A Theology of Hate

The Call to Preach Grace While Warning Against Sin

I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 5 and find your place at verse 43. Over the past few years of being the pastor of the church and preaching many sermons from this pulpit, I've become quite interested in seeing how God manages my messages.

In that it seems like He always just creates the time and the place for a certain message to be heard. And this week is kind of interesting because we're going to be looking at a passage regarding hatred of our enemies.

And it just so happens that this week that a man who was very associated with hatred of enemies passed away. A man by the name of Fred Feltz, who was the leader of a church. Let me rephrase that. He was a leader of a group of people that called themselves a church, who were known for picketing with signs that say, God hates you.

And thank God for dead soldiers and thank God for 9 -11 and things like that. And he was known for being a man who was very, very consumed with trying to get out the message of God's hatred. And while there is a very real sense and a very real truth that we need to explain to the world, and that is God hates sin, and that the things that are being done in the world are worthy of God's wrath, and that those who continue in sin are under the wrath of God.

Those things we should never hide, we should never fear to preach those things. There has to be grace and mercy in our teaching. It must be associated with grace and mercy. We cannot be without it. The Bible says that always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, but to do so with gentleness and reverence.

The onus of respect and dignity when proclaiming the truth is always on the believer. It's always our goal to demonstrate grace and love and mercy in the proclamation of the truth that God does in fact hate sin, and that sinners will be punished for that sin.

But as I said, it's just interesting that we are coming to a passage today in regard to Christian ethics wherein Jesus is dealing with the men of his day, the Pharisees. He's dealing with this teaching that has gone out in regard to hatred of the enemy.

And Jesus is condemning that hatred. For the past few months, we've been studying the Sermon on the Mount, and we are coming now to the end. I am not certain whether or not we will finish today. My mind is not yet made up, and here we are.

I know that we're going to begin the end today. But there is so much that is found in these few short verses between verses 43 and 48. There is so much powerful theology here. We have not only the ethic of love for our enemies, but we also have a very powerful doctrine called common grace.

We also see the holiness of God and His command for us to live holy lives. He says, Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. There is so much richness in these few verses. Whether or not we get through it today, it would be amazing to me if we were able to cover all of this, and I don't like to rush through the words.

So we will read it, and I will give exposition of it. And when I feel it's time to stop and God leads me to stop, we will pray and we'll pick up where we are next week. And whether or not that leads us to the end, we will let Him decide.

So let's stand and read the text, and then we will begin our exposition of it. Beginning in verse 43, it says, 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, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

For He makes His Son rise 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 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? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Our Father and our God, we thank You for Your Word.

We thank You for this section of Scripture, which is so powerful and deserves our undivided attention. I pray that You would, first and foremost, Father, as I pray every time I step behind this desk to preach Your Word, I pray that You would keep me from error.

And I pray that You would open the hearts of Your people to the truth, and that You would use it to convict and to convert and to draw Your people unto Yourself. In Christ's name we pray, Amen. One of the truths that I have sought to stress throughout this series on the Sermon on the Mount, and I want to remind everyone of today, is that the Sermon on the Mount is intended to correct wrong teachings about the law and instruct on the subject of genuine righteousness.

That's the goal of the Sermon on the Mount. In particular, the first section of the Sermon on the Mount, which deals with Christian ethics. It's intended to correct and to instruct on the subject of genuine righteousness.

It is not intended to provide us with the way of salvation. The Bible is clear that salvation is found in the work of Christ alone. Seeking to find salvation in our own adherence to the law is futile and will ultimately lead to frustration and despair.

Romans 3 and verse 20 says this, For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. You see, a proper understanding of the law shows us our desperate condition and our need for a Savior.

The law is impotent to save us. The law doesn't have the power to save us, and it was never intended to. The law condemns us, and Christ saves us. Understanding that truth allows us to have an appropriate understanding of the Sermon on the Mount.

