Did Jesus Teach Hate?

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): You have to hear the next podcast, More Faith, More Life. I’m going to say what Jesus said. He said to hate your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, even your wife. What does that mean? I’ll tell you in the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:12 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:37 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the Word of God and searching for the biblical principles that that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:12 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be an experience.

0:01:24 – (Steve Gray): Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast here along with my wife Kathy. And if you’re getting ready to listen to this live right now, you know, and it’s happening, then in whatever time, call a friend or text him and say, you need to listen to this now or later. You know why? Because there is a drought. There is a famine and a drought in churches today for the word of God.

0:01:49 – (Steve Gray): You can go to church and not hear the word of God. And there’s plenty of relief going on in our country as we see conservatism is growing and as I’ve been talking about at other places this week, that being conservative is not the same as being spiritual. You can be conservative and not spiritual. You can have family values and not be spiritual. And that’s what’s happening. Kathy, we have the deception that if I go to church, I try to be a good person.

0:02:19 – (Steve Gray): I’m conservative, I have family values, and I don’t do drugs. I’m a Christian, okay? And that has nothing to do with it. I mean, the minute we go back to talking about Christianity is trying to be a good person, we’re right back to the law. And people say, it’s not the law. We’re under grace, we’re under mercy. But as soon as you’re analyzing your life by how good of a person you are, you are under the old covenant, basically.

0:02:50 – (Steve Gray): And so the last thing I want to do is give loose grace and false grace and false mercy, because that’s going on, too, because people are in trouble, and we need to become spiritual people. So you got to tell somebody, start listening to this podcast. There’s lots of podcasts out there that are entertaining, okay, fun, entertaining, and more interesting than what I might going to talk about. But I’m going to save your life, and I’m going to teach you what true disciple ship is today.

0:03:23 – (Steve Gray): I’m going to pick one of the hardest scriptures in the entire New Testament that few pastors ever preach about because they don’t understand it. Guess what? After this podcast, you’ll know enough of one verse. Is that right? Two verses. We’re going to talk about two verses today. You’ll know enough to go into your Bible study, your family, your church, your youth group, and teach it and tell it. And people will say, I’ve never heard that before, but it is extremely accurate and you need to get it. So tell your friends and start listening every week, because next week we’re going to hit more parables out of the book of Luke.

0:04:00 – (Steve Gray): And it’s the most applicable gospel, I think, in what’s happening today. That’s why I love the book.

0:04:05 – (Kathy Gray): Very good.

0:04:05 – (Steve Gray): All right.

0:04:05 – (Kathy Gray): So, you know, you’re so skilled at teaching the parables from Luke especially. You have done it for so many years, and every time you preach one of those parables again for many, many years now, I always go, that is. That is like a revelation. And it just slices home. And it is. It’s a unique teaching that you bring, and it shouldn’t be unique, but you’re seeing it through, through spiritual eyes and not tradition.

0:04:31 – (Kathy Gray): I appreciate that.

0:04:32 – (Steve Gray): Thank you. And also seeing it in context to what it meant to the original audience and what we have, we have out of two things out of context. We have preaching out of context so that we take just a scripture that we, as pastors and leaders and preachers, we or teachers, we understand it. So we grab it because we think we understand it, and then we immediately apply it to the people in front of us who are hurting and we want to make them feel better about their life, or we do the other. What sounds so radical, and we preach to the people who aren’t in front of us that are never you know, we’re preaching to people in San Francisco. Here I’m in Kansas City railing about what’s going on in this alternate lifestyle in San Francisco, in California.

0:05:18 – (Steve Gray): They’re never going to hear it, but we make it sound. Boy, he’s really radical. Not if you’re not talking to people who are going to hear you or who are never going to ask your opinion anyway. So, yeah, so let’s get. So it’s going to be in context. Oh, the second out of context is our lives are out of context. Our audience that’s hearing us preach.

0:05:38 – (Kathy Gray): Right.

