Treats Other People The Way You Want To Be Treated

This morning, we're going to be continuing our study on the Sermon on the Mount. Our text this morning is maybe one of the most known passages, whether we know it's from the Sermon on the Mount or not. It's the sort of thing that is often said or spoken of by both believers and unbelievers. It's called the Golden Rule. You guys know the Golden Rule? Yeah. And so whether you're a Christian or whether you're not, this is something that, this concept, this principle, is something that's familiar. If you have children, it's something that you probably are regularly saying to them in their treatment of one another as you help them to manage their relationships and most often the conflicts between them. But the golden rule is much more than a really good piece of advice from God about how to get along with other people. It is that, but it's much more. And my hope this morning is that God will grow our understanding and our abilities to love others well. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord from Matthew 7, verse 12.

the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the law and the prophets. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. As I said at the beginning, I want to open up a little bit more. This golden rule that we would treat other people the way we want to be treated, I think often is, we think of it in terms only of solving conflicts. But that's when we get the golden rule off the shelf and we say, this is what you need to do. There's a rift, there's a problem, there's a lack in your relationship. And so what we need to do is solve that. And the way to solve that is by treating other people the way that you want to be treated. In fact, earlier in this chapter, though it wasn't the golden rule, Jesus was talking about this very thing. In Matthew 7, 2, he said, for in the way that you judge, you will be judged. And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

And so what was he teaching us when he said that? He was saying you need to be careful about how quick you are to judge other people because the hypocrisy that resides in you to judge them far more harshly than you would judge yourself is something that needs to be disciplined. So whoa, be careful. Be sure that you're willing to submit to the same level of scrutiny and judgment that you pour out on other people. And what is this except saying treat other people the way that you would like to be treated yourselves. You and I, we do need to be told this message, that in conflict we shouldn't be more harsh than is appropriate, that we should treat others in judgment as we would want to be treated if we were the one under judgment. And so this is a point of this golden rule, to treat each other the way that we would like to be treated. And if that was all that the golden rule was good for, just to adjudicate and resolve conflict between people, we'd have enough work to do, wouldn't we?

I mean, if someone says, hey, how was your week? We say, good, or busy, or hard. But if we were to go through and catalog how our week actually was, which one of us could say of a week, maybe perhaps even a day, that there wasn't conflict that needed to be dealt with between us and our spouse, or our children, or our co-workers, or our neighbors, or wherever we're at? Isn't there conflict that needs to be... addressed and dealt with? Didn't we get frustrated and offended by someone else? Didn't we offend someone else and then become frustrated when they pointed it out to us? If that's all that this text had to teach us, we would be busy. And yet it's not the only place that the golden rule applies. Notice that at the very beginning of this verse, Jesus says, in everything, in everything, you're to treat other people the way that you would have them treat you. And so, it's not limited to just the conflicts that we have, though those are constant in everything. We're to treat other people the same way that we want them to treat us. Now, we could explain the reasons why this is difficult, why this is hard for us to put into practice, while at the same time talking about how good it is to be done. We can look at this and say, that is how everyone should live. In fact, this simple statement.

If everyone would simply obey it and do it and put this at the forefront of their mind, it will resolve conflicts from the two-year-olds to nations. It would stop wars if we could just get this principle into practice. And everyone, Christian or not, would say this is a good idea. It's a good way to live. This is the sort of thing that should be done. But it's not. Instead of in conflict, instead of thinking of other people and what would be good for them and treating them the way that we would want to be treated, we think only of ourselves. And so really, our selfishness and our concern for our well-being and our desires being met governs us instead of this principle. We don't think of other people and what would be good for them. We think of ourselves and what would be good for us. And then we expect of them to treat us the way that we want to be treated.