The Pharisees believed themselves to be law keepers, but they only believed themselves to be law keepers because they had perverted the law to suit their own twisted pleasures. They had changed and modified the law to conform to them so that they could consider themselves to be the consummate law keepers.

But Jesus is demonstrating through the Sermon on the Mount that their interpretations were actually misrepresentations and that the law actually condemned them. That they were not law keepers. They were not law abiders.

They were, in fact, law breakers, and law breakers of the worst kind because they were hypocrites. That's the worst kind of law breaker. The one who says, I'm going to give you this requirement, a requirement which I am unwilling to abide by.

As Jesus said, they tie up burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, which they themselves were unwilling to carry. That was the modus operandi of the Pharisee. That was what they did. That was their life.

And Jesus is challenging those who say that they have kept the law by demonstrating that they have not. They have not properly understood the law that they espouse. And the Sermon on the Mount is meant to correct the false teachings of the Pharisees, the Jews, and to instruct the proper understanding of God's law and what it means for God's people.

Now, I want to ask a question. Why do we need to properly understand the law if it doesn't save us? Why do we need to properly understand the law if the law isn't what saves us? Well, the answer is simple.

Because it does provide the foundation of what it means to live a godly life. If the law doesn't save us, it first leads us to Christ because it shows us that we are condemned, but it also stands as this high and lofty lifestyle.

It tells us what God has in purpose for us and the bar that we are seeking to live by. We're not probably going to get there today, but the last verse of chapter 5 is probably one of the ones that affects people the most in their heart because it said you shall be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

People get really upset by that. People say, well, I can't be perfect. Well, does that mean that God should lower His standard? I mean, since you can't do it, does that mean God should say, well, then I'll lower it?

You see, verse 48 is the verse that forces us to look to Christ. Because we look at verse 48, we see the standard is perfection. Every one of us says we cannot reach said standard. We know we are so far from the standard.

We are so far from perfection. What do we do? We look to Christ. Jesus said two men went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee went right into the temple and he began to pray.

Oh, thank you God. Thank you that I'm a good man. Thank you that I do good things. Thank you that I tithe a tenth of my income and I do this and that and the other and all that's good. Thank you that I'm not like that horrible, terrible, no good tax collector out there.

And the tax collector did not even enter into the temple, did not even look up to heaven, but rather looked down at the ground and beat his breast and said, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. And Jesus said it was that man who went home justified.

See, the law doesn't save. The law condemns and forces us to look at Christ. But we still need to understand the law. Because once we come to Christ, the question becomes, how then shall we live? How then shall we live as Christians?

Do we live as the world? Do we live in sin? Do we live as the world says is right? No. To live is Christ. So we must understand the law. And the Sermon on the Mount enunciates to us the ways that the Christian is supposed to be different from the world.

And never is those differences, never are those differences rather, more powerfully enunciated than in the verses that we're going to look at today. We've seen Jesus decry personal retaliation over the last few weeks.

In the verses preceding this, He said, you've heard it said, verse 38, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And we went through those four examples Jesus gives to us over the last couple of weeks of turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and giving to the one who begs from us and not being angry over those who take the things that sue us for inconsequential things.

And we said during that sermon, I said, that's part of the hardest part. That's got to be one of the hardest parts about being a Christian, and that is being willing to suffer. Being willing to take the punishment of the world.

Being willing to take the words of the world, the hatred of the world, and yet still continue to love Christ. And yet still continue to live for Christ. It's very, very difficult. Well, today's passage is equally as difficult.

Because it tells us to do something that I have to tell you is so far away from the natural response that it's to the point of the extreme of absurdity that we would be willing to do this if we did not understand that this command comes directly from God.

And that is to love those who hate us. That's such an absurdity in the natural mind that as I said, if the command didn't come straight from God, I think we would absolutely dismiss such a thing. Jesus has been following a pattern.

You have heard it said, but I say to you. And in that pattern, He has said over and over and over, He has quoted the law of God. You have heard it said, do not commit murder, but I say unto you. You have heard it said, do not commit adultery, but I say unto you.