0:05:39 – (Steve Gray): Their lives are out of context because they’re not the biblical kind of people that heard it in Jesus Day. The people that heard it in Jesus Day were a certain kind of people.

0:05:49 – (Kathy Gray): Okay?

0:05:50 – (Steve Gray): They were. Most of them were God fearers. That’s what they called them. Either pagan and they’re Jews or they’re even pagan God fearers who then converted to the actual God. And then they listened with God fearing. We have no fear of God. There’s no fear of God in our country. There’s a few individuals and a few people preaching, but not very many. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All right, so let’s get a little fear of the Lord going today.

0:06:14 – (Steve Gray): This parable. Here we go. All right, so this is the one you’re never going to probably hear anybody else preach. So get it, hang on to it and teach it to somebody else. Tell it where it is. It’s from Luke.

0:06:23 – (Kathy Gray): Is it Luke 14?

0:06:24 – (Steve Gray): Yes.

0:06:25 – (Kathy Gray): And verse 25.

0:06:26 – (Steve Gray): We’ll start with that one.

0:06:27 – (Kathy Gray): All right, so here it is. Large crowds were traveling with Jesus. And turning to them, he said, if anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children.

0:06:40 – (Steve Gray): Brothers and sisters, and what do you think of that?

0:06:45 – (Kathy Gray): I’m pausing right there.

0:06:46 – (Steve Gray): Why? Why would anybody not preach that?

0:06:49 – (Kathy Gray): Well, because they don’t know how to interpret it in context.

0:06:53 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, because the Bible seems New Testament, Old Testament all the way through. That’s totally opposite of everything we’ve heard in the Bible. When we’re supposed to think of our brothers, I mean, we’re supposed to love everybody. If you’re supposed to love your neighbor as yourself, how much more? Father, mother, children, brother. Come on. Is there anywhere else in the Bible that says hate your father and your mother?

0:07:13 – (Steve Gray): A Jewish audience would flip out. And there’s a lot of them. It’s a large crowd. So you’re going to get. You could have got booed if you… not booze, Boo hoos, not booze, not drinking booze. Boos. You know, hiss, boo, hiss. This would just be what this is. A lunatic. A lunatic. And so because it’s so opposite of what the rest of the Bible says, most pastors, leaders, teachers, the. They can’t touch this.

0:07:40 – (Steve Gray): They have no idea what it means. All right? So here he obviously says, if you want to come after me, you have to hate. I heard a guy. I did hear a guy try to teach on this once. It was terrible. He says, no, no, no. He means, like, less. You got to like him. What? Like, like him less than what? Right, okay. He means hate. Now, obviously Jesus does. It makes no sense. Does Jesus really mean, go hate your father?

0:08:10 – (Steve Gray): Does Jesus mean go hate your mother? Well, you can’t honor your father and your mother and hate him at the same time. So there must be something here that we don’t know because we don’t know the culture, we don’t know the context, we don’t know what was going on in Jesus ministry at the time that he said it. So we don’t know what he means. All right, so he’s going somewhere with this. All right, I guess we could go ahead and put the tagline on. He’s going to take us to being a disciple.

0:08:42 – (Steve Gray): He wants them to be disciples. We’re going to see that in a minute. So we know where he’s going. Okay. At the end of it is a disciple. I want to make disciples out of you. Okay? So if I’m going to make you a disciple, then he comes up to these, that he’s trying to pull disciples out of this large crowd, right? Because that’s what he’s talking about. Out of this large crowd. He’s looking for disciples, okay? And so all of a sudden, this strange statement of hate. Father, mother, wife, children, brothers.

0:09:09 – (Steve Gray): Sorry about that. It said wife, brothers and sisters. You sort of said that one. Okay, what is going on here?

0:09:18 – (Kathy Gray): What is going on?

0:09:19 – (Steve Gray): What is going on here? All right. It’s the same thing that’s happening in our country right now in politics, that certain people of certain parties and certain thoughts are surrounding themselves with the people that have the same opinion as they do. And so you start thinking the whole country’s got that opinion. Because the only people you talk to all day are saying, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right. And that’s happening in one political party, in my opinion.