This text says treat people the same way that you want them to treat you. Instead, what we would say is, treat me the way I want you to treat me. That's actually how we live, practically. Treating other people the way that we would want to be treated requires some level of self-knowledge. Eric said in Sunday School in Passing, and we didn't talk about his Sunday School lesson in particular in my sermon, but he said a lot of things that I'm going to mention as well. One of the things that he pointed to and that I find to be true of myself, and I think all Christians would agree, is that you're actually kind of hard to get along with. You are a bit insufferable. You irritate people. When they're frustrated and angry with you, they're not always wrong. Sometimes you are obnoxious and rude or lazy or proud or selfish. And so they get irritated, and their irritation, their frustration at you, It's not unfounded. And it takes an abiding knowledge of our own weaknesses to put this passage in context. If we think of ourselves as always doing right, as always doing good, as always not making mistakes, and if we make mistakes, those always being the result of someone else's previous mistake, like I only sinned because this other thing happened first.

If we can't learn to take responsibility for our own actions, for our own sins, for the ways that we fail, then we will be very, very well equipped to expect other people to treat us well all the time. Because in that moment, we think we're better than them. Do you not walk through life looking at people, judging whether they're better or worse than you? What things they have that are better? What things you should aspire to? Do you never get frustrated or covetousness when you see someone who's got something you don't have? We go through life many times, much of the time, simply judging those around us. And then when there's conflict and then when there's sin, when we get close enough or something's important enough to two different people, we have a problem. Because they don't want the same thing. Or they don't want to get it in the same way. Or they don't want to make the same sacrifices. The reality of sin in our lives.

and in the lives of those around us is constant. When Peter exhorts us in 1 Peter 4.8, he says this. He says, above all, keep fervent in your love for one another. And then it says, because love covers a multitude of sins. And I don't know that I've ever really put it together. I've always just thought of the first half of that verse. But above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, as though there was a period at the end and not a comma. But he's exhorting them to keep fervent in their love for one another. Why? Well, because there's lots of sin to be covered over in those relationships. And he exhorts us not to let that sin accumulate and pile up, but above all else, to be forgiving, to keep fervent in our love. Because love is the only thing that's going to solve the conflict between the two of you. Our love, another way of saying this, is our love for one another, our ability to treat other people the way that we would like to be treated, is not dependent on whether or not they've sinned against us.

It really doesn't matter. If you have kids and undoubtedly your kids have come to you with big tears in their eyes or frustrations or maybe you heard them yell in the other room or you heard something hit the wall, there was a problem. You heard a conflict and they come in and you say, what's wrong, honey? And what is inevitably going to come out of their mouth? They did this to me. Always what comes out of their mouth. And you're sitting there as a parent and you're going, you call the other child in and you say, did you do that? And they say, yes, but they did this first.

And what you're watching happen in children, and here's the thing, we don't outgrow it when our hair turns gray, is this blame shifting of why I'm going to treat them the way they've treated me as opposed to treating them the way I would like them to treat. We say my interactions with them are going to be predicated and based on how they've treated me first. Well, here's the problem. If everyone in the relationship does that, then what we're going to have is chaos. When Paul was dealing with the Galatians and the fights that were going on in that church between the Judaizers and the Christians, he says this warning. Be careful. If you're going to bite and devour one another, be careful that you're not consumed by one another. And that warning is meant to teach us that if we go about life this way, always fighting and always trying to get what's due to us and what's fair and always blaming other people in the process, what Paul tells us is,

you're going to be consumed by that. It will destroy everything. We're self-protective and we think that if we don't look out for ourselves, then we will just be taken advantage of and consumed and chewed up and spit out. And that's a natural thought for you to have. But if you're a Christian, then a new way of processing your life and being sinned against is necessary. You're no longer allowed to think like an unbeliever. And you're not allowed to behave like an unbeliever who says, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And if I'm mad, then maybe a life for an eye or an arm for a tooth. Instead of thinking that way, you ought to be thinking in terms of turning your other cheek. Or if someone sins against you and steals from you, that you ought to give them your coat also. And that if they require something of you, that you might give them twice. You know, if they ask you to go a mile, you go with them too. This is how Christians think.

