In a passage from Matthew chapter 7, what seems like a random collection of Jesus' wisdom is actually a teaching about how we're to treat others.
We can have a self-righteous heart like the Pharisees or a kingdom heart made alive by God's grace. From Chicago, welcome to The Moody Church Hour with Pastor Philip Miller. In a moment, a time of worship and teaching as we continue a series on the upside down kingdom. From the Sermon on the Mount, we'll learn about a heart for others. Here now is Pastor Philip. Well, good morning, everyone.
Welcome to The Moody Church. We're so glad you're here. You know, we all want to help people. We want to be helpful to others, but how we help them really matters. We can actually botch it.
Without thinking about it, we can really mess things up. And so we need help today so that we might be helpful to others. Let's turn to the Lord as we begin and ask him to come and be our teacher. Would you pray with me? Let's pray. Father, we gather here today and we acknowledge that we need your help. As we move out and into the lives of other people, we need you to help us become helpful in the lives of other people. So we give you ourselves today. We hold nothing back.
Would you come and teach us, make us new? We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder by power throughout the universe. Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art. How great thou art.
Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art. How great thou art. When through the woods and forest glades I wander and hear the birds swing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur, I hear the brook and feel a gentle breeze. Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art. How great thou art. And when I think God his son will not spare me, sent him to die, my steps can take him in. That on the cross my burden will be deadly buried.
He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art. How great thou art.
Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art. How great thou art.
When Christ comes, it shall come at the nation, and they will come, but joy shall fill my heart. Then I shall come in a whole adoration, and man from pain, my God, how great thou art. Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my savior, God to me. How great thou art.
How great thou art. Listen as I read from Revelation chapter five. Then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, the voices of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.
And the four living creatures said, Amen, and the elders fell down and worshiped. We sing a holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. With all creation I see praise to the key of keys. You are my everything and I will adore you.
To cover, flashes of lightning, balls of thunder. Let's sing in honor, strength, and glory and power to you, the only one. And we sing, holy, holy, holy. Holy, holy, holy is God Almighty. What's in this, this God? With all creation I sing praise to the King James. You are my everything and I will adore you. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. What's in this, this God? With all creation I sing praise to the King of kings. You are my everything and I will adore you. May the mind of Christ my Savior live in me from day to day. By His love and power controlling all I do and say. May the love of Jesus fill me as the waters fill the sea.
In exalting self-abasing this is victory. May I run the race before Him strong and brave to face the fall. Looking only unto Jesus as I onward go. May His beauty rest upon Him as I seek the most to live.
That day they forget the child. Sing, holy, holy. Amen.
Amen. Today we come to one of the most difficult sections to preach in all of the Sermon on the Mount. And it's not the content that's particularly difficult.
It's pretty straightforward. It is the connections that are hard to find. They're somewhat unclear. So scholars will point out how brilliantly interconnected and interwoven the themes and rhetoric are throughout the Sermon on the Mount. But many scholars when they come to this section sort of throw up their hands in frustration and go, I don't know what Jesus is doing here.
It feels like a cluster of disjointed pithy sayings without a unifying message. Let me show you. Grab your Bibles. We're going to be in Matthew 7 verses 1 to 12. Listen to these words.
You'll see their point. Matthew 7 verse 1. Judge not that you be not judged for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye? But do not notice the log that is in your own eye. Or how do you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a log in your eye? You hypocrite. First take the log out of your eye, your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give dogs what is holy.
Do not throw your pearls before pigs lest they trample them underfoot and turn and attack you. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which of you if his son asks him for bread will give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish will give him a serpent. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him. So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. For this is the law and the prophets.
You see their point, right? These verses seem like a random collection of Jesus wisdom sort of cobbled together like he was running over in his sermon. He looked down at his watch. Oh, goodness, look at the time. You know, I had all this stuff to cover.
Well, I'll just give you the high points and then we'll pray, you know, go and be the church. You know, that's sort of that's it feels like that's maybe what he's doing. But now it won't surprise you, but I don't think that's what Jesus is doing at all.
