Love in the Kingdom
Kingdom Living May 11, 2025 Matthew 5:38-48 Notes
Have you ever been wronged so deeply that your first instinct was to strike back? Maybe it was a harsh word, a betrayal, or someone who simply made your life miserable. The world teaches us to stand our ground, defend our rights, and get even. But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers us a different way—a kingdom way.
Jesus calls His followers not to live by the law of retaliation but by the law of love. Kingdom love doesn’t play by the world’s rules. It refuses revenge. It reaches across enemy lines. And it reflects the heart of God. What does love in the kingdom look like according to Jesus?
In the gospel of Matthew 5:31-37, Jesus taught His disciples that true righteousness in the kingdom of heaven required a greater love than what was taught by the religious leaders of that day. As Kingdom citizens, we can answer Christ’s call to live according to His greater love.
Audio
All right. Good morning, church. Once again, happy Mother's Day. We're glad to be here with you as we continue our series entitled Kingdom Living. And we've been going verse by verse through the three chapters in Matthew, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, which has been called the Sermon on the Mount.
And in this sermon, which many have called the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived, King Jesus lays out his description of what it looks like to be followers of the King and to live counterculturally to the world, to live in a way that it shows the world what it looks like to live as kingdom citizens. And now we're in chapter five, verses 38 through 48, in a message I've entitled Love in the Kingdom. Because King Jesus addresses what it looks like to love the way God loves and to show the world God's kind of love. Now, I wonder, have you ever been wronged so deeply that your first instinct was to strike back, was to hurt back? They hurt you.
I want to hurt them back. Maybe it was a harsh word. Maybe you felt betrayed. Maybe they just made you feel miserable and you wanted to make them feel miserable, too. And this is the way the world teaches us, to stand our ground, to take a stand, defend our rights, to get even, or maybe even get better than even.
This is the world's way. But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers a different way, a kingdom way, if you will. He offers a way of love. Jesus calls his followers. Instead of following the law of retaliation, he says, I want you to follow the law of love.
Kingdom love. It doesn't play by the world's rules. It doesn't retaliate. It refuses to revenge. It reaches across enemy lines.
It reflects the heart of God. It's this new kind of love, the kind of love we see demonstrated in Jesus. Because in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us about this kind of love, and he calls us to a kind of love that shows the true righteousness of being members of God's family. It's a love that's different than the way the religious leaders of his day were teaching. It's also very different from the world.
As kingdom citizens, we're called to love the way Christ loves. As we encounter the text today, we'll encounter the word love four times in the text. Every time, it's the Greek word agape. And those of you that have been students together with us as we study God's word. There are several Greek words for love.
One of them is agape. It means God's unconditional love. There are other Greek words for love, like phileo. Phileo is. It's conditional love.
It's brotherly love. The city of Philadelphia is named from that Greek root word, phileo. It means, I love you because you're my brother. I love you because you're my sister. Eros is another Greek word.
It's sensual love. It's where we get the word erotic. But the Greek word agape is otherworldly. It's God's kind of love. It's not, I love you because of I love you in spite of, I love you because God's love has been poured out in me.
This is the kind of love, this greater love that Jesus calls us to. And as we look at the text, I think we'll see three ways that we can answer the call of Jesus to this greater lifestyle of love. Let's look at the text. We'll start at verse 38 of the book of Matthew, chapter 5. You've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same. You therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect. This is God's word. Amen.
We're looking for three ways to respond to Christ's call to his greater kingdom, love. Here's the first. This greater love responds with grace, not retaliation. It responds with grace, not retaliation. Jesus continues this formula that he's been following in the Sermon on the Mount.
This time we get number five and number six of six, antithesis, antithesis, if you will, where he contrasts what the Pharisees and the scribes have been teaching about the law of Moses and what they really mean from God's perspective. And so we know as we look back when Jesus started these six comparison, he said, you've heard it said, you shall not commit murder. But I say, if you're angry and demean your brother or sister, you've committed murder. In your heart, you've heard it said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say, if you look at a woman with lust, in your heart, you've committed adultery.
In your heart, you've heard it said, you can give a divorce for any reason, But I say, if you give divorce without cause, that you've committed adultery. Now, you've heard it said that as long as you don't use God's name, you can make an oath. But I say, let your yes be yes and your no be no, because everything belongs to God anyway. So those are the first four. Now he's got number five and number six.
And here he goes, you've heard it said.
And he says, love your neighbor. And then he surprises us. You've heard it said, you'll not find this anywhere in the Old Testament. Okay, I skipped it. I'm sorry, I skipped the first one.
You've heard it said, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Then the other one is, you've heard it said, love your neighbor. I better start with them in the right order. You've heard it said, eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth. Now, we've heard this one all of our lives.
The Latins called this the lex talionis, the law of retaliation. And many use it and say, well, this eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth is kind of harsh. Well, actually, it was to prevent a more harsh response of revenge killings. So what people would do individually, if you poke my eye out, I'm going to poke both of yours out. And it would escalate.
Well, if you did that, then I'm going to do this. And it would get worse and worse. So actually, this law of eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, was not to be applied individually by individuals, but it was an instruction to judges so that when they gave a punishment for a crime, the punishment would match the crime. You can find this in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 19. It says, the judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he meant to do to his brother.
So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and the rest shall hear and fear and shall never commit any evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. And so this was an instruction not to the individual on how to respond, but to the judges on how to respond to those cases that were brought to them so that they would judge fairly and the crime would fit the punishment.
Jesus is saying, I say to you, that was never meant for you to apply as an individual. And here's what he says in contrast. You've heard it said eye for an eye. You've heard it said tooth for tooth. But I say, do not resist the one who is evil.
That's a hard word. That's hard. That's a difficult word, isn't it? Here's what he's saying. I'm saying to you, the law of love for kingdom people is to give up retaliation, to not return evil for evil, but to return good for evil.
This is a tough one. It's already tough to resist. He says, don't resist. Now, other places in the scripture says to resist the evil one, speaking of Satan, resist him. But here, a person that does evil towards you, don't oppose them, don't resist them, don't retaliate.
That's hard. It gets harder. If he left it right there, I could have probably gone, okay, that's a good word. I'll try to follow that. Lord, give me the grace to follow that.
But then he gives four examples. It makes it even harder. It's so countercultural. It's so different than the way we humanly respond to hurt. He gives four examples.
Here's the first one. The first example he gives, if someone should slap you on the right cheek, turn to him the other. Also this idea of right cheek, right, that's the place of authority. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. The right side is the side of authority.
If someone literally backhands you on the right cheek in ancient days and even in modern days, that's a public affront, inviting a fight like that. And Jesus says, offer them the other. And there's a certain courage that goes with that. Like, pow.
Like that. Like, I'm not going to hit you back. You want to take your best shot? Go ahead, take another shot. Go ahead and work that out.
I remember a pastor that used to work with us years ago named Jamie. Pastor Jamie. He and his family moved to Iraq in 2003 as missionaries from our church. And we're working there, reaching Muslims. And I remember him telling me that young Muslim men were so angry that before he could share the gospel with them, he said he just kind of visualized it like this.
That as he approached them, he had to let them hit him a couple of times before he could get his arms around him and hug them. Kind of like a picture of how he visualized, rather than fighting back verbally. It was kind of an imagery he said that God gave him, was like. It's hard for them to hit me if I'm hugging them. They might get me a couple times on the way in.