This is how Christians behave. And what I'm afraid is that we as Christians have come and said, yes, yes, yes, that's true and that's good and that's how it should be. But we just look at it and we say, it's good over there. But when it comes to our lives, we've got real reasons for why we don't need to do that in this situation. And that's no good. That's a failure. In everything, which includes conflict and it includes being sinned against, We're to treat people the same way that we want them to treat you, which necessarily means you are not going to be treating them the way they're treating you. The Scripture is shot through with this message. You finish the verse for me. Do not be overcome with evil, but what? Overcome evil with good. So what is that except responding out of kind? Someone does something bad to you. You choose as a Christian because you love Jesus.

To not reciprocate in the same way. Which means what? It just means you got sinned against and you didn't retaliate. How will they learn not to treat me that way if I don't show them it's wrong? That's not your concern. What would you say to your kids if they asked you that question? He hit me. If I don't hit him back, he's just going to bully me and keep hitting me. I say, well, only if you'd never come tell your father, right? Or your mother. Only if you never do anything, like we act as though there's no other viable response except to respond to evil with more evil. In our house, it's common for us to say to our kids, I say to them, what could you have done? Okay, this situation, three kids are involved, and all of them have screwed up, right? It's not like, oh, the poor kid that didn't do anything wrong has been sinned against. They've all taken their share.

And what I will ask them is I'll say, listen, it's all said and it's done now, and now we're talking to dad. I want each of you to tell me what you could have done to stop this situation. Well, what they did, I didn't ask what they did. What can you do to stop this situation? How could you have kept this situation from boiling over? That's a hard question to answer because it requires an awful lot of self-discipline to say, I could have been sinned against and not retaliated. But that's exactly what Christians ought to do. If turning the other cheek means anything, it means being sinned against and not sinning in return. If treating people the way you want them to treat you means anything, it means not repaying evil for evil. And so in everything, we're to do this. Here's the thing about conflict. Everything I've described up to this point is reactive. You're responding to something, some outside thing that's happened to you. Someone has done something. It's very rare actually for you to walk up and just, you know,

Punch somebody in the face. Kids will do it, but there's like these steps that get up to that point, you know? It doesn't just start with that. You don't just get up in the morning and go wake your sibling up by like, you know. That's just not what we do. When we sin against other people, we're often responding to something, a perceived offense in them. And so up to this point in the sermon, all I've been trying to impress upon you is you need to respond when you're sinned against graciously. You need to respond the way a Christian ought to respond, treating them well when they've treated you poorly. But when Jesus says, in everything do this, he's not just simply saying you need to respond well when people harm you. He's saying in everything. You need to apply this principle proactively in your life, not just reactively. This rule is not just for when something happens to you. This rule is the sort of thing you should be...

thinking about in every interaction you have with people. Earlier, I asked, I said, could you go a week without having conflicts? And we'd all would say no. And I'd say, but was every conflict you had, was every interaction you had a conflict? And you'd say, well, no. And I'd say, okay, so in everything, in all of those interactions that were not a matter of, you know, us biting and devouring, fighting and having conflict, but just the normal rhythms of life and work and homemaking and all of these things. Did you think of other people and treat them the way you wanted to be treated? This is not something that's just for when we're sinned against. This is for all of our lives. We should think in our lives as Christians, when we're around other people, as we go through our day, strangers, family, co-workers, classmates, whoever it is, we should think, if I was in their shoes, what would I want to be done for me? What would I want to be done for me? And then,

we should think, well, why would I want that to be done for me? And you say, because it'd be so helpful. Because it would be so kind. Because it would be so encouraging. And then we should say, okay, well, now I know what to do. Now I know what to do for them because I know what I would have liked to have done and I know what it would have meant for me. So then we know how to respond to them. We know what to do for them. If you've ever had someone be hospitable to you, you've appreciated it, haven't you? Even though you may have been like, no, no, no, no, you don't have to do that.

