Love Your Enemies - Luke 6:27-28

We've been spending the summer months going through the Sermon

on the Plain, which is the Gospel of Luke's account of what

we often call the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and we're

going to continue to look at a section of that sermon this

morning. Before we get into it, let me

start with a continued invitation that you heard the

announcement for Church on the Park.

That is not just a time for us to meet as one big church family

and be together in the park and and maybe bring some friends

that wouldn't normally come to a church building.

This is also an invitation for some of you to get baptized to

give your life to Jesus in a way that is declared to all those

who would be in witness of that and even inviting you to that

makes me think of the very first person that I got to baptize as

a pastor. So I'll share the story with

you. The first mission trip and kind

of season and ministry that I got called to was in Amsterdam.

I did a summer in Amsterdam living and working with a

Christian hostel where people would come and we just

ministered to travellers. And we're actually ministering

to another man who worked there, just as, you know, a cleaner.

And he was not a believer. His name was Sanko, and he was

from the Sierra Leone. He'd come to to Amsterdam

seeking refuge, and he just started hanging out with all of

us. And so naturally, as we were

there to tell people about Jesus, we started inviting him

to prayer times and Bible studies, and we would invite him

to become a Christian. And his journey always stood out

to me because he would answer very honestly.

I'm only 20% Christian. When we first invited him to

give his life to the Lord, he said 20%.

He said, Sonko, you, you can't be 20% Christian.

And he said, OK, I'm going to keep going.

But he'd come to the prayer times in the Bible studies and

as the months went on, he would grow in his devotion.

But very honestly, we asked him again and he said, I'm 50%

Christian now. 50% said no, Sonko, you can't be 50%

Christian. And this went on until finally

he came so close to the gospel and, and accepting it that he

was ready to be 100% Christian. And in that moment he said, I

want to get baptized. I want to be 100% for Jesus.

And so we went to Vandal Park in Amsterdam and we waded into a

little lake and we baptized him. And that's really what the

invitation is all about to give your life fully devoted to

Jesus, every area of your life buried with Christ in the water,

resurrected with him in the newness of life when you come

out of the water. And so I, I mentioned that just

to, to stir in some of your hearts that you need to be fully

devoted to Jesus and you need to made that make that known.

I also think of it as a point of conviction for my own life.

Because if you follow Jesus, if you've given your life to the

Lord, you would know that you can't say you're 20% following

Jesus. You can't be a 40% Christian.

And yet, if we're really honest about what it means to follow

Jesus, to be a fully devoted disciple of Christ, and to read

his words as commands over our life, if we are really honest,

we would admit there's things about following Jesus that we're

not quite ready to fully commit to.

There are things that to follow Jesus will take you down such a

narrow gate of devotion to follow Him in spite of every

other invitation of the world and desire of the flesh that we

all come to places in our life, even post baptism when we're not

fully following Jesus. And if we were honest, we would

say I'm only 50% today. And I mention all of that

because that reality is not tested as much anywhere in the

commands of Christ than the one we'll look at today.

To really follow Jesus, to be a true disciple, means that you

are willing to go places you would normally not go.

You are willing to allow him to lead your life to areas you

normally would not be LED. It would not be a natural desire

of your heart to go there. And today's Scripture is the

most challenging scripture to obey and maybe the best test of

your devotion to Jesus. So read along with me in Luke

Luke 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6, starting in verse 27. He says, But I say to you who

here love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless

those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you.

GK Chesterton once said Christianity has not been tried

and found wanting. It has been found difficult and

left untried. And this passage of Scripture

might be the best expression of that reality.

There are going to be moments in your devotion to Jesus by the

very nature of following him against your own desires, where

he's going to press you beyond where you would normally go.

And this, the most radical command of Jesus is your

devotion to him is tested not in how you love your friends, but

how you love your enemies. And so today we're going to talk

about what that looks like and how we could possibly overcome

our reluctancy to have this verse be real in our lives.

So to do that, let's start by every so often in this sermon

series, we've kind of cross cross referenced over to Matthew

to see what he said in the Sermon on the Mount.

Notice in Luke, he says, but I say to you, he's making a

contradiction to a teaching that would have been common in the

day. And in the Matthew account, we

get a better idea of what that teaching was.

Same thought, the same moment of the sermon.

