“Love Your Enemies and Pray for Those Who Persecute You” | Matthew 5:38-48

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways.

Good morning, good morning. Do you talk good good morning

to you? And you?

Yeah?

Yes, yeah, yeah we should. I should add jazz hands

to that. Yeah, hey, Rich, I don't know what what

the heck was that? But hey, good morning everybody. Welcome

to the Bible Guys. We appreciate you tuning in or

watching whatever you're doing, but thank you for choosing us.

Man, that's amazing, and what a day to tune in

because you got good morning song.

Yeah, and we have a would you rather segment?

I love? Would you rather?

Yes?

All right, Chris, I'm gonna start, and I'm gonna ask

you first, go ahead. Would you rather always know the

perfect comeback or always know the perfect joke?

Oh? You know me, I already know this is gonna be.

You're gonna choose the perfect comeback because you like to

be clever, and I'm gonna choose the perfect joke because

I like it funny. I like to be funny, and

I love humor more than I do. Like to be clever.

I love I like to be clever too. I just

like humor more.

Yeah, I like I like the comebacks, so yeah, yeah,

I would have chosen that one. That's awesome. I know

you nailed it.

You nailed that, I know you.

Okay, okay, neverber too.

Would you rather never have to do laundry again you

probably don't do it now, or never have to wash

dishes again? Do you wash dishes? You wash?

Oh?

Yeah? You cook a lot, cook a lot, so you

make your messages a lot.

Yeah. I would prefer to never have to do dishes again.

Oh really? Yeah, yeah, to be honest with you, and I.

Do do laundry sometimes.

Do you My wife does the laundry ninety five percent?

Yeah, and my wife does it often.

Yeah, but I would say uh, but I would say

that every once in a while I will do it

and uh, And then it's sort of the same thing.

My wife just has the habit of doing dish is

more often than I do. It's a reminder she really

likes it.

It's one of her favorite things.

As I'm saying it out loud, I'm reminded that I

should probably do the dishes, but you know what she does,

she loads it.

I would do it, but she likes it so much.

I don't want to take that away from doesn't know.

No, I actually like washing dishes more than I like

washing laundry, so I would say I would rather never

watch laundry.

So I love cooking, but I cook with every pot,

pan and dish we have in the room. So yeah,

it's it's terrible. Yeah. So when I'm done, there's a

you know I made, I made a meal that barely

fits on you know, that fits on like six plates,

and the whole kitchen is destroyed. Yeah, so we look

at it and go here we go.

Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

Would you rather always get free dessert at restaurants or

always get free appetizers?

Oh? I already know immediately. And again this is you

didn't have to think you're gonna be desserts. I'm gonna

be appetizing.

Oh actually, I think it might be appetized. Now. I

believe Jesus has come back at any minute. You shud

eat dessert first. That's one of my core values. But

I order appetizers way more than I ordered desserts.

At restaurants, and you enjoy them more.

Yeah, I order them more. Ah, So I'd rather get

those free because I'm already spending money on.

Okay, there you go, there you go. So it's it's

it's a it's.

A it's practical math. It's practicality. Yeah, yeah, math. But

you like appetizers better than desserts, well I don't.

I'm not a dessert person.

Yeah.

So I'm not.

A sweet because you don't like chocolate. Well I don't

mean you're barely a Christian.

I'm barely a sweet person.

Yeah, I know.

So I went to Season's fifty two. I'm going to

promote a good restaurant. But they have they have little

tiny desserts.

And shot glass Yeah I love those.

Yeah, and it's the perfect two bites, three bites, yeah,

because you don't have to like, you know, like kill

yourself for this dessert. But as she went up and

she was turning the dessert trade and she was like,

we have these ten desserts, right, actually thought to myself,

I only like two of them, and all my kids

are like, I can't choose, and I'm like I barely

liked one of them or two of them.

So the last time you came to my house, I

had those little tiny cheese cake bites. Yeah, yeah, yeah

remember those. Yeah, you are good you get two little bites. Yeah, yeah,

yeah for dessert. Those are good.

It's just too rich for me.

Yeah, it's rich.

So number three okay, oh no, number four. Would you

rather live in a cozy small town or a bustling.

Big This is an easy one for both of us too.

You'd rather be in the big city and I'd rather

be in the cozy small town. That's right, Yeahcthough I

love small towns, but.

My wife would much rather be in the small town.

So I married the opposite of me.