There was a part of you that's like, this is really sweet. They're just being kind to me. They gave me this gift. They had us over for dinner. They babysat our kids. Whatever they did. You think this is just the kindness of them. They don't have to do this. They went out of their way to bless us. If you've ever experienced that, what you've experienced is someone proactively, in everything, doing what Jesus says here. It had a cost for them. It cost them time or money or energy. It cost them, you know, they had to say no to something else so that they could do that thing for you or with you. This is the golden rule at work. It's not always reactive. It needs to be mostly proactive. Here's the thing. We live our lives in a struggle for power. And when we're sinned against, we feel as though someone has done us wrong.

and that they've asserted themselves and their power or their ability to harm us. And so our natural response is to bristle against that, to stand up straight and say, you're not going to treat me like that. And so we punch back. If they haven't sinned against us, then we say, okay, we'll just all keep our distance and life will be good that way. But much of our lives is spent trying to be in control, trying to be in power, trying to manage other people and their treatment of us. But did you know, That that's not how God has brought us to faith. That's not how God has dealt with us. In Romans 2, verse 4, it says, Or do you not know that the loving kindness of the Lord is what brings us to repentance? That he bears with those who sin against him. And if anyone has the right to rise up and to knock down, it's him. One of the things that's most unique.

about Christianity and about God as our Father is the way that he deals with us and that he deals with us as children, that he's merciful to us. You understand if you have children or if you're around little children that they don't have the strength that you do, that you can't play or wrestle or throw or whatever it is you're doing with them. You can't do it at your pace or your speed because they're not capable. And so you have to accommodate yourself to their weakness. You have to accommodate yourself to their attention span. Do you ever get irritated when your little kid brings you a book and halfway through it they don't want to finish it? What's wrong with them? What do you do? No, you're going to sit here and we're going to finish this story. It's a good story. I'm probably not the only one who's wanted to do that. What do you do? You say, oh, you want to read another book? And pretty soon you've got half a dozen books that are half read. You accommodate yourself to your children. You understand their weakness and you bear with them. Because you should be thinking, my kid's bringing me books.

I want them to like reading. So I'm going to make this thing we're doing right now, even if we don't look at all the pictures and lift all the little see what's behind it tabs, that we're enjoying our time and we're learning to read. And that's actually what's going on here. And so we bear with our kids. We understand their weaknesses. We accommodate them. And what Jesus said just before this was, if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more so your father? In heaven. How much more so does he know how to give what is good to his children? And yet, because our fathers, in our land in particular, have been emasculated, have become absent, are weak, it really does color the way we view God the Father himself. And so when we come to his word, we read these things and we say, well, that would be good if, in some other place, in some other time, with some other people.

But that's not how it works in my life. In my life, we have to fight to get what we want. And we have to stand up for ourselves and we have to protect our own because there's no one else who will do it. Did you notice when we read the catechism this morning that one of the failures of authority is to leave their children and to leave their subordinates in danger or in temptation? But many of us have grown up without parents that loved us or cared for us enough. And I'm not saying there are perfect parents out there. Every one of our parents has failed us in this way and many other ways.

But we've come as a society to just believe that we are left to fend for ourselves. And so if we fend for ourselves, then the golden rule has no place in our life because it says surrender when everything in our society says fight. It says be kind. And we say, I've tried that and I got bitten. It didn't go well. And I learned not to do that again. But somehow there's this disconnect in our mind when we think this way and we don't ever stop long enough to think, What did Jesus do when he lived on earth? What was his life like? Was his experience 2,000 years ago so different from yours? I'm so mistreated. It's so unfair. There's no one here for me. There's no help. Was his life so different? Did the people not abandon him? Did the Pharisees not kill him? In his hour of need, did not his closest disciples scatter and follow at a distance and then deny him when questioned?