I don't think this is random at all. I don't think it's disjointed at all. It does take some pondering and reflection, but I hope to show you today what I believe Jesus is doing as he purposefully arranges these interrelated truths to form an overarching united message.
And I think there's evidence that all these elements are connected interconnected down in verse twelve verse twelve. You'll notice that the final phrase that we read reads like this. So whatever you wish that others would do to you do also to them.
So whatever you wish others would do to you do also to them. The word is so so whatever you wish, right? So it's a concluding word.
It's a summary word. He's wrapping up a argument here. The preceding verses have been building and leading up to this final statement. So whatever you wish others would do to you do also to them. This sums up the law and the prophets. So this passage is concluding with an ethic of treating other people the way we would want to be treated and everything here is building toward that point. So here's here's my thesis.
Okay. What if everything in this passage is about how we are to treat other people. What if everything in this passage is about how we are to treat other people. I want to show you that Jesus is identifying in this passage to radically different ways of treating others which flow from two radically different hearts that we can have. There's the self-righteous heart of the Pharisees that can't help but treat people a certain kind of way. And there's the kingdom heart that is in God's grace ours that can't help but treat people another a totally different sort of way. And once again Jesus is pitting two worlds the Pharisees and his teaching the way of the Pharisees and the way of the kingdom of heaven. He's pitting them against each other just like he's done throughout the whole Sermon on the Mount.
You've heard it said but I say to you he's doing it again. And as always Jesus focus is laser focused in on our hearts because actions flow from the hearts and a good tree bears good fruit right. A good tree bears good fruit. So what kind of heart treats other people rightly.
That's the question. What kind of heart treats other people rightly. We're going to see three hearts this morning.
Really two but I'm going to press it into three. Okay. The heart of unhelpfulness. The heart of helpfulness and the heart of helplessness. Okay. The heart of unhelpfulness.
The heart of helpfulness and the heart of help lessness. Isn't that good. I worked so hard on that. Let's pray and we'll jump in. Okay. Let's pray.
Father we invite you to do some heart surgery this morning. None of us are very good at dealing with other people. Oh our friends they're easy to get along with. It's the other people we have trouble with. And so help us we pray. Give us a new heart a new life alive in the kingdom of heaven by the power of Jesus as your spirit indwells us and leads us. Help us this morning in Christ's name. Amen.
Amen. First the heart of unhelpfulness the heart of unhelpfulness. When it comes to other people we don't need a lot of help with people that are easy to get along with right. Those people are easy.
Anybody can deal with their friends. It's the people that are difficult that causes trouble right. It's the people who try our patience. It's the people who get on our nerves. It's the people we just don't get them right.
We just don't get them. You know the people I'm talking about. It's the people who vote for the party you can't stand. It's the people who don't see life your way at all. It's the people who live in a way that is contrary to all the values you hold dear. Those people. How do you interact with those people?
Some approaches are simply unhelpful. Chapter seven verse one. Judge not that you be not judged for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. The word judge here has connotations of condemnation of blaming and shaming and ostracizing people. Which is such a routine part of our world isn't it. If we think somebody is out of line we make sure they know it.
Right. We have the glare. We have the eye roll.
We have size of derision. We ignore people. We snub people. We give people the cold shoulder. We make them sleep in the dog house.
Right. We push. We punish. We reject people. We unfriend them on social media.
As a culture we even have a word we cancel them when we don't like them. In ancient Greece if you offended a member of the community they would vote as a community. They would come together and they would vote whether you got to stay in the community or not. And if you lost the vote they would write a sentence of banishment on a piece of pottery earthenware called an ostracon or an ostraca. They would give it to you and you had to leave. You were banished.
You were ostracized from the community. And the Pharisees were masters of this sort of social in and out shame, honor, culture. They had clear lines of who was on the inside and who was on the outside. So the inside you have the scribes, the Pharisees, the righteous people, you know. They're on the in and on the outside sinners, tax collectors, gentiles, Samaritans, those people.
