Loving Your Enemies (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry, coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church, West Boylston,.

Mass.

Bbcchurch .org. Two b's, two c's. West Boylston is just north of a town called Worcester, Worchester. Sometimes my GPS gets the pronunciation right-ly because I've got it on, I think, an Irish accent or something like that, male Irish accent.

Worcester. Welcome to Worcester, Mass. I never thought I'd live in Worcester, Mass, but I never thought I'd live in Nebraska or.

California.

So I spent 22 years, 21 years in Nebraska, then moved to California, let's see, 83 to 97, so 14 years there, and now 27 years in Central Mass. I don't know if that adds up to 64 years or not, so maybe I've got a year wrong here or.

There.

But 27 years in Mass, that's a long time, where even Republicans or Democrats here in Massachusetts, although where I live, it's probably, oh, who knows, half and half or something like that. Today is November 7th in real time.

In NOCO time, it's later in November. Of course, we just had the election here, and I would think most of my neighbors probably voted, 60 probably voted for Trump because I'm out in the middle of nowhere, not close.

To any city.

I did see quite a few signs down the street, though, that had the comma and then the law, right, comma, law. I don't know if that worked out for them very well or not. But it is what it is, Massachusetts.

We have had several Republican governors over the years, Romney, Weld, and who knows who.

Else.

It doesn't matter.

The reason why I bring this up is because if I ask you this question, here's the lead in, who is the most polarizing figure you know? Who's the most polarizing figure you know? And probably you are going to say Donald Trump.

I think you're probably right. The most polarizing person you know, trying to get this thing to work here. My pen settings doesn't seem to work for my iPad. I would say most polarizing person in America now, maybe in the world, is Donald Trump.

But if you think Donald Trump is polarizing, and I think he is, I want you to know this today on No Compromise Radio, Jesus is more polarizing. If you think Donald Trump is polarizing and he helps you understand what a polarizing figure is and what they do and who they are and what they say, how much more is Jesus polarizing?

Not the Jesus of pop culture, not the Jesus of Twitter, not the liberal Jesus, not the politicians Jesus, not the rainbow flag Jesus, not the love is God and God is love Jesus, not the mainline denomination Jesus, but the Jesus of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and seeing the incarnate Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

If you think that Trump is polarizing, Jesus of the Bible is extremely polarizing, causing division, causing disagreement, causing strong disagreements. And even when Jesus says in Matthew 12, whoever is not with me is what?

Against me. That is polarizing. And of course, the real Jesus, the real Jesus of the Bible, the risen Savior, he knew what the ravages of sin would do. He knew what the ramifications of dying in your sin would be.

And he, along with the Father and the Spirit of God, of course, have a plan, eternal plan. I mean, they didn't sit down, but just using words of accommodation, the eternal plan of God to rescue sinners, to rescue the elect.

And he knew that he was the only way, the only truth, the only life. He knew that no one would come to the Father except through him. He knew that it wasn't just easy to go to heaven, right? All you need to do is die, and that's it.

Jesus, everything he said and did was obviously true. And many times, he might say things that you might respond with, that's a hard saying. And it would be hard. And I think of even Jesus in Luke chapter 13, he went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem.

Someone said to him, Lord, will those who are saved be few? And he said to them, strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. How many people will go to heaven?

A lot, a few, many, most. And Jesus responds with, well, what about you? That's the real question. You're going to need to enter that door through faith and through faith alone. And when I think of Jesus talking like that, I say to myself, polarizing.

I mean, it is polarizing when you say, as Jesus would say, you can't get to heaven without him. Oh, there's many paths and many ways, and salvation can come through other religions and other spiritual talks and other theological systems and philosophy and come through nature.

And Jesus says, no, you're going to have to believe in me in order to be saved. Your sins will have to be punished and I'll take the punishment for you. I will bear the punishment in your place. You say, well, you know, Jesus did his work and we might not know about him, but we can get credit for his work, maybe in other ways, through other religions.

And the polarizing Jesus would say, no, exclusivity found in Christ Jesus, no pluralism, no inclusivism. I mean, who else can be representative and substitute? Who else can become flesh and dwell among us?

The incarnate Jesus, truly man and truly God. Who else as the true man would live a perfect sinful life? No. What did I just say, sinful? I was looking at my notes ahead, but I think I caught myself. Spencer, strike that out, would you?