And what does the Scripture say to us about Jesus? That he became obedient even to the point of death. And for this reason, this is in Philippians, and for this reason he was given a name above every name. And it's at that name that every knee in heaven and on earth will bow. And so this idea that we would treat people well when they treat us poorly is really only another way of saying you should just be like Jesus. That's actually the expectation. That's the calling because you're a Christian. You're supposed to be like him, and that means that your life is going to be marked by treating people well who treat you poorly, who sin against you. And that there's not an upper limit where you say, we're supposed to behave that way up to this point, and then we can take our vengeance. Even on the cross, beaten and naked and dying, Jesus prays, what? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

And so there really isn't an upper limit where we can say, okay, but if they do this, then I don't have to, do I? How many times do I have to forgive my brother? Seven times? No. Seven times 70. As many times as you're sinned against and your brother comes and says, I've sinned against you, please forgive me. We're to forgive them. The world doesn't know anything about this. They can't know anything about this. They can't operate this way. But if you're a Christian, you're not of this world. And so you have a different set of rules and a different set of abilities. And so there's no relationship or situation in your life where this rule doesn't apply. This really is the most foundational thing that you should keep in your mind. If you don't know anything else about what the Bible says, and you never know anything else about what the Bible says, for the rest of your life, if you'll take this one rule and apply it to every situation you find yourself in,

By faith, you'll be the best Christian in the room. That's why Jesus says at the end of this, he says, in everything, therefore, treat people the same way that you want them to treat you. For this is the law and the prophets. What's he mean by this is the law and the prophets? What he means is, when we think of the law of God, we think of the Old Testament and the prophets, there's so much baggage and misunderstanding about what was going on there. Jesus tells us all of that, all of the law. Every single one of those laws only had one of two purposes, to teach you how to love God or to teach you how to love your neighbor. That's it. Excuse me. All of your life from creation until Jesus comes back has been aimed at these two goals. Everything Jesus has ever said, anything that has ever been recorded for us in Scripture was meant simply to teach us to love God and to love our neighbors.

When Jesus was questioned, what is the greatest commandment? He says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it, that you love your neighbor as yourself. I said earlier, I'm like, I said, you know, when we think of our lives, we tend to compartmentalize and think of this, well, this is a societal problem, or this is a theological problem, or this is a political problem. But the common thread through all of those things is that people are involved in them. And that the problems between nations, really does just boil down to problems between people, people wanting different things and not knowing how to sort it out. And when they can't sort it out and they get frustrated enough about it, we end up with wars. And so all of the law and all of the prophets just meant to teach us how to live in this world and how to relate to the God who made us. And if you're a Christian, the God who saved us. It's very easy to get lost in the law of God. I think in reformed circles,

You can see sort of this movement of the grace movement, the cheap grace movement, that God accepts you the way you are and you don't need to change, and he really doesn't have any expectations for you. And we can see the bankruptcy there, that actually those who believe that gospel believe a different gospel and are not changed by it. And so you can react to that and say, well, what do we need to do? What do we need to get back to? What do we need to take hold of to avoid that problem? And we say, we need to get back to the law of God. We need to get back to his yes and his no. We need to get back to the fear of the Lord. And those things are true, but it really does matter what you mean by them. What is it to get back to the law of God? Theonomy? No. That actually wasn't the point. The whole point of the laws that were given to Israel in the Old Testament was not to say, this is the quintessential perfect way for all of God's people to desire to be governed and to advocate for wherever they find themselves.

The whole point of the law was just to get them to love God and to love one another. To solve the riddle, the problem of sin that plagued every one of them. When the prophets would come, what would they say? You failed to love God. You failed to honor Him. Your hearts have wandered away. You've become fat. You've become rich. You've become proud. You've become a harlot. What's being said? What is the bottom line when all of those things... are being proclaimed against the people of God. Isn't it simply that you have forsaken the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery? You have replaced him with another God and you have failed at the first greatest commandment. And if you fail at the first commandment, it's impossible for you to succeed at the second. And don't we always see that to be the case? That those who don't love God or that when the people of God stray from God, their relationships with other people suffer.

