Matthew 5:43–48Scripture
Everybody turn your Bibles this morning to Matthew chapter 5. We're going to look at verse 38. Actually, it's Sorry, that was a while ago. 43 through 48. We made it through chapter 5. Mercy. That was rough, folks. I don't know about you, but that was rough. Love your enemies. Verse 43, you've heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those persecute so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Not even tax collectors do the same. And if you greet only your brother, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Well, goodness. I have been over these past few weeks as we've been in chapter 5 and maybe this would resonate with you.
I have been deeply sorrowful in my heart. As I go as we go through the biatitudes and we begin to consider the misuse of God's law in the current day.
Introduction
How we had they had in that day become perverters of the law for the sake of selfishness and selfish gain. Sounds familiar. Because today in the church, we're guilty of that. Not just from our pulpits, but from our personal devotional time. We're guilty of that. We're guilty of picking Scripture out that satisfy our flesh and empower us to continue living in ways that God is not pleased.
We do that. We look for Scripture to justify our selfishness. And much like the culture of that day, we have been guilty of doing that. Not to mention, right, track with me. Not to mention that this is very revealing this text. It reveals several things. It reveals you and it reveals your intention and it reveals your sinfulness. And that has made me deeply sorrowful.
Now I don't think that those who are far from the Lord, who have not had an encounter with the Lord, who have not given their life to the Lord, feel this way. But I have felt sorrowful for my sinfulness. Can you resonate with that just a smidge? Maybe some people in the house. Yeah. And it's hard. Let me just let me speak pastorally for a second.
It's hard to sit in that for as long as we do. Now, when you preach topically, it's very easy to kind of have something difficult and then just pepper in something encouraging. Let's go to the other part of the Bible. Let's find something encouraging. But Jesus, this is his sermon. He doesn't relieve the people. He allows them to sit in the tension of shameful sinfulness.
And he continues to reveal we are not like him. And what it does and should do in our hearts is stir up a longing to be more like him. That's what he's doing. He's drawing us into him by revealing who we are.
And the reality is much of my life in my heart, maybe not my outward behavior, because I've been in the church long enough to know how to tame that in the right moments of life.
But deep in my heart, there seems to be a disconnect between what I do and what I feel. And there is a convicting element where God or the Holy Spirit, God in and the Holy Spirit come in and they reveal these things to you.
But the point of this is not to leave you in shame. The point of this is to help you understand there is a hope beyond your shame.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 4:53
And his name is Jesus. It's the one preaching this sermon on the mountain. He came to give us hope that we used to be a slave to sin. Now we can become a slave to righteousness through Jesus Christ. So at the same time that I feel a deep amount of shame and sorrow in my heart, I feel springing up an immense amount of joy for the hope I have in Christ.
That's the point. That's what should be happening in our hearts and our lives today. So as we continue on and in and the sorrow, be encouraged because there is a God who made ultimate sacrifices by giving his son that you may become like him.
The way we love today is not the way he loves. So he begins to explain to us what love looks like. And honestly, this is a love that looks like God. That's what he's asking for us. That we would foster and carry and exude a love that looks like God.
If he calls us to it, then it means he must empower us to it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 6:18
That he can change and transform an unloving person into a loving person. And I'm telling you right now before he gets too convoluted, not the love that's on that you hear on Spotify, not the love you hear about in articles, not the love you hear about in the movies.
There is a love that is determined by God. And this type of love looks different. It's not isolated in nature. Doesn't pick and choose whom to love. This is a love that falls on the just and the unjust. This is the love that falls on everyone. And he is motivated by this. Thank goodness he was motivated by this kind of love.
Because if enemies prevented him from demonstrating love, Christ would have never stayed on the cross because we were all enemies of the cross of Christ.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 7:08
So here we go. My subject today, love that looks like God. Love that looks like God. I've had people ask me before, "Do you have a favorite kid?" I've had people ask me that. I think that's pretty ridiculous. And the answer would be no. Do not have a favorite kid. I've never had anybody ask me, "Do you love one more than the other?
Never had anybody ask me that. You know why people don't ask that question? Because parents don't love one more than the other. It is amazing. You can have one kid. Let's say you're you've been in church your whole life. Let me say I let me speak from my perspective. I'm a pastor. I love the Lord. Committed my life to preaching the word and to ministering to people.
