Loving Like Jesus - [Matthew 5:43-48]

The Joy of the Lord, Christian Love, and the Need for Growth

When I was a young believer, I was passionate for the Lord. The Word of God had just gripped me, and there was a lot of things that were changing. And then about like six months to a year later, my dad came and talked to me.

And he said, when I look at you, I don't see the joy of the Lord in you. You know, you are very passionate about the Word, but you seem to be this grumpy kind of guy all the time. And I was scratching my head thinking, you know, he's right.

I might feel an inward joy as I worship, but when I was out with the world and with other people, I just seemed to be a very disagreeable kind of person. And today's message is intended to focus on a very narrow aspect of what it means to love like Jesus.

When we live as the followers of Jesus Christ, as much as we love one another, and as we love the saints and even love the lost, is it evident to the people among whom we live that we reflect the love of Christ in tangible ways?

So I'm going to raise up a lot of questions, and I'm going to just provide one narrow solution from the text that we have from the Beatitudes. And my prayer is that the Lord would make us more like Christ as we follow the text.

God’s Love Revealed in 1 John 4 and Exodus 34

So why don't I open us with a word of prayer. A loving and gracious Father, may you direct the words of my mouth to conform to the truth of your Word. May you also direct the meditations of our hearts so that it would be pleasing in your sight.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. So I'll begin with parents. Do you love your children? Obviously, simple answer. Let me read this rather famous discussion that some of you may recognize. Daddy, I want a squirrel.

Get me, I see some smiles. Get me one of those squirrels. I want one. Veruca, dear, you have many marvelous pets. All I've got at home is one pony and two dogs and four cats and six bunny rabbits and two parakeets and three canaries and a green parrot and a turtle and a silly old hamster.

I want a squirrel. All right, pet. Daddy'll get you a squirrel just as soon as he possibly can. But I don't want any old squirrel. I want a trained squirrel. Very well, Mr. Wonka, how much do you want for one of these squirrels?

Name your price. Oh, they're not for sale. She can't have one. Daddy, I'm sorry, darling. Mr. Wonka's being unreasonable. Now as a parent, I want you to think through how, let's assume you're a parent of Veruca here, how would you demonstrate your love for your darling daughter as Jesus would love her?

And as you're thinking through that, I want us to turn the tables around. Put yourself in Veruca's shoes. I don't know how many of you want trained squirrels, but I'm sure you want something else, something that you love dearly and would love to have at any cost.

How does God demonstrate his love to you when your affection is set upon something which may not be the most profitable for you to have? With that as our base, I'm gonna throw up a bunch of questions and then we'll get into our text.

When we think of love, does love involve affection? Can you have love without any affection? And on the contrary, can you have affection without any love? There are two types of love that the Bible talks about prominently, agape love and phileo love.

Phileo love inherently involves affection. Agape love is an intentional love, which also does involve affection, but it follows. It's kind of like the emotion following, the caboose that follows after you've made your decision.

Now the next question, does love care for the wellbeing of the beloved? If you have genuine love, does that want to raise the person who is being loved out of where they are? And is it possible for us to have love without being visceral from the guts?

Does the Bible talk about a gut love that we have? In fact, I was just reading this past week that they call the guts your second brain. I guess we are catching up to the Bible. Does love need truth and justice?

Can you love someone in falsehood? And can you love someone without justice? And then the final question, is love, is the love of God and your love big enough to include these? Pain, conflict, suffering, anger, firmness, affection, and sacrifice.

Or is our love kind of tiny in the scope that we normally exhibit? Now, if you're not good at baseball, you can watch your favorite baseball player. You can see how it is that he swings his bat, how it is he pitches the ball, and you can learn by observing.

If you're not good at love, if your love is like mine, it's a little tiny and it needs to expand, you may want to watch someone who's good at love. And my contention is that there is one who is supreme at love.

