"The Hardest Thing Jesus Ever Said" Matthew 5:43-47 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Jacob Deschizer was a bombardier and a sergeant in the Army Air Corps in 1942.

He had led the uh his uh B-25 as one of the planes leading the Doolittle bombing raid.

It was the first uh American bombing run of Japan.

Because of that, the fuel uh had not been quite worked out right.

His B-25 ran out of fuel, crashed in mainland China behind enemy lines.

Many of his men escaped.

He did not.

He landed in the cemetery, couldn't find his way out, and was taken into custody, transferred to Japan, where he was held as a prisoner of war for 40 months.

Uh in custody, he bribed a guard to bring him something in English.

And the guard brought him a Bible.

Uh when this was found out, he was sentenced to the next 36 months in captivity in solitary confinement.

Uh so he spent three years with himself uh and his Bible, uh, reading it, and he came to faith during those times, uh, those many years in jail.

He was told that he could be released from solitary confinement if he would uh inform on some of the guards and their bad behavior, also if he would record these uh propaganda pieces against the United States and their involvement in the war.

He refused to help um motivate him to cooperate.

They brought out at least three, maybe more, but we know of at least three of his men and killed them by firing a squad in front of Jacob to get him to cooperate, which he refused the whole time.

He was finally liberated by American paratroopers at the end of World War II.

Once getting back to the United States, he went immediately to Seattle, where he enrolled in a Bible school, Seattle Pacific University, graduated with a Bible degree, was ordained in the Methodist Church, and moved back to Japan.

Uh he made it his goal to plant a church in the very city that he had bombed.

And Japan is notoriously difficult for church planters.

There's been entire books written about how, uh arguing that the Japanese culture is probably the hardest in the world to infiltrate with the gospel.

There's no shortage of missionaries that have tried, and yet very, very few have been successful.

But Jacob was and planted a church in that same city he had bombed.

And while he was there with kind of a thriving church at this point, his Japanese was pretty good, as you can imagine.

Uh the judge who had sentenced him to solitary confinement and had some of his uh fellow soldiers assassinated, really, by firing squad, that judge was put on uh trial for war crimes.

That judge was found guilty, and that judge was sentenced to death.

Jacob appealed to the Japanese legal system to pardon that judge and spent several years of his life begging them.

He made it kind of a mission in his life to get mercy and clemency for that judge.

He finally succeeded, and the judge was granted a pardon.

It was during that time that the Japanese leader who had commanded, the highest officer who had commanded the attack on Pearl Harbor, I cannot pronounce his name, uh, but he met Jacob because of Jacob's evangelistic influence, and he came to Christ.

And so the person who had led and ordered the Pearl Harbor attack himself became converted by a former American prisoner of war.

The two of them then became traveling evangelists together, uh, which can you imagine?

Uh and like I said, Japan is notoriously hard to plant a church in.

Uh some accounts say that he succeeded, the two of them succeeded in planting over 23 churches in Japan.

It was Jacob Delshazzar who said, speaking of Matthew 5, verse 44, this is one of the things I wish Jesus had never said.

Matthew 5:44

Can anything be harder than this command to love your enemy?

Jesus, through this passage here, has been repeating many, many times, you have heard it said.

With all of those occasions, the verse that he says, you have heard it said, is in fact a Bible verse.

And it is one that is quoted more or less accurately until today's.

They put the punctuation mark in an odd place today.

But if you just jog your eyes through Matthew 5, you'll see the rhetorical device Jesus has been using.

For example, in verse 21 of Matthew 5, he says, You have heard that it was said, you shall not murder.

And yes, indeed, it was said, you shall not murder.

Uh that is the um bad.

Uh it's one of the commandments, don't murder.

The Bible says it, don't do it.

Jesus repeats it.

Verse 27, you've heard it said you shall not commit adultery.

Likewise, that's true.

That also is a commandment.

Seventh commandment, do not commit adultery.

You have heard that it was said that if you do divorce, you must give your wife a certificate of divorce.

Verse 31.

That also is true.

You've heard it said in verse uh 33, don't swear falsely.

Again, that is true.

The Bible does prohibit you from swearing falsely.

It's a third commandment violation, as well as other verses as well.

And then finally, verse 38, an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, Lex Telianis.

We looked at that verse last week.

That is, in fact, a command in the Old Testament, and it is true.