Who else could live a sinless life, but the Lord Jesus without blemish to be a sacrifice.

For sin.

If he was a sinner, he'd have to have his own sins atoned for, and he couldn't be a sacrifice for others. No one else could die such a substitutionary death, assuaging the wrath of God, not for his own sin, but for our sin.

Jesus alone is the savior. And of course, to put everything in perspective, he raises himself from the dead. No one else can do that. Who has the power over sin? Who has the power over death? Who can raise himself to never die again?

Who can fully pay sin's debt and then rise from the dead? How do you raise yourself from the dead if you're dead? And I know the answer to that question, but I want you to know that Jesus is polarizing and when he says, he's the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through him, that's polarizing.

When Jesus has sent out apostle Peter, would say words from Jesus, it might say Peter said, but these are Jesus's words, the Holy Spirit's words, there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

And then Jesus would say, you have to believe in him to be saved. And of course, we know why works can't save because works don't atone and works are tainted by sin and that's why we can't do anything in order to please God because we've already got Adam's sin credited to our account and we have sin nature and we sin because we're sinners, not the other way around.

And that's why faith alone is something that is saving, faith in the risen savior. My point is Jesus is polarizing and you either hate him or you love him, you either believe in him or you don't. And since Jesus is so polarizing and since so many people do hate him, that means they're going to hate his believers on earth.

They're going to hate us for believing in him. And here in America, we're kind of isolated from a lot of persecution. Maybe your family's mad at you. Maybe people at work don't like you. Maybe the neighbors shun you.

Maybe they say things behind your back. But the persecution that we experience here on earth in the United States is pretty minimal compared to other places in the Middle East, other places in Africa, other places in China where the persecution runs hot and is extreme compared to what we might go through.

That's not to say if you lose a job for your beliefs that it's easy or anything like that. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that the Lord is so polarizing and that he is so true and right that there are people that hate him, and if they hate him, they'll hate us.

And the question of the show today is, how do you treat people who hate you because of Jesus? How do you treat people, dear Christian, how do you treat people who hate you, who don't like you? Not because you're dumb, not because you're a bad neighbor, not because you have trash in your yard.

We have a neighbor that's got all kinds of old cars, really nice neighborhood, little cul-de-sac, and then there's old cars and snowblowers that don't work and stuff just accumulates in his yard. And if this was a homeowner's association, he would be fine because you just can't leave all that junk in the front of your yard and you're like, who lives here?

What does that have to do with anything? But how do you treat people who hate you? Oh yeah, not because your yard's dirty, but because you're a Christian and they know it. The world hates Jesus and therefore it'll hate Christians.

So how do you respond? Satan hates Jesus, therefore hates Christians. How do you respond? Unbelievers hate Jesus and many of them are kind to Christians, but many of them hate Jesus and therefore they'll hate you.

So how do you understand? And the answer is found in Luke chapter six. And that is Jesus said, obviously in the Bible, love God, Deuteronomy six, Matthew 22, I believe. And he said, love neighbor. This is the summary of the law.

Love God, love neighbor, right? But he, in Luke six, additionally says, love your enemies, loving the enemies of Jesus, loving your enemies. And as I talk about this, I'm very convicted because if we're supposed to love our enemies, if we're supposed to love Jesus's enemies, if we're supposed to love people that hate us and despise us and to say things about us and try to condemn us and make us gagged and muted and held hostage, as it were, to political correctness, if we're supposed to love those people, well, what about our neighbors, our friends, our spouses, parents, children?

So I'm very convicted. If we're supposed to so love our enemies, what does that mean for loving our friends, loving our spouses? I read this week in one commentary, most of us find it hard enough to love our friends.

Our desire for self-protection and self-advancement is so strong that we often fail to love the people we say we love as well as we should. We're willing to help our family and friends up to a point, but we have our limits.

We want to give them loving service, but at the same time, we are desperate to safeguard our time, our money, our emotional energy. We do not have the constant, compassionate, sacrificial love of Christ.

Ouch.

Guilty as charged. How about you? Loving other people, loving enemies, then therefore loving people in your family, loving.

Your neighbors.

And how about this? Loving the weird people at church. Now that sentence doesn't mean everybody's weird church, but the ones that are weird are the ones that you don't get along with. Let me ask you this.

