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Hey, I'm Matt Brownell.

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And I'm Van Owens.

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And I'm Tim Adams.

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Welcome to Climbing the Mountain, where we dive into the scriptures and discuss themes,

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connections, and real life application.

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We're kicking off a series here where we're going to examine the Sermon on the Mount and

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discuss implications for this teaching for Christians today.

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All right, welcome back.

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We are continuing our discussion on loving our enemies, which is the sixth command that

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Jesus is discussing in Matthew 5.

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It's been really cool both to talk about this one and I just found this whole conversation

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we've been having over the past many episodes, very fulfilling.

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But to summarize what we were last episode, we heard from Darryl, who shared a bunch about

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his experience as a police officer and what that is and what it isn't.

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He talked about the importance of non-retaliation and gave some really powerful examples of

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that.

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But also the main thing that stuck with me was he said that his job has nothing to do

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with loving our enemies because he doesn't serve enemies, he serves fellow citizens,

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and he sees the people he's serving as his neighbors and someone that is worthy of love.

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So paraphrase a little bit, but that was the crux that I took away that was really powerful.

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And so we're going to jump off here and, Van, do you mind rereading that scripture to kind

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of set the stage?

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Sure thing.

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We're in Matthew 5, we're going to start in verse 43.

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It says, you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

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But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be

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children of your Father in heaven.

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He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and

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the unrighteous.

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If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?

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Are not even tax collectors doing that?

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And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?

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Do not even pagans do that?

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Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

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Great.

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So when I hear those words, they are extremely convicting, and I know that for each of us,

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we can have a tendency to ignore those things that convict us the most.

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So let's jump off with that question.

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What can happen when we ignore Jesus' words to love our enemies?

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Well, I have a real life example from my career.

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When I was a young man, when I was a young police officer, there was a group of guys

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that I would see all the time, and they were drug dealers.

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And there was one time when I was in a position to search some of them.

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We had all the constitutional green lights were in place.

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We weren't violating their rights.

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They were definitely suspected of crimes.

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So we were performing a search.

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And on one of these young men, I found a wad of food stamps, and I was enraged to find

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food stamps because in my background, in our background, there's a lot of poverty.

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And there's a long time when we were using food stamps to survive.

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And I knew what it meant.

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I knew that these young men had traded food stamps for drugs, and that somewhere there

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was a child not eating because a parent, a guardian, or a custodian was using food stamps

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to buy drugs.

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And I was enraged that they would accept this.

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And I launched on an independent campaign against this group of guys.

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I was very aggressive.

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I made their lives miserable as much as I could.

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I disrupted them as much as I could.

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And not all of what I did was right.

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But this is who I was.

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This is before I became a Christian.

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And that was my mission in life.

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But you know that there was a pain in my heart to have enemies.

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I didn't know what it was at the time.

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But there was one time when I'd said, you know what?

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I'm not going to rush in there.

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I'm going to get a parking spot, a respectable distance away from them where I can see them,

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they can't see me, and I'm going to watch them.

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And when I watched them, I was impressed by them.

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I thought, so this is what they were doing.

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They were comparing each other's sneakers to each other.

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They were laughing and kind of ragging on each other.

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And they were listening to music, like turning it up on the songs that I myself liked.

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And I thought to myself, I said, I kind of like these guys.

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I kind of like them.

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They remind me of me.

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They're younger than me, of course.

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I was in my mid-20s and they were in their mid-to-late teens.

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But I said, you know what?

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I'm going to start talking to them.

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I'm going to start being myself with them and talking to them.

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And so I started, instead of being aggressive, I started being conversational.

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I would talk to them about how I grew up and that I could relate to them.

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I would talk to them about sneakers.

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I had a brand name, still do have a brand name of sneakers that I love.

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And so we talked about that all the time.

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It was just, and I can remember one time on my way home, again, I wasn't even a Christian

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yet, but I said, those guys are beautiful.

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I was just thinking and I thought aloud, those guys are beautiful.

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And what I didn't realize at the time, because I had no framework for this kind of vulnerability,

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I said, 24, 25-year-old police officer, I really loved them.

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I loved those guys.

