’re so glad we get to be here this morning—together. You welcome us. You want us. You love us. You like us. You want to be with us. Well, this is just stunning, because you are God! You made all time, all geography, all universes, and you want to be with us and you welcome us into your presence. Wow! Help us to capture that but also to be captured by that, so that we may express radical hospitality in our own lives and our homes, our places of work, school, restaurants, neighborhood. Because we want to do your work your way as an expression of knowing how much we are loved. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

A simple definition of hospitality—I looked it up in the dictionary. I didn’t like it, so I made one up:

Any action or set of actions, or words, or experiences, or touch, or smell, that says to another person or group of people, “I am so glad you are here. Come on in. Let’s be together.”

And really, for this morning, if you’ll allow me, I’m going to use hospitality and belonging and welcome almost interchangeably. I think hospitality is kind of the inner core—the dynamic—but the expression of hospitality is welcome and belonging, belonging and welcome.

The first one, of course, to express that is the God of the universe. He says that to you and me whether we’re broken, whether we’re falling away, whether we’re joyful or lamenting, or absolutely in prodigal country. He says to us, before we behave and before we believe, that we belong. This is the radical nature of the gospel. It is not like any other religion. It’s not like the rules and regulations that we would set up, that we would expect: Well, you have to have the belief test and then the behavior test and then you get to belong because you’ve learned the secret code. You’ve learned the secret belief. You’ve learned the secret behaviors, and then God says, “Ok, now you belong with me.”

Christ most expressly says, “You belong with me.”

“Well, wait a minute. I don’t know the belief system.”

“You belong with me.”

“I certainly don’t behave.”

“You belong with me.”

This is the hospitality of God. If you don’t think that’s radical, just read the newspaper. Actually, just look at your own family. This is not how things work. This is how the gospel works. The gospel is this radical person, Jesus Christ, who expresses to a broken and hurting world, “You belong with the God of the universe.”

Stunning. Really. That God is radically hospitable to us. And if you believe this, if you have this at your core, you are most free then to express radical hospitality to others; which is most simply expressed in the second greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. Ultimately, hospitality, welcome, belonging are of the same kind. They are “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is it. Sounds so ordinary. Sounds so every day. It is. It is ordinary. It is every day. But if you think it’s easy, your life is not like mine. This is hard work. This is costly work. This has to be a practice.

Here’s what Paul says in Romans 12. He’s kind of riffing.

9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

This is getting harder as we go.

11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need.

And this just stands out there, screaming at me:

…Practice hospitality.

And this is what I would like to inspire you to. Practice hospitality. I really like the language of that because it’s a little bit better for me than “be hospitable.” Because what if I can’t be hospitable? Well, okay, good. You can’t. But what if you practice? Okay, I could try that. Practice. I’m not good. I have this muscle of hospitality right here. Here we go. Try to lift it. “I can’t lift it.”

“Okay, get something lighter. Practice.”

So this morning, what I’d like to encourage you in, is practice hospitality. Young Life is really kind of a laboratory for this with disinterested, lost teenagers here and around the world. I have a picture of a greeting. This is Tanzania, so this is probably mostly muslim kids. These are kids with no background in Christ. We set up a welcome for them. The little three wheeler coming down, and these are flags of all of these nations, back behind here is a wedding band and about a hundred people that are saying to teenagers that don’t feel welcome in their neighborhood, don’t feel welcome outside of their neighborhood, often not in their own family, maybe nowhere, not in their school, this is a hundred people or so, singing, dancing, screaming, flag-waving, “We are glad you are here!” It’s beautiful chaos. This would be like any Young Life camp anywhere around the world. This just happens to be Tanzania.

A really iconic moment for me of hospitality, and the importance of welcome happened a few years ago, kind of our first camp in Tanzania. All of the kids had come. They’re already here. This is kind of the start and this is the finish. One kid had missed the bus. So he missed out on the greeting.

