Love Your Enemies, Part 1 - 3 By John MacArthur

Love Your Enemies, Part 1 - 3

By John MacArthur

We come this morning to a passage of Scripture in Matthew Chapter 5 that deserves our greatest attention, deepest commitment for perhaps no other passage in all of the New Testament sums up the heart and attitude of a Christian as well as this one.

It expresses what I think is the most single, powerful testimony that a Christian can have in the simple statement of Jesus in verse 44, "Love your enemies." As we embark upon this passage from verse 43 to 48 this morning in our continuing study of Matthew, we come to a tremendously important part of Scripture.

I think that if there is one statement made by Jesus that in the eyes of the world sums up what Christianity ought to be like, it's probably, "Love your enemies." I know Will Durant was asked what he thought of the Christian ethic, and he summed the Christian ethic up with the words "Well, basically it's love your enemies." He said, "Without question Jesus set the highest ethic ever set in the history of man, but too bad nobody ever lived up to it.

This is the supreme facet of life. If love is the greatest thing, the loving your enemies is the greatest thing that love can do. And so the sunombonumin a sense of all of our kingdom living should be found in this concept of loving our enemies.

And I want you to really think with me. We have to lay some groundwork this morning so you'll understand and then two weeks from this morning, we're going to resolve this thing wondrously as we hear how Jesus speaks. Starting with the Old Testament and moving to the fullness of the New Testament concept of loving your enemies.

But we have to begin today with a little background and some foundation and I want you to get this, because it's absolutely essentially that you understand. In all of the Sermon on the Mount, I think there are two statements that more than any others and they're very obscure at first, sum up the ethics, the standards, the requirements of the one who claims to be a member of the kingdom of heaven.

They're very simple statements. The first one I want to point your attention to is in verse 47 of Chapter 5. It says this in the middle of the verse, "what do you yet more than others?" Now there is a tremendous summary statement of what Christ is asking in this whole sermon. What does your system have more than any other human system. What makes you different?

And then in Chapter 6, verse 8, another simple statement. "Be not ye therefore like unto them." There's a second statement. Two statements that sum up the whole sermon. "What do you more than others," and "don't be like them." What Jesus is saying in both of these simple statements is this my standards are not like other standards. What I require is not what other people do.

My standard is a higher standard, and that's what He's saying. In fact, He's indicting the whole pharisaical religious Judaistic system as being substandard. When the best is said of your system what makes it better than any other? What do you do different than anybody else? What sets you apart? If you are a part of my kingdom, you would not be doing like them.

People in my kingdom have a higher standard than even yours and theirs by the way was the highest religious standard of the day, but it wasn't high enough. God requires for His kingdom a different standard, unique, separate, holy.

In Chapter 5, verse 20, He pointed directly to their system and said this, "I say unto you that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven." My standard is high, He is saying. My standard is higher than the highest human standard, which is the standard of the scribes and the Pharisees. They struggled with all kinds of laws, all kinds of religious ceremonies and rituals. They were the most religious people of their time. And yet God says, you're no different than anybody else.

My standard is that you do not act like them, that you do more than even the best that men can do. The highest human ethic falls woefully short of God's standard. Now this isn't anything new in the New Testament. God has always called His people to a higher standard. This is how God put it to the people of Israel soon after He had rescued them from their Egyptian slavery and made them this covenant people.

He said this, listen, "I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt where you dwelt. And you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which I'm bringing you." In other words, my standard is not the one you came from and it's not the one you're going to. "You shall not walk in their statuettes. You shall do my ordinances and keep my statutes and walk in them, I am the Lord your God."

Now notice he brackets the statement by "I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God." Beginning and ending with that statement and because I am the Lord your God, you don't act like anybody else acts. You don't live according to any standard, not the one you came from and not the one you're going to. Because He was their covenant God and because they were His special people, they were to be different from anybody else. They were to follow His commandments and not take their lead from the standards of the people around them.

And that's hard, it's hard for them, it's hard in Jesus' time and it's tough on us today. To try to live according to a standard other than the standard that engulfs us and traps us in the world around us. It is difficult. But that's what God asks for.

Sadly throughout the centuries that followed Israel kept forgetting their uniqueness. They kept forgetting that theirs was another standard and they kept falling into sin. They were in Balaam'swords "a people dwelling alone and not reckoning itself among the nations." That sounds good. "They dwelled in isolation, not mingling," say Balaam. But the truth is, in practice, they became assimilated to...and to everything around them. So that Scripture this, interesting statement, "they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did."

Sad commentary, and that commentary could be labeled on the church just as well. They mingled with the heathen and learned to do as they did. From the very beginning God has always called the people to uniqueness. He has always called the people to another standard, to a higher level. And God's people for some reason are always pulled down. In fact, it came to be that in Israel they desired to have a king and their statement is this, "we will have a king over us that we may be like the nations."

They wanted to be like the rest of the world. They even went so far as to say, "let us be like the nations and worship gods of wood and stone." So God kept sending them prophets. And the prophets kept reminding them about their uniqueness. Prophets like Jeremiah who said people learn not the ways of the nations. Prophets like Ezekiel who said do not defile yourselves with the gods of Egypt. And prophet after prophet after prophet came singularly and in duos and trios and so forth they came continuously pleading with God's people to be sure they maintained their unique standards. To fall below was to dishonor God.

It's no different in Jesus' time and today. God wants His people to be different. He wants His people to be unique. And the standard that Jesus presents here regarding loving your enemies is not the mood of the mob. That kind of a statement to the average pagan today sounds like lunacy. Doesn't make any sense. It is not an earthly standard. It is not the morality of the age. It is unique. It is a far greater ethic, in fact, if you want to know the truth it's a far greater ethic than either you or I could ever keep on our own. It's way beyond us to love our enemies.

But kingdom character, now mark this, kingdom character is be absolutely distinct, absolutely unique. And the key to it is, that you can't live that way unless you are infused with divine power. And so Jesus is saying to the Pharisees you're system is substandard. And until you come to me for power you will never be able to live by my standards. This whole sermon really draws a contrast between the best of men and God's standards. And even the very best there were, the most legalistic, ritualistic, religious people on the earth, the Pharisees couldn't qualify.

For example, they thought it was enough not to kill. Jesus says, I don't even think you should hate. In fact, it's a command that you not be angry with your brother. They thought it was enough not to commit adultery. He says, you shouldn't even think about committing adultery. They thought it was alright when they got a divorce if they took care of all the legal paperwork. Jesus said you shouldn't even be getting those unbiblical divorces.

They thought it was enough that they kept certain vows. Jesus said, you shouldn't even need to make vows because your word is so true and so pure. They thought it was enough that they gave back an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He says, you shouldn't be retaliating at all. In Chapter 6 they said, here's the way we pray. Jesus says, it's inadequate. When you pray you're to do it this way.

And Jesus said, here's the way you give, and that's the wrong way to give. I want you to give this way. And Jesus said, you are concerned with material things. I want you to seek the kingdom of God. You see all the way through He's leveling a contrast.

And now as we come to Chapter 5 verses 43 to 48, he contrasts their love with the kind of love that should characterize the subjects of His kingdom. And what He's doing is telling them that they're not in His in kingdom. They don't qualify. We are called on to be unique beloved. That's the thrust of this whole sermon. That's really what He's saying and that's what I was trying to say earlier in the service this morning that God is calling us out of the system to be separated people with convictions and commitments and standards that we live by that are not the world's standards.

Nowhere is the distinction between the life of man and the kingdom God made more clear or unclear than in the life of a believer. That's where it all comes down. And so Jesus is confronting Israel here because Israel is religious as Israel was, was walking in the flesh, He attacks their humanistic religious tradition by saying it falls woefully short of God's standard.

Now, let's look what He says about this subject of love in verse 43. It's such an important one. "Ye have heard that it hath been said thou shalt love their neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you love your enemies and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven for He maketh His son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them who love you what reward have yet. Do not even the tax collectors the same? And ye greet your brother in only what do ye more than others? Do not even the heathen so? Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect."

He says to them as He has said in the five previous comparisons beginning in Chapter 5, verse 21, "your loss says this, mine says this." Your loss says love your neighbor, hate your enemy. I say, love your enemy. You're substandard He's saying. Your ethics are too low. First as I said, He had exposed their perversion of the divine statute "Thou shalt not kill." Then He had attacked also their unwarranted whittling down of the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Then He attacked their desecration of marriage. The He had spoken against their wicked tampering with the injunction not to take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Then He had shown how they corrupted the judicial law of an eye for eye. And now He attacks them on the basis of the highest and best of things, love, and says your supposed commitment to love your neighbor is inadequate.

And I have to say that I feel this is the supreme statement here because it's a statement on love and love is the greatest thing and loving your enemies is the greatest thing that love can do. He really comes to...to the peak, the sunumbonum, as He speaks of love. To compare with what we just read, Matthew Chapter 22, a lawyer came to Jesus and asked Him what was the greatest commandment, and in verse 37 Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind." This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like it. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." In other words, you can keep all the law and all the prophets one by one or you can just love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself and that'll cover it all.

That is the sum of it all. It is also indicated in Romans 13 by the apostle Paul who says, "Owe no man anything," Romans 13:8, "but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to its neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."

Paul says love fills up the whole law. Jesus says love fills up the whole law. And so in Matthew 5 when our Lord begins to speak about loving he is touching on that which sums up the whole law. Here is really, people, and we'll see this in the next few weeks as we cover this, here is a devastating death blow at the Pharisees. In fact, it is so direct that it must have curdled their blood when He said to them, you can be compared with heathens in verse 47, which is exactly what He says.

Your love is no better than anybody else. You don't have anything on publicans and sinners, tax collectors and pagans. The point is this, the people in my kingdom have a love that is beyond the best of loves the world can ever know. We don't just love our neighbors and hate our enemies, we love the our enemies.

And in so saying, He indicts them because they don't love their enemies and shows them their need for a Savior. Now in each of these contrasts and there are six of them in Matthew 5, we have marked out three major points, the teaching of the Old Testament, the tradition of the Jews, and the truth from Christ. And those are the same three points in all six.

Let's look first of all at the tradition of the Jews. The tradition of the Jews, and that is referred to in verse 43, look at it. "Ye have heard that it hath been said," now that little introductory phrase is a reference we have seen now for the sixth time that refers to Jewish tradition. It is not a statement related to the Old Testament. It means your tradition has been passed down saying this. This is your system. This is what you have developed and you have been taught.

This is the rabbinical current religious teaching. And what is it? Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. Now that's what they were taught. Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. That's pretty open-ended wouldn't you say? The first thing you do is figure out who your neighbor is and then you can hate everybody else and be okay.

You can just hate up a storm depending on how define your neighbor, right? If you define your neighbor as your wife and three best friends, you can hate the whole world. So it all depends on your definition of neighbor and that's exactly what Christ gets into, not only here, but elsewhere as we shall see in our coming studies.

Look first of all at the first part, thou shalt love thy neighbor. Now that sounds so pious. Thou shalt love thy neighbor, oh it sounds so good. You say, where did they get that? Well, that's in the Old Testament, sure it is. Leviticus Chapter 19, they got that right out of the Old Testament.

You know, whenever they wanted to make up a rule, they made sure that they intersected somewhere with the Old Testament. Like the clock that doesn't run, they're right twice a day. Every once in a while they're going to hit the truth. And they always find some kind of a basis for truth somewhere and so here they are in Leviticus 19:18 which says, "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people. But thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self." That's Leviticus 19:18. "Love thy neighbor as thy self." That's where they got that.

But did you notice something? They left something out. You have heard it said "Thou shalt love thy neighbor," what did they leave out, "as thy self." That's a convenient omission isn't it? In their state of unbelievable pride, they were so puffed up that that kind of a phrase at the end of a sentence would only confuse their desires. And so rather than be trapped in a thing where they would have to treat others equal to themselves, they dropped it.

Now granted the one who came to Jesus in Mark 12 adds as thy self, and the lawyer in Luke 10 adds as thy self, but it may have been that they wanted to make sure they were accurate because of who they were speaking with. Apparently the norm was "thou shalt love thy neighbor." They didn't want to love anybody like they loved themselves. That would be crowding them. They were too proud to love any equally.

Have you ever thought about what that means to love someone as you love yourself? If you were just to love someone and it didn't say as yourself, you could just sort of love them at a distance. You could treat them a little less than you treat yourself. Whatever you do for yourself, you do half for them or a third or a tenth. I mean if you just could drop that little phrase it would be so convenient. If it just said love your neighbor.

But the Lord has a way of driving things right into the heart of our being. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Oh come on. Equal to...you say how do we love ourselves? Listen you love yourself. You do. I mean, whose teeth did you brush this morning? Whose hair did you comb? Whose wardrobe hangs in your closet? Whose savings account is in your bank? You are concerned about yourself. You love yourself. To love means to serve the needs. You serve your own needs, let's face it. You have an unfeigned, unhypocritcal total love for yourself. There aren't some days when you fall out of love with yourself. You love yourself all the time.