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And we had a relationship for many years.

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And they gave me a nickname.

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They called me Scotty because when I was young, I looked like Scotty Pippin no longer.

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And I knew their names.

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I knew their backgrounds.

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I knew who their parents were.

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I knew where they lived.

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And we had an agreement that we would be courteous to one another.

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And I now realize that I really loved those young men.

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Yeah.

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And I think that what you risk when you ignore the words of Jesus and you don't love your

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enemies is just that not only do you risk not having those relationships, not having

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that appreciation of their humanity and of the things that you have in common, but you

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also risk what it is that we're all trying to be as Christians.

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We're all trying to grow and become more like Christ.

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We want to become more Christian.

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We want to become more like Jesus.

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If we ignore his words and we don't love, we risk that.

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We lose that.

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And I think it's really important to keep that in mind.

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Yeah.

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I like what you're saying about that because it reminds me of one of the other discussions

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we had about the trajectories.

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Our aim is to be more like God, our Father.

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And I think that's what Jesus is talking about here.

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He's making the sun and rain to come to the good farmer and the bad farmer.

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He loves everyone and we should be like him.

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And the risk is we could then not be like him and be like Satan, who's the father of

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lies.

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And so it gets into kind of a perverse, you know, it says we love before we love because

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he first loved us.

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Well, it gets into a kind of perversion of that we hate because they hated me first,

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you know.

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I'm going to hate because they hated me and then they hate that I hate them and they hate

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even more and then I hate more because they hated me more and it's just this escalation.

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Right.

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It gets crazy.

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You know, it's interesting that you would mention hate because sometimes when I've decided

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to hate in my worldly life and not in my Christian existence because Christians typically stand

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up to me when I start to separate myself.

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But when I start to hate, no one interrupts.

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But when I start to love and I start to serve and I start to give, I often get a question.

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Why are you wasting your time on blank?

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And you can fill in the blank and for that questioner, the blank is usually an enemy

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that they think I should have or that they have.

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Right now, when I was a young police officer, I didn't know what I could do.

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In fact, I felt like I wasn't in a position to really serve and give to teenage men, teenage

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boys and women.

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But now that I've been on the job for 33 years and I'm 57 years old and I've got a

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lot of experience and I work at the academy, I've been able to form this teen police academy

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that really gives to kids.

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And before it got really recognized the way it is now in the city of Boston, I had people

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that I worked with saying, why are you wasting your time on those kids?

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I had one person even boldly say, they're not going to amount to anything.

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So stop wasting your time.

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This is a sworn police officer in the city of Boston.

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And I thought, I don't care about what you're saying.

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And the answer for me was always when someone asks, why are you wasting your time?

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The answer was because I love them.

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I love who they are.

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I love their good and their bad.

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I love their polite and their disrespectful.

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I love their beautiful and their ugly.

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I love everything about them because I can really relate to them.

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And I feel like it's what God wants me to do.

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It's how God wants me to love.

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Yeah, there's such like an opportunity here because we experience this brokenness and

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we buy into the brokenness of the world when we say we've got to hate one another and we've

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got to hate our enemies.

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And when we're called to be children of our Father in heaven, to be like our Father, it's

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a way out of that.

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It's a way of ending that kind of vicious cycle that you were talking about, Matt.

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And I find that very exciting, even though it's incredibly challenging to think that

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there is a way of ending the cycle and breaking the brokenness, right?

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And not contributing but actually restoring.

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And Jesus is really just showing us like that.

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This is the way to do that.

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This is the way to not just be our fallen selves, but to be Godly, to be Godlike because

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we're acting like God himself does.

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I have a question.

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Do you think Jesus is primarily aiming his words at interpersonal relationships with

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and between groups defined by their otherness, what we might call tribalism?

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Or do you think his words extend to all levels of society, geopolitically?

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How do we define enemies?

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And how would someone in Jesus' audience define it?

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I think that the people who were in Jesus' audience were these Jews who were living in

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Palestine during the time of the Roman occupation.

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And they had enemies galore.

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They had, so there were the tax collectors who overcharged them for their temple tax.

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There were the Romans who were the bullies, who were in a certain sense the police officers.