And He's saying that as a quote from the Old Testament. He's saying that as a quote from the law. But this is the first time that Jesus is actually going to say something that is nowhere found in the law.

Look with me at verse 43. We'll begin to look over the text. At verse 43. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Beloved, that is not in the law. That phrase is not found in the Old Testament.

It's not a conglomeration of something that's found in the Old Testament. It's not even a combination of two or three verses that is found in the Old Testament. Only half of that phrase is found in the Old Testament.

It's the part that says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. We read it earlier this morning from Leviticus 19 and verse 18, which says, 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. That's where the phrase, you shall love your neighbor, comes from. But the tagline, and hate your enemies, is not found. The phrase, and hate your enemies, is not an Old Testament commandment.

This is an inference which the Pharisees had drawn from the text of Scripture and taught to the people as law. Because this was how they taught it, very simply. If I'm to love my neighbor, if you're not my neighbor, what should be my response?

Well, if the antithesis of neighbor is not neighbor, then the antithesis of love would be not love or hate. So this was an inference they had drawn from the text. They saw love your neighbor as yourself, and they said, you know what?

That means if you're not my neighbor, I get to hate you. And beloved, it was a welcome practice among the people. Because that's the natural heart. If you're good to me, I'll be good to you. If you're not good to me, then I'm going to hate on you.

That's the natural response. That's the natural heart. And hey, they had codified it in their teachings. So Jesus is here attacking this teaching, not that it was unbiblical, or not that they had misunderstood the Bible, but that they had totally created a new law which was nowhere there to be found.

Jesus said, you have heard it said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. And beloved, we have to know that they had not heard that from God. They had not heard that from the Word. They had heard that from the false teachers who were standing before them, giving them a misinterpretation of the law of God.

They had added to the Word of God their own improper understanding, and as a result, the people were grossly misinformed. Now, I do want to address something before we move on in the text, because any time I...

I have a little different sermon writing style than some people. I spent some time at the Ligonier Conference talking to other pastors, and I find myself to be quite unique in one respect. Not that that's good or bad, but I'm unique.

I tend to sit down and I read the text multiple times, and I'll write out questions. I'll write out a hundred different questions about what in the world does this mean, what does this mean, what does this mean, and that begins an investigation which leads into an exposition, which leads into what I finally bring on Sunday morning, which is after a time of seeking to answer the questions that the text has raised.

And one of the questions that came to my heart in the study of this was, what about the times in the Old Testament that there do seem to be those references to hate the enemy? How do we deal with that?

Because it doesn't say anywhere, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. But there are some times where the enemies of God are condemned in the Old Testament. Very forcefully condemned. And so one of my questions is, again, and I don't use a pen, I don't even know why I'm doing this.

I have not touched a pen in years. I type everything. But one of the questions that I type was, what about the imprecatory Psalms? If you don't know what the imprecatory Psalms are, the imprecatory Psalms are those sections within the Psalms wherein the psalmist writes prayers of judgment against the enemies of God.

And beloved, they are at times very bold. Blessed is he who takes your little ones and dashes their heads against the stone. That's pretty powerful stuff. The imprecatory Psalms are those Psalms of judgment against the enemies of God and the enemies of Israel.

And someone might say, well, here is an example of hatred in the Old Testament. Here is an example where the people of God are allowed to hate the unbelievers. And beloved, sometimes again, to some people that really excites their hearts.

You know, the Fred Phelps of the world, they really love that stuff because they want to hate. Well, herein is this prayer of judgment that licenses my heart to hate the person who is opposed to God. But beloved, one thing that we must understand about the imprecatory Psalms is that the imprecatory Psalms are not statements of individual personal hatred.

The imprecatory Psalms are prayers for justice in regard to the perpetually impenitent. What does that mean? It's a big phrase. Let me back up and I'll unpack that a little. The imprecatory Psalms were the prayers of judgment against those who continually and forthrightly are living in rebellion against God.