their ability to care for one another, to express any gratitude or love, just goes down the drain. Because they're consumed by themselves. All they can think about is me. What can I get? What do I want? What do I need to do to them or say to them? How do I manipulate my life to get the thing I want? And so this statement from Jesus, this command to treat people the way we would want them to treat us, is built on the foundation that you are a Christian and that you serve God, that you make that your purpose. However much you fail at it, that that is your desire and your intention. And so if you're not a Christian, this is just a self-help piece of advice that will do you no good. But if you are a Christian, then your mind should be going, okay, let me think for a minute. How do I want to be treated? Isn't the answer to that question sort of assumed in the commandment? Treat other people.

the same way you want them to treat you, and it presumes that you know how you want to be treated. Now, I could ask unbelievers, and you say, how do you want people to treat you? And they could come up with a whole host of answers. And we could agree with many of them. But if you ask a Christian, how do you want to be treated? Their answer should be different. The answer at the top of their list should be different. I want God to be merciful with me. That's how I want to be treated. Whatever else happens in my life is downstream of that, and it's not as important. What I want is God to forgive my sins.

That's how I want to be treated. Because if I'm not treated that way by God, then any kindness that's shown to me in this world isn't going to solve the problem that I have with the Lord. And in the end, it's not going to matter. It will amount to me having had, as the scripture says, received my rewards on earth. Do you want all of your rewards now? Do you want all of your comforts now? You're like, well, no. And I'm like, okay, well, will you trade some of the comforts of this world for some of the pain of this world? so that you can have comfort in the next. You go, I don't know that I would like that trade. Can't I have comfort here and there? Not nearly as much as you'd like. So how do you want to be treated? A Christian says, I want my sins forgiven. That's how I want to be treated. I want a home in heaven with Jesus Christ. That's how I want to be treated. And however people treat me, doesn't matter. What I care about is how God's treated me, how he will deal with me, how he views me, what he will provide for me. And I say, okay.

If you're a Christian, then you have the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ given to you. Your sins are forgiven. We talk a lot about sin at our church. And I think it's good. I'm the pastor. I'm the one who does most of the talking about it. The reason I do is because I know how easy it is to forget and to become proud and to leave behind the Scripture. I was thinking as I was preparing to preach this morning about this, and I thought, you know, I think that... that sermons are going to become, in-person sermons like this, like live, are going to become the only place in life where we're not allowed to speed it up to two-act speed, where we actually have to discipline ourselves to sit and to listen and to consider and to move slow. Because whenever we listen to anything, like don't you wish, I mean, unless it's talk radio, but who listens to talk radio anymore? We all listen to podcasts of talk radio. Why? Because it's more convenient and we can speed it up. And so a sermon...

in-person live is going to become the only place where you have to slow down enough to actually think. When you move through life as fast as you listen to your entertainment and to your podcasts and to your books and to whatever else you're listening to, your brain cannot keep up. I don't care how smart you are. Your brain can't keep up. You don't have time to stop and to think and to consider and chew on what was said, even for just a second. Because if you do, you'll miss it. And so what that produces in us, this I want to speed it up culture, what that produces in us is an inability to slow down and to actually think about the answers to questions that are posed to us. The question, how do you want to be treated? Any one of us could have listed off a dozen ways we want to be treated, but how many of us said the most important thing about how I'm treated is that my sins be forgiven? That wasn't the first answer I had. The first answer I had was like,

kindness and patience and generosity and forgiveness. But I never thought about God. That wasn't my first thought. But for a Christian, everything in their minds, their whole lives, should be focused on how God has interacted with them and treated them. And that should inform all the rest of their lives. Why should I treat people who sin against me well when they treat me poorly? Because God has been kind to you. That's why. There's no other reason. What will happen if you treat someone... Does this passage guarantee you that if you treat them well, they will see it and repent and then start to treat you well? No! It doesn't say anything about that. It doesn't say anything at all that says, if you do this, then... This is like a more sophisticated way to get what you want out of people. There's none of that here. All that's here...

is an instruction. Treat other people well because that's how you'd want to be treated. Why? So they'll treat me well in return? No. They didn't treat Jesus well when he was kind to them. They didn't treat the apostles well. The reason that you should treat people well in the way that you would like to be treated is only because of the way God has treated you. And you're never going to get mature enough to forget that or to have grown beyond it. One of the reasons... One of the things I look forward to when we have communion, about every other week, one of the things I look most forward to is being able to say, this is just the most simplistic thing we do. You're a sinner, and God is merciful to sinners. And that's what gets said when we have communion. We can get way ahead of that with our theology and with our applications of Scripture in society, and it gets very complex.