And I kind of go, “Well, you know, we’ve got to get dinner going. It’s a little bit late. I’ve got to button things up. But just have him come and he’ll walk into dinner and somebody give him a high five and it’ll be great.”

The Africans go, “Oh, no, no. We do the same greeting.”

I go, “Wait a minute. For the one kid?”

“Yeah.”

So he gets on the bus by himself. We’ve got to all wait out there for about thirty minutes. He comes down that road. It’s hilarious. It is a bus driver and one kid. But by that time, all the kids that had been welcomed had joined us. So now it’s about 350 people and they have set up a gauntlet for him. And he is being greeted like he is a rock and roll star. High five and he’s disoriented. I think what he had felt was the shame of missing the bus, the “maybe I shouldn’t have come,” the “maybe I don’t belong.” And he is overwhelmed.

And what’s interesting to me is, not just the believers who had done the first welcome, but now everyone’s in on the welcome. There is something fundamental that God has wired to us in Genesis 1 and 2, that is to be welcoming. And then there is something fundamentally broken from Genesis 3 on that says, “Play small, play safe, guard, don’t share, be in the background, be with people like you.”

There’s you know, 150 muslim kids and then 50 atheist kids and 50 nominal Christian kids. And they’re all welcoming this one kid. No duh. Did that kid meet Christ? Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. He met Christ. He hears the gospel. He’s experienced the gospel because he’s had a whole world welcome. “You belong. You belong. You belong.”

“Well, wait a minute! I’m late. I missed the bus. I probably shouldn’t be here.”

And this expression—and believe me, this is loud as any proclamation could be—it’s as fine-tuned and powerful as any sermon could ever be. So when you think about the radical hospitality of God, the radical hospitality of, “You belong with me,” also think about your own chance to express that gospel message to others who feel like they don’t belong. To say to them, with your words, with your actions, “You belong. You are welcome. We are so glad you are here.”

Luke 15:

15 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Which of course, in the Middle East a couple thousand years ago, and still today, if you come into someone’s home and you share a meal, often hospitality has to do with food. Good. Something fundamental going on here together. Always has to do with conversation. Also has to do with eye contact, learning names, to say with our body, with our words, with our actions, with our very spirit, “I am so glad you are here.”

And really, when you think about that, I think this is generally true with Living Streams, as David and I talked about this a few months ago, the idea of radical hospitality and that being one of the dynamics of Living Streams, we really did think we’re going to hire a high school band for the parking lot. And then we’re going to get a bunch of people to come in early to create a gauntlet so that everyone coming in got a high five, or a hug, or a “We’re glad you’re here.”

We were defeated by the logistics, but the heart and the idea were good. But just imagine you coming in this morning and there is a band in the parking lot, and they’re wailing out some John Philip Souza tune, and they’re kind of marching, and you’re all, “What’s going on?”

And then somebody says, “Oh! They’re here for you.”

“Huh?”

“Well, yeah. That’s the welcome band. They’re here playing so that you know how welcome you are.”

“Wow.”

Then you walk into the foyer and bunch of people are high-fiving. They’re here for you. This is the kind of place this campus desires to be.

But here’s the cool thing. What if we brought the marching band to your neighborhood, or your house, or your back yard. And really, the marching band is probably some great barbecue, probably some great drinks, probably some fun and games in the back yard. And you’ve got some neighbors coming over and they feel this welcome. They are treated with “We are glad you are here. You belong.”

“You’re one of those weird-o religious people.”

No response needed. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

Okay, did they make the direct connection of, “Oh, I bet God’s glad I’m here”? Of course not. But hospitality is an experience of the good news that we belong with God in relationship. It’s an experience. It’s the beginning of what I call the non-verbal proclamation of the gospel.

Think about your own life. There were things that happened around it that told you you belong, that brought you in. You just didn’t know what they were. What you said was, “I want what they have.” Because hospitable people create a curiosity—especially in today’s divided world. This is a very subversive activity.

Luke 19:

19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd.

