[00:00:00] Is it really possible to love your enemies? That's the question that sparked the journey that Ted and Carl took throughout the Middle East. Sitting at the table with their enemies. So I am so excited to welcome you here today. We are going to be talking about one of my favorite books Tea with Hezbollah. [00:00:36] So wherever you're tuning in from, thank you for joining us. I can't wait to share with you what Jesus has been teaching me and also how this book has helped shape my worldview. So let's take a moment before we dive in and pray. So will you pray with me? Dear Jesus, today is all about you. We want to welcome You into this place to guide us in this conversation, to open our hearts and our [00:01:00] minds to follow one of the greatest commandments [00:01:02] you've given us to love our enemies. It's not easy Lord, and we know that we can not do this without You. So we pray that You join us today. Be with us and every day in the name of Jesus. Amen. Okay. Tea with Hezbollah, it's written by two men, Ted Dekker, he's a fiction author and Carl Medearis. Now, when I say that name, it might ring a bell because he's a friend of Centrals. [00:01:26] He's been .Here a few times. And if I could just sum up Carl with one quick story, I would say that he knew from a very young age, that God was calling him to love Muslims and Arabs. And so he grew up and he looked around, he lived in a small town in Nebraska and he realized there are no Arabs here. So Carl jumped on a plane and went to Yemen. [00:01:49] So that's Carl .Now, Carl and Ted and their wives, they were sitting at a Hard Rock Cafe in Denver, Colorado a few years ago. And during the conversation Carl asked, [00:02:00] what does Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi and Jesus have in common? And Ted answers, well, They will all murdered. And Carl says, yes, yes, they were all murdered. [00:02:11] But for the same message, what was that message? It was this to love your neighbor, even if your neighbor is the enemy. So is it really possible to love our enemies? So Carl and Ted, they set on a mission to find out. They made a list of America's greatest and so-called enemies, and they decided they were going to go meet them. [00:02:35] Now this book is their journey, and I can promise you that if you choose to read it, you probably will not agree with every single thing in the book. And that's totally fine, because you see, we can read things and we can listen to people's stories and we can just listen,. We don't have to let them know how much we disagree with them. [00:02:53] Right? We can't listen to their story and say, no, your story's wrong. Right? We don't do that to people and their experiences. [00:03:00] This is peacemaking, right? So this book, it's not meant to be political or even religious, really. It's not in any way supporting the agenda of any terrorists or people that have done harm to others. [00:03:13] It's simply an account of two men sitting at the table with their enemies, talking about Jesus and talking about love and hoping to find the answer. Can you love your enemy? So they traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Beirut, Damascus, Jerusalem. They had candid conversations with the leaders of the Hezbollah Hamas, [00:03:37] mufti’s, Sheiks, ayatollah’s,the Bin Laden brothers, an orthodox Jew,

Palestinians, a Bedouin Prince ,taxi drivers, military officers, and more. They had 30 conversations in all. And now the people they met with these are the political and religious leaders, the law makers of the Middle East scholars in Islam, [00:04:00] culture, shapers, really. [00:04:01] And you see average people like you and I, we don't get to have an audience with them, not even like news agencies and politicians get to have an audience with these men. And during these conversations, they asked People Magazine style, interview questions. Okay. They ask questions, like, what is your favorite joke? [00:04:20] What kind of car do you drive? What kind of toothpaste do you use? By the way Crest, overwhelmingly, they use Crest. When is the last time that you cried? And these are simple questions that what, but they are ones that demonstrate the humanity in these men. They shared similar stories that you and I can relate to. Stories about losing our parents, [00:04:42] playing with our grandkids, how challenging parenting can be. In fact, all of these men are well-educated. Most of them having been educated here in the United States. And then they went deeper and they asked what is the most famous teaching of [00:05:00] Jesus. So let me ask you, what would you say is the greatest teaching of Jesus? [00:05:06] They asked mainly Muslims, right? One Jew, one Christian. And 27 of the 30 said that Jesus', his greatest teaching was to love your enemy. They said things like when you love your enemy, you no longer have an enemy. So let me read some of the quotes to you. First, the Bedouin Prince said, to have peace with your enemy, [00:05:27] you must love them. The Sheik said, love has many stages, there is no room for hatred. To love your neighbors comes naturally in response to obeying Jesus and God. A Mufti said, this is a beautiful teaching. A good Muslim is someone who does not hurt others by his hand, we are ordered to be useful to all humanity on earth. [00:05:52] You should give to anyone who mistreats you and forgive anyone who mistreats you. Abu Joudea,