You know, but when we come to the Lord's table, it's simple again. I'm a sinner who needs my sins forgiven. And the only way my sins can be forgiven is by the death of Jesus Christ. And that is how God treated you. He gave his son for you. And however smart you are, or however long you've been a Christian, or however good you are at whatever you do for your work, that's really the most important thing in your life. And it will always be the most important thing in your life. And yet it's easy to forget. It's easy to set it aside. It's easy to observe the fact with our minds instead of to feel it in our hearts, to believe it. So if you're to treat other people the way that you want to be treated, you're going to have to do it on purpose. It will never happen by itself. You're going to actually have to decide to do it on purpose.

You're going to have to choose to be sinned against and not retaliate. You're going to have to choose to see other people's weaknesses and needs. It's a skill that you have to cultivate. Some of you, I think you enjoy the fact that you're oblivious. And it's not good. It's not good that you would go through life as a Christian oblivious to the people around you and to the things that they need and the things that they lack. It's not good that you think only of yourself or only of your family. Now isn't that crazy for me to say? We're all about family and marriage and kids and your house and responsibility and all that. And I'm like, yeah, and so much more. We're actually about so much more than that. Because we have obligations and responsibilities beyond there. I mean, what is the single person supposed to do? What is the barren woman supposed to do? What is the widow supposed to do? Do they have no life? Are they of no value to God? Can they not produce anything good because they don't have these few things? No.

No. We have responsibilities to people outside of our home, outside of our church, outside of the faith. But you'll never see them if you don't open your eyes, except for when they sin against you. But then you won't see their needs, you'll just see their sins. When Jesus came into Jerusalem, he looked on the city, and his response after looking on the city from the mountaintop was to weep. to look and to see the hardness of heart and the unbelief and to know the judgment that was coming just a few years later to that city because of his unbelief. And I'm afraid that if we had stood up there, we would have said like Jonah, I hope you get what's coming to you. When instead we ought to be like Jesus who stood up there and wept and said, these are people who are going to destruction and they have no knowledge of it. Of course, they're going to sin against me. Of course, they're going to hurt me. Of course, they're going to offend my family or my children or my wife.

That should be expected. And there's no excuse for us not to treat them well. No excuse. And so you and I, we have a long way to go, don't we? We don't have to just get a little better at the relationships that are most important to us. We don't have to treat our loved ones just a little bit better. We've really got a lot of work to do. And part of that work is learning to see first where we are completely blind. Some of you might like to people watch. What do you see? What do you see when you look at people? What do you observe about them? What do you want for them? Do you say anything to them? Ever? Like strangers, do you walk up and talk to them? Hey, I remember Dan telling a story years ago about some kids playing in a mud puddle. I think you guys were on a date. And Dan's not always the smiliest person, you know? But he's just walking by, an older dad.

and he sees this dad and his kid. Maybe I don't remember the story perfectly, but this dad and this kid, this kid's just making a mess of it in the mud puddle, getting all wet, getting all muddy, and the dad's sitting there, and the father saw Dan look and immediately got all defensive because he thought Dan's going to say something like, you shouldn't be letting your kids splash mud and water all over themselves, far be it from them to have any fun. And all Dan said to him was, good job, Dad. Good job, dad. But the dad was like on his defense. He's like, oh, you're going to say something rude and mean. You're going to tell me I'm doing wrong. How many times do you watch somebody and as soon as you think they might catch your eye, you look away? Why do you do that? I mean, really, why do you do that? It's because you don't want to have any interaction with them. You want to be a passive observer of life, but you don't want to be involved in any of it. And so if you see someone who needs help, or if you see someone struggling,

