My name is Eric, one of the pastors here.
Thank you for being here with us today.
We're in the book of Matthew. So if you have a Bible, turn to
Matthew chapter 5. And we are in the last section
of the book of Matthew, chapter 5, not the book of Matthew that
goes till of 28 chapters, but we're going verse by verse,
chapter by chapter through this And chapter 5 has been a
daunting chapter. Really.
This is the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus's famous sermon
early on in his ministry where he comes to tell people what it
really looks like to live in the Kingdom of God.
And, and, and we've looked at a lot of different things about
what a Christ like person looks like, what a Christian should
live like. And today we're going to end
with the topic of love and hate, and I've titled it The Ordered
Loves of a Christian. The unique love that a Christian
has for the people close to him and the people far away from him
should be different than the world.
So let's look at these verses. I'll read them to you and then
we'll get into it. Matthew 5, starting in verse 43,
says you've 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, so that you may
be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
For he makes his sunrise on the evil and on the good, and sends
rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love
you, what reward do you have? Do not even 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?
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
perfect. So I've got 4 things I want to
pull out of this text today and the first one is concerning what
was in my title, the ordered Loves of a Christian.
We're going to talk about what it means to have ordered loves
if we're called to love everyone, as Jesus said, even
love your enemy. For for many of us, we think
about that and and we can think about loving our family, loving
the people closest to us. But loving our enemy seems
almost impossible as Jesus ended that with you must be perfect.
You would have to be a perfect person and not get offended, not
be hurt by your enemy so that you could love them, right?
This is a difficult topic to talk about today because it
seems nearly impossible. But we're going to walk through
this because there is clarity, reasoning and logic we can apply
to this text along with theology, a study of the whole
Bible, not just looking at these verses, but taking the whole
Bible into account when it turned, when it, when it talks
about how to love our enemies and even love those people
closest to us. And so that means it has to have
order, right? You don't love your spouse the
same way you love a stranger. That just makes sense, right?
So we're going to talk about that as we get into this first
point. Going back to our first verse,
you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and
hate your enemy. Now the context, let's get into
the context of this. So Jesus, this is has been
teaching an antithesis to what the Jewish Pharisees have been
teaching. What that means is that he is
going back and correcting what the Jewish teachers and leaders
were teaching the people. He's saying, you heard this, but
I tell you something different. And we know who Jesus is.
Jesus is God in the flesh, who, who is the author of and owner
of all of these words in Scripture, including the Old
Testament ones. And so Jesus has the he's the
only one with the authority to come and say, no, they had it
wrong and I have it right. Let me tell you what this means
or what they had wrong and what did they have wrong in this
statement? Well, it says you shall love
your neighbor and hate your enemy.
Now the first part is right. The first part comes from an Old
Testament law and and you've also you know that the greatest
commands. As Jesus is reiterated, you
should love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind and
strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
Loving your neighbor is not that hard of a concept to grasp in
Scripture. But what about hating your
enemy? Well, this is a
misunderstanding, something that the Pharisees, the Jewish people
have have inserted in their own teaching of God's law.
If we go back to Leviticus, which is one of the first book,
5 books of the Bible that contains the law of God, verse
18 said that you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge
against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your
neighbor as yourself. This is where that first the
first commandment to love your neighbor comes from.
But there is no commandment like this that says to hate your
enemy. You won't find it in the Old
Testament, in fact in the Old Testament in other places you'll
see if if you. Exodus 23.
Four. If you meet your enemy's ox, his
donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him.
If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its
burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it.
You shall rescue it with him. Deuteronomy 23.
Seven. You shall not a bore an Edomite,
for he is your brother. You shall not a bore an Egyptian
because you were a sojourner in his land.
So On the contrary, we can find even in the Old Testament, this
isn't a new concept that he's teaching.
There was love for your enemy, love for the foreigner, love for
people other than ourselves, other than in our close
community was taught in Scripture.
It's always been God's heart. But legalists, Pharisees, go to
the extremes of taking God's words and twisting them to fit
their convictions. That's what a legalist person
does. They they don't want to break
God's law, so they don't outright rebel against it.
What they do is try to find loopholes and they try to
interpret things in such a way that will fit with their
beliefs. Rather than conforming to God's
way, they try to make God's words conform to their way.