Now this is [00:06:00] a fascinating story. Abu his family is Muslim. He lives in the old city of Jerusalem and his family is the keeper of the key that opens the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Now this church, it, it dates?Back to the fourth century and it was built over the place that they believe was the crucifixion location and the burial tomb of Jesus. [00:06:22] And so why you might be asking is a Muslim, the keeper of the key to a Christian Church? And Abu says, well, the Roman Orthodox Catholics, the Greek Greek Orthodox the Armenians, the Ottomans, the Coptic Christians, they struggled about who should be in charge of the key. And this struggle still goes on today [00:06:43] you guys. And so they decided that they were going to give the key to a neutral party. So it has been in Abu's family for centuries. Now Abu in his reference to this teaching of Jesus. He says, this is good. I love all men. [00:07:00] A Mufti in Jerusalem, he says, we appreciate what Jesus has advised. I wish Christians would take these teachings seriously and do what Jesus has asked them to do. As Muslims [00:07:11] we appreciate Christianity and we appreciate Jesus. We consider him a prophet and we respect him. As Muslims we are not against any religion, not even Judaism. So they all agree Jesus is amazing. They revere him, they follow his teaching. And even without saying these exact words, they're saying that it's all about love. [00:07:35] It's all about this humanity that we get to be a part of. And let me say one more time, 27 of the 30, almost all Muslim, said that Jesus' greatest teaching is to love your enemy. So if we in America today, polled Americans, would 27 of the 30 say the same thing? If we polled American Christians would 27 of [00:08:00] the 30 agree? [00:08:01] It's something that's interesting to think about. So we're going to dive in today and we're going to discover where Jesus teaches about this. So if you have your Bible, go ahead and turn with me to Matthew 5:43-44. This is what it says. You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. [00:08:27] Now, if we turn into Luke 6, Jesus goes into this in greater detail. So turn with me here, Luke 6, starting in verse 27. Jesus is speaking and he says, but I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse, you pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on the cheek, turn to him the other also. [00:08:54] If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks [00:09:00] you and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. [00:09:14] And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your award will be great and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful just as your father is merciful. [00:09:50] Now there is a lot in there, but it circulates around loving people, around loving all people, people that might be hard to love, people [00:10:00] that hurt us, people that, you know, we might consider our enemy. Let me tell you a story now about my friend, Sami. Sami, he's a friend of Central also, and he's someone that if you go with us on a global outreach trip to Israel and Palestine, you'll get to potentially meet him. [00:10:15] He lives in Bethlehem. He's a Palestinian and he's a follower of Jesus. And he has been pursuing peacemaking his entire life. And he knew that to be a peacemaker, he needed to know who his enemy was. He needed to know their story. And so as a Palestinian who would his enemy be?

We remember from last week, Pastor Dean's message, a Palestinian would consider their enemy an Israeli Jew. [00:10:43] So, what is the greatest story and sorrow of an Israeli Jew? That would be the Holocaust. So on Sami's journey to learn how to love his enemies, he went to Germany for two weeks. He spent that time at Auschwitz. [00:11:00] For three days he stayed in a gas chamber and in this gas chamber, there were these open shallow graves and they were small. [00:11:08] And, uh, on the last night with the permission from the guards, he asked, could he sleep in this open, shallow grave. This grave that is where they, the soldiers threw the dead children who had died in the gas chamber. And the,

the guard said yes. And so Sami spent his last night cuddled hurdled up in this small grave. [00:11:30] And you see, he says that now he has an understanding of the modern day Jew. He has empathy for them. It's like our question that was posed to us in the message last week. What links are you willing to go to, to learn about those with a different experience and a different perspective than you? And now we understand today that some of the Jews that are Sami's,

