Practice Sermon 3
Before we open God’s Word this morning, I don’t want you to answer me.
I want you to answer honestly before God.
Have you ever been deeply wounded by another person?
Have you ever been betrayed by someone you trusted?
Have you ever been lied about?
Cheated?
Abandoned?
Taken advantage of?
Have you ever been the victim of someone’s cruelty?
Perhaps someone stole years of your life.
Perhaps they shattered your family.
Perhaps they abused you in the worst way imaginable.
Perhaps they took something from you that can never truly be returned.
Now let me ask you another question.
If that person walked through those doors right now…
What would you do?
If they came down this aisle…
If they sat in the empty seat beside you…
If they smiled and said, “Good morning…”
What would happen in your heart?
Would you move?
Would your anger begin to rise?
Would you leave?
Would you secretly hope they walked right back out?
Would you pray that God changes their heart…
Or would you pray that God finally gives them what they deserve?
Would you rejoice if, before this day was over, they genuinely repented of their sin and placed their faith in Christ?
Or does something inside you want justice more than mercy?
Don’t answer too quickly.
These aren’t easy questions.
They’re not supposed to be.
Because now I want you to hear the words of Jesus.
Turn with me to Matthew chapter 5.
Jesus says,
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
Church, if those words don’t make us uncomfortable, we probably haven’t really heard them.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Love your enemies if they’ve apologized.”
He doesn’t say, “Love your enemies if enough time has passed.”
He doesn’t say, “Love your enemies if they deserve another chance.”
He simply says,
“Love your enemies.”
That command reaches into places most of us spend our lives trying to protect.
It reaches into old wounds.
Broken relationships.
Painful memories.
It reaches into the deepest corners of our hearts and asks a question that none of us naturally wants to answer.
Will you love the person who has made themselves the hardest person in your life to love?
Notice that Jesus doesn’t stop there.
He says,
“Pray for those who persecute you.”
Not pray against them.
Not pray that they fail.
Not pray that God embarrasses them.
Pray for them.
Why?
Because that is exactly what our Father has done for us.
Scripture tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were enemies of God, He pursued us with mercy instead of giving us the judgment we deserved.
If that is how God has loved us, then Christ calls His followers to reflect that same kind of love toward others.
Now let me be very clear.
Jesus is not telling you to pretend evil never happened.
He is not telling you to ignore abuse.
He is not telling you to place yourself back into dangerous situations.
He is not saying that justice no longer matters.
The same God who commands us to love our enemies is also perfectly just.
There are crimes that should be prosecuted.
There are people who should remain in prison.
There are situations where wisdom requires distance and boundaries.
Loving someone is not the same as trusting them.
Forgiving someone is not the same as removing every consequence of their actions.
Jesus is speaking to something even deeper.
He is speaking to the condition of our hearts.
Will I allow another person’s sin to produce bitterness that poisons my own soul?
Will I spend the rest of my life feeding hatred?
Or will I entrust justice to God and choose obedience even when every part of me wants revenge?
That is not natural.
Everything in us cries out for retaliation.
Everything in Christ calls us toward mercy.
Not because our enemies deserve it.
But because neither did we.
The cross is the greatest reminder that God’s mercy is not given to the deserving.
It is given to sinners.
People like us.
And perhaps…
People like the person whose face came to your mind before we ever opened the Scriptures.
Church, these are not my words.
They are the words of our Lord.
They are difficult.
They are costly.
And they are good.
May God give us the grace not merely to admire them…
But to obey them.
Step One: How Does the Sermon Begin?
Let’s begin where we’ve begun every other evaluation.
How does the sermon start?
Before a single verse is read, the preacher asks a series of deeply personal questions.
Have you ever been betrayed?
Have you ever been abused?
Have you ever hoped someone would receive what they deserve?
What if the person who hurt you walked through those doors and sat beside you?
Those questions are uncomfortable.
In fact, they may be the most uncomfortable questions we’ve encountered in any sermon so far.
That immediately raises an important question.
Is the preacher manipulating the congregation?
Or is he preparing them to hear a difficult passage?
We shouldn’t answer that question too quickly.
Remember the first sermon. It also began with questions. There, we discovered the questions created guilt before the biblical text had spoken. They were preparing the congregation to accept a conclusion that had not yet been established.
So let’s ask the same question here.
Do these opening questions naturally arise from Matthew 5?