But if I get in there and show them love, they can't really get a good shot at me now because I've got them in God's embrace. That came to my mind thinking about this passage. They hit you on the right cheek, go ahead and give them the left. Don't retaliate. Don't return evil for evil.
That was the first example. Man, that one's hard. And can I confess to you, I haven't always done well at that one. God's still working on me. In fact, when my sons were going to school and if one of them came home saying they were being bullied, I didn't tell them what Jesus said.
You know what I told them? Stand up for yourself. Hit him back, dad, but I might get kicked out of school. I said, that's all right. I'll pick you up.
But I told you. I don't know if I told him the right thing. It doesn't seem like I did here, but it's just the way I was brought up by my father and my grandfather. And Jesus says something so radical here. It's hard.
Don't return evil for evil. Return good for evil. Turn the other cheek. Don't retaliate. Doesn't say you can't talk to them.
Doesn't say you can say, take your best shot. I'm not going to hit you back, bro. I don't know what you're so angry about. That takes more courage, I think, than hitting back to try to address the heart issue. Maybe I'll do better as a grandfather.
We'll see. Here's the second example. He's not finished. He says, don't return violence for violence. And then he says, don't return financially suit for suit.
He says, if someone sues you and takes your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And this is one of the things, if you read the Old Testament, that when someone would borrow money from someone else, they would give them their tunic as collateral. And you couldn't get your tunic back. Because people were poor in those days, and they might just have one suit of clothes and one really good cloak. In fact, if you were poor, the Levitical law said if someone is poor and you're taking their tunic as collateral, you have to give it back to them at bedtime so they can stay warm at night, and then they can return it to you in the morning.
But Jesus says, if somebody sues you, throw in extra. Throw in your outer cloak as well.
Violence, finances. Don't retaliate. That's his second example. His third example is if someone forces you to walk a mile, offer to walk too. That's where we get the phrase today that we still use, go the extra mile.
The Greek word here for forces you is actually a Persian word originally that passed into the Greek. And it was from where the Persian king would send a messenger or someone and he would empower them to take someone's donkey or horse or chariot or whatever to help them get the message out that they could do that. And then it came into Roman rule, that idea. And Roman soldiers, if they were carrying a heavy pack, a heavy load, they could grab any Jewish citizen and force them to carry it for one mile, literally. The Greek word there for mile is milion.
It means literally 1,000 paces. And so once they had walked 1,000 paces, that was what the Roman government called to. And so when Jesus said, if someone makes you, they were like, that's happened to me where I've had a Roman soldier make me carry his pack for a mile. And you can go to the Middle east and to Greece and to Turkey, and you can still see Roman roads. And they had it marked.
They had the mile markers just like i95. It was very, very orderly, offered go two miles. And then his fourth example that he gives is that if someone begs you, if someone asks something from you, don't refuse it. For example, instead of retaliating, give good. It's a hard word.
It's a challenging word. Don't refuse. Don't turn them away. Christ is our example to follow in this. He's the one who set the example for us.
Peter talks about it in his letter. He says to this, you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats.
Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He did not retaliate. That's our example. The Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He was probably contemplating the Sermon on the Mount when he wrote this.
Perhaps he says, let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all, if possible.
So far, it depends on you. Live peaceably with all, beloved. Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary. If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That's just the best summary. Instead of retaliating evil for evil, let the love of God, which is yours in Christ Jesus, be your response.
It's a challenging word, but this is agape love. It's unconditional. It's not based on a condition that's favorable. It's based on, does the love of God reside in your heart? If it does, that's how you'll respond.
If it doesn't, if you're easily offended, if every little thing hurts your feelings, that means you haven't done what Jesus invites us to do, to deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me. If you're easily offended. In fact, what I would say to you, if you're a Christ follower and you've made him king, you'll finally, as you grow in Christ, come to the place where you're unoffendable. Because your identity is so wrapped up in what Jesus says about you that when someone does evil to you, you'll just be thinking to yourself, I wonder what's going on in his heart.
I wonder what's going on that. That evil came out of them towards me. Because I'm nothing. You know, Jesus lives in me. You know, I can take a couple of shots.
Here, let me. Let me hug you. Anyway, let me see if I can get at the root of your problem.
Paul says it's like putting hot coals on their head because they're like, what? That's so opposite from the world. Have you heard of this lady, Corrie Ten Boom? Corrie Ten Boom. She's the author of a very popular Christian book, the Hiding Place.
Corrie 10 boom 10 boom Grew up in Germany and her parents were Christians. And they were so committed to Christ that when Hitler began to persecute the Jews. They began to hide them in their house. They had built a false wall so that they could hide in her house. But the SS found out, and when they did, they.
They put the Jews that they captured there in a concentration camp. But so did they put Corrie Ten Boom's whole family. Her parents died. The rest of her family died. Only she and her sister Betsy survived.
And both of them were in a concentration camp at Ravens, at Ravensbruck. And it was there that one of the cruelest guards took a special interest in her and Betsy and made life even more miserable than the concentration camp. Her sister Betsy finally starved to death, and only Corrie survived out of her whole family. Years later, she wrote the book, and she was traveling around from church to church, talking about her experiences and how Jesus had brought her through this horrible time and how God had given her the power to forgive. Now, at one of these conferences, she was speaking at a church in Munich that a man came to the front afterwards with tears in his eyes, an elderly gentleman.
And she looked at him and his hands were shaking. And then she looked up to his face and she recognized him. He was the guard. And as he came towards her, she began to feel the hatred that she thought she had released. But seeing him caused it to come to the surface.
And as she saw his lips moving, and he asked, saying, I have come to the Christ now, and I am so ashamed of what I did. Will you forgive me? In her heart, she felt her heart harden, and she knew she could never do it. But then the spirit in her, she began to pray. And she said, lord, show me how to do this.
Show me how to do this. And she said, help me to forgive him, because that's what she's been teaching. And even as she prayed, she felt, she says this, a surge of warmth and peace come over her. And then she felt herself saying, as if she weren't even saying it herself, I forgive you, brother, with all my heart. That's overcoming evil with good.
This is challenging, isn't it? This word that Jesus gives us today. I began to think about this, and I started to think, well, what about people that the government asked to become soldiers to defend our country? Does that mean they cannot take up arms? What about police officers who are called to protect and defend?
Does that mean we can't have a police force if we're going to live in a Christian? Does that mean we have to abstain and be passivists from all these places? Well, many do conclude that way. I don't and I take my guide from the scripture as well. What I look at to help me to balance this is Romans, chapter 13, for instance.
Paul talks about it here. He says, every person, let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God. And those that exist have been instituted by God. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.
Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.
So here Paul is talking to Christians and saying, don't break the law because God ordained the police officer and the soldier and those that are under God because God is over government and so don't. Because he says they don't bear the sword in vain. Some have used this passage, Martin Luther and others to talk about the right balance on how to achieve this. And so I would say that this also extends to us as fathers and mothers who are called to protect their children and their families. I think the scripture says that greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
And so I feel that I would be called to lay down my life in protection of my wife, my children, my grandchildren, or you. If I were in that situation, that might mean that in that authority position I would behave differently than turning the other cheek. But for me as an individual, Jesus says, if it's just you and them, I want you to seek the way of returning good or evil. Because who knows that that way of love might be the way that changes that person's heart. There might be exceptions where we are called to take up the sword.
You work that out. I don't want to soften Jesus word to us. I want it to rattle around in there and shake us up. Just as it did Corrie when she encountered that guard who came to her. We are called.
