My Witnesses | Week 3 | Pastor Michael White
MESSAGE NOTES
Episode Notes My Witnesses
January 18, 2026
Teacher: Pastor Michael White
The golden rule
Matthew 7:12
Intro:
“We are an underwear family”
I need you to get on board with this.
It’s the done thing in our family
I would assume that we are all underwear people, if not, please don’t tell me.
Families have characteristics.
Ways that they do things,
things they don’t do,
values they have.
When you think about your family, now or in the past, what things characterized your family?
Maybe you’re a camping family
Or maybe you’re a “we watch a movie on Friday night family”
Maybe you’re a “we say grace even in restaurants family”
There are things that you do, that show what your family values.
“Remember who you are!”
You’ve been given an identity.
A set of values
You’re not just you, you represent a group of people.
Super familiar verse
But I want to put it into its context and that’s going to add a layer to its meaning.
Scripture
Matthew 7:12
12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Context is king
This comes at the end of the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5-7
That’s important
What’s the sermon on the mount?
Riff
Jesus greatest concentrated teaching
Important because he starts out with this.
He is defining what his purpose is
Showing what is important to him
For the next 3 years he lives this out
When we get down to our verse…7:12
Doesn’t really feel related to vv. 7-11.
7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Then the golden rule comes and it doesn’t seem to follow.
It goes back to 5:17
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
That’s the overall rubric,
What does it look like to fulfill the law and prophets?
Jesus takes 2 chapters to illustrate how you do that.
then it culminates in the Golden rule
The law and the prophets are fulfilled in how we treat other people.
That’s what the 2 chapters of the sermon on the mount are all about, how Jesus’ disciples should relate to other people.
The proof of a relationship with Jesus is a changed heart that results in changed behavior toward other people
Need to understand
This is a verse about Christian community, the church
It’s not about being an individual.
It does affect individual behavior, but in the sense of how we as individuals fit into the group.
This is about how the family behaves.
Just like your family of origin has certain characteristics,
The Golden rule characterizes the family of God
This is how the family behaves as God fulfills his plan and purpose for the world.
The movement of God from the moment sin entered into the world
Until the point where evil is finally defeated once and for all
Story arc that God is making a new creation.
The church.
We are living into God’s plan and purpose and
we do that by acting like the family of God.
It’s fundamentally about redemption.
As people come to know the good news of Jesus,
God is gathering them/us together, creating a new people, a new community of people who are living into the reality of God’s new creation.
It’s like this taste of heaven.
Here’s where the Golden Rule comes in
Those people are pointing to a world where only good is done to each other.
Can you Imagine what that would be like?
People wouldn’t hurt each other
No one would say terrible things to each other
There wouldn’t be any war
No one would need to be afraid
It sounds like heaven…
This is the profound point.
This is the answer to the line of the Lord’s Prayer
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
A world where only good is done to each other
That’s the kingdom of God.
That’s what we point to.
That’s how disciples of Jesus live
Do to others what you would have them do to you.
This is the done thing.
This is how the family behaves.
This is how the new community reflects the character of God.
This is how we live into the day when God’s rule is complete.
That’s what the Golden rule is all about
The Golden Rule in history
Nobody really knows how it became known as the “Golden Rule”
But the story I like best is that the Roman Emperor Severus Alexander 222-35, was so impressed by the saying that he had it inscribed in gold on the wall of his chamber.
Severus Alexander
You’ve probably never heard of him, but he has a very famous descendent
Severus Snape
The Golden Rule isn’t original to Jesus.
It exists in Judaism, particularly in Rabbi Hillel,
I’d show you a photo of him, but he doesn’t have any famous relatives
and many other places,
Here’s the thing: it is almost always in the negative.
Don’t do to other people what you don’t want them to do to you.
That’s a great rule.
Would you like it if someone did that to you?
No? Then don’t do that to them.
Cutting people off on the freeway.
Jesus takes that rule and does something interesting with it.
Jesus puts it in the positive
Takes it away from being passive
As long as your not doing anything bad, you’re doing fine.
By putting it in the positive makes it more demanding.
Therefore everything you would like others to do to you, your yourselves be doing to them.
It’s proactive
“Hey, here’s this person in this situation.”
If I was in that situation, I would want someone to do this for me.
You can’t meet everyone’s need.
It’s impossible.
But don’t use that as an out.
There will be people God places in your field of vision
Me in the supermarket
You look lost can I help you.
In the negative way of understanding the rule, he didn’t have to do that.