Have you ever gotten a disagreement with somebody at church? Have you ever kind of gone toe to toe verbally or you got a disagreement or an argument or you have to figure out how to make up with them and how to make amends and how to patch up a relationship or to reconcile or to ask for forgiveness or to grant for forgiveness?

I think you know the answer. Now it happens to me probably more often than it happens to you, probably for two reasons. Number one, I sin more than you do. And number two, I'm the pastor. And so how do you deal with people?

In the old days, it was probably easier for me because to think this happened to me that there were stresses in the relationship or fractures in the relationship. Because the church called me in 1997, late 96, yeah, 97-ish.

And I had to come in here as, you know, they had to choose me. And so I went in as the outlier, the outsider, the California guy, and via Nebraska, of course. And now probably most of those people from 27 years ago are gone.

So the people that have come since, and we still have some families that are here from when I got here, most of the people now when they come to the church, they come to the church and they like me to some degree.

I don't mean it's about a personality. I don't even mean it's about a person. That's what ministry is. It's not supposed to be. But I'm the vehicle. And so they either like my theology, our theology, they either like my preaching, our preaching, or they don't.

And it's hard to come and attend and be a member if you hate the pastor, if you really, really dislike the pastor. Now, sometimes maybe a spouse would come along, the other spouse doesn't really like the pastor.

We kind of get that. We understand that as it were. But most of the time, if you really, really have a problem, I don't mean you have to... It's okay to have disagreements, of course. Probably everybody here has disagreements with me.

But all this is a rambling point to say, early on, I probably had more lively discussions with people than I do now. But I would like to love those here at the church. I know you would like to love those at the church that you're at, and it is hard.

And therefore, we have the Lord Jesus who tells us to love. And of course, when we think of guilt, grace, gratitude, we want, in light of our salvation, to do what Jesus says. We also want to say to ourselves, God is love, and therefore, he commands us to love.

And since he's loved us, we ought to be loving other people. Because the law now that condemned us as unbelievers guides us. The law now guides us and tells us what to do. Loving neighbor, loving others, loving God, loving enemies, gives God glory, and it's right for us, and it's good for society, and it's good for the local church.

And we come to the book of Luke, as some call it, a gospel that was written by somebody who was a master of language, and in fact, Luke was. And of course, Luke wrote Luke and Acts. And we have this complete, unfragmented, whole, everything you need to know about Jesus in Luke in terms of salvation, everything you need to know about his life, his compassion, his person, his attributes, and his death, burial, resurrection.

It's all there. There are extra things, of course, in the other gospels, but you would not read Luke and say, this is incomplete. I know what I need to know when it comes to trusting my soul for eternity.

So Jesus says, you're going to need to love your enemies. And he is talking to anybody who will listen, of course, back in the passage in Luke 6. He specifically is telling his disciples how to live and what to do when it comes to persecution.

He talks about four blessings, that they're blessed, therefore go out there and be his emissaries, his apostles, his sent out ones. There are other people who are listening. He gives the four woes, and that actually helps us as well to think through the pitiful condition that unbelievers are in until they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then he directs his attention to not just unbelievers, but it says in Luke 6 .27, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies. Now, of course, it's his disciples as they're going to go out and be persecuted for righteousness.

Sake.

That's earlier in the context of Luke. You're going to go out and you're going to preach and people hate me and they're going.

To hate you.

And what do you do? Fleshly response, get back at them. Earthly response, vengeance, retribution, eye for an eye. But I, Jesus, want you to love your enemies. And when it comes to love, you all know different words for love in the Greek language.

There's a family love, storge, I don't think ever used positively in the New Testament, just negatively. I think in 2 Timothy 3, they're against family love, no family love in society. There is eros, erotic, which is a physical, sexual love.

There is Philadelphia kind of love, phileo, and that is a brotherly love, warm affection,.

Brotherly love.

And then there's agape love, and that agape love looks at the object and says, by my own hurt, my own self-sacrifice for the other person's betterment, I will serve them and.

Love them.

That's agape love.

And that's what Jesus says in Luke 6 27, agape your enemies, but I say to you who hear. So there's a lot of people early on. Jesus comes down from the mountain, they're gathered. He looks to the disciples and he gives the four blessings.