Yes, yes, yeah, But why do you love the big city?

I get energized around people.

Yeah, that's true.

And so I like, for instance, we walked through the

city of New York. We've all been there twice, Liz

and I. But we go through the city and I'm like,

I'm like, man, this is awesome.

Yeah.

Well I've been are more, but just twice with her,

and and I've and I've said like, this is amazing.

Like I walk through it and I'm like, whoa, that

was an adventure. Getting from here to there is great.

And She's like, oh, thank god, we're off those streets

and we're sitting in this in this restaurant and by

the way, there's too many people in this restaurant, right,

we should have chosen the other one because it had

less people on it. Yeah, that's what she said. That's

what she says, right, And I'm thinking to myself, man,

that was that was fun.

So every time I'm in a city like New York

Now I like Chicago, but it's it's all the same.

I think that the big cities smell like garbage. They do,

and people honk it the horn before the light even

turns yellow on the other side, and are mostly rude

because everybody's like just elbowing to get to get their position.

And then in New York City, I've been in New

York City, I don't know five times. Every single day

i've been in New York City, I've seen rats in

the streets.

Every day.

I'm like, is this a developing name? So smells like garbage?

And every single day I've ever been in in New

York City, I've seen rats and I just man alive

right for everyone you see, Yeah, you know there's there's

millions you haven't seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I love

small towns. I love the small town thing anyway.

So with Liz would definitely agree.

Would you rather be instantly be able to instantly master

any board game or any video game?

Yeah, I'm gonna go with board games for me, and

you're gonna go with video games for you.

I'm gonna go with neither. Why Yeah, because uh have

the fun of the game is mastering the game.

Oh but you have to pick one.

I'm not picking one.

No, it says would you rather I Uh? Okay, So

if you're gonna ruin board games for you or ruin

video games, what should you rather know?

I like them both?

Okay, but you gotta ruin one.

I have to ruin one. Uh, video games, believe it

or not. Oh wow, because the board game thing is

something I do with the family and vida games, you

should somebody do by it myself.

Oh good, that's a good, good reasoning, Jeff.

Yeah wow.

The insight into into the mind.

Of the mind of Jeff. There you go, speaking about

getting insights into the mind. We are you gonna do that?

Yeah? I was gonna say no, no, no, go ahead.

Finish, please please, please you do it.

I was gonna say, speaking of insights from brilliant minds,

I was going to give you a compliment.

Jesus was pretty brilliant.

I was gonna say, we have another brilliant mind who

was actually quite more brilliant than you.

Oh yeah, yes, I just like being said my name

in the same sentence sentence as Jesus.

Yeah, well we are, we are all made in his image.

Nice, So we all call you very nice, very complimentary today. Chris, Yeah,

I know what happened.

I don't know. I don't know.

You're a Jersey Vitamins. Today's flintstone vitamins just make you

feel better today. Those weren't vitamins. Those are CBD gummies.

Feel better till today. I love you, man, No sir, nohing, okay, okay, shoot,

all right, so stand against that.

We're gonna we're gonna jump into Matthew chapter five. We're

going backwards today for some reason because.

People weren't ready for this one yesterday.

All right, here we get a prep for this, that's.

Right, Matthew Chapter five, verse thirty eight. So we're still

in the Sermon on the Mountain. Yep, Jesus said, you've

heard the law that says punishment must match the injury,

an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

But I say, do not resist an evil person. If

someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek. Also,

if you're suit in court and your shure it's taken

from you, give your coat too. If a soldier demands

that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it

two miles. Give to those who ask, and don't turn

away from those who want to borrow. You've heard the

law that says love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say love your enemies, pray for those who

persecute you. In that way, you will be acting as

true children of your father in heaven, For he gives

his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and

he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.

If you well of only those who love you, what

reward is there for that? Even crupt tax collectors do

that much. If you're kind only to your friends, how

are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that.

But you are to be perfect, even as your father

in heaven is perfect. There you go.

You know those words are very intimidating. Be perfect therefore

as your heavenly father is perfect. Sometimes I can see why,

because you know, if you know me, you know that

I don't like law and legalism, especially when Christians try

to especially when Christians try to impose it. But there

are moments in the scripture where my spirit sort of

like jumps up and I actually think to myself, couldn't

you have said what you mean there? Because certainly you

didn't mean Okay, now go be perfect, and anything less

than that is not good. Right. We've all seen enough

movies to know what it's like to try to live

up to you know, your parents' expectations of perfection. Right,

We've all seen movies, so we all know that like

it ruins lives. Right.

