Love (God's Version) (Matthew 5:43-48) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: We are in Matthew 5, and, um, I'm gonna let you guess

where the title comes from.

Um, because I'm gonna pretend like I don't know what her name is,

and I don't know any of her songs.

But anyway, um, we're in Matthew 5.

We're gonna look at a question that, that Jesus asked, all right?

So Matthew 5, again, Sermon on the Mount, right?

All that, that good stuff that we talked about a year ago.

Um, but this is basically a really long message that Jesus is giving

to his disciples and some crowds that were there listening to him.

And so we're jumping right into the middle of it, and one of the things that Jesus

does in this sermon is he, he takes what they might have heard about religion

or about, you know, the Bible, and then he compares it to what it really means.

Um, because really, what this whole sermon is about, it's about your

heart, about Jesus' sermon, right?

It's about your heart and, and God.

It's not…

'Cause at that time, a lot of religion was more external, right?

Maybe that's like your religion today.

Maybe your religion today is more about actions or places you go to or, or,

you know, things that you put in your Instagram bio or on your letterman jacket.

But, um, what Jesus is gonna have to say to us here is that religion is really

about your heart, and specifically, we're gonna be talking about love, right?

We're gonna talk about love and What's so interesting about love is really

the way that our culture loves, the way that we often love each other, is

we love people to get stuff from them.

Maybe you've never thought about it like that before, and

maybe you kind of feel alarmed.

You're like, "Wait, are you telling me that, that all the people who love

me are really just loving me because they're trying to get stuff from me?"

And maybe they're not just trying to get money from you.

But think about it like this.

A lot of times when you love someone or when someone loves you, the reason they

love you is because it benefits them.

Or the reason you love them is not because you want to love them

necessarily because you're like, you just want to, but really it's often

because you think there's a, there's something you get out of loving them.

Maybe you love them because they're so fun to be around, right?

Maybe you love your friends, you care about them because

you have a lot of fun together.

Or maybe you love your family because they take care of you.

Or maybe you love certain things in your life because they're good

for you or you enjoy them, right?

A lot of times that love is really more about you than it

is about those other things.

And that's really the, what the, a lot of the ways that we love and

that our, our love is, is messed up.

Our love often is really just to get stuff, to benefit from that.

It's really not for the sake of actually just loving what it is.

And so what we're gonna see in this passage is that God's

love is totally different.

God's love is so different, so unique, um, and it really changes everything.

So look in your Bibles at Matthew 5:43, okay?

Matthew 5:43

Verse 43.

Jesus says, "You've heard it said," right?

And so he's saying, uh, you might have heard this, whether it's from

the religious teachers of the day or from, um, the culture at the time.

He, you, you have heard that it was said, "You shall love your

neighbor and hate your enemy."

Which that's normal, right?

That, that's the normal way you think things work, right?

When you're a little kid, right?

I remember when I was a little kid on the playground, there were kid…

There were these, the, these kids I didn't like.

They were my enemies, right?

We'd get in fights, and we would, you know, get mad at each other.

And then there were my friends, and I loved them, right?

I love my friends, I hate my enemies, right?

That's, that's how naturally we work.

Oh, there's people that don't like me.

Well, what am I gonna do?

I don't like them back, right?

There's people that are mean to me.

Well, what do you do?

I'm mean to them back, right?

You don't have to teach anyone this.

This is how humans naturally work, right?

We love people that love us back, and we hate people who hate us back, right?

And you flip it.

When someone loves us, we're like, "Oh yeah, I love you."

And when someone hates us, we're like, "I hate you," right?

This is how naturally we just work.

We trade love for love and we trade hate for hate.

But Jesus says he's got something different.

"I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

So what Jesus says, instead of trading hate for hate, when someone

hates you, you should give them love.

When someone persecutes you, right, when someone, um, is…

In this case, persecution would be they're making fun of you

for what you believe, right?

They're, they're looking down on you because you're a Christian

or maybe even hurting you.

He's saying you should pray for those people.

You shouldn't hate them.

You should actually do good for them And that's really different than

the way that we naturally operate.

And I want you to see that tension, right?

'Cause the natural thing for all of us, when someone hates us, right,

when someone gossips about you, when someone is mean to you, our natural

reaction is to hate them back.

And what it takes to have some- a different kind of response, a

loving response, is, is we need something big to happen, and that's

what we're gonna talk about soon.

So Jesus says, "I say to you, love your enemies and pray for

those who persecute you," right?

Verse 45, right here.

"So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven."

So what He's saying is that there's something about your

relationship with God, right?

You're adopted by God.

We talked about that last week, right?

You're part of God's family if you follow Jesus.

