Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] If I wasn't already married to the woman that just tried to give high fives to the praise team as she ran by them, I'd want to marry her soon after she did that.
[00:00:12] So I'm glad, Rachel, you are mine. And thank you so much for reading that passage.
[00:00:21] So God is good all of the time.
[00:00:28] And we worship a God who is a good God, not just a God who does some good things, but all that is good is of God.
[00:00:42] Now, sometimes this can lead.
[00:00:47] This phrasing that I just used that is true can lead to some of the most hurtful things that people can say and do in grief or to others in grief.
[00:01:01] I remember when this is year number two, when my dad passed away, some of this stuff here's a life hack. You don't have to say anything to anybody about anything.
[00:01:17] You don't have to talk.
[00:01:18] That's cool. That's actually preferred to talking.
[00:01:23] It's usually the right choice.
[00:01:27] Have you ever left someplace and thought, you know what I wish I would have said?
[00:01:32] The fact that you said nothing is the Holy Spirit keeping your mouth shut.
[00:01:40] But people say some of the strangest things at funerals and in grief, when they come up to you, they're like, well, you know, it was a good life. And I'm like, but, yeah, but it's over. And that's awful.
[00:01:51] Not going to. I'm not going to take this moment where I'm sad to just sort of say, well, there was some good things. No, I'm just sad. I'm going to be sad. Let it be sad.
[00:02:00] But for some reason, people want to wrestle you out of sadness and grief and with some ridiculous things that they say about God.
[00:02:10] I was at a tragic funeral.
[00:02:13] Funerals are tragic. But it was an incredibly young, young little girl in which they had. And this is a huge mistake at funerals, an open mic where they said, would anyone like to say anything in this delicate and difficult situation?
[00:02:31] They didn't add that part, but they should have.
[00:02:33] Because people came up and were like, I like that little girl too. She was funny, you know, and they'd get. But then one lady got up and she said, God doesn't make mistakes.
[00:02:46] God is good all the time. We don't know his plan for this, but this is a part of his plan.
[00:02:55] Which I then thought, okay, well, I'm going to go set her car on fire and just wait because she's going to come out and say, what? Is my car on fire? And I say, listen, listen, God don't make mistakes.
[00:03:17] God Is good all the time.
[00:03:20] And whatever's happening is a part of his plan.
[00:03:23] Now, we all would recognize that that would be an absurd thing to say after someone's car caught on fire. But for some reason, we say it in grief and in death.
[00:03:34] We act like somehow that God's plan is for different people to end in different way.
[00:03:43] And that is not the God of good.
[00:03:47] Chaos rules. Chaos reigns.
[00:03:51] The God we worship is a God who gives good things, a God who offers good things to us.
[00:04:04] The way we treat God sometimes would be like if.
[00:04:08] If Nolan were well, no, we'll use Macy. Macy's not here.
[00:04:14] So Macy, when she was 6, 7, 8 years old, she was just all arms and legs.
[00:04:25] We knew she was going to be taller than Clara, A, because Clara's just always been little, and B, because she just was all arms and legs.
[00:04:35] And we said she ran like a tranquil. Like someone shot a baby giraffe with a tranquilizer dart.
[00:04:42] She just ran like she was constructed of noodles.
[00:04:49] But she falled a lot. Like she would aunt hurt herself. There were times that she would start crying in her room and we would say, we'd run in there and we'd be like, what happened? She'd say, I kneed myself in the face.
[00:05:02] She kneed herself in the just.
[00:05:06] You would have to cut off my leg to get it to where I could knee myself in the face.
[00:05:13] We just always, like, she. She would fall. Like if she was running and fell, it was A, expected, and B, we rushed to her.
[00:05:25] Even when they're really little, they fall down. You rush to them and you pick them up and you carry them inside. And that might be, at some point in some kid's life, a core memory.
[00:05:36] Remember a time they fell down and their father came to them and picked them up and carried into the house. But it would be absurd because that memory was good for them to then think, well, dad must have wanted me to fall.
[00:05:52] Just because we have a father who picks us up when we fall doesn't mean we have a father who's orchestrating the tumble.
[00:06:01] So we don't have a God who is hoping to show his goodness through our brokenness and rooting for brokenness to happen. Chaos and brokenness and bad choices and consequences of bad choices happen.
[00:06:18] God is good all the time.
[00:06:20] So we can see both streams. We can see God is good and consequences and chaos.
[00:06:29] But let's not mistakenly intertwine those.
[00:06:35] Then somehow reverse engineer a God who's got a hold of all the puppet strings and is making all things happen. We make choices. There are consequences to our choices.
[00:06:49] I say all of that to bring us to one of the most troubling passages of Jesus whole teaching that what he calls on us to do is odd.
