Why Getting Even Never Works | Jesus Said What?!

So remember this when we hear Jesus commands today, before I was commanded to love an enemy, I was an enemy that God loved. Before you are commanded to love your enemy, you were an enemy whom God loved. Welcome to the Infocus Church podcast. This is week three of our series, Jesus said what? And Pastor Brent Derard takes us into Matthew chapter 5, where Jesus says the words almost nobody wants to hear. Love your enemies. Here's the message. I want to talk about something that has been difficult to work through this week, if I'm perfectly honest, but I would like for you to join me on this painful journey. I don't like traveling it by myself. So I'm going to have you join me this morning as we look at the words of Jesus, but they're dealing with a problem. We have lots of problems in our world, but we have a retaliation and vengeance problem in our world. It's a recurring theme of all kinds of movies and all kinds of shows, so much so right that we are typically cheering for the one who is exacting vengeance and retaliation. I can think back to one of the early movies that I remember of Dinsale, Washington, Man on Fire, which I think was like 2004 or something like that and man, there were some horrific things that he did, but we cheered them on because it was vengeance and retaliatory. And so it was like we felt compelled to say it's right. He deserves to be able to do that. And they deserve what's coming to them. It's the subject of countless songs, not just in country genre, but every genre about getting back and paying somebody back. But more importantly than that, that just kind of anundates our culture, it's seen in the actions of humans towards one another, crimes and killings and wars, and this is worldwide. And since Cain killed Abel, this has been a disease of the heart, produced by sin and it's hatred within our heart that affects us in a way that we feel justified in exacting vengeance or paying somebody back for what we think they deserve. And it's still rampant today. We see it in the seemingly small things. It's not just killing, that's why Jesus elevated what we do in our hearts in this particular passage we'll look at today in Matthew 5. It's also something that we experience in the small things or seemingly small where we try to land that might drop comment that humiliates somebody in our group chat. Or we also see it at the highest level of leadership in our own nation where mocking and demonizing and humiliating those who disagree with us is the norm. Within the last week, you might have heard the announcement that the United States military was planning to livestream the execution by firing squad of the man responsible for the horrific murders of 13 people at Fort Hood. It was horrific, it was terrible. The president has since called off the live stream but the justification for live streaming it went on for days until that happened. Christians can debate and will and disagree about capital punishment but here's the difference. Believing a punishment is justified and then turning someone's death into an event for public viewing are separate moral questions that point to the problem that we have. It should cause us to carefully examine what we call justice when we're being invited to feel something emotionally while watching someone else's life be taken. I even heard a very prominent pastor before the live stream was called off. Yes, he was publicly supporting capital punishment. He was publicly supporting the execution but he was also publicly supporting the live stream of it saying that he wasn't sure yet but he probably would watch it himself because in his words it was not a moral or biblical problem. We have a serious problem. I think we've become accustomed to vengeance. I think we've become accustomed to retaliating because it feels justified and when it feels justified we give ourselves a free pass when it comes to getting even or paying somebody back. I mean I remember as a kid it was like we just called it paybacks. Do you remember that? It's like you know you slap that's paybacks paybacks it's like you would you would almost die trying to hit somebody else last. Once we've marked somebody as our enemy, listen now once you've marked somebody as your enemy almost everything seems justifiable even if it's not ethical moral or biblical. We can become so comfortable with humiliating people that retaliation looks and feels more appealing than reconciliation say but wait aren't we called to be minister? Reporters of retaliation, I think that's the wrongation word. We're called to be ministers of reconciliation not retaliation not humiliation. So when we look at Jesus' words we see that we have a problem and it's not just a problem that's out there somewhere that's why this is a difficult message and why I've wrestled with this myself this week it's a battle that's being waged at all of our hearts. The bigger issue that we need to deal with this morning is when that same desire to get even to pay somebody back that just disagrees with us suddenly causes us to start making exceptions to what we believe God's mercy really means. Because restraint feels like we're surrendering justice and we want to exact it ourselves like oh you done mess with a wrong person now I know I'm a Christian but that don't mean I'm a doormat so justice is coming and I'm going to be the one that delivers it. I'm smiling it was just an reenactment of