Think about this. We’ve got Zacchaeus. He’s a turncoat, he’s a tax collector, he’s stealing from people, he’s a liar and a cheat, he may live in a big, empty house on a hill and—ha ha!—he’s also short. And I think what you must imagine is a powerful, wealthy, but isolated, alone individual. And he wants to see what sort of person Jesus was. He didn’t really want to meet him. He doesn’t want to go hear a lesson, he wants to see what sort of person he is.

4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately.

I mean, Zacchaeus knows his internal life. He knows what he’s done. He’s going to spiritual prison and here’s the religious guy, the country rabbi that’s calling him out. He didn’t have that in mind. He climbed the tree because he wanted to see what sort of person Jesus was. Not to meet him. Not to talk to him. Not to get a lesson from him. But just to see him. Kind of a curious guy. Remarkable to me. Jesus knows his name.

By the way—become good at names. Know the names of your neighbors, the names of the people you sit next to in school. Go to one Starbucks. Learn people’s names. Go to one grocery store. Learn people’s names. Got to go shopping with my wife sometimes to get one gallon of milk. It’ll take an hour because she’s got to talk to everybody in Safeway. The guy that cuts the meat, the guy stocking the shelves, she knows all of the people that are checking the groceries. She walks in. They stop her. “Susan! How’s your mom?”

I’m going, “Give me the milk. Let me out of here.”

She’s one of my teachers in hospitality, welcoming and belonging. But just think about how crazy that is. It’s a subversive act. Go into the Safeway and learn people’s names and honor them for their work and ask them questions about their life. I promise. Experiment. Practice on this. Just try this for a couple of weeks. Same grocery store. Learn people’s names. Validate their work. Ask them questions about their life.

It’ll be a little weird at first. They’ll go, “Oh man. There’s a weird-o here. Better call security.” But they’ll get over that pretty quickly because that’s one human being validating another. And the human being that knows Jesus saying to the other one—regardless of where they are—“You belong. You are loved. You matter. Your work matters. I see you.”

A lot of hospitality is seeing, noticing, watching, sometimes the sad one, sometimes the isolated one, sometimes the one celebrating, but no matter what, an outward expression of the love of Christ is to notice. This means we have to slow down a bit. You know, you’re really not noticing people when you’re doing this (on phone), you’re doing that. It’s not happening. The idea that hospitality is cheap and free is incorrect. It’s actually pretty expensive. It costs time. It costs money. It costs some comfort. There’s a little bit of discomfort related to hospitality. But this is the whole subversion of the kingdom of God. It starts with Christ in the middle.

Matthew 25:

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

This is Jesus speaking.

35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,

I’ll stop there.

Luke 19:

5 …“Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

That Jesus. Doesn’t he know? The religious. Powerful. “We have a reputation to guard here and now you’re going with Zacchaeus? He’s the enemy. He’s been trying to destroy our town.”

8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Like, even just being welcomed, your name is used, “Come down, I’ll be with you.” His life goes upside down from everything he’s ever known. I have to think that comes from a vacuum of not belonging. But this belonging and the special nature of Jesus to notice, to “I see you, Zacchaeus,” is the thing that flips his life upside down.

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

The very purpose of God: seek and save the lost. And this is why broken people are so quick to be sought and to find Jesus. In self-sufficiency, “Everything is going my way,” it’s a heck of a lot harder to find Jesus. You find him most often in desperate moments, in lonely moments, in broken moments, in recognition of, “I don’t have it.” Yeah. You don’t. Me neither.

So what do we do? We’ve got a Savior. Died for our sins and rose to offer us life now, in hope and freedom, enjoying everything good.

Back to Matthew 25:

36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Wow. So when serving and giving our lives away to those who are lost or broken and lonely, and maybe different from us, maybe we have to enter into a little of our own discomfort to express the love and the knowing and the “I see you” and “you belong” and all of those things, what happens is, Jesus says, “Yeah. You did that to me.”

“But no, I thought I was doing it to them.”