Think about the passage for a moment.
Jesus commands His followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.
How could a preacher faithfully explain that command without first asking us to think about the people we actually struggle to love?
If I spend the entire sermon imagining someone who has been kind to me, I will almost certainly conclude that I already obey this command. The questions force me to confront the very people Jesus is talking about.
Notice something else.
The preacher didn’t answer the questions.
He didn’t tell the congregation what to think.
He didn’t say, “You’re all failing.”
He simply exposed the issue that the passage itself is about.
Only then did he open the Scriptures.
That is an important distinction.
The questions did not replace the text.
They prepared us to hear the text honestly.
So, at least at this stage, I don’t believe the introduction is manipulating the congregation.
I believe it is preparing the congregation to wrestle with one of the most difficult commands Jesus ever gave.
Of course, a good introduction does not automatically make a good sermon.
Now we need to ask the next question.
Did the preacher allow Jesus to define what loving our enemies means, or did he quietly redefine it himself?
Step Two: What Is the Main Point?
Now let’s identify the sermon’s central claim.
Don’t answer with a feeling.
Answer with a sentence.
What is the preacher asking the congregation to believe or do?
Take a moment before reading further and write it down in your own words.
Were we told to become best friends with people who have hurt us?
No.
Were we told to pretend evil never happened?
No.
Were we told to abandon wisdom, ignore justice, or place ourselves back into dangerous situations?
Again, no.
So what was the preacher actually asking us to do?
His claim was much narrower and much more difficult.
He argued that followers of Christ are commanded to love their enemies, pray for those who persecute them, refuse personal vengeance, and entrust justice to God.
That is a difficult claim.
In fact, it may feel too difficult.
If you’re honest, there were probably moments during the sermon when you thought, “Surely Jesus can’t expect that from someone who has been through what I’ve been through.”
That’s an understandable reaction.
But our feelings are not the standard by which we evaluate a sermon.
The biblical text is.
So before we decide whether the preacher asked too much of us, we need to ask a more important question.
Did Jesus ask that much of us?
Notice how that changes the discussion.
We’re no longer debating whether the sermon was comfortable.
We’re asking whether it faithfully represented Christ’s words.
Sometimes a preacher goes beyond the text and places unnecessary burdens on God’s people.
Sometimes a preacher simply refuses to soften the burden Christ Himself has already placed there.
Those are two very different things.
At this point, we’ve identified the sermon’s claim.
Now we must determine whether that claim actually grows out of Matthew 5 or whether the preacher quietly strengthened Jesus’ words beyond what the passage itself teaches.
Step Three: Did the Bible Lead the Sermon?
Now we come to the most important question.
Did the preacher preach Matthew 5?
Or did he preach his own ideas while occasionally quoting Matthew 5?
Go back through the sermon and notice what happened.
After reading the passage, the preacher didn’t immediately begin telling stories or jumping to other parts of the Bible. He stayed with Jesus’ words.
When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” the preacher talked about loving your enemies.
When Jesus said, “Pray for those who persecute you,” the preacher talked about praying for those who persecute you.
He didn’t redefine “enemy.”
He didn’t soften the command by saying Jesus was only referring to people who are mildly annoying.
In fact, he did the opposite.
He intentionally brought to mind the kinds of people we would naturally struggle to love because those are precisely the people Jesus had in mind.
Now ask yourself another question.
Did the preacher make Jesus’ command harder than it is?
Think carefully before you answer.
Many of us instinctively want to say yes because the sermon felt heavy.
But was that because of the preacher…
Or because of Jesus?
Read the passage again.
Jesus doesn’t simply tell us not to seek revenge.
He doesn’t merely tell us to tolerate our enemies.
He says,
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Those are Christ’s words.
Not the preacher’s.
Notice something else.
Whenever the preacher anticipated an objection, he didn’t weaken Jesus’ command.
He clarified what Jesus was not saying.
He distinguished loving an enemy from trusting an enemy.
He distinguished forgiveness from removing consequences.
He distinguished mercy from pretending evil never happened.
Those distinctions weren’t attempts to escape the command.
They were attempts to keep the congregation from misunderstanding it.
Throughout the sermon, the preacher kept bringing us back to the same place.
Not to his opinion.
Not to a moving story.
Not to an emotional experience.
Back to the words of Christ.
That is exactly where faithful preaching should lead us.
The preacher’s responsibility is not to make Jesus easier to obey.