And your true...you're genuine about it, you really do. You're fervent about it. You're habitual about it. It's a permanent love. Why whenever you have an interest you want to fulfill it. Whenever you have a need, you want to meet it. Whenever you have a want, you want to supply it. Whenever you have a desire, you want to fulfill it. Whenever you have a hope, you want to realize it. Whenever you have an ambition, you want to see it come to fruition.

I mean, you are really working in your own behalf. Just the way life goes. You're very concerned about your own welfare, your own comfort, your own safety, your own interests, your own health, physical, spiritual, temporal, eternal things we're very concerned about ourselves. We seek our own pleasure and we know of no limits to gaining what we want. Now that is exactly the way you're to love everybody else. Jesus said even your enemies.

In other words, you are to have that same totally consuming unfeigned, fervent, habitual, permanent love which brings into your heart their interest, their needs, their wants, their desires, their hopes, their ambitions, and prompts you to do everything you can to make sure that all their welfare, safety, comfort, and interest is met and that whatever they need and whatever they want or whatever pleasure they have, you are anxious to fulfill on their behalf.

How do you measure up? The last time you had a choice between doing what you want or sacrificing yourself so somebody else could do it, which way did you go? Who do you really care about? The standard is very high people. Love your neighbor as yourself is very, very high. Very high. Humanly speaking, it is impossible, because humanly speaking we are totally absorbed in ourselves. I mean just think of it. Think of it from the standpoint of your income.

I mean, probably at best you keep 90% of what you finally get after taxes and maybe give the Lord 10. When it comes to how much you spend on you as opposed to how much spend on the people on your block, I mean it's miniscule to even think of how much you might spend on them.

As to how much you give to the needy and how much you use for yourself, those kind of comparisons are very remote because we don't even think like that, that's how far we are from these kind of principles. Loving your neighbor as yourself is a very, very, very heavy principle.

And that's the way we're to love. But you see they weren't interested in that and so they just dropped it. Love your neighbor. And so they omitted something, but beyond that, they added something. What did they add? And what? "Hate your enemy." Now where did that come from? Did that come out of the Bible? No, nowhere does the Bible command us to hate our enemies. Where did they get that? I mean, what do they just make that up? That's right. It was the logical extension of their perverted thinking.

You see what they did was, they said all right, we are to love our neighbor. Now we've got to figure out who is our neighbor, right? So they said our neighbors are the Jews not the Gentiles. That's what the Pharisees believed. Only the Jews qualified and among the Jews only certain Jews, right? Certain Jews didn't qualify as neighbors.

For example look at Matthew 9:10. And Jesus passed forth from there, verse 9, He saw a man named Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. All right, then verse 10, "He," Jesus meeting with a tax collector. "It came to pass as Jesus sat eating in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples." And you have two categories of people tax collectors and we'll see more about them in our future study, they were the renegade trader, rebel, extortionist Jews that were despised by the people because they had sold out to Rome for money. And then there were sinners, they are the public sinners, the displaying sinners, the prostitutes, and the criminals. And the Pharisees saw it and they said "what, why eat your master with tax collectors and sinners?"

So they said their neighbors are the Jews, but only the Jews who are tax collectors or sinners. So we eliminate all of them. They aren't our neighbors. In fact, they found a woman taken adultery one time and they picked up stones to stone her. So it was a very defined neighbor. That wasn't all.

Look at John Chapter 7, verse 49. In John 7:49, they went even further. And the Pharisees are kind of giving away themselves here and in verse 49, they say, "But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed." And what they mean there is this rebel mob here. They're talking about a crowd. This rebel mob of uneducated, not knowledgeable people with no commitment to Pharisee of tradition, this riff raff that doesn't know the law are cursed. So they have eliminated the tax collectors and they have eliminated the sinners and they eliminated the rebel mob that weren't committed to the law they were. You know who their neighbors were? The people in their group that's who.

And if you were in their group you could...you would beloved but outside their group you were an enemy whether you were the rebel mob or a tax collector or a public sinner. If you weren't one of them, you know, it was us for, no more, bar the door. Commitment to ourselves and nobody else. They fed their evil proud hearts by concluding that anyone not a neighbor was to be hated.

In other words, they said the Bible says love your neighbor, therefore, if someone who is not your...therefore, someone who is not your neighbor is not to be loved and the opposite of love is hate so love your neighbor means, hate your enemy. That's what's known in legal arguments as a nonsecutorargument. It doesn't necessarily follow. But that's the way they reason, because they had a perversion in their hearts to begin with. Their prejudice found a way.

By the way, they didn't read far enough in Leviticus 19 either. If they'd have read verse 34, they would have read this, "The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself." If they'd have read a little farther, they would have known that even a non-Jew a stranger, whatever he was, was to be loved as they love themselves.

How they conveniently ignored Exodus 12:49, "There shall be one law for the native and one law for the stranger who sojourns among you." There aren't different laws for different people. If you are to love, you are to love and it is as broad as the commandment of God is broad. It wasn't only the Pharisees who were like this. We know of the three groups in Jesus' time, the three sects of Judaism. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. The Essenes were the hippy cult. They were the ones who went out of town and they set up a community on the edge of the Dead Sea, which is now known as Qumran. It's the place where we have found the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And they lived apart from society. They lived out in the wilderness in a primitive life and copied copies of Scripture and lived in a very austere anti-social way. And the Essenes have among their writings these statements that show they had the same attitude as the Pharisees. "Love all that God has chosen and hate all that He has rejected. Love all the sons of light, each according to his lot in God's community and hate all the sons of darkness, each according to his guilt in God's vengeance." And then this, "The Levites curse all the sons of Belial." And to them the sons of Belial were the non-Essenes. So they cursed everybody who wasn't in their group, just like the Pharisees.

Their love was a prejudice, narrow, ugly thing that just gave them license to hate everybody. If you don't think they hated just watch them interact with Jesus Christ. They were so filled with hatred. One of the evasive maxims of the Pharisees that we've discovered in archaeology is this statement, listen. "If a Jew," this is what they taught, "If a Jew sees a Gentile fallen into the sea, let him by no means lift him out for it is written, thou shalt not rise up against the blood of thy neighbor, but this man is not thy neighbor."

In other words, if you see a Gentile drowning, stand there and enjoy it. Don't save him, he's not your neighbor. With such an outlook, it is little wonder that the Romans charged the Jews with hatred of the human race. Now frankly, there's some reason to see why they were able to twist Leviticus 19 to fit their own prejudices. No place in the Old Testament does it ever say to hate your enemy. But there are some things in the Old Testament that at first might be a little hard to understand.

So let's move from our first point, the tradition of the Jews to the teaching of the Old Testament. Where did they ever get these ideas? And we're going to see a lot of this. We'll see some of it today and some of the teaching of the Old Testament in our next study and finally we'll see the truth of Christ as He clears up all the misconceptions. But let me just give you the tension that created that sort of opening for them to do this.

They wanted a way to hate. They wanted to justify it in their religious system so it would encroach on their self-righteousness. So they had to invent some way to hate. And no doubt they found a couple of good excuses. One would be the Old Testament promises to exterminate the Canaanites. You'll remember that when God brought Israel into the land of promise, the land was filled at that time with the Canaanites who were vial, retched people. In fact, archaeology has shown us that there has not been a race of people found that were worse than the Canaanites.

They were despicable things. They were a cancer on human society of the worst kind. Human sacrifice, blood letting, massacres of babies, you name it, the Canaanites did it. Horrible orgiastic kind of things. And so the Canaanites were to be wiped out and when Israel came into the land they were told regarding the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites to wipe them out. They are not to be treated with kindness. Deuteronomy 23, verse 3 through 8, that whole section there. It says that all of these people, Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites are to be treated with no kindness, but they are to done away with.

Now later on we read that also the Amalekites were to have the same fate. In fact, God says wipe not only them off the face of the earth, but the memory of them as well, so they won't even be remembered. So here was God saying to these people, you go in there and you clean those people out of that land. And certainly the Pharisees would have looked on this and said, you see, God says boy you know you've got to hate your enemies. Go get them.

And some people have been confused by this. They say how could God be the same God who said love your enemies and the God who wanted to wipe out all these nations? Now that's a kind of a confusing thing at first. But there was another thing that probably added fuel to their fire too and that's what is known as the imprecatory Psalms. Those are the Psalms in which David praised judgment on his enemies. And people have often said well how can...how can the Bible say love your enemies and the David's praying oh God judge my enemies, oh God punish my enemies, catch them in a trap, catch them in snare, you know, and so forth and so on. Judge them Lord, do away with them. How can he be praying that if he's supposed to be loving his enemies.

And so no doubt they had taken some of these imprecatory Psalms and used them as a basis. I'll give you an illustration. Turn in your Bible and I want you look there with me to Psalms 69, because I think it will help you to understand this. In Psalms 69, David here is praying one of these imprecatory Psalms. He's calling judgment down upon these evil people. And notice in Psalms 69, verse 22, it gets pretty heavy. It's really pretty stirring maledictions that he gives.

He says regarding these enemies, "Let their table become a snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not and make their loins continually to shake, pour out thine indignation upon them and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate and let none dwell in their tents for they persecute him whom thou hast smitten and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. Add iniquity unto their iniquity and let them not come into thy righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and not be written with the righteous."

Now that's pretty heavy stuff. I mean, that's giving both barrels, God, and don't spare anything. Now did this become a justification for the hatred of the Pharisees. Very possibly. Along with the destruction of the Canaanites. They would say well, see this is the way it is to be boy, the enemies we are to hate. And they use it as a justification for their own personal hatred and vendettas.

But if they did that, and it's likely they did and they missed the point of both the word to destroy the Canaanites and the Psalms. Because they have nothing to do with personal relationships. Just like our last study on an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, there are certain things that are judicial laws that do not apply in terms of person relationships.

And they have again confused that. They had taken the judicial code of an eye for an eye and they dragged it down and made it a way of living on a day to day basis. And the same thing is true here. They had taken the judicial act of a holy God and preserving a righteous seed, and they had dragged it down to be a justification for their personal hatreds.

Let me show you what I mean by that. In the first place the Canaanites were a vial people. So nauseating corrupt were their abominations that the Bible says the land vomited them out. They were a vial, retched people. When someone goes to the doctor with cancer and the doctor cuts the cancer out, we don't say the doctor is a cruel, unloving, uncaring, unsympathetic, without compassion person. We thank him for cutting cancer out and when God said get rid of the Canaanites, that was not an act of evil. That was an act of goodness to take out of human society a retched filthy vial, people that would do nothing but pollute it. And that is a judicial act on God's part. That does not give license to an individual Jew to despise and individual Canaanite or to hate him because of something he has done.

What God does in His judicial acts, does not change the fact that the same God who judged the Canaanites, loved everyone of them with the same love He loves you. Just as I love my child, when I punish my child, the punishment comes because of the evil. It does not deny the love. So there is a judicial element. If Israel had followed their customs, Leviticus 18 says, she would have shared their fate and God wanted to preserve a righteous seed. Why? To bring out a righteous Messiah and to redeem the world. And so the preservation of Israel was a great concern with God's heart so that you would have a witness in the world and He was cutting a cancer out of human society.

We have enough sense even today, at least a few places in the world, to set apart individuals in our society who do nothing but bring cancer on our society, who kill and maim and steal. We set them aside and God was doing no more than that in a collective way and setting aside those evil people for the good of society.

"The wars of Israel" wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer "were the only holy wars in history, for they were the wars of God against the world of idols. It is not disseminity which Jesus condemns, for then He would have condemned the whole history of God's dealing with His people. On the contrary, He affirms the old covenants. There was a place for a holy war then."

Well, what about the imprecatory Psalms? What about David calling down all this judgment on his enemies? Listen, you missed the point. In Psalms 69 if you don't read verse 9, because that explains verses 22 to 28. What does Psalms 69:9 say? "For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." Stop right there for a minute.

David, why are you so upset? David, why are you so concerned? David, why are you praying judgment on these people? Because of what they have done not to me, but Your house. You see? It is not personal. David, believe me, had the greatest enemy in his life be his only son...or his son, Absalom. And David prayed that God would judge his son and God would judge his enemy and yet he cried from the deepest part of his heart. "Oh Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son."

The fact that he prayed for judgment to glorify God and preserve his people didn't mean he didn't love his son. And those are things you have to hold in tension. We love the lost, and yet we pray that God would be vindicated and their sin would be stopped do we not?

We love the lost with all our hearts and our hearts ache for those without Christ. And yet we pray that Jesus would come and set His kingdom and put the unrighteous people aside. We have the same reaction of dear John the apostle as he saw the vision in Revelation 10 and he said "when the scroll went into my mouth and I saw what was going to happen, it was both sweet and bitter." It is sweet to see Christ reigning again, it is bitter to see what happens to the lost.