And my goal this morning is to begin by fixing our eyes on the perfect lover, on God who loves like no other. You see, today when we talk about love, the world wants to define love on the basis of how we think it ought to be.

And we have God who defines it for us. So before we want to even change or grow in our aspects of love, we want to look at what the standard of love is and let that be the guiding light in terms of how we ought to love.

So I have a couple of texts. These are introductory texts that we will look at first. If you'll turn with me to 1 John chapter four, we're gonna use this text to just get ourselves thinking about what the standard of love is.

In 1 John chapter four, verse eight, the apostle John, the one who is the beloved apostle, the one who was loved of Christ, who was on his bosom when we had the last supper, he writes about love. He is one who has experienced God's love and he is now talking about the love of God.

1 John 4, eight. Anyone who does not love does not know God. So everyone here who's a believer, who knows God, by contrast, has love. If you don't have love, then it is impossible for you to have a relationship with God.

Why? Because God is love. And I think that's the central part of what we mean by love that has to grip our minds. Love, we often look at it in the context of the way it is exhibited. And we say, I can recognize these as loving acts, but the very core of love is God himself.

So when we think of definitions of love, no matter what we have been trained to do culturally, personally, in the various circumstances of life, we need to go back to God as the basis of love. We know when it comes to truth and justice and what is right and wrong, God is the basis of that.

And likewise for love, God is love. It is an essential characteristic. It is his character. This is who he is. And so when we want to talk about love, we need to start in the person of God. And then verse nine goes on to say, in this, it is not just an abstract ideal that is encased in the personhood of God, but rather it is who he is and that's the way he acts.

So in verse nine, in this is the love of God manifest among us, demonstrated, shown that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. God demonstrates his love. The extent of his love is so big that what he holds most precious, the second person of the Trinity, his only beloved son, he is willing to give.

He acts, he sacrifices his son because his love for the world is demonstrated by his own agape love that we might live through him. Verse 10, in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

And as I'm talking, I hope some of you are starting to think already, this is the kind of love, God love, the agape love, which is, it loves when we were not loving. It is initiating rather than responding.

These are the characteristics that are encased in the personhood of the God who is love. And he is not just a love, an affectionate God without truth. When you'll continue to read in verse 10, it said, he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

He does not discard justice and truth, but rather he deals with justice and truth according to his love. He propitiates, he assuages his wrath by the perfect work of his son. He provides a way to get Veruca out of this train squirrel syndrome into something that is much grander, much more glorious.

And that happens before Veruca changes her mind about what is good and right and true. And that's the kind of initiatory love that God has demonstrated for us. Verse 11, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

God sets the pattern, he demonstrates the nature of that love, and now he calls us to reflect that love in our lives. And there's gonna be this twin aspect of light and love. I was gonna look at John chapter three, which actually brings this out in full colors.

You may wanna read John three from verse 11 to 21. When you go home to look at how these two work together in the demonstration of the love of God in our lives. But I wanted to go to one more text before we applied this for our loves.

So I chose instead to bring another text before you this morning. You don't have to turn there, but if you had to think of one text, you wanted to have a mind blowing experience with God. You're saying, I just wanna have this one experience.

What would that be? I know each of you can be thinking of a lot of different things, but let's say I can just take you back in time and put you in one page of scripture so you can actually experience God in that particular event.

When I first thought about it, I said, maybe I wanna be at the cross. And that would be a great place to be because that is the supreme manifestation of the love of God in a way that just shocks you, blows your mind away as you see the perfect son of God dying in love, demonstrating what it means to go to the very end of sacrificing his own life on our behalf.

That'd be a great place to go, but that's not the place I'm gonna take you. How about if God came down and speaks to you and gives a doctrinal statement about himself? How cool would that be? God comes down face to face and then gives a doctrinal statement.

So some of you probably guessed the passage that I'm having in mind. Again, you don't have to turn here. It's Exodus 34, verse five. And let me just read that for you. So here we read the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, the personal God, he descended in the cloud.

