So have you ever been surprised? Well Nancy was surprised this week, Nancy showed up at her normal Monday Bowling League and when she got there there was a huge crowd of her friends and they had cake and gifts and cards and they sang, happy birthday to her. Now how old did Nancy turn this week? Well she's only 99. That's right. She started bowling when she was 80 and it's not just bowling. She also participates in their local senior games in the categories of basketball and wait for it. The broad jump. Yeah, 99 years old, jumping and bowling and bowling. I guess you could say she's making the most of her spare time. That's right little bowling joke for you. A local tv station was covering the event of this birthday celebration at the bowling alley there in Winston, Salem north Carolina and they interviewed nancy and this is what nancy said for people of any age. Anything I thought I might be able to do. I've tried it and then she went on, don't ever quit and don't think you can't do something, you may not be perfect. I realized that but you can do most anything. Those are very true words, especially when it comes to one thing. One particular thing that could change your life and change the life of the people around you. This this one thing you and I will never do with perfection and it'll never happen. But this one thing can transform, how things are at work at school at the doctor at the hospital, at the mall, at the hunting club at the golf course, wherever you may be. This this one thing can transform things at the state house and the White house and the church house in your house. This this one thing. So what is this one thing? Well, we continue our series higher where we are looking at some very specific words from jesus really, it's jesus giving the most important action that any of us could possibly participate in. And we'll be looking at the last part of Matthew chapter five, Jesus is talking to his friends, he's trying to help them see that there is a way for us to change what's happening in our life and change what's happening in the world around us. But our gut reaction is to listen to these words from jesus and to say no, I can't do it, I just, I just can't. But that's when we probably should listen to nancy cause nancy's right, we can try anything and this is something we really need to try. So what is it? Well let's find out, Matthew, chapter five, we're going to begin reading in verse 44 Jesus says this. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Well that sounds super easy, right? No, the reality is if we're honest that sounds almost impossible, but it's not impossible. Look Nancy is a Sweet 99 year old woman who's still bowling, okay and and her words are encouraging, she's basically told the world this week, you know, when it comes to trying something, you can do it, you know, you can try it. But jesus is not a bowler, jesus is the son of God, he is the savior of the world. So his words come with an infinite eternity of power behind them. And so when Jesus says, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, if we are christians, we should do more than just try this. Why? Well, Jesus tells us in verse 45 so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your father who is in heaven. So how would we know that we're a son or daughter of God, Jesus says, well, the way you would know that is by loving your enemies and and praying for those who persecute you. So it might be mentally helpful for us if we flip this around and kind of challenge our minds a little bit, think of it this way, if we can name the date and the time and the place of where we have made a profession of faith or if we can remember the church that we were baptized in or or the pastor that baptized us, if we can be recognized for for many years of being a church member at a particular church, but we refuse to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, we may be proving that we are not christians, that's that is the language of what jesus. Here's the proof. The proof will be seen if you're loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. And if the proof isn't there, then it seems the opposite is going to be true. And why should we even attempt that? Why should we even attempt to love our enemies? Why should we try to even give any proof that we belong to God? Well, here's what Jesus says in verse 45, for he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good. See the proof that we're truly honoring God. The proof that we're truly following, Jesus is found in us looking like God. And what does God look like? Well, he loves his enemies. He he loves his enemies every day. The meanest atheists on the planet every day, the most arrogant politician on the planet every day, the most evil dictator on the planet. They receive the common grace and common love of God because the sun comes up and they're given another day, God in in kindness, causes the gift of another day and another hour, another minute and another second to those who are good to others and to those who are evil to others. God is kind, God is loving And if our profession of faith is going to be a true possession of faith, then Jesus says, we're called to do the same. No, that's not an easy call. It's it's not a natural call. It's not a call that's going to be our immediate go to. But it is the call of the one who loved us and gave himself up for us. It is the call of jesus. So as christians, we we really have a choice. We're either going to play a card game or we are going to obey jesus. We're either going to play a card game where we are constantly and consistently going to play the victim card or the bully card or the angry card or the religion card. Or we're going to follow jesus. We're going to obey what jesus has called us to do now. Now the victim card is is this card where we are always the venting victim even especially when we're not actually the victim. The victim card is the card we play when we're when we're not even a victim and we play it and we say, you know what, because I'm the victim. I'm not going to love my enemies because they don't deserve it. And you know that's a true statement. They don't deserve it. That's a very true statement. It's also a true statement that there are legitimate moments in life where people