But in Matthew chapter 5 verse 43, he says, you've heard that

Matthew 5:43

it was said in old that you shall love your neighbor and

hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your

enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate

you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute

you. One of the themes of the Sermon

on the Mount is Jesus correcting bad interpretations of the word.

And one of them came from Leviticus chapter 19 where it

Leviticus 19 · chapter mention

says you shall take no vengeance, but love your

neighbor as yourself. And so from that portion of the

law we actually find in Jesus day an add on in addition to the

teaching where the teachers of the day were saying love your

neighbor, hate your enemies. And just as aside, this is

typically how bad teaching goes. Bad teaching is usually some

version of the way we wish things were.

We we wish it said to love your neighbor and hate your enemies

because that comes quite naturally to our hearts.

That is the natural human instinct that that is something

that you can see way beyond the sanctuary of those devoted to

Jesus this morning, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

That is the way of the world around you, to love the people

that come naturally to your affection and to hate those who

you would want to separate your life from anyway.

So in Jesus day it looked like love your neighbor and hate the

tax collector. A constant reminder that our our

promised land is occupied by Rome and we're waiting for the

revival of the Kingdom of David. We hate their presence and what

they represent. Love your neighbor, hate the

prostitutes and the sinners. A constant reminder that one of

the problems with the promised land is all these people who are

defiling it. They're the issue.

They're the they're the the problem with with our land.

Or love your neighbor and hate the Gentiles.

Very common attitude in that day was to love the people of God

and to distrust and disassociate with those who are outside of

the covenant. And we can probably find some

modern day parallels. A 21st century version of love

your neighbor and hate your enemy by might sound like, you

know, love your neighbor and just hate the Democrats.

Everything wrong with our country is because of them.

Or conversely, wherever political party you stand, you

can just point the figure the other way.

Love your neighbor and hate the Republicans for all of their

corruption and greed. That's the real problem.

But of course it has to go deeper than that.

It has to hit more personal than you choosing some enemy that is

this far off distant category that you don't have to interact

with anyway. And so right now, if we could

take a moment to just allow the Holy Spirit to stir in your

heart why this verse is challenging to you.

I know in our sanctuary right now there are people that are on

the other side of a broken marriage, which means there are

ex spouses that probably had some ammunition to why the

covenant of marriage was broken. Love your neighbor, which

includes the one who betrayed you, cheated on you, lied to

you, stole from you. There's probably some business

partnerships that have gone awry.

There's probably some friendships that you can think

of that were once your best friends and now they would be

considered your worst enemies. And so for this sermon to be

effective, this sermon has to have real people.

Some of them might be part of your family.

Some of them might be people that you sit across the table

from or ride to church with. The idea is that Jesus wants you

to live this out in such a real way that it pushes you beyond

what would normally be comfortable.

And I want to point out once again, as we've done throughout

this series, what it is not saying Jesus is saying love your

enemies. He is not saying simply don't

hate them. Many of you would like to test

out of this sermon because the people you're thinking of that

have broken your heart, who actively hate you or the other

categories that we'll look at curse you spitefully use you.

You've said, well, I've overcome bitterness.

They, they no longer keep me up at night with thoughts of

vengeance. I no longer think of them and

wish I'll upon them if I see them, I'll just turn the other

way. And I, I, I never talk bad about

them. You found yourself in a

religious neutral. But Jesus doesn't say simply

don't hate your enemies. He actually says to actively

love them, which is one of the ways that we hope to turn this

command up to take us beyond where we would normally go.

So what does it mean to love them?

Well, we actually get very detailed commandments that are

associated with what Jesus means when he says love.

He says do good to those who hate you.

There is a very important Kingdom principle that we will

find when answering the question what does it mean to love them?

And finding the very next statement out of the commandment

is to do good to them. There is a principle that we

must have in our theology and the way that we practice our

following of Christ. And it is this.

We must do good things even if we don't feel like it.

Jesus does not tell us how to feel about our enemies.

He doesn't tell us what emotion we should direct their way.

He says do good, which means the principle of His Kingdom is that

your feelings will follow your obedience.

That as you actively do good to someone, the emotions associated

with love that we often commonly wrongfully associate as the only

marks of love will follow. And this is one of the upside

down natures of the Kingdom of God.

Right now. You live in a culture and you

are part of the human condition that wants everything to be

guided by your feelings. The the culture wants your

feelings to be the guiding principle of your life, which is

why you get mantras like if it feels good, do it.

