Introduction:
Leviticus 19:18 – You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:34 – You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
I Love My Enemies... (Matthew 5:43–48)
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...because of WHO I AM. (Matt 5:45a)
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...by WHAT I DO. (Matt 5:45b)
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...because I Am CALLED TO BE DIFFERENT. (Matt 5:46–47)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
Small Group Discussion
Read Matthew 5:43-48
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
What does it mean to be persecuted? When Jesus said we must pray for those who persecute us, what / how exactly should we pray?
Can you genuinely love your enemy if you don’t really feel like it? Why or why not?
Explain Romans 12:20. How exactly does loving your enemy lead him to repentance? See also Romans 2:4.
What did Jesus mean in verse 48 when He said we “must be perfect”?
Breakout
Pray for one another.
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Open up those Bibles to Matthew chapter 5.
As we go through our series, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5 verse 43, Jesus
said, "You have heard that it was said."
Stop there for a second.
This whole section that we're in right now, if you've been following this series at all,
I'm sure you've noticed that that has come up.
What is it like?
Six total times pastor?
Like, "You have heard that it was said, but I say to you."
What Jesus is dealing with here is correcting some garbage beliefs.
And I've shared with you before, that's my biggest concern for this church is the area
of discernment.
We live in a day that there is so much bad teaching out there.
And thanks to the Internet, we have access, right?
And look, I'm not saying it's all bad, but I'm saying probably for every good teaching
you can find online, you can probably find ten other garbage teaching online.
And my concern for the church is people not knowing the difference.
And it gets back to what did Jesus actually say?
It's the issue that He was dealing with in His day, lack of discernment.
Last week we saw Jesus said, "You've heard that it was said, and I for an eye."
And Jesus said, "No, no, no, no, no, no."
Jesus, as I say to you, I'm paraphrasing, He says, "Do not retaliate."
You can walk away from last week's message and say, "Got it.
Don't retaliate."
So I'm just going to ignore the people that I can't stand.
Well, let's keep reading.
Verse 43, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.'
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Oh, no, no, don't ignore your enemies.
You have to look for ways to be good to them.
You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You're saying that I not only don't get to get even with them, but I have to proactively
love them?
Yeah, that's what He said.
All right?
It's a hard word.
So I think we should just stop and pray right now, shouldn't we?
I'm going to ask that you would pray for me to be faithful to communicate God's word,
accurately and clearly, and I will pray for you to have a heart open to receive what our
Lord is teaching us in this part of His Sermon.
All right?
So let's pray.
Father in heaven, as we go through this sermon from our Lord, it's just wave after wave of
things that really confront our selfish, sinful, fleshly tendencies.
And I don't know of one that's bigger than this one.
I'm asking, please God, please, by the power of Your Word, Father, by the power of Your
Spirit that You would change our minds today, Father, change our hearts and that we wouldn't
just leave here knowing some things, but we leave here deeply convicted and moved to do
some things.
For Your glory and honor, Father.
We pray in Jesus' name.
And all of God's people said, Amen.
All right, let's break this down here.
Jesus says in verse 43, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor
and hate your enemy.'"
You have heard.
You have heard.
That's what we've seen in this series.
The scribes and the Pharisees in Jesus' day did what's still happening today.
They twist verses in the Word of God to justify whatever it is they want to justify.
For them, Jesus called them out.
They were justifying their lust.
They were justifying their hatred.
They were justifying their getting even with people.
He calls them out again.
You've heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy."
That's what the scribes and the Pharisees said.
And you're like, "Well, was that in the Old Testament?"
Well, the first part was, kind of.
Here's what I mean.
Here's what's actually in the Scripture.
Leviticus 19-18.
Look at this.
"You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you
shall love your neighbor as yourself.
I am the Lord."
So you see, with the way that they sort of restated that, they ran into four problems.
Four problems.
The first problem is the scribes and the Pharisees left out the "as yourself" part.
Did you notice that?
Well, I love my neighbor, but as myself, that's a bit too much.
Let's keep it vague.
Because if we keep love vague, then whatever we do, we can just say it was love, right?
So keep it vague.
God never kept it vague.
That was their first problem.
Second problem is the scribes and the Pharisees redefined neighbor.
And their definition of neighbor was, "Those I choose to love."
That was their definition.
So do you realize...the reason I'm laughing is, do you realize what that made the command?
God's command is, "Love those you choose to love."
That's convenient.
Third problem, the scribes and the Pharisees totally added the "hate your enemy" part,
right?
Totally added that.