Why? Because he had the tension of loving God with all his heart and loving people too. And that's the way it was with David. It was zeal for God's house that ate him up. And the reproaches of those who reproached you are fallen on me. He says, I'm not defending myself, it's you I'm defending. It's one thing to defend the glory of God and the honor of God, it's something else to hate people personally.

And you have to understand those two in balance. The judgments and curses are always judicial, not personal. What is to be my attitude toward anybody, even my worst enemy? My attitude is to be one of forgiving love, while at the same time I pray oh God do not let your enemies continue to dishonor Your name, but take the glory that is due to you.

My great attitude toward an enemy is to love them and to pray God would save him, and if God doesn't save him that God would judge him so that he can bring Christ to be the rightful ruler of this world and set righteousness in its proper place again. God punished Adam, but He loved him. God loved Cain, but He punished him. God loved the whole world, but He drowned them. God loved Sodom and Gomorra, but He burned them to ashes. God loved the nation of Israel, but He set them aside for a time. God loved His only begotten, but He let Him bear sin and die. And God loves the world today, but He promises that it's going to go up in a flame some day. God loves you, but you'll spend an eternity in Hell if you don't know His son.

Well, you see the scribes and Pharisees never made any distinction in this tension. They took judgment passages and because of their evil perversive prejudice hearts, they allowed them to become justification for them to hate people. That was the wrong thing altogether. I think I can sum up my thoughts this morning by having you look at Psalms 139.

Psalms 139 and this just the introduction really. Psalms 139, verse 19, now listen, most interesting Scripture. Psalms 139:19, David again is saying "Surely thou will slay the wicked Oh God." In other words, he's saying God, it can't always be this way. It wasn't meant to be this way. "Depart from me therefore you bloody men. For they speak against thee wickedly." You see, that's the right attitude. It's not me I'm defending God, it's You.

"And thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them Oh Lord that hate thee. And am not I grieve with those who rise up against thee? I hate them," watch this, "with perfect hatred. I count them mine enemies." Stop right there.

Now wait a minute, David you're hating. Yes, he says, but I'm hating them with what kind of hatred? Perfect hatred. Let me ask you a question, is it right to be angry? Is it right to be angry? No. Is there such a thing as righteous indignation? Yes. Is it right for me to be angry when somebody offends me? No. Is it right for me to be righteously indignant when somebody dishonors God? Yes.

Would it have been right for Jesus to say you can't talk to me that way and punch somebody? No. But when Jesus came to defend the holiness and the honor of God with a whip that was right. There's a difference between anger and holy wrath. And you want to know something? There's a difference between personal hatred and perfect hatred. That's what David's talking about. Lord, he says, I hate them oh Lord, not the hate me, it isn't me. I don't care for me. Me as far as I'm concerned, I'll forgive them and I'll love them, but for your sake, I hate what they do to Your honorable name. I am grieved with them arise up against thee and so I hate them with perfect hatred.

And then he says this, And Lord, I know this is perfect hatred, I know it isn't personal. Verse 23, "And you search me Oh God, and You know my heart and You know heart and You know my thoughts and you see if there be any wicked way in me." You check out my heart Lord and you'll see that my hatred is a perfect hatred, it isn't personal. It's not a vendetta. It's not a wrath for someone who's an enemy, who's opposed me. I love that.

You see David is saying Lord I hate him with a perfect hatred. You examine my heart and see if it isn't so. See if it isn't the right kind of thing. What are saying beloved? Perfect hate is not personal. As we walk through this world, I'll tell you something, what puts us a cut above everybody, what puts us above everything is the capacity to personally love our enemies. Yes, we pray for God's glory to be vindicated. Yes, we pray for an end of the unrighteous who curse His name. Yes, we allow God to come in fire and flaming vengeance. Yes, we know the same Jesus who said love your enemies to the Pharisees. He also said to the Pharisees you are woeful, Matthew 23, and I pronounce on you doom.

Yes, we know that judicially there will become a judgment. Judicially God will act in punishment, but that's for God to do and in defense of God, we'll uphold His holy name. But in our personal relationships we are to be characterized by loving our enemies.

That'll make us different than everybody in the world. People in the world love their friends. They do a pretty good job at that. They love their families, not bad at that either. And they're even compassionate and sympathetic to people who don't have much. But people in the world don't love their enemies. Believe me they don't love their enemies.

People in the world may not kill, but they get angry. People in the world may not commit adultery, not all of them, but they do it in their hearts. People in the world may do all legal things in their divorces, but they shouldn't have divorces anyway. People in the world sometimes keep their word, but they don't always keep their word. People in the world retaliate, some of them on a very equal basis, but they don't forgive and forget. And people in the world love, but they don't love like this.

And Jesus is saying I don't want you to be like that. Go back to verse 47 again. What did He say? "And what do you more than others?" What makes you different? You're not going to be different if you just sprinkle a little Christian activity on your human life. You're not going to be different if just a little bit of commitment goes over to Christ. What makes you different than anybody else? If you belong to my kingdom for one thing, it is that you love your enemies.

It's pretty high standard. "To love them." said John Stott "is ardently to desire that they will repent and believe and be saved." If you love them enough they just might respond to the Christ who lives in you, made visible through that love.

Let's pray. Who am I Lord to speak this message when the standard is even beyond me or anybody, but I speak as your spokesman, and I speak to my own heart. Teach me to love not those that are easy to love, not the lovely and loveable, but the unloved and the enemies. Teach me to love the people who hate me. Teach me to love the people who curse me. Teach me to love the people who would silence me, who would harm me, who would harm my family and those I love most dearly, but oh God, teach me to hate the sin, to hate the unrighteousness that sweeps over the world, to hate to Jesus dishonored, give me a perfect hatred that calls for a righteous day, a righteous kingdom, with a righteous king to make things right.

May I understand the difference between that great longing for God's glory and a personal love for those who offend Him most. May we love people Father, people who don't love us and so may they say of us, they must be Christians for no one else can love that like. May Grace Church be known as a place where people love with a love that is unearthly, supernatural. May we not retaliate. May we not give back what is due, but may we give back forgiveness and love. And so as Your Son said, "be the sons of our Father who is in heaven." May we love like You love, like Jesus loved, even those who hate us most.

Father, we can't do it on our own. There's no way. Thank you for the promise of Romans 5:5 that the love of Christ has been shed abroad in our hearts. You have given us a new capacity to go with a new command. To go with a new life as new creatures called to a new kind of love may we tap that capacity that's there by the presence of the Spirit of God. Give us magnanimous, big, forgiving, loving hearts. That there might be a validation of our testimony in Jesus lifted up. And truly some of Your enemies turned into friends in response to such love. For Your glory we pray. Amen.

Love Your Enemies, Part 2

I invite you this morning to turn with me again to Matthew Chapter 5, Matthew Chapter 5 and we are examining verses 43 to 48. This is such a key passage, so filled with truth and importance for our lives that we're going to spend a few weeks on it. I believe God has some very special and important things to say to us to me through this.

Let me read for you verse 43 to 48 of Matthew Chapter 5, and you follow as I read. "Ye have heard that it hath been said thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you love your enemies and pray for them who despitefully use you and to persecute you. That ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He maketh His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them who love you what reward have ye. Do not even the tax collectors the same? And if ye greet your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the heathen so? Be therefore perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect."

As you know, if you've been with us for any time, Matthew presents Jesus Christ as king. Each of the gospels focuses on a different element of the life of Christ, a different facet of His very character. And Matthew's point is that He is the king. The king of the universe, the monarch of the earth, the king of Israel, the anointed of God. And Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience primarily, because he wants them to realize that the very one Jesus of Nazareth, whom they rejected is none other than their Messiah.

The one of whom they said we will not have this man to reign over us, is none other than the anointed king. Matthew's purpose then in all of the pages and chapters and verses of his gospel is to present the kingliness of Christ. We have seen how he has done that already in the first five chapters. He began by discussing His royal birth, coming at the end of a royal lineage. He discussed his adoration by Persian king makers known as the Magi who recognize this one as king.

He talked about His baptism in which God approved of Him as the anointed one. He said, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." We see Matthew present his kingliness as he presents His defeat over the reigning monarch of the earth, Satan. As Satan comes three times against Christ, and all three times he is defeated and finally vanquished.

We see His kingliness and His miracle power as He has power over the physical world to heal, to raise the dead, to give sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, and voices to the dumb and feet to the lame. And all of these things are Matthew's efforts to present the majesty of Jesus Christ. Finally, as he comes to Matthew Chapter 5 and 6 and 7, he presents the standards of the king's kingdom.

If He is a king, then what are the rules of His kingdom? What is the manifesto of the monarch? What are the standards by which those in His kingdom live? And we have the incomparable Sermon on the Mount presenting those very standards. And the key note that I wanted you to remember all through this is that the standards of the kingdom of Christ are not the standards of the world. In fact, Jesus sets them in contrast with the system of His day.

He shows how inferior Judaism is to the true standards of His kingdom. And we've already talked about the fact that the Jewish people have taken the divine standards of God and lowered them to their own level and then by keeping their substandard rules, identified themselves as righteous. With a righteousness they themselves had invented.

In other words, they lowered the standard and accommodated themselves to it. Jesus comes and lifts it back again. He doesn't change the Old Testament. He doesn't set it aside. He reaffirms it and says your standard is here, God's is up here. And so in our study of Chapter 5 we have seen how he has done that. And he's done it by a series of six contrasts. He contrasted, first of all, in verse 21 and following their view of murder with His. Then their view of adultery with His. Their view of divorce with His. Their view of swearing with His. Their view of retaliation with His, and finally their view of love with His.

And here we are at the apex, really people, because the apostle Paul was exactly right under the inspiration of the spirit when he said, "the greatest thing is love." And Jesus saves this for the ultimate contrast. Jesus saves this for the final statement. That the epitome of the disparity between the standards of His kingdom and the standards of His day can be seen in the difference between the nature of loves of the two.

That's the final contrast. Yours, verse 43, "You have heard that it hath been said," which is a...simply an introduction to those rabbinical teachings passed down to them. "Your system has said thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies." Now you see there the disparity don't you? Between a low level, substandard religious ethic. And that which is God's.

Now as we've studied the texts all through Matthew 5 from verse 21 on, we have simply stated there are three features in each that are the major thrusts. The Jewish viewpoint, the Old Testament viewpoint and the viewpoint of Jesus.

Let's go back and review very briefly the tradition of the Jews. Verse 43, and you'll remember two weeks ago that I said that it all starts out good, "thou shalt love thy neighbor." That sounds good and that's always the way it is with any system that wants to infiltrate the truth. Any system that wants to become a substitute for the truth must contain a portion of the truth. Therein lies the deceit. Therein lies the subtlety.

That's why we find in Ephesians 4 that spiritual babes are tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine. Because whenever there is an encroachment upon the truth by Satan, he invariably wants to maintain something of that truth to provide a common ground to lead people into the perversion.

And so it all starts out so well, "thou shalt love thy neighbor." But as I told you there are two problems. They left out something and they added something. They left out "thou shalt love thy neighbor," what's the rest of it, "as thy self." And they added "and hate thine enemy." They left out "as thy self" because of pride and they added "hate thine enemy" because of prejudice.

They didn't feel they wanted to love anybody as themselves. And they wanted the right to be justified in their victory a la hatred toward everybody who wasn't a part of their little group. So conveniently, they dropped something and conveniently they added something and thus they came up with a perversion of God's standard. And that's precisely what Jesus attacks.

And what Jesus is saying to these Pharisees and scribes and those who agreed with the system is that your system no matter how intellectually convinced you are, your system is inadequate to redeem you. You are not God's people. You have not met the standard. You are sinners. And the consequently, He offers Himself as the Savior knowing full well that no one comes to a Savior that he does not know he needs.

And so really, it's a message about sin. They thought that because they didn't murder, they weren't sinful. They thought that because they didn't commit adultery under their definition they weren't sinful. They thought because they divorced and made sure they did the paperwork they weren't sinful. They thought that because when they swore by the name of God they kept their word, they were okay. And they thought because they retaliated equivalently that they were all right. But Jesus says you've missed the point.

If you hate somebody that's as good as murder. If you look on somebody that's the same as adultery. If you divorce for non-biblical grounds that's evil. And if you don't keep your word no matter what you swear by you've sinned. And so He undercuts their whole security. And here He says, you think you love and what you love is everybody in your little group that agrees with you. And then you have license to hate everybody else. And you're not even willing to love the ones you love the way you love yourself, which leaves room for yourself indulgent pride. That's the Jewish tradition.

Now we move from that to the second point that we're looking at and that is the teaching of the Old Testament. From the tradition of the Jews we see implied behind us the teaching of the Old Testament. What did the Old Testament teach? Did the Old Testament say anywhere hate your enemy? No. Did it say love your neighbor? Yes. Well, what is the sum of the teaching of the Old Testament? Well, we kind of got started in it last time. Let me just remind you of this. There is a statement in the Psalm, in Psalm 139 where David says "I hated them with a perfect hatred." That is the only justifiable hatred in the Bible. That is the only justifiable reaction to an enemy in the Bible.