0:09:48 – (Steve Gray): But what’s happening here is very similar. Okay, so what’s he trying to do? He’s trying to make a disciple, all right? So all these crowds are there and what’s going to happen after he’s done preaching? The large crowds, they do follow him around, but generally they go home. If they don’t go home, then they got concerned. Remember that time they said, hey, we’re in trouble here. We’ve wandered out in the wilderness here.

0:10:12 – (Steve Gray): And now it’s so late, they can’t go home in time to eat. And all these people are hungry. There’s 5,000 of them and they’re hungry. How are we going to feed them all? But most of the time, the people are just going to go home. And when they went home, in their culture, they lived in an extended family, right? Father, mother, you could have brothers and sisters and you could have a wife and your own children, right?

0:10:37 – (Steve Gray): And when a lot of times they got married, they. The, the before they got married, the husband to be would go to his father’s house and add a room on for him. That’s why Jesus said, in my Father’s house, there’s many rooms. I’m going to go make a room. That was the picture of, I’m going to, I’m going to talk to you like you’re my bride. I’m going to treat you like a bride. Well, in this one, he’s treating us like a disciple. Okay, but it’s similar.

0:11:03 – (Steve Gray): So when they go home, who, who’s, who’s at home? Father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters who probably are not in this crowd. They could be, but most people are going to go home to their family. Okay, when you go home to your family, what’s happening? They’re all Jewish people who didn’t hear this sermon. They’re not following around. They could be your neighbors too, you know, but friends even.

0:11:27 – (Steve Gray): So you’re going to go home after you hear these wonderful sermons that Jesus is preaching about being a disciple and what he’s calling you to do and calling you to be. And then you’re going to go home to mom and dad and brother, family. And when you sit down with them to eat, they didn’t hear the message. And they’re going to talk like, hey, how are you? How you doing, son? What’s going on, daughter? How are things going? You know, we just love you so much. Mom and dad just love you so much.

0:11:58 – (Steve Gray): And we just want to encourage you, just encourage you in everything you’re doing. We want to encourage you in how you’re living. We want to encourage you. Just keep going. We want to encourage you. Don’t give up. Keep going. Keep doing what you’re doing. Do the Jewish law. Be a good Jew. That would have to be it. There could have been a few pagans in there, but that’s Jewish audience, large crowds.

0:12:22 – (Steve Gray): Just be a good Jew with it, Jew with us. We’re going to go to synagogue together. We’re going to go to temple, we’re going to tithe, we’re going to give. We’re going to love God with all our heart. Let’s just be good Jews and keep going. The same thing can happen to people today if they’re fortunate enough to hear a sermon about becoming a disciple. They’re going to go and spend Christmas with their relatives or whatever.

0:12:47 – (Steve Gray): And instead of your. Most of your relatives, go spend Christmas with them or whatever holiday it is. You know, you’re going to sit down at turkey dinner or whatever on Thanksgiving. Most of them aren’t going to say, let’s talk about discipleship. Let’s talk about how we can change, how we’re going to grow, how we need to be disciples. No, they’re going to talk about. Grandma and grandpa are going to be there and they’re all going to talk about how great.

0:13:11 – (Steve Gray): Let’s tell some stories of our family. And we’re a good family. We’re a good. We’re good people. We’re hardworking people. We’re glad you have a job, son, and you’re doing a good job. Just. We just are so proud of you and we don’t get to see you that much, but we’re so glad to spend Thanksgiving with you. Well, these people, though, they live together. So that means every day you go home after hearing Jesus, every day you go home, you got a father and a mother and a family that are very Jewish.