Uh don't do it, uh, don't swear falsely, and if if you do fulfill your vow, and then do show justice to people, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, do enforce justice.

Today's passage is the end of that rhetorical device.

You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor.

And if you are an Iwana student and you memorize Leviticus 19, verse 18, which is what this verse is, instead of Matthew 5, verse 43, then you know something the disciples and the apostles and the Pharisees did not know.

Leviticus 19:18 Matthew 5:43

You know that they are not quoting this verse correctly.

The Old Testament does say you shall love your neighbor, but a day men, brother.

We have we have a little another here.

You shall love your neighbor and everybody now as yourself.

But the Pharisees, as well as many of the Jewish leaders and philosophers and theologians, had moved up the semicolon and left it right there.

You shall love your neighbor.

Now let's keep moving on.

They dropped the as-yourself.

And so Jesus, as he is confronting this teaching with the Pharisees and with the disciples that are on the hill there, and really with Judaism as a whole, he is drilling down on what they had skipped over.

What he says is shocking, and so I want to help you understand the shock value of it by giving you the series of questions that the disciples would be asking as they listen to this.

The first question You want me to do what?

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And that is the answer to the first question.

You want me to do what?

The answer is love others as yourself.

That is, in fact, what Leviticus 19, verse 18 says.

Leviticus 19:18

You are to love those around you like you love yourself.

As I mentioned, the Jews had dropped the how as yourself, instead, focused on the who, your neighbors.

They underlined the word neighbor and erased the phrase as yourself.

Which is not a small mistake.

It's kind of a big mistake because it's kind of an important Bible verse.

In fact, several times in the New Testament, the New Testament says Leviticus 19, 18 sums up the whole law.

It's too much work to memorize the Ten Commandments?

Memorize two.

Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.

That covers everything.

Don't try that in your awana class because you will not get the patch.

Jesus recognizes that the second table of the law, the final five commandments, are summarized by loving your neighbor.

At my house, I don't need a sign on my wall that says family rules.

One, don't yell at Deedra.

Two, don't throw things at Deedra.

Three, answer Deedra when she asks you a question.

Four, ask Deedra questions.

Five, see if there's things you can do to help Deedra around the house.

When I come home from work, I don't need to look at that sign and say, okay, where am I?

The only rule I need is love Deedra.

That makes the other ones irrelevant.

This is how the Old Testament law worked.

You don't need to know how high the parapet needs to be, the wall around your balcony needs to be, or the wall around a pit in your yard needs to be.

You don't need to know what the consequence is for stealing a sheep.

You don't need to know if that's different than the consequence for stealing an ox.

You don't need to know all that if you love your neighbor.

You don't need to get caught up in what size the boil is that makes you clean or unclean.

If you recognize you're contagious, love your neighbor.

The law can be fulfilled with that.

The only rule you need is to love your neighbor.

Do that, and you fulfill that half of the law.

Now, the first half of the law, of course, is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

That's the first four at least, or possibly even five commandments covered up in that first table.

But Jesus will get to that later.

For now, love your neighbor as yourself really covers everything else.

This is why it's Romans 13, verse 9.

Romans 13:9

It says, All the law is fulfilled in love.

There, Paul drops off the as yourself because he's just given one word.

The whole word, the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

That one word is love.

Love God, love your neighbor, love people.

If you do that, you fulfill the law, is his word.

It is amazing today, people try to get out of this.

And they try to get out of this by all kinds of fancy dancing and moving shell games here with what the words say.

You even hear today, something that would make the Pharisees proud.

Today, a very common Christian teaching, especially American Christians, is to say, you know what?

I know I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself, but the first step of that is loving myself.

So I really got to figure out how to love myself before I can love my neighbor, because if I don't love myself right, I can't love my neighbor right.

And it becomes an excuse to focus on loving yourself.

When the command is to prefer your neighbor over yourself, really, don't put your own interests first, but consider the interests of others before you, and you say, okay, in order to love my neighbor as myself, I'm sorry, I need a minute.

I need to love myself properly first.

JJ is my neighbor.

I can say, JJ, you need something.

I want to show you love, man, but first, I have to figure out how to love me.

So I'll circle back once I have the love me thing figured out.

He'll never see me again.

This whole logical structure the Lord uses here hinges on the fact that you are pretty good at loving yourself.

You came out of the box loving yourself just fine.

That's not your problem.