Yeah.

So then so then when I hear words like this,

be perfect therefore as your heavenly Father's perfect, I'm like, well, gee,

thanks for that, Jesus. Couldn't you have said it better?

I know? I know, Yeah, I'm giving you when you

get to heaven.

When you get to heaven, you're gonna say, hey, there's

a couple things I'd like to fix.

And one of them is so so I have a red.

Pen any racer, and I'm a market like like like

our friend who gave you that movie script, Ye, look

it over, give me some suggestions to you all marked

up and read that's right, that's.

Right, and he's thinking, by the way, he's never given

me another one since so but uh, that's not true.

He gave me two. But but uh. But anyway, here's

what I was going to say, is uh, in my humanity,

I'm confessing sin here. I do think that sometimes, and

I think like, I think like, Okay, this helps me

understand legalistic Christians a little bit more because somebody could

take that at face value and say, well, hey, Jesus

said be perfect as his heavenly father, so therefore I'm

gonna bark at everybody because you're not being perfect, and

so grace doesn't abound, right and romans forget Romans. Jesus

said be perfect.

Right.

So anyway, all that to say, I think I know

what Jesus meant, which is you can never be sinless,

but you can sin less, right, right. So in other words,

we should strive to follow righteousness and follow the nature

of our heavenly Father. Because what does the Bible also say.

The Bible says that he is conforming us into his

image right from glory to glory. He transitions us from

glory to glory, and so therefore we are being made

into the likeness of Christ. God continues to work on us.

God wants us to sin less, even though that will

never be sinless. And so therefore, you know, when I

hear be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. You

break that down, and what you do is you compare

it to other scriptures. You compare it to You know,

God's words is never going to contradict itself. The Bible

is its own best commentary. We always say that, right,

and so therefore you can't take that at face value. Legalists,

if you're out there and you're a legalist, you probably

don't number one, know that you're a legalist. But you know,

if it's all about laws and enforcing God's rules and

correcting people's behavior and judging people and all these sorts

of things, it could stem from comments like this, You know,

verses like this that maybe you can take perhaps a

little bit out of context without measuring the heart of

God or God's intention or what he says about humanity

and sin.

Yeah, so you know, the the law has a lot

of purposes. One of them is to show that we

can't keep the law perfectly. The fact that we need

a savior. So the people who focus primarily and only

on grace reject all the other purposes of the law. Right,

but the law also shows us a better way to live.

When when when when we have a society of people

who are following God's laws out of fear of God,

they're not stealing other people's stuff, it makes a better society.

When men aren't sleeping with other men's wives because of

the fear of God, it's better God's laws. It's a

better society. When we're not killing each other out of

fear of God and fear of God's judgment, then it's

a better society. So so when we follow God's laws,

it's also better. It's a better life. And so he

gave them to us for two reasons. One, he's the

architect of human life, and so he knows the perfect

parameters as the end engineer of life, the perfect parameters

for operating at peak operating performance. And then anything we

do outside of those parameters typically causes a breakdown and

inefficiency stresses on the systems, and it stresses our marriages,

it stresses our finances, it stresses our social structures, it

stresses our families. Right, it stresses everything. So the engineer

of our and designer of human life knows the best ways.

So if we see the laws of God as when

we follow those, we're going to be operating in peak performance,

and when we don't follow those, we're always going to

be under more stress and everything in our life is

going to be wobbly and inefficient, then we see the

law in a different way. So on one side, if

the law is to go to heaven, Paul said, hey,

the lawges proofs to us we can't, right. And that's

why the Pharisees were such a problem, because the Pharisees thought,

that's how you got to heaven by keeping the law.

But if you see the laws as these will set

you up for peak performance, then it's inspiration. Right. And

then you read a passage like this, be perfect even

as your Father and Heaven as perfect. The word perfect

in our minds means sinless. The Greek word for perfect

means complete, lacking nothing. That's the meaning of complete. Yeah,

and so or the meaning of perfect. And so from

that standpoint, then we can look at God's character, we

can look at God's God's ways, God's wisdom, and we

can we can begin then working towards this completeness as

a human in God's design for us. Right, that's a

very different way of viewing this idea of perfection.

You think that the word perfect could be a poor translation,

It could have been better translated as complete.