He actually comes down to the level of Moses and stood with him there and proclaimed. He speaks for the name of the Lord. The name talking about who God is, his character, his essence. What is it that, how can you define God?

God gives his own definition for us. And the Lord, Yahweh, passed before him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh. What would you have felt next? Holy? Truthful? There's a lot of things I would have thought of, but here's what God says.

Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding, overflowing in steadfast love. This is the character that the leading definition with which God defines himself. And then he continues, love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

And this is all the love part of it. And then comes the light part. But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

When God defines himself, he gives a doctrinal statement of himself. He talks about his merciful nature, his gracious nature to those who are undeserving, his forgiving nature and his steadfast love and faithfulness.

So when we began, I said, we wanna have this picture of the definition of love before we start to look at how we can grow in love. And this is the nature of God. We saw from 1 John 4 and from Exodus 34.

The Greatest Commandment: Love God and Love Your Neighbor

So let me ask you the question, is God the best exemplar of love? He certainly is. He is the one we wanna look to, to learn about love. Now, have you experienced that love of God in your life? Because if there's anyone here who does not know that love of God personally, other than what you just heard me say or what you've heard others say, then you're like someone who's watching or hearing about Mother Teresa.

She goes out into the streets, picks the people who are unwanted, left to die, brings them into their home and then cares for them until they die or helps them recover. So when we hear something like that, it's noble, it is great.

And I'm filled with admiration for this person. But then when I go back and my mind turns to something else, I just live my own life the way I did. But if you've experienced the love of God, it's like if Mother Teresa came and picked you out of the gutter when your family had turned you away because you were just too old and useless.

When you were just baking in the sun and just waiting for you to die and the ravens to pick you up, and then someone comes and picks you and takes you to a home, gives you the shelter and the love that you didn't deserve, but you get to enjoy.

Now, if you've experienced the love of God like that, the love of God is no longer an ideal abstraction, but it is personal. It is deep because you now have a relationship with a God who has saved you.

If God is the exemplar of love, can we, should we imitate the love of God in our lives? 1 Corinthians 11, 1, Paul says, imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. There are aspects in which we who are children of God are intended to reflect the character of God in our lives.

He has picked us out of darkness and put us in his light in order that we may showcase the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into light. There is a purpose in the redemption that each of you have experienced when you have experienced the love of God.

And that purpose is that we may reflect the character of God to a world who cannot see him with their physical eyes. And so my purpose this morning is to take you to some texts where we can do just that.

You see, we see that when God loves, he loves in truth. When you love, you ought to love in truth. When God loves, he loves with a steadfastness, with a compassion, with a tenderness. So must you. Your heart, your gut must go out for those whom you love.

When God loves, he looks at the long-term. He looks for the well-being of the one whom he loves and cares for. He wants to bring them forth to their desired end. So each of you who has experienced the love of God, you can be assured that you will one day see him in heaven because he is not a God who just loves temporarily, but he loves permanently, he loves eternally.

And you also, when you love those whom God has placed in your care, you want to love them for their well-being and for their eternal good. And before I go further, I want to provide this caution. I'm not Jesus.

I think all of you would recognize that. You're not Jesus. None of us can love perfectly like Christ alone can. And we are loved by God, not because of the extent of our love and our demonstration, but because Jesus chose to freely and unconditionally love us.

His love for us never changes on the basis of our demonstration, but our love ought to grow because of the gratitude and the thankfulness that we have for his love that he has so freely given to us. So with that, I'm now going to bring us to the crux of our message, which is I'm going to take you to four different passages.

And in each of these passages, I want you to look at Jesus Christ and how he demonstrates love. And then what is it that Jesus is calling us to do? The first, and as you're thinking of this, I want you to remember Jesus is not just God.

