You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you,
love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in
heaven.
He causes his Son to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous
and the unrighteous.
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?
Are you not even the tax collectors doing that?
And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others?
Do not even pagans do that?
Be perfect therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
May God bless the reading of his word.
Good morning again everyone.
It is absolutely wonderful to be together singing beautiful hymns, watching a baptism.
After the word, we're also going to be taking the Lord's Supper together.
And it's such a privilege, it's such a wonderful grace that we as the people of God can worship
hymns so publicly.
And so before we come to his word to us this morning, let's ask our Father for his help.
Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you that as we pray, we're not speaking to the ceiling, but because of the Lord Jesus
Christ, our prayers, our petitions are coming to the throne of grace, all by your love.
This morning as we peer into the words of eternal life, we ask that by your spirit,
you would give us ears to hear, hearts to retain, and that by your spirit, you would
grow this wonderful love that you are to speak to us of this morning in our lives.
We ask for this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
The First World War had been raging on for only four months.
The weather that December in northern France was cold and wet.
Many of the trenches were continually flooded, soldiers were covered in mud and exposed to
frostbite and trench foot seemed impossible to get rid of.
The soldiers on both sides were dreading having to spend Christmas away from their families.
Then something incredible happened on December 24th, 1914.
Soldiers from both sides put down their weapons, stepped out of their trenches, and enemy really
did meet enemy.
It was reported that jovial voices could be heard calling out from enemy trenches, followed
by requests not to fire, then shadows of soldiers could be seen gathering in no man's land,
laughing, joking, playing soccer, and even exchanging gifts.
Incredibly for a short time on that cold and wet day on December 24th, there was a sense
of peace.
But as we all know, that serenity never transpired into real and lasting love for one's enemy.
And that's the thing that we'll be looking at this morning, looking at how our Lord not
only commands us, his disciples, to treat our neighbours who we like, but how to genuinely
love our enemy in whom we are at war with.
So if you have your Bibles with you this morning, please look with me at verse 43.
We read, you have heard that it was said.
Now I'm well aware that we have many visitors with us this morning, so that phrase, you
have heard that it was said, comes as no surprise to those who have been with us over the past
few weeks.
As we've been working our way through a series of, but I tell you, antidotes that Jesus has
been making in contrast with the popular teaching of the day.
So as I'm well aware of this, let me catch you up a bit.
Way back in verse 21 of this chapter, we started to see Jesus use this language of, but I tell
you.
First up, he tackled murder and challenged the popular teaching of the day that said,
as long as the court dealt with the external act of murder, then God's justice had been
served.
It was a literal rendering of the mosaic law that completely ignored the root of the problem.
Jesus challenged it and said, standing condemned for murder doesn't just mean what you do with
your hands, folks.
No, it includes what happens in the heart and with the tongue.
In other words, when you harbor hatred, when you spew out comments of loathing about another,
you're condemned before God.
Murder is defined internally.
Again, Jesus contrasted his teaching with the popular understanding about adultery.
It isn't just the physical act of being with someone who isn't your husband or wife, said
Jesus.
Murder is defined and exposed in the heart when you lust for someone who isn't your
spouse.
Jesus even goes after truth telling, saying to his disciples, whenever you say something
is true, you don't need to staple an oath to it.
Simply say yes and mean it.
Do it if you said you would or say no when you can't because swearing on inanimate objects
and on cities just to get out of what you said is wicked and when it comes to revenge,
don't seek it.
Haters are going to hate and you're going to be in the firing line.
So when people slander, slap, persecute and insult you, don't go after them.
Don't plan to take revenge.
As from this understanding of the law that we've been able to understand that Jesus viewed
and took the law so much more deeper than just wanting to highlight external bad behaviors,
which the teachers of the law did.
And Jesus' use of the law refuted that popular teaching because as he's shown us over and
over again, the law was given to go after the heart to show us that we just can't measure
up to God's perfect standard.
Just put it another way, the law was given to highlight that we are poor in spirit, in
great need of mercy so that we will turn to God, experience his mercy and enter the kingdom
of heaven.