Your problem with biblical ethics is that you don't know how to love yourself.

You've got to be kidding me.

The whole self-help section at Barnes and Noble is aimed at getting you to care less about your neighbor and more about you.

You wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and sing, how great thou art.

That's the way I love my neighbor, is by loving me.

No.

You love your neighbor by putting his interests over your own.

By sacrificing yourself for him.

That's the what?

Love your neighbor as yourself.

You feed yourself, you clothe yourself, you're tired, you go to bed, you're hungry, you go to work, and you get money and you buy something to eat.

You do a lot for yourself.

You know that?

You work hard for your belly.

You work hard for it.

You're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself.

So you're with me so far, get it.

Love my neighbor as myself.

Hard, impossible, but I get the commands.

Leviticus 19, 18, love my neighbor as myself.

I'm in.

But Jesus doesn't stop there.

He keeps going.

He says, But I tell you, love your enemies.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Who?

Who am I supposed to love?

And the answer to the who question is your enemy.

You're supposed to love your enemy.

Now, if you look back up at verse 43, the Jews said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

Now, this gets really to the heart of the typical Jewish worldview.

It's different than an American worldview.

American worldview is fine with like blandness, fine with lots of gray areas and medium choices.

The Jewish worldview is not.

In the Jewish worldview, something is either clean or unclean, love or hate.

That's everything fits into one of those categories.

Every object in the world is either clean or unclean.

You can touch it, or if you touch it, you are unclean.

Those are the two categories.

You can eat it or you can't eat it.

That's it.

And everything fits in that category.

And this affects all parts of their worldview.

You either love something or you hate it.

There is no middle ground in the Jewish worldview.

To use a very common analogy, the books often point out, if you come to a fork in the road in the Jewish worldview, if you go left instead of right, you love the left and you hate the right.

You leave the parking lot and you take backlik instead of Braddock, you love backlick, that means you hate Braddock.

And Americans don't usually think like that.

Americans are more like, yeah, you know, I might go left one day and right the other way.

No, in the Jewish worldview, no.

You love one and you hate the other.

And this factors in to their ethic towards neighbor.

You're supposed to love some people and hate other people.

Love for neighbor and then hatred towards others.

And when they say hatred, they don't mean it like Americans do.

The Americans, when you hate something, it's like, oh, that's a you can't say not the H-word.

Hatred is an extreme emotion.

In the Jewish worldview, hatred just is something for people that you didn't choose.

You didn't choose them.

Now I want you to understand the Jewish mindset of this for you to appreciate.

You have to understand their argument before you can appreciate how countercultural it is what Jesus says.

Their argument really hinges on this.

If everybody is your neighbor, then nobody is your neighbor.

If you're supposed to love in that sacrificial way for everybody, then being your neighbor isn't special.

And let me speak to you like an American here.

You have Thanksgiving dinner coming up, and you want to invite people.

You can't invite everybody to Thanksgiving dinner.

They won't fit.

So you start with like your immediate family, and then maybe your neighbors, and then maybe the people sit next to you at church, and if they say no, then maybe the coworker you like the most.

And if they say no, then maybe a you know the Sunday school teacher.

You have you gradually expanding circles until you fill your room.

That's the kind of the way the Americans think.

And in the Jewish mind, they appreciate that because they say that is your neighbor right there.

You're making circles, those are your neighbors, you love those people like yourself, but if you tie your child up to everybody, then it's meaningless.

The word neighbor has to mean something, so it can't mean everybody.

And in the broadest way, neighbors were other Jews.

So Jews are in diaspora, they're spread around outside of Israel, all over the world.

In their ethical system, other Jews are their neighbor, Gentiles are not their neighbor, you love the Jews, you don't show love, or you hate the Gentiles, that's their structure.

And there's all kinds of books and journal articles written on this.

Let me read you a very commonly cited Jewish philosopher.

This is a thousand years after Jesus, about 1,000 A.D., he writes, quote, If a Jew sees a Gentile fallen into the sea, let him by no means lift him out of the water.

For it is written, You shall not rise up against the blood of your neighbor, but this is not your neighbor.

In other words, if a Jew is walking around, you see a Gentile drowning, you don't need to fish him out of the water.

Of course, you would never kill a Gentile, you wouldn't do that.

But you also don't need to save their life.

I mean, come on.

He's drowning, he's a Gentile, probably deserves it.

Jews would make very bad lifeguards in this ethical system here.