And it is based upon the same heart attitude, the same mentality as Psalm 69:9. Where David says "the reproaches that have fallen on you have fallen on me, zeal for your house has eaten me up." For example, the Bible says it is wrong to be angry, but there is such a thing as righteous indignation. True? Jesus said we are not to be angry with one another and yet Jesus made a whip. What's the difference? Jesus never got angry with people who personally offended Him, but Jesus got angry with those who defiled the glory of God.

We have the right to react in indignation when God is dishonored, but not to react in retaliation over personal injury. Now the same thing is true in regard to this kind of thing with our enemies, with hatred. We should have a perfect or a righteous hatred for those who are the enemies of God. And David said "I hate them with a perfect hatred." And right after that, do you remember what he said? "And God," he said, "search my heart, try me, and know me. Know my thoughts that there is no wicked way in me."

In other words, God I hate them with a perfect hatred and if you search my heart, you will know that my motive is your glory, not my own personal injury. There is a place for that. There is a place for zeal for the holiness of God and the sacredness of His truth and His person. And the Old Testament will tolerate that, but it will not tolerate any kind of evil attack, any kind of bitterness or anger or resentment or hostility towards someone who brings against a personal injury.

We have no place for personal hatred out of pride or prejudice, no matter what has been done to us. You see the Jews define neighbor in a very narrow way, but the Bible defined it in a very big way. The word neighbor is the issue. The Jews said neighbor is the one who believes the way we believe. And you remember, I told you how they cursed the rebel mob who didn't know the law. And the despised the ignorant Galileans who were they from that isolated place. It was just their little group. But hate your enemy never came from God's truth in the Old Testament. They put as an accommodation to their pride and prejudice.

What did the Old Testament really teach about loving your neighbor? How broad is that term? Let me show you. Look with me at Deuteronomy 22. Deuteronomy 22, we're going to spend a few minutes in the Old Testament because I want you to see that God hasn't changed His perspective. Deuteronomy 22, now here we're dealing with some of the Levitical law, some of the codes for Israel behavior, and this is a very practical and simple one. "Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray and withhold thy help from them. Thou shalt in any case bring them again to thy brother."

In other words, if your brother has an animal that gets loose and goes astray, you want to immediately come to assist. The point being you meet another person's need. All right? Verse 2, "If your brother be not near unto thee or if thou know him not," maybe it's somebody you don't even know. You don't have any idea who it is and "you shall bring it then to your house and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it and thou shall restore it to him again."

Let's say you find a stray couple of sheep or an ox somewhere and you really don't know to whom it belongs at all. You take it, feed it, care for it, as long as it's necessary. Be sure you do that until the person comes and says say, I lost a couple of...I've got them right here. And then you take them and give them back. "In like manner, shalt thou do with his ass and so shalt thou do with his raiment if he loses his cloak and with every lost thing of thy brothers which he hath lost and thou hast found.

Now, that's the general principle about lost and found. When somebody loses it, you don't own it because you found it. You just keep it until he comes to get it. And then you give it to him. Now notice that this is meeting somebody else's need. Verse 4, "Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way and withhold thy help from them. Thou shalt surely help them to lift them up again."

Sometimes the burden will become heavy, the animal will become tired and he just fall down. Well, one fellow would have a little tough time getting that animal back up again. And so you are to come to his help. Now, you say, well what does this have to do with anything? It's talking about your brother here. All right, turn to Exodus Chapter 23 and we go even early in the writing of Moses, and we see the same principle in Exodus 23, verse 4 only this time it takes on a completely different identification.

Exodus 23:4, "If thou meet thine enemies ox," you say ah ha, there's my enemies ox loose, "or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again." Now notice same exact principle as Deuteronomy 22. Only Deuteronomy 22 used what term for the individual? Brother. How big a term is brother? How big a term is it? The syllogism of this simply says that brother has to include what? Enemy. That's the point.

Verse 5, "If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under it's burden and wouldest forbear to help him thou shalt surely help with him." Somebody who hates you and his animal falls down, the normal reaction is serves you right buddy. Hope your animal dies. And you've got to put the whole load on your wife. You know that retaliatory spirit. He says, no you go and help, even if it's your enemy.

In other words, the standard never changes. The term brother is big enough to include whoever happens to have a need. You see the point? That's where we determine the meaning of neighbor. Neighbor is as big as need. That's all. And when the Bible says "love your neighbor," it simply widens up the whole thing as Psalm tells us the commandment of God is very broad to encompass anybody who has a need no matter how they feel about you. That's the issue.

Now we're not talking about nation against nation in war. We're not talking about a criminal justice process. We're talking about the day to day routine of human relationships. Look further with me will you at Job 31. Job 31, verse 29, and Job has some people telling him that he's a sinner. He has some diseases and some problems in his life and he is really being used by God as an illustration. He hasn't really done any sinful thing to bring this upon him, but all of his counselors think he has and so they're forever telling him that he's a sinner.

And Job starts to muse and respond a little bit to this issue and one of the things that he says is in Job 31:29. He's trying to tell them that he really hasn't done some sin to deserve this. He says, and here's his illustration, "if I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me or lifted up myself when evil found him," in other words, boy I had a great time, I just loved it when he fell into evil. And the implication is if I did that then I would have sinned.

I mean, you'd have a right to accuse me if I had ever rejoiced at the destruction of somebody that hated me. Now that touches a nerve of human behavior. Because when there is somebody who is your enemy and they fall into problems, the first reaction is that you love it. You just love it. And the worst the problem, the better you like it. That's human nature.

Job says, but I didn't do that or I would have sinned. "Neither have I suffered," verse 30, "my mouth to sin by wishing a curse to his soul." I've never allowed out of my mouth any evil thought towards someone. And boy we do that a lot, a lot with our epithets and our curses and our condemnations. Job says I didn't do that either. I never rejoiced when they fell into calamity. I never wished them evil.

Verse 31, "If the men of my tent said not oh that we had of his flesh, we cannot be satisfied." In other words, we've never longed for the flesh of an enemy. We've never been dissatisfied enough to want more injury or harm to come to someone. No. You see the attitude of Job and by the way Job was in the patriarchal period so this really takes you clear back to the earliest years of God's dealing with man and the attitude from the very start was one of love and forgiveness, not wishing evil even on an enemy.

Go further with me into Psalm Chapter 7, the 7thPsalm, verse 3, and David in a sense is praying a similar prayer. "Oh Lord my God, if I have done this, if there be iniquity in my hands, what kind of iniquity David? If I have rewarded evil unto him who was at peace with me. In other words, if I was unkind to my friend, yeah, I have delivered him who without cause is my enemy. In other words, if I have sinned by being evil to one who was good, or if I have sinned by being evil to one who was evil to me.

David really pinpoints two things. It's wrong to be evil towards those that are good to you. It's even wrong to be evil towards those that are evil to you. If I have done that he says, let the enemy persecute my soul and take it. Let him tread down my life on the earth and lay my honor in the dust. He's justifying himself to God here and he's saying God I've looked at my heart, and I have never given back evil for good and I have not given back evil for evil either.

You see the Old Testament never justifies hating an enemy. That's a sin. Job recognized it as a sin and so did David. In the 35thPsalm, so that you'll understand further what God's heart is on this, verse 12, David says of his enemies, "They rewarded me evil for good for the spoiling of my soul." In other words, it just...it hurt me on the inside. They gave me back evil for good, my enemies did. "But as for me," now look, here's a righteous man, "when they were sick my clothing was sackcloth." Now what did sackcloth speak of? Well, it's spoke of remorse and sorrow and mourning didn't it? When a Jew put on sackcloth and ashes, he was in mourning.

He says when I was good to them, they were cruel to me, but when evil fell upon them, I mourned over them. My heart broke over them. This is the Spirit of Jesus who hangs on the cross and looks at those who spit on Him and says, "Father," what, "forgive them they know not what they do." This is the heart of Stephen who lays beneath the bloody stones that are crushing the life out of his body and cries out to God, "lay not this sin to their charge." This is the magnanimous unbelievable inhuman, supernatural forgiveness that comes here from the heart of David who has been given evil for good, and yet when his enemies suffer his clothing is sackcloth. And he says, "I humble my soul with fasting and my prayer return into mine own bosom."

In other words, David says I fasted and I mourned and I prayed for my enemies when they fell into calamity. Verse 14, "I behave myself as though he had been my friend or brother." Notice that? And here David brings together in our thoughts Deuteronomy 22 and Exodus 23 and he says "my enemy is my brother. My enemy is to be my friend at least in that sense. I bowed down heavily as one who mourneth for his mother."

Now I'll tell you something people, when a man can weep over his enemy like he weeps over his mother in calamity, he has learned a dimension of love that is far beyond the human level. And that's the teaching of the Old Testament. "In my adversity, verse 15, "they rejoice and they gather themselves together. They had a party and they tore at me and they cease not, they gnashed upon with their teeth, but that was never my heart towards them."

Oh this is such a basic truth. Look at Proverbs for a moment 17:5. In Proverbs 17:5, it says this, "Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his maker." And then this, "And he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished." When you rejoice over evil fallen on someone, you'll not be unpunished. That is a sin, even that person be an enemy. Proverbs 24:29, "Say not," this is the command, "Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me." Don't say that. Don't be a retaliatory person. Don't strike back at your enemy. That's the opposite of what we know as the golden rule.

And then finally, in Proverbs 25:21, we find...I think we find the sum of it all. Proverbs 25:21, listen carefully, very simple and very profound. "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat and if he be thirsty give him water to drink." Beloved can I say this to you? Your enemy is your neighbor, that's what the Old Testament teaches. Your enemy in a human sense is your brother. Not in the spiritual sense, in a human sense is your brother.

Maybe you need some illustrations. Let's go back to Genesis Chapter 13 and see how the Old Testament honored this kind of attitude toward an enemy. Abram and Lot had a dispute. There were too many of them and their animals to occupy one plot land. And verse 6 says that they had so many flocks and so many tents and herds and all of this that the land was not able to bear them. They couldn't dwell together in the same place for their substance was great so that they couldn't dwell together. And there was a strife between the herdsman of Abram's cattle and the herdsman of Lot's cattle.

So here you have enemies. You have a minor warfare. How is it to be handled? Bitterly? Antagonistically? Watch Abram and you see the virtue of the man. Verse 8, "And Abram said unto Lot, let there be no strife I pray thee between me and thee and between my herdsman and thy herdsman for we're brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself I pray thee for me if thou wilt take the left hand then I'll go to the right. Or thou depart to the right hand, then I'll go to the left."

Now, listen people, that is an amazing reaction. Abram ended the fight right there because he said, "Lot you take whatever you want and I'll just take what's left. You pick out the best and you take it." That's how to treat any enemy. Give them the very best that there is. And so Lot checked around lifted up his eyes in verse 10, "beheld the plain of Jordan, well watered everywhere, before, of course the Lord destroy Sodom and Gomorra. It was like the garden of the Lord, the land of Egypt as it comest unto Zoar," which is a very fertile area of Egypt.

"So Lot chose all the plain of Jordan and Lot journeyed east and they separated themselves the one from the other. Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent towards Sodom, but the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly."

Now we could talk a lot about the stupidity of Lot pitching his tent towards Sodom and how it eventually got closer and closer until he was in Sodom and finally he was out of Sodom and Lot's wife was a pillar of salt. But the point that I want you to see here is the fact that Abraham treated an enemy as the Bible would want us to treat one. He loved him as he loved himself. Instead of seeking the land for himself, he sought the best for his enemy.

The Bible honors that kind of virtue. 1 Samuel Chapter 24 offers us another illustration. And I'm taking time to develop this because I think it's such an important point. And we're really...we'll draw it down to some practical things next Lord's day as we conclude. But in 1 Samuel 24, I want you to notice the first six verses. "It came to pass when Saul was returned from following the Philistines that it was told him saying, behold David is in the wilderness of Engedi." Now Saul was busy chasing David. David was a threat to Saul's throne, a threat to his security. Saul had been trying to kill David. Tried every way he could to find David and murder him. And so they said "David is in wilderness of Engedi. Go and find him, that's where he is and you can get him there." "So Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel," and these were the crack troops, the best guys, the sharp shooters, you know, the SWAT team, "off they went to find David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats."

And by the way, I've been to Engedi and it is a treacherous and rocky area. "He came to the sheepcotes," and by the way sheepcotes were little stacks of rocks that they would put at the front of a cave to act like a fence to keep the sheep in, "and there was a cave there and Saul went in to cover his feet." Now that is a Hebrew expression for visiting, I don't know how else to put this, the men's room.

What they did was they just went in, and I don't...I don't know how to describe this delicately, but I'll give it a shot, anyway, they had these long robes and they went in and they would just kind get down on their haunches and they would put their robe around them covering their feet. That's literally what they did. They had sort of a portable commode. And so Saul went into this particular cave by himself to deal with that particular necessity, and while he was there David and his men were in the same cave.