Why might Jesus be doing this?
Well because the disciples of Jesus, those who have left their way of doing things and
who are united to him are to be the salt and light of this world.
That's what the disciples of Jesus are.
By the grace of God, we are united to the Lord Jesus Christ and are called to be so
radically countercultural that those out in the world might be drawn to God by our very
lives.
We saw that in verses 13 through to 16 of chapter five.
But as we've seen, being the salt and light of this world, affecting real change for the
glory of God only happens when we are totally given over to God with all that we are.
And that's what God is after.
It's all of us brothers and sisters, every fibre of our being, external as well as internal,
actions, as well as our thoughts and words.
And the law exposes us for what we are.
And as we've seen, this is a wonderful thing.
Otherwise, if we didn't see that we are poor in spirit before this perfect and awesome
God, we would think that we have a righteousness that justifies us before him, good works that
we think he owes us for.
Now the law plainly shows us that we need the righteousness of another as anything else
is to fall so far short.
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers
of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven, said Jesus in verse 20.
So with all that said, we now turn to our Lord's final, but I tell you antidote.
So we might ask the question, what phariseeical saying was Jesus kicking back against?
Well it's right there in the rest of verse 42.
Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.
Now I'm not sure how many of you in this room went to Sunday school, but most of you should
recognise that first phrase, love your neighbour.
You should recognise it because it's a direct quote from the Bible and more specifically
Leviticus 19, 18 which says, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your
people, but love your neighbour as yourself.
In fact later on in the ministry of Jesus, a teacher of the law asked Christ what was
the greatest commandment in the law to which he replied, love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
The second is this, love your neighbour as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these, to which Bob Dylan admits he's still trying
to do in his song, Ant Talking.
All this to say, love your neighbour is one of those phrases that was so ingrained in
the culture of the day and one that has so influenced our own culture that as soon as
you hear it, you know exactly where it's come from and it's not Bob Dylan's playbook.
But like me, you might be a bit perplexed with the tail end of the sentence that we
have before us this morning, because unlike the famous phrase that we've just heard, hate
your enemy is nowhere to be found in the Bible.
It's like saying that's one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind and shop at
Woolies.
It's that intrusive.
So we might ask, how did it creep into one of the most famous Bible verses of all time?
Well, as we've seen through the weeks, Jesus never contradicted the law, never went after
what God had given to the people through Moses.
No, what he has gone after time and time again is the phariseedical interpretation of the
law, their traditions on how to understand the law.
And he's doing this again.
He's doing this again as he's going after something that they had blatantly added to
the scripture as their definition of neighbor was so incredibly limited.
Let me explain what I mean.
You see, God had revealed through Moses that we are to love our neighbor and that there
are beautiful commands all throughout the law on how to practically care for your neighbor.
Things like you're not to let them go hungry, you're not to let them go cold, you're to
care about the orphans.
Absolutely, but you're only to do that for your neighbor, said the Pharisees.
And that seems to be where the discussion lay.
What and who was your neighbor?
That was certainly the question that Jesus was asked in Luke 10, when a top tier theologian
came and asked about how to enter into eternal life.
Jesus asked him about how he understood the law to which the guy pretty much answered
like Jesus saying, you've got to love God with everything that you are and your neighbor
is yourself, but, and this is where we must take note, he wanted to justify himself.
So he asks Jesus, but who is my neighbor?
An expert in the law didn't know how to define who his neighbor was.
This gives us an incredible insight into the mindset of the Pharisees at the time.
You see, the Pharisees misunderstood the meaning of neighbor as they restricted the definition
of neighbor to those who qualified to be treated as such, namely those who were your fellow
citizens.
That's what defined neighbor in the phariseeical worldview.
Fellow citizens or to put it plainly, other Jews or those who were joined up with your
people, which is, as you might remember, the very worldview that Jesus challenged in the
Good Samaritan parable.
All this to say, because the Pharisees had limited the definition of neighbor as those
that somewhat qualified for your love, they had restricted the definition of neighbor
and thus developed a theology around how to hate people that lay outside of that qualification.