Neither is it to make Him more demanding than He is.
His responsibility is simply to let Jesus speak.
So far, I believe that is exactly what happened.
Step Four: Did the Preacher Deal Honestly with the Difficult Questions?
By now you’ve probably noticed that this sermon anticipated several objections.
That’s a good sign.
Difficult passages naturally produce difficult questions, and faithful preaching shouldn’t pretend those questions don’t exist.
Think back through the sermon.
The preacher knew people would immediately wonder about abuse.
He knew someone would ask about forgiveness.
He knew someone would think about justice.
He knew someone would ask whether loving an enemy meant pretending evil never happened.
So what did he do?
Did he ignore those questions?
No.
Did he dismiss them with a quick, “You just need more faith”?
No.
Did he shame people for struggling?
Again, no.
Instead, he carefully distinguished things that are often confused.
He explained that loving an enemy is not the same as trusting an enemy.
He explained that forgiveness does not remove consequences.
He explained that justice still matters.
He explained that wisdom may require boundaries.
Notice what those explanations accomplished.
They didn’t weaken Jesus’ command.
They clarified what the command was actually requiring.
That is an important difference.
Sometimes people hear a sermon like this and immediately conclude that the preacher is asking victims to return to abusive situations.
But did this preacher actually say that?
Read the sermon again.
He explicitly denied it.
He wasn’t adding to Christ’s command.
He was preventing the congregation from misunderstanding it.
That’s what good preaching often does.
It doesn’t explain away difficult truths.
It explains them carefully enough that we obey what Jesus actually said instead of reacting to something He never said.
As we’ve worked through this sermon, I hope you’ve noticed something.
The preacher wasn’t trying to make the passage easier.
He was trying to make it clearer.
Those are not always the same thing.
Step Five: Did the Application Grow Naturally from the Text?
This is where a great many sermons begin to drift.
A preacher faithfully explains the passage, then arrives at the application and quietly asks more—or less—than the text actually requires.
So let’s ask the same question we’ve asked throughout this book.
Did the application come from the passage?
Or did it come from the preacher?
Look back over the sermon.
The preacher never asked the congregation to do something Jesus didn’t command.
He didn’t tell them to become close friends with those who had harmed them.
He didn’t tell them to ignore wisdom.
He didn’t tell them to place themselves or their families in danger.
He didn’t tell them to abandon justice or prevent the civil authorities from doing their job.
Instead, every application revolved around the command Jesus actually gave.
Love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Refuse personal vengeance.
Entrust justice to God.
Those applications aren’t comfortable.
In fact, they’re deeply uncomfortable.
But discomfort is not evidence that a preacher has gone too far.
The question is whether he has gone farther than Jesus.
I don’t believe he did.
There is another lesson here that is easy to miss.
Many of us have no difficulty applying passages that tell us God loves us, forgives us, and cares for us. We gladly receive those truths because they comfort us.
Then we come to a passage like this, and suddenly we begin negotiating.
“Surely Jesus didn’t mean my enemy.”
“Surely He wasn’t talking about someone who did something this terrible.”
“Surely there must be an exception.”
If we’re honest, those thoughts reveal something about us.
We are often tempted to become very strict with passages we enjoy and very flexible with passages that confront us.
A faithful preacher doesn’t have the freedom to do either.
His responsibility is to let every passage speak with its own voice.
Sometimes that voice comforts.
Sometimes it convicts.
Sometimes it calls us to obedience that feels impossible apart from the grace of God.
That is exactly what Jesus does here.
The application may be one of the hardest in all of Scripture.
But difficulty is not the measure of faithfulness.
The words of Christ are.
Step Six: What Evidence Was Left Out?
We’ve asked this question after every sermon, and we should ask it again here.
What evidence would significantly challenge the sermon’s conclusion?
Notice that I didn’t ask whether there are other passages we could have included.
Of course there are.
No sermon can cover everything the Bible says about a subject.
The question is narrower.
Did the preacher ignore a passage that would substantially change the meaning of Matthew 5 or undermine the application he made?
As I worked through the sermon, I don’t believe he did.
In fact, he anticipated many of the objections people naturally raise and answered them without leaving the passage.
Could he have spent more time discussing forgiveness?
Certainly.
Could he have explored reconciliation in greater detail?
Absolutely.
Could he have addressed church discipline, civil government, or the pursuit of justice more thoroughly?