like me and people like you are actually victims. It is true, it happens. I saw a quote this week from an orthodox Jewish rabbi from 14 years ago listen to what he said. Is there a man who is human whose heart is not filled with moral revulsion against terrorists Who target a rabbi who feeds the hungry. What God? Or jesus asked me to extend even one morsel of my limited capacity for compassion to fiends rather than saving every last particle for their victims instead could God really be so unreasonable? Could jesus be so cruel as to ask me to love baby killers? And would such a God be moral if he did? Could I pray to a God who loves terrorists? Could I find comfort in him knowing that he offers them comfort as well? No. Such a God would be my enemy. Now, if we're really honest, all of us have had moments where we thought some of those things, okay, don't don't lie to yourself, it's alright. Just tell yourself the truth. We've had moments where we thought some of those things where we have felt some of those things, the victim card is not wrong. In fact, it's often very justified. But it does not cancel out these words from jesus, it does not cancel out the call of the one who was loving and forgiving his enemies while they were executing him. So jesus is not just throwing out some catchy phrases for us to put on a T shirt, jesus actually did this. So regardless of our uncomfortable itty, regardless of us trying to to map out our own human morality against the one true, infinite Godof the universe. The truth of the matter is the one who loved his enemies, gave himself up on the cross for his enemies so that they could be saved. And just to remind you, there's only one way to step into life after death, either as a enemy of God or as a friend of God. And if you're a christian, then please know that you were once an enemy of God. Remember your chains and remember that your chains are now gone. Remember as paul said that we were dead, we weren't just a good southern baptist kid who went to church with his parents, dead in sins, is what the scripture says. We were dead in our sins and our trespasses. Even if we didn't quite understand it, we were walking and living and breathing in the evil ways. Evil philosophies of this world. Even if we couldn't articulate them, we were either walking arrogantly in sin or apathetic lee in sin. And and in that moment God, because he's rich in mercy in that moment, God made us alive together with christ by grace. We have been saved. And that changes everything that means that no matter how much we may be victimized in this world, there is no power of hell and there is no scheme of man that will ever separate us from the hand of God. And if that's true then that means right now you have deep, intense, satisfying value. You are valuable in the eyes of God. There's hardly anything in the ways of this world that are moving you toward truly being valuable or not, either boldly or subtly the world is moving us, not only just to defy God, but to actually deny the basics of humanity. Oh, there's a there's a lot of fluff out there about humanity, but it's not really being laid out from the ways of the world, Whether in the womb or outside of the room, whether 16 or or 86, we we live in a culture that continues to teach us to devalue the life of a human no matter who that human, maybe we we now say that when you come out of the womb, you don't matter unless you can come up with a title for yourself, unless you can say that you're straight or gay or male or female or been or whatever it is, We have to have a title or you don't have value and the glory of God from heaven says you have value, period exclamation point because you had value before the foundations of the world. Let me just give you one kind of simple picture of the subtlety of how this is being played out in our world. Have you seen the new commercyal for google pixels camera? The newest one. I think it's I think it's the seven the commercyals are are highlighting the really cool things you can do with the camera and the camera software and there's some really cool things you can do with the camera and the camera software and so that's what the commercyal is highlighting. And so as part of these little 30 33 2nd commercyals, one of the things that's highlighted is that when you take a picture, if there's something you don't like in the picture, you can edit it out. It's really pretty cool. And right there in the commercyal, they show you exactly, you know how to do it. But here's how they show you in the commercyal and the commercyal, the way they show you how you can edit somehow the picture is, you know, they're they're showing and there's several different commercyals, all the same thing, they're showing you, you know, taking a picture at the beach. You know, hey, here's my family at the beach. And then the line from the narrator says this, you can edit annoying items out of pictures and you know what happens that mom and dad and those kids in the background? Oh they're highlighted and they're gone. Did you hear the language, you can edit annoying items out of your picture. What it's training us to do is this hey, you know what I need a great shot for instagram And that stupid family on vacation is messing up my picture. So I'm just going to erase them. They're not humans. They're just an annoying item. Now you can say that the preacher me is playing that up too much. Am I I mean whoever was creating that commercyal, couldn't they? I mean it would have been at least nice for them to say annoying people. You know those annoying humans in the background. I can go with that but now people there they're just items they they have have no value. This is the subtle way. Even the most humanitarian calls out there today are devaluing humans because they are saying humanity is only valuable if if yeah and God says humanity is valuable because I created it. I give it value with my glory and my grace. It's subtle but it's real. The world is pressing us to devalue one another and yet jesus, not only is he saying, hey let's value one another. He presses us even beyond he goes, I want you to value your enemies. I want you to give prayerful loving value to those who are against you. So again we have a choice. We can play the victim card sinfully play