Interesting circumstance. And they were along the sides of the cave while Saul was in the middle. "And the men of David said to him, behold the day of which the Lord said." I mean, this is it David. "I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand." They said the prophecy has come true. Here he is. Of all things we are in the middle of nowhere, in the wilderness of Engedi and in walks our enemy to cover his feet. He is there literally a sitting duck.

Well, what happened? "The men of David said unto him, this was the fulfillment of the prophecy. Do unto him as it shall seem good unto thee." He's your enemy, get him David, this is your moment. You know you're God's anointed. Get rid of this evil man, this enemy.

"So David arose and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe stealthily." He snuck up behind him and took a snitch out of his robe. You say well that David isn't what we had in mind. Well, we're not taking pieces of his garment bit by bit. We'd like to do away with him. But just to show you the sensitivity of David's heart, "It came to pass afterwards that David's heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul's skirt." He was convicted about that.

And he said to his men, "The Lord forbid that I should do this thing under my master the Lord's anointed to stretch forth mine hand against him seeing he is the anointed of the Lord." You can feel that way about an enemy. After all he's a creation of God. "He's beloved by God and David restrained his servants with these words and permitted them not to rise against Saul, but Saul rose up out of the cave and went on his way."

"David also rose afterward and went out of the cave and cried after Saul saying, 'My Lord the King,'" oh man can you imagine the jolt that must have been to Saul. "And when Saul looked behind him David stooped with his face to the earth and bowed himself." Amazing. He paid homage to this evil enemy and David was a Godly man as was Abram.

You see virtue behaves towards an enemy as we would behave towards a friend, because an enemy is a neighbor. I want to show you one other illustration, 2 Samuel 16, and again it's David. 2 Samuel 16, verse 5, and this is...this must have been oh just...I can't recreate the terrible anxiety of this moment in David's life. David was a terrible father. You've got to be a terrible father to end up with an Absalom. But he did. And Absalom, his son, whom...with whom he was far to lenient, turned out to rebel against him.

Absalom came against his own father, wanted to usurp his throne. Absalom not only came against David politically, but Absalom, frankly, broke David's heart. Finally, David just cried out with tears rushing down his face, "Absalom, my son, my son, my son," when he heard of his death. But Absalom is after David and David is running, fleeing from his own son.

David who is the king. And in the midst of all of this, verse 5 of 2 Samuel 16 says, "And when King David came to Bahurim, behold there came out a man of the family of the house of Saul who's name was Shimei, the son of Gera, he came forth and he cursed continually as he came." He was a profane man.

"And he cast stones at David and at all the servants of King David and all the people and all the mighty men on his right hand and on his left." He just started throwing rocks at all of them, and cursing foully David. "And thus said Shimei when he cursed, come out, come out thou bloody man and thou worthless fellow." David apparently was inside the troop a little bit and he was screaming at him to come out.

"The Lord hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul," you know why you're getting what you're getting, you know why Absalom has turned against you? Because you dethroned Saul, because you took Saul's place. And remember this was a fellow from Saul's family. Now you're getting your due David, you bloody man.

"And the Lord hath delivered the kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son and behold thou art taken in thy mischief because thou art a bloody man." You want to know something, there was just enough truth in that to make it painful, because later on when David wanted to build the temple, God said, "no because you have hands full of blood." He hadn't murdered Saul, but he had fought many battles and bloodied his hands.

"Then said Abishai," Abishai was loyal to David, son of Zeruiah, "why should this dead dog curse my Lord the king?" Now apparently dead dog was a bad thing to call somebody. I mean, that's probably the worst epithet Abishai could think of. This dead dog. You find frequently in the Bible that pagans are called dogs. Even in Peter, you hear Peter refer to dogs licking up their vomit. And he has a mind apostates who go back to their evil ways. And to call somebody a dog was a terribly derogatory term. But to add the term dead dog is really strong.

But we even say that. Boy so and so is a dead dog. We use it in a little different term, but this is where it came from. "Why should this dead dog curse my Lord the king. Let me go over I pray thee and take off his head." This was a pretty primitive time and that's what normally would have happened. And the king said, "what have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah. So let him curse because the Lord hath said unto him curse David who shall then say why hast thou done so."

What David is implying here is maybe the Lord told him to do this. You see David is feeling the guilt of his failure with Absalom. And David is facing the realization of his bloody hands. And he's saying, "how do you know that God has not asked him to do this? David said to Abishai and all his servants, behold my son who came forth of my own body seeks my life. How much more now may this Benjamite do?" In other words, look I could care less about this guy. The pain is from Absalom. What he adds to the thing is minimal to me. Don't bother with it. "Let him alone and let him curse for the Lord is bidden him."

And I'm sure this is David's feeling, whether the Lord did or not, I don't know, but he feels that he must have. "It may be that the Lord will look on mine affliction and the Lord will requite me good for His cursing this day. And as David and his men went along the way, Shimei went along on the hillside, opposite him and cursed as he went and threw stones at him and cast dust and the king and all the people who were with him became weary and refreshed themselves there." But David's heart was right. At that moment he loved with the love the Old Testament taught.

The Jews were dead wrong in Jesus' day. The Old Testament didn't teach to hate your enemy. That was their evil, prideful, prejudice teaching that. Neighbor encompassed even an enemy.

Go back with me for a moment to Matthew and let me share this with you. Chapter 5, verse 10, earlier in the sermon Jesus had said similar terms, "Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are yet when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all man are evil against you falsely for my sake." How should you react? How should you react?

Verse 12, retaliate? No, what? "Rejoice, be exceedingly glad for great is our reward in heaven." That's what David said. "Perhaps the Lord will requite me some day for a right reaction to this cursing." In whatever human relationship you're in, that's what God is after that right reaction. Maybe you've got conflict in your marriage. Maybe you've got conflict in your family between the children and parents. Maybe you have conflict on the job. Maybe you have enemies at home and you have enemies at work and people who speak against you. Maybe a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law or a brother or sister, another part of your family speak evil of you or your children. And it's so easy in our human world to get these things going and these enemies and we become bitter, then we begin to be hostile and instead of reaching out in love to the people, instead of seeing them as our brother and our neighbor as the Old Testament does, we begin to see them as the enemy and we miss the point of what Jesus says and we fall to the low level of Pharisaic religion.

That's not to be. So the Old Testament was very clear and Jesus is in absolute agreement with it. Can I introduce the teaching of Jesus to you in verse 44? And I'll just introduce it today and we'll go into next time. We saw the tradition of the Jews in verse 43. We saw the teaching of the Old Testament implied behind verse 43, but perverted, and now the teaching and the truth from Jesus himself.

This is the Lord's corrective to the error of the Jewish system. And he gives five principles to correct the faulty love of the Pharisees and the scribes. Five short statements, sequential statements that ascend to the very highest statement of all. They have a beautiful flow in ascent and we'll see that next time.

He says five things. Let me just give them to you, "love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, manifest your sonship, exceed your fellow men, and imitate your God." And people when we finally ascend into that fifth principle, you are going to see perhaps in a way you've never seen before what Jesus meant when he said you're to love your enemies. It is the most powerful statement, I believe in the New Testament about the meaning of love.

Let's just take that first one for a moment before I let you go. Verse 44, "But I say unto you love your enemies." Jesus speaks with authority here. He is the Lord of the law. He is the Son of God. One of the things we learn in Greek is that Greek verbs change their form depending upon what pronoun is used. For example, you don't need pronouns like I, you, he, she, it, they, them, your, etc. in Greek because the verb form indicates which pronoun is proper. It's in the ending of the verb. So whenever the pronoun is put in front of the verb, it is put there for intensification.

It would have been enough to just have a verb form. I say unto you. I say could be several verbs. It could be say lego. I say unto you, but if it is ego lego, it is mean...it means I say unto you and then emphasis is not on the saying, the emphasis is on the sayer. And so Jesus by using the emphatic pronoun is intensifying the fact that He speaks authoritatively. "I say unto you." Setting Himself up as one who can speak over against their system no matter who their teachers have been. No matter how long a list of renowned and well meaning and well known and astute Rabbis there have been. "I say unto you." And so He is the Lord of the law.

And what does He say? The first principle as we move up the steps, "love your enemies, love your enemies." And the idea we learn from the Old Testament is that your enemy is your neighbor. To illustrate that look with me at Luke 10. Luke 10, verse 25, "A lawyer came to Jesus, he said what do I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, what is written in the law. And he said thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor," what "as thyself."

Now, the question is, the lawyer says, all right if what you want me to do is love my neighbor as myself, fair question, verse 29, "who is my," what, "neighbor?" Who is it? You want me to love my neighbor, who is it?

Jesus said let me tell you a story. "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho," and that is down, I mean, it's really down. You go from a mile high to below sea level in a very brief time, down to Jericho. "And it was a very dangerous road, robbers and highwaymen along it. And this man going down fell among thieves who stripped him of his raiment, wounded him and departed leaving him half dead. They beat him up and robbed him and left him on the road for dead. By chance there came down a certain priest that way. When he saw him he passed on the other side. Now a priest was a man who represented God to the people. A man who stood in the place of God. A priest was one who connected people with God. A priest of all the people in society should have been one to behave as God behaved. He was God's representative and the priest came along and he saw the man and he said that man is not in my group. And he went to the other side of the road. Who wants to touch him? He's not my neighbor.

It's one of the rebel Jewish people who's probably not even belonging to my religious party. He was followed a little later by a Levite, one who was of the great heritage of the Levitical priests as well and when he was at the place he came and looked on him and passed by on the other side. He said, he's not in my group either. Off they went, but a certain Samaritan," and that word conjures up all kinds of thoughts, because the Samaritans basically were a race of people originally they were Jewish people who inner-married with the pagans who infiltrated the northern Kingdom. They became half-breeds and the most despicable thing to a pure bred Jew was for somebody to defile the uniqueness of being a Jew by inner-marrying with a pagan.

Can you imagine the Jew wouldn't even enter a Gentile house. The Jew wouldn't even eat with a Gentile utensil. The Jew wouldn't even eat food cooked by a Gentile. They wouldn't even go into a Gentile house because they believed that the Gentiles aborted their babies in those houses and they were desecrated places. They believed the wildest and craziest things about the Gentiles and they despised them. When they came back to their own country, they would shake the dust off their garments because they didn't want Gentile dust dragged into their land.

And when they went from the south to north, they would go across the Jordan and up the east side and cross over at the top so that they wouldn't have to go through Samaria. They didn't want to defile themselves with that polluted land. And here came a Samaritan, an enemy who would look at that bleeding Jew and say boy good for him. It's about time some of them got their due the way they've treated us.

But the holy pious priest and Levite didn't see him as a neighbor and a despised and hated Samaritan did. And he went to him and bound up his wound, verse 34, "poured in oil and wine and set him on his own beast, brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the next day when he departed, he took out to dineria and gave them to the host and said care of him. And whatever thou spendest more when I come again, I will repay thee."

Boy he was magnanimous wasn't he? He got involved and he bound up his wounds and he loved him and cared for him, put him on his beast and led the beast to the inn and paid the fare at the inn and said I'll pay the rest when I come back if it's more. "Which now says the Lord of these three thinkesth thou was neighbor to him that fell among thieves. He said he that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him go and do thou likewise."

You want to know something people, who's your neighbor? Your neighbor is anybody who needs you. That's it. Anybody in my path with a need constitutes my neighbor. Not because they believe what I believe or think what I think or belong to my group. God loved us when we were enemies and He died for us and it's that very love that we're to have for others.

I'm going to close with this story. In the year 1567, King Phillip, II of Spain sent the Duke of Alva, the Duke of Alva was notorious for his bitter hatred of everybody who embraced reformed Christianity. It was the time of the reformation and people were turning from Catholicism to biblical Christianity and believing in Christ in a proper and they hated those people. In fact, the time of the of the Duke of Alva was known as the Reign of Terror in Spain, and the council of Alva was call the blood council, because they slaughtered so many people who embraced the reformed faith.

But the historians tell us about one man, a man named Dirk Willumsoonwho became a Christian, a Protestant Christian and thus was condemned to death in a torturous manner. Somehow he made an escape and he began to run for his life. It was near the end of winter and there was still some patches of snow on the ground and as he ran and ran he finally came to the inevitable, a lake. The lake was frozen, but not frozen very hard because winter was nearly over and yet he had no choice because he was being chased by one lone soldier.

And so he decided he'd run across the lake and the historian says that as he ran, the lake ice began to crack and creek and shake under his feet as he pounded across. But he didn't stop because he wanted to avoid the terrible death that awaited him if he were caught. He stretched his legs further and further in his strides until at last in one gasping leap he lunged himself and landed on the solidarity of the shore. And as he began to take his next step he heard a cry of terror from behind him. And he looked around the soldier who had been chasing him had fallen through and was clutching the ice for his life.