And in a million subtle and not so subtle ways they made sure you knew which group you were in. Thank God I'm not like this sinner, right. And Jesus says you don't, my followers are not to be doing this kind of stuff. Don't go around condemning people, shaming them, rejecting them, banishing them, ostracizing them. Oh, it might make you feel better.
You've got to make your point. But you're just going to lose the influence you have in that relationship and in the end it will rebound in your face. If you judge them they're going to turn around and judge you right back. If you condemn them, that's the measure you're using, they're going to lash back and condemn you in turn.
It'll get measured right back at you. Because condemnation, friends, provokes counter condemnation, doesn't it? Condemnation provokes counter condemnation. And that vicious cycle doesn't help them and it doesn't help you. And Jesus illustrates this.
Verse three. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that's in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a log in your own eye?
You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye and you'll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Have you ever had a little bit of sawdust, you know, just in your eye there? Have you ever had just, it's extraordinarily painful, isn't it? And if you don't have a mirror around, you need somebody skillful to help get it out of there, right? They've got to be gentle and careful and wise because they can make it so much worse so quickly. Remember Jesus grew up as a carpenter.
I think he knows what this feels like. Sawdust in your eye. Now the imagery that Jesus uses here is comical. The log he refers to is kind of a technical term. It refers to the main supporting beam in a home. So if you've ever been in like a big log cabin or a lodge, you know that big huge beam that runs down the middle holding everything up, right? That's the picture. You got this big old beam sticking out of your face, right? And you just, just let me get it.
Like it's just a disaster, right? And Jesus is just comical. He says, you hypocrite. Remember the context. He's talking about a condemning approach to other people. He says, look, if you're condemning people, if you're blaming them and shaming them and ostracizing them in order to help them change, help them see the right way, help them, you know, figure out their mess.
If that's your strategy, you're a hypocrite. Now, how does he know that? How does he know that? Is he simply pointing out that we're all sinners and we should just work on ourselves first, not worry about other people until we're, we got our stuff together and we're perfect. Is that what he's saying? You know, sort of you who are without sin cast the first stone, that sort of thing. Well, if that's what he meant, he would have said, get the spec out of your own eye and then get the spec out of their eye because you both have specs in your eye, right? You're all sinners.
Put on your own oxygen mask and then assist those who are traveling with you, right? That sort of principle. That's not what he says. Jesus' point is not that we're all sinners and we all have specs in our eyes, although that's true. Jesus says, if we are coming at people with this condemning, blaming, shaming, ostracizing approach, there's something far bigger than just a speck of sin blocking our vision. We're blinded by a log of self-righteousness.
There's something bigger in our eye. We're blinded by the log of self-righteousness because to condemn someone is to be blinded by self-righteousness. The only way, think about it, the only way I can condemn someone, I can blame them, shame them, ostracize them, push them away, discount them as unworthy of anything.
The only way I can treat someone like that is if I feel superior to them. If I'm looking down on them, if I believe I'm in the right and they're in the wrong, I've got it figured out and they're the ones who are deceived and I've got all the answers and they don't. And Jesus is saying self-righteous people with their others condemning attitudes are the last people who should ever be trying to help others deal with the harmful stuff in their lives because they only make it worse. Condemnation flows from a heart of self-righteousness and self-righteousness never helps anybody.
Never helps anybody. And Jesus gives a warning. Verse six, do not give dogs what is holy and do not throw your pearls before pigs lest they trample them under foot and turn and attack you. Sometimes we use this phrase pearls before swine today but we're actually ripping it out of context and using it kind of in the opposite way that Jesus is using it here. We use it to say, you know, you have lots of pearls of wisdom and don't waste them on unworthy people, you know. Those swine in life, you know, they're not worth your time.
They're not worth your trouble. That's not what he's saying. The whole point here is how very unhelpful it is to swine to be given pearls. What exactly is a pig supposed to do with a pearl?
What is it supposed to do with that? If you go to a pig pen and you go like this, what does the pig think you're scattering in the – what does he think you're doing? He thinks you're feeding him, right? And he starts choking on the pearls because they're useless to him, right?
Pearls will only choke a pig. What are dogs supposed to do with the Holy Scriptures? You take a holy Bible and you throw it at a dog.
