Apologia Live - Love Your Enemies

The Whole Counsel of God and Reading Matthew in the Old Testament Context

Five, Kingdom of God series, and we are just about through kind of the biggest section that brings difficulties because you need to understand the background, and a lot of times if you've opened up the Bible for the first time, let's say you're a new believer and you've just come to the Bible for the first time and you open up Matthew and you're not familiar with the Old Testament context, you're not familiar with the verses that Jesus is drawing from, it might be difficult to understand what is happening, what is Jesus saying, what is doing, what's the context of this book, and here's what I want to say to start before we read the passage, and you guys open your Bibles to get there, or you open your phones to get there, whatever you guys are doing to cheat, I want to say that one of the things that we ought to be doing as Christians is understanding the whole counsel of God, amen?

The whole story, the big picture, this is 66 different books and letters written over a period of at least 1 ,500 years by many, many authors, same God, same God, and Peter says that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, but holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and so the origin of the Scriptures is the Holy Spirit of God.

God gave us this revelation, and one of the things that I think is not helpful ultimately is when you have just a simple New Testament church, you know what I mean by that? You ever seen people hand out the New Testament kind of Bibles, right, they give you the New Testament, and my response is, well, there are plenty of Christian bookstores and Amazon has same-day shipping, you should be able to get the whole revelation, amen?

You really ought to get the whole thing because a New Testament only Bible is a broken sword. It's a broken sword, and so what's important for us as you come into Matthew, I want to say there are all of these amazing just jewels right there in the text, but you may not see them and may not understand them fully and allow your heart to be full with just awe toward God if you don't understand that Old Testament revelation.

So for example, and I'm going to show you in a minute here, Matthew is thinking in Isaiah. So one of the things you can do that would make studying Matthew just spectacular is if you spend the time reading the book of Isaiah before you read the book of Matthew because Matthew is thinking in Isaiah, and there is so much here.

I'm going to read the text, I promise. We sat down two weeks ago and did a little radio show on our back porch, kind of on the fly because we had such a busy week with the event our church was putting on to bring the gospel into the issue of abortion nationwide, and we sat down in the back and we did a little radio show, and one of the things that happened is we were just talking about Matthew, and we were talking about God and God weaving together this entire story with Jesus, and it was just like I had goose bumps running all up and back down my side because it's so utterly glorious, and one of the things I said when we were doing this little discussion on the fly, and those are usually the best kinds of discussions with theologians, is I said this.

I said, atheism is stupid. When you see what God has done to carry along His revelation in history and give it to us, and you see what He has done just to weave this whole story together, you see that this is not humanly possible.

It's not humanly possible to put together this story the way that God has with all the little details hanging there that most people, when they got the revelation, could not have even comprehended, and yet when you get to the end of the story and you see that climax, Jesus coming to conquer death, to rise again and to bring salvation to His people, to the ends of the earth, you see the glory of Jesus, the majesty of Jesus when you see what God has done in this revelation.

So all I have to say, start reading your Old Testaments. Matthew chapter 5, the gospel according to Matthew, Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' section as He begins to unpack the law, we're at the very end, actually, of that little section.

I'm going to skip for today because we've touched it a little bit, and I want to make sure that I spend the time unpacking it in a way that glorifies God and benefits you. I'm going to skip the first few sections before this, passages, verses, and just get to an important meaty section here for us to dig into.

Matthew chapter 5, starting at verse 43, hear now the words of the living and true God. 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 causes His sun to shine on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

Therefore, you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father. In God's word, let's pray. God, I want to ask you to please bless now your church. Bless us as we get into your word and bless us as we seek to know you.

Bless us as a church. As we get into your word, I pray that you'd guard us from error. Guard us, Lord, from our own traditions. Bless us so that we can know you deeply. And I pray, God, for anyone in this room that does not know you as Savior and as Lord.

I pray that you would open their eyes even today. I pray, Lord Jesus, that we would see your promise come to fruition before our eyes, that you said that you've come down from heaven not to do your will but the will of Him who sent me.

And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that has been given to me. God, guard me and my mouth as I teach. Bless your church. In Jesus' name, amen. So this is big, right?

Love your neighbors as you love yourself. I mean, I think that Jesus, what He's most known for is His love, right?

Would you say it?

I would say when people think about Jesus, even people who are hostile towards Jesus, when they could think about what are some of the things that Jesus said? What did He say? And He said, love your neighbor as you love yourself.