Yes, let's be fair to the Pharisees.
In their worldview, you were to love your neighbor, definitely, but where it had gone
wrong was that they limited neighbor to the fellow citizen language of Leviticus 19, 18.
So we might ask the question this morning, what had gone so wrong that they had obscured
the definition of neighbor?
Well, it seems to have come from a fundamental misunderstanding of their view of sanctification.
You see, sanctification in its simplest terms means separation, separation, and the Jews
knew they were to be separated from this world, sanctified from the nations, and that they
were called to be nothing like them.
And so they concentrated their efforts and defined their neighbors as those of their
own people, which meant that they developed a place for a justified hatred for all those
that lay outside the covenant people of God.
I mean, just have a think about the temper tantrum that Jonah chucked because God showed
mercy on Nineveh.
Yes, those outside of Israel could come to the Jews and they could be proselytized.
We even see Israel as they take over Canaan, people joining with them, but the problem
was outsiders only qualified to be loved when they became Israel, because until then they
were seen as something other, as alien, something to be hated.
Church, we have to remember the original audience here.
They were a Jewish audience waiting for the kingdom of heaven and they were following
Jesus trying to figure out if he was the king of this kingdom.
So when he said, I want you to be the salt and light of this world, that is language
around sanctification.
But says Jesus, and he makes it crystal clear here, you're not to view that separation in
the way that you have been taught by the Pharisees.
No, you're not just to love your neighbor, but you're to love all those that lay outside
of that qualification.
Verse 44, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Yeah, that Jesus certainly doesn't negate that his disciples will be different in this
world, but listen to what he's saying here.
These enemies of yours, well, as you are to love your neighbor, you were to love them.
Church, I don't know about you, but this presents for us an incredible problem, right?
You see, it's very easy to love those who love you, but even then we don't always get
on with those that we love the most.
I mean, just think about those among our own family and friend groups, even in our churches,
it can sometimes be very, very hard to get along with those that we love the most.
We all struggle.
But that's not what Jesus is addressing here.
That's not what he's commanding us to do, to love our neighbor.
That's a given.
No, he says, I want you to love those who hate you, that don't have your best interest
at heart.
I want you to love those who insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against
you.
I want you to love your enemies.
We have a natural tendency, humans, to be like emotional mirrors.
We reflect how people treat us.
You like me, I like you.
You say hi, I say hi.
You smile, I smile.
You say something nice about my beard.
I'll choose my words very carefully if you're a woman.
But you can see where I'm going with this, right?
Our human nature, our natural tendency, gravitates to loving those who love us.
It's natural.
The opposite is true as well.
Before I entered into this ministry, I used to play drums for local bands here in Perth.
And one of the best places to play in town, simply because they still had a big audience
there, was a place called the Mustang Bar.
And I used to see these emotional mirrors on full display being reflected all the time.
You insult me, I insult you.
You push me, I push you.
You punch me, I push right back.
And many times I saw many young men and women absolutely pulverizing each other over something
as frivolous as not being served first at the bar.
But that's our natural tendency.
It's to reflect what is given.
And this is what Jesus drills down on here.
It's on our very nature.
Brothers and sisters, it must be said, there are going to be people in this world that
hate that we follow Jesus, hate that we stand for the biblical definition of all sorts of
things, hate that we don't go with the tide of the latest trend.
And our enemy will hate us.
They will hate us.
But Jesus says, when you see your enemies doing that, when you see the hatred spewing
forth, don't reflect it back.
No, come at them with something completely and radically different.
Love them.
I just want to say here, so we're clear, that in no way is Jesus saying that by loving others
that we are in and of ourselves, making ourselves children of the living God.
No, in fact, it's the other way around.
When God's spirit, when God rescues us and makes us his children, we will then walk in
the countercultural love that's being talked about here, because it's his work in us.
It's all by grace alone.
You may have heard of this guy, John Calvin, but he says it nicely.
He says, Christ testifies that this will be the mark of our adoption.