people that he interacts with, they weren't actually alive during the Holocaust. [00:11:57] Right? They didn't experience it directly, but it is the [00:12:00] story of their family and it is the pain of their history. And now he says he understands why his enemy fights so hard to never be the victim, why they fight so hard to never be seen as weak. Why the parents teach their children to be proud of their heritage, to waive in Israeli flag and to say, never again. [00:12:23] So Sami, he comes home from this trip and he gets a ton of flack. Can you imagine who he's getting the most flack from? It's fellow Palestinians, you see, because they don't understand. So few people in the world have taken the step similar to Sami's to learn, to love and to know their enemies. So even on this journey that Carl and Ted took, they encountered people who definitely loved Jesus. [00:12:49] They revere Him. They say they practice His teachings, but only a few demonstrated an actual attempt to love their enemies. And Jesus, He [00:13:00] teaches about this and what's called the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And this story of the good Samaritan it's found in Luke chapter 10. But something happens in Luke 9 that I want to just read to you because I believe that it sets up the story of why we have a teaching of the Good Samaritan. [00:13:17] So if you'll join me, flip to Luke 9, and we're going to start in verse 51, this is what it says. As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead who went to a Samaritan village to get things ready for him. But the people there did not welcome him because he was headed for Jerusalem. [00:13:40] And when the disciples, James and John saw this, they asked Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven and destroy them? But Jesus turned and rebuked them and they went to another village. Okay. This part is so funny to me because like calling fire down from heaven is so drastic. [00:14:00] And why, why just being denied entry into village with the disciples, those who are following Jesus, say let's kill him? [00:14:08] Let's call fire down from heaven and destroy them. Why would this be their first reaction? Well, in the day, Samaritans are not well loved people. You see Jews and Samaritans, they don't get along. You can read about the beginning of their rift in the Old Testament, Genesis, Ezra, Nehemiah, in Kings. But in Jesus's day, the Jews considered the Samaritans heretics. [00:14:32] They practiced a false religion. They worshiped idols. They intermarried with foreigners. All of these things were unacceptable in the eyes of the Jews. And Jews, by the way, they were really good at "othering" people. They had this practice of pointing out the flaws and the sins in others and making sure that everybody knew that they were better than everyone else. [00:14:53] So at this time with Jesus, Jews and Samaritans had very

little interaction. In [00:15:00] fact, a Jew that would need to travel the land. He would actually travel around the land of Samaria in order not to have any type of encounter with the Samaritan. So here we have Jesus. We have these Jewish disciples and they're planning to just cut right on through Samaria. This like no trek zone, [00:15:16] they just go right on through and it doesn't end well. The Samaritans don't welcome them, James and John, they wonder, should we call fire down from heaven? Destroy them. And Jesus always keeping his cool. He rebukes them and they simply had to another village. Now a few verses later is where we encounter the teaching of the Good Samaritan. [00:15:35] Okay, and it starts with an expert of the law he's testing Jesus. So he says to him, teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus, true to Jesus style responds to the question with a question and says, what does the law say? And the man, he knows the law. So he quotes it and He says to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor [00:16:00] as yourself. [00:16:01] Correct. That is correct. But the man wanted to know more, and so he pressed Jesus further and said, who is my enemy? And that is where Jesus answers with this story. If you want to pick it up with me, we're going to be in Luke 10, verse 30. This is what it says, in reply jesus said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, [00:16:23] when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road. And when he saw the man he passed by on the other side. So to a Levite when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side. [00:16:42] But a Samaritan as he traveled where the man was. And when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandages wounds, pouring on oil and wine. And then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to the inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two [00:17:00] silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper .Look after him [00:17:04] he says, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense that you may have. Which of these three, do you think was the neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers ?And the man responded.. The one who had mercy and Jesus says, go and do likewise. So we have a priest, we have a Levite. A Levite [00:17:27] it's like a temple official. In our, you know, equivalent today this would be like a priest would be a pastor today and a Levite would be a volunteer or a volunteer. And then we have the Samaritan. Remember, he's the heretic, the half-breed the good for nothing. And yet he is the one that shows mercy. And the expert of the law [00:17:47] it's like, he can't even bring himself to say that the Samaritan is the hero in the story. So when Jesus asks him, he simply says the one who showed mercy. Let's recall real quick, 3 things [00:18:00] that we read about already in Luke 6. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. [00:18:09] Now, love your enemies and do good Jews, Samaritans their enemies. They hate each other. And we know this because what we read in Luke 9, right? They were rejected from the village, James and John want to call fire down from heaven. And then lend to those without expecting anything in return, the Samaritan man in the story, he cared for the injured man. [00:18:30] He put the man up in the inn, he paid the innkeeper to take care of him. He expected nothing in return. He gave up his time. He gave up his resources, freely. And the last part Jesus says he's unkind, or he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked be merciful just as your father is merciful. So when Jesus asks the expert of the law, who is my neighbor and the man responded, the one who had mercy. [00:18:59] The [00:19:00] one who had mercy, we are to be merciful. And as hard as this is, you guys, it actually doesn't get any simpler than this. Love your enemy, give without expecting anything in return and be merciful. So who's our enemy? It's time to define it and maybe for some of us to redefine it. In the broadest sense, an enemy is someone that is turned against us, or maybe it's someone that we think doesn't deserve our love. [00:19:29] It's someone that I see more differences between us then I see commonalities. And this word enemy it's, it's so harsh. I really don't like the word. And we might think that we don't have these big and scary enemies. Like I don't hate anyone, so I'm good. I'm off the hook, but no. Someone pointed out to me this week that we have what will be considered an enemy continuum, if you will. [00:19:54] It's like we have these different levels of enemies and some of us think if we don't have a level 10 [00:20:00] big, scary enemy, that's terrorizing us that we're good. But it's a continuum. So today I want you to consider who might those people be that are the level one level, two level, three enemies in your life. [00:20:14] It could be someone that you encounter every day that you just struggle with someone that you dislike, or they dislike you. Someone that we avoid on purpose. Someone that just pushes our buttons, right? It could be a coworker. Maybe they threw you under the bus for something, or maybe they took credit for your work. [00:20:32] Maybe it's someone that votes differently than you, or a family member or a friend that just challenges your decision making, your values, your lifestyle, your spending habits. And we have a variety, a wide variety of the ways that we react to people that were indifferent to. Some of those indicators might be, if you are not happy, when something good happens to someone else, that's an indicator for you. [00:20:56] If we have a posture that's literally or [00:21:00] figuratively, like holding people away from us, keeping people at a distance, that's an indicator when we have contempt or disdain. We've all been hurt. We've all been irritated. We've all been blank. You fill in the blank, but no matter what we are called to love. [00:21:18] And so, for I'm sure how to do this you guys, we, all we have to do is just look in the Word of God. We just study Jesus' life because he gave us the teaching of the Good Samaritan. Right? But he also modeled this the way he lived is an example for us. And in the Bible there's dozens and dozens of examples. [00:21:36] I'm just going to talk about 3 of them real quick, and I don't have a lot of time to give you the backstory. So jot these scriptures down. You can go back and read these stories when you have some time. But the first one is the story of the Samaritan woman. Now this happens in