He has the authority of God. He is God. And he has the ability to do things that are far beyond what humans can do. And when he says, do something, he speaks with the authority of being God. But he also demonstrates this love, not just in his Godhead, but in his perfect humanity.

He showcases what it means to live like how you were intended to, but you cannot because of the fall. So I want you to look at both of these aspects of Jesus Christ as we look at our champion, our captain who has gone before us and showed love to the world that was not willing to receive it.

Love God and Love Neighbor as the Foundation of Life

So the first point that I want to give you is that love is foundational in governing our lives. You can turn to this text if you'd like to. It's in Mark chapter 12. I've deliberately picked one of each of the gospels for us to look at this theme of love prevalent in all the gospels and actually through the rest of the scriptures.

Mark chapter 12, verse 28, we see that one of the scribes, someone who was very knowledgeable in the word, comes up to Jesus. And Jesus has already been attacked by a whole bunch of different people. These people are coming to tear Jesus down.

And Jesus, in his wisdom, showcases that he is God. He breaks all the arguments and showcases what it means to love God in the midst of all these various scenarios. And so this scribe comes up with one other scenario.

And he sees that Jesus answered them well and he asked him, which commandment is the most important of all? And in verse 29, Jesus answered, the most important is, I want us to stop there once again. The point I want to make here is what is foundational in our lives?

So if for a moment, just forget that we are inside a church, maybe picture yourself where you're spending most of your time, maybe it's at home or in your workplace. The most important is, what is it that's governing your life?

What would you fill there based on how you've lived your life, week in and week out, day in and day out? The most important is, this is what is your foundation. That's the basis on which we make our choices, live our lives.

What is most important for you? Here's what Jesus says. The most important is, here, oh Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. That is, he's singular. He is the only God that exists and he is to be the center of your affection.

Verse 30, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. That's the first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no other commandment greater than these. So if you go back to the way we've been living our life, what should be the foundational aspect of living our life in our homes and in our workplaces?

Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself. That's Jesus' command to us. What does God want us to do? He wants us to love God and love our neighbor. Now, this kind of thinking is impossible when we think from the mindset of the world because in the world, people are there to make money, have a comfortable life, you know, be well-pleasing to one another.

And that's the way we are normally used to thinking because that's the world that we come out of. But the kingdom that we belong to is a different kingdom than that of the world. And the kingdom of God requires us to love God and love our neighbor as foundational.

And that changes everything in how we live our lives. And we're gonna see how that happens in the next text. But here, let's finish this passage. There is no other commandment greater than these. The scribe said to him, you are right, teacher.

You have truly said that he is one and there is no other beside him. God is foremost. To love him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, and listen carefully, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

Here is a means to come up to God through sacrificial system because you are sinful and unholy. And undergirding even the lack of holiness is that love for God that must be central. And we don't have time to get into this, but I want you to look carefully to what Jesus says to the scribe's response.

When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions. Now let's ask this question. Did Jesus love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength?

And did he love his neighbor as himself? He said, I have come to do the will of him who sent me. He's there in the garden of Gethsemane. Father, let this cup pass, but not my will, but yours be done. And we see time and time again, the love and the compassion of Jesus Christ that goes out for those who are in his midst, in pain, in suffering.

He heals. You just want to do a search on compassion of Jesus. And you just see how his heart goes out with compassion for people who are lacking a teacher, people who are in pain and suffering, people who are condemned by the world.

And that's the kind of love that Jesus demonstrate. He demonstrates the love of God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. And he demonstrates the love for his neighbor. And then he says, this is what you must do.

This is the commandment of Jesus Christ. So when we say love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself. And that ought to be foundational. I want you to be thinking of two words.

One of them is an indicative. And the second word is imperative. So those of you who've been coming here to BBC for a long time, you know exactly what I'm talking about. An imperative is a command. It is what you are called to do, asked to do.