This is the fruit of a love versus hate worldview.

Now, as I mentioned, it doesn't mean a Jew would walk around killing the Gentiles that are overthrowing that are ruling Jerusalem during Jesus' lifetime.

Of course not.

But they had an ethical structure about how to interact with them that was loving their neighbor and hating their enemy.

Like I said, it's hard for Americans to understand this because we don't often have personal enemies.

You know, if you had to make a list of your enemies, it would probably be pretty short.

Nobody's actively seeking your harm.

Sometimes in your life, you might have people that are slandering you or putting their own interests ahead of yours, and you take that as hatred, or you know, sometimes somebody disagrees with you at work and you're like, oh, that guy hates me.

Probably not.

Probably just disagreed with your plan at work.

But in our mind, we we go there.

But we do have ideological enemies.

You know, if somebody asks you who your enemy is, you might think, I don't know, the terrorists from other countries that attack our country.

They're my enemy.

Or maybe those people who are socialists, they're my enemy.

You might have like a political, you know, red, blue, conservative, liberal, traditional progressive divide in your mind, and those others are the enemies.

You define it differently.

But the truth is, for most Americans, you have few friends and neighbors, hardly any enemies, and you just have a sea of blandness in front of you.

Most people in your life, like you can get with a Christian ethic, you're supposed to love your neighbor, you're supposed to love your enemy, but you have retooled those circles so that most of the world doesn't fit in either box.

I'll look at all those people out there.

I don't need to love them.

They're not my friend or my enemy.

Score.

Again, very different in the Jewish world view.

But Jesus' words are just as confrontational.

You are supposed to, if you're supposed to love your neighbor and love your enemy, verse 44 says, that is gonna check every box in the Jewish world.

That means you love everybody.

And you know that the word neighbor has to mean everybody, too, just in the context of the Ten Commandments.

After all, do not covet your neighbor's wife.

The word neighbor there has to mean everybody.

Otherwise, I mean you can't say.

It's okay for me to commit adultery with that person because I don't even know her husband.

The word neighbor means everyone.

And Jesus checks in here and says, Love is what is commanded.

Love for neighbor is arguably, maybe this or Psalm 110, the most quoted verse from the Old Testament in the New.

Matthew 5, 43 here.

Matthew 19, love your neighbor.

Matthew 22, verse 39, love your neighbor.

Matthew 22:39

Mark 12, 31, love your neighbor.

12, 33, love your neighbor again.

Luke 10, 27, love your neighbor.

Romans 13, 9, love your neighbor, love fulfills the law.

Galatians 5, 14, love your neighbor.

James 2, 8, love your neighbor.

This is the fulfillment of the law.

Over and over and over again, the New Testament speaks like that.

Indifference is not on the table.

Love is active, it's emotional, it wants what is best for the person.

You can't say, uh I don't hate that person, but I don't love him.

I just, you know, blah.

That's not being like God.

If someone, this is why you want to fall back on a difference because somebody hates you, somebody slanders you, somebody seeks your harm, somebody tells lies about you, somebody steals from you.

You think I don't want to take revenge.

I want to take revenge, but I know I'm not supposed to.

So I don't want to take revenge.

Let me just pause and try not to think about the person.

That's indifference.

You think somebody's hating me, can't I at least push back on that person?

Somebody's hating me and being, you know, unkind to me and lying about me.

Can't I push back on that?

No.

You're supposed to love your enemy.

Neutrality is not a middle ground.

Pushing back is not a middle ground.

Love is the only option.

Anything short of unconditional love for your enemies is condoning sin in your life.

And the point here is that as long as there has been enemies in the world, there has been God's command to love them.

So who?

Love everyone around you.

Including your enemy.

Now, how are you supposed to do that?

That's the third question.

Okay, I'm with you.

But how do I love my enemy?

My enemy is my enemy.

He doesn't like me.

He's not asking me questions.

He's not asking me to pray for him.

He's my enemy.

How am I supposed to love them?

And so Jesus is going to answer that with very practical ways.

And it is at this point, I need to do this sometime this morning, so I'll just insert this here.

I want to kind of park the car for a second and say a very common question about this is how does this work at the level of nations?

Are nations supposed to love other nations?

Are nations supposed to put other nations' interests above their own?

How can a soldier drop a bomb on a city and then while dropping the bomb say, I love those people?

