I met a church welcome to Amen podcast where we preach the good news of Jesus Christ and how it applies to everyday life. I am look at Lonnie your host and we have a question for you. Are you a basic Christian in slang when someone is basic. They're an original and exceptional in mainstream and Jesus was nothing of the sort to be like him is to be unique, free, simple,

much more. And something that makes Jesus so attractive is how he is unlike anyone. Alex will be preaching how not to be basic from Matthew chapter 5 verses 43 through 48. Before we read you all constantly remind us that this is no basic podcast. If it is transformed your life, would you mind rating and reviewing it, liking this video on YouTube as well as following us on Instagram. When you do it helps reach people all around the world.

Thank you and let's read. We're in the living Bible translation verse 43. There is a saying love your friends and hate your enemies, but I say love your enemies pray for those who persecute you in that way you will be acting as true sons of your father in heaven for he gives his sunlight to both the good, the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and unjust too.

If you love only those who love you, what good is that even scoundrels do that much. If you are friendly only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else, even the heathen do that, but you are to be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect.

Amen. Are you basic after talking about that? We're going to talk about the problem with being basic and how to not be basic.

You guys have heard this term before. A person who is basic, they do what everyone else does. They don't really spend a lot of time thinking for themselves to get the most basic drink at Starbucks or they have a basic wardrobe, they don't really try to express themselves differently.

Definitely, they kind of just like fit in with the crowd. They don't really want to stand out. And at times, yes, there's no need for us to stand out, but there is nothing intrinsically basic about a Christian.

How Christ calls us to act is so completely otherworldly. That's why we say things like we're not of this world. It's like we're aliens, you know, the Bible calls us on the Old Testament.

We just are we're strangers or exiles. We are totally different from the world around us. If you look at verse 43 through 45, Jesus is taking a standard that they had known and they're raising it.

In verse 43, when it says, you've heard love your neighbor, of course, and in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they were told to love their neighbors. In verse 43, it says, and hate your enemy. Jesus is saying this to the disciples saying, you've heard love your neighbor hate your enemy.

The love your neighbor part is something they've heard from God. The hate your neighbor part is something they've heard from the religious leaders around them because that's not in the Bible.

And so what happens in church leadership sometimes is you have people who have power and authority and they add on things that make sense to them. And then they say, yeah, God will get on board with this.

So I'm just going to teach this as scripture, teach this as fact. God had never told the disciples or anybody reading the mosaic law to hate their enemy.

But that's what they assumed God meant when he said, love your neighbor. That's not true. You're supposed to love both of them. Now that is very unbasic, you know, that's that's something that's completely different.

In verse 44, when Jesus says, but I tell you, he's saying, I'm telling you this, love in your enemies is the most unbasic you can be.

It's basic to hate your enemies. Everyone does that. That's just like, you know, ordering a vanilla bean frappuccino at Starbucks. Everyone does that.

So everyone's basic intrinsic first thing that they do is hate your enemies. Verse 45, it says, if you do this, if you love your neighbor and love your enemies, you will be children of your father in heaven.

And then he gives us the reason for why we are called to love our enemies.

He's saying, if you love your enemies, you'll be seen as a child of God. How? Because God is the one that causes rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous, the sun to rise on the good and the evil.

If God has favor and gives common grace to all people on earth, whether they deserve it or not, because none of us deserve it.

Shouldn't we be able to give grace to our enemies? Now here's an example. Jesus loved Nineveh. You might be thinking, where was Jesus involved with Nineveh? Well, he talks about Nineveh in the Gospels.

But when God sends Jonah to Nineveh, he was sending Jesus, because Jesus is the Word of God. Look at Jonah, one, one through two. Do you mind reading that for us?

...