He talks to the woes, he gives the woes because the disciples need to know who are receiving the woes and the other people who are sitting there listening, they need to know about the woes. And he says now to you who hear, I'm certain to the disciples mainly, but other people are listening, the apostles, but other people here, disciples, you're going to go out there into the world to be my emissaries and it's going to be rough.

And so what do you need to do? You're not going to want to retaliate. You're going to love your enemies, love your enemies. And this whole section in Luke 6 27 and following through verse 36 has keywords repeated.

And the main keyword that's repeated is love. Verse 27, love your enemies. Verse 32, three times the word love is used. Verse 35, he says what he said in verse 27 again for the bookend, love your enemies.

So everything about this is loving your enemies. And so if somebody's striking you on the cheek, somebody's begging from you, somebody does, takes your goods away, what's your response? And it's an attitude and of course action when appropriate of love.

So the key to understanding this passage in Luke 6 27 through 36 is of course knowing the audience, knowing who's giving the law, understanding the law of God is reflecting God's good, holy, righteous character and essence.

Not thinking law and God are somehow separated. Understanding the law is going to the disciples and this is not, if you don't do this, you're.

Damned.

This is not a covenant of works for the disciples, the believers in Jesus. This is a third use of law. That is to say this guides them and this helps them understand what to do, what would be good for other people, how to honor God.

And then we see one last thing. And here's where we're going to land the plane on the show. Love your enemies, he says in verse 35 and do good, lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great and you will be, you'll show yourself to be the sons of the most high for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Be merciful even as your father is merciful. All right. That really, really helps. Jesus says, I know you men are going to go out and they don't like me and they're not going to like you. Persecute her for righteousness sake.

And I want you to love those people anyway. It's not a feeling, I don't feel like it. No, but I want you to love in an agape way, a self-sacrificial way. I want you to think to yourself, what's the best for them?

Not retaliation, not vengeance, not I'm going to get you back, not an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, but how do I treat the enemies of Jesus? Back for the disciples, those that actually, some were going to arrest Jesus and kill Jesus.

How do we act toward those kinds of people? Do we hate them back? Do we try to get them back? He's not talking about legal things here, civil courts here, anything like that. He's talking about what's the attitude of essentially an evangelist, somebody going out telling the story about who Jesus is.

And the bottom line is to love those people that are enemies, knowing the motive and the background is God is kind and merciful to his enemies. And so if God is kind and merciful to his enemies, you should be too.

And then if it's just carried on to what about spouses, kind and merciful to spouses, are you kind to your spouse? Are you merciful to your spouse? I think it's grace looks at someone who's unworthy. Mercy looks at someone who's needy.

Very convicting stuff. Now, was God kind to you when you were an unbeliever? Was God merciful to you when you were an unbeliever? And of course, if you think of rain and taste buds and ears to hear wonderful music and eyes to see glorious things, children, spouse, intimacy, beauties of the sunrise and sunset, ocean waves.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Yeah, there's a common mercy, what some call common grace. But then has really the ultimate thing happened to you in terms of mercy and kindness? That is salvation, dear Christian.

And the answer is yes, yes. So if God has been ultimately kind and salvation to you and have been ultimately merciful to you and said, you have a need, mercy sees need, grace sees unworthiness, and you receive both grace and mercy.

Now you're sent out to other people who are just like you. That is against Jesus. How do you treat them? The answer is you love them. You love them. You have God's example. Yes, God's law, which shows us his essence in nature, his holiness, righteousness, and goodness.

Romans 7, 1 Timothy 1, but you know he's been merciful to you. So the way you love God's enemies who don't love you, you have the reason because you have received mercy and kindness. The Father is merciful.

You ought to be merciful. The Father is kind. You ought to be kind. You have been loved when you were an enemy, and you ought to love enemies, enemies who.

Hate Jesus.

And that's really what the writer is saying here. That's what Luke is saying here. That's what the Holy Spirit wants you to know is, in fact, how do you love people that hate Jesus and hate you? You're going to love in a sacrificial way because it's pointing to the mercy and kindness.

Of God.

That's convicting.

Especially then we think about how to love our friends, family, and spouses. Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. What am I supposed to say at the end? Give us five-star rating? Okay, give us five-star rating.

I don't think that boosts anything. Oh, to go to the Amazon site and give my cancer books better ratings?