And although I don't do that, awesome. Although I fumble around a lot. God loves me anyway and he chose me. And if you have a problem, take it up with my boss. But I have a problem with me, too. So, you're in good company. I got some problems. And he's gracious. Thank goodness he's gracious. But I have two kids.
Let's say one kid decided to reject God, was uncomfortable being around me because of his sinfulness. I have two boys. Began to alienate himself from our family, from Brooke and from my did not want to come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Guess what? Maybe this is just me. I would love him just as much as I love the other son who committed his life to Christ, who showed up at every family event, who was always there. I would be deeply broken over my son who rejected the Lord and rejected our family.
And that brokenness would drive me to prayer. It would not stop me. It would motivate me to continue to reach out and do all I could as a father to continue to draw him back into the fold.
I would want to show my love to him because that love is real. It is not dependent upon his behavior.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 9:29
That love comes from somewhere I can't explain.
You can't foster this. You can't initiate it. It's just there. Are you with me today? That from the moment that they were born, it was there as a father.
Now, that's beautiful when we think of a father to a son or father to a son and a daughter, father to all of his daughters. However your structure is in your home or a mother to their kids, that sounds wonderful. But is my love, that love I'm speaking about, is that the same for those outside my immediate family?
Track with me. When I look at the love I have for my kids and I look at the love that I have for other people, if they were to reject God, if the other people were to reject me, not be comfortable with me, talk about me, would I be motivated with the same type of love? Track with me here.
That's what God's calling us to. Well, that seems impossible, Sean. How in the world are we to love this way? Whatever I have for my kids, that comes naturally. I didn't do anything for that. It's just there. But you're asking me to do something that is completely against my nature. Yeah, I'm not. God's God's commanding it. Well, but it's impossible, Sean.
I think that's the point. I think he wants you to sit when A place NOT where YOU GO, well, I'M A very loving person. I got this one licked. I think he wants you to understand that we got problems. We need help. We need some assistance. We need to be yolked with somebody who loves this way. We need to see how they step and see how they walk and see how they move.
And
The reality is I'm not motivated by this type of love. I need a new nature.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 12:04
And he goes, I got you because I can give you a new nature. I can instill in you a new heart. A heart that loves in ways you never thought possible. You really think the love you have for your kids, you got on your own, when I entrusted them to you, I empowered you with a kind of love that would serve them well.
That's what this is about.
He wants you to look upwards instead of inwards for this kind of love.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 12:42
And trust me, I've looked inwards. I come from a particular Christian heritage, wonderful heritage. And part of it might be the way that it was taught and part of it might be the way that it was thought. But I will tell you this, we were had a tendency I had a tendency to be very motivated by what I did.
Works just what do I need to do? What do I need to do? Just tell me what to do. That I never really reached out to God to let him do a work in me is so concerning. Listen, I'm just going to be real with you this morning. We are living in an unusually hostile moment in time. I mean, okay, online has become a cesspool of hostility.
Let me tell you, let me tell you something. Let me break this down for you. We don't
We are so interested in playing the algorithm that we have forgotten to be Christ to the world.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 13:54
It is amazing because now even pastors know that the greatest way to build a platform is to be hostile.
But we're not to be like the world. Well, Sean, you know, sometimes you got to play the game to get to be heard. Jesus didn't do that. He was the opposite of hostile.
He would not play the algorithm to get a following because he would get the wrong following.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:42
I mean, can you just can you just with me just think about what I'm talking about?
I don't need to be specific, do I? It's crazy right now. This is a problem. This is a problem that the temperature of the world is rising. And not just politically, not just culturally, but spiritually. Hostility towards Christ is no longer whispered in the corners like it was in the 90s. People are vocal and they're hostile towards the church, towards God, towards Christ, towards believers.
Believers are dying around the world in the thousands upon thousands for their faith. The world is hostile. Now, in case you didn't know that hostility has hit the states, the world is hostile.
Truth is no longer merely questions. Righteousness is no longer misunderstood. It is resisted and truth is mocked and opposed around every corner of the earth.
Darkness is no longer hiding in the shadows and the corners. It's bold. It's aggressive. And it's emboldened. And it has platforms. And it runs and committees and boards and it receives donations.