Has someone wronged you recently? A co worker? A family member? A spouse? Don't repay evil with evil.
Choose grace over retaliation. Extend mercy. This is what Jesus teaches to kingdom citizens. Here's the second way. Here's the second way.
This greater love reaches beyond friends to enemies. It reaches beyond friends to enemies. So now we're at verse 43. He says, you've heard that it was said this is the sixth of six antithesis where Jesus takes on Old Testament laws that have been misapplied by the scribes and the Pharisees. And he corrects them so that they are aimed at the heart.
He says, you've heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. You can look through the whole Old Testament, you cannot find that version of the law stated anywhere. Here's what had happened. The law actually said, love God with all your heart, all your strength, all your mind, all your soul, right? And love your neighbor as yourself.
That's what the law said. But the Pharisees, in their rabbinic reflections on this, looked at it and said, well, who's your neighbor? Oh, that's other Jews, okay? So if you're not a Jew, we don't have to love you. And I guess logically speaking, if we don't have to love you, that means we can hate you.
And so they had moved to the point where logic had taken them to the point that if you're a non Israelite, we can hate you. So they came to the point of, love your neighbor, hate your enemies.
That was their logical working that out. Here's what Jesus says, boy, he turns it upside down. But I say to you, this is final one. This is six of six. With my own authority as the Son of God, as the new Moses, if you will.
Moses went up on Mount Sinai and brought down the Ten Commandments. Jesus goes up on the Mount and brings down his sermon explaining what the law really meant all along. He says, I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Love your enemies. Pray for them.
Now, if I'm going to pray for an enemy, here's how I might pray. Lord, could you send fire down from heaven, please?
You think that's what he means? I don't think so. That's what some of the disciples, they were like, hey, Jesus, hey, remember when Elijah called fire down from heaven? Can we do that? Jesus said, no, that's not the way we're going to.
That's not the Kingdom way, okay? And I'm like, man, okay, that been an easy prayer to pray, like, send a lightning bolt, Lord, right? No, I don't think that's what he meant. That's not what he means. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Those who are currently persecuting you for your faith, for your belief, they're hurting you. Pray for them. I think it means to pray for their hearts, pray for their salvation, pay for their good, pray that they would be blessed. All of these Things. I think he has that in mind.
It's what he's talking about here. And so this is what he says. And it goes on. And so he says, besides, if you love those. Look at verse 46.
If you love those who love you, what reward is there? Do not even tax collectors do the same? So he picks out a group that was hated by the Jews. The tax collectors were Jews, too, but they were considered traitors because they were collecting taxes for the Roman Empire. And they were often thieves because they would collect more than that was necessary and skim it off the top.
So they hated them. They said, well, even tax collectors love the way you love. You love me, I love you. We're in love. That's just reciprocal love.
That's not what God's talking about. That's not what Jesus is talking about. He said, the kind of love I'm talking about is agape love. I love you not because you love me, but in spite of you. I just love you anyway because God's love has been poured out in me.
This is, he says, even the tax collectors. Can anybody in the world love somebody if they love them back?
Of course. It kind of works like this, too. In the world, if you stop loving me, I'm going to stop loving you back. It's conditional love. But agape love is unconditional.
It loves and keeps on loving. He says, if you greet your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Don't even the Gentiles do the same? Those are the ones we're supposed to call enemies. We're supposed to hate.
They even know how to love as good as you do, boy. Jesus, you really know how to hit the heart. You really know how to penetrate our hard hearts. There's a parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke. You might consider it the reader's digest version of the Sermon on the Mount.
It's like a shorter version. Here's what Jesus is saying in the book of Luke. In this same parallel section, he says, I say to you who hear, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. That's the golden rule. Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you.
That's what Jesus is teaching. And so we see Jesus on the cross, his seven last sayings of Jesus among them. As he looks at those that were mocking him, those that were crucifying him, he says, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. This is the Jesus who calls us to turn the other cheek. This is the Jesus who calls us to love our enemies and to pray for them.
And that's him praying on the cross to his Father. This is how Stephen, the first martyr, prayed as he was being stoned for preaching about Jesus. It says that heaven parted and he saw the Lord Jesus at the right hand of the Father. And with his dying breath he said, father, forgive them, Lord, forgive them. Do not hold this sin against them.
He prayed just as his Lord had prayed for his enemies. Who would you consider an enemy right now? Holy Spirit? Open our minds and think about it. Do you see a face in your mind right now?
Someone that. I wouldn't call them an enemy. I just don't like them. Maybe, you know. Exactly.
That's an enemy. It's somebody. Who do you consider an enemy right now? Is it someone who disagrees with your faith? Is it someone who disagrees with you politically?
Is it someone who is a former friend? You were pretty close, but you don't talk anymore. Is it a family member who you haven't talked to in years? Well, if she would say she was sorry because it was her fault.
Pray for them, bless them, love them. This is the radical love of the kingdom. This is the second way we love past friends, even our enemies. And here's the third way. This kind of greater love reflects the perfect character of our Father.
It shows that we are children of God, that we're different from the world. It reflects the perfect character of our Father. We're at verse 48, and you'll probably notice I didn't spend much time on verse 45. Let me take those two together. Because 45 he says so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
When you love your enemies, Jesus said, it makes you like your children of God. Why? Because God lets the sun rise on the evil and the good. God lets it rain on the just and the unjust. God is merciful on the good and the evil.
And if he weren't, none of us would be able to stand before Him. And if he weren't, if he wasn't willing to put his arms around us even when we were enemies so that he could bring us near and change our hearts and make us like Jesus, then where would we be? And so he loves us anyway. And then we see in verse 46, you therefore must be perfect. Oh, my goodness.
As your Heavenly Father is perfect. This is impossible. But yet. Let's unpack it for a second. The Old Testament doesn't word it quite like that.
The Old Testament says, you must be holy as the Lord is holy. Well, that's impossible too, isn't it? The Luke translation, the Luke gospel says, you must be merciful as your Father is merciful. Well, that's impossible too, isn't it? But all things are possible with Christ.
All things are possible with God. I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength. And so that word perfect. Let me help you with it for a second, because I need help with it too. The Greek word for perfect is teleos, which can also be translated complete to the end or to the level of maturity or wholeness.
And so here's what God is doing in us. It's what he was doing in Corrie 10. Boom. When that guard came forward, there was still something in her heart that had to be brought to the surface for her to die, to. To her to surrender.
And every time you get slapped, every time you get offended, he's bringing out that which is in you that needs to be perfected, brought to maturity. And so pray for me, and I'll pray for you. I want to be less like me and more like Jesus. I want to be more like my Father, who has adopted me through the love of Jesus, than like the world. God's still working on me.
A few years back, I'd said that so often, one of you made me a T shirt. I'm under construction. I've still got that T shirt right. God's still working on me. Still working on you.
That gives me hope. He says, be perfect, as your Father is perfect. Now, why would he tell you to do something you can't do? Well, the only way you can do it is through him. And one day we're going to be like Jesus completely.
That's what he's up to. And if he's trusted you with somebody who's persecuting you, someone who's hurt you, someone who's offended you, he's given you an opportunity to respond the way Jesus responds. First, John chapter 4 says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. And everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Every one of those Greek words right there is agape. Agape, love. God is love. It's his chief character trait. When we get the fruit of the spirit in our lives, the chief one, the very first one is for the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self control.