In the positive sense that Jesus introduces, this was a great way.
It has little implications and it has huge implications.
Maybe it means you open the door for someone who is caring an armful of packages.
Maybe you stop and help someone who looks like they need help.
Maybe you grant charitable assumptions instead of assuming the worst.
Maybe you put yourself into the position of people who are affected by policies and procedures that don’t affect you and ask yourself, what would I want someone to do for me if I was in that situation?
Water at Chautauqua
We take the initiative to love people.
It doesn’t say treat others as they treat you.
We are called to live by a higher standard, a greater righteousness, a deeper ethic than
“pay each other back in kind”
quid pro quo
Feels like there could be this complex morality.
But Jesus boils down to something super simple.
There are 622 laws in the Old Testament
All the teaching of the sermon on the mount is caught up in this summary. This one thing…
Whatever you would like other people to do to you be doing that to other people.
Raises issues of identity
Whose family do you belong to?
Maybe the more revealing question is: Whose family do you look like?
What are the things that characterize your life?
Some of us, need to decide which family we want to belong to.
Others of us, need to decide that we are going to be more serious about reflecting the family priorities.
You can’t just dabble with Jesus
In the public square there are people saying Jesusy things but whose lives don’t reflect anything of the Jesus that I know.
What family are you reflecting?
Whose family do you look like?
Just because you show up at church, doesn’t mean that you are reflecting God’s family.
The biggest problem to be overcome? Our anger
Inside and outside the church.
We are all Jesusy until something happens that makes us mad or that we don’t like.
Sajan and the capital fund.
We grow. We get mentored. We watch other people live
The longer you hang out with the family, the more you figure out what the done thing is.
Which means that some us need to make sure that we are setting a good example and all of us need to continue to grow into the image and likeness of Jesus
This happened in our family.
Brian
3 criteria
I’m a girl dad
He’s a guy.
He contacts his parents 3 times a year.
I have heard from Rachel and Allie
Our family is not like that.
Brian has learned
That’s the done thing in our family
I’m sure his parents don’t know he was deployed
They’ll have three kids
But he has learned what our family looks like
We sink our roots in deeply into the family and we participate with the Holy Spirit in the creation of the new community
I am a part of a group.
I am not just me.
I am an extension of us.
All about relationships.
How we treat each other.
How we love God, by loving others
How does this help you make decisions?
The Golden Rule is like a compass.
It doesn’t address every single situation.
But, it points you in the right direction.
It might not tell you how long you need to do something or what the exact process should be, but it helps you find the right path.
Friend is dealing with a difficult employee.
They do just the bare minimum to get by.
They are passive aggressive.
They are not actively undermining things.
They seem to know just where the line is and they push it but don’t cross it.
Before you put your management hat on.
It’s complicated.
And I haven’t told you the whole story.
The Golden Rule doesn’t tell you when to involve HR, or when to start a performance improvement plan.
But it does tell you what your posture should be as you approach the situation.
An application point would be to look at your relationships and ask “Who am I not treating like I would like to be treated?”
Context of the series on missions.
Uniquely positioned to affect people
Place of hospitality and warmth
Keeping the main thing the main thing.
All sorts of churches who have become characterized by all sorts of things that are not the gospel.
God is inviting everyone into a new community. That’s the evangelistic opportunity.
We have this to offer people.
Showing people a different way, a better way. A way that leads to peace and joy and fulfillment.
We do this by living differently
lives are Characterized by the things that characterized Jesus’ life.
Holding as important what Jesus held iimportant
I want to go back to something I said early about two very important teachings of Jesus.
The Golden Rule and the Lord’s prayer
Desire is in the golden rule
Do the thing that you would desire other people to do for you.
It’s also key to the Lord’s Prayer
I desire that Your kingdom come, your will be done.
In my life and on earth in the same way it is done in heaven.
Our hearts is a not good judge of what is best.
But our hearts can be changed to desire the things that God desires.
Encourage us as a group to think about that.
What are our hearts desiring?
Who or what is forming our heart?
The gospel or our preferred news outlet?
What would your friends, your children or your grandchildren say forms you more, your commitment to Jesus or your party affiliation?
We have this amazing gift which we have been given that we can offer people.
Changed lives, changed hearts, a community where we are striving to honor God by faithfully working in our relationships to bring about a kingdom where only good is done.
Sermon question:
Who or what is forming your heart?
Who do you need to treat differently?
How can the golden rule help you make decisions this week?