something that you might say we might say I might say he ever heard that I mean they just expect me to I'm a Christian I'm going to be walked all over well they're going to get there do and I'm going to make sure they get it. See that's what we're going to talk about today and when we hear Jesus' words words I believe we probably heard before unless you're new to church or watching online and new to this and if you're going to come probably to the same conclusion that I did this week and still often do is like Jesus said what Jesus you said what and I want us to see if we can agree with and apply Jesus' words because as we said last week we can often agree with Jesus and still don't apply his word to our life agreement and obedience or different things so can we agree and then obey when we are the ones that have been wronged not just somebody else out there and here's a genuine question that I propose to us today will our response be determined by the person who hurt us or by the Father who loves us if you have your Bible Matthew chapter 5 verse 38 through 48 will read the words of Jesus when he says you've heard that it was said eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth that's kind of where we want to stop but I tell you do not resist an evil person if anyone slaps you on the right cheek turn to them the other cheek also and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt hand over your coat as well if anyone forces you to go one mile go with them two miles give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you you've 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 calls his son to rise on the evil and the good and sins reign 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 the others do not even pagans do that be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect holy spirit I pray that you would illuminate the word of God today that you would transform us from the inside out to look more like our father God help us to apprehend understand and apply your word to our lives see I read that and I read that this week and I've read it a hundreds of times like Jesus you say what and before we walk through what Jesus is asking of us I want you to notice who he tells us to look at first who he's telling us to model our lives ever he's saying don't look he's not saying look at your circumstances he's not saying yeah but you can look at them and you're better often they are look at that situation he's saying I want you to take your eyes off of all of that and here's what I want you to do I want you to look at the father because that's who you're supposed to look like the heavenly father whose generosity has reached to people who have done nothing to deserve it that's why I want you to look at so remember this when we hear Jesus commands today before I was commanded to love and enemy I was an enemy that God loved before you were commanded to love your enemy You were an enemy whom God loved. We need to remember that when we start trying to decide who deserves our kindness and who doesn't. We need to remember that. I need to remember that when I want God to be merciful towards me and severe in his judgment towards somebody else. We need to remember that when we so easily assign the word "enemy" to people made in the image of God and write them off as people to be destroyed instead of people to be forgiven and loved. Everything we hear in these verses rests on the character of the Father. That's why Jesus says, "Look at the Father, our heavenly Father whom Jesus is teaching us to resemble." Because following Jesus means surrendering revenge and learning to love those who hurt us because that's how the Father has loved us first and always. And that doesn't mean that we still won't have some difficult questions. Believe me, I went through a lot of these difficult questions this week. That's why I'm inviting you to join me in them and to say that I have all the answers would be an incorrect statement. But I'm asking God to give me wisdom and discernment as it relates to how to apply this to my life. How do we apply this to our lives as his children, as his church? Because you're going to have questions like I had. Maybe you have these as well or you're going to have them if you go through this and apply this. And what do I do with the desire that I have to make somebody else pay? You mean you have that desire too? Am I human? Yes. Or what about how do I seek the good of a person who's still hurting me? What about when they're hurting the testimony of the gospel? What does love look like when trust has been broken and nothing has changed? Lots of questions. And God's here for all of them. In this passage Jesus brings all of those questions into this ordinary place of our lives where we're insulted, where we're imposed upon, where we're treated unfairly. And then he goes after our responses in those situations when someone does us wrong. Now as we go through this, I want you to consider somebody in your own life, considering your own minds, somebody that maybe has betrayed your confidence, somebody that maybe undermines you or says something about you at work that hurts you. Maybe they mistreated you, maybe they mistreated your family, your spouse, or your children, or maybe they just consistently treat you with contempt. And I want you to see what God may ask of you by a spirit today in following Him in obedience to Him so that we could be changed. To begin with, if we