the victim card or the bully card or the angry card or or the religion card or we can obey jesus. Now what about those other cards? Well the bully card is something like this, your opinion is the only opinion that matters. You know, doesn't matter what anybody in your house or or your job or your neighborhood or your church thinks your opinion is the only one that matters so you're not going to love anybody, you're just going to bully them. You know until they agree with you and then maybe you'll like them, but you still ain't going to love them. You know, you're just going to bully them. And then the Angry card is you watch Fox News, MSNBC, whatever talk radio or tv news that that kind of goes in with your political bent. You watch as much of that as you possibly can. You just get angry and you ain't loving any enemies because you just love now being angry, you know, you love being the victim, even when you're not the victim, you love being the bully or you love being angry. I'm just man, this is good, I just love this. So I'm not going to love anybody else because I love this more. What about the Religion card? Where the religion card is this? Hey, I'm following, Jesus, I'm doing what the good book says. And so if I'm following what the good book says, then Jesus said, people are going to hate me. So I'm in the clear, there's there's nothing I'm doing wrong. I'm I'm fine, I don't have to love my enemies because because I'm in the right, except for that time when Jesus said, you have to love your enemies. Cortland said this if we stand up for what's right, we will have enemies, they feel justified in their hostility, but Jesus says love them. Anyway, and then he says this hostile people expect hostility in return, Jesus says, surprise them, surprise them with what surprise them with with love, in other words, we should take the amazing grace that we've received as believers, we should take that amazing grace that we've received from the great news of the Gospel and we should follow after jesus and live in such a way that we would look and sound a little bit like that. Great political, military strategist, private Gomer, Pyle and live life, just saying, surprise, surprise, surprise, See this is a hard topic, so little gomer helps. Okay, but it's true, see this is this power that God has given us in the world to surprise the world with grace. On another day, Jesus was teaching his disciples about the the end of the world as we know it and he made this prophetic declaration Matthew 24/12 and because lawlessness, lawlessness is increased, most people's love will become cold. That's not anything like the world that we live in. You hear the math as lawlessness increases, love go grows cold and it and it decreases why? Because anger increases because bullying increases because false victimization increases because apathy increases because religious arrogance increases. See the math that Jesus was giving is is not confusing. We're actually living in that math right now. So how can we change that trend first in our own hearts and minds because we're tempted to go man, this world, man is just going to hell we it needs to be better. Well guess what? Everything in the bible screams that part of that math is, it begins with me and it begins with you, you know, it doesn't really begin in the White House or the state house or or or the church house. It actually begins in your house, in my house. This is where it begins, it begins with us. So how can we change those trends in our own minds? Well, the way we change those trends is by turning to God and trusting God and how do we do that? Well, we have to look at his character and what's the character of God. Like Look what Jesus says next verse 45 and God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. That's that's the character of God. God sends the sunrise and he sends the rain to the evil and the good and the righteous and the unrighteous. My dad grew up on a farm um about an hour from here in Lee County. Um my mom grew up just down the road about 8000 ft from that farm. Um the first two churches that I pastored uh full time, we're in small rural settings and we were surrounded by farms and and I loved everything about country life. There are three men that I would trust my life with and they're all farmers. So I I've been around the farm world a lot and I've also heard stories about the farmers you can't trust, you know, there's there's some of those out there, but here's the most amazing thing now? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe in one of your devotional books, there's some amazing miraculous story where there were 10 farms and nine of them were not christian and one of them are christian and maybe one day rain fell just on the christians farm. I don't know. Maybe there's a story like that out there. But generally speaking, the rain doesn't stop at the landline. It rains on the farms of the righteous and the unrighteous God shows kindness to the righteous and the unrighteous. In other words, God shows kindness to people who love him and obey him and God shows kindness to people who hate him and defy him? It's it's the nature of how he functions. He shows kindness in his character, to people who defy him. In other words, God is constantly surprising the world with his grace and not just to the unrighteous, but he's surprising the righteous with grace too. Right little little pop quiz for you. How did you treat your spouse this week? How did you treat your parents this week? How'd you treat your kids this week? How do you treat your classmates or your teachers or your co workers this week. How did you talk this week about people, you go to church with, how did you talk about those politicians this week? How'd you talk this week about your doctors and your nurses or your neighbors. How did you talk about your enemies? In other words. Have any of us been perfect this week? No, we haven't. And yet we got sun and we got rain and we got laughter and we got life and we got breath and man, some of us even got bacon. You know I mean, come on. It's been a week. We got grace. We received Grace. Look loving. Just about anyone can be difficult. Alright? But loving our enemies. Gosh! That that really does feel impossible. But it's not Around 64 a. d. when the persecution of Christians was was just kind of getting ready to go into high gear. Peter was writing to some Christians and he was trying to encourage them. Right. Here's here's how you need to live now and here's how you need to be preparing for the future. And so this is was what? This was his advice. 