Now, we can all be like that if we're honest.
We all grow up with preconceived notions and ideas and morals
about what life is like and what God is like and what's good and
what's evil. And when we come up in
something, come up against something in Scripture that that
disagrees with what we thought was right, what, what do we do?
We start arguing, right? We start arguing with it.
And then the next step is to go, well, let's, let's go to the
original language and, and see what does that word mean?
And then we'll go, let's go to background history and context.
And, and we'll try to say, you know, things have changed from
then back in their culture to our culture now.
And you know, we do this with scripture.
So first of all, there's a warning to not do that, because
when we do that, we're being like a Pharisee, we're being a
legalist. We need to just come under the
submission of God's Word. That is the first principle of
what it looks like to be a Christian is to submit to the
Word of God. Quit trying to twist it.
That's what Satan did from the beginning and that's what
they're doing. They got this wrong because they
wanted to hate their enemy and they had a misunderstanding of
who their neighbor was. In fact, here's something
interesting about the Jewish people back 2000 years ago, even
though they were occupied by the Romans, who the Romans
mistreated them, but the Jewish people because of the teaching
of the Pharisees at the time and their misunderstanding of God's
law, they hated anyone who was not of their clan, anyone who
was not like them, anyone who wasn't Jewish or from Israel,
they hated. And, and in fact, the Romans
themselves said this, that they were haters of the human race
because they had taken this saying to hate your enemy so far
that they made everybody outside of of their close, you know,
nationality, an enemy. And they got that wrong.
Now let's look at the other side.
Is there such thing as having an enemy then?
If you have to love everybody, yeah, you can have an enemy.
God has enemies, right? So King David in Psalm 139, in
fact, uses the word hate when he talks about enemies.
This is this is interesting. And the reason I'm bringing this
up is because teaching on a subject subject like this brings
up so many what ifs and questions, right?
And, and I want to try to do a full teaching and there's a lot
to get through today. But just look at this verse with
me, David in Psalm 139. He says, do I not hate those who
hate you, Oh Lord, and do I not loathe those who rise up against
you? I hate them with complete
hatred. I count them my enemies.
Now, David was inspired by the Holy Spirit when he was writing
this. Just so you know, if you're not
aware, we believe every word that is written in this book is
inspired by the Holy Spirit through men who wrote it down.
So this is literally God speaking through David and yet
through his personality, through his logic and reasoning.
And yet this is God's word. God has enemies and David had a
hatred towards God's enemies. Is that just if Jesus says love
your enemies? Well, yes, because in this sense
this is a king. King David was acting in a
judicial way here. He was the leader of the
government basically. And nations can have enemies.
Nations had enemies in war and and to a degree, in order to
carry out justice, a level of both love and hate have to be
present hatred of sin and the consequences of that caused by
the person. And you have to have a love of
the people closest to you in order to bring about justice, to
protect. And so sometimes when we think
about the word hate, we don't quite understand the word.
While the Pharisees had it wrong there, there is a a godly way of
understanding what hate means. In the Bible.
It's godly to hate sin. In the book of Hebrews, it says
you've loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
In fact, God hates sin. And if we're going to be like
God, we need to hate sin as well.
But sometimes we misunderstand this word hate in in in Hebrew.
It means to abhor, attest, loathe, be hostile, have a
feeling of open hostility and intense dislike, be an enemy.
It talks about being disliked, A shunning, not loving, have a
feeling of lacking of love and compassion for an object.
And then in the Greek the word means to loveless.
And so does God hate any person? Well, that's a mixed answer,
because while God loves everybody, Romans 913 says Jacob
I love, but Esau I hated. So what do we do with that?
Well, that's God's divine choice, to love the people of
Jacob, who is Israel, right? He loved them them, which means
that he had to have less love for this other group of people.
You can't have an intense love for something without having
less love for other things around it.
Does that make sense? So that comes back to this idea
of ordered loves. We are, in fact, called to love
everybody. But sometimes you're going to
love people more and sometimes you're going to love people
less. And sometimes that word hate is
used in the Bible as a loving less like, you know, Jacob and
and Leia and Rachel, you know, Leia said she was she she was
hated because Jacob, you know, wasn't able to give her a child
yet. That didn't mean he hated her
completely with the hatred that we think of.
