Love Your Enemies
Sermon on the Mount • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 31:11
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· 77 viewsIt is easy to love those like us, but what about people who hate us? Find out how the Christian should love in this message from Matthew 5:43-48.
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We are wrapping up our next major section in the Sermon on the Mount this morning, so go ahead and turn one more time to Matthew 5.
As you are turning there, let me ask you again: what do we say our goal is here at Christiansburg Baptist? Our goal is...?
Love. Based off 1 Timothy 1:5, we make it our goal to love God and others in our family, church, community, and world.
Over the last few months, we have been encouraging you to look for ways to love others around you. I imagine, though, if you are like many, there have been more days than you would like to admit where your goal wasn’t loving God and others; it was simply to survive.
Changes at work, government regulations, school for the kids, and stay-at-home orders can very easily turn our hearts inward as we fight to keep up with the shifting systems around us.
In the first part of this week, Facebook and news sites were filled with fights over mask mandates, reopening procedures, and the like.
As the week went on, we became confronted again with issues of racial injustice in the killing of George Floyd, which was like ripping a band-aid off wounds that hadn’t healed from the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and others.
Frustration and hate has spilled out again on all sides, and as we take in this full picture of anger, chaos, and division, I want to challenge us to lean back into this idea that Our Goal Is Love.
In fact, that’s exactly what Jesus is going to point us towards in this passage.
He has been building up to this, and it is the perfect capstone for this section, and it couldn’t be more timely for us.
So far in Matthew 5, we have seen Jesus sit down with the crowds from all over and begin explaining to his disciples just what should characterize those who were citizens of his kingdom.
He began explaining that those who are his citizens would look, act, and behave very differently than the rest of the world. In fact, much of what they would do would be the exact opposite.
That kind of heart and mindset should lead us to stand out, slowing the moral decay around us and highlighting right from wrong in the world around us.
From there, he turned his attention to explaining how kingdom citizens responded to the commands God gave in his law. Jesus wasn’t doing away with them; instead, he was fulfilling the law.
In doing so, we saw that the New Covenant he was making and that we enter into elevates the commands that the Pharisees had reduced to outward obedience. Jesus makes it clear that doing the right thing must start with having the right heart.
That is what he is wrapping up this morning, reminding us that kingdom citizens are called to love our enemies.
Read through these verses with me...
You know, there are times when I like to try to come up with a memorable title; something catchy or poignant.
However, this week, I simply want to point you to what Jesus said here: love your enemies.
I believe Jesus gives us two main reasons why we should love our enemies:
1) Because God is good to his enemies.
1) Because God is good to his enemies.
Look back at verse 45.
Do you ever think about what we are trying to accomplish in life, or what we are trying to do as a church?
Jesus sums it up in this verse right here: we are called to be children of our Father.
The older I get, the more I hear my dad coming out in the way I talk, the way I act, the way I respond to things.
My dad is an awesome man who has modeled for me what a loving husband and dad should be, as well as what it means to work hard to provide for your family.
It is amazing to me to see just how much he has rubbed off on me, and I only hope that my kids can look back at me and feel the same way about me that I do about him.
I am the son of Jon Couch, and it shows.
Listen, folks: Romans 8 says that we are adopted into the family of God as his sons, so if I looked at the way you responded to the events of this week, whether on a big scale or a minor scale, do you think you look like your heavenly Father?
Jesus points out for us that one of the ways we copy our heavenly Father is that he shows love to everyone.
According to the folks at Gordon Conwell Seminary, there were over 7.7 billion people in the world in 2019. Of those, just over 2.5 billion identified as Christians. [1]
That leaves 5.2 billion people who don’t even claim to follow Jesus.
Yet how many of those people had the sunrise on them today? All 7.7 billion people, right? It may have been cloudy, and they may have slept through it, but the sun rose on every person in the world.
The same thing is true of the rain. Although there are seasons of floods and seasons of droughts, the rain that waters our crops and provides the water we need to live off of falls on those who follow Jesus and those who don’t.
It isn’t like it just rains on the crops of the righteous, or that droughts only come to the wicked.
The sun rises on everyone, the rain falls on everyone—this is something that theologians refer to as, “common grace.”
Although there are specific aspects of grace like forgiveness and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that are only given to believers, there are common graces like sunrises and rain and coffee that are available to all.
Why?
Because God is kind, loving, and gracious even to those who hate him.
“Yeah, but Sean—that’s just the natural course of things. Is God really behind all that?”
