Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Does a Christian Look Like? | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 6

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

"I do good to someone, knowing they will do good to me. I will lend to someone, knowing that they will pay me back in some way. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not Christian." Did you know that Christianity is one of the most diverse groups of people in the world? There are believers all across the globe—people with different languages, customs, professions, and traditions. But we all unite in his name. That's been true since the very beginning, when Jesus chose his disciples. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6&version=NIV (Luke 6) lists out the Apostles and then follows with Jesus's teachings on how we should live together and treat each other. Follow along as https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Keith) reads the timeless message to continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). Interested in more content like this? Listen to this episode about Levi the Tax Collector: https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-keeps-people-from-following-jesus-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-5-27-32/ (What Keeps People From Following Jesus). Also, make sure to check out Rebecca McLaughlin's guest sermon https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/media-feeds/confronting-christianity/ (Confronting Christianity). To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're learning how to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. One of the coolest things about Christianity and really one of the things that sets it apart from every other religion in the world is that Christians have always been a radically diverse bunch of people. There are Christians from every country, every ethnicity. You know where the most Christians are today in our world?

Where the church is going the fastest? It's in sub-Sahara Africa. It's in Asia and Latin America. This idea that Christianity is the product of a white Western culture is absolute nonsense, silliness to anyone who knows the facts, to anyone who's paying attention. Christians have spoken a wide variety of languages. They come from every point on the social economic spectrum.

In other words, there have been Christians who have lots of wealth, and there have been Christians who come from abject poverty. Christians have always done well with both men and women. Now, when you bring all these diverse people into a church, you're going to have tension. You're going to have problems. In other words, when we become Christians, we don't all become alike.

All the differences don't fade away. We bring all of who we are into following Jesus, into a church. And that was true even of Jesus' first disciples. In Luke chapter 6, he gives us a list of the disciples who were among the 12. And what you find when you read through that list is that there are some important differences that these people would have had with each other. For example, there's Matthew who was the tax collector. Now we know that he was Jewish and had sold out,

or had at least been seen by his people as selling them out, to become a traitor by going over to Rome's side and then using his power with Rome to take money from his own people. That's what a tax collector did. And also on that list, you see a man named Simon, who were told was a zealot. and the zealots were a political party dedicated to overthrowing Rome by any means necessary, including military means.

So here you have Matthew the tax collector who sold out and worked for Rome, and Simon the zealot who is trying to overthrow Rome. And now both of these men are following Jesus and are among his early disciples. How do they get along? What do they talk about? do they argue? How do they come to live at peace with one another? I mean, these are questions that you and I have to answer because we're a part of a church that people belong to and they have a lot of differences. Some of the differences are just about church, how you do church, what songs you like,

what kind of sermons you like, what your expectations for a church are. But a lot of them go deeper than that and are more controversial because we bring our own ethnicity and races and our own experiences into following Christ and into our church. Some of us come from wealthier backgrounds, some from poorer backgrounds. Some of us voted for a particular candidate that others hate. And of course, the other people voted for the candidate that we hate. And so how do we learn to live at peace with one another as we follow Christ together. Well, maybe it's no accident that right after telling us the names of all these disciples, Luke tells us about Jesus' teaching on loving your enemies.

Jesus says, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold the sheep. shirt from them, give to everyone who asks of you. And if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Now these commands to love and do good and bless and pray. They are words that show continual action. In other words, these aren't things we do one time, but these are the ways that we act toward people habitually. We're loving.

We're people who speak well of you. We're people who are praying for you. What we see here is that there's kind of unnatural words. In other words, it's unnatural to bless and speak well of those who are lying about you or misrepresenting you. We're called the unnatural actions to be kind to people who are being hateful toward us. And unnatural prayers. Because it's natural for me to pray for those who are praying for me or pray for those

who are being kind to me or praying for those who are doing something that I can benefit from. But what Jesus calls us to do is to pray for people who are mistreating us. And that takes us down to what we call the golden rule, due to others as you would have them do to you. Now, I get that some religions have this in the negative. In other words, don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you. And that's powerful. but it's not the same as saying it in the positive,

that we are supposed to seek out others good, not because they are good to us, but because that's how we want to be treated. But Jesus pushes further through a series of questions. He asks, If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you,

what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners expecting to be repaid in full. See, what Jesus is driving at here is that Christians are called to live an unnatural and extraordinary life. Here's the way he says it works in ordinary life. In ordinary life, you do good to those who do good to you. you lend to those who are going to pay you back in some way.

And that conventional morality, what is ordinary, is fine. The reason people do it is because they want to get an immediate reward. I do good to someone knowing they'll do good to me. I'll lend to someone knowing that they will pay me back in some way. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not Christian because Christian love is loving people, without expecting to get anything back. What Christian love is is loving people who don't deserve it. Now Jesus says that when we do that, when we love God's way, we don't get an immediate reward here,

but he says that our reward in heaven will be great, that will be called children of the most high. Why? Well, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. And it ends with this. Jesus says to be merciful, just as your father is merciful. See, that verse kind of gets at the point of what Jesus is saying here. Is that when we love people who can't love us back, well, we're showing that God is at work in our life. We're showing that we are children of God,

that we are like God in the way we're loving people. Now, how do I get the power to live unnatural? to live an extraordinary life, to love those who are mean or cruel or lying about me, to bless those who persecute me, to pray for those who mistreat me, how do I get the power to live that life? I know I should live it, but how do I live it? Now here's the key. Be merciful just as your father is merciful. Who was the father merciful to? To sinners like me. Jesus loved me, when I was his enemy so I can love others when they're my enemy. Jesus was patient with me so I can be patient with others.

Jesus forgave me so I can forgive others. See, if we're going to live with people in our church, and our families, in our community, and our workplaces who are different than us, who we even strongly disagree with, and let's just pretend for a second that you're right and they're wrong. Still, you've got to love them. You don't just love people who are right.

you love all people. You don't just love people who are good. You love people who aren't good. You don't just love people who deserve it. You love people who don't deserve it. Because if God just loved people who deserved it, then I wouldn't get his love. If God just loved people who are good, then that's not me. I would mousse out on his love. God loved his enemies. And I'm thankful for that. Because now no longer I is enemy. But in Jesus, I am as free. friend. Love your enemies because God loved you and you were his enemy. Amen. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this

podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.