If it feels good, follow that feeling and whatever action

needs to take place after that is yours to choose.

That's how you get the phrase follow your heart.

That is another way of saying what do you feel like doing?

What do you? What is the emotional response

you get when you think about doing something?

Follow your emotions and your actions will will line up

accordingly. You also get this in the

negative. You'll hear people say to one

another I no longer have feelings for you.

I've lost the feeling and because the feeling is gone I

will now separate my actions from this relationship.

But the upside down Kingdom says that your obedience leads your

feelings and you know this to be true.

In reality, if you just think about what works in your life,

you know this to be true. Here, I'll, I'll, I'll give you

a couple examples. Maybe you can relate to them.

I don't often feel like eating healthy.

In fact, I, I have to overcome the temptation to just eat

whatever I want all the time. I, I have the appetite of a dog,

I'll just eat what's in front of me and I'll gobble it down and

I'll eat whenever I can. And yet, when I discipline my

body and I allow my healthy and eating habits to lead, good

feelings follow it, it actually feels much better to eat healthy

and not overeat and have it a a nutritious diet.

And down the list for areas of discipline, I don't often feel

like working out. I often feel like hitting the

snooze button when it's time to get up and work out.

And if I let my feelings dictate when I worked out, I would never

ever move a muscle and down the list.

I wake up and I don't feel like making my bed, but every morning

I overcome the feeling of initial laziness to make it.

Because if I did it, I would eat everything.

I would never move a muscle and my house would be a mess and my

I would feel horrible. But if you can allow your

obedience to lead your feelings, you actually get to experience

the health benefits of all of those decisions.

And the reality continues into your spiritual life there.

There's all sorts of spiritual disciplines that I hope that you

know every Sunday are the basic applications of every sermon

that you should spend time with God in his Word on a daily

basis. And I am a pastor of a church

and I can just go 1st and confess and admit what you

probably have all felt from time to time that you don't always

feel like reading your Bible. And when I wake up, sometimes I

feel like grabbing my phone before my Bible, and sometimes I

try to read my Bible on my phone and I'm just completely LED away

by my emotions to follow all the notifications that are waiting

for me. I don't always feel like

praying. And yet when I do, I get to the

the amazing spiritual benefit of the promise that in His presence

is the fullness of joy. The joy is in the presence, not

before it. Prayer is a discipline, and if

you wait till you feel like praying to do it, you're

probably going to have a very indiscriminate prayer life.

And all of this is especially true with the command that hangs

over your head as a follower of Jesus to love people just the

the the relationships that exist right now.

The most principle and basic calls on your life to be a

loving person will require discipline more than emotion.

Husbands, love your wife like Christ loved the church and lay

down your life for her. Do that even if you don't feel

like it, in fact, especially if you don't feel like it.

Wives, bless your husband, support them and care for them

and encourage them overcome your emotion to do so.

And down the list. Parents, discipline your

children and raise them up in a godly house home.

Pray for them, teach them to pray.

Teach them in the Bible, especially when you don't feel

like it. And if we need discipline to do

that in the most primary offices of our life, we are especially

going to need that when it comes to the great command to expand

the borders beyond what we're comfortable with or what we

naturally want to do, which is to do good to your enemies.

I love the way CS Lewis puts it. He says do not waste time

bothering whether you love your neighbor or in this case, your

enemy. So don't waste your time

wondering if you love them, act as if you did.

As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets to

life. When you are behaving as if you

loved someone, you will presently come to love them.

When your obedience to the call on your life to love your

neighbor as yourself rules your life, regardless if you feel

like it, the secret to life is God will allow the emotion to

follow. Do good to those who hate you.

Paul says to the church in Rome. Repay no one evil for evil.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Amen. This is such a great temptation

of our life to respond in kind, to allow someone's evil towards

us, to turn into a cycle of eye for an eye and tooth for a

tooth. But one of the other themes of

every time we gather together in our sanctuary to open the word

is that we are called to be holy, which means set apart,

which means the people of God look different than the people

of the world. You want to know one of the

great ways you can do that? Repaying evil with good.

To be someone who is kind and good and charitable to someone

regardless of how they treat you.

In other words, to kill people with kindness. 1 commentator

says this isn't to say kill them like they're no longer a threat

to your life. It is to say kill them so that

they are no longer an enemy. Kill your enemies by making them

friends. This is a great mark of the

people of God living different than the people of the world.

