The Golden Rule - Luke 6:30-31

Rule #12 pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

My name is Connor. I'm filling in for Tucker this

week. I'm one of the assistant pastors

here. He is at a wedding in

Washington. And so him and his family are

there. And today we are going to be

opening up the Gospel of Luke. The rule that I just quoted to

you is from Jordan Peterson's 2018 book Here on the Screen.

It's called 12 Rules. It's the 12th rule, the final

rule for life and antidote to chaos.

Now, you might be familiar with this book.

You some of you probably are. In the first few years, it sold

5 million copies, and by now it's sold around 10 million

copies. Many people were helped by the

rules that he laid out, by the things that he said, by having

some semblance, an idea of how to live their lives.

Young men in particular took a liking to it and it caused

somewhat of a cultural phenomenon going in to and

through the pandemic, became a global bestseller and was on

audibles #1 for many weeks. It catapulted him and is

speaking to to unparallel heights for him personally.

But he wasn't the only famous American to do something like

this. In fact, Americans have been

doing this since the time America became America.

Thomas Jefferson famously had his 10 Rules for Practical Life

and if you read them, a lot of them are very helpful and good,

and he followed some of them. One of them I find funny.

He said stay out of debt as much as possible.

If you know anything about Thomas Jefferson, when he passes

away, they have to sell all of Monticello to pay for all of his

debts. Benjamin Franklin there on the

left, he famously had 13 virtues that he said were the way to

live. And the story goes that he set

out to reach perfection by spending 13 weeks practicing the

13 principles, 13 virtues, and every week you practice one for

13 weeks. And in hopes of becoming perfect

and doing all the things he said.

It didn't really work, but it was helpful to do.

Now, my question for you is, have you ever written or thought

about what these rules for your life might be?

My guess is some of us have. And if you haven't, you at least

I gave you a few minutes to write out the rules for your

life, could jot down 3-4, maybe up to 12 or 13 fairly quickly.

Because we all have, whether we had consciously thought about it

or not, some rules that we live by, ways that we make decisions,

and how we decide what we are going to do.

This question, though it's not just an American question, is

actually a biblical question. When you read the Old Testament,

and some of us probably have, and if you have, you know, it's

hard to read. And there one of the reasons

it's very difficult to read is because there are in the Old

Testament, not 12, not 13, but 613 rules for living.

Now, you can imagine as Israelites trying to follow

this, they tried to think of some ways to simplify it.

How can we simplify all 613 of the laws and commandments given

to us by God through Moses so that it's easier to follow in

our day-to-day lives? How can we simplify it?

And so people in Jesus's day are having this conversation.

And we know this because there's this collections of writings

from around that time called the Babylonian Talmud.

And in there there is this quote from Rabbi Similai.

He's a teacher in Israel just before the time of Jesus, the

generation previous. And he says this.

He says Micah the prophet came and he reduced the law to 3.

So 613 down to three. That's more manageable.

Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.

That's in Micah chapter 3, Isaiah and Isaiah chapter 56

Micah 3 · chapter mention Isaiah 56 · chapter mention

reduces it down to two. Keep justice and do

righteousness. Even more doable and

rememberable. Amos reduces it then down to 1.

He says name is chapter 5. Amos says that God says seek me

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

and you shall live seek me. Habakkuk also reduces it down to

1 saying the righteous will live by faith.

In Habakkuk 2, it says that they might be wondering, well, I'm a

Christian and love the Bible and so I want what the Bible says to

be true for my life and I want to live it out.

And so which one is it? Because seek me and live it kind

of overlaps with the righteous shall live by faith, but it's

not quite the same. So how should I live?

How can we actually formulate this in a helpful manner?

Well, there's a famous story about this guy.

He's a gentile who went to visit a rabbi route the same time

right before Jesus named hello. And he goes up to hello and he

says, I want you to teach me the whole law.

I'm a gentile, I don't know any of it.

Teach me all of the law and the prophets, all the Old Testament

while I stand on one leg. So before I put my other leg

down, as long as it takes me to stand like this, I want to learn

the law. And LL responds, that which is

hateful to you do not do to your neighbor.

He says this is the whole Torah, the rest is just commentary.