And if we are honest, we feel it in our chest. We feel the tension between loving God and living in the world that seems increasingly committed to dishonoring the God we love.
We grieve the erosion of truth, the dismantling, single-handed dismantling of the family, the distortion of justice, God's justice, the casual disregard for life, just disregard for life, the life God gave.
We don't care. Save THE dogs, kill THE children. And Scripture gives language to what we feel. The reproaches that fall on God fall on us. So when Jesus then speaks into this moment, his words don't come as a soft suggestion. They come as a confrontation.
If you want to be like God, love your enemies.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 17:38
That seems hard in a hostile world.
That sentence unsettles us. Not because it denies righteous indignation, but because it redirects it.
Jesus does not tell us to call evil good. We learned that last week. He does not tell us to celebrate what grieavves the heart of the father.
But he does tell us that personal hatred is never the pathway to divine likeness.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:11
Track with me. Personal hatred is not the pathway to divine likeness.
And to understand this command, Jesus exposes how religion can shrink love, how Scripture can be misused to excuse bitterness, and how the father calls his children to a love that looks like him.
Point 1When religion shrinks love, it sanctifies hate
One, when religion shrinks love, it sanctifies hate. Number one. Number one. There we go. There we go. When religion shrinks love, I should have said it sanctifies hate. Matthew 5:43. Sorry, I should have left this open.
Says, "You've heard it said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy."
Jesus begins by quoting what everyone in the day thought was Scripture, but really wasn't. I want you to this week, I want you to go out there on the Google sphere and I want you to research some of the most misinterpreted Scriptures in the Bible.
Here's one. God does not give you more than you can handle.
Wrong. The essential nature of the gospel message reveals that everything is more than you can handle.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 20:05
Everything is more than you can handle. Everything is more than you can handle. Says he didn't allow you to be tempted more than you could stand up under that. Now track with me here. This is the type of thing and there's many more and I don't have time to go into them because that's the point of my sermon.
But this is the type of thing that happened in the day where it's telephone game. One person heard a Scripture and they interpret it one way and they gave it to somebody else and tell by the time it got down the end the line you get part of the Scripture right but you get the other part wrong.
Have you ever done that before? Have you ever Have you ever like as we're preaching through because we've been in Oh, we've been a lot of vers. We've been we preached through a lot of books. Hebrews and First John and Romans and Exodus and Matthew. Now, when you go through it, you're like, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
That's not what it says." How many of you have been there? Right? You That's not what it says. That's not what I thought it said. I thought it said something different. That's what our mind does. It's what our mind does. And so that's kind of what's happening in the day. And I don't I don't want to say that it was that the people heard it wrong, but those teaching it misinterpreted it and preached it wrong until it became so standard that the standard thought of the day, to put it simply, was you are to love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But that's not what the Bible says. The Scripture that is being quoted here is in Leviticus 19:18. And here it is. You are to love your neighbor. That's it. Doesn't say you're supposed to hate everybody else. Later on, we hear somebody asking Jesus, "Who's my neighbor?"
That was a fun little back and forth because we want to limit our love.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 22:20
At the same time, be grateful for a God who didn't limit his. Now, as we move on here, and I'm probably getting ahead. He says, "If you're my son, you look like me. You talk like me. You have manurisms like me. You know what one of the weirdest things in the world is? When your son's talking back TO you and you see a reflection of yourself.
And sometimes that caused pride to rise up in your heart. You get excited. And sometimes you're like, I don't know where you learned that behavior from. And then you realize that's me. That's definitely me. How many of you ever been in you're you're in this dialogue with your husband or your wife and you say to them, "That's your kid."
What has happened there is you see an image and a p and of you see a behavior that looks like the person you have attributed that child to.
And God is saying, "If you're my sons, this is how I love. This IS what YOU should look like. This looks different than the world's love. You act different than the world." Let me tell you, it's hard. Have you ever heard of the nature versus nurture? There are some things I just listen Brooke Brook's father a lot of her life growing up she had occasional opportunities to be around him and so now we have moved back in to the area and he lives in Harrisonville so we have been around him a lot more so I as since our marriage I've been able to get kind I see there are a lot of things baby that you didn't get nurtured into being. You are like him.