But he did love Rachel more that that does say that in the Bible.
So my commentary says this. It says there's two kinds of
love, involving the same general feeling, or springing from the
same fountain of goodwill to all mankind, but differing so far as
to admit of separation idea. The one is that feeling by which
we approve of the conduct of another, commonly called the
love of complacency. The other is that which we wish
well to the person of another, though we cannot approve of his
conduct. This is the love of benevolence,
and this love we are are to bear toward our enemies.
It is impossible to love the conduct of a man that curses and
reviles us, that injuries our person or property, or that
violates all the laws of God. But though we hate his conduct
and suffer keenly when we're affected by it, yet we may still
wish well to the person. We may even pity his madness and
folly. We may speak kindly of him and
to him and may return good for evil.
We may aid him in the time of trial.
We may seek to do him good here and to promote his eternal
welfare. So what I'm saying to you is, is
that sometimes when you love something more, you have to love
something or someone less. And the word hate is used there
in scripture. In fact, when we talk about who
we're supposed to love the most in ordered love, see, the
concept of ordered loves is you love those people that are
closest to you, right? So Augustine back in the 3rd and
and 4th century kind of came up with this idea, or at least
espoused this idea. And it says all men are to be
loved equally. But since you cannot do good to
all, you are to pay special regard to those who by the
accidents of time or place or circumstance are brought into
closer connection with you. And that brings in this idea of
ordered loves. If I look at scripture, I know
I'm first supposed to love God. That's the top priority.
Then my next priority if I'm a married person is my spouse.
And then the next one is kids. Now, I know we often, sometimes
we'll get that wrong in our families, right?
Like, but I'm here to tell you married couples, you need to
love your spouse more than you love your kids.
And guess what? That sounds like, you know,
different to our culture or mean or something.
But when you love your spouse more than you love your kids,
you're loving your kids properly and then they understand how to
grow up in a healthy way, in a godly way in this life because
you put your spouse first. When you have a healthy
marriage, then you can have teach your kids to do the same
thing. So we love our kids and the
Bible says that we're supposed to love our church family also,
right? There's so look at look at this
verse. Does God love everybody equally?
I want to ask you this as I continue to get into this idea
of ordered loves, and the answer is no.
God does love everybody, but He does not love everybody equally.
And sometimes that might feel like when you're unfavored or
loved less, people would call that hate.
But look at this in Ephesians chapter 5 when he's using this
analogy of marriage, but it says husband's love arrived as Christ
loved the church and gave himself up for her.
You know what that's saying? That's saying, first of all,
that we need to, you know, put our spouses in high priority of
love. But secondly, when Jesus came
and died, the people that he died for, first and foremost was
the church, the believers, those who would, everyone who would
ever believe in him, that's who he was dying for.
He loves his bride. So then that therefore would
mean that if someone isn't a believer and isn't part of his
bride, that there's less love for them.
I know that this is a hard concept.
This brings up this idea of of definite atonement or particular
redemption that would say that that Jesus died not for the
whole world, but died for his bride.
But let me tell you how to make sense of that.
Jesus death is sufficient for the whole world, meaning that if
everybody believed, his death would apply to them.
But it's only efficient, it only actually works.
It's only actually fulfilled in those who believe.
And so then if God is sovereign and he knows the beginning from
the end when he died on that cross, you cannot simply say
that the love of Christ was the same for the unbeliever and the
believer if his death apply for all the sins of those who would
believe. I know that's a a hard concept
to grasp, but this is something that can be debated, but it's
biblical truth. So does God love everybody the
same? I would I would argue that he
loves his family, his believers more than he loves the rest of
the world. Then we're called to order our
loves in the same way. And in fact this whole idea of
ordered loves, God says this and he uses the word hate in here.
Jesus says this. If anyone comes to me and does
not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and
brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my
disciple. Isn't that radical?
What does that mean? He's not telling us to literally
have no love for our family because then that would be
against God's law. He's saying you better love them
less than you love me. God is top priority.
So this is where this ordered love thing comes.
We love God first. We love our spouse.
We love our kids, we love our church.
Then we love, you know, extended family.