Go and learn. So which is it?

That sounds maybe a little bit familiar, more familiar to our

ears, but which is how do we live?

It's a question that the people in Jesus's day were asking.

It's the question that we're asking, what's a way that we

could figure out how to live day by day in light of what God has

done and wants to do through us. And so when Jesus, as we open to

Luke chapter 6, verse 31 today in his sermon on the plane, when

Luke 6:31

Jesus tells us what he's about to say today, he's not entering

into a conversation that hasn't been had before.

He's not starting a brand new theology on reducing the law and

trying to figure out how to summarize it.

He's answering a very common question in his day.

And likewise, he's answering a very common question in our day.

How do we live? How can you sum up what all of

God is saying in a memorable and helpful way so that we can make

decisions based on God's will? This is Jesus's answer.

Luke 6 verse 31 And just as you want men to do to you, you also

Luke 6:31

do to them. Likewise.

This is probably well known to each of us, probably maybe more

famously, do unto others as you would want them to do to you,

but we would call the golden rule.

Matthew adds a little bit when he quotes Jesus saying this.

He says, therefore whatever you want men to do to you, do also

to them, for this is the law and the prophets.

So he says the Old Testament can be summed up.

Law and the prophets is Jesus's shorthand for saying the Old

Testament. It's how they would have

referred to it. And he says what you want men to

do to you, do also to them. Now for you faithful and fervent

Bible readers, you might be wondering, you might have

thought before, well that's that's true.

If that is what the whole commandment is, that's what you

sum it all up with that, then what about what Jesus says in

Matthew 22? And he's asked by a Sadducee who

was a lawyer, and he gives a different answer.

We'll read that. He says this.

He says, teacher, the Sadducee comes to Jesus, which is the

greatest commandment in the law. Now you might know what he's

about to say. Jesus says to him, you shall

love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,

with all your mind. This is the first and the great

commandment. And the second he says is like

it. You shall love your neighbor as

yourself. On these two commandments hang

all the law and the prophets. So you might be wondering, well,

Jesus, is it one or is it 2? I thought you'd clear it up, but

you kind of just muddied the water a little bit.

Well, here's how I think it makes sense of it.

Jesus, when he's asked by this teacher, by this yes, teacher,

how do we understand the whole lot of the prophets?

What's the greatest commandment? He's responding as a good

teacher would. He's responding to that

particular question in the particular way the questions

asked. So when Jesus says to him, you

shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind,

and strength, and your neighbor as yourself, he's actually

quoting from Leviticus. So he's giving the answer that

this man was asking for. Now, Jesus is a great teacher,

he's a great rabbi, and so he answers that man in that way.

But when he's preaching the Sermon on the Plain and also the

Sermon on the Mount, he's preaching something that he

wants people to go home and remember.

He's preaching in the mountain and then the people are going to

go home to their cities and their families.

And he wants to teach them in a way that sticks that they can

remember because they're not going to be there with tape

recorders and you can get the YouTube video.

They don't have any of that. They had to remember it.

And So what he says to them is he sums up, you shall love the

Lord your God, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself

with something that is catchy and memorable and clear and

helpful. He says you shall love people,

shall love them by doing unto them as you would want done unto

you. That is how you live.

That is a summation of the law and the prophets.

And you know that this is a good teaching of Jesus.

You know that that's a helpful way to phrase it because you

went out to the streets of Boise and you asked most people,

probably 9 out of 10, if not ten out of 10 people, what is the

golden rule. They could probably tell you

word for word. Do unto others as you would want

done to you. Most people, certainly most

people in a in a church congregation and certainly most

people that heard Jesus teaching were going home.

They could remember this. And not only is this what Jesus

is saying is summing up the law and the prophets, but it also

sums up his sermon on the plane as we've gone through so far,

the attitudes and the woes and love your enemies.

This statement really sums up everything that Jesus has talked

about and is going to talk about.

Now, the way that the we've learned to read things

throughout probably middle school, high school, elementary

school, how you probably learn to write an essay is sequential

or linear. So probably most of us, if we

had a good writing teacher in the American style, said to you,

you want to start your essay with a thesis.