look at verses 38 through 42 that I just read where we've got the slap and we've got all these other things, Jesus confronts our tendency to let another person's hostility determine our response, to determine our conduct, how we're going to live. We want our goodness to depend on their goodness. We want our generosity to depend on their fairness and we want our good will to depend on whether they've been repentant or not. And Jesus says, "No, no, no, no, actually, that's not how you do this." But again, I ask this question, will our response be determined by those who have hurt us or by the Father who loves us? Because Jesus is exhorting us to not let those who have hurt us determine how we live and act and think, but to let the Father who He said, "I want you to look at His character and how He's responded to you and let that determine your response." So let's start with our desire to get payback because we all have it. So here's what Jesus is saying that we have to do. You've got to surrender, number one, you've got to surrender the desire to get even. You've got to surrender the desire to get even. I'm telling you, this is not easy. I really don't have to tell you. You know as soon as I say this, this is it easy. Simply put, He's saying refuse to return harm for harm. Well, that doesn't seem quite fair. I say this often, we don't want fair. We want mercy, and that's what God has given us. Jesus addresses our instinct to want to make another person pay. And He does that by asking us to surrender that desire to Him. Lay it down to the cross, or it's Pastor Keith had a week one, die to that, and take up our cross, and follow the character of God in Christ. And even those who use the Old Testament to justify certain retaliatory responses, and die for an eye or tooth for a tooth, God was never giving people an unrestricted invitation for personal revenge. The purpose of the law was to require proportionate justice and restrained excessive retaliation. So what's excessive retaliation? Jesus is exposing our temptation to justify excessive retaliation, like you hurt me, now I'm going to hurt you and your whole family. And then we cheer that on if we see it in a movie, or if Denzel does it. You see, because someone else wronged me, Jesus saying that doesn't give you the right to wrong them back. He confronts it, and then he gives us these four practical ways of how we surrender payback and instead, how we practice generosity. The first is the slap. And when I say that, like I like to think about as Will Smith and Chris Rock, right? The slap. But the reason he is saying and talking about the slap, that's the example, is because it's exposing in us the impulse to answer humiliation with humiliation, because getting slapped is humiliating. So he's saying, hey, don't answer that humiliating action with your own humiliating action. Don't be like those guys and those girls that you watch on TV and those competitions to just slap the living mess at each other. Have you all seen that? I mean, my goodness, it's like I'm at the gym and they show these different things. And it's like a table, this large, and I'm watching these people and all of a sudden they're just like, what? I'm like, dear God, what are we doing? And then the next person, after they come back and they go, they slap them until somebody knocks somebody out. I'm like, that's literally how we want to live life. And Jesus say you can't do that. Then he goes about the lawsuit over clothing. When is he exposing? He's exposing our attachment to possessions and the insistence on getting our due and things being fair and things being right as we define it. Then he goes about the compelled mile, if they say go one, well, then go two. Why? What is he exposing? Our resentment when somebody exercises power over us? Nobody likes that. And then the last example is the request for help. And it seems a little bit out of place because somebody asking me for help or money doesn't mean that they're trying to do me harm or they're my enemy. But what it does do is it broadens the picture that Jesus is trying to paint for us. Taken together all of these examples together portray a life that is marked by costly generosity even under the pressure and even under the overseeing of being wronged by somebody. And the question goes from what do they deserve for what they did? That's the question we want to ask ourselves. And the better question is what does faithfulness to my father require of me now? Again, will our response be determined by the person who hurt us or by the father who loves us? And I'll make a distinction, though, because surrendering revenge can coexist with seeking protection, telling the truth, reporting wrongdoing, and establishing necessary boundaries. These are some of the things that I wrestled with this week because I'm like, oh, yeah, but what about this and read about the slap and then I'm like, yeah, but what about this person and then what about this situation and what about when they did this and what about and you know, all of these things, all of the protestations that I had. And here's where some of this that's coming back to helping us understand what it doesn't mean. Loving someone does not require giving them continued access to harm you. Well, I'm just trying to love them. Well, that's not loving them. Being an enemy does not require remaining in danger, concealing wrongdoing, or immediately restoring trust where it hasn't been earned. And