Right. But the first one is love. It's the chief mark. God is love. You want to be like your heavenly Father.
You want to be like your King Jesus. The mark of love is what we're called to. Some years ago, I was on a mission trip to Uganda, and we'd heard that there were some pastors that were there in a United nations refugee camp. And so we paid our church, raised the money and paid for them to come to the pastors conference that I was leading when I got there. And these are the five pastors.
They were from the Congo, from Kenya, a couple of them from Rwanda. And they had escaped war and genocide, even in Rwanda. One of them was Pastor Emmanuel. Pastor Emmanuel, when he was six years old, that's when the Rwandan genocide took place. And it was a battle that was between the Hutus and the Tutsis, these two tribal enemies.
And the Hutus had decided they were going to wipe out the minority Tutsis and also the Pygmies that were there that had been removed from the jungles and forced out, the Batwa. These two minority groups were so decimated that nearly a million of them were killed in a matter of days. Some reported that bodies were floating down the river in Rwanda with all these. Whenever Pastor Emmanuel was six years old, his entire family was murdered. His grandparents, his aunts, his uncles.
By the neighbors in the same village that they had grown up together with. Because of this tribal difference, they were killed by machete in terrible, ugly ways. His mother and Immanuel and his sister hid and escaped. And as he grew up, Emmanuel told us, he said, my dream was to grow up and become a soldier so I could have a weapon and I could return to my village and kill them all. That was his burning vision for life.
And so as he got a little older, he found out he could go to school in Uganda and it would be safer there anyway. And his mom and sister were. Had moved away from their home village, and they were still in hiding from those areas. And he got a scholarship to go to a school in Uganda. Now, little did he realize until he got there, it was a Christian school.
And while he was there, he came to Jesus. And as he was studying, he realized that God was calling him to forgive his neighbors that had murdered his family. And so he went back to Rwanda, and he got in contact with his sister and his mother. And he shared the gospel with them and what God had put on his heart to forgive. And they resisted.
They were angry. But over time, he said, they came to a place The Spirit changed their hearts and they agreed and they came up with a plan. And they had never been back to their home village. But they decided to go back to their home village to make a feast, invite all their neighbors and to publicly confess their own sin. Because he said he was moved by Romans 3:23.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God to confess their own sin and their own hatred. They had in their hearts that they wanted to kill them and to forgive them for killing their family. And you know what? They did it. They went back to that village and they did that very thing and they forgave them.
He says his mother and his daughter still live there now. They moved back home and they're still ministering in that village. This is how he closes. I asked him to write it down. And if you want to read my blog online, you can read his entire testimony.
But here's how he closed as he wrote this down for me. He says we embraced each other, speaking of the villagers and I prayed for them. And since then my mom has been sharing with our so called former enemies what we have. And I go on preaching the gospel he now preaches in the refugee camps of Uganda. He says, I thank Almighty God who sent Jesus to save me.
I am now a child of God, a new creation. No judgment is on me. And I believe Jesus will never leave me. Glory be to Jesus who saved me. And he has given me a beautiful wife and a daughter.
And my hope is in Jesus. And I was a terrible sinner, but I will not fail to save others through the powerful blood of Jesus. That's how he closes his testimony. Jesus love changed his heart and caused him to be able to love his enemies. Ask yourself, does the love in my heart reflect the love of the Father or do I still have hatred?
Do I still want to get even? Do I still want to harm? Or am I at the place now where God has brought me, where I want to show mercy, I want to show grace, I want to show kindness. I don't want to return evil for evil. I want to return good for evil.
May this word penetrate our hearts. That we would respond with grace, not retaliation. That we would reach beyond friends to enemies, that we would reflect the perfect character and love of our Heavenly Father. This is what Jesus is calling us to today. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, would you transform our hearts, especially those of us who are thinking of someone that has hurt us. That Lord, you would allow us to think less of ourselves and more of you so that we would be able to love even our enemies. And Lord, I first of all just want to pray for those of us that might be here today. And we've treated God in such a way that we've been like enemies to Him. We haven't been following Him.
Is that you? You came in today because it was Mother's Day. Someone invited you. But you've never surrendered your life to King Jesus. You've never given your life to Him.
You can do it right now through prayer, through expressing your faith. You could pray with me right now. It's not so much the words as it is the attitude of your heart. Would you pray with me? Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner.
I need a savior. I believe you died on the cross for me and that you were raised from the grave, that you live today. Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sin.
Adopt me into your family. I want to be a child of God. And I want you as my king, my Lord, my Savior. All the days of my life. I will follow you.
If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing he'll save you. Others are here and you're a Christ follower. But this is a difficult word and you're thinking of someone and they hurt you bad. And Jesus is saying, follow the law of love, not retaliation.
Lord, help us with that, especially those people that we're thinking of right now. Lord, help us to be reconciled. In Jesus name, Amen.
Audio
Thank you so much for being here today. I know a lot of you. It's your first time with us and you've hopped in on Mother's Day, and we're so thankful you're here. We have been going through a series together, but thankfully this is a series on the Sermon on the Mount, where our Savior and Lord Jesus is going through various topics that are very powerful instructions to us as a people, as a church. And so you won't feel out of place today.
Don't worry. You haven't missed something crucial. But I would recommend to you, you, you can go on our website and see what we've been preaching on as we've been going through Matthew chapter five through seven together. So here we are again in this scripture that we call the Sermon on the mount. In Matthew 5, we've called it Kingdom Living because it seems that Christ is really teaching us what it means to be citizens of his kingdom, both now and forevermore.
This is like the ideal of what it looks like to live as Christians in. In a world that is fallen, is broken, is very tough at times. And you know this. You're experiencing this in your workplace, in your life. There's ups and downs.
You're riding a roller coaster sometimes. And so Christ is now coming into that and telling us how to be radically different than the rest of our culture, radically different than the world. We're gonna be focusing on a section of scripture that I have to admit is somewhat personally challenging, but because I, and I imagine a lot of you in the room will feel this way, too. I want to be tough when I need to be tough. I want to protect the things I need to protect.
And so this one kind of pushes me a little bit to try to understand what God's up to. We've entitled this one Love in the Kingdom. It's Mother's Day, we got to talk a little bit about love. And so at Father's Day, we'll probably just completely bust on. Guys, I'm going to try not to do that this year.
It seems like that normally happens. Mothers, we love you. Fathers, we're not going to try to do that this year. But anyway, so we're getting into this thing where Christ is talking about true love, not the world's kind of love, but this greater call of love. But it causes us to ask some really important questions.
And that is, what do I do when others have wronged me? What do I do when I feel offended? What do I do when someone, I guess maybe this has happened to you? Physically slaps me, but probably that's not common. Normally they're slapping you with their words.
They've said something they shouldn't. They've hurt your feelings. What do I do with that? What do I do when someone takes me to court? What do I do when someone tries to rob me?
Like, what do I do to defend myself? What is the right way to show love? This is where Christ is on today. This is a very powerful word to you. You may have been betrayed.
You may. You may have. Someone has just made your life miserable and you're wondering, okay, I'm supposed to be walking with Jesus, but right now I want to hurt some folks. You might feel that way at times. So what do I do with those things?
And Jesus is going to offer a kingdom way. Jesus calls his followers to not live under the law of retaliation. This is a common human concept. In fact, I think we come out this way at least. I've observed this in my kids.
They come out with some kind of somewhat broken idea of fairness. He hit me, so I hit him back. Well, yeah, but you hit him back twice as hard. This skewed kind of retaliation that is built into human nature. And you don't have to teach kids how to do this.