And in your thesis you're going to say what you're going to

argue for. And then you want to give like 3

paragraphs arguing for that point and make your point very

clear. And you want to make it so clear

that at the end you can give a conclusion where you sum up

everything that you said and it's clear, it's to the point

and people can know where you stand on this issue.

Probably sounds familiar to most of us.

Well, for ancient Israelites, learning to read and write and

tell a story or convince, the way that they would learn to

write is circular. So not ABC, but they would read

something, they would write something, they would read it,

and they would read it over and over again.

So they would read the Sermon on the Mount once it gets written

down, or they would remember over and over again in this

circular manner. And when you do it that way,

when your reasoning is circular, the thing that's at the center

is actually the thing that stands out.

And so in for Luke and for his readers, the thing at the center

was the main point. And what's at the center on the

sermon on the plane is love your enemies and do good to those who

persecute you. And as you continue in that

paragraph, this is the summation of all that Jesus has said in

this paragraph. So the summation of the center

part of Jesus's teaching of the main point of the sermon on the

plane is this to do unto others as you would want them to do

unto you. And because that's the case,

this is how we read everything in the sermon on the plane.

So you want to understand what Jesus is saying when he's giving

the beatitudes of the woes. Go back to this.

It brings it to light. We'll take verse 30 right before

this as an example. Jesus says give to everyone who

asks of you and from him who takes away your goods, do not

ask them back. Now, we were just to try to live

that this week. It'll be incredibly difficult,

right? In fact, if we set that out as

the way that we were going to govern a nation or rule a city,

it probably wouldn't work, right?

Most of us recognize that's just the way towards anarchy.

So how do we make sense of this? Well, let's put this into

practice. Jesus says the center of this,

do unto others is you want done unto you.

So give to everyone who asked of you, OK, if I'm somebody who is

asking something of someone else, if I need something, what

would I want someone to do for me?

So the teaching of Jesus is to say, let's put myself in that

person's shoes. Let's think about what it would

be like for a moment. I was that person and I came to

me with a question of can I have that or can you help me with

this? Well, I would, it probably would

have been hard to get to that point and to admit that I need

help. It probably would have been a

kind of show of humility to, to even ask the question.

And I'm probably hoping that that I respond with kindness and

give a yes. And then I help them

begrudgingly, kind of hoping that that person would take me

into consideration and see my need and, and not ask me any

questions, whatever it might be. We're going to put ourselves in

that person's shoes. And all of a sudden this becomes

truly a way to live and begins to make sense.

Then the second part gets even harder because it's talking

about those who steal from you. He says from him, who takes away

your goods. Do not ask them back.

So Jesus is saying put yourself into their shoes due to them as

you'd want done to you. If I'm somebody who is needing

to steal at the point of theft to make my life make sense and

work, what would I want someone to do for me?

Well, I'd probably want them to allow me to take the the thing

that I took and maybe even find me and forgive me and give me

more and answer the root problem of why I have to steal begins to

make more sense as we think about all of Jesus teachings in

light of this, the thing that all the law and the prophets

hang on. Now, Tucker's made a point

throughout this sermon series to point out that the way of love

is ultimately the way that we have to make decisions.

He's pointed out that if a friend comes to you and says,

Hey, I'm asking of you for 40 bucks, but last week I asked you

for 20 bucks and that 20 I spent all of my addiction and this 40

I'm going to spend also on my addiction.

Then the loving thing is not to to say here, take all that I

have, take 40 bucks and go and, and spend it on your addiction.

The loving thing is to think, well, what would I want done for

me if I was addicted and spending money on tons of money

on my addictions? What would I want someone to do?

I'd want them to step into my pain, my brokenness and actually

fix the root of that problem. And so this teaching of Jesus to

unto others as you would want them to do to you, helps us to

make sense of everything that is in the Bible, but in particular

everything that's in his sermon on the plane.

So let's take a look at what he is saying by this and to look at

that, we'll look at what he's not saying first.

So the first one, I actually got this one from my dad.

I was home in Colorado this week visiting my parents, my sister.

And we, I was chatting with him about preaching this Sunday.

And he said, oh, what you're preaching on?

And I said the golden rule. My dad said, oh, I love that

rule due to others before they do to you.

