The Power Of Radical Love | Cornerstone Church | Pastor TJ McConahay

So I had a ridiculous youth pastor. Okay? My youth pastor used to put us in the most uncomfortable situations. First of all, my youth pastor was a hippie from the seventies who got saved in the Jesus revolution and then became just just as wild, just on the Jesus side of things.

And he loved to surprise us. His favorite thing was surprising us. And so one year at summer camp, we didn't go to our usual lake, he took us to Canada, okay? And Canada, it was wet and kind of dark and gray the whole time, so we really had no idea why John

would take us to Canada until day four. He goes, guys, I have an amazing surprise for you. And he loaded us all on the bus and he took us up the mountain. Okay. We got to this beautiful canyon and there was this giant

bridge and it wasn't a bridge that you drive over, but it was a bridge that you walk over. And as we got closer to the spot, we realized there's something going on on this bridge. People are jumping off of it

and he looks at us and he goes, Guys, you're not gonna believe this. I signed the entire youth group up to do bungee jumping today. Okay.

Of all, I'm not gonna do this. Okay. There's no way I'm gonna go bungee. I hate heights. For some reason, John thinks the greatest thing you could do is put people in really scary height positions and I think that I'm not alone in this. As he goes, so John goes, hey, I realize that some of you guys aren't gonna like this today. So

everybody who wants to buddy jump come over here with me and everybody who doesn't want you can go over there and it was the whole youth group went to John and then it was me and the camp nurse

And I'm sitting there and I think this is lame and then one of my buddies came over and he's like, hey, hey, we just we just got news that you can go up to the bungee jumping platform and you don't have to jump. They'll they'll let you just kind of if you're too scared, you can just sort of walk away. I was like, well,

that sounds better than hanging out with the camp nurse. They have to weigh you in front of everyone. It's a giant scale that you stand on and then they write your weight on your arm. This is like the only time in life where you will not lie about your weight. Okay?

This is you wanna might wanna add 10 pounds. Why? Because that's that's the the bungee cord that they use is when you get up there, right? So I'm watching and I think I'm

Just one after another and they're all going and I'm like, why is everyone doing this? This is so stupid. John, why do you have us doing this today? I don't wanna do this. I'm like the last person to go. And as you get closer

to the platform where you're going to jump off, you realize how podunk this whole situation is. Okay? You think that because death is on the line, there would be like some level of professionality? No. They tie your feet together with just like truck straps.

Okay? The bungee cords are like a 100 rubber bands just kind of bound together and then and then so your feet are together.

The platforms like this, it's like a three foot platform and the guy who's operating it is this giant Samoan dude with like tribal tattoos and his whole job is to bully you into jumping, okay? That that's his whole thing, okay? And I've already told him, hey, I'm just gonna take a look this time and he goes, hey, you need to go out further and I look at him I'm like,

Maui, my feet are tied together.

He goes, well, you gotta hop out there. I'm like, I don't want to hop out there. So he takes his big foot and he puts it on the back of my knees and it makes me hop and I'm like, stop that. Okay? I told you, I'm just looking this time. This is not my go time, you know? And he puts his big foot out and boom, there. And then all of a sudden, I'm on the edge.

I'm looking down at death. Okay? That's that's what's happening here and I know that I will not jump. So I've got this thing already figured out. I'm gonna take a look. I'm gonna wimp out and then try to hide on the bus back to camp. But then my youth pastor, he's at the observation deck and he yells, hey,

I think TJ's gonna jump. All of the youth group just run to the railing and they're all there and they start chanting, TJ, TJ, TJ. And I think, well, today's the day I got peer pressured into dying. I'm gonna jump. And so I look back at my friend Maui and I say,

I think I'm gonna jump. He goes, okay. That's good. I'm gonna count down. I said, well, let's start at a reasonable number like 500, you know. He goes, I'm gonna start at five, four, whole time my heart just go, three,

two, and I'm about to jump out but I'm so scared my legs are just shaking. I don't bungee jump, I bungee fall. Just sort of like fall off the edge.

And as I'm falling, as I'm as I'm kind of just leaning over the edge, there's 's a bunch of people as I'm on the stage right now, they're rooting for me to fall off the stage right now. And by the way, that's YouTube gold, so we're gonna do that. But so as I'm falling off this platform,

this is the moment my grandma's words come back to me. TJ, if all of your friends were jumping off of a bridge,

would you jump off a bridge too? And the answer was yes. I'm that stupid. I am that dumb.