Well, so no, I think that when these words were translated,

I think that English speakers knew the meaning of perfect

in a different way than you and I in this

modern because English keeps changing. It's a living language, whereas

Greek coin a Greek is a dead language. So when

we go to the Greek, we know exactly what it means.

It means complete when we say it in English in

this modern way of saying it now, we mean it

in a way that means sinless with no imperfections. But

that's not the way that it's written as written completeness.

There's a completeness to it. There's a note here as

a matter of fact, that talks about it in the

Life Application Study Bible, and it says, how can we

be perfect one in character? Right? But in this life

we can't be flawless, but we can be complete in

God and aspire to be as much like Jesus as possible.

So these are inspirational verses right where he's inspiring us

to become more like a In holiness, like the Pharisees,

we are to separate ourselves from the world's sinful values.

But unlike the Pharisees, we're to be devoted to God's

desires rather than our own, and carry his love and

mercy of the world. In maturity, right, we can be

complete in maturity. We can't. We can't achieve christ like

character and holy living all at once, but we can

grow towards maturity and wholeness. Just as we expect different

behavior from a baby, a child, a teenager, and an adult,

God expects us to continue to have different behavior in

each of us depending on our respective stages of spiritual development.

And then in love, we can seek to love others

as completely as God loves us. Right, so we work

in those directions so we can be complete in God

yet have much room to grow. So God makes us

complete while he's completing us. Because God's outside of time,

and so he can give a command like this, be

perfect even as I am perfect, knowing what He's saying

is let me complete you. But when I see you,

I see you beyond time. In Christ I've already completed you.

Now let me do the work while you're living in

time to keep completing you. And so this is why

Luke six thirty six he says, be compassionate as your

father is compassionate. And one Peter, he says, be holy

even as I am holy. Right, So, so what God's

doing is He's trying to grab our attention. Say, hey,

the goal of me saving you and leaving you on

this earth is for you to become more like me,

develop my compassions, develop my holiness, develop my completeness in

you while I'm making you complete.

Yeah right, Hey, in this moment, I hope that God

will allow me when I get to Heaven to pull

a Jerry Maguire and say, you complete me. I hope

God allows it.

It'd be great, yeah, yeah, and he'll probably be thrilled, Yes, thrilled.

So oftentimes we quote the you know, the the study

portion of the life application Study Bible. I pulled off

my shelf another Bible because we're no longer using the

chronological Bible. That's right, right, So we've been in the

chronological Bible forever. Yeah, right, But but anyway, I grab.

It went back to the normal the traditional life applications.

Stay yeh, yeah, yeah, I grabbed the study Bible. Oh yeah,

yeah yeah.

So what does it say about that?

Verson? So, yeah, it does say that is something about completeness.

It says, who can be as perfect as God? No

one can be as perfect as God. But Jesus calls us,

Oh no, excuse me, but Jesus does not call us

to an exercise in futility. The word perfect implies completion

and maturity, something that more than sinless perfection. Later, Jesus

summarizes the whole law with two basic principles, the laws

of love for God and love for your neighbor. Here

in the same way, Jesus says that the law of

love Verses forty three and forty four represents the full

and mature expression of completeness. To live in a perfect way,

God's love must flow through our lives to others, even

to our enemies. That is a great connect to Dot's moment. Yeah, right,

So Jesus is talking about that kind of love. Hey,

you've heard it said this, but love your enemies. And

he says, be complete as God is complete. He's talking

about how God is love. Yeah, and so that is

the measure of completeness when we love to the fullest extent.

That's right, that's a great connect to.

So so he has made us like him, like Christ. Yeah,

that's that's the idea of sanctification. He's already set you

apart to be holy while he's making you holy, right,

and then he leaves it on us to make some

of those choices. So he goes, you know, you've heard

love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say,

love your enemies, pray for those persons. In that way,

you will be acting as two children of your father

in heaven. So he goes, Okay, I'm gonna expect you

to act like a real child of mine. And then

I'm like, I don't like loving my enemies. I hate

loving my enemies. Correct, But how many times have we

had conversations, We've had choices where you and I have

sad in meetings when we knew somebody had pitted themselves

as our enemy or were angry at us in a moment,

and we pivoted and said, let us be as generous

and as kind and as loving as possible to this person.