We love our neighbors in our city, we love our state, we love
our country, and then we love the world.
That would be the biblical idea of ordered love.
This has been brought up when thinking about, I remember, you
know, seeing something on the news about, you know, foreign
aid and, and all of that. Like that could be a possible
application if you so wish to go that direction.
But we better get the First things first of ordered loves.
And so then in First Timothy 5/8, it also says if, if if
anyone doesn't provide for his relatives, especially the
members of his household, he is denied the faith and it's worse
than his than an unbeliever. I've got to love my family by
taking care of their needs before I take care of someone
else's needs. If I choose to neglect them to
love someone else down the list, that would be the wrong order is
what I believe the Bible is saying.
And with the church, it says, so then as we have opportunity, let
us do good to everyone, especially to those who are the
household of faith. There are different levels of
love that God has and that people should have for one
another in this world. And that's the idea of ordered
loves. All right, that took a long time
to explain. And I'm sure that's going to be
a lot of processing that people will still need to think about.
But if we're going to keep going, we need to see how it is
then that God loves people that are not in his family or that
are unbelievers. And so that's my next point then
is that God has this common grace for the entire world in
this verse that really kind of sums it up for us.
It says so that you may be after he says love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you.
He says so that so that you may be sons of your father who is in
heaven. For he makes his sunrise on the
evil and on the good and sends his reign on the just and the
unjust alike. So if everybody isn't
automatically atoned for their sins by the death of Jesus
Christ so that they can enter the family of God, and God has
the special love for his bride, if everybody's not in that
category, so then how does God love everybody?
Well, it's this idea of common grace.
While they are still under wrath for their sins because they
haven't repented and believed in Jesus yet, God still shows love
for all of his creation because they all hold the image of God.
And he has this common or general love for every person by
providing for them, by taking care of their needs.
And this has three parts to it, by the way.
There's a universal component to this where, like in Psalm 145,
the Lord is good to all and His mercy is over all that He has
made. OK, so there is a goodness of
God that extends to all people. That doesn't include forgiveness
of sins in the sense that it's applied.
Your sins aren't forgiven until you trust in Jesus.
But there still is a God good, God's goodness an undeserved
favor. That's what grace is to all
people. We can all experience love and
goodness in this world because of God's common grace.
Also, part of this common grace that God has is restraining of
some evil and sin and our own sin.
If God didn't have His common grace on His creation, people
would be so evil that no one could actually exist on this
earth. But there's a restraining power
of God, even in believers and unbelievers, that keeps us from
doing certain things. In Genesis 20 verse 6, God stops
this unbelieving king of a neighboring nation of sinning
against Abraham by taking his wife.
Here's what the verse says God said to him in the dream.
Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your
heart and, and, and it was I who kept you from sinning against
me. Therefore I did not let you
touch her. God sovereignly somehow made it
so this guy wouldn't want to sin in that way because God's that
powerful in his grace. So there's a restraining of some
sin of believers and unbelievers out there in the world, some
sin. Remember that he doesn't stop
all sin. He doesn't stop all evil in the
world, but some he does. And then there's this civic
righteousness to God's common grace, which means that there
are people that although don't know the law of God, they still
live with morals and good character to some degree.
Paul puts it like this. For when Gentiles who do not
have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law
to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
So when we look at people, although people are utterly
depraved spiritually, meaning that there's nothing good that
they can do to please God, not everybody is equally evil out
there in the world just because they're, you know, an
unbeliever. People actually can do some good
and righteous things and that is not because of them.
That is a grace of God. There's a again, a restraining
from the evil and A and A and a force of God's goodness out
there in his common grace. So let me let me quote what
Ligonier has to say about this. It says the doctrine of common
grace encompasses the biblical teaching about the universal and
undeserved goodness of God towards sinners.
By common grace, God restrains evil, sin, evil, misery and
wrath in this fallen world while conferring general non
redemptive blessings on all mankind.
This is distinguished from saving grace, but common grace
is a necessary aspect of the continuance of life in this
fallen world. Without God having common grace
on this world, this world would be annihilated.