What's it going to do? You can't read. It's not helpful. And if you keep throwing pearls at pigs and Bibles at dogs, eventually in exasperation, they're going to turn around and bite you because you're the only edible thing left. Jesus says, look, this kind of preachy, judgmental, condemning self-righteousness that is trying to push wisdom and advice on other people, even if it's the most valuable, highly sacred things in the world, if it's not useful to people, they can't swallow it and digest it, if they can't make it useful to their lives, it's only going to aggravate them and you're going to get bit in the process. Friends, you see, the bottom line here is a self-righteous heart is helpless with others. The self-righteous heart is helpless with others. Don't you see again, Jesus is going after the Pharisees.
The Pharisees focused on all the externals of religion, keeping the law, doing good, keeping their noses clean, and they felt by and large they were doing a pretty good job. Thank God I'm not like one of those sinners. And Jesus is saying, look, if that's how your religion works, if you're trying to like do good so you can impress God, so he'll bless you, so you can feel good about yourself and look down on other people, then your heart is full of self-righteousness. And a self-righteous heart can't actually help anybody. You're only hurting them along the way.
So what's the alternative? The heart of helpfulness. Jesus is now going to describe an entirely different approach to other human beings, which is coming from an entirely different heart. Look at verse seven. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds. To the one who knocks it will be opened.
Jesus is saying, look, if somebody is bothering you, if they're out of line, if they're on the wrong path in life, if they're a problem, instead of condemning them and blaming them and shaming them and ostracizing them, what if you were to try a different approach? What if you were to simply ask, seek, and knock? What if you were to ask for their help? What if you were to ask about their story?
What if you were to ask to try to understand where they're coming from? What if you were to seek them out? What if you were to seek to build a relationship with them? What if you were to seek to find a way to be a part of their lives? What if you knocked on the door of their lives? What if you knocked and asked for permission to come in?
What if you knocked and waited for them to respond? Because souls open from the inside. Souls open from the inside, don't they? You can't force entry into another person's soul.
In fact, if you try, you're sure to never get in. The only way to speak into another person's life is if they willingly allow you to do so. Think about it. Isn't that how your soul works? And notice this is exactly how God treats you.
Do you realize God is a gentleman? He won't crash your way. He stands at the door and knocks. He asks. He seeks.
He knocks. He never overrides your will. He never forces entry into your life. He always waits until he's welcome. As C.S. says, he cannot ravish.
He can only woo. The latch to the door of the heart is on the inside and souls open from within. Remember when Adam and Eve sinned against God? They were in trouble. How did God approach them? They were hiding in the garden, remember? They had sinned. They messed up the whole world. If you've ever ruined something, crashed your parent's car and you got to go tell them, hey, I'm sorry, it's a horrible feeling, right? Right?
Just me? It's a horrible feeling. What if you were God's kid and you wrecked the whole universe?
Right? Like this is a mess. So they're hiding.
They don't want to fess up. And what does God do? He asks questions.
Where are you? Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree?
What is it that you have done? Ask, seek, knock. It's like a therapist session, isn't it? What do people in therapy do? They ask questions. They know how this works.
Questions, requests are hard to ignore. Verse nine. Or which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? Look, if you're judging with someone else, it usually leads to counter judgment. If you're condemning, they might throw a stone at you, right? You throw stones at them, they'll throw stones at you.
If you shame them, they might bite you back with venom. But if you ask, seek, and knock, if you honor their will and their humanity, it's unlikely they're going to respond with stones and snakes. If you just simply ask, may I come in? May I have a word? May I help you be successful? May I show you another way to look at this?
Would you help me understand? Would you allow me to push back just a little? Would you be willing to consider a different approach? You see, a genuine request is hard to say no to, isn't it? A genuine request is hard to say no to. Demands we resist. Manipulation we chafe against. Coercion we fight. Sales pressure hardens our fences. But requests, requests we have a hard time saying no to. It's how you end up at all those parties you didn't even want to go to in the first place. It's hard to say no to a request, right?