And So what does it look like to do good to your enemies?

Once again, I, I realized that in this short time that we have

together on Sunday, the most powerful work that will happen

through this sermon is for those of you who hear, as Jesus says

in the beginning of this command, for those who hear, the

Holy Spirit will bring to mind a specific person that you can

begin to practice this sermon on.

And I hope some specific good things that you can do for that

person. So without exhausting a list of

good ideas, writing them letters, sending them flowers, a

phone call of reconciliation, pulling weeds, mowing the lawn,

any good thing that you can think of, There's actually 2

concrete examples of doing good that Jesus is going to present

to us. That we can all do starting

today, and you won't even have to interact with them.

It starts with the posture of your heart and the words of your

mouth. He first says to do good.

You bless those who curse you. So what does it mean to bless

someone who curses you? I don't usually appeal to the

Greek because I don't speak Greek and the translations into

English are great, but every once in awhile we get a word

that in Greek we actually still have an English.

So see if you can recognize the root word that Jesus is is using

when he says bless. The Greek word is euloguejo and

it literally means to speak good words.

And if you've ever been to a funeral, you've heard this Greek

word when someone stands up to give the eulogy.

So you understand this concept that Jesus is getting at a

eulogy is the moment in a memorial of someone's life when

in remembering them, you're highlighting all of the best

things and you're staying clear of all of the worst things.

You're allowing that moment of memory to be a time to remember

the good things that they did as a member of the family, as a

friend, as a Co worker. A eulogy at a funeral is a great

way to see someone be blessed and as a reminder, you would

never stand up during a funeral and highlight all of people's

things they got wrong in in the funeral moment.

It is not the time to go off about how bad they were as a

parent, or all the bad advice they gave or the failed ventures

of faith that they had. The eulogy is the moment to

highlight someone's best. And so think of that when you go

to obey this command with the person you have on your heart

and your mind. What does it mean to highlight

their best? And as promised, I hope this

sermon takes us to a few dead ends where we have to cry out to

God. I don't know.

I don't know how to proceed in following Jesus for that person

because when I think of them, I think of nothing good.

So let's let's just get some starter, some starter blocks for

what it means to highlight someone's best.

Spend some time seeking God's perspective on anyone in your

life and you will find something that God values in that person.

Every enemy that exists in our minds and our hearts as we think

through this sermon bears the image of God.

Every person that we might possibly be thinking of right

now was fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together

in their mother's womb by a God who made them for a purpose.

Good works for them to walk in that He prepared beforehand.

He has good thoughts towards them, and the Bible says that

God desires none to perish. No, not one, even this person.

He desires all to come to the saving knowledge and the Amazing

Grace of his love and the power of His redemption.

So you begin to see this person as an object of God's design in

your life to teach you how to highlight the best in someone in

the hardest of circumstances. If you get God's perspective,

you will see something good about every person on your list.

And as we continue to qualify those that you may think are

unqualified in your heart for a message like this, let's

consider just for a moment what it means for those who are to

receive this blessing. It's for those who curse you.

To curse someone is to wish harm on you, to insult you, or to

speak evil over you. Very simply, to curse as an

opposite of a blessing where you highlight the best.

To curse is to hope for the worst, and I don't have to teach

you what this looks like. All of you have hearts that are

deceitfully wicked, and you've all probably had moments of

short interactions or long-suffering type

relationships where you've known what it's like to just feel

angst against someone else. And if you'd like practicing

this, just drive around Boise on I-84 during rush hour from 3:00

PM to 6:00 PM and someone will do something so stupid and an

idiotic that you can't help but point it out to the heavens

above. If there's nothing good about

the growth, it's that we all get to practice patience and

repentance when we drive. We know how to curse.

It's easy to curse people, and that's easy for people to curse

you. You've all done something to

contribute to bad driving and the sinful nature of this world.

But God's people are different. Where the world curses, God's

people bless. Where the world sees the worst

and hopes for the worst, we look for the best and hope for the

best. And let me just take a moment,

as we can often do, as Jesus teaches the expanding nature of

his love, it pushes off beyond where we would normally go.

This sermon will should give you a how much more moment if Jesus

wants you to bless and not curse those who hate you?

How much more should we bless and not curse those who you're

called into a covenant relationship with in the family

of God, in the households of God represented in the sanctuary in

the marriage covenant before God.