at the same time, you cannot overlook the difficulty and the costliness of the command that Jesus is giving us and asking us to deny ourselves. And then we have to ask ourselves, can we trust God with justice when I surrender personal payback and lay it down? This came to set us free, man, this is supposed to bring you and I freedom today because one of those places that we desperately need freedom deals with our relationships with one another. And in this case, the emphasis is that somebody's wrongdoing does not have to dictate your conduct and who you're becoming, turning the other cheek, giving the cloak, going the extra mile or actions we choose and obedience to Jesus to not just agree with him, but to apply it to our lives by his grace. And if we don't, we risk being held hostage by that hatred in our own hearts, the turns to bitterness and contempt, and we ask ourselves where we're allowing someone else's behavior to now shape who we're becoming instead of the character of the Father whom we're supposed to look like. I know the internal struggle that takes place, as I said, I've been fighting it this week. And I think about this, and maybe you do too, listen, if I don't strike back, if I don't get even, is anybody else going to defend me? Will they think that if I don't get payback, will they think that what happened is okay and do it again? The hurt we may have experienced, deserves care, it deserves wisdom, it deserves discernment, But also the desire to use hurt as an excuse or an authorization for revenge needs to be laid at the cross. And what might that look like today? What does revenge look like today? Because we sanitize it. Like I said, we sanitize it, we monetize it, we put it on Instagram, we make an account of it. Here's some ways that it can sneak into our life, repeating a true story about somebody because we want others to dislike them as much as we do. Creating an error in a way designed to embarrass that person that we're correcting who made the error in front of a bunch of people maybe. With holding ordinary fairness or help to make somebody feel the consequences of crossing us, taking satisfaction in their failure or their sickness or their humiliation. Yeah, they deserve that. Or waiting for an apology before we are even willing to pray for their good. Not every response is retaliatory. Again, we become masters at sanitizing and making it not as bad in our own minds because here's the thing. And that's why Jesus said, listen, I said don't murder, but I listen, if you have hatred in your heart towards someone, you need to deal with that because that's murder. And so we have to not just look at our actions where we maybe we didn't retaliate, but then what's going on in our hearts? Murder some false solutions that we come up with. And here's some of the false solutions. I mean, payback is a false solution, but that's probably the most normal one. Once they heard enough, then I'll feel better. That's payback. But here's some other false solutions, suppression. I will say everything is fine while I continue to rehearse the injury and the hurt and the pain in my mind. What about conditional goodwill? I will consider loving them after they become easier to love. Listen, bro, you're not going to love anybody at that point. Easier to love. I mean, the people that you love the most aren't even easy to love at times. Me included. Y'all should have said amen at that, but you didn't. You lost your opportunity. Okay. Shut up. Now I'm just kidding. Technical compliance. Here's technical compliance. I did not retaliate openly. So I assume that I have fulfilled its command. Listen, you can be just as hateful in your heart without ever saying a word, and Jesus is saying it's destroying you. It's killing you. If we're going to become more like our father, we must surrender retaliation and trust justice to the God whose mercy we've received. Be your retaliation unless trust justice to the God who has been merciful to us. Amen. Number 2. Please forgive me for saying shut up. I shouldn't say that. My kids will be like, "Dad, we don't say shut up." You're listening to the Infocus Church podcast. So far, Pastor Brent has shown us that getting even never settles the score. If this is speaking to you, send it to a friend who's carrying a hurt right now. Next, how to seek the good of the person who hurt you? Number 2. Seek the good of the person who hurt you. This is where I really was like, "Jesus said what?" I am going to withhold hurting them. But now you're telling me I got to go do good to them. Jesus' words are taking us way deeper than we want to go. And once we surrender the desire to get even a retaliate, Jesus is now directing us toward the other person's good, and he's saying, "I want you to practice generosity." If they ask for this, give them double. They say, "Go one mile, go two." And the underlying heart issue is becoming especially clear. We often want justice to include the satisfaction of personally making somebody pay. And Jesus is calling us to entrust that judgment to God while taking responsibility to love them. Romans 12 makes the connection explicit. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath for it is written. It is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord. Somehow we have got, it's mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Brent. And you insert your name there too. It says the Lord. Overall things. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. If you're doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not overcome evil, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. You could summarize this whole thing by saying, "What God is asking of us, their wrong does not give me permission to do wrong." Instead do good. You say, "Well, what about heaping burning coals on their head?" Well, we've probably been mistarred, or maybe you've misread that as some sort of, "I'm going to do good till it makes them feel bad." That's not what burning coals are. Coals is actually a picture, contextually, of humility and repentance. So we're going to do good until they come to a place of humility and repentance themselves because that is the ultimate goal of everything that God is asking us to do. And loving our enemies is not so that we could just do something difficult. It's so that they could come to a place of wholeness and repentance and restoration. That is the goal of all spiritual discipline and anything that God is doing in His delay of returning is so that all would come to know Him. Jesus doesn't just want us to restrain our retaliation. Basically, He's saying anybody can kind of do that. He wants us to actively love those who are our enemies. Surrender your desired retaliation, yes, but at the same time, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Here's one aspect of loving your enemy. Love and enemy means seeking their genuine good before they have earned your good will. It's hard to do. See, when I seek somebody's genuine good, what does that mean? It's what I just said that their genuine good includes repentance, freedom from destructive behavior, reconciliation with God and with people, emitting their genuine needs, and see what retaliation wants is for somebody really just to kind of burn with judgment. They're going to get what's coming to them. Love does not require approving what they have done or helping them to continue to do it. But, what it does ask of us is that we would love and pray for them. See, this is where it gets infinitely more costly. And I'm not arguing with you that what's being required of us is costly. This is where I think of Micah 6.8 that we're called to do justly and love mercy. And that's hard. I want to just do justly. But to paraphrase Carol Lawson, who's the Duke University Women's Basketball Coach, I saw this this week and I thought it was so powerful. She was encouraging her team. It's like, y'all are all waiting for life to get easier. Quit waiting for life to get easier. When you're in high school, you're just waiting. Man, once I get out of high school, it's life's going to get easier. Once I get married, life will get easier. Once I get this car, get this house, get this job, get this income, life's going to get easier. And what she was saying, and what I would say is life's never going to get easier. You're just going to do hard things better. See, life's never going to get less costly. You're just going to daily pick up your cross better. And you're going to die to yourself more. And then we ask the Holy Spirit to form in us the love that Jesus is asking us to give, that we don't know how to do. That's why on this week, Holy Spirit, I need your help to love people and to pray for people like this because I really don't know how to do that. And typically when things Jesus said, get the most costly or difficult, we start to explain away the command as to why it does it pertain to us. We use those rationalizations, all of us do, like I'll be kind when they apologize. That's when I'll be kind. I don't hate them, I just hope they get what's coming to them. I mean, when I say it out loud, we do, it's like laughable. But yet that's what we think. I'm praying for them. I'm praying for them, but I mainly want God to prove that I'm right. That's the answer to my prayer. I'll love them, as I said a moment ago, once I feel differently. And if I only loved when I felt like it, I would never love like Jesus called me to love. I'm pretty sure that's where and why God graciously gives us the direction here to pray, because prayer is what gives us the immediate place to begin when you don't feel like it, well then I don't either, let's pray. You may not feel affection, it might not even be wise to have contact with an individual, but there is something that we can do, and Jesus is saying you can pray. You can ask God to work for that person's true good. You can begin practicing love while still honestly acknowledging the pain in the hurt. Obedience does not require pretending the wound has healed or was never there. But what it does require is for us to answer the question of whether we're willing for God to show mercy to someone who has hurt us. You know, you think about Job, right? See God, that's why I didn't want to come and preach the gospel in essence to them. I didn't want to tell them about you because I knew you'd forgive them. Choose to seek their good. You've heard that it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you love your enemies. to pray for those who persecute you. And Jesus is naming love and prayer as the response that we can start with to our enemies and our persecutors. And you may not know what to pray yet. There have definitely been times where I have said, like, what am I supposed to pray, God? I don't feel anything. Actually, I just feel like I need you to go do something. Go get 'em. And then I have to cry out, Father, you know what