People catch that from Jesus. Think about His entire life. Everything was in sacrifice for the sake of the other. So Jesus is God in the flesh. He takes on flesh and He lives in a world that has fallen and is suffering and is broken and He pursues rebels, right?

He hangs out with the tax collectors and the prostitutes. He hangs out with the people that most of society said are beyond help, beyond hope. That's who Jesus is. And even the enemies of Jesus today will quote from Jesus in terms of, well, I would say.

This.

What are the verses that say the enemies of Jesus would quote today? They would quote, number one, the very first one off their lips is what? Do not judge. This is awesome. Very good. See, we're all together, right?

Okay.

Don't judge, right? Lest you be judged. And they usually haven't even read that. Apparently, in its context, they understand what Jesus is saying there, but they know that one and they know you should love your neighbor as you love yourself.

I think I remember one time seeing one of the famous atheists, right, of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the new atheists, talking about an ethic that we can all agree to and one of the things they pointed to is, well, Jesus said it, to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Everyone knows Jesus is about love, but the Bible goes further than to say that He's just.

Loving.

The Bible says that God is what? God is love. He is everything that love is in its full expression supposed to do and is supposed.

To be.

God takes on flesh, not for the sake of Himself. It says in Philippians about Jesus that He was in the very form of God, but He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped or held onto, but He emptied Himself and He humbled Himself and became a servant and He was obedient even unto the point of death and you have to ask the question, why?

What motivates God to do that for somebody? Is it because the people that He comes to chase are worthy? Is it because they deserve it? Is it because something in them He saw and He said, I must have that or to make my joy full, I need to have that person around me for eternity?

No, Jesus, He did really the opposite of what we would expect a just judge to do. He goes after the rebels, He goes after the enemies, He goes after the haters of God. People know that God is love. As a matter of fact, when people today want to reject God's standards and they say, well, no, not that any longer, they often fall back on that blind sort of peanut butter statement that God is love.

But love does something and people know that God is love. They can sense it. They know in all of creation and in their heart of hearts, they know that God is love. He's not just love. He is mercy. He is just.

He is holy. He is righteous. But God is love. And the text that Jesus quotes from, you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself, that text was well known to the Jews in Jesus' day because it's a quotation directly from Leviticus 19.

The passage is from verses 9 through 18. We're going to get to that in a second. But Jesus quotes the well-known text, you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. He goes back to the Old Testament as is often His course to go back to the Word of God.

When He was in conflict with people in His day in Matthew chapter 7, there was a conflict between the Word of God and the traditions that they had held so near and dear to their.

Hearts.

They were considered essentially in a way sort of a divine tradition. Jews today, many Jews today still think that way, and there are other religions that think.

That way.

You have the Word of God and a divine tradition, or the Word of God and this other set of divine texts right here. But Jesus, when He was in conflict with people in His day, He would go back to the Old Testament revelation as the standard, as the final arbiter of truth.

And so Jesus says to them in Mark 7, Moses says this, but you say that. Their tradition they held to. They couldn't understand why Jesus' disciples weren't following their traditions. And Jesus goes back to the Word of God, the standard that's already there, and He says, well, God says this, but you say that, and He says, thus you invalidate the Word of God for the sake of your tradition.

For Jesus, it was what does the Scripture say? Have you not read what was spoken to you by God, Jesus would say. Jesus points back to that revelation of God as the standard and basis for all that He was doing and all that He expected us to do.

And so when you look at this text in Matthew 5, Jesus quotes from the Old Testament. He quotes from the Old Testament a couple times here, points them right to it. But then He explains it in a way that was different than they were explaining it.

So Jesus in this text is doing something that I think is contrary to the way most people see this text today. People think that Jesus in this text is saying to the law of God, it's rubbish, that's done, I'm here now, it's over.

No more harsh God, no more laws, no more of that hard standard, now we're going to have my new law. But if you look at the text itself, what does it say? Go to the text, look here. Matthew 5, verse 43, you should have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

How many of you guys have a modern Bible that has, you shall love your neighbor in quotations or in block letters to signal to you that it's a quote, but does not have the other words hate your enemy in quotations or in block quotes?

How many of you guys have that? Your Bibles do that.

Okay.

Jesus here in this text quotes from the Old Testament in Leviticus 19, you shall love your neighbor. And then it says, and hate your enemy. What's interesting here is that as Jesus unpacks the law of God, after saying in Matthew 5, 17 through 19, do not even begin to think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. When he goes to this text, he quotes part of the Bible and then he quotes something.

Else.

Did you know that it was not said in God's word, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. So Jesus in his day is actually addressing as the perfect lawmaker and law keeper, their mishandling of the Bible.