And we laugh, right? Because that's obviously not the

golden rule. But if we're honest, that's how

a lot of the world functions. That's how a lot of workplaces

function. I want to look good before the

boss before you, so I get the raise or promotion.

I want to slander you before the boss so that I look good so that

I can get the raise or promotion before you slander me.

So what happens in politics? We're going to drag your name

through the mud before you can drag our name to the mud.

We're going to do this before you can do that.

It's the way that in, in, in, in many of our families that have

brokenness and betrayal in people act.

I'm going to do to you before you can do to me so that I can

feel comfortable in this home or this marriage or this

relationship. It's the way that it's kind of

summed up. It's a dog eat dog world, right?

We're going to do to you before you can do to me.

Now, that's obviously not the golden rule, but as we go down

this list, it gets a little bit closer.

So the next one is do more, a little bit better than doing

before someone's hurt you. So you're going to do what

you're going to do just a little bit more because you need to get

even. But they also, they started it.

So you just a little bit more to, to make amends.

And then what happens, right? They, they say, well, you, you

did a little bit more to me and so I need to do a little bit

more to you. And the, the cycle of revenge

kicks in. One of the the best movies to

illustrate this point. And it's definitely not a

Christian movie because it's illustrating this point, but

it's the movie John Wick, right? If you know the movie, The start

of the movie is him with his dog that his late wife gave him and

his enemies. His enemies killed the dog.

That's that's pretty. It's pretty bad.

Well, John Wick's response, you might think, OK, we can kill

their dog or kill two of the dogs.

His response is to go and kill everybody in that organization

and everybody they know, like the rest of the movie is just

John Wick killing people. And it's the law of revenge.

You hurt me, so I will do more to you.

The next law that we often live by and that gets us a lot closer

is do no more. Do you know more?

It's actually this law comes from the Law of Moses.

Moses lays out the 10 commandments and the 613 laws

and commandments, and one of them, one of them is an eye for

an eye and a tooth for a teeth. In other words, if your tooth

gets knocked out by somebody, then the right response is for

their tooth to get knocked out. Tucker's pointed out that in our

hearts, we want to do more. Their tooth gets not.

Our tooth gets knocked out. We want to knock out their whole

mouth. But Moses says the right thing,

the just thing is a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, a life

for a life or whatever it might be.

And this gets us closer, doesn't get us quite there.

This next one is going to sound familiar.

It's going to sound like Hillel. He says do no harm, Do no harm,

or don't do to others what you don't want done to you.

This is getting a lot closer. We're going to think about other

people. I'm not going to do to them what

I don't want done to me. This is, if you know anything

about Buddhism, this is kind of the, the, the principle that

Buddhists live by is do no harm, not going to do anything wrong

to other people. And it's, it's OK, It gets us

close. But Jesus summing up all the law

in the province, giving the summation for what he is about

and the people he's trying to create, the people group, the

church that he wants to to create and how they're going to

live. He says do unto others as you

would want done to. You see how big of a step

forward that is, Not just don't do or do no harm or get even.

Jesus is saying proactively and regularly think about other

people and what is going on in their lives and then do to them

what you would want done to you. Do the good thing to them before

they do a good thing to you, do a good thing to them.

If they could never do a good thing to you, and if they've

never done anything good or have always done bad, look to others

and ask what can I do for them that I would want done for me?

When author sums it up this way, he says think of the best thing

you can do for the worst person and go ahead and do it.

Think of what you'd really like someone to do for you and do it

for them. Think of the people to whom you

are tempted to be nasty and lavish generosity on them

instead. These instructions, he says,

have a fresh spring like quality.

I love this. They're all about new life, of

bursting out energetically like flowers growing through the

concrete and startling everyone with their color and vigor.

The picture of walking down the streets of downtown Boise and

there's flowers poking through the concrete, poking through the

sidewalk. That's what it's like to live

this way, to do unto others as you would want done to them,

done to you. Living that way in a world that

does no harm or gets even or gets revenge shines.

It shines in the workplace. It shines as you talk about

politics. It shines in the streets of the

city. People take notice of that and

they say that is beautiful, that is good.