And they were not prayers of individual hatred like, Chris, you took something from me, so I'm going to hate you and I'm going to pray God's judgment on your head. That's the wrong way to see the imprecatory Psalms.

As a personal vendetta between me and another individual. But rather these are prayers against those who are continually and perpetually impenitent, the perpetually rebellious. They are praying that God would bring judgment upon them.

Someone says, well, that's hatred. I don't believe so. Because when I pray for someone, anyone, particularly those who are hating and who are treating me evilly and who are treating me badly, I don't pray that God will bless them with continued success.

When somebody's punching me or hurting me or hating me, I don't pray that they will continue. I mean, I don't know about you. I don't pray that God would embolden them to continue hating me. I don't pray that God would embolden them to continue persecuting me.

What do you pray for? You pray that God would lead them to repentance first. That's our prayer for everyone, that God would lead them to repentance. I say it all the time, I say it about America. People, I hate the phrase God bless America without the caveat of with repentance.

To say God bless America and stop means that we are worthy of God's blessing and we are not. We are worthy of blessing only with repentance. That is the truth. Because we have so continually snubbed our noses at God that we need to repent as a nation from the top down.

So when I pray for our nation, I don't pray for the success of our President. I don't pray for the success of our Congress and our Senate. I don't pray for the success of all of the people in power. I pray for their repentance.

Knowing full well that apart from that, God's judgment will fall with a heavy hand. Thus, am I not praying for them? But at the same time, praying in such a way that another person might say that that's a prayer of hatred?

See, we have to understand that when these Psalms are praying, they are not praying prayers of hatred necessarily. They are praying in conjunction with the will of God that these people's judgment is fitting.

There are other places in Scripture where one might say there is hatred demonstrated. And I must tell you, there are times where God's judgment falls. And God's judgment is powerful. God's judgment is terrible.

And the world does see it as hatred. The world would see the Canaanites... By the way, the Canaanites were destroyed. Every man, woman, and child were destroyed. The people of Sodom were destroyed. Every person there except for Lot and his two daughters were destroyed.

And someone would say, this is hatred. Well, it depends on how you define hatred. Because the reality is... People always say... I'm going to make myself very unpopular here. People always say God loves sin, hates the sinner.

Wait, no, that was backwards. God loves sinners but hates sin. And I said, well, the reality is God doesn't send sin to hell. He does send sinners to hell. He does judge sinners. And that's a very strong reality, something to consider.

That you cannot separate totally the sinner from the action. The action is the result of the sinner's heart. That happens. It's the truth. But at the same time, when we talk about God's justice and God's judgment, it's not the type of hatred that Jesus is here referring to.

When Jesus says that God said to Jacob, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. It's not the type of hatred that Jesus is talking about here. Jesus is talking about the personal vendetta. The personal injury which causes the individual insult and the individual hatred.

And beloved, we do not have the right to hate other individuals because God has demonstrated grace to us so that we will demonstrate grace to others. But that does not alleviate him from having the right to impose judgment and justice as he sees fit.

God can impose judgment and justice at any moment. Beloved, there's a story in the Old Testament of a guy named Uzzah. Uzzah was helping transport the Ark. The Ark of the Covenant was the representation of God's presence with the people.

It was the symbol of Israel. It had been stolen and now was being taken back to Jerusalem. As the Ark was being carried, Uzzah... Let me back up. As the Ark was being carried improperly, as it was not supposed to be carried the way it was being carried.

It was never supposed to be carried on an ox cart. It was being carried on an ox cart. It was supposed to be carried by the Levites. It was to be carried in a very specific way. But it was being transported on an ox cart as it was being rolled and it stumbled.

The Ark of the Covenant jostled and began to fall. And Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the Ark. At that moment, Uzzah died. Now, Uzzah did what probably 90 of the world would have naturally done.

When something goes to fall, we go to catch it. But what was the judgment? The judgment was simple. God had commanded this was not to be touched. He had commanded it wasn't to be transported that way anyway, but it wasn't supposed to be touched.