The request is so deeply honoring to our souls, we almost always want to say yes by default. Your kids know this. My kids come to me all the time. Dad, can I have some bread? Can I have a snack? Can I have a fish? Can I have some protein? Can I eat something? And I almost always say yes, right?
Most people tend to say yes when they're politely asked. And by the way, that's true of God too. Did you know that? Verse 11. If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? When it comes to God, just simply, Jesus is saying, just simply ask, seek, knock. Just what works in relationship with other people works with God too. Because God's a person too, you know.
And if you come with all your demands and your manipulation and your coercion and your sales pressure to try to get what you want from God, look, just like you, he'll probably shut down. He's not interested in playing all those games. He loves you.
He loves giving good gifts to his kids. So just ask him. Just seek. Just knock. He's predisposed to say yes.
And maybe one of the good gifts that you need most is your father's help with the difficult relationships with people around you. Maybe you are asking and they're rejecting you. Maybe you're seeking and they're hiding. Maybe you're knocking and they're shutting you out. And maybe you're tempted to throw in the towel and say, forget them.
They're beyond hope. I'm done with this. You're tempted to condemn and blame and shame and ostracize. And maybe you need just a little bit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Maybe you need the fruit of the Spirit from your good father who loves to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. It's his greatest gift. Your father's greatest gift, friends, is to make you like himself, to fill you with his Spirit, to conform you to the image of his son so that you can begin to love other people with the same love with which you have been first loved. Do you notice how in this passage this sort of blends, it blurs from, we're talking about other people and all of a sudden we're talking about God. We're talking about our relationship with other people and then all of a sudden we're talking about our relationship with God. And it's hard to know. When does it shift?
When does it shift? It just blurs the lines, doesn't it? That's the point. As God has loved you, now you go love others. The way that God has treated you becomes the ethic of how you treat other people. So verse 12, whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them for this is the law and the prophets. The law and the prophets, all of the scriptures are teaching you fundamentally this basic truth to do unto others as you would have them do to you. Instead of condemning and blaming and shaming and ostracizing others, you don't want that. You don't want that. What would you like to be treated?
Jesus is teaching us to put ourselves in other people's shoes, to act in empathy and love. If I were them, how would I want to be treated? How would I want to be approached? I bet they're scared. I bet they're afraid. I bet they're embarrassed and ashamed.
I bet underneath they're actually hurting. And if I were in their shoes, how would I want someone to interact with me? Jesus says, look, all the law and the prophets, the whole of scripture is about living well in relationships with others from a heart that's right before God. And if you treat others the way you'd want to be treated, if you were them, that's what God was after all along. Now, the only way you could ever do that is if you have the new heart of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus is offering us in himself, right?
We can't divorce these words of Jesus from the works of Jesus, that Jesus came, that he lived a perfect life, that he died in our place, and for our sake, that he rose again to make us right with God so that we can be children of God filled with the Spirit, clothed in his righteousness by grace through faith. And a righteousness-graced heart is helpful with others. A righteousness-graced heart is helpful with others. Friends, if you know your righteousness is not your own, that it's a gift from Jesus, you can't look down on anybody. There is no room for pride or boasting or self-righteousness or condemnation. All of our righteousness is like filthy rags.
There's no one righteous, no, not one. And so there's no basis in a heart made right by grace for condemnation and blaming and shaming and ostracizing other people because we're the chief of sinners, amen? And in the end, we are one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.
That's all we are. And so we humbly ask, seek, and knock because that's what we wish other people would do to us. And that's exactly what Jesus has done for us. When we were worthy of being condemned and ostracized and put away forever in love, our Jesus came and pursued us in love.
Don't you see? A heart that has received the grace of God is equipped to extend the heart. This is why a righteousness graced heart is so helpful with others.
Think about the people in your life who have been most helpful to you spiritually. Were they stringently rigid and hard and tough and perfect in every way? Or were they gentle and humble and lowly of heart?
They were like Jesus, weren't they? Gentle, lowly, humble of heart. Here's the irony. Here's the irony, friends. The most helpful heart is the one that realizes it's helpless. The most helpful heart is the one that realizes it is helpless.