You are to obey God by doing these things. An indicative is a statement of fact about yourself. It is who you are, what God declares about you. And if you try to do the imperative, do something without standing on the foundation of who you are in Christ, you're doomed for failure, firstly.

And then it is a fruitless task because you cannot accomplish what you're called to do without being grounded in the person of Jesus Christ. So with that thought in mind, we're gonna go to our second text, our primary text for today, which is Matthew chapter five, verse 43.

Please turn with me to Matthew chapter five. As you know, Matthew five, six, and seven, we have the Sermon on the Mount and we have the Beatitudes in the beginning in Matthew five. And here, Jesus is giving the kingdom principles of living as a follower of Jesus Christ.

The next passage we'll look at is in Luke six, and that's actually not Sermon on the Mount, it's Sermon on the Plain, but it is still the same message that is given in a different location. And they are parallel texts, and which is why I picked from both of these.

So when we look at Matthew 5, 43, what I want you to remember is, love does not act upon its natural inclinations. Many a time, when I say I love somebody, I like to do what just spontaneously overflows from my heart.

When you hold that little baby in your hand, you can't help it, can you? You just have affection just coming out. Can't stop the cuteness. But there are some things that just don't come naturally to us, and that's what this text is gonna look, and Jesus is gonna tell us.

Some things that you naturally want to do, you should not do. And let's look at what those are. In Matthew 5, 43, we're kind of jumping right into the middle of the sermon. So there's a lot of context here.

He has talked about what it means to be a believer in the beginning of Matthew five, and then here's what it means to be a follower. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

This is Jesus talking to the disciples who are following. The disciples have heard someone say, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. And actually, both of those phrases are very interesting because you shall love your neighbor, occurs in the Bible, but it is incomplete.

It comes from Leviticus 19, 18, and the verse goes on to say, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. It's not just a blunt love your neighbor. There is an extent to which you are supposed to love your neighbor, and this is the degree.

Do you love yourself? That's exactly how much you are supposed to love your neighbor. That was the first part of the sentence. And the second part of the sentence, hate your enemy. That doesn't exist in the Bible.

In fact, following up on Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, there's plenty of passages that talk about how you must love your enemy. You see your enemy's oxen fallen down? Ha ha ha, you're not rejoicing.

You are actually taking that oxen. You are meant to take it and restore it. You are supposed to care for your enemy. And whether this enemy is a fellow Israelite or even a Gentile, there are ways in which you are to deal with those who intended harm to you by demonstrating love.

That was what the Old Testament said. But here, these disciples have heard it said, you shall hate your enemy. You wonder where it came from. You have the Pharisaic laws that have, not laws, these writings that have come up, and essentially they have encapsulated what is natural.

Do you have to teach somebody to hate your enemy? Not really, it just comes naturally. It's just as much as you love the little baby, it is just the sinful heart's natural response to hate someone who hurts you.

That will be the, and let me tell you this, as with all temptations, the temptation itself is not a sin. So if someone just punches you in your face and you get, that's not a sinful deed. But what you do next, which you have control over, that will determine whether you're going to demonstrate the love of God in that person's life, or whether you will choose to give no reign to your sinful inclinations.

So here Jesus says, you have heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, I, ego, you know that word ego doesn't need to be said there, but he brings that emphasis, I, Jesus Christ.

In fact, in the end of Matthew 7, Matthew 5, 6, 7, as well as the end of Luke 6, Jesus spoke with such authority that the scribes and Pharisees did not have. The people marveled at it because here was one who was speaking of his own authority, and he could do so because he is God in their midst.

And he is God in our midst, speaking to you and I today. I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This was meant to be a bombshell. You know, here are people who are just used to thinking naturally like you and I are.

And here is a command, an imperative that comes from our master saying, you must love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. Let me finish that sentence here. So that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

There is a strong tie-in between the imperative of love your enemy and the indicator that you are sons of your God who is in heaven. Now, this text is a little challenging to understand. Sometimes if you just read it like this, you might think, wait, so if I love my enemy, then I can become the sons of my father in heaven.