Something about being part of God's family changes the way

you treat people who hate you.

Instead of thinking, "Oh, well, they hate me, I'm gonna hate them back.

They're mean to me, I'm gonna go get back at them," right?

"They don't like me, I'm just gonna avoid them."

So that there's something about being related to God, being part of God's

family, that makes that different.

There's something different about that.

Well, why is that?

Well, it's because of who God is.

For God makes His son, which you notice that.

Have you ever think about that?

You ever look at the sun and be like, "That's God's son."

God owns that, right?

You look at the moon.

God, that's God's moon.

You look at the sky, God's sky.

You look at the ground, God's ground.

You look at your house, God's house.

Your car, God's car.

Which that'd be good for you to think about probably a little more often, right?

He makes His son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends

rain on the just and the unjust.

People who treat people fairly, people who don't.

The criminals and the honest civilians.

So God gives good things to everyone regardless of whether they deserve them.

That's what verse 45 is saying, right?

God, does He say, "Well, you know what?

You've been a good person this week, so you get to eat food, and you've

been a bad person this week, so I'm gonna take away your food."?

Doesn't say that.

God says, "Here, I'm gonna take care of you."

You have…

Right?

Some of you, you don't even think God exists, right?

Or, or you don't believe in God.

You don't want God.

And God still has given you clothes.

God still has given you parents that take care of you.

God still gives you energy and life.

He lets you stay alive on His earth, breathing His air, eating His

food, taking up His space, right?

God is so loving, even to people, even to the worst criminals,

the worst atheists out there.

God still shows goodness to those people.

And that's Jesus' point, is if you're related to God, you're gonna have

that same type of love as God, right?

If you're a part of God's family, like we talked about last week, you're

gonna have that same type of love.

Verse 46: "If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?"

Which, interesting question, right?

Because usually you get stuff from loving people who love you, right?

When you love someone who loves you, guess what?

They're nicer to you, they care about you, right?

Maybe they buy you things for your birthday, right?

If you love someone who loves you, usually you get a lot of stuff for that.

But what's Jesus saying?

He's saying that if you say you're a Christian, if you say you're part of

God's family, and you only love the people that love you, well, guess what?

You're not any different than, in this case, the tax collectors, which those

are, like, the worst people at the time.

Jews, tax collectors, not on good terms, right?

The tax collectors were usually criminals, they were usually bad people.

So he's saying even the worst people love people that love them back, right?

When you think about this, think about, like, your least favorite

people, or think about maybe the worst people in all of history.

They all loved people that loved them back, right?

The worst criminals, the worst people in the history of the world,

everyone loves people who loves them.

Everyone is fine with loving people if, "As long as they're nice to

me, I'll be nice to them," right?

He's saying, "Well, guess what?

If you call yourself a Christian and that's all you do, you're not

any different than those people."

And in verse 47, "If you greet only your brothers, what more

are you doing than others?"

Right?

If, if you're only saying hi to the people that you already know, that are already

close with you, everyone does that.

Right?

There's nothing uniquely Christian about that.

Don't even the Gentiles do the same, right?

The Gentiles, people who don't know God, right?

You don't have to know God to want to be nice to people who are nice to you.

Right?

Even the atheists do that.

Even the Muslims do that.

Right?

Even, you know, the, the people that you think are the most

godless people, even they do that.

So what makes you different, if you call yourself a Christian, what should make

you different is not just how you treat the people that are easy to love, but

the people that are hard to love, right?

Because we, if you're part of God's family, you're gonna

love like God does, right?

If you're part of God's family, you're gonna love the way God does,

and, and here's how God loves.

He loves to give, not to get.

This isn't your first blank.

This is just kind of the main point of the sermon.

Jesus' main point, this whole question, right, if you love others

who love you, what reward do you have?

His whole point is you should love to give to people, not to get.

Your goal in loving someone shouldn't be, what do I get out of this?

How does this benefit me?

What has this person done for me to deserve my love?

That's not how you should think about love.

Love should be an overflow, right?

It should be you're not expecting anything from that person.

You're giving.

You're not giving so you can get.

You ever been around someone like that?

Maybe in like a board game, right?

You, you … They give you something, and then, but then they expect you to

like, you know, not … You know, like maybe it's a game like Uno, right?

And, um, they, like, don't use their plus two or whatever, their plus

four on you, and then they're like, "Well, I didn't use, you know, my plus

four on you, so you better not…"

Whatever, right?

That's often the way we love people.

We love them, and then they don't love us, and we're like,

"Oh, I don't have to stop…

I don't have to love you anymore."

And that's not the way God loves, right?

God loves not expecting anything in return.