You don't have to be taught how to do this. You have this sense that if someone wrongs me, I'm going to turn it up a couple of knobs. Like, they came in at volume five. I'm coming in at volume at least seven, right? I'm bringing it.
And that's a human kind of tendency. And Christ says, that's not the way of the kingdom. That's not the way of Christ's kingdom. So we're going to be in gospel of Matthew 5, 31, 37. Here Jesus is teaching his disciples and all of those and hearing a great crowd about the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven that requires a greater love than what's being taught by the religious leaders of that day.
It's not culturally what they're hearing. They're hearing a different word, and Christ is going to show them more. We're going to see the text, give us three ways that we can answer Christ's call to a greater love. So let's dig into the scripture. Matthew, chapter 5, verse 38 through 48.
Listen to this church. It says, you have heard that. It was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, Turn to him the other also.
And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
For he makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Look, even the tax collectors do the same. And if you greet your brothers, greet only your brothers. What more are you doing than others?
Do not even the Gentiles do the same. You therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Boy, that ends tough, doesn't it? God bless the reading of His Word. Amen.
I pray that this would call us to a greater kind of love. I know it's hard, some of it, at first hearing you go, man, wow, wow. Be perfect, for I am perfect. Be holy, for I am holy. This is a tough thing to hear.
The first way in which Christ calls us to a greater love is this, that we would respond with grace and not retaliation.
He begins the fifth and then the sixth of these antithesis. These you have heard. But I say this counterpoint that Christ is doing here, and he starts in verse 38. You have heard. What have you heard?
You've heard an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now, this is common law. This has been common law for thousands of years. Church. This is back in the Roman day, where Christ is here preaching in the Latin.
We would have called this lex talionis, which is the idea of an eye for an eye or just whatever has happened to you, exact retaliation. And so this is a principle that governments have been using for centuries, for millennia. And Christ says, that may be true for governments, but when it comes to you, that's not how we operate. We don't operate based on retaliation, he says. Instead, I say to you, verse 39, I.
This is this emphatic use. He's literally saying, I. I say to you that don't resist the one who is evil. Now, he's quoting a little bit of something here when he's talking about an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. This comes out of the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 19 where it says, the judges shall inquire diligently.
And if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and the rest shall hear and fear and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. All right, so he's quoting Deuteronomy.
And is he now saying, hey, so now I'm throwing out the law here? Well, that would be confusing considering Christ has already said, I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. So he's not talking about the judicial system here, here, this church. Christ is not coming here saying, hey, we should no longer enforce justice as a government. That is not what he's saying.
He's saying, when someone comes and offends you, you should handle it differently personally. There's a difference between the way a nation should handle things corporately and the way we should as Christians, handle things individually. There's a thing I'm observing in our society, and maybe you have, too, maybe you've experienced it, that people are very, very offendable. Maybe they've always been. But it seems really obvious to me now that everything hurts everybody's feelings.
And sometimes it's just things that are just true that hurt people's feelings. And perhaps at times, church, we say things, even among Christians, we say things that are true but lack the seasoning of salt on them. And so they're too harsh. They may be true, but they're not kind. But we live in a culture where everything is really touchy and everybody's a little on edge.
And Jesus is saying, that's not the way the kingdom of God works. The kingdom of God looks different. He says something wild right away. Verse 39, he says, do not resist the one who is evil. Now, he doesn't say, do not resist the evil one.
There's a big difference there. In fact, Paul would say exactly that. Resist the evil one. Here he's talking about people. He's not talking about the demonic.
He's not talking about Satan. He's talking about people who do evil stuff. And then he tells us how that looks. And these are challenging. Aren't these challenging church?
When he says, the one who slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other. You've heard this your whole life, probably. Turn the other cheek. Turn the other cheek. Have you ever actually considered what that looks like?
Have you ever actually tried to put that into practice into your life? That is wild. So this person has just totally cut me down and I'm supposed to just go, come on the other side. Still got room for you, friend. And why the right cheek again?
Here he is talking about. Earlier he talked about the right eye and the right hand, but now he's talking about the right cheek. The reason being is most of society. I'm sorry, lefties in the room. Who are my lefties?
Any lefties in the room? Praise God for you. For some reason, most of culture has looked at you and thought some something was going on that was wacky with you. All right? It's totally cool.
However, you would mess up Jesus illustration. All right, so most people are right handed. And so the way to insult somebody would be to backhand them. And so you're gonna backhand them across their right cheek. He's saying when someone comes and basically picks a fight, they've come to insult you.
This isn't accidental. This is turn to them the other cheek.
This is intense. What does it look like to turn the other cheek? Is he talking literal here? Maybe, but I think it's more this idea that we are under control. Look, he started the sermon on the mount by saying, blessed are the meek.
Meekness is not weakness. Meekness is power. Is strength under control. It's a place where you've reached, where someone may be trying to scold you or hurt you or trying to get a rise out of you because they want to see what happens when the Christian breaks. They want to see what happens when the hey, what if the pastor will snap?
If y' all are trying to test me like this, you're going to have to work really hard. But I don't think you should. Believers be doing that.
Non believers in the room. You've come here. I'm thankful you're here. You might do this accidentally, but this is this idea that we are the meek, we are the peacemakers. We come with a certain kind of power under control.
We have the Holy Spirit who raised Christ Jesus from the dead. And yet we have the power to not be just so offendable all the time. Instead, we might turn the other cheek. What does that mean? I like a couple of writers on the issue.
Spurgeon once said we are to be as the anvil when bad men are the hammers. Now you can beat the absolute snot out of an anvil with a hammer and the anvil will win. I like Spurgeon's thought on this is, we're not resisting. We're not pushing back. We're not.
But we are under control and we are firm. Sometimes people are cutting you, insulting you, slapping you, because you have been a person who has shown Christ well. And they're not resisting you, friend. They're resisting the Lord. And that's the moment where you just say, okay, it's not about me.
It's something going on with you. And I'm praying for you. This is, I think, why you can boldly love your enemy and pray for them. Turn the other cheek. John Stott writes on this and says, depicts.
This depicts the strong, not the weakness. This depicts the strong whose control of himself or herself and love of others is so powerful that he rejects absolutely every imaginable form of retaliation. Have you reached that place yet, friend? This is what it looks like to be a kingdom citizen. Now, I recognize some of you in the room have been insulted, ridiculed, cut down since maybe you were a child.
There's some really old pain there. Maybe. Maybe your parents were very hard on you, and so it's hard for you to come under control. But this is what Christ has called you to. And he has not just called you.
He is going to empower you. Some of you need a daily prayer on the way to work, because you know that's the very place where people are going to make you want to snap.
And that's on the way to work, where you need to be saying, lord, you have given me everything. I need to be meek, to be under control. Would you show up in a powerful way today? Name the person by name. Oh, my goodness, Lord.
You know, I gotta talk to old whatever, old Jonathan today. He's gonna come in, be a pain in my neck.
God, help me to be meek. Help me to show them the love of Christ, because I'm supposed to represent you. This is what it means to turn the other cheek. Not that you're weak or that you're not. No, you're actually powerful enough to not retaliate like a child, because children do that.
Oh, he hit me. I hit him back. Good job, adult. Good job. Christ is saying, the Kingdom is more than this.