So when he deals with their laws about divorce, he confronts it directly. They had taken God's word and twisted it about divorce. And so he addresses it and he shows them what the standard is. He condemns the way that they were twisting the law of God and he brings in, this was the true meaning of the law of God.

When it came to murder, right, you shall not murder and the people of his day were saying.

What?

Well, I didn't put a knife in anybody. I'm not guilty. He says, no, no, no, no. That's not how the law of God works. The law, it begins in your heart. If you're angry with your brother in your heart, if the hatred is from within, Jesus says you've already committed the act.

And when it comes to adultery, it's not just the relationship with that person. It's what begins at the very beginning. That's where sin has its genesis from within. And so Jesus as the perfect law maker and law keeper is explaining the Torah.

He's explaining the law of God. And in this case, he actually addresses how they had actually distorted the word of God. They said, you shall love your neighbor and what? Hate your enemies. And Jesus goes right to the text to show them what the text means.

It's really amazing. Watch this.

This is so big.

And I don't know if you get excited about this like I do, but it really is something that fascinates me. We've talked about it before how in Matthew, Matthew is thinking on Isaiah, right? So if you know Isaiah, you get to see all that he's doing in bringing Isaiah in and bringing the themes in.

So in Matthew chapter one, you see the genealogies of Jesus. Now help me out here real fast. What do the genealogies of Jesus do for us? Establishes his kingship. What else? It shows that God is faithful to his covenant.

It shows that Jesus is a descendant of who? David and Abraham. These are the heavy hitters, right? Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant, Genesis chapter 15, Abraham is told that he's going to have a seed that's going to be the one that would bring descendants as big as the stars, as the sand on the seashore.

There's going to be so many multiple descendants. It's unfathomable. It's incomprehensible. And then David is told that he's going to have a descendant that's going to be the king not over Israel only, but over the whole entire world.

And so Matthew opens you up now and he says, well, here you go. There's the genealogy. Jesus gets the right, the royal right to the throne. The genealogy is Jesus is the king. Jesus is Mashiach. He's the anointed one.

And then you move forward and you begin to see in Matthew. Go ahead and go with me. Move back for a second so you can see this whole story start to open up. In Matthew chapter one, you now look near the end, starting in verse 18.

It's the virgin birth of Jesus. And what's the first thing quoted? If you look down in verse 23, behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.

That's from what in the Old Testament? I want to know quickly. Isaiah 7 .14. Isaiah 7 .14 is an amazing prophecy that talks about Messiah, but he talks about it kind of in two ways. There's depth to it.

There's a current fulfillment in his day, but then a larger fulfillment that's to come because it's actually God who is with us, a virgin born son. And so you see the prophecy. Jesus fulfills the prophecy of the Old Testament.

And you go again into chapter two, and you see the Gentiles are the first ones coming to worship Jesus. And what do they recognize? They recognize that this king is coming and they're coming to give him worship, right?

And who are the first ones that come looking for Jesus? Is it Jews or Gentiles? It's coming to worship the king, which by the way, what do you see in Isaiah? Immediately, Isaiah chapter one talks about the failure of the people of God in that day, how they were not doing justice, how they were in sin.

And God was saying in Isaiah one, I don't even want your sacrifices. I don't want to hear it because you won't do these things. You won't obey my law. And then in Isaiah two, God promises what? That all the nations are going to, what, stream up to the mountain of God.

That the law of God is going to go forth from Zion. The nations are going to come. And then watch, Matthew chapter two, Matthew goes, here comes the Gentiles. Here come the nations now to worship the king.

And then it gets deeper though. You start to see now, this is all unfolding and coming to fulfillment. Next, you see in Matthew chapter two, the images of Moses, but yet it's Jesus. Because what happens in Matthew chapter two is the king wants Jesus' head.

He wants Jesus dead. And so what happens is now you have this beautiful picture of what happened to Moses. Pharaoh wanted Moses dead as a baby. And these people resisted the government of the day and said, we're not going to kill.

The babies.

And they protected Moses. Moses escaped death. So here's Moses, this great prophet, and Pharaoh tries to kill him as a child. And now you see all of those images coming into Jesus in Matthew two. Who was Moses to the Jews?

He was the one who gave Torah. He was the prophet of God. He was the one who gave the law of God from Mount what? Mount Sinai. And now you have Jesus, the king, fulfilling the promises of the Old Testament and now moving into his life.

