INTRODUCTION
• VIDEO CLIP PC
• SLIDE #1
• It is not always easy to love others. We picture love as something that is feeling based or emotional based.
• For most people, it is easy to love people close to them. We can love our children, our spouses, our family and friends. We can love people who are good to us, or people who do things for us.
• In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to give us one of the most difficult things for us to do, love our enemies, love people who are mean to us or who persecute us for doing the right thing.
• Why would Jesus expect such a thing out of us? How many of you want to love someone who is mean to you? There has to more to love than just a feeling if Jesus is commanding us to love?
• I hope that after today’s message that if you are struggling with loving people you may not like, or if you are having trouble loving a spouse, child or someone who used to be close to you, that this message will help you.
• For everyone else, we all need some help and encouragement loving people who have wronged us or who are not too nice to us.
• Let us begin with verse 43
• SLIDE #2
• Matthew 5:43 ( ESV ) “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
• Let’s begin by looking at how things were.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
I. Love the LOVEABLE (verse 43)
• This is the sixth way that our righteousness is to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, the way that we choose to love.
• Jesus is quoting in part Leviticus 19:18 which says,
• SLIDE #4
• Leviticus 19:18 ( ESV ) You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
• You will notice in verse 43 that there are a couple of differences between what Jesus says and what Leviticus says. Notice two things. First, there is no reference to hating anyone and notice that God told the people that they were to love their neighbors as they loved themselves.
• What Jesus has done in this instance is He has combined the scripture with the commonly taught practice of the day.
• In the context of Leviticus 19 and other Old Testament passages, the Jews understood their neighbor being fellow Jews. They were under the false impression that they did not have to love those who were not Jews.
• The part about hating an enemy came from an inference that the Jews made from the Old Testament.
• When the Israelites were taking possession of the Promised Land, God told them to kill EVERYONE and not to make treaties with any of the inhabitants of the Promised Land (Ex 34:11-16 as an example).
• They drew the inference that God hated these people and therefore the Jews were to hate them as enemies.
• The Jews considered all the Gentiles to be their enemies.
• The truth of the matter was not that God hated these people, but they along with their false religions would drag the Israelites away from God.
• In the Jewish writings there were all kinds of disparaging things said about the gentiles. The Jews felt that they could hate these people and that they did not have to save one of them if they were dying.
• They people had an utter contempt for the gentiles. This is one of the reasons that the story of the Good Samaritan had such a stinging message for the religious leaders.
• The Jews of Jesus day were bent of revenge and justice for anyone who wronged them. Remember the context of last week’s sermon on going the extra mile.
• God never intended for His people to be a people of hate, they were to be an example to the rest of the world as to how God’s people were to conduct themselves, much like the church is today.
• Jesus is going to tell us that there is a better way for those who belong to His kingdom. (ISN’T IT EASY TO HATE PEOPLE?) Life is short.
• The natural way for us the deal with people is to basically treat them the way that they treat us; Jesus will tell us that His people will act in a different manner.
• Let’s look at verses 44-45
• SLIDE #5
• Matthew 5:44-45 ( ESV ) 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.
• Jesus ushers in a new way to think and act!
• SLIDE #6
II. LOVE THE UNLOVABLE (VERSE 44-45A)
• It is easy to love those who love you, but Jesus gives us a new way to do things, it starts with loving your enemies.
• SLIDE #7
A. Love your enemies.
• God’s love embraces the entire world (John 3:16), and He loved each of us even while we were still sinners and His enemies (Rom. 5:8-10). Those who refuse to trust in God are His enemies; but He is not theirs.
• In the same way, we are not to be enemies of those who may be enemies to us. From their perspective, we are their enemies; but from our perspective, they should be our neighbors.
• Jesus’ command for unrestricted love is grounded in one’s relationship to the Father, which necessarily demands a love surpassing conventional standards or expectations.
• The natural response is for us to repay evil for evil. To bless and pray for those who persecute you is to align yourself with the character of God. Evil for good is evil, good for good is human, good for evil is divine.
• SLIDE #8
• Romans 12:17-18 ( ESV ) Repay no one 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.
• In a parallel passage in Luke 6:27-ff we find that our enemies are those who injure and persecute us for righteousness sake. These are people that we need to love.
• The type of love that we are to have for our enemy is not the same type that we have for our spouse or children, but it is to be the same type of love that God has for us. We do not deserve God’s love and our enemies do not deserve our love.
• We are to love our enemies in such a way that we may cause them to change their ways and turn to God. If someone is your enemy that is one person you will never have a chance to win to Christ.