Right?

God's love is not selfishly motivated.

So our first point tonight is to adopt God's version of love.

By adopt, right, I mean make it yours.

Right, you should say, "Okay, I'm gonna get rid of my version of love, and I'm

gonna say, 'I wanna love like God does.'"

Right, you should say, "I…

You know, my version of love, I don't need that one."

Right?

I wanna love the way God loves.

So when I think about loving people, I'm gonna look at how God defines

it, and I'm gonna say, "That's what I, that's what I'm gonna do.

That's how I'm gonna feel."

Right?

I'm gonna do that God's way, not my own.

I wanna show you these verses again

Because I want you to see what God's love is like here.

Um, God is not loving expecting these people to give him stuff back, right?

Think about this.

When God lets you live another day on his planet, is God like, "You know what?

If you don't, if you don't do stuff for me, if you don't make it worth

it to make the sun come up and open your eyes and keep your, your blood

flowing and your, your lungs breathing, if you don't do that, you know, I'm

gonna, I'm gonna start hating you."

Right?

If you, if you, if you think about it, what God does is he keeps doing it.

He keeps loving these people who don't love him back, and he's not

ex- he's not putting them in debt.

He's not expecting them to love him back.

He knows that they're not gonna love him back.

You realize that, right?

But he still does it.

He still cares for these people.

Also, there's nothing about these people that's lovable, right?

They're evil.

He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the unjust, right?

God is not saying, "You know what?

You, you deserve my sunlight today.

So here you go.

You know, you're so great, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep you alive today 'cause you're,

you're a great, you're a great kid."

That's not why God does that.

He does it because who he is.

God is love, so that's what he does.

It's who he…

His nature is love, so he loves.

That's, that's, it produces actions, right?

The new na- his nature produces his actions, his

feelings, his thoughts, right?

They're, he's love.

That's what he does.

That's what he is

It has nothing to do with the object.

Maybe that's a different way to put it for you, right?

God's love isn't drawn out of him by the lovability of the object.

If you think about it, there's things that you love, and that's because they, if you,

uh … And this is gonna be kinda weird, but think about love as like a, I don't

know, like a, like a substance, right?

Like a, I don't know, like magnets, okay?

Let's think about it like that.

Um, there's things that are magnetic, right?

And so they pull stuff towards them, right?

Like a tractor beam, you know, Death Star, New Hope, right?

They get stuck in the tractor beam, it pulls them in, right?

I just changed to, like, three different illustrations in one go, but there you go.

Tractor beam.

We'll go with that.

All right.

There's things that attract your love, right?

Maybe it's, you know, people because y- you think they're pretty great,

or you think they're pretty, right?

And so you, they attract your love, right?

You're drawn to them.

Or maybe there's, you know, shows that you love or food that you love

and, you know, they attract you.

They draw you in.

God's love is not drawn.

I don't know if that makes sense.

If it doesn't make sense, go like this.

If it does make sense, go like this.

You don't have to go like this.

You can go like this.

It's totally fine.

Okay?

God's love is not … Jordan, not helpful.

Uh.

God's love is not drawn by … You're not, like, drawing God's love to you.

You're not attracting more of God's love because you're such a great kid or

because you know a lot about the Bible or because your parents are Christians.

You're not drawing God's love to you.

God pours out his love because he wants to.

It's not because someone is like, "You know what, God, I'm so lovable.

Give it to me.

I, give me, give me your love.

I deserve it."

Right?

So-

God's love, in a sense, is indiscriminate, right?

He's an equal opportunity lover, right?

God loves people because He loves them, not because they're lovable

And that's really how God expects us to love people, right?

He doesn't expect us to love people because they're nice to you, or

He doesn't expect you to love people only when they prove that

they're good enough for your love.

He expects you to love people because He's loved you, and now His love has

been poured into you, and so that's gonna overflow, and it's not gonna wait for

other people to draw that love out of you.

So God's love takes initiative.

Does that make sense?

It, it, it doesn't wait for, like, green light, now I can love.

It starts on the green light

Right?

Worldly love is the opposite, right?

Worldly love is given out transactionally, right?

Well, you're lovable.

You're worth my love.

You're worth my time, my effort, my money, my, my care, so I'm

gonna give you some of that, right?

Here it is.

I'm gonna care about you, but only as long as it's worth it to me, right?

If you think about it, it's not worth it for God to love you.

There's nothing that you bring to the table that God's like, "You know what?

I'm so glad that I loved Lewis today.

Man, I, if, if I hadn't loved Lewis, th- man, wow, I would be missing

out on so much great stuff," right?

That's not how God feels.

Right?

I don't bring anything to the table.