Do you know what I'm saying? And you weren't around him a ton. So there are some things we're just we just adopt cuz we're like them.
But there are some things you pick up because you're around them. Let me ask you a question. Could it be Could it be that we're not in the presence of God enough?
Amen. Could it be? Could it be that relig religion shrinks the attributes of God by hoping that people can be sustained by a 30 minute sermon on Sunday?
I say 30, we know it's not, but I'll just I just say it. Could it be? We hope that people can be sustained and develop the characteristics of Christ and the nature of Christ by a 30 minute sermon a week when everything in their world from online social media to movies to engagement with friends to everything else that they participate in to locker room time and parties on the weekend and hangouts with your friends who are not like Christ is pouring in and pouring in and pouring in and pouring in and pouring in and I get 30 minutes a word.
We hope to be like him. We become and demonstrate the attributes OF those WE marinate IN. And there should BE A clarion call TO THE church TO begin TO invest themsel in into a relationship with GOD. YOU should BE IN your word. You should be sitting with HIM AS much AS YOU DO with your phone. Amen. HOW CAN YOU BE like HIM and not be around him?
I was my wife very faithfully makes me a cup of coffee in the morning. I just want to thank you Lord for my wife and her faithfulness to serve in this capacity. And the other day I got into a Oh, man. I got into a place where I had a cup of coffee and I was daydreaming out the window and I had was running I was going to run some I was going to empty out I was going to clean the cup and it was half full.
I didn't drink at all and I put it under the faucet and I was just sitting there and I was daydreaming. I was like, "Oh yeah, it's a cup of coffee." And I looked down and it was still dark. I thought, I wonder how long it will take for the water to become white. That took a while. It took a while.
Now imagine with me for a moment. If she was pouring coffee in while I was pouring clean water in, it took a long enough just to sit there for the coffee to disappear by pouring water in there forever.
See, this is more important than you think. Yes, it has a purifying job. Some of you are like, "Well, I have the Holy Spirit. I have the Holy Spirit." I If the Holy Spist, if your life is a glass of milk and the Holy Spirit is the Hershey's cocoa you pour in the bottom.
Oh, I love that. How many of you ever taken a sip of milk and then squirted Hershey's and shook your head? I've done that. I've done that. Don't Don't do that. Give you a headache. What am I talking about? If you were the glass of milk and the Hershey's went in and it was the Holy Spirit, then the word of God would be the spoon.
I like some of you like, "Well, I got the Holy Spirit." It can be stirred and it can be quenched. Yeah. And the way he does that is by his word. Religion today shrinks the word. You know the church has been guilty of the only people who could get access to the word were the priests.
Do you know what kind of privilege you live in? You are so privileged. You have privileged religion. This type of religion which handles the word of God and does not allow the people to have access to it begins to sanctify hate.
It's not good.
The rabbis narrowed the meaning of the neighbor until love became manageable.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 29:49
Neighbor meant something like you, someone like you. I'm going to love you if you're like me. If you're not like me, weirdo, I don't love you. Someone within your tribe, someone who shared your blood, your customs, your convictions. And in the day, outsiders were excluded, foreigners were cursed, and enemies were despised.
Religion became external performance. Hatred, listen, found shelter under the language of holiness.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "Well, Jesus flipped over tables and made whips, and it's not my beyond me to do the same."
Hatred found shelter under the language of holiness and the misinterpretation and abuse of Scripture.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 30:43
God's commands were flattened into social convenience, and Jesus exposed the danger.
Listen, when religion loses the heart of the message, obedience becomes selective and love becomes conditional.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:00
Don't let religion shrink love and sanctify hate.
Point 2When God's justice is used to excuse our bitterness
Number two, when God's justice is used to excuse our bitterness, Jesus is not correcting Moses.
He's correcting misinterpretation. In the Old Testament, judgment always belonged to God. Track with me because some of you are like, "What about all the wars in the Old Testament, man?" The wars were judgment of God on nations. Israel's wars were judicial, never personal. Isn't it amazing?
We take what's judicial from God and make it personal.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:59
So, what he's doing here is he's talking to a nation that has taken what was meant to be judicial and he's turned it into a personal way of loving those who are for you in your nation and hating those who are against you and not a part of your nation.