0:13:41 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:13:41 – (Steve Gray): And they’re going to tell you to do what. They’re going to say, you know, son or daughter, I guess it is, but referring to son, you know, kid, we’re a pretty good family. We get along well. We’re doing good. Let’s just keep it up, Keep going. Just keep doing what you’re doing and it’ll work out. Isn’t that a message we hear all the time? And isn’t that a parent’s message? I was young once and I worked hard.

0:14:08 – (Steve Gray): We tell people we’ve been married a long time and just keep going with your marriage and it’ll work out. Don’t give up. Right?

0:14:15 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:14:16 – (Steve Gray): That’s the opposite of what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying you don’t go home and fight your mom and dad or your wife or your family. No, What I need you to do is I need you to fight that message that’s telling you, just become and just stay who you are. You’re okay. Isn’t that the message? You go to church today. Thousands of churches are not trying to transform you or make you a disciple. They have. I know. Isn’t it weird?

0:14:47 – (Steve Gray): Yes. Do you have a discipleship class? Yes. And what is it? The same as their preaching. It goes in to get encouragement to keep going and be a good person. That’s discipleship. Not to Jesus, it’s not. Jesus is trying to change them. He said, you’re going to have to make major changes. And one of the first changes. Come on, get this, everybody. One of the first. You’re not going to hear this everywhere. One of the first changes you’re going to have to do to be a disciple is stop listening to everybody else who says, but just, you’re doing great.

0:15:22 – (Steve Gray): Keep going. Just keep doing what you’re doing and you will succeed. Yep. You might in your job and you might in your marriage. You might with your mom and dad and wife and brother and sister, but not with Jesus. Jesus is saying, you’re going to have to make a big change if you want to be my disciple. I don’t know of any discipleship classes. I’m sure there’s somewhere. But there’s a lot of churches, they have discipleship, Bible studies and all that.

0:15:47 – (Steve Gray): And they’re just so cozy. Men get together and get cozy with each other. Come on. But Jesus is not getting cozy when he says, go and hate father and mother. That’s not a cozy Bible study. That could start a riot or that could start. Some people get up and walk out because they wouldn’t understand it. But he’s not saying literally, hate them, but hate the message that they have implanted in you that’s keeping you from being a disciple.

0:16:14 – (Steve Gray): Because you keep hearing, you don’t have to make changes. You’re good enough. You’re good enough. So everybody got lesson one in this. He’s not speaking literally against your family. He’s saying, but your family has a message. Your family has an overall umbrella over you that says, just keep going. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re a good person. It’s going to work out. And Jesus is saying, nope, stop what you’re doing. I’m saying, stop what you’re doing.

0:16:42 – (Steve Gray): Stop the direction you’re going and change directions. All right? So that’s why nobody preaches it, because they can’t figure out, why would you hate your Mother and your father. You don’t you hate anybody, but particularly your family, heritage, ancestry. That just keeps impressing on you. Just keep going. We’re a good family. We made it. Mom and dad made it, Grandma and Grandpa made it. And you’ll make it too.

0:17:05 – (Steve Gray): Just don’t give up. And Jesus said, no, no, no, no. I’m calling you to a change direction. But you’ve got more voices than mine saying, just keep going. That’s it. Now let’s go to the next portion before we run out of time.

0:17:19 – (Kathy Gray): Okay, so if someone doesn’t come and not hate all his relatives, then yes, even their own life. Such a person cannot be my disciple.

0:17:29 – (Steve Gray): So what I’ve just told you, you have to stop listening if you want to be a disciple to everybody that’s keeping you going and encouraging you to be who you are and not listen to Jesus say, no, you’re going to have to be my disciple. And if you do that, there’s one more thing you have todo. You even have to hate. Yes, even. And the word hate’s there above even. Hate your own life. Now, that goes against everything.

0:17:54 – (Steve Gray): Cause you’re supposed to. How many people say, you know what your problem is? You don’t love yourself enough. Remember I told you about that icky, icky, icky, icky, icky sermon I had to sit through while somebody else was preaching? And at the end, their great altar call was, so let’s all stand and give ourselves a hug. I go, icky, icky. And I didn’t do it, obviously. It was sickening. What? And this says, I’m supposed to hate my life, not hug my life.