God's not, God's not benefiting from loving me, right?

It's actually kind of embarrassing for God to love me, when you think about it.

Right?

'Cause God's like, "Yeah, that guy, that sinner?

I love him.

He's mine."

Right?

That's really embarrassing for God to love people like me and you

But also in the same time, it's…

So it makes God so great, right?

Because He loves people like us.

That's the whole point

So that's the type of love that we're thinking of, right?

Love that takes initiative, doesn't wait for people to be lovable, right?

Love that doesn't expect anything in return.

Love that isn't looking to gain from loving people.

That's the type of love that God has.

All right, I want you to see that this doesn't…

Uh, actually, we'll go back to, to this.

See this last verse right here, verse 48?

It's kinda weird to put right here.

Right, we're talking about love, and then Jesus goes, "You, therefore,"

right, therefore, it's a connecting word, "must be perfect as your

heavenly Father is perfect."

I think the point Jesus is making is you and I can't do this.

You and I, we can't love like God does, 'cause it's so unnatural.

It's so foreign to us.

Right?

The only way it's gonna happen to you is if God changes you.

God has to love you, and His love changes you to make you

want to love other people, right?

Right?

And even if you are a Christian, this is still gonna be hard for you, right?

Because your old sin doesn't go away all of a sudden, right?

You've got your new software and your old hardware, so it's still gonna feel

unnatural sometimes to love like God does.

But if you really are a Christian, you'll feel that tension.

You'll feel that tension between God's love is in me, and now I wanna love

these people who maybe don't deserve it, but my sinful flesh is fighting

that saying, "They don't deserve it.

You're not gonna get anything out of this.

You should go talk to those people that you're already friends with.

You shouldn't talk to that person that you don't know," or, "That person's weird.

Why would you talk to them?"

Right?

Your sinful flesh is still gonna say those things, but if you really are

a Christian, you're gonna have that desire from God to say, "No, I do love

those people 'cause God loved me first."

So you should see that tension.

But it should feel weird.

Right?

So don't expect all of a sudden you become a Christian and you're

like, "Oh, wow, I have no problems loving anyone ever," right?

'Cause you're still stuck in your sinful flesh, right?

So you shou- there should be that tension of, "Okay, I, I want

to love these people, but I…

It's hard."

Right?

And this type of love, it comes from a relationship with God, right?

We already talked about this, but so that you may be sons of

your Father in heaven, right?

Your relationship with God is the key to doing this.

So really, the best way to love other people is you get closer to God.

The more you experience God's love, the more loving you're gonna be.

Right?

Remember that parable Jesus told about the guy who, uh, he had a

huge debt, and then the king was like, "Yeah, don't worry about it.

I'll pay it.

I'll pay it for you."

And then that guy, who had the big debt, there was a guy who owed him a

little bit of money, and that guy, after he'd been forgiven this big debt, he

went over and threw that guy in jail for owing him a little bit of money.

And then the king found out about it.

He's like, "I forgave you all this debt, and you didn't

forgive this guy a little bit."

Right?

That guy didn't…

The, the middle du- dude, right, he didn't appreciate what the king had done for him.

He didn't really get it.

He wasn't really grateful for the love that the king had shown him.

And so he was like, "Oh," he didn't think it was a big deal,

so he just went and, and didn't love other people either, right?

The, the bigger deal you think God's love is, the easier it'll

be for you to love other people.

Right?

If you're struggling to love other people, that's not just a you and them issue.

That also is a you and God issue.

Right?

So maybe it's your…

Maybe you have a really hard time loving your siblings.

Right?

They're just really annoying and frustrating.

Right?

That's not just a you and them issue.

That's a you and God issue.

Right?

Maybe there's people at school or, or, or people at your work or, or people on your

team that are really frustrating, right?

And they don't s- seem very lovable to you

Right?

The, the root of that problem is, is you need more of God's love, and

that will help you love those people.

'Cause what we end up doing is we end up saying, "I'm, I … It makes sense

that God loves me, but it doesn't make sense that God loves them."

See what we've done is we've actually messed up our

relationship with God right there

So we want to take God's version of love, and that's our standard, right?

You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

I think it's also easy for us to compare and say, "Well,

yeah, I'm nicer to those people.

You should see the way my non-Christian friends treat those people, or even other

Christians treat those people," right?

"I'm nicer to my siblings than my friend at school is to their siblings."

Okay, but that's not your standard, right?

Your standard is God's love.

Your standard isn't, "Well, I'm nicer than most other siblings," or, "I'm more loving

than most other people in my class."

Your standard is God and His love.