It would not exist. God confers common grace on
mankind to encourage sinners to repent and trust in Christ on
Judgement Day. The common grace experienced by
the unrepentant and their failure to thank God for it will
factor into their punishment. Since man is pervasively
depraved, no continuance of human history, development of
culture, or growth in common virtue can occur without some
operation of God's grace. So This is why there is good and
beauty, beauty in a sinful world.
That's what this verse means in Matthew chapter 5, that he sends
his reign on the just and the unjust alike and causes the the
sun to shine and people can grow crops and have careers and do
good and have love and joy in their families.
This is all because of God's common grace.
And the verse that stands out here is so that you may be sons
of your Father who is in heaven. So when it says love your
enemies, be like God, you need to have this general love for
everyone, even people you consider to be your enemy.
But I think what they got was wrong was who was their enemy.
That's why we are and who was their neighbor.
You see, we read the verses of this Samaritan, the Good
Samaritan before we got up here. And that's a story of of Jesus
teaching the Israelites a lesson when they asked, who is my
neighbor? Well, a Levite and a priest walk
by this guy who was severely beaten and left for dead.
And a Samaritan was hated by the Jewish people.
They were considered to be 1/2, a half Jew and and half Gentile
that had their own way of believing they were hated.
And a person hated by the people that he's teaching is saying is
better than you because he loved this person who had no relation
to him. He, he took care of this person
who had no relation to him whatsoever.
You know how offensive that would have been to the people
that Jesus was teaching. But that's the the type of love.
So we're still called to to do good.
We've got to quit thinking about hating our enemy with this
complete hatred. You know, that's where you know,
prejudice and racism come from, by the way, is looking out at
people that are different than us, that think different than us
and hating them, withholding any kind of of love at all, placing
our ourselves in this on a level of of superiority.
That is not something that God wants for His people to be like
that. We are representing God in a
fallen world and we should be like our Father who is in
heaven. Well, I'll tell you what, this
is hard. This is really hard to do, and
that's my next point. The greatest love does not come
natural. Going back to verse 44, but I
say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you. I guess that means that we do
have enemies. They are our neighbors as well,
but they are our enemies. So we're supposed to love them,
but yet we need to protect our our families and the people that
we love most from, from the possible threat from people that
we love less. So that makes logical sense
because, you know, sometimes people think, well, you know,
Jesus sacrificed or God sacrificed his son for, you
know, people that didn't love him.
But yet God is not calling any of us to have our kids be
sacrificed for another person's sins.
Only God and Jesus himself can die for the sins of any human
being. And God nowhere in the Bible
calls us to sacrifice those who we love the most for another
human being sins. Only God can do that.
So we can't be like God in that aspect.
Which means then going back to the idea of ordered loves, we do
have to sometimes we're going to have an enemy.
If they're a threat to the people that we love the most,
How do we love that person though, even though they're a
threat? Well, sometimes we have to share
the truth with them and we need to tell them the way that
they're living. They are an enemy of us and of
God, and warnings need to happen.
We need to pray for their salvation because ultimately,
God's in control of that as well.
That's what what we see here. That's a difficult thing to do,
though, right? But here's how Jesus challenges
it with these two illustrations. Next in these verses where 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 Gentiles do the
same? We should be loving better than
tax collectors and Gentiles. That's basically what Jesus is
saying there. If all you do is only love the
people who are closest to you, then you're no better than an
unbeliever. By the way, tax collectors to
the Israelites were despicable. They were hated, they were
enemies. They would tax, tax them to
death, tax their food, tax everything that they did and
they would keep money for themselves and also give it to
their enemy, Rome. And he's saying if these guys
can love their friends and you're doing the same thing,
you're just like them. You're no better than them.
There's a challenge to be better than these guys, right?
There's a challenge to live like Christ again to the Romans or
the Gentiles. He would be talking about the
Romans. They were, they were called the
the Gentiles. They hated each other, the
Romans and the Jewish people hated each other and yet they
could love their family and their friends.
They were the persecutors of the Jews.
Where Jesus was saying pray for those who persecute you, He's
tone Pray for those who have come and occupied your land that
follow none of my laws. Pray for them.
Even evil people can love their family and friends, and we need
to be better than that at love. Basically Matthew 7 Jesus says
this. Or which one of you?
If his sons ask for bread, will you give him a stone?
Or if he asked for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.
If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven
give good things to those who ask him?