That's the dynamic that's at play that people ask.

Or to use Old Testament language, how can how can Samuel hack Agag to pieces while loving his enemy?

How can both of those be true?

How can you hack the dude into little pieces while saying you love him?

There's a problem with that, you would think.

And you really do need to disentangle national ethics from personal ethics.

God made nations to check evil.

He made nations to check each other.

This goes back to Genesis 8 and 9.

Nations are designed by God to bear the sword against each other.

Wars between nations check each other.

It's not even that one nation is good and one is bad, or one is right and one is wrong.

You don't need to sort that out.

You just know that wars against each other check evil.

They keep each other down, those two nations do.

And people don't have to do that.

An individual, you interact with your enemies differently than a nation would interact with their enemies.

David is not going to put Saul to death, even though Saul was his personal enemy, but at the national scope, David's mighty men are fighting against Saul's army.

You have to be able to disentangle those.

Naaman, the Syrian military leader, when he attacks Israel, he goes to war and they fight against each other in war.

But when he comes to Elijah and asks for help and his leprosy to be cured, he's cured.

When the soldiers come back and besiege Samaria, the Israelites, it's war and there's open conflicts.

But when the soldiers are taken captive by Elisha in 2 Kings 6, remember what he does?

Brings him inside the house and feeds them.

And the Israelite king freaks out about that, pulls the tassels off of his robe.

And you gotta be kidding me.

These are our enemies, and you're feeding them.

And Elisha says it's 2 Kings 6, it's not right to have an enemy and not give them food.

So you understand there's a difference between national ethics and personal ethics.

Jesus here is not giving ethics for running a nation, he's giving ethics for you interacting with your enemies.

So that's complicated enough for you, okay?

Love your enemies without bringing your nation into it.

And as a side note, C.S.

Lewis in his book, The Four Loves, talks about this and has a really great illustration of if you get these right, you should be able to go to war against somebody and fight against the other soldier.

But when there's a pause in the battle to pray with them and have a meal with them and then go back to fighting with them.

Now he's being hypothetical, like not in reality would that take place, but that concepts, you need to have those concepts in your mind to allow that to think rightly about the orders of love.

Alright, so how are you supposed to love your enemy then?

And they may not be asking for prayer, but that's where Jesus goes first.

The first way you can love your enemy is praying for them, verse 44.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

This is the obvious place to start.

If love wants what is best for the other person, prayer is asking God to bless that person.

Prayer is the means in which God blesses people.

You pray, God answers prayer by showing favor to somebody.

Now, don't pray in a precatory prayer for them.

You said pray for my enemies.

Lord, I pray for my enemies' life, and I just pray that their life would be so short.

There, I prayed for them.

You're praying for blessing on them.

You want what is best for them, and the best thing for your enemy, by the way, would be their conversion, their repentance.

Lord, open their eyes, help them love you.

1 Timothy 2, verse 1, Paul says, first of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgiving be made for all people, especially, particularly for kings and those who are in high positions, so they can lead, so that we can lead a peaceful and quiet life.

1 Timothy 2:1

You're praying that they would be converted, so they would let you be godly.

And that's what Jesus certainly means here in verse 44.

Pray for those who persecute you.

Those who are persecuting you are likely those in authority.

That's what persecution probably means.

And so it's obvious that you would pray for those who persecute you, that God would convert them and lead them to faith, that God would bless them.

Secondly, that you should give them grace.

You show them grace.

This is where Jesus goes next.

Think of your father's in heaven, verse 45, he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, he causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

It was Calvin that called this common grace, and that phrase I don't think has been improved upon in the next 500 years of church history.

Common grace is a great description of it.

God gives people things they don't deserve that make life livable and even enjoyable.

And he doesn't only give it to Christians, he gives it to the world.

Rain, sunshine, marriage, music, milkshakes.

The go to the world.

And you don't need to be a Christian to enjoy music or marriage or milkshakes.

Non-Christians can enjoy them.

Now I think Christians enjoy them better because you understand the kind providence of God in the milkshake and the kind design of God in marriage and the ultimate purpose of music.

Like Christians get the big picture, but non-Christians can still enjoy those things.

Traffic lights make the world livable.

Government, even bad ones, make the world livable.

These are all examples of common grace.

And God gives them to people not because they deserve it.

The rain doesn't only fall on people who had their quiet times that morning.

It falls on the just and the unjust.