Look at the subtlety of what Jesus said…whose sun is it? “His sun.”
You see, everything in the universe was made by God and for God and is his. If God so chose, he could direct sunlight only on believers or rain just to those who follow him, because they belong to him!
He has done it before—look at the plagues, where God made divisions between the Hebrews and the Egyptians, and look at Joshua 10 where God extended the daylight so the armies of Israel could have a decisive victory.
But, in general, God doesn’t operate that way—he shows common grace to all, even to his enemies.
Do you? How do you treat people who disagree with you on Facebook, or people of a different race than you? Do you treat people as though they are created in God’s image, regardless of the sin they struggle with or the way they look or the things they say?
“Well, but I’m not God. Surely, I don’t have to act like that towards everyone, right?”
Wrong! You and I are called to love the different, the difficult, and the unlovable because...
2) Because we are called to be like him.
2) Because we are called to be like him.
We already established that we are called to be like our heavenly Father, but Jesus drives it home in verse 46-47.
I love the logical argument Jesus uses here.
Okay, so we claim to follow the God who loves the entire world enough to give common grace to all. Those of us who claim to be Christians claim that we are going to heaven based off the fact that the Son of God took our sin, died in our place, and rose from the dead. He has drawn us to himself in a new covenant, making us alive spiritually and placing us as citizens of his kingdom.
There is no greater love imaginable than that.
If that’s true, then Jesus asks, “Why don’t you act like it?”
Look back at verse 46-47.
In those days, tax collectors were some of the lowest of the low.
They were Jews who had sold out to the Romans and were extorting money from their fellow countryman.
Jesus hits the Pharisees hard by saying essentially, “They love their moms like you do—why do you think that makes you special?”
Even the pagan, godless Gentiles are nice to people who are nice to them!
I am afraid we do the same thing!
We think we are loving and kind because we are nice to people at church or people who think like us and look like us.
What about “those people,” though?
I bet for each of us, “those people” might be different.
For some, “those people” are Democrats, for some, “those people” are Republicans.
For some, it is rich people; for others, it is poor.
For some, “those people” are those who commit a particular sin that is more noticeable than yours.
Listen to me, as clearly as I can say it: you are called, commanded, and expected by God to love those people!
You aren’t called to agree with their choices or to condone all their actions, but you are called to love them and desire God’s best for them.
Jump back up to the top of this passage again. Look at verse 44...
Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.
What does that look like? What does it mean to love your enemies?
Jesus gives us an idea in what he says in verse 47. The idea of “greeting” here is more than just saying “Hello”, but it extends to wishing well on others.
If you claim to be a citizen in the kingdom of the God who gives common grace to everyone in the entire world, then how could you possibly keep from showing grace to everyone around you?
We are called to copy the same God who:
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
We don’t give our sons, we give ourselves to point others to the Son of God who was given for us.
God had already commanded his people to do this in the Old Testament, but they had missed it:
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink;
Do good things for those who do bad things to you! Pray for God to help them see their need for him. Pray that he would work in their hearts to draw them to himself. Seek the good of “those people”, because that’s what God does!
Verse 48 points to this as Jesus sums up this entire section.
Kingdom citizens are to strive to emulate the character and nature of our Father to the fullest extent possible.
We will still wrestle with sin until the day we die or Jesus comes back to take us home to him. We cannot achieve perfection this side of heaven.
However, the overall tone of our life must be that we strive to live up to the standard God has set for us.
Looking back over this section, where Jesus has shown us just how high the demands of the New Covenant are, we see this:
Instead of giving in to unjust anger, we pursue reconciliation, just like our heavenly Father pursued us when we were his enemies and separated from him.
Instead of lusting after others and leaving our spouse, we seek purity, devotion, and faithfulness to your spouse, just like God has been faithful to us.
We don’t make promises we don’t intend to keep. Instead, we keep our word, just like God keeps his promises he has made to us.
We don’t do what is expected; we go above and beyond, even when the world says you have the right to retaliate, just like God has gone above and beyond by dying in our place.
We don’t just love those like us; we love even our enemies, just as God did for us.
Listen: there is a world out there who is afraid and angry. We know the one who is the solution, and we are called to represent him well.
Our goal as a church is that you and I would so radically love God and others in our family, our church, our community, and our world that those who see and hear about what God is doing will be drawn to the God who invites us into his kingdom through his own shed blood.
Let’s pray...
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.gordonconwell.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2019/04/StatusofGlobalChristianity20191.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2020.