Today, we continue our journey through the teaching of Jesus in Luke 6. Remember, there’s a massive crowd gathered seeking healing, and Jesus uses this opportunity to share important lessons with his newly selected disciples and potential followers. And what he chooses to tell them about is the pattern of his love and how we are called to follow it. First, we looked at his teaching of the Golden Rule. He took an old teaching they had likely grown up hearing that said, “What is hateful to you, don’t do to anyone else”, and he turned it into a positive with even more meaning. He said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This is more than just don’t do harm, but intentionally do good. The pattern of Jesus’ love shows us to do good things for others, wish them well (which includes talking well about them), and pray for them. If you listened to that teaching yesterday, did you notice a difference in the way you talked about others? I heard this and it hit me to the core, “You cannot treat someone better than you talk about them.” Woah … let that set in. Think about this, every bad thing you say about someone is ammunition the enemy uses against them. God is not against the person you don’t like or have been hurt by. That’s still his child. He wants to heal them and help them be better. He didn’t create them to be bad. And God is asking you to treat them the way you would want to be treated yourself, and stop giving the enemy ammunition to use against them with the negative words you speak about them. God’s not talking bad about you and he’s not talking bad about them … you shouldn’t either. Now, let’s see what Jesus wants to teach the crowd next, because not only was Jesus talking to the large group gathered to hear him that day, but he knew you and I would be reading about it today and he’s speaking to us just as much as he was speaking to them 2,000 years ago. What does he want to tell us? We will read 2 verses with 3 powerful lessons. The first lesson is James 6:37, “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you.” It’s easy to think you’re not judging or condemning, but let’s read this scripture in the Message translation to check ourselves. “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults – unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down, that hardness is a boomerang.” Are you guilty of any of this? Have you been doing some picking? Sly little comments, tiny jabs, inconspicuous posts you hope they see. That’s picking. Have you been jumping on failures? Oh, we can be especially guilty of this with family. Our husband and our children fail, and we take that as an opportunity to show they were wrong and we are right. A friend fails and we proudly retell their story of failure in an effort to make ourselves look better. Dang, we’ve got some ugly down deep in us! Have you been criticizing faults? They aren’t perfect, but what makes you think you are? What have they been through that makes them do what they do? What broken thoughts and self-beliefs do they constantly struggle with that create the faults you see in them? It’s easy to think you would do better with their life than they are doing, but really, if you had been dealt their exact hand with their exact experiences and struggles, I bet you wouldn’t be doing better than them. In fact, most people are dong about as good as they can with what they have and...