You're not going to find that anywhere in the Old Testament.
My vague love is for my Jewish neighbors.
What about the foreigners?
Hate them.
And that leads us actually to the fourth problem.
Because that whole love your neighbor as yourself, that was in Leviticus 19, 18.
But if you go down a few verses to verse 34, it says, "You shall treat the stranger who
sojourns with you as the native among you.
And you shall love him as yourself."
For you are strangers in the land of Egypt.
I am the Lord your God.
See the scribes and the Pharisees, they thought that they were honoring God by hating foreigners.
And we get asked this question a lot.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait."
In the Old Testament, didn't God tell the Israelites to exterminate the nations that
were living in the Promised Land?
And don't we have all these imprecatory psalms?
Like what's up with that, huh?
Well, it's like the eye for an eye thing that we talked about last week.
The scribes and the Pharisees took a thing that was designed for Israel as a nation and
they turned it into a personal thing.
So the whole exterminate the enemies in the Promised Land.
Yeah, absolutely.
Israel's wars weren't personal vendettas.
They were commanded by God to wipe out those nations because those nations did horrible
things.
And God says, "You are not going to pollute my nation Israel."
So Israel, you're going to wipe them out.
And if you have a hard time with that, I would just like to lovingly remind you that God
is allowed to make those calls because vengeance belongs to Him.
Okay?
And God's whole purpose in that was to protect Israel as a nation in that land.
That's why when you turn to your New Testament, you don't see any imprecatory language in
the New Testament.
It's for Israel.
And individually, we're talking about personally now, what about the people that hate me?
What about the people that are my enemies?
Love them.
Love them.
Look at verse 44, Jesus says, "But I say to you," pretty clear, isn't it?
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
You see the whole loving your neighbor command includes everyone around you, including your
enemy.
Now breaking this down, when He talks about enemy, He's talking about your personal enemy.
Okay?
It's not this collective group idea.
It's somebody who personally hates me.
And Jesus says our response is to love them.
That's the word agape.
That is the highest form of love.
That's self-sacrificing love.
That's the kind of love that we should have for our enemy.
And the verb tense here is constant.
It's continually.
You need to continually love your enemies.
And you're like, well, who is my enemy?
Who is it that hates you?
Who is it that you know that if you tried to call them, they wouldn't answer the phone?
If you sent them a text, they wouldn't reply.
Or vice versa?
Who is it that has been slandering you, making accusations against you?
Jesus says we not only love our enemies, but you notice He ratchets it up even more when
He says pray for those who persecute you.
Those who persecute you.
Those are your worst enemies.
Where Jesus is speaking about your enemies who they don't just hate you.
They actively hate you.
These are the people that make an effort to show you how much they hate you.
And as we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount, we see that a true believer
in Jesus Christ is someone who is defined by the Beatitudes.
And if you were here for the Beatitudes here, do you remember what the last one was?
The highest rung on the ladder of following Jesus Christ is when we're persecuted.
And here's the part where we stop and ask, are we persecuted?
Are we really persecuted?
Because here's the thing.
I think for a lot of us our knee-jerk reaction to that would be I'm not persecuted, but the
reality is you probably are.
But you just haven't realized it.
Here's what I mean by that.
Here's what I mean.
Persecute doesn't just mean somebody physically attacks you.
Somebody murders you.
Somebody gets you arrested, thrown in jail.
Yes, that is persecution, but those are the most graphic manifestations of persecution.
The word "persecute" literally means to pursue.
That's what it means.
And listen, listen to this.
Persecute means somebody is chasing after you to constantly criticize and condemn you.
So I imagine most of you are being persecuted right now according to the true definition
of persecution.
Think about it this way.
Was Jesus persecuted?
If you're like, "Oh yeah, when He was crucified."
Of course!
But He was persecuted His entire ministry because what were they constantly doing?
The proper definition.
They were constantly - read the Gospels.
They were constantly pursuing Jesus.
They were - how would we say it?
They were out to get Him.
That's what persecution means.
I mean, read your Gospels.
They were constantly looking to criticize Jesus and assaulting Jesus, accusing Jesus.
"You did this in the Sabbath and you shouldn't be doing healing this way and your disciples
didn't wash your hands and what's up with the fasting?"
They were constantly, constantly, constantly after Him.
That's what persecution means.
And if you really follow Jesus, you have people pursuing you in that way too.
Don't shout out any names.
But do you have somebody at your workplace, for example, that's always watching you,
always looking to get their little remarks in, get their little digs in,
always looking to criticize anything you say or anything you do.