And then, you just fall and it feels like forever and you're just you just and it was crazy because you just go towards the canyon bottom and there it is. The rocks are about ready to smash your head on there and then it just like things just pause. And then you just hit the rewind button and just sends

you back up and then bang, bang, boom, boom. And then they just lower you like a fish into a boat. And here's the thing is, I actually loved it. It was so much fun. I'm so thankful for a youth pastor who put me in an uncomfortable situation. I'm so thankful

that a youth pastor who could see that I was able to do more than what I thought I could do, that I could do a hard thing, that I could do something that I thought would be impossible. John, his crazy hippie self was a great youth pastor. You know who else was a great youth pastor?

Jesus. Like why are calling Jesus a youth pastor? You know all the disciples were teenagers. Jesus was the first youth pastor. Besides Peter, every single one of them was teenagers and that's what Jesus did. He he he over and over put his disciples in uncomfortable

situations and what he required from them was to do things that they never thought that they could do.

On one such day in Matthew five, he takes his followers and his disciples up to the mountaintop similar to me. The backdrop would have been familiar to all of these guys. It was the Sea Of Galilee and pretty much all of Jesus's disciples lived somewhere along the Sea Of Galilee. Now here's a backstory about the Sea Of Galilee. The name fakes you out because you kind of think it's an ocean or like an inlet. It's just a giant freshwater

lake. And to this day, you can go to the Sea Of Galilee and they they ski and wakeboard on it in certain times. It is a bucket list item for me that I would be able to wakeboard where Jesus walked someday. That's where they're at. The backdrop is the Sea Of Galilee. It's beautiful, but it's familiar

and that familiar probably brings a comfort to the disciples and Jesus gets up and he starts teaching but he's teaching his most famous sermon ever and he's calls them to do something that they don't want to do. He makes them incredibly uncomfortable because he says something that's crazy. Matthew five

forty three through 44 Jesus looks at his disciples and all of his followers. He said, 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. Now, this would have been a radical teaching.

Every single person listening to Jesus would have said, that doesn't make sense. No, no, no. Defeat my enemy.

Prosper me over my enemy. Help it so that my enemy doesn't win any battles. Grind them into the ground. That's what we do with enemies. We don't love them and probably the disciples had, hey, he's gonna clarify this. You know, it's not. He

says weird things but sometimes he comes right just like kind of like a hook or something. But no, Jesus lets the statement stand and everybody who would walk away from that sermon that day would have been uncomfortable because they would have known to follow Jesus. You were going to have to love your enemy.

You are going to have to do something that you would think that would be impossible for you. Oh, guys, I think that Jesus now now in our life, we've especially if you've grown up in the church,

you've heard the teaching love your enemy before. This is probably not the first sermon that you've heard on this because it's a very famous teaching and because of that, we've heard it so much. Sometimes in church cultures we get inoculated to how radical these things are.

We get inoculated, just becomes background noise, become nose blind to it, But let me put it into perspective for you. That person who's in your life who roots for your downfall, who would be happy if you got fired, they would celebrate

if your bank account went to zero. If you were publicly shamed in front of everyone, that would be their best day. If you died, they might celebrate it. That person, Jesus says to love. That is radical. That is crazy.

Jesus doesn't just call us to do hard things because in doing hard things like we learned that hard things are possible. Whenever God calls us to something very difficult and very radical, he does so on purpose for a purpose and Jesus has three purposes in telling us to love our enemies.

The first one is this. The first one is this, maturity is letting go of self to the glory of God. That's one of my youth pastor's points. I stole it. Thanks, John. Maturity is the letting go of self to the glory of God. Now, if you're like me, you don't like giving up yourself.

I don't like giving up any piece of me. I'd rather life be more about me, but the crazy thing is is that Jesus is totally interested in me growing up and then to me to grow up, I have to give up myself over and over and over again. Now, here's the crazy thing is young people,

God will put things in your life that will require you to give up yourself. Someday you will have to pay your own bills and every time that automatic that automatic deduction happens, you will give up a piece of yourself that day.

Someday, you will fall in love with somebody and you'll get married to them and it will be awesome but then there will be another person that you have to take care of and in your marriage if you're gonna do it right, you're going to have to give up yourself. Maturity is the letting go of self and then someday

you might have children and with every new child that God blesses with you, you will be emptied out over and over and over again. Why? Because maturity is the letting go of self. But here's the thing is, if God really, really, really wants you to grow up,

he will give you an enemy. He will allow an enemy to come into your life and he will say, love them. Now, when it's when it's your wife, when it's your kids, you're okay with loving them. You love them. It's like, yeah, awesome. They're doing well. I can freely give up myself.