And rain doesn't just make their life livable, it doesn't just cool them down, it causes the food to grow.

Gives them food to enjoy their world, it meets their needs, it allows them to live.

That's how God loves his enemies.

He gives them grace.

Can you give your enemies grace?

Think about what that means.

It means don't impute to them bad motives with things.

Don't think the worst about them.

Treat them graciously.

Speak kindly of them.

Show them kindness.

That's what God does to us.

If God only caused the sun to shine on the righteous, then the world would be dark.

If God only showed grace to his friends, then there would be no grace.

But God gives grace to enemies.

So should you.

Thirdly.

Serve them.

Serve them.

Luke 6, verse 35 says, Love your enemies and lend to them without expecting to get anything in return.

Luke 6:35

Now that verse should be under the heading, no duh.

If the person's your enemy and you lend him money, do you think they're going to pay you back?

If they pay you back, they're probably not your enemy.

So Jesus says, lend to him anyway, and don't expect to get paid back.

That's called a gift.

Or back in Exodus, Exodus 23, if you meet your enemy's ox wandering away, take him back home.

You know your neighbor is your enemy.

He's always calling the HOA on you and throwing the seeds for weeds into your yard and stealing your carrots.

The guy is just bugs you, and he is such your enemy.

Then one day you're wandering around and there goes his ox.

Wandering away, and you think, good.

Good.

No, Moses says, go fetch the ox and bring it back to the guy's house.

Another example, Exodus 23, verse 5.

Exodus 23:5

Say you see his donkey of your enemy, and it's burden shifted and collapsed.

And so you've got like a capsized donkey here on the side of the road.

The donkey was all loaded, and the enemy sent the donkey away, and donkey go into the barn or wherever it's supposed to go, and you come across the donkey, and he like fell over because the weight wasn't loaded.

The guy's an enemy, okay?

He doesn't treat you right, he probably doesn't treat his animals right.

Everybody gets what they deserve in this scenario, except the poor donkey.

I have to say that for the Americans.

Poor donkey.

So Moses says, help the donkey up.

And it's not because Moses was concerned about the donkey, by the way.

It's your way of helping your neighbor, who in this case is your enemy.

Help him.

Rescue it, Moses says.

Don't refrain from sending the donkey on his way in the news this week.

Out in Arlington or Alexandria, there was a neighbor who was upset at his neighbor's dog always barking.

Maybe some of you saw the story.

So the neighbor took meat and put rat poison in it and chucked it over the fence.

And the people with the dog caught it on the ring camera.

They were like, who's that guy walking around our yard?

I think that's our neighbor.

What's he throwing into our fence?

What's he throwing into our yard?

And so they drive home really quick and check and they gab the meat and the dog didn't get the meat.

And so the dog lived.

And they call the police, and I don't know what the punishment for that is.

A ticket, or I have no idea what they did to him, tased him, I have no idea.

But they did something to him, and but it's not like in jail for a long time, you know?

The guy's out in the world right now.

If that's you, how do you interact with that guy?

The story actually interviewed the uh the homeowner and he said, We're moving.

Up and moving, we can't live here anymore.

I think, what's the I'm not judging him, I honestly have no idea what I would do, but what's the Christian worldview to that?

You know, you love the guy.

How do you love that guy?

You know, next week you see him on the beltway and his car's out of gas and he's got the gas can in his hand.

Do you stop and help him?

He just tried to poison your dog.

Love your enemy.

Serve them, pray for them, give them grace.

Give them grace.

You're seeing how outlandish this is.

Why would anybody act like that?

Why?

That would be the next question.

Why in the world, Jesus?

Why would you want us to act like this?

Nobody else in the world acts like this.

There's no other ethical system, there's no other religious system, nobody acts like this.

Even in kind of the Eastern mystical religions, the idea of karma, you might do good to people so that it comes back to you.

That is not what Jesus is talking about here.

And even in those Eastern religions, you don't want to do good to a bad person because you're robbing them of the punishment they need.

But Jesus says something different in the rest of the world.

Why in the world would he say that?

He does give you a few reasons why you're supposed to love your enemies.

The first is so that you are like God, verse 45, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

As far as I know, I could be wrong about this, but as far as I know, this is the only New Testament description of this, that you will be like God when you do this.

You will be like God when you love your enemies.

Like I mentioned earlier.

If God only loved his friends, he wouldn't be displaying his love.