The people who think they've got it all together can't really help others. But the people who realize they've got nothing are best positioned to actually speak into other people's lives. Because it's the heart of helplessness. It's the heart of helplessness. The reality is only a helpless heart can help other helpless hearts. Only a helpless heart can help other helpless hearts. This world that is full of bent and broken people, that is chock full of sin and twisted up in rebellion. All the self-righteous, pharisaical, condemning, blaming, shaming, ostracizing treatment of this broken world will never do an ounce of good. Self-righteousness can never offer good news to people. But if we are sinners saved by grace through faith and this not of ourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.
If we are helpless to save ourselves and yet have been given such mercy, such grace, such forgiveness, and such love, if we, the poor in spirit, are actually welcome in the kingdom of heaven by grace, then maybe, just maybe, we are the ones, the best ones to help point the way. I see you got a little sawdust in your eye right there. Does it hurt? Mine did a lot. Have I ever told you?
No. For years I had sawdust in my eyes. It hurt like crazy. I was crying myself to sleep and I couldn't do a thing about it. I was helpless and hopeless. That was my story.
What happened? Oh, you don't want to know. No, I really do. No, seriously, you don't want to know. It'll wreck you.
No, I want to know. This man named Jesus turned my life upside down. He cleaned me out, changed me forever. Amazing grace.
How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. I was blind, but now I see.
Friends, here's your takeaway. Grace floods out of a heart that is flooded by grace. Grace floods out of a heart that is flooded by grace. I sometimes think of my soul as like a pipe. This is weird.
Stay with me. As like a pipe with an opening up top and an opening down below. Down below is everything that flows out of my life.
It's the way I interact with and treat other people. And at the top, the input of the pipe of my soul is another valve. There's a valve on both ends.
The valve up top is what's coming into my soul. I cannot dispense what I am not receiving. I cannot extend what I have not welcomed in. I cannot give what I'm not getting.
The valves of your life are meant to be opened on both ends. To freely receive the grace from God, lavishly pouring in, saturating all of who you are to the depths of your being so that it lavishes out. You are a conduit of grace. You want to have a heart for others that's helpful? Let the grace of God flood into your life and wash out all the self-righteousness, the entitlement, all the ego that's gunking up the pipe of your life until there's nothing left but a poor, abject sinner, saved by grace, beating his breast, crying out, have mercy on me, a sinner.
And I am surprisingly loved more than I know. And in that helplessness you will discover to your great surprise how supremely helpful you are to the helpless hearts all around you. Because when you are gentle and lowly and humble of heart, they will sense in you the presence of the living Christ as your life is a conduit of the amazing grace of our God. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Oh Father, teach us to live like this, to embrace the upside down life of grace, of the Spirit, of the kingdom of heaven that is ours in the abundant life of Jesus. Teach us to swim in grace, to be flooded out with your mercy and kindness so that we might be supremely helpful and gracious toward those people around us who desperately need it. Help us, we pray. In Christ's name.
Amen. For our benediction today, I just want to read these beautiful words that describe the kind of loving heart that God wants to give to each one of us. We read these at weddings, but they're actually about the Christian life. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoings, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. That is the love that your heavenly Father has for you and it is the love that we are called to give to those around us as well. So now, Moody Church, remember, you are loved more than you know, so let's go and be the church.
Have a great Sunday. On today's Moody Church Hour, we heard Pastor Philip Miller telling us about a heart for others. This has been the 21st in a 24-part series from the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Matthew. When Jesus talks about what a life of virtue looks like, he's joining an ongoing conversation in his Greco-Roman and Jewish world.
The best example of this dialogue is in what we now call the Golden Rule. Next time on The Moody Church Hour, we turn to the topic of The Law of Love. Plan to join us. The Moody Church Hour is a listener-supported ministry.
We count on the ongoing financial support of listeners like you. Together, we share solid biblical teaching that transforms lives across America and around the world. You can call us at 1-800-215-5001.
That's 1-800-215-5001. Online, you'll find us at moodychurchhour.com. That's moodychurchhour.com. Or write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.