He goes on to say something really hard. And some of you have had to experience this in your life. If they sue you and try to take your tunic, give them your cloak as well. Now, those words are not words we use often, but here's what he's speaking to. The tunic would be like the inner garment.
It would be Important to you for sure. But he says, hey, if they come and take this, give them your outer garment as well. Well, now I'm going to freeze at night. Lord. There's a principle that he's trying to unpack here, though.
He's saying, hey, look, if someone comes and takes your less expensive stuff, be willing to give up your more expensive stuff. The outer garment is more. I like what one commentator writes. He says the more costly of the two garments is the cloak, the one that you would give. And he says it is wise rather to surrender more than is demanded.
This is really powerful language here. So if someone comes trying to sue you that you would, instead of just resisting and fighting, you just say, fine, this. What does this mean? What does this tell us about ourselves? This must mean that I have such a powerful level of trust that my stuff is not scary to me.
Like losing it, gaining it. It's just stuff. And we start to go, okay, God, I know you own the cattle on a thousand hills. You can take care of me no matter what's going on in my life. And so if someone comes and they're materialistic and they're trying to take my stuff, whatever, dude, that's fine.
That's what you're about. Instead, I want to be about loving you and showing you grace. Then he shares this third, and then a fourth. A third one is if they force you to go a mile. The word force here, I'm going to teach you a little something.
This is the word, the Greek word angaruo Angaru. You can use that later. You can name your kids that, Whatever you want to do. Angeruo. This is actually from Persian origin.
It means. It's this idea of taking someone a thousand paces, forcing them to go on a journey that they weren't ready to go on. It comes all the way back from Persian times when the Jews would have experienced this. Now through the Greek times and now to the Roman times. The thing, the principle is still true.
So there was this thing that could happen if they needed to run a letter somewhere. Even in Roman times, if the soldiers wanted some help carrying their equipment, they could make citizens carry their equipment for a mile. Some of you are like, I haven't walked a mile in a while. This would have been a challenge for me. But they could do this.
And so this would have been familiar language for them to hear. They've been hearing this since for generations. The Persians used to use this principle. If they needed to get letters somewhere really fast, and you happen to be on horseback, they could just Say, all right. King Cyrus says, you got to run this letter.
Get it done. Wow. Imagine that. Imagine that you're just driving down the road and somebody knocks on the. Alright, I need you to go a couple miles and drop this off.
Like, forget that. I'm out. I looked this up this week. Y' all are gonna. This has nothing to do with anything.
I'm just a weirdo. All right. Did you know that the police technically can commandeer your vehicle under certain circumstances? I thought that was just the movies. Apparently there are certain times this can happen.
John, we gotta talk about this later. I'm like, what in the world? If I were a police officer, I'd be like, not that car. Absolutely, yeah. Go two miles.
Jesus says, he says, if you've been forced into this, go a second mile.
Wow. And guess what happens then? That person moves from. I'm in a position of authority where I'm making you do something to. In a position of receiving grace.
Wow, you would do that? You would go extra for me. We still say this church go the extra mile. It's a phrase we still use. Guess what?
You've been called to this. And this is a powerful way to show people the love and mercy of Christ Jesus. Go the extra mile. And if anyone begs you, the fourth one he gives, do not refuse him. Don't turn away.
In fact, this example comes to my mind of the the two disciples coming up to the gate called Beautiful. And there's a beggar there who's been begging there since he was young. And he's not looking at them and he's begging. And Peter and John, they look at him and say, hey, look at us. Silver and gold, we don't have.
But what we do have, we give to you. Stand up and walk. Now, there's a powerful miracle there, but there's also something there about this principle where most of us, when we're driving through and we see someone begging or something, we. We all do the same thing. I'm right there with you, man.
There's a lot going on over here that I need to look at. Peter and John, don't do that. In fact, the beggar's not even looking at them. They say, hey, look at us, boy, that's a crazy thing to do. Hey, hey, look at me.
Maybe we got to do this too. Just say, you know, I don't have. I don't always. I rarely have cash on me or stuff like that, but am I willing to just say, hey, you know, I don't really have anything, but can I. Is there anything I can help you?
Do you need a bite of food? Can I pray for you? What would happen? I don't know. But God can use those kinds of moments.
That's what he's speaking to. Follow the example set by Christ. First Peter, chapter two. It says to this, you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving for you an example that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth.
When they hurled insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. That's the principle there. The Bible throughout says, the Lord, your God is an avenger.
Vengeance is mine. He says, it's not our responsibility, it's his. Paul says that we are to overcome evil with good. Look at him in Romans 12. He says, Let love be genuine.
Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Repay no evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all, if possible, so far as it depends on you. Live peaceably with all, beloved.
Never avenge yourselves. But leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary. If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
This is powerful stuff. And if we could live this out, it would totally separate us from a fallen world. A culture that is at odds. In 1947. You can pop this image up for me.
This is a lady named Corrie Ten Boom. In 1947, she was speaking at a church in Munich. She had been in a concentration camp with her family for many years. She was speaking at a church. She was a believer, and she encountered a man who had been one of the cruelest guards at the concentration camp that she had been stationed at, had been taken to her, and her sister had been greatly mistreated by this man there.
After her talk, the man approached her, expressing that he had himself become a Christian and sought forgiveness from her and all the atrocities that he had committed. She writes in her story about this that there was a painful reckoning that happened in her. When this man came up to her, she remembered everything that he'd done. All the pain, all the sorrow. But at the same time, she felt the spirit of God in her, saying, you need to let this Go.
This is bitterness in you. Forgive.
She prayed silently, asking Jesus for help. In this, she writes, and extended her hand to the former guard. As she did. Here's what she said. As she did, she said she felt the warmth and a peace of God that she hadn't felt before.
I forgive you, brother, with all my heart. Now, I would say to you there's probably some atrocities, some terrible things that people have done to you in your life. But I got news for you. The only one that's feeling the bitterness of that might be you. And for Corrie, she found out that forgiving this man, even though he didn't deserve it, actually released her, gave her peace.
Some of you, it's parents. Some of you, it's siblings, dear friends, you've been betrayed. Something terrible perhaps has happened to you. But I want you to know something, that forgiveness is not only for them. It's for you.
And Christ Jesus has forgiven you far more than this for whatever terrible things have happened to you. I want you to understand something that Christ Jesus has forgiven you of all. And it cost him his life. And that's a powerful thing to remember. So I know some of this is very challenging for you to come and to forgive.
But you can do it by the power of God. This is Christ's call to his kingdom, Citizens. Love responds with grace and not retaliation. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, what about soldiers? What about the police?
What about protecting our families? The Bible speaks to this too. Romans, chapter 13. It says, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God.
And those that exist have been instituted by God. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. Now listen to this.
But if you do wrong, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath, the wrongdoer. So God has spoken much about the corporate nature of how governments should run. Some of us get called into military service.
Some of us are in lines of duty where we have to take action. But this is not about that. This is about how you deal individually with people. Does this make sense? So there are exceptions where you take up the sword.
But today I would pray for you that you would extend mercy, not repay evil with evil. Here's the second. And this is where things get wild. He reaches beyond Friends to enemies. This is where the people have been getting lied to.
This is the last of Christ's turning the tables. These contrasts where he says, you've heard it said, But I say, this is one where the Pharisees added on to the word of God. The scribes and the Pharisees, they added on this bite that says, hate your enemies. The word. You can go all through the Old Testament and you will not find God.