0:18:23 – (Steve Gray): But that’s what we’re being taught. Stuff, junk like that that’s keeping us in bondage to our own selves, our own ancestry, our own way of doing things. So when it says even your own life, now you have to not only rise up against what everybody else is saying to you, you have to rise up to what you’re saying to you. Cause we fight it like we know we should. We know we need to make real changes. Now, I’m not talking about becoming a better person.

0:18:50 – (Steve Gray): I’m talking about becoming a disciple, which is a disciplined one in the word of God. This is not just turning over a new leaf and trying to be kinder. A disciple is kind, but they also have love, joy, peace, patience, kind. They have all the fruit of the Spirit because they’re walking by the Spirit. They’re a disciplined one, and they’re a spiritual person. You might not know what that means. What does it mean? What does God even want you to do?

0:19:17 – (Steve Gray): Well, you’re never going to know if you keep listening to everybody else telling you, you’re a good person, you’re not that bad. Just keep going, right? Stop trying to be a good person and start being a spiritual person. What does that mean? You’ll never know if you keep telling yourself. As God’s trying to transform you into a disciple, you keep hearing a voice saying, yeah, but you’re not that bad. And nobody else is that concerned about themselves like you. You’re concerned about yourself. Nobody else is concerned about themselves.

0:19:45 – (Steve Gray): Why don’t you just relax and just accept who you are and just enjoy life. Take life easy, right? Eat, drink, be merry. Take life easy. And keep building your barn and filling your barn with your money, right? Just take life easy. Quit it. But that’s the opposite. So he says, and if you don’t even hate yourself, you cannot be my disciple. And in that crowd, what’s he trying to do? He’s looking for disciples.

0:20:12 – (Steve Gray): Then we’ll take verse 20. We can take one more verse before it goes to another story.

0:20:16 – (Kathy Gray): And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

0:20:22 – (Steve Gray): Okay? So once he says cross, we’ve entered into a new realm. Everybody knew back then, look, we see cross on jewelry, right? We see a. Jewelry or whatever, you know, a cross or people tattoo crosses on them or whatever. But so we see it as. It can be jewelry, you know, we see it on the church. It goes on a steeple. Well, their audience, when you said cross, they thought of one thing. Torture. Torture and death meant to keep Jewish people in line. It was to frighten all the other people. You saw somebody crucified, it was because they had. They had risen up against Rome and rebelled against Rome. Rather than rebelled against themselves, they’re rebelling against Rome. And so they would crucify him. A horrible, torturous death.

0:21:09 – (Steve Gray): So when you said cross to them, they’re not thinking steeple, right?

0:21:14 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:21:14 – (Steve Gray): They’re not thinking, oh, yeah, my grandma gave me a necklace with a. With a cross on it. No, they’re thinking, who does not carry his cross? If you carry across, you’re heading to death. Die to self, death to yourself, death to all that, all that you are. To transform you into following somebody else instead of following yourself. And it’s hard. It’s hard when you followed yourself and trust in your. Just believe in yourself.

0:21:44 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, where’s that in the Bible, I think it says, just believe in him and believe the word of God. And believe in God. Believe, believe, believe. Why? And Jesus would say, why don’t you have faith? Believe, Just believe. But anyway. But you know why? You’re so rooted in believing in yourself, you can’t get out of your skin. It’s hard because of that. But it can be done, and it should be done because Jesus is looking for disciples, and we don’t even know what that is other than a Bible study, right.

0:22:18 – (Steve Gray): Of people who are, what, trying to be. What? Better.

0:22:24 – (Kathy Gray): Just a better person.

0:22:25 – (Steve Gray): A better person. I want to go to discipleship because I want to be a better dad. I want to be a better person. That’s okay. We should be better people. But what are better people? If God. If. What’s God’s definition of becoming a better person? And what’s our definition of becoming? You know, you don’t lie, cheat, steal. Right? You don’t cuss anymore.