So we want God's version of love

But in the middle, in these questions right here, verses 46 and 47

We talked about this earlier, but what Jesus is saying is the, the

point is that if, if you only love people that love you, there's nothing

uniquely Christian about that.

There's nothing about that that says, "I follow God."

There's nothing about loving people that, that love you that says, "Oh

yeah, that's, that's how God loves."

'Cause it's not.

God doesn't love people who love Him back.

There's, there's no one actually that loved God first, and then

God was like, "You know what?

Thanks for loving me.

I'll love you now."

Right?

There is zero human beings that have ever done that.

Every human being, as Romans 5 says, was an enemy of God, and then God loved them

So our second point tonight is once you adopt God's version of love, you're

gonna love people who don't love you back

Right?

A great measurement for whether you've experienced God's love or not,

or maybe how deeply you appreciate God's love, is whether you love

people who don't love you back

'Cause it's easy to love people who love you back.

That's not a problem.

You don't need the Holy Spirit to help you do that, right?

Because that's selfish.

Your sinful flesh will help you love people who love you

back, who love you back, right?

But you need the Holy Spirit to help you love people who don't love you back

So I want you to even think about your relationships, right?

Evaluate your, your sibling, your relationship with your siblings,

your parents, your friends, your, your classmates, your coworkers,

even people in your small group.

And think, "Do I, do I only love the people who love me and who are nice to me?

Or do I love the people that are harder for me to love, too?

And do I work hard at that?"

Right?

"Do I pray for them?

Do I ask God to help me love them?"

Right?

"Am I fighting to love them?

Or am I just saying, 'Well, whatever, I'm just gonna talk to these

people 'cause I like them better'"?

Or maybe you're always looking for what you can get out

of the relationship, right?

May- not a romantic relationship necessarily, but even a friendship.

Maybe you're only friends with the people that are benefiting you, right?

They have the same interests as you, they're easy for you to talk

to, they care about you, they ask you good questions, right?

Those are the type of friends you wanna have, obviously.

But maybe if those are the only people you care about, right, if you walk into

a room and you're always talking to the same people who are the only people

that care about you, and you never, as Jesus says, greet those who, who

don't love you, then, right, you're, you're shrinking your circle, right?

And, and God's love is not just like, "Oh yeah, you know, there's

just a couple people that are really good that I'm gonna love."

Right?

God's love is overflowing.

It's looking for more people to love, right?

Right?

God loves people who can't pay Him back.

Right?

God loves people who are unlovable.

God loves people who are neglected, who hate Him, right?

And those are the type of people that Christians should be loving.

That's what's gonna make you different from the world if you're a Christian.

Yes, the quality of your good Christian friendships is gonna be obviously

different, but so is the way that you love the person that no one talks to

in your class, or the person that no one else in the small group really

cares about, or the person that's sitting by themselves at lunch.

Right?

Those are the people that God would say, "That's the type of

person you should be loving."

Not that you don't love the other people, but that's what's gonna set you apart

Right?

Take initiative to love people, right?

It's your responsibility to love people first.

Don't wait for other people to love you, 'cause think about that.

What if God waited to love you or to before…

Yeah.

What if God waited to love you until you were like, "God, I love you.

I'm gonna follow you"?

Guess what?

God would still be waiting

Right?

God loved you first, and so that's the kind of love we

should show to people, right?

Don't wait for other people to love you and say, "Now, now I'll love you."

Right?

You go love them, and that's the type of love that, that we're talking about

And we haven't really talked about love, what it is exactly.

You guys can talk about that in small groups.

Um, but again, when we define love, we wanna think about

how does God do it, right?

Um-

Yeah.

So what really makes your love, if you're a Christian, different is

where it comes from, why you do it, and then how it's expressed, right?

So I, I really want you to think about, do I love people because I'm

trying to get stuff from them, or do I love people because God loves me?

And so naturally what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna love other people.

Uh, so let's pray, and you guys can go to small groups.

Heavenly Father, um

We're so amazed that you love us.

You don't have to love us.

You- there's nothing that we do to attract your love.

Um, in fact, we actually are, um, objectively ugly to you.

We are disgusting, um, because we hate you.

That's how all of us start.

That's what the Bible says about us.

So I pray that you help us remember that and to b- even believe that,

that, um, b- before you loved us, um, we were not lovable at all.

But you decided to love us, and thank you for that.

And thank you that your love for us isn't just something you're supposed to

do, but it's something you really do.

You really do love us.

Um, and so I pray that our love for other people would overflow from

that, that we would love people because you've loved us first.

I pray that you'd help us to think about your love.

Even as we're reading our Bibles this week, I pray that we look for what it

says about your love, and that would fuel us to love others as a overflow of that.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.