happened. You saw it all. You know how I was wronged. But I'm praying that you bring that person to repentance. I'm praying that you would bring them to a place of wholeness, God. And I am asking that you would not let that hurt, continue to hurt me in a way that I become somebody that doesn't look like you. That's hard, but there's a both and here that's helpful because I believe seeking someone's good can include confronting their wrongdoing and pursuing accountability with the aim to include their repentance and their restoration. That is the goal. So we ask again, do I want this person to become whole or do I just want them to hurt? Do I want my response to be because of what the person that hurt me did or do I want my response to be what the Father who loves me has done for me? Seek the enemy's good because God sought my good while I was still his enemy. So I just surrender my desire to get even and I seek to do good as hard as that is and maybe it's just starting with the prayer. And then finally, let your Father's love become the pattern for yours. As I just said, Matthew 5, 45 through 48, talks about how God shines His light, the sun rises and the rain falls on the evil and the good. They say, listen, anybody can love those who love them. Anybody can do that. The worst person on the planet loves somebody that loves them. These verses here give us the reason and the foundation for everything that Jesus has commanded us to do and He's pointing out that the Father give sunlight and rain to people across the moral divide. It doesn't even matter. Like, He then challenges the love being confined to those who return it, He challenges us just welcoming those who are in our tribe. And He's saying, our love, the Father's love that we're supposed to have is to display the family resemblance of belonging to a heavenly Father that loved even His enemies onto His death. Think about the picture He's giving us. The sun comes up over the home of somebody who loves God. At the same time, the sun comes up over the home of somebody who denies and hates God. Rain the same way. The Father's generosity reaches people who have done nothing to deserve it. Like me. And we know that. You should know that personally, if you've given your life to Jesus, that His love reached into your life when you did nothing to deserve it. God sought out our good while we were still His enemies. Scripture says, that's why we keep seeking somebody's good, even when they have not changed or have no look of ever changing. We have received a love that reached us before we ever returned it. And Jesus is calling us to let that love shape our responses to even our enemies. Jesus said, what? There's a difference between reciprocal love and the love that Jesus is talking about. Loving people who love us is good, as He said. I mean, we even have a hard time doing that. Let's be honest. Loving those that love us. Even, that's why Paul's been so much time talking about how you love people in the body of Christ, 'cause you're not doing that very well either sometimes. But He's saying, look, I'm challenging you to extend that love where there is no assurance or appreciation or agreement or repayment, and it might not ever come. So a good question to ask ourselves is, is somebody was watching how I treat people who oppose me? Would they learn about my Heavenly Father's character? Verse 48 completes the movement by telling us what it looks like to be whole, or as Pastor Kevin tells our students here, holy His, holy belonging to God, W-H-O-L-E. We are not talking about perfectionism here, 'cause they'd be perfect as your Father's perfect. We're not talking about perfectionism. We're talking about wholeness. Love that reaches enemies is essential for your spiritual wholeness. Jesus is trying to encourage us and exhort us to form a love in us that does not stop where our circle ends, but actually does what He told us to do in the great commission that our love extends to the ends of the earth, not the end of our circle. Romans 8 or Romans 5, 8, which I have referenced, but I will read, provides the Gospel foundation for the response that Jesus is inviting us to have. But God demonstrates His own love for us while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him? For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through His life? By the blood of Jesus, we have been saved. So Paul describes Christ dying for sinners and reconciling us to God while we were His enemies. And what we see is that we have personally received as a believer the kind of love that Jesus is commanding us to extend to others. What Jesus is telling us is let your father define your love and nothing else. The father's character supplies the model, the pattern, his generosity reaches people that have done nothing to deserve it. So sometimes your generosity is going to reach to people who've done nothing to deserve it. Jesus calls us beyond love, confined to those who reciprocate and to love those who are even our enemies to go from our own tribe to every tribe, nation and tongue, to the murderer, to the adulterer, to the idolater, to the other political party, to the atheist, to the Muslim, to the Hindu, to anywhere in between and anybody that I might paint or call an enemy, God's love knows no bounds. The question we must ask again is, will we continue to obey Jesus when loving our enemy is costly and doesn't bring an immediate reward? And before we answer that question, let