Evil people can love people closest to them.
The challenge here then for all of us, after understanding the
idea of ordered loves and, and you know who is our neighbor, is
that we need to challenge ourselves to love accordingly.
Like love our family well, but then love people who aren't like
us as well, praying for their salvation even.
Love the people that are persecuting us.
Love our enemies. Who's your enemy?
Anyone who poses a threat to you.
Anyone who's wronged you. Anyone who disagrees, disagrees
with you. That might even be your spouse.
It might be your neighbor. It might be your next door
neighbor. You guys are fighting about the
fence line or whatever it is, right?
Could be a politician you disagree with.
And man, can you just, can we just take a moment as we already
have, but think about the chaos going on in our world, about the
differences in opinion about politics and people killing over
that. I mean, nobody should ever be
killed for saying something that you disagree with, but yet we
that is not that is not loving your enemy and praying for them.
And you know, people are using this word hate nowadays saying
it's hate speech to call out sin and it's hate to to disagree
with me. Well, really for the Christian,
we believe that calling out sin and trying to share the morality
of the Bible and the message of Scripture, the message of God,
you might think that it's hate, but actually that's the most
loving thing that you can do to an enemy because they're headed
towards destruction. They are enemies of God and
there's a chance for them to turn from their sins.
And the only way a person can turn from their sins is to point
sin out and call sin sin, sin. And it's.
I mean, that's hard for a lot of people to do because we live in
a Society of people pleasers where it's like, I don't want to
make my boss offended, my neighbor offended.
You know, I don't want to get into any conflict.
And, and I understand that, that feeling, but yet I think it's
loving to cross the line of conflict.
If it's for the sake of the gospel, to tell someone the
truth, we need to do it with gentleness and respect, but we
do need to tell the truth. And that's one of the most
loving things that we can do. As a matter of fact, Jesus
prayed for his enemies. He loved his enemies.
And you know who his number one closest enemy to him was?
It was none other than Judas himself who betrayed him.
You know when when some stranger you know is your enemy for in a
in a in a foreign land or whatever, like it really isn't
that big of a deal. But when someone close to you
whom you loved to pray betrays you, they that's most like the
worst thing that can possibly happen to you being betrayed.
And Jesus, when he was arrested in the garden, he was greeted by
a kiss from Judas says, friend, do what you've came to do.
Friend. This is radical love that the
Christian is called to. And what did Jesus say on the
cross when all of his enemies were crucifying him?
What did he say? Father, forgive them.
He prayed for their salvation and forgiveness.
I mean, this is radical. And guess what?
If Jesus didn't love his enemies, then none of us would
be capable of love or being loved because we were enemies of
God. Romans 5/8 through 10 says.
But God shows his love for us, that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore we have now
been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by
him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more now
that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?
We are enemies of God. We were enemies of God.
If you're a Christian now and you've been forgiven, you're now
a friend. You're now in the family, you're
a son or you're a daughter, and you are loved with an intense,
merciful, compassionate love. But just remember, you and I
were enemies and if you don't believe in Christ that you stand
as an enemy now of God. But there are there is still
room for you to enter, not just to experience the common grace
and love of God, but you can enter into that intense burning
passion. The the, the, the, the love, the
agape love, the sacrificial love that God would send his one and
only son to die on the cross to be the sacrifice for our sins.
Because you know what? Just this had to be served.
God is perfectly just. And because God hates sin, sin
had to be dealt with. But all of the sin of all the
people who should have been dealt with, the justice that was
supposed to be served, was put on this one man, Jesus Christ,
and he had to die for all of the sins, as the Bible says, the
whole world. That means that you, if you're
not a believer, still have a chance to change from being an
enemy to being a son or a daughter by faith in Jesus
Christ alone, the atonement of his death, in the power of his
resurrection, eternal sons and daughters we can be.
So this is all pretty difficult as we think about this as
Christians, how are we going to live this out?
We're going to fail at this. And this is the last thing I
want to say. Our God has perfect love and we
need it. Only God has perfect love.
We are going to fail at this, but we should strive.
In fact, here's what he ends with this whole chapter.
You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The whole chapter and five of Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is
setting up two things. How someone who's living in the
Kingdom of God with Jesus is their king will be to the world.