0:22:44 – (Kathy Gray): No.

0:22:44 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. I don’t know. And you don’t do cocaine anymore. You don’t do cocaine anymore either, do you?

0:22:50 – (Kathy Gray): Oh, no, I gave that up years ago.

0:22:53 – (Steve Gray): That’s only a joke, folks. She never did cocaine. She never even got around it. We’ll leave it at. But. But that’s what people are doing. They want to break bad habits. They want to be better moms and dads. They want to make more money. If I become a better person with God, God will like me better. Maybe he’ll bless me more, make more money. Life will get easier. I won’t get s. He’ll keep me. Well, so it’s still all about us.

0:23:20 – (Steve Gray): It’s all about self. And so here it says, it’s time now to pick up a cross. That means you’re heading towards some kind of death. Crucified with Christ and I no longer live. And if you are, he says, if you’ve been buried with Christ, you’ll be raised with Christ. Well, there’s no reason to be buried. You can’t be buried with Christ if you don’t plan on dying with Christ. Right, but. But don’t we kind of fool ourselves? Like. Oh, yeah, that’s like. I’m buried with Christ because I believe.

0:23:49 – (Steve Gray): What? What? What? No, you have to die with Christ in order to be buried with Christ, to ever be raised with Christ. Oh, I just. What did I just say?

0:23:57 – (Kathy Gray): You opened a can.

0:23:58 – (Steve Gray): Wait on that.

0:23:58 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, let’s.

0:23:59 – (Steve Gray): What’s wrong with a can of worms, by the way? I don’t know.

0:24:01 – (Kathy Gray): Oh, I don’t know. I shouldn’t have said that.

0:24:02 – (Steve Gray): No, that is a phrase. But what’s bad about that.

0:24:04 – (Kathy Gray): That’s a fishing phrase. I didn’t mean it.

0:24:06 – (Steve Gray): I like a can of worms because it reminds me of fishing. But I guess that means like if you wanted to open a can of beans and you opened a can of worms.

0:24:14 – (Kathy Gray): I don’t know. We should research that.

0:24:16 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, I don’t care either. Yeah, well, next week we’re going to take this time, we’re going to talk about building a tower and probably get to waging a war. And what does he mean by that? But it’s still on discipleship. But God is calling us to be disciples. And you can’t find. First of all, it’s hard to find one. It’s even worse. You can’t even find somebody that’s interested in being one. You’ll find a lot of Christians that would like to be a better person, but not a better disciple.

0:24:43 – (Steve Gray): Jesus is still looking at those large crowds where they say, you know, their church has 30,000 members or whatever. You suppose there’s a few people he would say this to and say a large crowd. I’m looking for disciples, not people that want to feel better about the direction of their life. So they’re looking for a pastor to encourage them to keep going. A mom that says, you’re such a good son, just keep. Just keep doing what you’re doing and God will bless you.

0:25:09 – (Steve Gray): Have to step beyond that. We’ve got powers in our country. Principalities and powers are invading. Even with all the good, that shows there’s good things happening too. There’s some, like a launch pad of demonic rockets are going off right now. And it’s going to take spiritual people and disciples to turn back the powers of darkness. That’s why we need him. That’s why I think Jesus is calling for disciples. And now you know what that means. He’s not saying to hate your mom and dad. He’s saying you need to hate the message that has kept you going the same direction when Jesus is trying to change you to a new direction called a disciple. Got it.

0:25:49 – (Steve Gray): Wonderful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life. Be sure and go to stevegrayministries.com and you can get books and more on this. You get my new book, Mighty Like Gideon. That’s got more jewels in it. Other books that have these kinds of teachings that you don’t get. You open a book, who knows? You get the same thing all the time. It’s just self building. You’re not going to get it from me because I’m out to change you forever into a disciple. Till you’re transformed by the renewing of your mind. Till next time. Bye. Bye.