And let's not get critical at the Jews in this particular day because this would be very easy for all of us to fall into. Can I get an amen up in here? Amen. If God is using you to bring justice to another nation through war, the natural tendency would be we supposed to hate them because we're killing them.
I want you to understand where this is coming from. And in case you didn't in case you already forgot, in case you think I ain't never gone to war and killed nations and people, and God hadn't used me in that way, and you're right, he isn't using some judicial punishment when you talk bad about your brother and you murder them, but you do it anyway.
It's amazing. We began to feel entitled to this type of behavior. Vengeance was never entrusted to individual hearts. But Israel's leaders took text about divine judgment and they personalized them. They took God's prerogatives and used them to justify what God never authorized.
Yet Scripture consistently calls God's people to personal mercy.
Exodus commands kindness even towards enemies. David spares Saul's life when he had every reason to strike him dead. Job refuses to rejoice when the enemy's fall. Proverbs warns against celebrating another's downfall. There is no difference between holy hatred and personal hatred. Track with me today. Amen. There is no difference. It is right to hate what God what dishonors God.
That's right. We should hate what dishonors God.
It is never right to hate those made in his image. Righteous indignation towards sin must never become personal animosity towards sinners.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:42
Point 3Jesus will not let us love like everyone else
Number three, Jesus will not let us love like everyone else. But so and so did it. I man when my kids were growing up, one would get in trouble A BIT, BUT SO AND SO DID this. You Some of you are like, "Yeah, that's really annoying when our kids do that. You do that. Yeah, you do that. I do that.
My behavior is justified because OF THE behavior OF another." Jesus will not let us love like they love.
Your love must supersede the world's love because we're not like the world.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:47
Can I get an amen? We're aliens and strangers in this land. Matthew 44 5:44 says, "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Let me see that again because it can't say that. It can't. It has to be something else. But I say to you, love your enemies. Oh, it does say that. And pray for them. Pray for the people who persecute you. I'll pray for them. All right. Sorry. Sorry. That was my internal dialogue while I read that earlier this week.
I got your prayer right here. You know what I mean? Like he says, "But I say to you say, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. But I say to you, love them." Don't just love them, pray for them. Oh, here's where my heart becomes incredibly sorrowful. Oh, and so should your heart be as well. God, help me. Help me to love like this.
I need your help. This is not like me.
I can't even remember TO pray FOR THE people I love. I'm too busy. I care TOO much about myself. I'M TOO wrapped UP IN myself. I GOT TOO much going ON. I GOT NO margin in my life. I'm on the brink, man. I'M ON THE brink. I'M ON the edge. Any little thing will make ME POP OFF. I have nothing else to give.
But God doesn't seem to care about that. And
Actually, that cry might be the end of your rope that will get you to this type of life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 38:09
Because you can't get here by fighting your way there. You get here by surrender. That's a dirty word in our culture, man. Surrender. How dare you bring that up? Surrender. You love this way. When you surrender your rights, surrender your time, you surrender your life. Jesus does not soften the command, he makes it harder.
Jesus is so, you know, like I just listen, we have created an idol out of Christ today.
And
I'm afraid, track with me. I'm afraid there are people who recline into the arms of a Jesus they fashioned who is not the Lord of the Bible.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:13
And they are comforted by an idol they have fashioned in their mind while coming to church, serving in the church, preaching from the pulpits in the church and living like a Christian their whole life.
And they will be shocked one day when he turns them away because they have worshiped an idol that looked like Christ that was fashioned in the image of Christ and the image they wanted him to be, not in the image he was.
Jesus does not soften the command because you don't feel good. He hardens the command because he wants you to not be feel good about yourself.
He replaces distortion with divine clarity. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.
Listen, this is not a command of emotion. It is a command of the will.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 40:18
Agape love is unrecognizable goodwill. It seeks the highest good of others. Enemies do not mean theoretical opposition. It means the one who harms you, the one who opposes you, the one who despises your faith.
To love them means you act for their good. You desire their redemption.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 40:53
Track with me here. Like a father res desires the redemption of a child that rejects God, rejects the family, rejects everything about the family and everything the family stands for.
There is still a desire in the heart for salvation for that person. You long for their salvation.