me tell us to remember that before I was commanded to love my enemy, I was an enemy that God loved and he proved that scripture says by sending his son Jesus to shed his blood on our behalf. And here's the amazing thing now in Christ. He now calls us friends. Now in Christ, he calls you sons and daughters of God. He has made us family by his blood. And what we're doing, Jesus, as we think about that, being his sons, being his daughters, being his family, being those that are supposed to reflect the character of our father, what would it look like if we actually did what Jesus is telling us to do, even this week. So here's just a few applications. And then we're going to see a song about the blood of Jesus, which I think is so appropriate, because there is no other way for us to do this. You're not going to will power your way into loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. It won't last. But because of the blood of Jesus, because of the grace of God, because of the mercy of God, because of the power of the Holy Spirit we can. So here's what we can do. First of all, name the person or persons. You find hardest to love privately before God. Like, don't just yell them out right now. Or don't go home and put them on Facebook. My pastor said to name the person that I find the hardest to love. And it is, drum roll, please, Josiah. Don't do that. That would be a passive-aggressive way of trying to get revenge. So name the person to God that you find the hardest to love. And then I want you to pray daily for their genuine good, including repentance and transformation, where needed. And then maybe you choose one thing that would be a fitting act of obedience to follow Jesus' footsteps, like stop a retaliatory behavior that you've been doing. Stop it. Or speak truth without contempt but with love. Or maybe meet a real need where doing so is appropriate and is wise. See if we're gonna apply what Jesus said to our lives and not just agree with his words, then we have to follow the father's lead and let his love shape the persons that we're becoming, the church that we're supposed to be. And I was thinking about this this week as I was wrestling with this and I was riding down names and it was hard. I've joked how I have like multiple, journals that I'm like a serial journal starter and never finish her and then just get a new one like you write in it like two pages and then you go and get another one so like this is I've got one in here from 1998 and then the next entry is like 2010 and then you go over here and there's 1984 and 2012 you're like what if anybody ever has to put my timeline together by my journals good luck but I want you to ask God to help you to bring the persons to mine and then bring the hurt that you're feeling honestly to God and remember the mercy that you received from Jesus first and then return to the question we've been asking throughout the series why you call me Lord Lord and then refuse to do what I say God by your grace would you help me to do one act of obedience that shows and proves that I am not being the person that is being formed by the one who hurt me but I am becoming the person that you want me to be because of your love I'm not going to let the person who hurt me determine who I become I'm gonna let the Father who loves me determine who I become and if you would just think for a moment what it would look like for a multi-generational multi-ethnic church in our world today to love one another and to love the world around us this way then you can understand why the power of the gospel is seen and how we love even those we disagree with for the glory of God I believe God wants to do something miraculous in us to set us free personally and to use us for his glory corporately in this community and in the world in Memphis and wherever he takes us to shine the light of God's love if we do that I believe God's gonna do incredible things in us and through us amen let's pray Heavenly Father I thank you so much I thank you for everyone in this room I thank you for everyone watching online and you may be sitting there with every head bound every eye closed you may be sitting there going you know what you don't really understand what this person did to me and you're right I don't but God does and as much as I want to and as much as I've tried this week I can't find the loophole and so if I don't have all the answers and I don't know what my particular situation looks like or your particular situation looks like then I just go back to the word and I know this I begin to pray and ask God to help maybe that's where you start today God I don't even know how to respond I don't even know how to love but I don't want this hurt and this pain in this betrayal or whatever it may be to shape and form my heart any more God I want to release that to you God you are just and I trust you with your justice but right now I am praying for your mercy to be poured out and as we ask God to do that that he would heal people that he'd restore people yes he would heal and restore us but he'd also heal and restore those who we once called enemies or once called us enemies thanks for listening to the Infocus Church podcast here's the line to carry into your week before I was commanded to love an enemy I was an enemy whom God loved if this message helped you send it to someone who needs it find us at infocus.church and on Instagram at infocus church we'd love to see you on a Sunday in Augusta