And I'll say we, we are living in a time where a fundamental

way we can be separate and and holy for God's name's sake is to

be thriving families, raising up children in the way they should

go Covenant marriages that are faithful and enduring.

And so those things by nature will be under attack.

So practice this with each other.

Husbands highlight the best. Don't think the worst wives 2

husbands highlight bless your husband highlight his best

parents to children, children to parents.

May we practice our piety at home.

How much more should we do all of these things inside the

family of God? So one thing you can actively do

is you can bless people in your heart the way you speak about

them. And the second thing he says you

can start today. Pray for those who spitefully

use you. Jesus has been very clear in all

of the ways that He qualifies your enemy.

He doesn't want anyone left off the list of how we are going to

love them. He wants this without exception.

If they hate you, they're included.

If they curse you, they're included if they spitefully use

you. So just to expand it even

farther, let me share a few definitions from other

translations of what it means for someone to spitefully use

you. The NIV says those who mistreat

you. The NLT says those who hurt you.

The ESV says those who abuse you and commentators say this

includes exploiting, manipulating, humiliating,

threatening, insulting, emotional, physical, spiritual

mistreatment. Without exception.

We are agents of the love of God to everyone.

And I understand that I have used some words that can

sometimes feel heavy and burdensome in the way that we're

called to interact with people, words like emotional, physical,

and spiritual abuse. We are to love them.

And I will give a disclaimer so that we can be shepherded well.

There are healthy and wise moments where spiritual counsel

and sometimes legal counsel will set up protective orders so that

people do not continually threaten your life.

And so I would not be shepherding you well if I didn't

encourage you at times to have good and healthy boundaries

against life threatening abuse. It is good to have protective

orders in place. I don't want you to go through a

cycle of physical harm unto death.

But when it comes to this command, there are no boundaries

where there are good, legal, physical and even relational and

social boundaries. There are no boundaries inside

your prayer closet, he says. For those who spitefully use

you, you are commanded to pray for them.

Every person that could be considered an enemy on the list

can be and should be an object of your prayers.

So once again, we come to a moment, we say, Lord, what does

this look like? How am I supposed to pray for

someone who's been so hateful and spiteful and abusive to my

life? Well, let me encourage you in

just some practical ways to have a healthy prayer life.

One of the great things we can always be praying for is wisdom.

James says if any of you lacks wisdom, let him pray and God

will give it liberally without reproach.

And so one of your beginning prayers for anyone you feel like

you're at a dead end with can be the prayer for wisdom.

Lord, what does it mean to love this person?

How am I supposed to do good to this person?

Lord, give me wisdom that I might follow your lead on how to

even interact with this person. A prayer for wisdom Another

powerful prayer that you can start with is a prayer for

forgiveness. One of the biggest challenges is

the hurt and the pain that needs to be resolved.

It's a burden you should not carry.

Where there is a need for forgiveness, there is a need for

someone to pray that the God of forgiveness would begin to make

that work happen. Corey Temboom who is a life that

could be studied on how to love your enemies.

A woman who went through a Holocaust concentration camp and

survived to learn how to forgive the guards that tortured her

wrote in her book. You never so touched the ocean

of God's love as when you forgive and pray for your

enemies. You want to experience a

powerful prayer Experience the prayer of forgiveness for those

who have hurt you, mistreated you, spitefully used you, and

cursed you. And what about the prayer of

salvation? It is maybe the beginning prayer

for all of us, for anyone of you who believe your relationship

with God. Cries starts with a cry, a

prayer to ask for forgiveness, to confess of your own life that

you were once an enemy of God, dead in your sin, in need of a

Savior. What a powerful moment it is in

your own spiritual life when you learn the prayer of salvation

and that powerful moment when necessary for those who have

hurt you who would be qualified enemies who don't know God.

What a powerful way to shift the hurt and the pain away from your

relationship and towards a relationship with God.

To pray for your enemies salvation is to see them as an

object of God's mercy and grace and power of redemption.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who who lived in the same time as Corey

Temboom World War 2, lived in Germany trying to understand how

to live with such a oppressive government, said through the

meeting of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side and

plead for him to know God. The power of prayer to turn

enemies into friends. And so this is where the Gospel

of Luke ends the command. And I find it so helpful to make

one more reference point to Jesus teaching in the Gospel of

Matthew in this very same section.