Yes.
But remember what sermon he was preaching.
He wasn’t preaching on every biblical subject connected to conflict.
He was preaching Matthew 5.
A sermon should never be criticized simply because it didn’t become a systematic theology.
Its responsibility is to faithfully explain the passage before it.
This preacher stayed with Christ’s words.
He answered the obvious questions that arose from them.
He refused to weaken the command, but he also refused to add burdens that Jesus Himself did not place on His disciples.
As far as I can tell, he allowed the passage to remain the controlling authority throughout the sermon.
That doesn’t mean every question has been answered.
It does mean the questions that remain should send us back to the Scriptures, not because the preacher avoided them, but because faithful preaching should always leave us wanting to know God’s Word more deeply.
Step Seven: What Is Our Verdict?
After carefully working through the sermon, I believe this was a faithful handling of God’s Word.
Not because it was emotionally powerful.
Not because it challenged us.
Not because I happened to agree with it.
It was faithful because the preacher consistently allowed Jesus’ words to set both the boundaries and the application of the sermon.
That doesn’t mean the sermon was easy to hear.
In fact, I suspect many people would leave feeling convicted.
Some might even leave feeling frustrated.
Others might spend the afternoon wrestling with what Jesus requires of His followers.
None of those reactions make the sermon unfaithful.
Sometimes we confuse conviction with manipulation because both can make us uncomfortable.
They are not the same thing.
Manipulation asks us to submit to the preacher.
Conviction calls us to submit to Christ.
There is a world of difference between those two.
Notice something else.
Throughout this sermon, the preacher repeatedly refused opportunities to soften Christ’s command. He also refused opportunities to make it harsher than Christ intended. He did not redefine love, nor did he redefine justice. He simply explained the passage and trusted that Jesus knew exactly what He was asking of His followers.
That takes humility.
It’s tempting for every preacher to improve upon God’s Word. Some make it easier because they fear offending people. Others make it harder because severity can sound spiritual. Faithful preaching resists both temptations.
Our responsibility is not to improve Jesus’ sermons.
It is to explain them.
As I read through this message, I found myself returning to one question.
“If this sermon feels too demanding, is it because the preacher has gone beyond the text…”
“…or because Jesus has lovingly confronted something in my own heart?”
That is an uncomfortable question.
But it is also a healthy one.
Discernment isn’t only about protecting ourselves from error.
It is also about protecting ourselves from the subtle temptation to explain away the very truths God intends to use to transform us.
Sometimes the greatest danger isn’t believing something God never said.
Sometimes it’s refusing to believe something He clearly did.
That is why we must test every sermon carefully.
Not so we can become critics.
So we can become faithful disciples of Christ.
What Did We Learn?
This sermon teaches an important lesson that every Christian eventually has to learn.
Not every difficult sermon is an unfaithful sermon.
In fact, some of the most faithful sermons you will ever hear are the ones you wish weren’t true.
Throughout this exercise, we asked the same questions we’ve asked from the very beginning of this section.
Where did the sermon begin?
What was its main point?
Did the biblical text lead the sermon?
Did the preacher respect the context?
Did the application grow naturally from the passage?
What evidence was left out?
The process never changed.
Only the outcome did.
That consistency is what protects us from becoming either gullible or cynical.
If we only question sermons we disagree with, we are not practicing discernment. We are simply defending our preferences.
If we automatically reject every sermon that confronts us, we have quietly placed ourselves above the Scriptures. We become the ones deciding which commands are reasonable and which ones must be explained away.
That is a dangerous place to be.
There will be times when you hear a sermon and your first reaction will be, “Surely that can’t be what God requires.”
When that happens, resist the temptation to immediately dismiss the message.
Open your Bible.
Read the passage again.
Ask the same questions you’ve learned throughout this book.
If the preacher has gone beyond the text, reject his conclusions no matter how persuasive he may be.
But if the preacher has simply allowed God’s Word to speak, then let God’s Word do its work.
There is a humility required for faithful listening that is every bit as important as the discernment required for faithful testing.
Both are acts of submission.
One protects us from the words of men.
The other keeps us from resisting the words of God.
My prayer is that, as you continue listening to sermons for the rest of your life, you’ll develop both habits. Test everything carefully, but when God’s Word speaks clearly, don’t spend your energy looking for a way around it.
Instead, ask God for the grace to obey.