And you've got now somebody trying to kill him as a baby. And they escape and Jesus' life is preserved. And so you see Moses there. Then you see something really cool. Watch this. Go to Matthew two. Do you have your Bibles?

Okay, go to Matthew two. Look at this text. Matthew chapter two. And if you look now in verse 13, now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, get up, take the child and his mother and flee to where?

Egypt.

Egypt.

And remain there until I tell you for Herod is going to search for the child to destroy.

Him.

So where's Jesus? In Egypt.

In Egypt.

So Joseph got up and took the child and his mother while it was still night and left for.

Egypt.

Now watch.

This is where it gets amazing and big and you see the fulfillment of Jesus. And he remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet out of Egypt.

I called my son. And that was from Hosea 11 one. Now watch.

Watch. Watch.

If you read your Bibles and you don't just take it at face value, if you read your Bible and go back to that text in Hosea, who was God talking about in that text? Anyone know? Feel free to participate today so I know you're learning.

Anyone know who God was talking about in Hosea?

Israel.

So now Matthew takes a text that was in the Old Testament about Israel where God called Israel his son and God called Israel out of Egypt. And now Matthew takes that text and he places it over Jesus and he says, that was really about Jesus.

That was a foreshadowing of what Jesus ultimately fulfills. Atheists, by the way, atheists who apparently struggle reading their Bibles. It's true, right? Dr. White says, he says, apparently being an atheist dramatically impacts your ability to read the Bible, right?

They'll go to this text and they'll say, well, okay, yeah, there are some prophecies that really look like Jesus, but here's an example of New Testament authors taking a text out of its context to make Jesus look like the Messiah.

And here's one. Hosea was about Israel, so gotcha. But what they don't realize is the entire New Testament shows that the Old Testament was really about Jesus. All the images, the priest, the temple, Israel as a people, Adam, everything ultimately was pointing towards the greater Jesus who fulfills all those things.

And so Matthew says, Jesus, he's in Egypt. This was to fulfill what God said there about Jesus that out of Egypt God would call his.

Son.

Now, watch.

It gets deeper. Next, if you move forward now, keep your fingers on your Bible now. Now move forward now. What do you see in Matthew chapter three? John the Baptist promised in the Old Testament, the very last book of your Old Testament.

Just flip over from Matthew to the last book. It's very, very short.

Read it.

You know why? It's all about Jesus. It's all about the forerunner coming before Jesus. And now here we go. Matthew chapter three, there's the forerunner. What's he say first thing? It's what they expected.

Repent for the kingdom of God is at hands, kingdom of heaven at hands. Now what happens now? John the Baptist is baptizing people. Who shows up for the baptism? Jesus shows up for the baptism, right? And this is powerful, by the way.

This is important for you to get. John the Baptist was a priest, right? He's a son of a priest. He's a priest. He baptizes Jesus. I believe that that was him anointing Jesus for ministry because according to the law of God, you had to be anointed by a priest in order to take that office.

John the Baptist is anointing Jesus. Jesus, it says, here we go, starting in verse 13, then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John to be baptized by him. But John tried to prevent him saying, I have need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?

But Jesus answering said to him, permitted at this time for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he permitted him. After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were open and he saw the spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him.

And behold, a voice out of the heavens said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

Okay.

Moses almost destroyed as a baby, escapes. Moses, the law giver on Mount Sinai. Israel in Egypt and slavery called out of Egypt. Now watch real fast. When Israel was in Egypt, when they got out, what was the next big event?

They got out of Egypt. What was the next big event? They crossed through the Red Sea, right? And then where did they go? Ultimately into the what? The wilderness. So Jesus now is that true and great and perfect Israel.

He's the king. He is the Messiah. He's the son of God called out of Egypt. And then what does he do now? He goes into the waters of baptism and he comes out of the waters. And where does he go? It says immediately the spirit of God drove Jesus into the what?

Wilderness. Do you see now? It's Jesus now and he's walking through all the patterns of the Old Testament. Everything that God was laying down ahead of time, Jesus fulfills. When someone says, I'm Jewish, I don't believe in Jesus.

That's crazy because this is straight up, hardcore, pipe hitting Jewish completely. It's all Jewish. It's everything Israel anticipated. And here's Jesus now coming out of Egypt, going into the waters, coming out of the waters and going into the wilderness and then he does something in the wilderness.

He does what Adam, our first parent, failed to do. He does what Israel, the son of God, failed to do in the wilderness. Adam and Eve were confronted in the garden with a conflict. God says this, the serpent says this.

And what do they decide? Not to go with what God said in his word, but to go with what the deception was of the serpent. To go with their own hearts, the lust.