And Uzzah knew this. If you read further into the text, you'll find that Uzzah knew this was not something that he was supposed to do. But he touched the Ark and in an instant, what happened? God's judgment befell him.

He died. Somebody says, well, that's not fair. I want to remind you of a verse of Scripture that you ought to etch in the very frame of your mind, and that is this. Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?

Uzzah died. In an instant, the sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu brought strange fire before the Lord and they died in an instant. Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit of God. Because by the way, some people say, well, that's the Old Testament God.

He was mean. And the New Testament God, oh, he's lovey-dovey, you know, nothing but puppy dogs. No. The New Testament God is the same as the Old Testament God. To believe such a thing is to, number one, never have read the book of Revelation.

If you think the Old Testament God is rough, turn to the right of your Bible. Go about as far as you can and start reading. And you will see what justice and judgment looks like. So don't bring me that Old Testament God is nicer than the New Testament God.

Number one, you don't understand God. And you don't understand your Bible. But the truth of the matter is this. When God's justice is opened up for us to see, just for a second, it is so powerful, it is so intense, that it would very easily by us be confused as hatred.

Do you know why it would be confused as hatred? Because we, even as much as we like to think we might, still do not understand His holiness. We don't. If we understood the holiness of God, the issue with Uzzah would never cause us to bat an eye.

If we understood the holiness of God, Ananias and Sapphira would not even, for a moment, cross our minds. If we understood the holiness of God, Nadab and Abihu, we would understand why the judgment of God fell.

If we understood the holiness of God, we would stand amazed by the fact that we have not had the earth opened up beneath our feet and swallowed us into hell. If we only understood the holiness of God.

So do not confuse God's holiness with your understanding of hatred. Because our understanding of hatred is so clouded by personal, fleshly problems, that we can't see what it means when the Bible says, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.

We have a hard time with that because we don't understand. And what do we do? By the way, I'm way off the notes. What do we do? We create God to be the way we want Him to be. And so we establish a new God.

One of the things that I said this week, and I didn't put it out on any type of social media, because I knew a lot of people out in the world would not understand this, but I'm going to say it to you as my congregation, because hopefully you have heard me long enough to understand what I'm about to say.

If Fred Phelps offended you, but Joel Osteen doesn't, then you don't know your Bible. Because Fred Phelps taught people that God hates sinners. Joel Osteen teaches people to hate the true God, because he gives them an idol instead.

You can't compare those two. I just did. Write me an email. But it's the absolute truth. We need to understand God's holiness if we are to understand His hatred of sin, and understand that it's nothing like the hatred that Jesus is here expounding.

When Jesus tells us to not hate our enemies, but actually to love our enemies, He is commanding us to behave in such a way that we understand who we are. Do you know why I'm commanded to love somebody who is a sinner?

Take a guess. Because I'm in the same boat. Why am I commanded to love the sinner? Because God loved me, and I am the chief of sinners, says the Apostle Paul. Why am I commanded to be willing to love somebody who hates me?

Because God loved me when I hated Him. That's why this is so powerful. When we start trying to think of God's actions as actions of hatred, not understanding His holiness, His justice, and His wrath, then we have missed the boat completely.

We have missed the boat completely. Jesus says in Matthew 5 and 44, after He has said in this first portion, He has said to us, you have heard it 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. That statement, beloved, that causes a lot of people distress. They say, man, that's a pretty powerful New Testament concept. But guess what?

It's in the Old Testament, too. This whole idea of loving those who do wrong to us, Jesus didn't come up with that out of whole cloth. He stressed it. But, beloved, I just want to show you two verses, just to show you this is not a holy New Testament thing.

Go to Exodus 23 and verse 4. Exodus 23 and verse 4. It will be on the screen if you want to read along. It says, If you meet your enemy's ox. Now, it says enemies. Looking at the Hebrew, it's enemy. It's similar.