God loves his enemies.

He loved you when you were his enemy.

You weren't born in this world as a friend of God.

You were born in this world as an enemy of God.

And yet, while you were an enemy of God, Christ Jesus died for you.

God gave his own son for you.

So certainly God shows love to his enemies.

This is a very basic way.

If you want to be like your father who is in heaven, love your enemies.

It says verse 45, sons, the ESV, but it's the um it's a word that encompasses both sons and daughters.

If you want to be a child of God, love your enemy.

This is the kind of love that God is known for.

God loves his enemies in an unmerited, unrestrained, over-the-top, effusive kind of way.

He shares himself with them.

He gives his enemies what they need to make life enjoyable for them, even.

God goes beyond.

So you are like God when you love your enemies.

That's a basic reason for you to do it.

For you to represent the Lord to the world.

Secondly, love your enemy to receive a reward.

They're just straight up pandering to you.

One reason to love your enemy is so you're like God, but if that doesn't do the trick for you, and sometimes with enemies, you can understand why they're like, okay, I know if I love them, I'll be like God, but that's still too much to ask for.

So Jesus appeals to even a baser reason here that if you love those who love you, verse 46, what reward do you have?

The implication is that there is a reward for loving your enemy.

Now I'm going to preach a whole sermon on this in a couple months when we get to Matthew 6.

In Matthew 6, Jesus talks about storing up treasure for yourself in heaven.

There is a very real sense that Jesus teaches that you can store up treasure and reward for yourself in heaven.

And not every Christian gets the same reward in heaven.

You're rewarded based upon how you lived your life and based upon what God gave you and how you used it.

How did you invest the time, talent, and resources God gave you?

You will be rewarded based upon that in heaven.

I don't want to preach that sermon now, though, except to hint about it and plant that seed in your mind that when you love your enemies, you pick up the guy's donkey on the side of the road and send it home.

Nobody sees that.

Your enemy probably doesn't even see that.

You're not getting rewarded in this world.

But in the next world, there is a reward for you.

And the third reason you do this is that you shine in the world.

So you shine in the world.

If you love those, verse 86 who love you, what reward do you have?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same.

Okay, so this is insulting.

These are fighting words here now.

Brought tax collectors into it, Jesus, really?

Tax collectors are they're like lepers in the Jewish society.

They are unclean.

No touching a tax collector.

If a tax collector in Jesus' lifetime, if a tax collector entered your house, your house was unclean for a week.

You weren't allowed to touch money a tax collector touched.

So when you paid your taxes to a tax collector, that money is going to Rome.

It's not going to another Jew.

Beggars, if beggars are begging on the side of the street and a tax collector goes to give them money, the beggar is supposed to run away from the tax collector.

He can't take his money.

That's the Jewish world with tax collectors.

Tax collectors had no friends.

Their families disowned them.

They weren't allowed to, their testimony wasn't admissible in trials.

Did you see who stole that person's purse?

And the tax collector says, yes, I was standing there the whole day.

I saw it.

It doesn't count.

You're a tax collector.

Slaves had more rights in Israel than tax collectors.

So have that in your mind.

So when Jesus says, even tax collectors love their friends, and you hear people say that today, you know, my heart, my heart is, I show so much love for my family.

I don't have time to love my neighbors, I don't have time to love my world.

My my heart is just for like for my friends and my family.

I'm just all about that.

That is tax collector ethics right there.

Tax collector ethics.

They're like that.

Jesus says, great, you show love to your neighbor.

Wow.

Tax collectors do such a good job of that too.

Or how about this?

Verse 47.

If you greet only your brothers, there's a big debate, I won't bore you with all the nuances of it, but in Jesus' lifetime, it was a big debate in Judaism.

Are you allowed, is a Jew allowed to say shalom, which is like a greeting of peace, peace be upon you, are you allowed to say shalom to a gentile?

Massive debate in the Jewish ethical world.

And you know, the argument against it was if you said shalom to a gentile and something good happened to the Gentile, then you're responsible for the good thing that happened to him.

Like you see a Jewish, uh, you see a Gentile soldier walking down the street, a Roman soldier, and you say shalom, and that guy goes on and gets promoted.

Well, you're responsible for his promotion by wishing him peace.

Your prayer was answered for him, so don't tell him shalom.

And the counter-argument was like, you know, it's just a word you say.