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They were the armed guys who would break up anything with violence.

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There were the priests who were always coming down on their lives and enforcing the temple

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tax.

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I don't remember which Herod was in charge back then, but there were the king who was

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subservient to the Romans, but still in charge of them, also taxing them, also violent against

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them.

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They had any number of enemies, and that's not to even include the personal enemies that

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they had even amongst themselves.

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And so I think that in a way Jesus is talking about all of that and how enmity is virulent.

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Like I was talking about before, I think in the last conversation, enmity spreads.

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But if you have one enemy, then almost anybody can be your enemy.

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It reminds me of a story that a police officer told me once.

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I'll give a disclaimer.

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I've often complained to everybody who will listen that I can't stand when people want

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to only talk about my job, but here I am sitting here, and I'm only talking about my job.

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So this story goes like this.

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I was a young cop.

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He said, you're young and everything is great.

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You called me Dudley Doright.

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He said, everybody's happy.

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Everybody's good.

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The world is awesome.

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You got your dream job.

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And then one day, a few years from now, you're going to think that everybody except police

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officers stinks.

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They stink.

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You hate them.

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You don't trust them.

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And then you're going to think in a couple of years from that, you're going to think,

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hmm, every, even the police officers stink except for the guys in my station.

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We're awesome.

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But everybody else, every other police officer don't like them.

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Don't trust them.

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They stink.

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And then you're going to think this station is terrible.

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This station is terrible.

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I hate everybody else except for my shift.

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My shift is awesome, but everybody else, I hate them.

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Don't trust them.

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Don't want to be around.

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They're awful.

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And then you know what you're going to think.

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I hate the shift.

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I hate the guys that work except for my partner.

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The rest of the guys, I hate them.

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Don't trust them.

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Don't want to be near them.

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And then a year later, you're going to be in the, in the cruiser with your partner.

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And you're just going to look at him and go, I don't like my partner.

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And so I, I mean, it's a funny story, but as humans, right?

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We're, we're an integer.

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We're a unit unto ourselves.

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We're a singular thing.

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And it's really easy to hate everything outside of self.

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And if we allow ourselves to hate a group, like a geopolitical group, like pick, pick

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a nation that is declared an enemy state of the United States, right?

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It's easy to say, I hate all blank.

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I hate the blank until you meet one.

242
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Yeah.

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Until you meet somebody who doesn't feel the same way and who you can connect to humanly.

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So I think the answer to your question is yes.

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And yes.

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Yes.

247
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And yes.

248
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Yeah.

249
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Yeah.

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I, I have kind of a hard time answering it because I, I think about that too.

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It's easy to think about someone on the other side of the world and you're told they're

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your enemy and, you know, but then you spend time with the people and, and you're like,

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well, they're just like me.

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And, you know, their circumstances may be different.

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They may have different governments.

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Yeah.

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I think about the example of the Good Samaritan again, where, you know, we have someone who

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was considered an enemy.

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The Samaritans were not liked by anyone.

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And he was a neighbor.

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He showed mercy.

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Yeah, I think this is, when I think about this, I kind of go back, I want to go back

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to like a Leviticus 19:18, right?

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That's the verse.

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We talked about it when we talked about retaliation a little bit because they had forgotten the,

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you know, beginning part of it, which says not to hold a grudge and, and instead love

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your neighbor, you know, that the law expressly forbid taking matters into your own hands

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and this tit for tat kind of retaliation stuff.

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But what's interesting about what Jesus is highlighting here is he says, you've heard

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it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

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Well, that love your neighbor, they cut off a pretty important part there.

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It says love your neighbor, it actually says love your neighbor as yourself.

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It has far less to do with who, which would be the natural kind of, well, who is my neighbor,

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than how Jesus is really talking about.

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How do you love?

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And it's really everyone around you.

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Yeah.

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If there's no distinction between who is my neighbor, which is the point that Jesus makes

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in the parable of the Good Samaritan, then if everyone's my neighbor, then I can't, I

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don't have any enemies in the same way that we, we think of unless we're meditating on

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this, there's, or so much that does unite us.

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Now it doesn't mean that there's not tension or challenges, right?