It is so hard to give up pieces to yourself to somebody who despises you. It is so hard to let go of yourself and watch somebody prosper over you and I've gotta be honest guys. There's some sermons I get and I'm like, I'm so excited to preach this one. I'm gonna be really honest. I dislike this teaching of Jesus's.

I don't like the idea that I have to take people who don't like me and I have to love them with a radical love. Now, here's the thing is, here's just the qualification. Jesus isn't asking you to love your enemies with your emotions.

That's what we kind of That's that's like the worldly view of love is that you have to feel something warm towards them. So when they come in, it's like, hey, this person wants my my demise. Yay. I'm so happy that they're here. No, that's not the biblical understanding of love.

If you wanna know what the biblical understanding of love is, it's in first Corinthians 13 and every single one of those things that God calls us to is not about our feelings or our emotions, it's all about action, intentionality and discipline. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not boast, it is not envious,

it does not seek its own. It does not boast in unrighteousness but boast when the truth wins out. You can feel any way you want towards somebody but the requirement of Jesus is that in your actions, you discipline yourself to love them but I don't like doing that. I'm like David.

I wanna pray the prayers of David. You guys ever read these Psalms? Defeat my enemies, crush them below my feet. Let me prosper over them. How long will you let your people suffer God while your enemies are up here? But every time that God allows an enemy in my life,

he also and I start to complain to him about it. He also gives me an eternal perspective. Okay? An eternal perspective. Here it is guys.

This is your life. Okay? And and it represents your time here on earth and if you know Jesus, the gold represents your time in eternity. Okay? The white is your time here on earth. The the the golden like the golden streets in heaven, that's your time in eternity. Now, what you don't know

is this rope, it goes all the way backstage. It goes out the back door.

We took it down to compass, we wrapped it around their church a couple times as a prank, you know, and then we took it over to Queen Creek, we wrapped around Rock Point because we need to build to know that we're doing this illustration today and this this this rope never ever ends. Okay? Now, this little red mark here

is the time in which God gives you an enemy. Okay? And in that time, you might think that it's very unfair

that God wants your enemy to prosper over you because you are called to love them. And in this moment, might go, God, why are you letting them prosper over me? God, why do you make it so they're up here, they're getting the promotion, everyone likes them and I and I have to love them and they're not called to love me, they definitely don't love me, they put me down every chance they get. It's not fair. Guys,

we have all of an eternity as our inheritance. If God calls us to suffer for a little while, guess what? In eternity, we get to spend with him. He makes all things new.

Then you go, TJ, I have I have more than this. I have, you have one red line. If you did my life, I have like a red line here and a red line here, and if there's a lot of red lines, you might be the problem. Okay? That you need to repent. You you've become an enemy. Okay? So but even if the whole thing is red,

Paul says it this way. I consider all the good, the bad, the evil in my life. I consider it rubbish for the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus. Letting go of self unto the glory of God. Guys, you have an inheritance that's bigger than this moment and you can walk in the pain of this moment. Why?

Because Jesus, anything that happened to you also happened to Jesus. And if he can endure and produce resurrection, then you can rise too. Maturity is letting go of self towards the glory of God. The second point is this, the only real way to defeat an enemy is to make them a friend.

The only real way to defeat an enemy is to make them a friend. Guys, we live in a time of war and there's a lot of thoughts around war, but the one thing that's just universally true is this, If you confront enemies with violence and and hard confrontation, what ends up happening is you might win in the temporary,

but you will make enemies not just of your enemy, but of their kids, of their tribes, of every other thing. So the way in which we confront enemies oftentimes makes more enemies. And if Jesus is who he says he is, the prince of peace, then he's interested in enemies stopping. And the only way to take the enemy

aggregate down to zero is if the people of God start actually making friends with their enemies. Now, I wanna say this to you guys is that I have a I had an enemy that became a friend. I started my youth ministry career twenty years ago in a tiny little church, little tiny Baptist church in Aurora, Oregon.

Now Aurora, Oregon's a tiny, tiny area. It's known for antiques and old people. So I was on the cutting edge of youth ministry when I started this whole thing, you know. And and my youth ministry grew. It grew actually bigger than the church.

I thought that was a good thing but it ended up being something that was kinda hard on the church. And the church, because it was filled with a lot of very elderly people, they started to die off and within three years, the church didn't have the resources to keep going, so the church had to shut down. So here I was a youth pastor with a youth group at no church.