That's persecution according to the proper definition.
They're pursuing you.
Maybe you have that family member.
Never approves of a thing you do.
The bum just can't do anything right and they're always vocal about it.
Getting their little shots in, their little passive aggressive comments, they're always
out to get you.
That's persecution.
Maybe it's on social media.
You know anything you post.
You know that person is going to show up with their snarky little comment.
That's pursuing.
That's persecution.
Jesus says we need to pray for the people to do that to us.
The people that are out to get you.
Jesus said pray for them.
So when was the last time you did that?
I don't know about you but I have a list of people that I regularly pray for.
When was the last time that you loved your enemy?
And you're like, why in the world would I do that?
Well let's keep reading.
Jesus says in verse 45, "So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven."
Why would you love your enemy?
Why would you pray for people that are constantly out to get you?
It's not because of who they are.
It's because of who you are.
That's the sermon that our Lord gives.
That you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
It's not because of who they are.
It's because of who you are.
We just confess that so much of our lives, our attitudes, our moods are determined by
other people, good or bad.
People have a way of just like governing our lives.
Here's what I mean.
Your service, you go over to a giant eagle and you run into an old friend that you haven't
seen in years.
"Oh, that puts you in a good mood.
Oh, it was so great catching up."
That's going to put you in a good mood for the rest of the day, right?
Or somebody makes a really jerky comment to you at work intentionally wanting to get
under your skin.
Then that's just like wreck your day and you're in a bad mood for days over one jerky comment.
And I would bet if you had a bad day last week, if you could point to a day last week
or like, "Oh, that was a bad day," I would be willing to bet that it had something to
do with people.
You're laughing because it's true.
And Jesus here is saying, "My people don't react to people.
My people act according to the Word of God."
So let's unpack this for a few moments, shall we?
When you're outlining, I want you to jot some things down.
I love my enemies.
Can you say that?
You're like, "Not now."
You will in a few minutes.
I love my enemies.
Number one, we already touched on this.
We're going to drill a little deeper here.
Number one, I love my enemies because of who I am.
Look at this again.
This is Jesus' whole rationale.
Why would I love my enemies, Jesus?
Lord, why would I pray for the people that are constantly out to get me?
So that You may be sons of Your Father who is in heaven.
This is where Jesus starts Your identity.
You love Your enemies not because of who they are, but because of who You are.
Jesus is in essence saying, "You love Your enemies because..."
It's a family tradition in our family.
You have family traditions.
You have family traditions.
You know what I mean?
Every family has on brand things that they do, right?
Like some families, they're like, "We're campers.
We go camping."
Yes, we have a house, but for a while we like to pretend that we don't.
That's just what we do in our family.
We live in a canvas enclosure in the wildlife.
Okay, but that's your family thing.
For some families, it's like, "We're beach people.
We love the beach."
Our family loves the beach.
We love the beach.
That's our family thing, right?
Some families are sports families like, "Oh, we're baseball.
We're a baseball family.
We love the box and we're on the church softball team."
And we're like, "We love baseball."
Every family's got their thing, right?
I mean, I remember growing up, our family.
Our family had our thing.
I remember when we were teenagers, Aaron actually came over to our house for Thanksgiving.
And they had the stuffing out and the turkey and all the dressing and all that stuff.
And I just remember our family was passing around the table a bag of funyons.
And I just remember Aaron sitting there going, she looked like she saw a ghost.
I'm like, "What's the matter?"
She goes, "Why are you passing around a bag of funyons?
It's Thanksgiving."
And I'm just like, "What's Thanksgiving without funyons?"
Like, "We're not the weird ones here."
And then I got older and realized that we were.
Every family's got their thing.
That's what Jesus is saying here.
Like, "Hey, hey, hey, we're in God's family."
He said, "You know what we do in God's family?
Do you know what we do?
We love like God."
And God loves His enemies.
You're like, "Who are God's enemies?"
Everyone.
Do you realize that?
Literally every single person on the planet is an enemy of God until they are reconciled
to God in Jesus Christ.
That's what Paul said in Romans 5, right?
"If while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son."
See that's the glorious reality of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When you receive Jesus Christ by faith, when you believe that He died to take away your
sin, when you believe that He rose from the dead to give you eternal life, when you turn
from your sin and receive Him, God changes you from an enemy of God to a child of God.
And now we are a child still living among enemies of God, child of God.
Ephesians 4, spilling over to Ephesians 5, says, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.
Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children."
This is what we do in our family.