No one was near to help the soldier but Dirk. But the soldier was his enemy. What would you do? The historian tells us that Dirk went back picking his way over the crackling ice, rescued his enemy, and brought him to safety. That's the heart of the matter isn't? That's the spirit of Jesus. The spirit of Stephen, of Abram, of David. How about you?

Let's pray together. Thank you Father for our time this morning, for the goodness, the grace of God that gives us a love that is humanly impossible. We can't love like this and we know it and so how grateful we are that Romans 5 tells us the love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts. If it weren't that You gave us this love we could never love in this way. Help us to love in the Spirit, to love with a love that is Your love loving through us. When we come to those moments when we would consider an enemy an enemy. When we would lash against them. May we at that moment stop and beseech the Spirit of God to fill us with love. That we may love as You love us. And may we be known in this world as they who love and by our love may the world know we belong to you.

So grateful are we Father for what you've taught us and for what awaits us in the majesty of the remaining passage. And Lord too, we can't help but be excited even as we look forward to tonight. As we share around the life of this man Daniel, who was all that a man could be in an evil society. We pray that this day might be a life-changing day for us as we learn to love and to stand in this evil day. In Christ's name. Amen.

Love Your Enemies, Part 3

This morning, we are going to look at Matthew 5:43-48. The Old Testament says that man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. I've found that to be true even in preaching. I've preached a lot of messages about love because it is such a recurring theme in the Bible. I've preached on the theme of love again and again and again.

When I came to this passage, I said, "Lord, these dear people have heard me talk about love so many times, I think I'll just take all these verses and do it in one message, because I don't want to say what they've heard before." That was my intention, but the Lord just strung me out, and this is our third week on the same passage. In preaching, you can plan all you want, but you very often have the feeling that the Spirit of God is taking you places you never expected to go. That's part of the adventure of the pulpit.

As we come to the same passage this morning for the third time, I feel in my own heart that this isn't really what I want to say to you, but I guess it's what the Lord needs to say. Sometimes I think the Lord strings things out on the same topic because maybe someone wasn't here last time who is here this time, and God knows this is for them.

The only thing I fear is that sometimes, when we hear the same thoughts or same words or similar ideas, we think we know them and don't hear them at all. Some of the greatest lessons we'll ever learn are those we've heard again and again, but finally come to understand. May the Spirit of God fill in the blanks about love, reinforce what you already know, and say it in a fresh way so there will be a different level of commitment than there has ever been in the past.

We all have friends, and I guess we all have enemies. We all have people who love to be with us and people who love to attack us. The test of our Christian character is not how we treat our friends, it's how we treat our enemies; that's the bottom line. You can really tell all there is to know about a man's true spirituality by what he does when people attack him, what he does when people despise, hate, persecute, stand against, or criticize him. That will be the revelation of the reality of his life. If he is a creature of love, made so by the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ, he will love that person just as much as he will love his dearest friend, because it will be his character to love and have little to do with the person involved.

That is essentially what Jesus is saying in this passage; He is saying in verse 43, "Your tradition tells you to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. That's what you've learned. You've learned that there is a justification for hatred, a place for vilification, animosity, bitterness, revenge, for resentment. You've been told that your pride is justified and your prejudice is allowable. You've been told that there are some people you should hate." But in verse 44, He says, "I say to you, love even your enemies."

What men do and what God commands are two different things, and that is the essence here. The people to whom Jesus spoke thought they were good enough. He says, "You're not good enough at all. Your kind of love is not adequate. Your kind of love is very, very narrow; it picks out its objects. The love of those in My Kingdom is indiscriminate; it loves friend and foe just the same."

In Luke 23:34, we see a beautiful illustration of this. The Romans had done a foul deed. They had taken the lovely Son of God, driven nails into His hands and feet, and attached Him to a wooden cross. They had lifted the cross and dropped it in its socket, and when it hit, the jolt would have ripped and torn His flesh. They had spit on Him and mocked Him.

The Jews had done a foul deed; they accused Him of being a blasphemer. They screamed for His blood, and they too had mocked Him, casting things in His face. He hung on the cross, and at His feet was a vicious, frantic, frenzied, hateful, despising mob, thirsty for His blood, the result of years of bitterness and hatred against One who was only an agent of love.

How does He react to that? What is His attitude toward them? Luke 23:34 says that Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." And they parted His garment and cast lots. In the midst of His magnanimous prayer of forgiveness, they were still busy gambling for His clothing. The point that I want you to see is that Jesus could love them so much that He could beseech the Father on behalf of their forgiveness. That's not a human love; that just isn't true of mankind.

You say, "Jesus was God. We can't do that, it's beyond us. We can't love enemies to that degree." I think we can. There is another biblical illustration in Acts 7. There was a man by the name of Stephen, full of faith and the Holy Spirit, a man who was numbered among the first chosen in the church in Jerusalem as a godly man to be placed over some important ministry. Stephen was the best of the very best in the early church, a man who knew God and the Old Testament and the new covenant even in Jesus Christ.

Stephen stood up, in Acts 7, and preached an indicting, powerful message not unlike Peter's message on Pentecost. He laid bare the sinfulness of Israel, and when he was finished, the people were so frantic and overwrought and so cut to the heart, says Luke as he writes, that they literally screamed with their voices and clapped their hands over their ears so that they wouldn't hear anything from this man. They picked him up and threw him over a precipice, and began to pummel his body with stones.

The Bible says, in the midst of this, that he pulled himself into a kneeling position - imagine that. The Jewish method of stoning was to find about a ten-foot drop and drop the man down. Then the first accuser would take the largest stone and try to crush his head with it. The second accuser would follow, and finally the mob would stone him until they crushed the life out of his body.

Stephen was lying at the foot of this, receiving the stones, and he managed to pull himself into a kneeling position to do what? To pray a prayer. What was his prayer? Simply this: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. Be merciful, don't make them pay for this; be gracious to them." That's loving your enemies.

I have several times read the story of George Wishart, who was a martyr in the early years for his faith in Christ. He was to die because he loved Jesus and wouldn't deny Him. He was taken to the place of execution, and the executioner prepared to take his life. But he had known of his life and testimony, and he was so burdened with the guilt of his role as executioner that he hesitated in reluctance in taking his life. The biographer says at the point where he hesitated, Wishart looked up and saw the hesitation. So he stood up, put his arms around him, embraced his executioner, planted a kiss on his cheek, and said, "Sir, may that be a token that I forgive you." That's loving your enemies.

That's what Jesus is talking about. Kingdom character doesn't hate - it doesn't even hate enemies, not Kingdom character, not the kind of character that manifests godliness, not the kind that manifests the virtue of a transformed life. That's the message here.

The Jews felt that they were already alright, but the Lord shows them that they're not, as proven by the fact that even their love is an inept, inadequate, narrow kind of thing. So Jesus presents to them the truth about love. In verses 44-48, we have the teaching of Jesus in response to the tradition of the Jews. The tradition of the Jews was to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. The teaching of Jesus was quite different. As we go through this passage this morning, there are five points that I want you to see. There are five ascending, connected, sequential truths that lead us to a marvelous conclusion. I pray that God will really show you as we move how these apply in your heart.

Keep two things in mind. Jesus is speaking here with a two-fold purpose. One, let's say a person is not a Christian and they're hearing this. What is their reaction? Their reaction is to know that they fall short of God's standard, that they don't love like this, they can't love like this. Therefore, they are sinful, because this is required. If you don't love like this, you're a sinner, and if you're a sinner, you need a Savior. So the message that Jesus is giving to the people there, to the Jews, to the massive crowd, is, "This should prove to you, once and for all, that you haven't arrived, and that you need a Savior." And of course, He is the one who offers Himself as that Savior.

But there was another group on the hillside when He preached this, and that was His disciples. They had already believed in Him, committed their lives to Him. But sometimes, even for those of us who have been forgiven for our lack of love, those of us who have been given the power to love, fail to love. So for us, this becomes an exhortation to live up to what is now potentially a reality.

First, He is saying, "You are a sinner if you don't love like this, and you must be forgiven." Then, He says, "If you have been forgiven, and you have been given the capacity to love like this, you must respond to that in obedience."

So it's a message for everyone - the crowd and the disciples. For you that know Christ, an exhortation to a greater love; for you that don't, the realization that you're a sinner and you fall short and need a Savior. Let's look at the first point in the five. Jesus says simply in verse 44, "But I say to you, love your enemies."

Beloved, this was just a devastating statement in the society in which Jesus lived, because there was so much hate. The wonderful commentator William Hendrickson writes, "All around Jesus were walls and fences. He came for the very purpose of bursting those barriers so that love - pure, warm, divine, infinite love - would be able to flow straight down from the heart of God. Hence from His own marvelous heart, into the hearts of men, His love overleaped all the boundaries of race and nationality and party and age and sex. When He said, 'I tell you love your enemies,' He must have startled His audience, for He was saying something that probably never before had been said so succinctly, positively, and forcefully."

He was saying something that they just didn't do. Love your enemies, are you kidding? I read of a native tribe in Polynesia who had around their huts special articles hanging all around the roof of the hut. A visitor said, "What are they?" They said, "They are reminders." Reminders of what? "Reminders of injury. When anybody injures us or anybody does something against us, we hang a token of that injury there so that we will remember every time we have been wronged and none is ever removed until full vengeance is gained."

That's the human way, that's not God's way. That's the way the Pharisees lived. Around their legalistic hut hung all of the articles or symbols of their vengeance. They were proud and prejudicial, judgmental, hateful men masquerading as religious. And Jesus devastates that. He says just in one statement, "Love your enemies," what is contradictory to their entire lifestyle. They hated. They hated the rabble mob, they hated the publicans who were the tax collectors who had sold out to Rome. They hated the Gentiles. They literally despised them. And Jesus gives them a simple command that lays bare all that hate. "Love your enemies," He says.

Who does He have in mind? Everybody. We talked last time about 'neighbor' encompassing 'enemy,' didn't we? Neighbor is a big enough word to encompass an enemy. Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." An enemy fits into that. A neighbor is anybody in need, isn't it?

Remember we looked a Luke 10 and we talked about the Good Samaritan and how in the story the Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan came along and saw this man who was a Jew (and Samaritans and Jews didn't have any dealings - there was tremendous hatred between the two of them) and yet he went over and he saw that man and said, "That man is my neighbor," and he bound up his wounds, and cared for him, and wrapped him, and he put him on his animal, and took him to the inn, and paid his bill, and he made a sacrifice. A sacrifice of time, a sacrifice of energy, a sacrifice of money, a sacrifice of prejudice, a sacrifice of all of the factors of his life to stop and do all of that because the man was in need.

And we said that's the way it is. Your neighbor is anybody in your path with a need. But in Luke 10 and the Good Samaritan, Jesus really is making an opposite point as well. Because the lawyer said, "Who is my neighbor? I mean, I'm going to go through the world, and I want to pick out my neighbors and do what I should." But when Jesus came to the end of the story, He said, "Who was that man's neighbor? Or which one of the three that came down the road showed themselves to be his neighbor?"

Now what was He saying? First there was priest and he ignored him, then there was a Levite, and basically they were the helpers of the priests, so they fit into the religious community, and he passed by, and then a half-breed Samaritan came, and he helped him. He said to the lawyer, "which one of those proved to be the wounded man's neighbor?"

In other words, Jesus turned the tables. Instead of going through life trying to pick out who your neighbor is, He says, "Are you a neighbor? Because if you're a neighbor, then anybody in your path is going to get your neighborly love." It kind of works like this, in our society humanly speaking, we basically are object oriented in our love, aren't we? You know, you sort of love people on the basis of the kind of object they are, if they're attractive, you know?

For example, when the guys are looking for some girl to marry, girls come across their path and they'll say, "No thanks, keep moving, I'm not there yet." And different girls will come along. Then, all of a sudden, boom! There she is, and they just kind of zoom, zero in on her. There's something attractive there, and there's this emotional thing that hooks you in, and you don't feel that with anybody else. So that our love is object oriented.

When we look at a picture or we look at a house or the style of a car, there are some objects that attract our affection and some that do not. There are certain personalities that attract our love and some that do not. Now that's the human kind of affection. And that's really what the lawyer was saying. "As I go through the world, how do I know which objects I should attach to?"

Jesus is saying that's not the issue. The issue is are you a neighbor? If you're a neighbor and your heart is filled with love, any object that gets in your path is going to receive that love. That's what He's saying. He's saying, "Don't try to figure out who your neighbor is. You be the neighbor to everybody, and then you won't have a problem." Jesus is calling for love towards an enemy, and that's a simple thing. I don't know how else to say it other than to simply say it means to love everybody exactly the same, be it a friend or foe.

You say, "What do you mean by love, John?" I don't mean affection. We talked about that the last time. God doesn't expect you to love them philia, like a friend. He doesn't expect you to love them storge, like you love someone in your own family. He doesn't expect you to love them eros, with affectionate, desiring love. But what He does say is to love the agapao, which is a love that seeks their highest good and seeks to serve their needs.