Because none of this is possible by just being a better person

and trying harder. Jesus will continue this

teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew by giving us a

vision of how all of this starts.

It doesn't start by seeing someone who went out and tried

it with bold faith like Corey Temboom.

He actually says in Matthew chapter 5 that in doing this,

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

you'll be sons of your Father in heaven.

For he makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends

rain on the just and on the unjust.

In other words, if you want to see the source of how loving

enemies and blessing those who want nothing to do with you

works, look to how God cares for his creation.

The sun rises the the rain falls on the evil and the good, on the

just and the unjust. In other words, there's not this

portion of creation where all the good people live and that's

the land that God blesses. And then there's this place of

creation where the bad people are and God wants nothing to do

with it and he's abandoned. Many times people ask the

question, why do good things or bad things happen to good

people? But what this begs the question

for is why do good things happen to evil people?

Why is God so gracious to a world that hates him?

Why does God allow the wicked to prosper?

Why does God give sun and rain and all the same blessings of

creation to everyone, regardless of the devotion to him?

It's because God loves those who don't love him.

God gives grace and mercy to His enemies, to the just and the

unjust. And aren't we glad?

This is not a message to say that as the people of God, we

are here because we have earned our right to be here.

If you can think back to the moment of your salvation, you

can think back to the moment when you yourself were the

beneficiary of the kindness of God that led you to repentance.

The gospel begins with a message that God loves his enemies.

In just a moment, we're about to take communion.

Communion is a moment to remember how all of us got into

the Kingdom, that it was the blood of Christ in the cup, the

body of Christ broken for us that we remember in the bread.

And as he hung on the cross, we get a picture of the gospel

bringing us in by the love of God.

So before we take this, let me give more imagery to what we're

about to remember. We're in the Gospel of Luke.

As the story continues, Luke 23, we give a vivid picture of

Christ on the cross. It says in Luke chapter 23 verse

Luke 23:33

33 that when they come to the place of Calvary, there they

crucified him and the criminals, one on the right hand, on the

other on the left. And as he's hanging on the

cross, paying the price for the sins of the world, the gospel

gives this detail. And the people stood looking on,

but even the rulers with them sneered, saying He saved others,

let him save himself, if he is the Christ, the chosen of God.

The soldiers also mocked him, coming and offering him sour

wine and saying, if you're the king of the Jews, save yourself.

And as they mock him and as they curse him, as they hate him and

betray him, it says that Jesus said, Father forgive them, for

they don't know what they do. The gospel is that we were

enemies of God. Our sin was placed on his cross,

our sin yelled crucified. Our sin and our love for the

world are turning our back on God, mocked him and betrayed

him. And in our sin, in our prodigal

state, in our wayward living, God pled on our behalf and said,

Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're

doing. To receive this message that you

must love your enemies is only possible to receive the gospel

that you have been loved as an enemy, that on the cross Christ

declared enemies loved by the Father.

And this is where the whole sermon takes us back to the very

beginning. We all want to follow Jesus as

much as we're comfortable. We all want to pick up and

follow Him, pick up our cross and follow him into the

sanctuary and get an encouraging message for our life and go live

life with the borders of our choosing, where we love our

friends and we hate our enemies. But Jesus ends this message by

saying if you love those who love you, what reward do you

have? Even the tax collectors do that.

To follow Jesus means you must follow Him beyond what you would

normally do. You must allow His love to

become your love. You cannot have Christianity

without Christ. You cannot choose the boundaries

of how far the love of God can flow through your life. 50%,

sixty percent, 80% of the people I know I'm going to love to

follow Christ is to love like Christ.

So we sang a song to start this sermon, and I will pray this for

all of us as we end it. May we surrender all, all of our

lives, all of our boundaries, all of the bitterness that we

hold in our hearts for someone that has hurt us, all of the

things that we want Christianity to look like, and none of the

things that we don't want to surrender all says Lord, I want

to know the power of your forgiveness so radically in my

own life that he who is forgiven much can love much.

And I want to know the love that you have for even my enemies.

This sermon is meant to do 2 things.

To point you to the cross. That the whole model for all of

this would be seen in Jesus love for you and 2nd to humble all

self righteousness. That none of this is possible

inside your own heart. But to receive Christ and the

power of the Holy Spirit is to receive the power to love even

the enemy. 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.