Well, was a church in the next town over, Woodburn, that allowed me to bring my youth group over and they hired me on as their youth pastor. Here's the problem. They already had a youth pastor, a volunteer guy who they didn't tell that they hired me until the day I showed up. You think that might cause some problems?

And we butted heads. The whole thing was like a power struggle right off the bat and he did things that were just horrible and it was all to just undermine me in every single way and honestly, I wanted to fire him. I wanted to off board him and I it's really weird to fire volunteers because like they're already not paid

but I didn't want him there anymore. But it's in those moments that the scripture speaks louder to me when I'm when my intentions are bad and it was these scriptures, love your enemy, bless those who curse you, that kept coming back to me over and over and over again. And so we tried, was just bumpy for four months.

And then this big moment happened. It was four months in and we had a winter camp coming up. Now, at the beginning of winter camp, I had this big thing upfront. It's like the start of winter camp and it's supposed to be this kind of big moment. And I had planned for myself to come on stage covered in balloons,

like balloons. Now, what was really trendy in youth ministry back in those days was something called junta darts. This is gonna sound so podunk and hillbilly to some of you guys, but it was awesome. Okay? Some youth pastor somewhere, a legend, he figured out that you can take PVC pipe and you can fashion little darts

in like cone shapes and you could you could build like a dart game with your youth group. Now, the crazy thing is it was just, it was just duct tape, PVC pipe and a lot of fun. So the game that he came up with was you take a balloon, you put it on your body and everybody has a PVC pipes and these little duct tape cones

and you're trying to pop each other's balloons. So the way I'm gonna introduce this to my youth group is I'm gonna come on stage covered in balloons

and I'm gonna give them all PVC pipes with the junta darts already made and I'm gonna let them just shoot it at me as much as you can. Now here's the thing is, when you build these things just out of duct tape, it's really weird but they'll pop a balloon but they won't hurt the person. That's why it's a legendary status. Now, I didn't know how to make these, so I sent the most nerdy volunteer I had at the time into Portland

to learn from the experts of the junta darts, okay? His name was Isaac. He set the whole game up for us. And then it's time, but I decide, you know what? I'm not gonna be the hero of this year's opener. I'm gonna make Sonny, you know my enemy, the other youth pastor guy, I'm gonna make him the hero.

So I'm gonna let him be the centerpiece.

So we duct taped all of these balloons to him, right? And again, this is supposed to be pretty harmless thing. And so he comes out and then the kids start counting down. They all have their their their dart guns. They're about ready to start blowing. And I go in the back and Isaac

starts talking to me. He goes, by the way, I need you to know something. I couldn't figure out how to make these hoodoo darts work. What? He goes, yeah. I couldn't make them pop. So what'd you do? He goes, I just added a little toothpick to the end of each one of these things. Oh, no.

At that point, five, four, three, two, one. Every single one of those darts stuck into Sunny. Every single one of them. Okay? He was pierced for my transgressions in that moment.

And I'm going back to apologize. I think I'm gonna get fired because everyone knows that I don't really like this guy and I just had a 150 kids dart him as like some sort of public humiliation ritual. And I walk back and the crazy thing is he's laughing and he's making jokes as volunteers pull darts out of his body. Okay?

Now, there's only one type of creature in this world who can laugh after being darted 150 times. That is a youth pastor. We laughed as we pulled darts out of him and we bonded in that moment because I realized we had the same heart. We shared the same calling.

Now, Sonny kept pursuing ministry, but he pursued it more on the secular side. He had a radical story about how God had saved him from drug and alcohol addiction, So he became a drug and alcohol counselor,

and he took all of the methods that we had formed together in youth ministry, and he applied it to the drug and alcohol movement in Salem, Oregon, and he became the best and well known drug and alcohol counselor in Oregon state. How does that stuff happen? How does that stuff happen? It happens because

the only real way to get rid of an enemy is to make them into a friend. I wonder what type of redemption story God is putting in your life if your enemy could become a friend, If your enemy could become a friend. There's one more verse I wanna look at this morning. There's one more verse I wanna look at and it's just

at the end of Matthew five forty, just what we talked about, but it's verse 45. After Jesus says, love your enemies, he looks at his disciples and he says this, that you may become children of your father in heaven.

If you underline your Bible, I want you to underline children of your father. Why is this so important that Jesus is calling these guys to center themselves back under the father's authority because he understands who created your enemy. And maybe if you can understand that God created your enemy,

maybe then you can understand why it's important that you love them. Now,

I was in sixth grade and I didn't like school very much, so I didn't engage very much in school, but every once in a while, something happened at school that really grabbed my attention. And we were in science class and we were studying flight and they had us build these balsa wood airplanes.