When Jesus said in John 13, "Love one another as I have loved you," He had just washed their feet. At that point, He wasn't saying, "These disciples are so wonderful, they're just irresistible." No, they were cantankerous, ugly, arguing over who would be the greatest in the Kingdom. They were acting sinful, they were self-motivated and self-centered, and couldn't even be considerate enough to consider Christ going to the cross and comfort Him.

They were acting about as ugly as they ever acted in the New Testament, and yet He said, "Love each other like I've loved you."

What did He do? He washed their dirty feet. And that's what He's saying. Love is an act of service to one in need, not necessarily in emotion.

You'll notice that He says, "Love your enemies." And then the text also in the King James says, "Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you." Now that's not in the critical text or manuscript text. It's been brought into this one from Luke 6. The Lord did say it, Matthew just didn't include it, and some scribe brought it over. But it's really true. If you love your enemy when he curses you, you'll bless him, and when he hates, you'll do good to him. That's the practical out working of it.

You see, it is no so much the feeling as when your enemy is your enemy, you say things that bless him and you do good to him. It is what you say and what you do that God is after, not how you feel. You may have an enemy and in your heart you know there is no great human affection. You know there'll never be a great friendship. You know you'll never embrace him like a person in your family, but you will, with your mouth, bless him in what you say, and with your life, bless him in what you do. So we find that the love that we're talking about is the love of action, not the love of emotion.

Look with me for a moment at I Corinthians Chapter 13. What is it saying, but perhaps the greatest definition ever given of love? I want to have you note verses 4-7, just briefly. We could spend a lot of time on this and rightly we should and have in the past, but for this moment just a brief look. But keep in mind one great and important truth: there are 15 characteristics of love given here. All of them appear in a verbal form. They are not presented a substantives, they are presented as verbs. Why? Because love is doing, love is in action, love can never be defined statically.

Love can never be defined as a plateau. Love is always an activity, always an action. And by the way, somebody has titled this as 'the Beatitudes set to music,' or 'a lyrical interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.' So others have seen the parallel. But Paul, in describing love, uses verbs because love is only described in terms of what it does. That's all. I suppose the reason that you don't always believe someone who says they love you when they say it, is because they say it but there never seems to be anything done about it. You have every right to question that kind of love, because love does things.

For example, verse 4 says, "Love is patient." Literally, it means 'long-tempered,' and most times, the word is used of patience with people. "Love is patient, love is kind." It means literally in the Greek 'useful.' In other words, love sets itself to do deeds of kindness that help people in their time of need. Then it says, "Love does not envy." That is, it doesn't have a competitive spirit, it isn't jealous. It joys in another's success.

It says, "Love is not boastful." It is not boastful, 'vaunteth not itself' means it's not boastful. I think the Greek word there has mostly to do with outward bragging, outward pretense, outward showing off, the voice of conceit. Following that, it says, "Love is not puffed up," and I think that's talking more about the inside, the inward, big-headed, self-centered. See, love is not self-centered. It's patient towards people, it's kind, it has not competitive spirit, no jealousy, never envies anyone else's position or anyone else's situation at all. It can just totally rejoice in someone else's success.

"Love does not behave rudely or unseemly," it says. That's such a beautiful thought at the beginning of verse 5. "Love is always considerate," always concerned with somebody else, always tender in dealing with people, even evil people. Love never insists on its rights.

You know, today you can even take courses. Do you know this? You can go to week-long seminars and take courses on how to assert your rights. That's not the way love acts. "Love seeks not it's own." In other words, it's unselfish, it only seeks the things of others. "Love is not provoked," and that means it doesn't have a sudden outburst of anger or rage. It never reacts to injury or loses its temper. "Love thinks no evil," that is, it always imagines the best about people. It always wants to think the very best. It always wants to give the benefit of the doubt. It always forgives and forgets and never carries a grudge and is never defensive, never eager to blame somebody else.

And then it says in verse 6, "Love rejoices not in iniquity." Love never takes pleasure when someone else sins, never takes pleasure when someone else is chastised. "It rejoices in the truth." That is, love is positive, encouraging, goodness. Then four things: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

Love bears all things. It's a beautiful Greek word, and it means 'to cover something.' It throws a blanket on the faults of others, it just covers them up. It believes all things - it's never suspicious, it always believes the best. It hopes all things; even when it knows there's a failure, it's optimistic enough to believe that something different is going to happen, there's going to be a change. It refuses to take the failure as final. And then, love endures all things. Verse 8 says, no matter what you do to love, "Love never fails."

Boy, what a great picture. Just like shining a light into a prism, it splatters all of the colors of love. Do you love like that? That's the kind of love that characterizes our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the way God loves. If you don't love like that, you need a Savior. If you've received the forgiveness for a lack of love, and Christ lives in your heart, and you have forgiveness, and you have His love shed abroad as Romans 5:5 says, but you're not letting that love out, you're bottling it up, then you need to make a new commitment to love the way He says you're to love.

The commentator Lenksi says, "It indeed sees all the hatefulness and the wickedness of the enemy, feels his stabs and his blows, may even have something to do toward warding them off. But all this simply feels the loving heart with the one desire and aim, to free it's enemy from his hate, to rescue him from his sin, and thus to save his soul. Mere affection is often blind, but even then it thinks that it sees something attractive in the one toward whom it goes. The higher love may see nothing attractive in the one so loved. His inner motive is simply to bestow true blessing on the one loved and to do him the highest good."

Lenski says, "I cannot love a low, mean criminal who robs me and threatens my life, at least in the sense of liking him. I cannot like a false, lying, slanderous fellow, who perhaps has vilified me again and again. But I can, by the grace of Jesus Christ, love them all, see what is wrong with them, desire and work to do them only good, and most of all, to free them from their vicious ways."

So we are to love, not in terms of a feeling, but in terms of service. Paul says it so beautifully in Romans 12:20, let me read it to you. "Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink." That's how you treat an enemy - if he's hungry, feed him, and if he's thirsty, get him a drink. "For in so doing thou shalt heap coals fire on his head." Basically, I think that means to bring conviction upon him, to make him feel bad about his hatred and his sin.

"And be not overcome by evil." In other words, when somebody does evil to you, don't retaliate, don't lose the battle, but overcome that evil with your goodness. Let the enemy come and throw everything he can at you. It'll never make you fall into sin. "You will drown his evil," as Chrysostom said, "Like a spark that falls into the sea, so does an injury find itself extinguished when it comes into the sea of the love of a believer." When people cast their sparks of hatred at us, may they be as quenched as the spark in the sea.

Now, Jesus simply then says, "Love your enemies." Secondly, moving up this ascending ladder of truth about love, He says, "Pray for your persecutors." In verse 44, "And pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you." Praying here is simply beseeching God on their behalf. Despitefully using you is using you for a negative purpose or abusing you. Certainly, persecution is clear. When somebody comes along and does despite to you or does evil to you or harms you, injures you, persecutes you, what are you to do? You are to go before the Lord on their behalf and intercede for them. That's what Jesus did on the cross. That's what Stephen did.

I've read so many stories about those who have died for faith, and even while they were being consumed in the flames, they were praying for those who were persecuting them. I remember reading in a tremendous book, A Distant Grief(you ought to read that book if you haven't read it - I told you the story of Kefa Sempangi some months ago and that book is available now), how they came to take his life in Uganda under Idi Amin, and came these men with the guns pointed at his head. He began to confront them with the Gospel and pray to God to change their lives, and the very men that came to kill him bowed the knee to Jesus Christ.

"Pray for those that persecute you." You know, there is no persecution in the world, and there is no hatred in the world as severe as hatred regarding religious things. You see, man lives with sin and man lives with tremendous guilt. Guilt produces fear, and the ultimate fear that man has is the fear of death, what's going to happen. If there is a God and I have sinned, will I be punished? Man lives with the eminence of punishment, and thus man lives in fear. So man inevitably constructs a system in which he can deal with this fear. He convinces himself that he's okay, that he's kept enough rules that God is going to let him into heaven, that he's really not such a bad guy. Or else, he just decides there is no God at all, and says, "I will not come under guilt, I will not have the fear of judgment, and I'll get rid of it by just saying there's no God."

When you go to an individual and say, "You're a sinner. You will die and go to Hell apart from Jesus Christ. You need to be redeemed and you need to be saved." You are striking that individual at the core of his deepest pain, because you are dragging back all of his anxiety, all of the sin, all of the guilt, all of the fear that he has managed somehow to sublimate under his philosophy or religion. You're tearing it all open again. That is why the most severe persecution is always religious, because you are unmasking people at their most vulnerable point.

Besides that, persecution brings to focus the real battle between Satan and God. So religious persecution throughout history has always been the most intense, always. When we really stand up and live for Jesus Christ in this society, we will get persecuted. More and more, people, all the time, this is going to happen. The question is, in the midst of the most heinous kind of hatred, at the point of the most serious reaction to persecution, can we pray on the behalf of the very one who seeks to destroy us?

That's what Jesus said we are to do. "What do you mean pray?" I think He means to beseech God for their highest good. I don't think He's talking about the prayer of importunity to call down fire from Heaven and consume them. I think He's praying here for their salvation.

I was reading Spurgeon a couple of weeks ago and I found a little sentence in one of his messages and he said, "Prayer is the forerunner of mercy." When we pray, we release God's mercy in a very real way, and this is what I think Jesus is saying. "Pray for your persecutors. The very ones who would take your life, pray for them."

You know we can point out our enemies. We can say, "Boy, they're enemies of Christ, and they're enemies of the Cross and the Bible and the church." We can forget that what we hate is what they represent, but we must love who they are. Hate the sin and love the sinner, and pray for them.

Wouldn't it be great if we just began to pray for the people who are set against us? Praying what? That they would be redeemed. You know what, just that praying in and of itself will fill your heart with love. It will wash your soul to pray like that. When somebody comes to me and says, "I've got a problem with so and so. They just annoy me, and I resent them," and this and that. My answer is always the same, "I'll tell you what to do, pray for them. Set aside a certain time every day and pray for them."

You know what happens? That begins to wash the soul of bitterness when you pray for somebody and you ask God to be merciful. In fact, Chrysostom also said that kind of prayer is the very highest summit of self control. You've really brought your life into conformity to God's standards when you can pray for your persecutors.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who suffered so much in Nazi Germany, said "This is the supreme command. Through the medium of prayer, we go to our enemy, we stand by his side, and we plead to God for him." Oh, what a beautiful thing that is. The cruel torture of crucifixion couldn't silence Jesus' prayer. The crushing stones couldn't silence Stephen's prayer, but I wonder what has silenced your prayer for your enemy.

So love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, and then we ascend another level up, "Manifest your sonship." That's the third point. Verse 45. It starts with hoposin the Greek, which indicates purpose. Why love your enemies? Why pray for your persecutors? "For the purpose that you may be the sons of your Father." Here is a punctilliar, an aorist, "That it may become, once and for all, an established and settled fact, that you are a son of God."

The Bible says God is love. If God is love and I'm His child, then I should be characterized by love. So I John says, "If you do not show love to your brother, how can you claim to be a child of God?" Don't claim you belong to God if you don't manifest love. And Jesus is not saying, "You will become a son of God if you love." He's not saying, "Just muster up enough love, and you can get yourself into being a son." He is saying, "You will prove, once and for all, the validity of the claim that you're a son when love is manifested in your life." You will prove it; it will become a settled fact.

It's kind of like what Peter said; we already have this divine nature, we already have received this incorruptible character. But to make our calling an election sure, we have to add to what we've received virtue and so forth. In other words, we'll never convince anybody we belong to God unless we're like Him, and He loves. Manifest your sonship.

I told you some years ago that when I was a little boy, I got into trouble stealing some things from a Sears store with a little friend and they took us and they put us in the City Jail in Glendale. My father was out playing golf with a couple of deacons and he was notified about it. He came to get me at the jail thinking it was a mistake, and then tried to explain to the deacons what his son was doing in jail. I remember when I got home, my mother was crying and she didn't think I would do such a thing. I'll never forget what some person said to me, I can't even remember who it was, and they just kind of went, "Johnny MacArthur, did you forget who your father was?"

I never forgot that. I owed something to my father; he had given me my very life. I wanted to be his son. One of my little boys, Mark, said to me the other day, he said, "Dad are you ever going to retire?" I said, "No." He said, "Good, because I'm glad you're a preacher." I said, "Are you glad to be my son?" He said, "Yes, I'm glad to be your son." Well, I'm glad to be my Father's son too, but I think it's only right that I manifest something of my Father's character. That's what Jesus is saying. "You Pharisees and scribes may claim to be the sons of God, but if you don't manifest the character of God, you'll never convince anybody, never."