We love like God.
And as His children, we imitate our dad.
Do you ever notice that kids love to imitate?
Do you ever notice that?
Kids loved to imitate adults.
It was made painfully aware to me, oh, many, many years ago, a couple decades ago at this
point we had foster kids.
Before we had any of our own kids, we had foster kids.
And I remember, one little boy, he was five years old, his name was Walter, and we'd be
playing the PlayStation.
We were sitting there, playing the PlayStation, and look, I was a perfect gamer back in the
day.
But sometimes the stupid game would glitch or something, and my guy would get killed.
And when that happened, I remember I'd put the controller down, and I'd be like, "Oh,
for Pete's sake!"
Well Walter would be playing video games with me, and I remember he'd be playing a video
game, and he'd just randomly throw his controller down and go, "Your pee stinks!"
Like no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, it's for Pete's sake.
But he was...
It never clicked with him.
He was constantly commenting on the smell of urine.
Your pee stinks.
Why did he do that?
He was just imitating me.
Right?
Kids love to do that.
And as a child of God, we naturally, we supernaturally want to imitate him.
So when that guy at work is constantly out to get you, and you love him, and you repay
his nastiness with kindness, and then somebody else comes in and says, "Well, what are you
doing?
You love that guy?
That guy's a real jerk to you!"
And your response says, "Yeah, I get that from my dad."
You see, I see people as dad-season.
Lost.
Blind.
Slave to sin.
Heading to hell.
You know what my heavenly dad taught me?
He taught me that I don't need to retaliate.
And my heavenly father taught me I don't need to ignore them.
My heavenly father taught me that people like that need compassion.
And I know right now somebody's thinking, "Yeah, I love your enemies.
I see it.
I hear it.
Pastor Jeff, you don't know what this person said to me.
You don't know the horrible things that they said to my face.
You don't know the horrible things they said behind my back.
Pastor Jeff, you don't know this person for years has been just out to get me."
Look.
You're right.
They don't deserve it.
You're right.
They've been miserable.
But you, you love them not because of who they are, but because of who you are.
You're a child of God.
And your heavenly father, he loves his enemies.
Right?
So I love my enemies because of who I am.
Secondly, number two, write this one down.
I love my enemies by what I do.
I love my enemies by what I do.
And you might be sitting here going, "Ah, yeah, this love your enemy thing.
I ain't feeling it.
I ain't feeling it."
And I would say, "That's okay.
You don't have to feel it."
But you do have to do it.
Because look, when the Bible talks about love, agape love, it's not an emotion.
Listen, you don't have to like them.
But you do have to love them.
And biblically, love is an action.
Here's what I mean.
Love is an action.
First, John 5.3 says, "For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments."
Jesus said the same thing.
What is it?
John 14, 15.
Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."
John 15, Jesus said, "Abiding in Him is keeping His commandments."
Notice the Bible never calls us to stir up some kind of emotion.
Loving God is a choice.
And yes, we worship God with our emotions in song and worship, yes, but that is the
fruit of a choice to love God.
The proof that you love God isn't based on your feelings.
The proof that you love God according to our Lord is based on your actions.
And listen, church, love works the same way with your enemies.
You are not called to love your enemies by conjuring up gushy feelings.
You're called to love them by your actions.
You're called to love them by actively blessing them.
Why?
Because that's what God does.
Look at verse 45, the rest of it.
He says, "For He makes His Son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the
just and on the unjust."
God is so kind to sinners.
Did you ever stop and think about that?
Have you ever stopped to just marvel at the glorious truth that somebody can live their
entire life and completely ignore God?
And they can still have a pretty good life on the earth.
Isn't that astounding?
Isn't it amazing that somebody can live their entire life hating God, speaking against God,
speaking against God's people, speaking against God's truth.
They can live their whole life and do that, and they can still have a good life on the
earth.
In God's kindness, He still lets them have sun and rain and a million other good things.
You can hate God, still have food and friends and laughter and family and health.
And yeah, the heart hearted may refuse to be thankful or acknowledge this, but regardless,
God does it anyways.
God's kindness says little about them, but it says much about Him.
And Jesus says, "Take note, children of God, you show love for your enemies by what you
do for them.
You show love for enemies by actively seeking their good."
Like, well, what does that look like, Pastor Jeff?
What does that look like?
Okay, so you've got a nasty, older family member who's always hated you.
Go do your yard work.
You got a jerk co-worker always looking to get their little shots in on you?
Look for ways to sincerely and genuinely compliment their work.