Say this instead. God verbatim says, love your neighbor as yourself. Actually, this is disappointing. I know this week to find this out about your pastor. I did not realize that that was in the Old Testament.
I thought Jesus was the first one to say that. So just know, I'm still learning. Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself. He's actually directly quoting the Old Testament, but the words hate your enemy are not there. So yeah, you might could make the inference, hey, if I hear love my neighbor, then maybe the inference is hate my enemy.
But God never said that. And Jesus says, you've heard this said. But I say to you, this is a lie. Love your neighbor unconditionally. This is agape, unconditional God kind of love for your neighbor.
Now what do they mean by neighbor here? These would be those of your own kind. Love other Jews for them. For us it might be okay, I'm good to love other Christians, but I don't know about loving those people outside. I'm good to love people that look like me.
I'm good to love my little family, but I'm not trying to love my co workers. They're the worst. You know, we do this naturally. We have a tendency to just kind of bottle up and little clicks. And I love these people.
These are my people. Jesus doesn't do that. These are his people. He made them all. He's called us to something new.
He says instead. Verse 44, here's the flip. Love your enemies and pray for them. He is now transforming enemies into neighbors.
This would have been very powerful for them to hear. They've got this society where they dislike the Romans because the Romans are oppressors. They dislike outsiders because they don't fit into our faith. They look at this whole thing as being this closed network and God's going to take care of us in this. But we're not really supposed to be reaching out.
We're actually supposed to be just keeping everything together in here and loving this and hating this.
Jesus flips it all up. This is what makes the church at its best so countercultural, so recognizably Powerful. When the church is the kind of people that are outward loving people that don't act right all the time, don't look the same, come in with misguided things. And, oh, it would be easy for us to say, all right, here's our set of beliefs. And it's instead of, we have 10 essentials here, and these are really important things.
But we could go ahead and make it 100. So, no, but there's some other stuff. You know, you can't be involved if you don't vote this way. If you don't believe this. We could add a lot.
That's not what Jesus does. He says, love those who you've been considering outsiders. Pray for them. Well, that's bold. Pray for those who persecute you.
Father, forgive. This is exactly what Jesus does on the cross. He says, father, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing. He's called us this as well. And then he gives us a little bit of logic to that.
Did you hear this? In verse 46, he says, you know, it's not all that impressive when you love those who love you. Anybody can do that. It's not all that impressive when you greet and hug and those people who do that with you. That's not.
He says, even the tax collectors will do that. Now, I have to admit, this was kind of a timeless principle, because I think most of us still aren't really a big fan of tax collectors right that time of year. Not a fan. Like, I don't want to do that. But for this day, it was even worse because these were people that would be in the service of Rome, the great oppressor.
And then he says, greet only your brothers. And look, even the gentiles, that means the ethnos, the nations, even those outside of Judaism are doing that. That's not impressive. That's the logic of this. And yet we just naturally do this.
We come out of the womb this way. Hey, you're nice to me, I'm nice to you. I like this reciprocation. Let's keep it up. Jesus says, no, I'm going to love even when it's not received.
That's really the heart of who God is to us. The Bible says, for when we were still sinners, he died for us. This is the heart of the Gospel church. You were enemies of God, and he still died for you. There are people all throughout the world that would say, I don't need you, God.
And he still loves and died for them. This is the heart of the gospel. He's called you into it. That you get to be a part of this wonderful attitude of loving people in spite of them and praying for them. Luke's parallel passage.
Luke has a snippet of the Sermon on the Mount as well. He kind of shrinks it down a little bit. But Luke chapter six, it says, I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
This is the model of the New Testament. Christ models this. Forgive them, Father. They don't know what they're doing. Stephen, one of the first martyrs, picks up on this very thing.
If you've got that name today, just know that's a powerful name. Stephen. Stephen prayed for those who were stoning him. In Acts chapter seven. Stephen's taken outside the city and they're hurling rocks at him to kill him.
What a horrible way to die. I can't imagine what that would be like and what it would be like to be the people doing it. Killing a man by throwing giant softballs at him. He calls out to the Lord, similar to what Jesus says, lord, receive my spirit. And falling on his knees, listen to what he cried out in Acts chapter 7.
He says, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Now guess who was standing there holding the coats? The Apostle Paul. Then at the time named Saul. And the amount of guilt that man must have felt.
And yet God sets him free. This is the prayer that Stephen prays over them. And then God uses some of the people, maybe more than just Paul in that audience, to change the world.
Who do you consider your enemy right now? Anybody got any enemies? I don't really have any enemies, but I just got some people I don't care much for. That's pretty close. All right.
That's pretty close. I got some frenemies y' all to meet. If you're a teenager, I guarantee you've got some kind of frenemies right now. But adults. You know what I've noticed?
Some of us don't grow out of this. Who do you consider to be at odds with right now? Someone who disagrees with you about your faith or the way you're trying to live your life, or a former friend, a political opponent? Maybe you feel like this is something you're at odds with. Jesus says, pray for them.
I think our nation could learn a lot from this. When the Christians would rise up and pray and bless. I know we have differences of opinion about A lot of things. You can watch the news for five minutes and find out we really disagree on a lot. But what would it look like if the people of God would bless and pray?
I'm not saying we agree some things are right and wrong. Some things are good and evil. But that doesn't mean Jesus says, do not resist the one who is evil. Instead, bless, pray, love. Here's the third.
And this is the one that was the most challenging. Reflect the perfect character of our Father. This is the one where you're like, please tell me what in the world that's supposed to mean. Because I look at me and I know. Not perfect.
I know that too, friend. None of us are coming into this building today with Perfect. Oh, there he is. There's Mr. Perfect.
My wife might have thought that in the first week of us being together, she learned real fast. She learned quick. None of us are Mr. Or Mrs. Perfect.
So we hear this and go, how is this even achievable? Is this some kind of ideal reality? Is this meant for heaven? Are we even supposed to try to attain this now? Oh, yes, we are.
And Christ has an intent behind it. He's talked about what it looks like. So verse 45, he breaks down this idea of what it looks like to be the sons of the Father, that is to be in his family. He uses sons to describe the idea of actually, like, receiving the full inheritance. This is for sons and daughters.
Just hear me say that. He's saying, all of those who believe in the Father, who follow the Lord Jesus are receiving the inheritance. And what it means to be, that is to be like him. What is he like? He lets it rain on the good and the bad.
What? Why do you do that? He makes the sun rise on the just and the unjust. You know, read the Psalms just a little bit in your life, and you'll hear some of the heart of David and other people writing where they're questioning God, why do you bless the wicked? Why do you let people be successful that are so far from you?
Well, Jesus here says exactly why. Because God's love does not show partiality. It's another opportunity that they might see the sun rise and go, hmm, maybe God is good. I know that that's a really vague illustration, but that's what Jesus is using here. He's saying, if you want to be like me, you want to be like the Father, then your love is impartial.
It's impartial. When Jesus died on the cross, he wasn't just saying, hey, I like some of these people. This is for some of y' all. He looks at the people nailing him to the cross and says, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.
The man next to him, he says, today you'll be with me in paradise. That man didn't do anything right. Didn't get baptized, didn't join a church. This is a mess. This is who Christ is.
An impartial, loving God. You want to be like Him? Okay. Then you must be perfect. Well, I'm in trouble.
This is the Greek word, teleos. All right? I want you to understand that when we think about perfect, we think about it a certain way. But there's a lot of ways that you might interpret this. The word perfect here has more.