What is the biggest criticism that people have of the truth of the Gospel? It's the people who claim to live it, but don't. That's always it. "There are so many hypocrites in the church." The best answer for that is, "Come on in, we've got room for more!" But it's true that the biggest detriment to Christianity is Christians. We just don't live up to the standard that we ourselves ascribe to. So that's the problem. Manifest your sonship, let it become a settled fact, prove it.

You know, there are people who are Christians, but you'd never know it because they don't love like this. If you find someone whose life is full of love, who overflows with love, who gushes out with love toward everybody, be he friend or foe, and the world will have a very difficult time assuming that that person comes from a human source because people don't love like that. That's exactly what the Lord goes on to say in this verse. He says, "You are to be the sons of your Father who is in Heaven."

In other words, your style of life ought to be one that isn't earthy. You ought to manifest a heavenly source. That's why He identifies the Father as the one who is in Heaven. Not your earthly father, your heavenly one. Not with a human approach to life, as good as that may be philanthropically speaking, but in a manifestation of love that is only possibly described as heavenly.

Then He says, "How is that so? Well, look at God. He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, He sends rain on the just and on the unjust." First He talks about the evil and the good, and then He inverts it and talks about the just and the unjust. He switches those two back and forth - the evil come first one time and the good come first the next time, in order that you might see the point as impartiality. He inverts the order just to show you what he's saying is,"God loves everybody. When the sun comes up and shines in its beauty and spreads its warmth, it's for everybody. When the rain falls, it's for everybody."

The other night, we were out watching our son play a football game in the evening, in a place outside of the city, and the clouds were puffy and I saw two rainbows over here and one rainbow here, and these big beautiful clouds, and the moon, and I was enjoying it, just a beautiful evening. A little rain was trickling down, and you know, all the rest of the people all around me didn't know the Lord, and they enjoyed it too. The sun comes up and gives light, and it grows your grass and it grows my grass and it grows the grass of the people on our block who don't know that God even exists and couldn't care less. Why? Because God is good, and God is indiscriminate in His benevolence.

This is what Calvin called common grace. Divine love and providence touches everybody and this is what He's saying. "Be like your Father. Let your love be so indiscriminate that your sun shines on everybody and your rains falls on the just and the unjust. Then it'll be obvious that you belong to your Father."

There's an old rabbinic tale that tells of the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. When the Egyptians were drowned, it says the angels began to praise God and God lifted His hand mournfully and silenced the angels and said, "The work of My hands are sunk in the sea and you would sing?" God loved Pharaoh and God loved Pharaoh's soldiers because God is love. Be manifesting your sonship by praying for your persecutors and loving your enemies.

In Psalm 145:15, we read this. Listen to it carefully. "The eyes of all look expectantly to You, and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing." Who is the source of all supply for every living thing? It is God. All men receive common grace, providential love. Not all receive that very, very special love that is reserved for God's covenant people who come to the blood of Christ.

As an illustration, look at Genesis 17:20, "As for Ishmael." Ishmael was an illegitimate son, not the covenant son of Abraham, not the one God had planned for the Messianic line, but a son taken in adultery from Hagar. "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee. Behold I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. Twelve princes shall he beget, and I'll make him a great nation."

Did you hear that? God is even gracious to an illegitimate son. God is even gracious to a 'not a people,' to an outcast. That's God's love. But verse 21 says, "But My covenant will I establish with Isaac." Listen, God loved Ishmael, but He had something real special for Isaac. God loves all, and the world, but He has something very special for His covenant people who come in faith to Christ. Common grace is a wonderful thing, providential love is a wonderful thing, but it will not save you. For that, you must come to Christ.

Jesus says, "Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, and thereby you will manifest your sonship." Number four, exceed your fellow men. This is a brief and clear point. Verse 46, "For if you love them who love you, what reward have you?" I mean, if you just go around love the people in your group, are you to be commended? If you just love the people who agree with you and think like you and belong to your little thing, are you to be commended? Are you to receive some kind of reward? "Do not even the tax collectors the same?"

I want you to know, folks, that you can never in any way imagine the emotion of the Pharisees and the scribes when He got done with that one sentence. "Do not even the tax collectors the same?" I mean, they must have gone into real fits. If there was anybody they hated it was the publicans. Why? Because these were renegade, traitor Jews who had committed treason against Israel by lining up with the Roman government to extort from the people taxes to pad their own pockets. They had become the pawns of the Romans.

Literally, a Roman citizen would buy a certain territory in the Roman empire and he would have the rights to exact the taxes out of that territory, then he would hire renegade rabblerouser Jews who wanted only money and thought nothing of their people. Those Jews would then collect the tax, and they had to get a certain amount for the government, and all the rest they could skim off for themselves. They became despised, despicable. In fact, you read Matthew, you read Mark, you read Luke, and you will find again and again and again the despised character of the publicans, or tax collectors, defined in this passages.

Now He says to them, "If you love them who love you, what reward have you? You just love the people with your own pride and your own prejudice and your own narrow little thing. You're no better than traitors and renegades and publicans, because they love their group too." In other words, "You don't prove you belong in My Kingdom." They thought, "We have love, we love the people in our group." He says, "Yeah, well that's great. So do the worst people in the human race. They do that. They love each other. Murderers have something in common, so do thieves and robbers and adulterers and extortioners and whatever."

You know, it's interesting to me, in just doing some reading about the criminal mind. Some people can't wait to get back in prison because that's where their element is. Do you know that? One of the major reasons that people commit crimes again and again is because they're more at home in the jail than they are on the outside because that's their people. They love those people.

"You're no better than that," He says. "If all you can do is love the people in your group." If you think that was a blow, the next one was even worse. He says in verse 47, "If you greet your brethren only, what do you more than others? Don't even the Gentiles do that? If all you could do is warmly embrace," and the word 'greet' having to do with a warm embrace with a kiss, is as it was done in the East, "If you only have a warm and affectionate embrace for your brothers, you're no better than a Gentile."

Now folks there's only one thing worse than a tax collector. What was that? A Gentile. Jesus didn't pull any punches. When He told them they were no better than tax collectors and Gentiles, He was really getting them where they hurt. "Some kind of religion you've got," He says. "You're no better."

Look at the statement in the middle of verse 47, I just love this statement. "What do you more than others?" What makes you different? If you don't exceed the human standard, you're no different. Why should you be rewarded for being like everybody else? Why should God reserve His Kingdom for you? Why should God reserve His crowns for you? Why should God pour out His blessings on you? You're no better than anybody else.

This is a devastating statement, folks. He's saying that religious people are no better than heathen people. He's saying that people who function in the temple are no better than people who extort. "You're all sinners," you see. It's just a matter of kind of sin. You're no better than the rest. What do you do more than anybody else? What makes you different?

Beloved that's a question for us to face, those of us that are Christians. What makes us different in the world? Are we different on the job because our ethics are different, our conversation is different, our attitude is different, our love is different? Are we different in our homes, are we different in our communities? Because if we're not different, we have nothing to say to this society that they're going to believe.

Oswald Sanders said, "The Master expects from His disciples such conduct as can be explained only in terms of the supernatural." And if your conduct can only be explained in terms of the supernatural, then you've got something to say to the society, they're going to take note. But if you're like everybody else, what is the difference? What do you have that they don't have? If we're to speak to this age and call this godless age to Jesus Christ and let them know that there's something real about Christ, it'll be when our lives are unique have no other explanation than that God is there.

So Jesus says, "Love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, manifest our sonship, and exceed our fellow men," and one more. "Be like our God." This is the sunnum bonum. This is the epitome of His statement, verse 48. "Therefore," all these four only lead up to this, "Be perfect." I've heard people say, "Oh, yes, but He means 'mature.' He means you need to be growing, you need to be moving along, you need to becoming along, and just growing up." Listen, He says, "Be perfect." How prefect? "As perfect as your Father who is in Heaven." And He's not just coming along, he's there.

The point is this, you are to be like God. You say, "That standard is too high." You're right, and that's exactly what He wanted the Pharisees to know. You can't make it. I think this beautifully illustrated in Matthew 19, a I want you see this very briefly, and then we'll draw to a conclusion. You know this because you've heard it before, but let me read it to you. Matthew 19:23. "Jesus said to His disciples, 'Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall with difficulty enter the kingdom of heaven.'"

Now this is a very hard statement for them to hear, that a rich man shall with difficulty enter the kingdom. You know why that was hard? Because they believed that rich people got into the kingdom easier than everybody else. Why? Because their system taught you get into the Kingdom by works. The richer you are, the greater your works. Why? You can buy more lambs to sacrifice. You can buy more bullocks to sacrifice. You can give more money into the temple treasury. In other words, you're more religious. You can buy your way into the kingdom. The richer you are, the more sacrifices you make, the more money you give, the greater ease you'll have in getting into the kingdom.

However, Jesus reverses the whole deal. "A rich man with difficulty enters the kingdom." How difficult? "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Now I've heard people say all kinds of things about this. They say, "Well, it's just too bad Jesus said this; tt's very confusing. A camel can't get through the eye of a needle." Well, that's pretty obvious. I got that right off the bat. Camels cannot get through the eye of a needle.

I've heard all kinds of things. "If you could arrange the molecules of a camel in a straight line and you could put him through the eye of needle. If you could reduce a camel to liquid, you could eye drop it through the eye of a needle." On and on and on. I've even heard a deal about a needle gate. You know, a little low gate and all the camels had to crawl through. If they were going to build such a gate, I don't think archaeologists have ever found such a one, but if they were going to build one for camels, they wouldn't build it like that, they'd make it big enough for camels to go through. I mean, they were totally inept in those days.

What is He saying? He is saying it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter into Heaven. You say, "But a camel can't go through the eye of a needle." And that's what He's saying, "Nneither can a rich man buy his way into Heaven." It's just as impossible.

That's the next verse. "When His disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed," and they wouldn't have been if they knew about a needle gate. They said, "Who then can be saved?" If a rich man can't be saved, who can? "Jesus beheld them and said unto them, 'With this man this is impossible. With God, all things are possible." You want to know what He's saying? Nobody can be saved. Not a rich man, a poor man, or anybody in between. The man with the most possible potential money can't do it; nobody can be saved on his own. Nobody can do it through flesh or works, but with God anything is possible.

What Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount is the same thing, "Be perfect." They're supposed to say, "But I can't be perfect!" And that's when He says, "Right. If you fall short of perfection, you need a Savior." That's where Jesus comes in and brings to you what Peter calls 'the divine nature' and makes you like God, a partaker of His nature. Then God, in a miracle of salvation, does for you what you could never do for yourself - be like God. When you came to Jesus Christ, positionally, you were made like God. You were given His eternal life, His righteousness, you became like Him in that sense. Now, you need to bring your behavior into harmony with your position.

Listen, a Christian is not someone who keeps the Sermon on the Mount. A Christian is somebody who knows he can't, and comes to Jesus Christ for forgiveness for the sin of falling short, and receives from Christ the forgiveness and the power to begin to live these principles. That's the point of the message. Even when you fail, you're forgiven, because Christ has paid the price for your sin. That's the message.

So, back to where I started. If you're not a Christian, what's the message to you? If you don't love like this, that's a sin, and if you're a sinner, you need a Savior. Jesus Christ will come in and forgive your sin of lovelessness. Jesus will cleanse your life and plant His love in your heart, and then He will teach you how to love the way He wants you to love. For some of you, this is a call to salvation. For some of you, it's an exhortation to let the love that's there flow.

My favorite illustration about loving an enemy is this one. Abraham Lincoln was held in contempt by a man named Mr. Stanton. He called Lincoln, "A low, cunning clown," and he nicknamed him 'the original gorilla.' He said that men were foolish to wander around Africa trying to capture a gorilla when they could find one in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln never said anything to Stanton, and because Stanton was the best man for the job, when Lincoln needed a war minister for the United States, he chose Mr. Stanton. He appointed him over all of the soldiers of the United States. He treated him with love and courtesy and the years passed.

The night an assassin's bullet tore out Lincoln's life, in a little room to which the President's body was taken, there stood that same Mr. Stanton, looking down into the silent face of Abraham Lincoln with all it's ruggedness and character. Speaking through his tears, he said, "There lies the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen." Because Mr. Lincoln could love him with a forgiving love, he received and return his adoration.

Beloved, Jesus is calling us to love our unlovely, unlovable world with a love that knows no discrimination. Such a love will show that we're like God, and reveal God to them. That's the beginning of an effective evangelism. May God help us to love the way we are to love to manifest His nature. Let's pray.

Lord, we're so much aware here in our own church of people with needs: transportation for the elderly and the handicapped, housecleaning for old people and people who are handicapped. People need jobs, houses, medical, legal, financial help. We have children who need help, like Buddy, that we mentioned this morning. We have kids at the juvenile hall, people in the jails and the hospitals. We need some people whose hearts are filled with love to touch these people, to reach out, pick up the wounded and the needy. Lord, we need to love each other no matter where we are, in human definition, the way You love all and are good to all. Teach us to love that we may be known as Your children. In Jesus' name, Amen.