1st. Peter 2 24 and he himself, Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the cross, Jesus bore our sins, our penalty what we deserve. He innocently took those on and he cared for the penalty of our sin. And why did he do that? Peter goes on so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, Jesus died so that we would actually make more than just an attempt at living a righteous life a life that shows that things with us and God are right and what's our fuel? What's our motivation to even think about living that way. Peter goes home for by his wounds. You we're healed. Listen, listen, this is this is healing, healing, Okay, this ain't some hokey evangelist slapping you on the head and screaming healed. This is true healing of the soul forever. No more condemnation, No more damnation, No more separation, only Salvation, only a joining together with God forever. This is what we have in christ. This is our fuel, our our motivation for loving those that we don't really want to love. Listen, we're going to have enemies in this world And we're going to have to deal with our adversary, the Devil Satan and and can I just say this in in 30 years, three decades now of ministry. I don't know that I've ever had a morning where I've dealt with the adversary more than this morning. Never, I can't ever remember a day in my life where the enemy so mentally attacked me all morning long and so as I approach this message today, after my mental morning, I have all morning long being going, come on God, I'm loving my enemies, Help me out here. But it's real. We will have to put up with the adversary, we'll have to put up with all of his evil agents. His influence will keep pressing down upon us. However, there is coming a day and it may be today, but there is coming today where we will be with jesus and everything will change. Everything will change. As one song puts it all the cancer will be gone, every mouth will be fed, there will be no one left in the orphans bed. Every lonely heart will find their one true love and that will not be on the bachelor or the Bachelorette. The one true love is jesus. Your heart is longing for jesus. Even if you don't know it, every lonely heart will find their one true love and there will be no more goodbye and there will be no more not enough and there will be no more enemy. No more. But today there's an enemy today. There's there's lots of enemies today, there's there's victimization and there's bullying and there's there's anger and and there's religious arrogance. Today there's sin. So today we have to remind our hearts that as christians, Jesus did not bare our sins in his own body so that we could turn and live a prideful, selfish, petty, rude, immoral, unloving life Jesus died, Jesus bore our sins in his own body. Not so that we can constantly play the victim card or the bully card or the angry card or the religion card, but jesus died to make sure that we wouldn't do whatever we wanted to do and say, oh I'm good, I'm covered by the blood. No, we need to be the kind of people that frequently bury our face in the blood stained dirt at the foot of the cross and to look and to consider the humble unselfish, silent, submissive love of jesus and then we need to stand up and we need to follow jesus. We need to obey his commands and we need to die to sin and live to righteousness. And we need to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us Now. Should we pray that God's divine justice would rain down on evil people in the world? Sure it's a good prayer will we at times have to take up action to deal with evil in the world? Absolutely. But those prayers and those actions do not cancel out the command of jesus. Nor do they cancel out the power behind the command of jesus 150 some odd years ago J. C. Ryle said this a standard of conduct like this may seem at first sight extravagantly high. Yeah loving my enemies is more than extravagantly high. I found sounds extravagantly impossible. Right? But then he says this but we must never content ourselves with aiming at one lower. What happened to us? What happened to the church? What happened to Christianity? How in the world in the last four years have we decided that politics and pandemics are greater than our God? What do we sound like? What do we talk like? How do we live? How did we turn on one another? How did we turn on the world? How did we get so angry? How did we get so afraid when our God says aim high, I'm right there with you, aim high, all of my love and grace and strength and sunrise and rain, it'll be right there with you. What a privilege! What an honor that our savior is still saving and helping and keeping and laughing. What a glorious thing when we consider, even on our best days how much we turn away from him and how much we lose our minds over things in the world. Listen, let's don't aim lower, No let's don't aim lower. Let's keep aiming higher. Row goes on to say this unfailing courtesy, kindness, tenderness and consideration for others. This is good. The world can understand these things. If it cannot understand doctrine, I see the world can get that and we're going to give them doctrine to give them truth, we're going to give them theology, the study of God, we're going to give them that, but we're going to give it to them and the way that paul said truth with love, you know, one of the most surprising and amazing realities in the universe right now, one of the most surprising and amazing realities in the universe. Right now, here it is. I once was blind, but now I see that's stunning and amazing and surprising. I once was lost. But now I'm found by the wounds of Jesus Christ, I have been healed different. If that's your story. If if the curse of Sin has lost its grip on you, then you can do this and I can do this ain't going to be easy. But if the Curse of Sin has lost its grip on you, you can surprise the world by loving your enemies. So let's follow jesus, let's obey jesus, and let's go surprise surprise, surprise.