“Yeah, anytime you’re doing it to them that way with your hospitable heart, this is what you’ve done to me.”

The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.

The practice of hospitality begins in the human heart. We realize that God has been hospitable to us, so 1) we are grateful. If you realize how hospitable, how “You belong, Marty, with all of your stuff,” the natural response is gratitude. We can express that in worship. We can express that in prayer. We can express that in generosity. We can express that in service. But a heart that is grateful is a heart that is true; because it recognizes what God has done and what he has said to us and how he activates that within us.

Then it causes us to begin to practice more hospitality. It frees us up. Hospitality is a subversive and courageous action in a divided culture. Actions, words, memories, smells, even touch. You’ve got to be careful in the climate today. But read the signals. You can tell if someone’s a hugger. Hug them. You can tell if they’re not a hugger. Shake their hand. But just pay attention. See, look. A handshake can be very welcoming to a person that needs a handshake. Maybe you shake the hand in a different way. Maybe you put the other hand on there.

In Ethiopia—this is so cool, so humbling—any older person, a younger person comes and shakes hands and they always put their left hand and they lift it up, because the young person does not want to be a burden on the older person. For once to lift their burden. Is that cool? Like a cultural hospitality. A sign of respect. A sign of eldership. A sign of “I want to be last. I want to be a light to you.” And you see this all over Ethiopia. It’s intentional. It’s thoughtful. We think about what will help them feel welcome most often in the home, but it really can be everywhere, noticing, affirming blessing.

I want to tell you about one of my hospitality heroes, Holman Mendoza. I brought a picture of him. It’s a picture of my job with Young Life. Rapha Allejo, the Director of Young Life in the Dominican Republic, Carlina Poe, Director of Young Life in South America, and Holman Mendoza, Director of Young Life in Nicaragua. If you know anything about the politics in the eighties, the Sandinistas were being fueled by the Russian government; whereas the United States was funding the Samosa government. I’m not going to get into the politics, because there are two stories worth telling on both of those sides.

But Holman was born in the eighties. He was raised as a revolutionary. I’ve seen his textbook. He showed me his second grade math textbook. One AK47 plus two AK47’s is how many AK47’s? This is how he’s learning math. Two hand grenades plus two hand grenades is how many hand grenades? The Sandinistas realized, “If we don’t start raising up revolutionaries, that will want to join our army and kill the enemy, then we’re going to lose this war.”

So Holman was raised to be a Sandinista revolutionary and his weapons were really going to be hand grenades, AK47’s and whatever he could make available to do violence to the enemy—until a guy named Emerson who played basketball, didn’t speak Spanish very well, walked into his neighborhood and said, “Do you want to play basketball?” Holman and his friends started playing basketball again and again and again. His Spanish wasn’t very good and neither was his basketball. But he had one and they didn’t have a basketball and they loved to play. They played everyday until Emerson said, “Holman, I want you to come to this Young Life camp with me.”

Remember, he’s consorting with the enemy. “I’m supposed to hate you. You’re supposed to hate me. But we’re playing basketball together. I’m really not sure about this.” But he just caught him on a whim and he doesn’t have something better to do, to go to this Young Life camp. He meets Jesus. He eventually becomes a volunteer leader, he gets a college degree, eventually goes on the Young Life staff. This is about fifteen years ago.

But he told me a couple of years ago a thing that really flipped me upside down. He goes, “Marty, I was raised to be a revolutionary. My weapons were going to be those of destruction.” But he said, “I’m still a revolutionary at heart. So I have new weapons, because I want to change my nation. I want to change Central America. I want to change North America. I want to be part of God’s changing the world. My new weapons of revolution are love and service and prayer and hospitality. But I want to fight with the same passion. I want to love my enemy. I want to welcome those who feel like they don’t belong into the welcoming arms of the family of God.”