That is the way to live. So the big idea I think that

Jesus is getting that is that doing to others as you would

want done to you. Is the guiding principle, the

guiding rule for our lives. It's not the 12.

It's not the 13. It's not the 613.

It's not the 10, three, the two. It's this one.

Do unto others what you would want done to you.

Now, this doesn't give us every single answer.

Do unto your spouse as you'd want done to you.

Doesn't tell you exactly what to do, but it does point us in the

right direction. It's like a compass.

My wife and I recently have been rewatching the Pirates of the

Caribbean movies. We had a couple over from our

community Group A few Sundays ago.

We watched the first one and they were like, you should just

watch all of them. I think there's like 5 or 6 of

them. And so we're on like 3 or 4

right now. And if you've watched them, you

know that Captain Jack Sparrow has a compass.

And you know that it's a strange compass because it doesn't point

north. And everybody at the beginning

of the movie thinks that it's broken.

In fact, you kind of think that it's broken.

Like, I just have this broken compass that can't point N It's

a strange thing to have as a pirate who's sailing the seas

who needs to know where he's going.

But you begin to figure out that this compass, well, it may not

point N it does work. And it actually works really

good. Works really quite better than

any other compass that there was.

This compass points whoever's holding it to the thing that

they want to the thing that they want most for Jack Sparrow might

be treasure, might be rum. And I think this is how it

functions for us. This rule that Jesus gives

functions like this compass, it may not seem to work at first.

You think due unto others as they, as I would want done to

me, it seems like a broken compass doesn't seem like it's

going to create flourishing. And in fact, as you live this

out, people will look at you and say, why would you do that?

Why would you go there? And it doesn't give us the exact

particulars about how to get to the end destination of doing for

them what needs to be done. But it points us in that general

direction. Might have a million things you

could do and it eliminates 900,000 of them.

It gives you just a handful of things to choose from.

I'm going to do the thing that I'd want done for me.

Now, odds are that your compass doesn't always work this way.

I know that there are though, in our community, in our church,

there are people who's this is the guiding principle by their

life and it like never fails. And we are so thankful for you.

We need you as role models and models and people that are doing

this in our church because we are so blessed because of you.

So thank you. Continue on.

But if you're like me, your compass isn't isn't there yet,

and you need to work on it and it needs to be fixed so that it

can reorient itself to the ways that Jesus's compass works.

So I want to give us to that. Give us that in three simple

practices as we close. The 1st is to see one writer

famously said the first act of love is always the giving of

attention. I just love that the first way

that you love someone, the first act is to give them attention.

A while back, number of years ago, my I went on a high school

mission trip for the first time and we went down to San

Francisco and went to the Tenderloin in San Francisco.

And if you know anything about the Tenderloin, it's this place

that it's kind of hard to believe that it exists in such a

well off city. There are people who live on the

streets addicted to all kinds of things.

And they prepare you for this before you go out.

We're going to work with this organization called City Impact

and they take you out to hand out some food and to invite

everybody to this block party. And they said we want to prepare

you. You're going to see a lot of

crazy stuff today. You're going to see people using

the bathroom on the street because this is their home, they

live there. You're going to see people using

hard drugs on the street. And we know that you are going

to be tempted to try to look past them and to think of them

as something less than human. But our challenge for you is to

with each person, as you walk by them, do your best to look them

in the eye and remind yourself that they, although broken, are

made in the image of their creator And see how they might

change the way that you talk with them, the way that you

invite them. And it and it does it did.

This is changes the way we relate to one another here in

Boise and community and in church and our families.

When we look at one another in the eyes and and we see each

other truly see each other as image bearers of our king.

It changes the way that we think and act towards one another.

Now that's a great first step. Second step is to begin to feel

what they're feeling, to think about what would it be like to

be them? What would it be like to have

that to do that or to live here. This is often called sympathy or

empathy, and some of the the most sympathetic, empathetic

people that you'll meet are the most curious people.

Developing a heart of curiosity about other people is one of the

greatest and most helpful ways to feel what they're feeling.

What would it be like to live here?

Would it be like to go through that, to ask yourself those

questions and allow for yourself to sit with that?