They are utterly different. They're set apart.
They're called to be holy. It will show and prove that
they're true disciples of Jesus Christ when they conduct their
lives as Christians should. If God is our Father and we are
as children, children ought to try to as as physical children
resemble their parents. We should physically and
spiritually resemble our Heavenly Father.
As first Peter one says in verse 15.
You are called to be holy in all your, so be holy in all your
conduct, since it is written you shall be holy, for I am holy.
So when we understand that the whole law is summed up and in
loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and
then loving our neighbor as ourselves, that ought to
challenge us to love as much as we possibly can.
And not even in our own power, but in the power that God has
now given us to love with sacrificial love.
And it's not just a feeling. Even if you don't feel like
loving somebody, love is an action word.
It takes effort, it takes work. It's hard work to love people.
If you don't think love is hard work and it's just a feeling,
look at the hard work that Jesus did.
You'll never work have to work harder than that.
You'll never work that hard to love someone.
But this is the reason that we learn more about God is so that
we can strive right and do things and be the people that
he's called us to be. And so there is no excuse for us
to not live by God's standard. That's what this verse is
saying. There is no excuse.
You don't have an excuse to not live a perfectly loving life
like Jesus Christ. We don't walk around saying,
well, I can't do this and I can't do that.
We're called to do it. Jesus says to do it.
But the second thing that Jesus is pointing out in this Sermon
on the Mount is that this whole thing is a measuring stick, that
the real expectations of a holy God is impossible to meet.
We cannot, we cannot physically do this.
You and I cannot love perfectly. We cannot keep keep all the
requirements of the law, the Old and the New Testament.
No one is good. No, not one.
It's impossible to be good enough to satisfy God's
holiness. And all people are found
wanting. That's Jesus's point in this
whole thing. And those of us who are truly
following Jesus will just be honest and will say, gosh, I
cannot measure up to this. We can't live these principles
out. We can't just do it like Nike
tells us to do, because we're still Sinner sinners, but we're
saved sinners. And so actually admitting this
makes it so that we can live these things out, not perfectly,
but willingly submitting, trying, learning, growing and
surrendering to the only One who did live the perfect life for us
and loved us so much even that we though we were enemies,
Christ died for us. You know what that did that
actually fulfills this scripture right here.
We are perfect. We are perfect in God's eyes.
The word perfect means to be whole, complete, a finished
work. We get the perfection of Christ
that embodies all these wonderful impossible traits that
we're that we've been learning about.
But when God looks at us, he doesn't see a Gentile or a
Pharisee or a Sinner anymore. He sees a perfect mess and
that's that's the last verse I would share is in Hebrews 10/14
by a single offering, he is perfected for all time.
Those who are being sanctified, when God looks at us now, those
of us who are sons of God, forgiven by Jesus, trusting in
his sacrifice alone, we have been perfected past tense and we
are being perfected or sanctified made holy is what
that word means. So positionally, justice has
been carried out and we've been let off the hook and, but, but
we're also now empowered to start living the way God wants
us to live. And that does mean to love
everybody, especially or also our enemies.
And part of this becoming more holy is the whole process in
which the Christian life is lived out.
That's why we come to church. You wonder why?
Why do people go to church every week?
Why do they do small groups? Why do they study the Bible?
Why do they pray? It's because we are trying to
live out the things that God has called us to do.
And the only way to do that is to be in relationship, in a
community, in accountability, hearing the preached, prayed,
sung word of God together. This is how God has designed it.
And the loving one another's is most lived out in our families
and in the church. And then we get to learn how to
go out into the world and love everyone else.
We start with our with God, our spouse, kids, the church,
extended family, neighbors, Co workers, people with other
religions and politics, and even our enemies.
But we can only do that in the supernatural power of Jesus.
Would you guys pray with me? Lord we come to you this morning
and we still need to process how this all plays out in our lives.
How can I apply this to in my life this week?
Who can I love? How can I show them love?
How can I stop hate hating people?
How can I love people that I still need to have boundaries
with? These are all things that we
need your Holy Spirit alone to help us learn how to do.
But thank you, God for your word.
I pray for us to grow more and more to be like your Son Jesus
Christ. And it's in his name we pray.
Amen.