This is the subversive nature of the simple but radical, ordinary hospitality. And really, my admonition to everyone here today: practice. Just do something. “Okay, I’m going to practice that. I’m going to learn a name. I’m going to take a little more time at Starbucks. I’m going to have my neighbors over—my actual, real neighbors, the ones that live next to me. I’m going to invite them over for a barbecue.”

Well, yeah, should you have a Bible study right away? Yeah, I kind of don’t think so. Have a barbecue. Make good barbecue. Find out the beverage of their choice. Serve that beverage. It might not be your beverage. But this is the idea of hospitality, that this tribe, Living Streams, would be those who are most hospitable. And there really isn’t something that’s more hospitable or expresses hospitality better than breaking bread. That this is our symbol in the body of Christ. It’s actually a revolutionary act to break bread together.

You can pass out the elements. When you think about this, this is God welcoming you to his table. Why? “I don’t know the theologies or I don’t know the doctrines, or maybe I do but I forgot them." Or maybe, “I’m not living them.” “I know them but I don’t live them.” No matter what, the welcoming nature of God is expressed most regularly and most simply in the act of communion. That God says, “You belong with me. You are mine.” We are brothers and sisters.

I would propose to you that not only is taking communion together an act of hospitality, it’s also an act of revolution. We are not going to live by the world’s values. We’re not going to think it’s about stuff or achievement. We are going to think about the love God, experience his love, and love people.

This is the place within the church, the tribe of the church, that we come together and God expresses that belonging. I actually think the most stunning thing about communion was the first one, when Jesus offered communion to Judas. I can’t believe this. He knew the betrayal. He knew what was going to happen, and he still says to Judas, “You belong with me.” So what this says to me is, no matter how far you have drifted, no matter how far you are, if this is your first time in church in twenty-two years, God says, “Glad you’re here.”

I mean, it’s nice that we say, “Glad you’re here.” But it’s a little bit nicer and lot more powerful that God says, “Glad you’re here. Welcome home, welcome home. Let’s share a meal together.”

And so communion expresses this idea of hospitality so beautifully. Theologically commanded in Scripture, and also it is an action, seemingly ordinary, but, like hospitality, subversive, powerful and a lot more than the sum of the parts.

On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread. He gave thanks and he broke it. He said to his friends, “This is my body broken for you.” So let’s take and eat the bread, the body of Christ.

And likewise, he took the cup, pretty ordinary in its day, always an expression of hospitality, always an expression of, “We are friends in this together.” And in particular, that this is all new to you, this is the blood shed on a cross for your sin and mine and an offer of sweet forgiveness forever. Not just the past stuff, but the today stuff and that tomorrow stuff which will come. Forgiven once and for all and again and again and again. And it’s why he has commended communion to us—so that we would remember that well. The blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sin, the new covenant. The old is passed away, behold, the new has come.

If you feel like you don’t belong, I have failed. Please don’t let my failure become yours. You belong. The whole Bible, all of God’s history, every one of his expressions is to say to you and to me and to call us by name, not some generic somebody, “Hey, Dude,” but to say to us, “You belong. You’re with me. We are together in this thing called life and I want you to have it in abundance.”

And for that very reason, you belong. We belong. Why? Because that’s what God wants. And he has a way of getting what he wants. Let’s pray:

Lord, thank you for your hospitality toward us. We’re a little bit nervous about being revolutionaries, but we can certainly invite our neighbor over. We can love them and we can pay attention. We can get to know the guy at Starbucks and remember his name, the gal at the bank that cashes the check, the guy at Safeway that’s mopping the floor, our neighbor, the one that’s next door and behind us. We ask for the gift of names and we ask for the practice of hospitality, that we would always be known as “those weird-o’s that welcome everybody. They’ve got something different.”
Indeed. The Holy Spirit indwells and expresses itself most beautifully in receiving God’s love and expressing his love by loving other people. We just admit, Lord, we need help on this. Probably going to fumble a few times. But that’s not news to you. We ask for help. We ask for your fruitfulness and your thriving in our lives. I pray in Christ’s name, amen.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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