Samaria and Jesus encounters her at a well, and remember, because she's a Samaritan, she's unclean, she's a half-breed, she's an idol worshiper, [00:22:00] right? [00:22:00] Much of her life when we read the story, we find out is shameful, she's a sinner. And yet she has a life changing conversation that not only changes her life, but ultimately results in her entire village coming to faith. And then there's the story of when Jesus feeds the 4,000 plus. And now I say 4,000 plus, because back in the day they didn't count men or women and children. [00:22:25] They only counted men. So this 4,000, that would be just men, but we knew women and children were there. So more than 4,000, and this story it's different than the fishing fishes and the love story. If you're familiar with Matthew 14, that story Jesus feeds 5,000. And those 5,000 were Jews. Those were Jesus's own people, but that is a different day. [00:22:48] And that's a different region of the country when Jesus feeds the 4,000 plus, they are in the region of Decapolis. This is East of the Sea of Galilee and the people that live into Decapolis [00:23:00] they're Gentiles. Now a Gentile is anyone who's not a Jew. So a Samaritan would also be a Gentile and they are treated the same way as Jews treat Gentile's the same way as Samaritans. [00:23:10] There's so much scorn and hatred and aversion between these two groups. They are enemies and yet Jesus feeds 4,000 of them. Now the last one, this one might hit a little closer to home you guys. Peter, he's my favorite. Jesus on his last night, he's talking to Peter. And,