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Or differences of opinion at times or, you know, any of that, but there's being able

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to recognize the commonality and recognize that this person is creating the image of

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God just like me.

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What makes me valuable makes this other person valuable.

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And that's, that needs to be the defining way that I see this person, not all of the

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stuff that makes it, you know, that makes my blood boil when I, when I just think about

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them in the abstract.

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That has a lot more to do with how you view other people too, I think what you're saying,

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right?

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Like they were all, you know, made in God's image.

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Some of us may not realize that, but we should decide to love other people, kind of what

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we were talking about before.

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And how I think is so much more the focus of what Jesus is talking about here.

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He's, you know, it's sort of the, you know, how, well, think of how easy we are on ourselves,

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right?

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Like we, we mess up, I'll give myself another chance.

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I'll mess up again.

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77 times in one day kind of chances.

301
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That's the, that's the kind of image that we get here.

302
00:20:44,240 --> 00:20:51,680
And isn't it, isn't it just so personally corrupting when you feel hatred towards a group?

303
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I feel, I feel corrupt and I feel like when I'm doing that, it's just, it just feels terrible.

304
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But as with any terrible feeling, you can kind of get used to it.

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You can kind of get used to being tired or being sore or having a headache or, or even

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an annoying noise and we can tolerate that corruption in ourselves.

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And I think our world, especially now is just so rife with this corruption and people are

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satisfied with it and are content living in it.

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And they don't, and because they haven't, they haven't submitted to, to Christ.

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They haven't, they haven't truly taken up his cause in the area that you guys have been

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discussing that they become satisfied with that corruption.

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Even on the smallest level, it can be even a disdain for people who drive a Prius, right?

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You can even, oh, there's another one driving a Prius, right?

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It sounds funny, but it's so corrupting when we allow ourselves to do that.

315
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We wall ourselves off from interpersonal relationships with people who are different from us.

316
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Yeah.

317
00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:10,640
It's funny, I think about social media with this because it was supposed to be, hey, we

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00:22:10,640 --> 00:22:13,920
got this wonderful thing and it brings people together and what has it done?

319
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It actually, it's so perverse.

320
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It separates people even worse into these camps where that's tribalism right there.

321
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We've got like, I think this certain way and I hear all the same information all the time

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and how could anyone else think you over there when they could be right across the, could

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be literally your neighbor.

324
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Right.

325
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Yeah.

326
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And that's what's natural and what comes from God is us.

327
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There's only us.

328
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Yeah.

329
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What's artificial is them.

330
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Yeah.

331
00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:55,880
And we create thems out of our fear, which morphs itself into hatred.

332
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Yeah.

333
00:22:57,400 --> 00:23:04,680
And it's so, it's so, and I think that's why Jesus again is so extreme in his language

334
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:09,880
about these things and all of these things sort of lead in, everything leads into the

335
00:23:09,880 --> 00:23:21,040
next thing and it's just, we cannot accept a 'them' because as soon as we do, we're opening

336
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ourself up to creating an enemy.

337
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There isn't a them, there's only us.

338
00:23:27,520 --> 00:23:28,520
Yeah.

339
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:30,760
That's pretty deep.

340
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:38,320
I just, this is one of those things where I do just want to be able to live the way

341
00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:40,640
that we're talking about.

342
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:41,640
Right.

343
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:42,640
Yeah.

344
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:47,840
Like it's, we're talking a lot about the world and the dynamics of the world, but there's

345
00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:53,320
so much of this brokenness that we're still working on and that we're working on in our

346
00:23:53,320 --> 00:24:00,640
church and in our relationships and especially if you think about the broader church outside

347
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:05,720
of any particular region or denomination, I mean, there's so much of labeling, you're

348
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:07,960
this person, you're that person.

349
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:10,560
I'm not going to associate with you.

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00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:15,600
And I know that like that, and I've just been so convicted like having this conversation

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00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:20,080
because it's like, it's so easy for me to do that.

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00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:29,040
And you can make it sound really righteous and you know, like you are totally within

353
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:37,760
your rights, but it's just, it's totally not the spirit of what Jesus is saying here.