or you see someone being ravaged by sin, it's not okay for you to be silent. It's really not okay. Now you can call that what you want. You can call that evangelism, and you can call that outreach, or you can just call that loving sinners and being a Christian. If I say that, they're going to get upset at me. I'll tell you a story. I was playing pickleball. Some of you guys know I play pickleball every once in a while. And I was playing, and there was this young Indian kid, maybe 20 years old. And so he had this friend with him, and I'm watching the two of them play. They're no good. They think they're good, but they're no good. They're like 20, and I'm 40 and fat, and they're young and athletic, and we're just kicking their butts because they don't know how to play the game. And Ali, this kid, was getting so angry. I thought he was going to, like, bust his paddle. I thought he was just going to smash it. He was cussing. He was mad. And the kid he was playing with was this, like, milquetoast white kid.

who is like not a firstborn. You know, he's like a middle child. He's just the peacekeeper. He's like, dude, come on. It's going to be okay. It's going to be like, calm down, man. You know, they got more experience and all this stuff. He's just trying to play peacekeeper. And this kid's just getting mad. He's getting mad. He's getting mad. And I'm playing against him. So what am I supposed to do? I'll tell you what I did. On the serve, I hit him with the ball on purpose. And you know what he did? He calmed down. And then sat and talked with me for 45 minutes afterward and told me he has no dad.

His mom's passed away, his dad's absent, and he lives with his grandma. And we got talking, and I was just like, this kid has no dad. That's the only reason you behave like that as a 20-year-old, is you've never had a dad tell you, cut it out. And his friend, I think his friend thought he was going to come across the court and beat me up. Don't worry, he's going to come and beat me up. I know what's going on inside of him because I've had the same thing go on inside of me. And sometimes you need somebody to just tell you to stop it without being mean or nasty. So we sat and we talked.

And we drank our water afterwards and we talked, you know, I'm a pastor and I've got all these kids and you're this young Indian kid who is a computer programmer and has no aims or goals in life other than to live in a beautiful place, not Indiana. And so we sat and we talked and we had a good time. I noticed something about him. His friend noticed it too. His friend was unwilling. He's like, oh, no, no, oh, no. You know, it wasn't working. So then he refused to play with him. And so then he's cussing at him and he's cussing back and they're yelling and, you know, and here I'm the old guy watching, you know.

And so they come back out and they play, and then I hit him. And everything was better after that. It really was. And for that one example where I engaged in some way in what I saw, because I did it on purpose. You know, his friend's like, oh, he didn't do it on purpose. I'm like, yeah, he did. I looked right at him. I said, I hit you on purpose. You shouldn't stand there. That's a bad place. If you want to learn how to play the game, that's a bad place to stand when people serve, because they'll hit you. And we were able to relate. I didn't hit him because I was mad at him. I didn't hit him because I wanted to make him madder.

I just saw that this guy was struggling, and I'm like, he just needs somebody to press the reset button. His friend doesn't know how. I'm going to. If you see people, if you observe them, if you're aware of what's going on, don't be afraid that they'll sin against you if you engage. They might. So what? What's so bad about that? If someone sins against you, what's so bad about that? You sin against people all the time. What's the big deal? We ought to proactively look and see. People's needs. You know what my failure was with Ali? I didn't get his phone number. That was my failure. So I hope I see him again when we get his phone number. That's what it means to be proactive, is to see what other people's needs are and to engage them. And sometimes that's going to be scary and sometimes that's going to be risky and sometimes that's going to result in pain and harm and you being sinned against. That's okay. You've done the same thing to other people. You've done the same thing to God and he's been merciful to you. So you can be merciful to them.

This is our calling as Christians, and it's true in every minute of our lives that we ought to behave this way. Let's pray.