We got to cut them out, we got to paint them, and then we even got to put little rubber band propellers on them. And then, they would fly. They would actually fly. And so, I had built this beautiful plane. It was so awesome. And the crazy thing was it flew so,

so well. And so, went out after we'd all built our things and in a class, we all threw theirs. In mine, it just kept circling, circling until that rubber band had run out and then it finally just lands perfectly on the ground.

And what they did is they took the top three planes from each class and at the school end assembly, we got to have a contest to who built the best balsa wood airplane.

And my plane, every single time, I just throw it up and circle, circle, and it was always the last plane left standing. I was pretty sure I'm gonna win this competition in front of my whole middle school. It's gonna be awesome. But I do that thing, golfers are gonna understand this. When the championship's on the line,

where you try to put a little too much into it. So I take it and I go to throw it and I just decide I'm gonna throw it even higher so it goes even higher. And my finger gets stuck on the rubber band and I spike that plane right into the ground in front of my whole school. The whole thing is completely broken

on the ground. It's a complete mess. And I there's nothing in a middle school boy that wants to cry in front of anyone, but it was involuntary.

I hit my knees and I started crying and I started to pick up my plane and I could hear everyone laughing. And then my friend came up as I'm picking up my plane and I'm just putting the broken pieces into my pocket. He looks at me and says, TJ, it's it's garbage. You don't have to pick it up. Why are you picking it up?

And I looked at him through tears and I said, because it's mine. And even though it's broken, it's still mine, and I love it.

I wonder if you could understand that your enemy was also made by God. And even though they are broken, God still desires restoration and redemption for them. I want you to hear this. Jesus is on a rescue mission for broken souls and he has said this over and over and over again throughout

the New Testament and in our relationship to him that I wanna make all things new. And there's people out there who don't just call themselves your enemies. They will happily declare that they are enemies of God. But guess what? God doesn't make enemies of them. He still keeps pursuing their soul. They're broken,

but he still loves them because they are his. And if you want to be a child of your father, then you have to join Jesus on this rescue mission for the broken souls of humanity. God could write a redemption story for your enemy, and he could change everything for them. We don't want to be the people

who root for other people's destruction. We want to be the people who root for the glory of God. I want you to think of it again. That person who's in your life right now, who's rooting for your failure, they would be happy if you got fired.

They would be happy if your bank account went to zero and you were bankrupt. They'd be happy if you were publicly shamed. They hate you. Even if you die, they'd probably celebrate it. The radicalness of the gospel is that we are to love them as well because God might want to save them too.

We cannot make enemies of people because God is still trying to rescue those same people. And guys, like I said, it's a hard teaching. It's a really, really difficult thing to say love your enemies. But if we're going to be the type of people who change things for the glory of God,

we've got to do things that we think are impossible. So I wanna tell you this, there's enough courage in you through the Holy Spirit that you can do a miracle so big that only God can get the credit. And this is it. Love your enemy. And let's see what God does with the rest.

Guys, will you stand with me as I close? I wanna pray a benediction prayer over us. I realize, I can see it in this service, there's a heaviness here. So I know that there's some pain in this place. And maybe in the same way that the disciples felt, you're like, hey, pastor TJ, no, no, no, You don't understand my enemy.

I wanna just pray the words of God over you. And in hope and and as you hear these words, all I want you to do is close your eyes, and I just want you to receive the word of God. And as you do that, as you do that, I believe that God is going to encourage your soul in a way that's new.

Do me a favor, close your eyes and just open up your hands and just receive these words, and maybe somewhere in this place, we will find the courage to do the impossible. Matthew five says it this way, you've heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you,

love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven. But to you who are listening, this is Luke six, love your enemies,

do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, but love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting anything back. Then your reward will be great in heaven, and you will be children of the most high because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Proverbs 25 says this, if your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink, and in doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. The Lord will reward you. And the last verse that I want you to receive as you think about how you can love your enemy, Romans 12.

Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Do not repay evil for evil. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. God, I pray in this moment that you'd break every chain of bitterness, of malice,

of rage. And God, I pray in this moment that you would give us enough courage to do the impossible and learn to love those who hate us. God, can we be the church that makes enemies of no one and rescues some? We love you, Jesus. And all God's people said, Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

The prayer team will be up front if you guys need prayer.