354
00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:39,080
And no, it's not.

355
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:44,800
It's, but it's one of those things that Darryl said, you can get used to it.

356
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:45,800
You can get used to it.

357
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:47,760
You can just, oh, this is just the air I breathe, right?

358
00:24:47,760 --> 00:24:54,200
I breathe, go into church and hearing, you know, nice things and convicting things.

359
00:24:54,200 --> 00:25:00,440
And then I go home and I feel exactly the same way towards my boss or my brother or

360
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:02,520
whatever it might be, right?

361
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:12,520
And I think I'm, yeah, especially with, you know, brothers and sisters who I know, but

362
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:18,880
maybe I am like, I want to, I don't see eye to eye or I'm wrestling and I just want to, I want

363
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:26,800
to make it about it's me versus them, right?

364
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:27,800
Instead of having this heart that we've been talking about.

365
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:30,680
So I just wanted to like be open with that because I don't want to ever pretend that

366
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:33,160
like we've got it figured out or that I have this figured out.

367
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:37,520
You know, I really appreciate that, Tim, because it's something, it's something that we can

368
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:38,520
struggle with.

369
00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:41,480
I even struggled with it today.

370
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:46,640
I was with a disciple and he was, you know, and we sent, we tend to tell these stories

371
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:48,920
about outreach, right?

372
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:52,560
Met this couple, they live close by to us.

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00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:54,440
They're about our age.

374
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:58,120
We've invited them to a few things they haven't wanted to come because they've been going

375
00:25:58,120 --> 00:25:59,960
to their own church.

376
00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:05,920
And then last week they called me and they said, they invited me to their baptism.

377
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:13,400
And initially I wanted to say, oh man, they got baptized someplace else.

378
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:18,200
But immediately I said, I was able to check that that's my raw emotion.

379
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:20,720
That's what the flesh in me wanted to say.

380
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:24,800
But I said, you know what, bro, that's encouraging.

381
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:26,360
You know what that means?

382
00:26:26,360 --> 00:26:33,520
It means that there are people out there who are our age, who are searching for God.

383
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:37,920
I pray that I can be that for someone.

384
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,040
And he said, yeah, you know, I really love my neighbors.

385
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:44,920
And he said, I love my neighbors, interestingly enough, to me today.

386
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:45,920
I really love my neighbors.

387
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:50,320
I'm going to hang in there with them and just keep being their friend and keep reaching

388
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:51,320
out.

389
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:53,400
And I was like, that's really good.

390
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:58,480
So when you said that about, we've got to be cautious not to speak theoretically about

391
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:00,120
the world.

392
00:27:00,120 --> 00:27:01,120
It's right here.

393
00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:07,400
Because my first impulse was to go, oh man, we could have had, you know, and oh man, I

394
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:13,120
hope that they're in some church, you know, but the first impulse was to say, oh, they're

395
00:27:13,120 --> 00:27:14,120
one of them now.

396
00:27:14,120 --> 00:27:15,120
Yeah.

397
00:27:15,120 --> 00:27:17,480
The first impulse was to other them immediately.

398
00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:19,600
But I said, you know, that's really good news.

399
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:26,360
And you know, that's really the encouraging thing is that there are people out there of

400
00:27:26,360 --> 00:27:30,840
our age and stage who are still looking for a relationship with God.

401
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:31,840
And we're here.

402
00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:34,880
We're fortunate enough to be here to reach out to them.

403
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:40,240
I like the way that you connected it to the other examples because all of these are related.

404
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:48,720
The first one on anger is so super applicable to this and how people are name calling, rock

405
00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:55,200
a, like in that society, that was like, we don't consider you saved basically.

406
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:57,000
You're not part of the community.

407
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,040
You're not part of us.

408
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:03,280
And you know, to judge people that way.

409
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:05,440
Well, there's more.

410
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:09,000
I think we should, we should come back to this because I think the next couple of questions

411
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,800
are too big to start on another one.

412
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:14,000
And wow, this time flew by.

413
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:15,000
Yeah.

414
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:16,000
Thank you so much, guys.

415
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:17,000
Thanks.

416
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:34,040
Thank you.