And even while they're calling us every name in the

book and angry at us. Right, we've had these conversations before,

and it's not that, oh, wow, look how good of

a Christian they are. It's a choice to treat them

well when they're treating us poorly. And when we do that,

we're acting like God's children then. And so there is

this choice, and it's a part of that maturity. And

so I love the note here in the Life Application

Bible saying, just as parents have different expectations for babies

versus toddlers, versus children, versus teenagers, versus young adults versus

mature adults, I think God has a different perspective on us.

And one of the things he wants us to begin

to learn is, Hey, you're going to be tempted to

treat them like an enemy. What would it look like

if you started just making the hard decision to love

them this time? Right? And so earlier in this passage

it says, I say to you, love your enemies, pray

for your enemies. And Luke he goes on and preaches

the same message, and he says, love your enemies, pray

for enemies, do good to your enemies. So it's easy

for me to say I love my enemies. Oh, I

love my enemies, and you don't know praying for my enemies.

I can pray words, but you don't know. I can

pray words and still have a bad attitude. But it's

hard to do good to my enemy. I just have

to choose to do good in some way to be

a blessing. And so there is a choice to that,

and that is us acting like children of God. So

it's not so I can go to heaven. It's because

I'm going to heaven. It's not so I can be saved.

It's because He saved me. Now I wear his name.

I don't just go get to go do whatever I

want to do. Now I'm supposed to be looking more

and more and more like him. And if I'm going

to grow up and I'm not going to stay you know,

stuck as a toddler spiritually, well, then that means I'm

gonna have to make some grown up decisions.

And by the way, when we hear the word enemies,

sometimes we may think I don't know enemies, you know,

like we think of like, you know, enemies on the

opposite side of a war something, right, But that's not

the definition of enemies. The definition of enemy could be

somebody who is perhaps pitting themselves against you in a meeting, right,

and yet they're really not your true enemy, but yet

they're behaving like an enemy to your well being in

that moment.

Right, Right.

So there's varying degrees, right. So just like yesterday when

you said there's very degrees of worry and you said,

like the far end of worry is terror, right right,

but it is true. So the far end of enemies

could be you know, al Qaeda, yeah, right. But then

you can have a coworker who's truly not your friend,

but you know, maybe like a good acquaintance who maybe

perhaps has malicious intent in a moment because they're having

a weak moment or something like that. You know, they

sort of slip into the category of like not your

friend in that moment, which is sort of in the

category of an enemy. So there's very degrees, which means

God calls us not just to okay, fine, if I

ever into contact with you know, somebody oversees that, I'll

love them. Yeah no, no, no, that's not what God's saying.

God saying as you go through life, to love anybody

who's not your true friend. Love every treat everybody with

respect and love and forgiveness and kindness who pits themselves

against you, even in a weak moment, because that is

the character of Christ.

I did a survey one time, and I asked, how

many of you have preaching this message? And I did

how many of you have enemies? And I just forget.

Everybody would raise her and say, oh, I know I've

got enemies. And I had this lady go, I do

not have any enemies. And I stood there for I

was caught off guard for a second. It was a

small group. It wasn't a preaching thing. It was a small,

small group, maybe forty people, And so I was like, really, yeah,

and she said yeah. I said, oh, I think you're

misunderstanding my question, right, I'm asking you. You think I'm

asking have you chosen to be enemies against somebody?

Yeah?

And she goes, I don't have a single enemy. I said,

you don't have anybody who treats you bad, and she goes,

oh yeah, And the lady sitting next to her starts

this starts their whispering, you know, back and forth, and

I said, so it doesn't have to be that you've

chosen enemies. And then God says, love those people you've

chosen to hate, right. It's also those people who've decided

to pit themselves against you and work against you. And

Jesus said, if you're a follower of me, people will

hate you, right. And it's even those people that have

decided to make us their enemy, even though we're not

choosing them to be our enemies. We love everybody, even

if they've chosen to make us their enemy for some reason,

they're working against us. They don't like our faith, they

don't like our politics, they don't like they don't like

something about it. They don't like our race, they don't

like the neighborhood we live in, they don't like the

job we have. I don't know. They don't like our family,

and they've just decided to work against us. Jesus says,

love them also, And so a lot of us can

be a little bit fair, say, and we go, oh, no,

I love everybody. This verse doesn't apply to me. Well,

there's people who've pitted themselves against you, and every one

of us has people like that.

That's right, Yeah, that's right, and it could be in

the smallest of ways.

Yeah right, yep, So love them, do good love.

Them, love them. Okay, that's a great place to end,

and we will pick up tomorrow and hopefully we'll see

that on the Bible. Guys, M.