How To Destroy Your Enemies Series

How To Destroy Your Enemies

Matthew 5:43-48

OKAY – let’s do this…

NOW - I want to start off with a couple of passages of Scripture, as we begin our time in His Living and Active Word this morning.

The first passage is found in Luke 23 beginning at verse 27…

It’s approaching 9 am on a Friday morning…

Jesus was arrested the night before,

AND – He has spent the last 12+ hours

• Going through several mock trials

• Standing before the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate,

• Being: beaten, punched, beard ripped out, spit upon, insulted and having a Roman scourge tear across His back 39 times ripping His entire back wide open.

AND – now Jesus is forced to carry a heavy wooden, rugged cross on His back up to the hill, that we call Calvary.

HOWEVER – Jesus has lost so much blood, His beaten – bruised and bleeding body crumbles beneath its…

AS – the religious elite insult Him and the crowd lining the streets shout crucify Him.

AND – Luke records these words, beginning at 23:27…

As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him…

32Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left.

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. – Luke 23:27-28, 32-34

MGCC – Jesus (God the Son) with His hands and feet spiked to a Roman cross, looks down at His executioners who were casting lots for the clothes that had just stripped off His body… and He prays, “Father Forgive them…”

AND PAUL – writes the following in Romans 5:6-10…

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.

But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him! 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!

– Romans 5:6-8

GOD – demonstrated His own love for us how?

While we powerless and still sinners

WE – were reconciled to God through Jesus’ death when?

While we were God’s enemies

Prayer

MGCC…

• Welcome to week 23 in our verse by verse study of the Gospel of Matthew (The King and His Kingdom)

• Welcome to week 16 of our study of Jesus’… radical, upside down, counter-cultural manifesto… About what life in His Kingdom is all about (also known as ‘The Sermon On The Mount, and

• Welcome to Matthew 5:43-48 and to this morning conversation, ‘How To Destroy Your Enemies.’

UNDERSTAND B/S – the verses that we will unpack today August 14, 2022… represent the ‘high point’ of Jesus’ entire Kingdom Life Manifesto.’

AND LISTEN – not only are these verses the ‘high point,’

BUT – they are ‘perhaps’… the most difficult commands that Jesus has ever called us to obey.

I MEAN – if you thought that the conversation, we unpacked last week… ‘The Right To Be Wronged…’ was a difficult one to live out… YOU KNOW – the truth of Matthew 5:38-42, where Jesus is telling us that…

In a world full of people who constantly seek to get even and are always demanding their rights, Jesus says that those who live in His Kingdom have the right to be wronged.

AGAIN – if you thought that teaching and command of Jesus is a tough one to live out (and it is), but listen, what Jesus is going to command that we do next, takes Kingdom Living to a whole new level.

I MEAN LIKE – not retaliating when wronged is one thing…

BUT MGCC – what Jesus says next seems impossible to actually live out…

OKAY B/S – buckle up… here is our text for this morning.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you,

UNDERSTAND – the reason I have some of this in italics is because those words do not appear in the earliest manuscripts.