If we are kind to the bad and unworthy, do not think that we are made sons by our own
kind deeds.
Christ gives proof from the effect of those deeds that the sons of God are precisely those
who approach him in their humility and tenderness.
All this to say, when God takes up residence in your life by the Holy Spirit, he does the
work of transformation.
And he enables you to love those who are unlovable, to love those who do not deserve love naturally,
and even to have compassion, humanly speaking, on those who do not stir our compassion.
So what are we to do for our enemies?
What is the way that we can love them?
Well, it's as Jesus says here, we pray for them.
That's what Jesus says here in verse 44 of our text.
He says, pray for those who are your enemy.
And if you're wondering who your enemy is, well, you don't usually have to wonder very
long because they're the ones that are out to persecute you.
Just a tip there.
That's going to look different for many of us in this room.
I mean, for the immediate audience, these people had the vicious Romans hanging over
their head.
But bringing this a little closer to home, we could think about the different social
wars that are happening in Australia at the moment, but enemies aren't always out there
somewhere on social media typing away.
Now, they can be a lot closer to home, right?
I mean, I can't imagine some of the horrid things that have happened to you personally.
I don't for a second want to downplay how hard some of your lives have been because
others have treated you so wickedly.
This is the beauty of prayer.
It has the ability to help bring the presence of God into such tremendously broken places.
It's really hit home for me when a friend of mine who had been abused by his father
came and spoke to me about why his resentment and bitterness didn't control his life anymore.
He simply said to me, it was very hard to go on hating someone who he was praying for.
This wasn't something that happened overnight.
In fact, I think his prayers to God started with, help me God to even say this person's
name.
Nor was it like, I'm cured now, now it's time to go catch up and have a hangout.
Now, this friend of mine has had to wrestle really hard daily, but over time and by asking
our heavenly father for his gracious help, he's been able to pray for this man and able
to come to a place where he has asked that God would surround him with people to share
the gospel with him.
This is just one beautiful picture of how to pray for our enemies.
Praying that even though they might be at war with us, that they come to a knowledge
of the truth, that their eyes are opened and that they would come to see Jesus for who
he is and repent.
I don't doubt for a second that the early church was praying for their greatest enemy
in the midst of real battle, Rabbi Saul of Tarsus.
Praying that God would reveal himself to the one who was persecuting them, tracking them
down, throwing them in prison so that he would become their brother in Christ.
And look how God answered that prayer.
So we are to pray for our enemy and those who persecute us.
It's really interesting what Jesus goes on to do here in verses 45 through to 47 because
he kind of pulls back the curtain on everything.
At first, he gave us a practical lane to love our enemy, we pray for them.
But then here, he doesn't go on to tell us how to keep the law of neighbour loving.
No, Jesus goes on to show us why his disciples should be motivated to keep the law.
Notice it.
Jesus shows us why we should be motivated to love our enemies and it's all so that we
will be like our father in heaven, verse 45.
Which if we understand and strive for in the power of the Holy Spirit by his grace, we
will live to be radically different in this world.
Let me give you an example.
It's one we've already explored.
The Pharisees were saying, if you're not part of our people, part of our nation, then you're
not a neighbour and you don't qualify to be loved as such.
Contrast that with what Jesus reveals about our heavenly father and his care and provision
for all people.
Verse 45, he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good.
He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Hear that.
Notice what Jesus says here.
Notice the tender care that our father has for all people, even the unrighteous.
He gives them everything that they need to live in his creation.
He provides for them in what theologians call a common grace.
Pretty full on stuff for people that have been taught to hate outsiders, right?
But like the guy from Danos Derecht used to say, but wait, there's more.
Jesus goes on in verses 46 and 47 that we must learn to love in a way that the world
will stop and take notice of it.
He does this by drawing on some practical everyday examples that the disciples would
have known.
The tax collector and those of their own social classes.
And he says, look, even they know how to love each other and pay mutual respect.
Even the pagans know how to treat each other because they know how to look after their
own interests.
Jesus is saying to all his disciples that he is expecting us to love others even more
than what the social norms dictate.