[00:07:13] He says in Matthew 5, verse 38, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.
[00:07:30] If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. My goodness, this is the passage that we have wiggled our way out of the most. Don't you think?
[00:07:43] This is the one that we say, oh, man, hyperbole.
[00:07:47] Jesus was.
[00:07:49] What a crazy thing for Jesus to say. What he means is. No, what he means is. What? He says that when someone persecutes you, you don't return persecution for persecution.
[00:08:06] You don't return insult for insult. You don't take eye for eye, you don't take tooth for tooth. You. If someone, if some evildoer oppresses you, do not resist them.
[00:08:19] Someone strikes you on the cheek, turn also to them, the other. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, wouldn't lawsuits be better if they were just over jackets?
[00:08:35] Ah, you hurt me. I'm taking your jacket.
[00:08:40] If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also with him a second mile. Now, this happens. I mean, in their day, it doesn't really happen in ours. No one shows up at our door and is like, hey, carry my stuff for a mile.
[00:08:59] But this happened on a regular basis. The Roman soldiers would be marching, they would have all of their stuff on them, and they would knock on people's doors and say, hey, I need you to go with me a mile.
[00:09:14] Now, I'm sure they said kilometer or whatever their measurement was back then, but they would, they would take them and they would go a certain distance and you would give it back and they'd find somebody else. Jesus here is saying, when a Roman soldier forces you to go to carry their equipment for a while, go a second while.
[00:09:36] Go, go longer, double it. Volunteer.
[00:09:42] Find in that service a service to the Lord. Now, is he saying that the Roman government is, you know, stamped by God? Absolutely not. But he's saying, you're stamped by God and that should matter in your choices and in your actions.
[00:09:59] Give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
[00:10:06] You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I Say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So the God of good and then the agents of chaos, the people who hurt you, oppress you, who talk badly about you, who insult you, who talk behind your back, like all the people who cause all of the brokenness in life.
[00:10:34] And even myself at times, I'm in that group as well.
[00:10:38] But if I'm to look like the God of good, I am to pray for them and love them.
[00:10:45] This is hands down the most absurd calling of Jesus.
[00:10:52] This is the one we buck against the most. It's the one we talk our way out of the most. But it is the most. It's insane to say, you know, the people who hate you, love them.
[00:11:05] You know the people who persecute you, pray for them.
[00:11:10] And not just like God, help them find the front of a truck, on the road, whatever.
[00:11:17] Not like bad prayer, like wanting what's good for them, not wanting what's good for them.
[00:11:28] There is a prayer he's asking of here for the persecutor. There is a love he's asking for from us, for those who hate us. And that is the highest calling of the Christian life, to love those who hate you and to pray for those who persecute you. You will be awful at that most of your life. And in the name of Jesus, we're called to keep trying, constant.
[00:12:01] I'm going to be honest with you.
[00:12:04] I don't want to.
[00:12:08] I don't think anyone's super jazzed about loving their enemy.
[00:12:18] I don't think anybody is naturally praying for those who persecute us. But as we've seen, following Jesus is hard.
[00:12:31] It's difficult.
[00:12:36] All of the evil in the world.
[00:12:39] I'm going to pray for those people.
[00:12:42] I'm going to do my. I'm going to. I'm going to love those people.
[00:12:49] And that takes effort at this. Not a single unloving word should come out of our mouths in the name of Jesus.
[00:13:05] At the heart of it, we are called to love all, no matter their worthiness or their actions or their attitudes or their actions against me or for me.
[00:13:17] Love rules.
[00:13:22] And he tells them this.
[00:13:24] And I think this is the most important part here. The command's tough, but he tells them the reason they are to love their enemy and pray for those who persecute us.
[00:13:37] The reason is so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. By this, God doesn't mean. He doesn't mean when you love, you'll somehow be connected to God that way. This is not your entry into the kingdom. This is you practicing the kingdom. When he says so that you may be children, what he means is you may represent your father.
[00:14:03] So they, they talk like that when they would say sons of or daughters of. So you remember James and John, they were deci. They were apostles. They followed Jesus. They were called sons of thunder.
[00:14:17] That was one of their nicknames.
[00:14:20] Now I don't have to explain Jewish idioms for you to, for you to think about a couple of boys that are sons of thunder.
[00:14:31] Some might even say Nolan and Carson. But where it's like you just. You hear them a coming before you see them, they show up. Like James and John had a.
[00:14:48] They, they represented in, at one point in their life, thunder to people. And they, they, their nicknames became sons of Thunder.
[00:15:01] So when Jesus is the son of man, he is what man was supposed to be. And when we are children of our Father, we are representatives of God in this place.