Obviously, the New Testament is in Greek. But it's the same idea. Jesus said, love your enemies. Same idea. This is not your friend. This is not your neighbor. In the sense of the neighborly neighbor.

This is this person that doesn't like you. And you don't particularly like him. And you have this animosity between you and this person. There's a hatred. Maybe it's a national hatred. Maybe it's a racial hatred.

There's some type of hatred that exists between you and this person. There's an enemy here. If you see your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. Now, that may not sound like much.

But that's a pretty powerful thing to command. And it goes on to say, if you see the donkey of one who hates you. Oh, not just your enemy. One who hates you. Lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it.

And you shall rescue it with him. Okay, you come across your enemy. He's there. He's got his animal that's under this burden. And he's trying to help this animal. And you see him doing it. And you walk by and laugh at your enemy in his distress.

No, the Old Testament says, go and help him lift it up. Love is not a feeling only. Love is an action that we do on behalf of someone. It doesn't matter if we like them. I explain this to my kids all the time.

I don't get to control what I like. Because like is pretty much built in. I like chocolate. I like vanilla. I don't like squash. And for some reason growing up, that's been pretty consistent. I like sweet stuff.

I don't like hot stuff. And I don't know how people can put that stuff in their mouth that burns them, you know. But some people do. I have a hard time liking people who are mean to me. And if you're sitting there, don't sit there like a bunch of, don't allow your piety to overrun your sensibility.

You know what I'm talking about. You don't necessarily like somebody who treats you difficult, in a difficult way. But like is not love. Because like is not necessarily something I control. But love is.

Because love is an action. Love is something I do. Not something I necessarily feel. So when Jesus says love your enemies, I go back to the Old Testament. It said if my enemy's having a problem and I have the power to aid my enemy, then that's my responsibility.

That's a powerful thought. We laugh at our enemy's distress. We mock our enemy's distress. But we're supposed to love our enemy. Proverbs 25 and 21. This is the verse of verses when it comes to this Old Testament.

Proverbs 25. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink. For you will heap burning coals on his head and the Lord will reward you. I've heard people say that the burning coals are insults.

No, you're not insulting him. You are heaping upon him conviction. That's the burning coals. It's not burning coals of insult. I'm doing this and now you're going to see that you really were the jerk and I was the good one.

No. The heaping up of burning coals is that when we do good to one who hates us and does evil to us, we are heaping upon them conviction. They may not ever have that conviction expressed in this life.

But there's something about a man when he lays down at night and he closes his eyes and there's nothing except himself in the darkness and God, where those moments come back to remind him of the reality that he is living under.

Jesus says if your enemy or the Bible says if your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat. If he's thirsty, give him water to drink. That's loving your enemies. That's an action. That's something that you do.

The Good Samaritan and the Definition of Neighbor

Beloved, I want to finish today by taking you to Luke chapter 10 and we're going to finish in Luke chapter 10. Very, very familiar set of scriptures, but one that I think really summarizes Jesus' command.

Go to Luke chapter 10 and go with me to verse 30. And this will have to be our, this will be where we end today. Luke chapter 10 and verse 30 is a very familiar parable. You're all probably familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan, but I want us to see something today from this parable that you may have not seen in the past.

And I want to show it to you as we draw to a conclusion. Verse 30 says, Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. This was an attack against the religious elite. Because if anybody should have stopped to help this man who had been beaten and had been left pretty much for dead, wouldn't you think it was the preacher?

Wouldn't you think it was the religious man that would go by and do this thing? So likewise, a Levite, the Levite were also among the priestly class, very respected among the people of Israel. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to that place and saw him pass by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as many of you probably know, but some of you may not know, the Samaritans were the enemies of the Israelites. They weren't just, you know, neighborly neighbors, cozy neighbors. They were hated by the Israelites.

In fact, they were hated by the Jews and the Gentiles. They were a result of, after the Babylonian captivity, they were a result of inbreeding among Jews and Gentiles. They weren't really accepted by either side.