Because if we fail to do so, if we fail to pattern ourselves on our heavenly father's
love for all people, even those who we would define as our enemies, we will simply blend
in with what is already considered kind and loving in our society.
Jesus concludes by saying, be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect.
Verse 48.
Now immediately some of you in this room this morning might be thinking, but Michael, I'm
not perfect.
How on earth am I meant to be perfect?
As Jesus says here, I want to put it forward to you this morning that Jesus is not saying
that a person could attain perfection in this life.
That's not what he's saying.
And we know that he's not saying that because he goes on in this very same sermon to teach
us to pray to our heavenly father to forgive our sin.
Jesus isn't expecting his disciples to achieve perfection in this life.
No, by Jesus saying, be perfect, he again as he has done time and time again, he makes
God the standard by which we must measure ourselves by when it comes to loving our enemies.
And it's as we do this, as we look to the perfection of God, that we are again driven
to the perfect one whom he sent for us.
Jesus has made it plain to us in this sermon, in the Sermon on the Mount that the law and
the prophets were given to point to him and that he fulfills their very meaning.
In other words, Jesus gives the fullest expression as to what the law was all about and nowhere
else in all human history, including soldiers being jovial for a day, do we see love for
one's enemies displayed more perfectly than at the cross on Calvary.
Brothers and sisters, you and I, we will fall short because we're not perfect.
We fall short in loving and serving our enemies as God would have us.
I mean, we fall short in even loving our neighbors and our own families.
But I'm here this morning to tell you that there is one who has been perfect in all he
said and did, perfect in everything.
And even while he was being nailed to a cross by his enemies, he prayed to our Father in
heaven that they would be forgiven.
And church, it was our sin that made the cross necessary.
He made a way for his enemies to have total and utter peace with him for all eternity.
Paul says it like this in Romans 5, for if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled
to him through the death of his son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved
through his life?
Hear what is being said this morning, perfection doesn't come from our own works.
Salvation isn't given because we deserve it.
No, we enter the kingdom of heaven because God in his gracious love revealed that we
are poor in spirit.
Not so that we will try harder to enter it, but that we would look upon and call out to
the perfect one to which the law and the prophets point to.
And it's here, church, it is he that transforms us.
He that helps us to love those who have hurt us.
He who helps us to pray for those who don't deserve our affection.
He who helps us to have compassion on those who are out to persecute us.
It goes without saying that this love that is modeled for us by Jesus Christ is impossible
to be created in our own efforts.
Time and time again, we will fail because there is nothing in and of ourselves that
enables us to love all people with such a self-sacrificial and perfect love like our
heavenly father has towards us in Christ Jesus.
But time and time again, we can run back to God, run back and ask for his grace, his help,
his guidance, his wisdom.
By nature, we are mirrors and so only a living and loving relationship with our creator,
only being united to his son through the Holy Spirit, can we ever even to begin to imagine
what this love might look like towards those who insult us, persecute us and falsely say
all kinds of evil against us because of Jesus.
But this is our hope.
There is coming a day where every wrong will be made right, where justice will be served,
where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.
That day is coming.
And so might we pray that until that day comes, that we would be like our perfect father in
heaven, that we would be transformed to the point that those trapped in the darkness of
this world would see such undeserved love coming from the church and turn to the one
who loves them with a perfect love in the Lord Jesus.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for these words to your church this morning.
We thank you for the Lord Jesus who you have caused by your spirit for our eyes to be raised
up to once again.
Father, I thank you for this wonderful, beautiful congregation of people that you have rescued
and redeemed.
But I also pray for your wider body, your bride that you are coming back for.
I pray for all people that have called upon your name, Lord Jesus, that have turned to
you, that are trusting you, that we would not only love our neighbours, but love our
enemies, that we would pray for those who persecute us, that you would use us, Lord,
in Armidale, in this region of Western Australia, the church in Australia, that we would be
a praying people for our enemies, and that we would have wonderful testimonies of people
turning to you and teaching sinners your ways.
We ask for this in the wonderful name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.