• Remember when we talked about going the extra mile? It takes love to do that. It took a lot of love on Jesus part to go the extra mile for you and me!
• Luke tells us in Luke 6:28 to bless those who curse us. To bless means to speak well of them. Instead of exchanging insult for insult we are to speak well of those who curse us.
• General Robert E. Lee was asked what he thought of a fellow officer in the Confederate Army who had made some derogatory remarks about him. Lee rated him as being very satisfactory. The person who asked the question seemed perplexed. "General," he said, "I guess you don’t know what he’s been saying about you." "I know," answered Lee. "But I was asked my opinion of him, not his opinion of me!"
• The second thing that Jesus tells us to do is to:
• SLIDE #9
B. Pray for your persecutors.
• Have you ever had a person that you had trouble with, maybe you really dislike them in a big way because of something that they have done to you?
• Our have you had a person who just gives you a hard time all the time?
• Jesus tells us to pray for those who persecute us.
• One of the reasons for that is that pray may be the most powerful weapon that we have to change them and their attitude towards us.
• It is hard to hate people that you pray for. Try it.
• By the way, we are not to pray that God zaps them into hell immediately.
• Stephen, while being stoned to death said,
• SLIDE #10
• Acts 7:60 ( ESV ) And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
• Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified Him in Luke 23:34.
• Stephen did not like what was happening to him, but he loved his persecutors enough to want to see them saved
• Why are we to do this difficult thing?
• SLIDE #11
• Matthew 5:45-48 ( ESV ) 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.
• SLIDE #12
III. LOVE LIKE THE FATHER! (45-48)
• We are in God’s family when you are immersed into Christ, we are to do these things because we first of all we are to be like our Father.
• SLIDE #13
A. Be like the Father. (45, 48)
• The first part of verse 45 says that we do this so that we can be sons of God who is in heaven.
• Loving as God loves does not make us sons of the Father, but gives evidence that we already are His children. When a life reflects God’s nature it proves that life now possesses His nature by the new birth.
• One of the most common and most damaging criticisms of Christianity is the charge that Christians do not live up to their faith.
• Even though the world has a limited and often distorted idea of what the gospel is, they know enough about the teachings of Christ and the life of Christ to realize that most people who go by His name do not do all that He commanded and do not live as He lived.
• When we love and pray for our enemies, we are showing the world who we love and that we will do some of the craziest looking stuff for the God that we love.
• Look at verse 48. The perfection that is God is utterly impossible in man’s own power.
• To those who wonder how Jesus can demand the impossible, He later says, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26).
• That which God demands, He provides the power to accomplish. Man’s own righteousness is possible, but is so imperfect that it is worthless; God’s righteousness is impossible for the very reason that it is perfect. But the impossible righteousness becomes possible for those who trust in Jesus Christ, because He gives them His righteousness.
• That is precisely our Lord’s point in all these illustrations and in the whole sermon—to lead His audience to an overpowering sense of spiritual bankruptcy, to a “beatitude attitude” that shows them their need of a Savior, an enabler who alone can empower them to meet God’s standard of perfection.
• The second reason we are to do these difficult things is we are called to:
• SLIDE #14
B. Be different than the world. (46-47)
• If the scribes and Pharisees were certain of any one thing it was that they were far better than everyone else.
• But Jesus again cuts through their blind hypocrisy and shows that their type of love is nothing more than the ordinary self-centered love that was common even to tax-gatherers and Gentiles—to whom the scribes and Pharisees thought they were most undeniably superior.
• In verse 46 Jesus tells the listens that loving the lovable is something that even the tax collectors do. Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
• Those were probably the most devastating and insulting words these religious leaders had ever heard, and they must have been enraged. Tax-gatherers were traitorous extortioners, and almost by definition were dishonest, heartless, and irreligious.
• In the eyes of most Jews, Gentiles were outside the pale of God’s concern and mercy, fit only for destruction as His enemies and the enemies of those who thought they were His people.
• The citizens of God’s kingdom are to have a much higher standard of love, and of every other aspect of righteousness, than does the rest of the world.
• Loving and praying for an enemy is not what the world would do, but it is what a Christian is SUPPOSED to do.
• WE are to be different in thought and action from the world.
CONCLUSION
• Forgiving people, loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you will be some of the hardest things for most of us to do.
• I implore you this morning that if you have someone you consider an enemy, follow what Jesus tells us here, you will be better for it and you will not let someone else have control over your life!