The idea of completeness, wholeness. He says, be complete. Be whole as I am complete or whole, be finished. That is that. I have determined that I find my being in the Lord Jesus.
This is why he ends here. He ends here by saying, you want to know how to do this stuff? Find your wholeness, your perfection in me. I am this. He is perfect in every sense of the word, perfect, but certainly in the sense that he's calling us to.
That we would begin to understand what it means to be whole in Christ Jesus. That we would begin to be fully known and fully fulfilled in Christ Jesus, such that we could love people because we know so deeply who we are. We're no longer easily offended. Because when we look at ourselves, we go, I am a son. I am a daughter of the king.
I. I will be with him for eternity. It doesn't bother me that you just tried to cut me down because you don't know me and you don't know yourself and you don't know who you are in God. And the reason you're acting this way is because you desperately need to know Him. Can I introduce you?
No. I can slap you back and I'll never get to make an introduction. Instead, I'm going to say, hey, I recognize that you're in big trouble. But I want you to know who I know. This is the idea of wholeness, perfection.
What's the first mark, in fact, of God's perfect love? John tells us in First John, he says, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God. Because God is love.
Great or terrible? Greater, Terrible. Mirrors don't ever lie. Have you observed this yet? This is a hard reality.
As you begin to get Older mirrors, I felt like were a good friend to me. At a younger time, they never lie. A bad hair day, a surprise pimple, those weren't very surprising. In my teenage days, I was covered up. Bags under your eyes.
Now it's a few extra pounds, I've noticed. Mirrors don't lie. They tell the whole story. I'll look in there and go, you should have gone to bed earlier, friend. You look bad.
That pimple over there, that's the greasy pizza you ate last night. That's not going well. Some days, and I'm a hair guy, some of you have learned this about me. Some days I look and go, that hair is just not going to do right. Today's not the day.
And I hope I don't meet the president or somebody special on a day like that, you know, because this ain't today. Mirrors don't lie. I want you to know something. The same is true with your character. The character of Christ in you.
It doesn't lie because Christ in you is a mirror. You are a reflection of the character of God or not. There's no in between. The mirror doesn't lie. You're either reflecting consistently the love of Christ, you are consistently reflecting the brokenness of your flesh.
And the longer that people know you and they find out, hey, he's a churchgoer, he says he's a Christian. Oh, this or that, they begin to watch you. Some of you have been that you've been watching Christians. I'm thankful you're in the room today because you've probably seen some good and some bad examples because we are a broken people. But those of us who are trying to walk with the Lord Jesus and be perfect as he is perfect, we look at ourselves and say, all right, today, am I reflecting who Christ is?
Well, am I doing that? Is the love of God so consistently reflecting in my life that when everybody else lashes out, instead I pause. Some of you, this will go a long ways for you. The first thing that you think to say, don't say that. Some of you are quick.
You're quick witted, you're quick tempered. Here's a great help to you. The first thing you just thought of, don't say that. Spouses in the room. Boy, y' all might need to pay me later.
This might save your marriage. Like the first thing you think to say to her when she's gotten ruffled your feathers. Take a deep breath. Should I say that? And the answer is probably no.
If you're even having to ask, should I say that? Don't say that.
Are we reflecting the love of Christ? The best place to begin practicing this is at home. As a husband, as a wife, as a parent. Start there. That's the hardest place, but also the most important place.
Am I showing the love of Christ to my spouse, to my children, to my parents? Deserving is not applicable here. Nowhere does it say, love your enemies only if they start to change. No, pray for them, even if they persecute you.
The moon is like this. We're like the moon in the night sky, my friends. I think God gives us these images in his creation to remind us of things. I think there's a reason he does these little tweaks all throughout. He could have done all of this different, the way he created the world.
But he gives us these little pictures. And I think the moon is one of those. The moon in the night sky. If we let the love of Christ shine through us, even the dark night is illuminated on a full moon night. It's like, man, I can see everything.
It's wild. But if we choose to go it alone, we hide behind something. We choose to be apart from God. You can't see anything. There's no light.
And then truly, dark is the night of our lives. And people will know either way. They're not surprised. When you're just another shadow in the dark. It's not surprising at all.
That's what everybody's doing. It's surprising when you're light in a dark place. God's kind of love isn't natural. The love of a mother. What a wonderful day to talk about.
This is somewhat supernatural. There's an unconditional nature of a mother's love, but it's not even close to God's kind of love. No offense to you women, it's not even close. Because God's kind of love loves enemies, prays for the those who persecute. Turns the other cheek.
Boy, moms and dads, we get close. We look at those little ones and go, man, I can't imagine not dying for you. Not doing everything I could for you when I look at you.
But God did that with people that would say, I'm not your kid. Get away from me. I don't know you. God still said I would die for you. You get this.
His kind of love is supernatural. And in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can walk in it. It goes beyond every instinct we have. Every instinct we have to ball up our fists or to go into war. No, it.
It's the very kind of love that Jesus himself shows us that we would respond with grace, that we would be the anvil of meekness and love our enemies, reflecting God personally, I want to pray for you now. Church. Let's go into prayer together. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that first of all, you have modeled the kind of love you've called us to here. That this isn't a one off.
This isn't something that Jesus said and then didn't model it. And we're supposed to just guess at it. No, he showed us clearly what it looks like. And we're supposed to just walk with him. Christ has called us.
He says, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. We're to follow him in this way of love. Lord Jesus, thank you for that love poured out. Thank you that your love for me, even though I was far from you and so many of us in the room, far, far from you, and yet you still poured out your love on the cross for us. Thank you for that today.
I recognize that some of you may have come in today and you've not said yes to Jesus in this way. I pray that perhaps your understanding may be for the first time that Christ Jesus poured out for you, that his love was on display for you when he died on the cross for your sake. Not just mine, not just the sins of some perfect people. No, he died for those very imperfect people like us. And he died for you, my friend.
If you're coming to an awareness of that today and you feel like you need to receive that today, I'm thankful for you. I want to give you an opportunity to respond to God as he's calling you. We do this in prayer. Paul writes in Romans 10 that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. We believe that as a church.
That's why we enter this in prayer together by confessing with our mouths what Christ has done. If that's you today and you're believing and you want to give your life to Christ Jesus, pray with me this Lord Jesus. I believe today that you died on the cross for me. I'm thankful for your love that I did not deserve. Thank you, Lord Jesus.
And I believe that God, you raised Christ Jesus from the dead. And that gives me such incredible hope that not only have you freed me from this brokenness, this harshness that I've been living under, but also that your love has displayed itself in a way that the resurrection is a reality. God, I'm so thankful for this. And God, I'm asking now, would you help me to walk in this way that you've called me? The way of love.
It is my natural bent to retaliate. To not pray for those who persecute me. To not love. Dear friend, that's all of us in the room. We're praying that along with you.
Welcome to the family of God. And we're all praying right along with you that same thing. God, help us. Give us courage. Give us boldness.
Help us to be strength under control. Help us to have the kind of meekness you've called us to have. It's not about being a doormat. It's about helping people see the grace of Christ. Our agenda is something different.
We're not here to take care of ourselves. We are here as ambassadors of God that we get to show other people the love of Christ. And if that's our goal, God help us to be courageous in it, bold in it. And even when people try to hurt us or offend us, and they will, they will. That we would love as yous love.
That we would be peacemakers. That we would pour out this unconditional love that yout are so pouring freely in our lives. God, I pray for your people today that they can receive this word and be challenged to live it out. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.