[00:15:15] We are to others what God has been to us.
[00:15:20] We are children of the Father. And this is, this is a verse we completely take out of context from the. Pray for those who persecute you, love those who hate you, but we are to be children of the Father who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. Now this is the only passage in scripture that I know of that has been completely taken out of context by Charlie Brown.
[00:15:56] Charlie Brown has messed us up with this one.
[00:15:59] You remember Charlie Brown. He would be on the.
[00:16:02] He'd be just. Things wouldn't be going right for him.
[00:16:06] Although, you know, he trusted, he trusted that, that girl with the football, what was her name? Lucy. He trusted Lucy. And he shouldn't have. He shouldn't have.
[00:16:20] But just things would be going downhill for Charlie Brown. Nothing would be going right. The kid, the dirty kid was getting better grades.
[00:16:32] What was his name?
[00:16:33] Pigpen.
[00:16:35] What parent?
[00:16:38] No, I'm just kidding. That's probably a nickname.
[00:16:42] So Pigpen.
[00:16:45] No, Pig Charlie would be on the beach or on the football field or something and a storm cloud would roll up and just the epitome of sadness and defeat, he would sit there and the rain would fall on him and no one else.
[00:17:04] Oh, poor Charlie Brown with your football sized head, your comb over.
[00:17:17] He.
[00:17:20] He's the only one who gets the sad, sad, bad rain.
[00:17:28] And for some reason we took that, we take that mentality that the rain is this sad thing and we reinforce it back onto this passage as if to say Jesus was saying, well, good things Happen to good and bad people. And bad things happen to good and bad people. If you are a farmer in the first century, sun is good and rain is good.
[00:17:54] Rain is not anywhere near the idea of sadness or bad things here.
[00:18:01] But for some reason we've taken this passage and we say, well, God does good things for both good and bad people. And also God does, because he's equal opportunity here. God does bad things for good and bad people. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, look, he's given us the command, love everyone, even those who are unrighteous, even those who hate you, even those who persecute you, pray for them.
[00:18:29] Just like God who sends the sun that helps things grow and gives us crops both on the evil and the good, and sends the rain which helps things grow and gives us crops both on the righteous and the unrighteous. Rain here is not bad. It's good.
[00:18:54] We serve a God who divvies out his goodness to all, a God who is so good that all of those who God sees God is blessing and hoping for good things. From them God offers the sun and the rain, the good rain, the rain that helps things grow to both the righteous and the unrighteous. And if we want to be children of that God, we've got to go back up a couple of verses and say, we pray for those who persecute you and we love those who hate us.
[00:19:36] Because we serve a good God who sends his goodness in all situations to all people to be God's children.
[00:19:51] We first have to acknowledge that when we were scoundrels, scallywags, some might say, when we were sinners, when we were unrighteous, when we are sinners, when we are God blesses us then too, because our God is good.
[00:20:13] How many of you, when you see your child fall or you see someone you love in trouble, think, well, have they been good today?
[00:20:24] No, you just.
[00:20:26] Your instinct out of love is to give, is to bless, is to pray for.
[00:20:36] And so our God feels that way about us.
[00:20:41] You may not have earned it.
[00:20:44] Actually, I'm willing to bet you haven't that you're not quite 1, as good as you think you are, or 2 as bad as you think you are, whichever side of the street you land on that one.
[00:21:03] But it doesn't matter to God's personality, it doesn't matter to God's goodness. Your sin does not make God worse.
[00:21:16] Your love does not make God better.
[00:21:18] God is constant and God is good.
[00:21:24] And so it's out of that not because, well, we were commanded to love those who hate us and pray for those who persecute us.
[00:21:32] So. Or guess what gotta, out of that richness of gift from God, that when I am righteous, here comes the sun, here comes the rain, here comes the growth. When I am unrighteous, here comes the sun, here comes the rain, here comes the growth. It doesn't matter to God. God is blessing the whole way around that because God has done that for me.
[00:21:58] That I am not to walk out into the world with a love to give and start judging who deserves it.
[00:22:11] That I am not to walk out into the world with goodness to offer and trying to parse who would benefit from it.
[00:22:25] We love like our Father loves.
[00:22:29] We are good like our Father is good.
[00:22:32] And if we want to represent our God, if we want to represent our King Jesus, if we want to really live out what the Spirit is pushing us to do, we will love our enemy and we will pray for those who persecute us.
[00:22:51] And we will be children of our Father, who sends all that is good to all that he sees, both the Son and the rain, to the righteous and the unrighteous.
[00:23:08] So too will we love to those who love us and to those who hate us.
[00:23:15] Let's pray together.