Fruitless exercise, isn't it? If I have to love my enemies perfectly, I'll always fail. I can never be a son of my father in heaven. But really that's not the sense in which this is intended to be read.

The better way for you to understand this text is when you look at Hebraism's son of something. A son of peace demonstrates that you are reflecting the character of peacefulness in your life. A son of love is that love is characterizing.

You're showcasing who you are. You are an offspring of love, if you will. That's basically what your actions are demonstrating. And sons of your father here is talking about the character, that trait that would be showcased in the children of your heavenly father who is love.

And he's gonna go on to talk about the father and we're gonna see that in a moment. But I want you to keep this in mind. Your father is one who loves his enemies. And as you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, you are showcasing to the world that you belong to a supernatural father, not just the father, my father, Mr. Tilak, or your father.

There is a heavenly father we belong to and that gets shown when we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. All right, now you might be thinking, enemies, let me make a list. I don't have any enemies.

I don't have anybody there with a sniper gun on my head. I don't know, I can't see them at least. You know, there's nobody like, you know, in the times of Jesus, they wanted to kill Jesus. There's nobody like that in my life.

Who are those enemies that I am even unconscious of? You know, many a time in our lives, there are people who offend us, who causes grievous harm. And I can tend to do one of two things, which are both sinful.

One is I can respond and retaliate. And the other one is I can just ignore. I can have complete apathy for this person, cut them out of my consciousness because I can be a lot more peaceful if I don't think about them.

And life goes on, right? And I actually have to be conscious to think about this person who has offended me in order to demonstrate love for this person. Me just walking away doesn't cut it in the kingdom of God.

If God just walked away from us when we were rebels, we would all be dead. And we are intended to reflect that love to the people around us. So now who might be those enemies that God has sovereignly placed in your life?

Here's one way you can think of. Maybe there are some that come to your mind and maybe you're already praying for them. God bless you. That's exactly what we are intended to do. But here is how I was thinking.

I think of those who would thwart my will. It is so easy to become my enemy. I like to do something. Someone comes alongside and just so lightly diverts it to a different way. I want my squirrel. And they take it away.

You know, this can happen in a multitude of contexts. I desire this. I want to do this. I cannot do it anymore because my enemy has prevented it. I have certain feelings that I want to enjoy, but someone comes and evaporates them by what they do.

I have some desires that I want to fulfill, but they are no longer possible because my enemy has come between me and the object of my desire. And maybe this is even more deeper. My well-being is at stake because my enemy has come and taken away my job, has taken away my health, has taken away a member of my family.

Whatever it is, that enemy that God has placed in your life, there is one command for us that is to love your enemy. And so, as I began this point, I made it clear. There's one thing you must not do. Your love should not act upon your natural inclination.

That's the first step you want to be thinking of. When you feel you ought to respond either with violence or with apathy, stop. That's not the kingdom of God that you and I belong to. Why? Now, let's look at the indicative in verse 45, that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

You have a God who is in heaven. Remember that first, because many a time when I'm dealing with my fellow human being, my neighbor that I ought to love as myself, my neighbor who is my enemy, I forget that there is a God in heaven above who is watching over me, who is ordaining these events in my life and is giving me this opportunity to love someone that I otherwise would not be thinking of.

And that God in heaven who is watching is a God who loves his enemies. And you, who are sons and daughters of the Most High, ought to reflect that love in the people whom you meet. And how does God show his love?

He makes his son, his son, not the son. It belongs to him. He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good. Did you know that the sun did not shine its light in Egypt for one day? When the Israelites were in Egypt, he had the camp of the Israelites, Hebrews in brightness, whereas the Egyptians were in darkness.

Do you also know that God is able to keep that light from being on the people he doesn't want to see that light as long as he wants? But God chooses to send his son on the ones who would love him and those who don't.