Right?

The desire to go after, it looks good to me, it'll make me wise. I will be the determiner of what is good and evil. I will take it. And they broke covenant with God, they didn't obey his word. Israel wanders in the wilderness.

And what did God say?

It's crazy.

Have you read it?

Have you gone back to read that text about Israel in the wilderness? What did God say? He says that the reason he had them wander in the wilderness, the reason why he provided the manna from heaven and that he was feeding them by his grace and his goodness, the reason they were wandering wasn't to just be abusive to them, it says specifically that he wanted them to learn to depend upon his word and not the bread alone.

It was a test. It was a test for the people of God to see if they would actually depend upon his word. And Jesus, the true and great and perfect Israel of God, goes into the wilderness and he does what the first Adam failed to do.

And he does what Israel failed to do. And what does he do? Satan comes with the temptations and Jesus fights him, wrestles him physically.

He quotes scripture.

Scripture.

God said to Israel in the wilderness, he said he did that so that they would learn to depend upon his word and not by bread alone. And Jesus now confronts him with Satan, he confronts him with the scripture, Satan goes.

Away.

Satan comes with temptation, confronts him with the scripture, Satan goes away. Each and every time Jesus goes back to the word of God and Satan flees and it's a glorious.

Thing.

Jesus comes out of that wilderness and he says what? Repent for the kingdom of heaven is what? At hand. And it says that he was going forth, healing the sick and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.

It's a powerful thing. Jesus is the fulfillment. Then you get into what? After the wilderness, after he's proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, this word gets.

Big.

Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Yes?

Out of the wilderness. Now Jesus ascends up a mountain. This is called the sermon on the what? Jesus the perfect Israel. Jesus like Moses almost destroyed. Jesus the son of God called out of Egypt. Jesus who goes through the waters of baptism like Israel crossed the Red Sea.

Jesus going into the wilderness and defeating Satan, doing what Israel failed to do, Adam failed to do. And now Jesus ascends this mountain like another famous prophet did. Who went up a mountain? Moses.

And what did Moses deliver on the mountain? The law of God. Now Jesus goes up the mountain and what does he do? He pronounces not curses but blessings. The beatitudes, blessed are you, blessed are you, divinely happy are you.

The persecuted, the meek, those who are poor in spirit, Jesus not giving curses but blessings to his people. And then he says what in Matthew 5, 17 through 19? He talks about the law and he says, don't even begin to think that I've come to abolish.

It.

I didn't. And he says this. If anybody teaches anybody to break even the least of these commandments, he'll be called what in the kingdom of heaven?

Least.

But whoever does them and teaches them will be called what?

Great.

And now Jesus does what? He goes right to the law. Jesus is the law giver, the perfect law giver. And he fulfills the law. And now Jesus unpacks the law. He confronts their misinterpretations. He confronts how they were handling his law.

He gives us the true understanding of the law. And now he goes to a significant part.

Of the law.

I love that it's last because ultimately it's where everything rests, right? Let's do it. Are you ready?

Yes?

Can you see that I'm excited about this?

Yeah?

Okay, good. All right, here we go. This is a big one.

This is a big one.

So listen, if you missed everything I said through the Sermon on the Mount regarding the law of God, I hope today it opens it all up. You'll get it all. I love that it's last. Here we go. Jesus says, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

Again, first point. That verse doesn't exist in the Bible. The first part does, not the second part. They had learned to take Gentiles and see them as the enemies, as hostile, as strangers, as other, and they began to see themselves as more holy.

They forgot that the reason why they were the people of God is because God loved them. He was gracious to them. What was in Israel that drew God to them? Was it their works? Was it their faithfulness?

Come on. Was it something good in them? It was his grace. When he starts giving the law, what does he say? I'm the Lord, your God, who delivered you out of Egypt. What does he start with? Redemption. I did it.

I'm your God. And he gives his law. It's a powerful thing. They said, well, that's an enemy of God and my enemy, so I shall love my neighbor and hate my enemies. And Jesus says what?

He destroys it.

He destroys it by telling them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. But I want you to see what he quotes from, because this is big, especially today, especially today in 21st century America, especially today with 21st century evangelicalism.

This is important. It's big. You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. Amen? We think today that love is this just simply emotional, gooey kind of response where we just sort of are gushy with people, right?

Or we say it's love when I don't say anything. It's love when I don't confront. It's love when I'm not really discerning. It's love if I just speak really sweet and nice to people. You know what I'm saying, y 'all?