You got a nasty neighbor?
Find out what they like and treat them.
Hey, I saw your garden, and the other day I was at the store and I saw that there was
this magazine about gardening, and I picked it up for you.
I thought you might be interested.
I don't know.
Just get on your face and ask God to show you how you can show kindness to your enemy.
Romans 12.20, Paul quotes from Proverbs 25.
He says if your enemy is hungry, feed them.
If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
For by so doing, you will heat burning coals on his head.
When I was a young Christian, when I read this, I had this idea that if you do good
to people that aren't good to you, like if you meet their needs, they're going to have
this like mini Sodom and Gomorrah experience on their head.
Like I'm going to be nice to you, and it's going to rain lava on your head.
I'm burning!
Like that will show them.
And then I learned that that's not what that means at all.
It was actually an Egyptian symbol that they would put hot coals in an insulated pot and
carried around on their head.
It was a sign of repentance.
See, Israel had the sackcloth and ashes.
Israel had the pot of coals on their head.
And that's what God's Word is driving us to.
Because no one's ever been one to Jesus because a Christian matched their pettiness.
No one's ever been one to Jesus because a Christian just flat-out ignored them.
It's kindness that leads to repentance according to Romans 2-4.
Show love to them.
Actively show love to them.
Why would I do that?
Because it's not about who they are.
It's about who you are.
And one more.
I love my enemies because of who I am by what I do.
In Romans 2-3 we get to another because I love my enemies because I'm called to be different.
Look at verses 46 and 47.
Jesus says, "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing
than others?
Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
Stop there.
If you're like, "You know what?
I love the people that I like.
I love the people that I like."
Well, then you do what people who don't even know Jesus do.
And our Lord here is saying, "What's so special about that?"
Oh, so you think you're great because you do what's normal.
Well hang on a second.
Let me shine up your participation trophy.
Why is it that we want applause for doing what's expected?
Here's an example.
Well Aaron and I, we always look at each other and kind of laugh.
When we hear a dad say, "Yeah, I had a baby sit my kids last Monday."
Do you hear somebody say that?
You're not going to say it anymore.
I had a baby sit my kids last Monday.
I believe that's called being a father.
You didn't baby sit your kids.
What did your wife pay you $10 an hour?
Like look, I'm not giving you a cookie because you did what was expected.
That's what our Lord is saying here.
You're expected to be different because Christians have something that no one else in the world
has.
Do you know what that is?
Like the Bible?
Not everybody has that.
Like compassion?
No, a lot of people have that.
Christians have something that nobody else in the world has.
You know what that is?
God living in them.
In other words, you should be different.
I mean, anybody can go one mile.
That was the law.
That's expected.
Anyone can give up a shirt that they lost legally in a lawsuit.
That's expected.
And here our Lord is saying, "Anybody can say hi to their friends."
That's expected.
But God expects and empowers us to do more, to be like Him.
So do you do what the world expects?
Or do you do what God expects because God's called you to be different than the world?
Do you have a heart like God?
We'll find out.
We'll find out because it's revealed not in how you treat your friends, it's revealed
in how you treat your enemies.
You love them.
Not because of who they are, but because of who you are.
Oh yeah, there's one more verse.
One of the most deeply convicting and challenging verses in the whole Bible.
Jesus says, "You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."
In the context of this teaching, obviously, he's talking about the way we love, right?
You must love perfectly the way your heavenly Father loves perfectly.
That's what Jesus is saying here.
And look, you and I, we look at that verse and we say, "I failed.
I failed."
We all have.
And actually, remembering the beatitudes, step one and two of the beatitudes was recognizing
that you failed.
And you're like, "Man, I'll never be perfect."
But God says you must be perfect.
You know what that means?
It means I always have room to grow.
And today we're talking about loving your enemies.
And maybe right now you're saying, "You know, I knew that.
I knew that, but today I'm encountered by this calling in a fresh way and I realize
now I need to grow.
I want to grow in this area."
It's grace.
It's grace.
God has made us perfectly righteous in Jesus Christ.
God has adopted us as His children, and He is constantly changing us.
We don't deserve anything, but God has given us everything, even though we were His enemies.
It's grace.
You get that?
Then like your Father, give it.
In just a moment, we're going to be gathering around the Lord's table as a church.
And it is the Lord's table that reminds us that we are grace people.
Because in essence, what we are remembering, what we are celebrating, what we are declaring
when we take the Lord's supper together is the Lord is saying, "I saved you."
Not because of who you are, but because of who I am.