he tells Peter that he would deny Jesus 3 times, 3 times. [00:23:37] And Peter he's one of Jesus's inner circle. He's one of Jesus's best friends. Peter, in fact, in John 13 says, Jesus, I will lay down my life for you. But it happens, Peter, in fact does end up denying Jesus. And then when it happens, Peter begins to weep bitterly because he knows what he's done and it's [00:24:00] deep and it is a painful betrayal. [00:24:03] And many of us listening, we can relate to some type of betrayal from someone that we trusted, someone that we loved. So Jesus he's crucified. He's buried three days later, he rises again. And when the timing is right, Jesus heads to find Peter. Remember Jesus was the one that was betrayed. Jesus was the one that was hurt. [00:24:25] And yet Jesus is the one that takes a step towards reconciliation. He makes breakfast for Peter and he invites him in to a conversation. So I could continue to go on and on with more examples of Jesus, but here's the deal, we can't continue to fill up our heads with ideas and suggestions. We have to translate that and that's got to move from our head into our heart and we have to start being practitioners [00:24:49] of this. Now all summer, if you've been with us, we have been on this journey, walking through books, and we all individually picked out our book. We didn't huddle together and say, who's talking [00:25:00] about what. Individually we thought we were picking out our own books, but really God was a part of it because the way our books have lined up this summer has been powerful. [00:25:09] We've talked about contempt, caring for our own soul so we can care for others. We've talked about grace and empathy and compassion. Right? And typically with God, when He's trying to get a point across, He repeats Himself. And so we find ourselves in the midst of Him repeating Himself this summer, He's trying to make a point. [00:25:29] And I think that His point is this, love your enemies, give without expecting anything in return and be merciful. So we start today. Now the action comes it's time to put this into practice and as followers of Jesus. Who better to be a catalyst for change than us. So here's how we do this. First, you need to identify who your enemy is, right? [00:25:53] Consider that continuum of the people that you struggle with, the ones that hurt you, where do they land on that [00:26:00] continuum? And then get curious about them. Find common ground. In many ways it's that empathy conversation from last week, right? Find a common ground that you have with people, ask them questions like Carl and Ted asked their enemies. [00:26:13] What is your favorite joke? When is the last time you cried? Use statements like tell me more and help me understand and then listen to their response. And then last but not least pray, pray. So I want to share a personal story with you about a time that my family had someone that we considered an enemy. [00:26:37] It was quite a few years ago, and we found ourselves in a battle with another family. It was ugly. There was no understanding. There was no ability to attempt any type of reconciliation. There were days where it was so bad that the police had had to be called. There were times when we had to go to court and we couldn't [00:26:56] even sit in the same courtroom at the same time [00:27:00] with each other. It was exhausting. It was taxing. And my family, we clung together. We supported each other. We were in it together. There was no way we were going to let one of us face this alone. So it drug on forever. Months and months went by, we were hopeless. [00:27:17] We had no control over the situation. We felt like we were at the end of our rope. And then my mom called. And she said, she realized that the one thing that we had not been doing during this time was praying for the other family. Sure. We were praying, we were praying for a quick resolution. We're praying for everything to be in our favor. [00:27:41] We were praying for all these things, but it was all about us. And that was the ticket. Suddenly this hopeless feeling changed. We had something that we had control over. We could pray for them. So we did, we started praying for this family and specifically [00:28:00] we started praying that they would meet Jesus, that they would find salvation. [00:28:06] And you guys, listen, it worked.

It worked a shift happened and like, it normally does it happened inside of us, but it also happened for them. In fact, this family, they began to take some incredible steps towards reconciliation with us. They also took steps towards Jesus joining Bible studies here at Central, [00:28:26] one of them even getting baptized here at Central. And now we're not best friends. Okay. We get along though, we get along. We can get together for special gatherings celebrations, and we are kind, and we are loving. And honestly, if you saw us today, you would never believe what our families went through. So no one has an excuse. [00:28:50] We all have something we can do and if nothing else pray. So I hope that you'll read this book. I hope that you'll allow it to change you [00:29:00] and to challenge you. And it's relevant for us today because we, as a church, we're committed to these countries that Carl and Ted visited. We love the people in this region and we send trips over there to meet people. [00:29:11] We a send workers. As a church we are committed to knowing and loving Muslims. So I would invite you if you're ready to take a step on your global journey to loving people in different countries, contact us. Reach out to our Global Outreach Ministry. We'll help you get a trip scheduled. We'll help you meet international [00:29:30] students, will give you suggestions of classes you can take to expand your global and biblical worldview. And I want to end with this thought, as we wrap up today. You see Jews, Israelites, Pharisees, these are the teachers of the Jewish law. They were really good at drawing borders and building walls and defining who's in and who's out pointing out the sin in other people, but here's the deal. [00:29:57] Jesus came to knock down those walls. [00:30:00] He came to heal our land. So when will we let him? Or are we going to just keep rebuilding the walls, putting up more borders around our homes and our workplaces, schools, trying to keep people out. So I want to ask you, will, the way that you live your life, be a statement to others that says I will love you beyond our differences? [00:30:23] Beyond all borders, beyond cultures, skin, economic status voting habits. Will the way that you live, be a statement to others that says I see Jesus in you and I want you to see Jesus in me? It's like Carl and Ted said, when they learned on their journey, when you love your enemy, you no longer have an enemy. [00:30:46] There is no longer us and them, there's only us. Again when you love your enemy, you no longer have an enemy. There is no longer us and them. There's [00:31:00] only us. Let's pray. Dear God thank you. Lord, we praise You for who You are and for your unconditional love that You have for us, for the gift of Your son, Jesus .And Lord, we thank You for the wisdom and the teaching in Your Word and the examples of how we should live. [00:31:18] Lord, thank you for calling us to live more than ourselves. Help us on our journey to love our enemies and to be merciful just as You are merciful. May we be known for our love, for our care and compassion towards others Lord. May we stop defining walls and borders and deciding who's in and who's out. [00:31:36] Lord, may we just love, we ask these things and we pray all of this in Your son Jesus' name. Amen. [00:32:00] [00:31:45] [00:32:08]