I can't imagine what it'd be like to go through that

brokenness or for that person to leave or for that to happen to

me and I end up here and begin to feel what they're feeling

now. Jesus doesn't leave it there.

Jesus says not feel what they're feeling, says do to them what

you want done for you. And the final act is to do so

with that in mind, with how you feel about them, how you feel

about being in their shoes, do what you would want done to you.

Now, while practicing this may get us some results, it's not

ultimately enough. One commentator says this.

There are two particularly astonishing things about these

instructions. First, there's simplicity.

And you've already noticed that do unto others you want done to

you. That is so simple, he says.

It's obvious, it's clear, it's direct, and it's memorable.

But the second thing that is surprising is their scarcity.

They're simple, they're clear, they're memorable, but yet

they're not lived out. How many people do you know who

really lived like this? How many communities do you know

where these guidelines are? Rules of life.

He asks what's gone wrong? Has God changed?

Has God changed since Jesus spoke these words?

Has God changed since Luke recorded them?

Or, he says, have we forgotten who he really is?

He gives the answer. Only when people discover that

this is the sword of God they are dealing with, will they have

any chance of making this way of life their own.

The first step in doing unto others as you would want done to

you is to recognize that that is the God that we serve.

You can imagine Jesus looking at us and seeing us and saying,

What would it be like to be separated from the Father?

What would it be like to live in eternal disconnection with God?

And you can imagine him feeling that pain and saying, well, I

know that if that were me, I would want somebody to bridge

the gap, to do something that could offer me forgiveness.

I would want somebody to step in and make that relationship

right. And that's just what Jesus does.

It's just what Jesus did. He stepped in, He lived a

perfect life. He died the death that we were

supposed to die. And he defeated death.

He defeated sin. And he offered us his spirit and

new life so that we could be connected to the Father again.

Jesus did to us what he would have wanted done to him.

And as people who want to live in light of what Jesus has done

as a community that hopefully can embody this rule, I think

one of the best places to do that is in a Calvary community.

And we can do this in all of our lives.

But one of the best places to just practice this, to see

people, to feel their pain and to do to them what you'd want

done to you is week by week, gathering around a table, eating

a meal, discussing scripture, praying with one another, and

then doing all the things that flow from that throughout the

week. It's a great practice.

As we close, I want to share a story from one of the Calvary

communities. And this last year there is

this, this guy who had gone through, he's going through,

he's been a part of the group for a couple years.

And they knew that he was going through this, this divorce.

He'd been long, he'd been drawn out, he had a son and they knew

that. He's going through this.

And one night he shows up and he says, hey, guys, thank you for

praying. Continue to pray.

The divorce has been finalized and I want to be kind to my wife

and generous towards her. So I've left her and my son the

house and all of the furnishings.

And so I'll be fine. I have work, but I'll shut to

save up to get a place and to furnish it.

And so he he goes away and a couple weeks later he comes back

and he says, hey, guys, prayer, praise report.

I found a place that I can afford and I move in and it's

going to be a couple months, though, before my son can visit

because I want him to have a bed to sleep in and a table to eat

at and a couch to sit on. We probably want to watch some,

some football. So it may be ATV and and his

community. You might see this was going.

They heard that and he said, well, how close are you?

And he said, well, I probably about half of what I need.

And there's a couple ladies in the group.

He said, you know, we are incredible with Facebook

Marketplace. We know how to get all the best

deals and we know all the best places to look.

And so can we help you with that?

And actually, we've talked to the, the community and we, we

would love to take what you've saved up.

And then whatever that doesn't cover, we, we'll buy all of

that. We'll buy all of that for you.

And I saw that man a few weeks after that story got shared with

me by the community leader at church, sitting in the front row

with his son who had spent the night the previous night.

And this is the way, the small example, right?

Few 100 bucks helping out a dad in need, Small example of doing

unto others what you'd want done to you.

But that small example, it shines, it's beautiful.

It's the way of Jesus. And so this week, for our lives

together, how can we be people who live this out that do to

each other, that do to the people in our city what we would

want done for us? Thanks for joining us today.

If you would like to watch the full service, check out the link

in the description. For next steps and to learn

more, visit calvaryboise.com.