Chill out.

It's worded differently in like the ethical books, but chill out is how I would summarize that one.

And kind of the prevailing view in Jesus' lifetime was that it's okay to say shalom to a Gentile only if it diffuses the situation.

So like if the soldier confronts you in the road, then you can say, shalom?

And that's allowed, and it means just peace on this conversation, not like on his promotion or his life or anything.

That's what Jesus is talking about here.

So this might be new for you, but it's not new for the disciples.

So Jesus says, if you he takes sides on this, if you greet only your brothers, if you say shalom only to the Jewish neighbors you got, shalom to them, what good are you?

You're doing exactly the same thing as everybody else in the world says shalom to their friends.

Even the Gentiles have secret handshakes with their friends.

That's the same thing.

You want to shine in the world?

You want to be different than the tax collectors?

You want to be different than the Gentiles?

All due respect.

You want to be different than every other religion in the world?

Then love your enemies.

That's why you do it.

And the Lord will reward you and you become like him.

Now, earlier, Jesus said the Lord causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust.

It's a very basic application of this.

For believers, show love to your enemies.

For believers, show love to those that are in need.

Jesus says, those around you, show love to them.

This doesn't mean you enable bad behavior, of course.

I mentioned last week, you know, the beggar who's asking for money.

It's actually unloving generally to give that person money because you're enabling their bad behavior.

It's, you know, a more loving thing to do, you pray for him or give him the gospel or whatever.

You have enough Christian freedom and liberty to interact in all situations your own way.

So don't take from this gullibility.

Take from this wanting what is best for those around you.

Actually having a heartfelt desire for their conversion, that you pray for them, that you minister to them, that you share the gospel with them.

That's the application for believers.

For non-believers, the application is don't presume upon the Lord's kindness.

It is common grace that causes the sun to shine on you.

It is common grace that gives you marriage and music and milkshakes.

That's common grace.

That grace does not save you.

You can be a great musician and have a great job and be a great husband or a great wife and be on your way to hell.

Common grace does not save you.

Nor does common grace run forever.

Jesus circles back to the statement at the end of his ministry, Matthew 22, and says, the time is coming when the sun will no longer shine on the world.

Speaking of the great tribulation.

The rays will be withheld.

The sun will not always willingly light your sinful path.

The moment is very, very, very short.

For believers, that means be active in doing good works.

The night is almost at hand.

The day is almost over, Paul says.

So do stuff.

Be active to take the gospel to the world.

So be active to show your love for your neighbors and your enemies, because the day is almost over.

You don't have a lot of time to do this.

For non-believers, this means you don't have a lot of time to get right with the Lord.

Genesis 6, the Lord says, My spirit is not going to strive with mankind forever.

Like, I'm not going to deal with this forever, the Lord says.

Matthew 24, 29, the sun will stop shining on the world.

For now, you recognize that Jesus did love his enemies.

Think of how he loved those who were his enemies in this life.

He healed them.

He healed the centurion servant.

He healed the Jewish leaders and their families.

He healed the Gentile leaders and their families.

He taught them the word of God.

He prayed for them.

He prayed for Judas.

He prayed for Judas.

Just let that sink in a little bit.

He prayed for Judas.

Showed him kindness, taught Judas, appealed for Judas's repentance.

His last act in the upper room towards Jesus, Judas was handing him a piece of food and sending him out.

And turning the other cheek.

And he was slapped at his arrest.

That's his love.

Jesus fulfilled the law in our place.

So when you put your faith in him, the perfect life of Jesus, God imputes that, accredits that to you.

You can't love your neighbors, you can't love your enemies.

Jesus has done it in your place.

And his life is given to you when you, through your faith, believe that he died for your sin.

He was betrayed by his enemies.

He was killed by his enemies.

But God forgives us of our sin through our faith in his death.

Lord, we're grateful that you gave your life so that we might live.

We fail at these commands.

We can't love our enemies.

We can't even love our neighbors.

We can't even love our family like we should.

We fail all the time.

And yet you have loved us perfectly with a holy love.

Jesus loved his enemies perfectly with holiness, with a truthfulness.

So God, we pray with thankful hearts that his love has become ours, his life has become ours, his holiness has become ours, all this through our faith in his death and resurrection.

Pray for our church.

I pray that we would be a countercultural church that turns the world upside down by how we love each other.

We ask this in the name of Christ.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.