When was the last time you were heavy hearted for the lost?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:26
To love them means you act for their good. Jesus already illustrated this truth.
The good Samaritan shows us that neighbor is not defined by proximity or agreement but by need.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:53
Listen, there is a love that requires to be conquered, that refuses to be conquered.
This kind of love does not wait for agreement, does not require apology. It does not need permission. It moves towards those who move against us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 42:12
There's a prayer that puts us on the cross with Christ. Prayer changes the battlefield. Persecution becomes opportunity. Hostility becomes fuel for eternal reward.
And prayer becomes evangelistic.
We should not be praying for the destruction of others. We should be praying for the redemption of others.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 42:45
We pray for their deliverance.
We stand before God on behalf of those who stand against us.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 42:57
Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them." If you have no other words to pray, if you don't know what to say when you have an enemy, pray those prayers, those words.
Father, forgive them. That's the heart we should have. Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them." Stephen prayed, "Lord, do not hold this against them." When he stoned them, when they stoned him. Listen. And God answered both prayers. To pray for your persecutor is to stand be beside them before God and plead for their souls. Family resemblance is revealed under pressure.
Matthew 5:45, Jesus tells us why this matters. Let's read it real quick. 5:45. And I'm almost done. I'm drawing close. Not Isaiah. So that you may be sons in your father who is in heaven. For he makes the sun rise on evil and on good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.
And Jesus tells us why this matters. So that you may be sons of your father in heaven. That one threw me for a while. Did it throw you for a while? Just a while.
Loving enemies reveals family resemblance. Forgiveness is the clearest mark of divine likeness.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 44:44
And then moves on and God lets sun and rain fall without distinction. I think that's key. He shows daily kindness to the righteous and to the wicked. And he's showing you how your love should look as well with this. His love is displayed through general goodness. Track with me here. Compassion and pity, warnings of judgment, and the universal offer of the gospel going out to all men.
Not the universal salvation, universal gospel going out to all men.
Selective love proves nothing. Loving those who love you is no different from the pagans.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:50
Our love should look like God's. We're never more like God than when we forgive those who least deserve it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:55
Point 4The measure of maturity is how we love the undeserving
Number four, and my final point, the measure of maturity is how we love the undeserving.
We base maturity in the church based on your tenure in the church. Track with me here. That's the amount of years you've been a Christian. I'll be candid with you. I'll be candy with you. There are people who have been who've received salvation, been in the church two years, who are much more mature than people been in the church for 45.
Because maturity is not based on tenure, amount of years you've been here.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 46:44
And I believe this Scripture is saying the measure of maturity is how we love the undeserving.
I would say most if not all of God's attributes are revealed in us loving the undeserving. Not just one of them. Matter of fact, all the ten commandments and all the extra stuff he added to the ten commandments and how they were being misused can be summed up in two. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
And love your neighbor as yourself. It's all of God's attributes and characters and holiness and all of that delivered through love.
Be perfect, therefore. Really, as your heavenly father is perfect. This is not a claim of sinless perfection. It is a call to godlike love. Perfection is the goal. It's not the boast. All right. Perfection is the goal. It is not the boast.
The measure is the father himself. Love without discrimination. Mercy without limits.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 48:23
The evidence of true sunship is not religious talk.
It is love for enemies. Prayer for persecutors. Evangel evangelical compassion. Evangelist Evangelistic compassion for the hostile. Persecution. It's not a bad thing. It's a blessing. It's an opportunity.
It affords us the opportunity to be a light in a world that is growing incredibly dark.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 49:07
To be salt in a world that has lost its flavor. God help us.
We sons of God, we do not retreat. We do not retaliate. We intercede.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 49:30
That's what we're called to. And this is the love that looks like
36:16
34:03
40:58
43:06
38:28
36:29
53:31
46:21
50:56
50:14
50:59
50:16
50:33
1:01:14
55:11
58:45
48:40
53:36
50:01
48:24
46:58
53:46
48:09
47:47
48:22
48:05
49:51
44:16
43:00
36:15
31:13
52:55
50:14Now playing
58:33
49:41
46:19
44:54
43:02
38:08
30:23
45:14
45:45
44:48
38:14
45:30
43:08
26:04
47:18
37:25
30:49
43:11
47:01
40:41
44:50
33:29
53:32