Luke 6:27-36: Loving the enemies of Jesus like Jesus loved His enemies

Politicians on both sides that are very polarizing. People in the media are very polarizing.

Sometimes even sports figures are polarizing. But I would submit to you this morning that the most polarizing person is the

Lord Jesus Christ. Not the Jesus who's the politician's

Jesus. Not the Jesus of pop culture. He's not very polarizing.

Not the rainbow flag Jesus. He's not that polarizing. Not the mainline denomination

Jesus. He's not that polarizing. But I submit to you that the Bible's Jesus, the one that says you're either for me or you're against me, is the most polarizing figure who's ever lived.

Someone went up to Jesus once and they said, Lord, will those who are saved be few?

Will just a few people make it? And then Jesus said, strive to enter through the narrow door.

For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. People don't like it that Jesus is so polarizing for lots of reasons.

One is they want Jesus to be more inclusive. Lots of different ways to get to heaven.

Christianity isn't the only way. Maybe they have friends who are Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu.

So they don't like it that Jesus' stark message is like, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me. So they find Jesus very polarizing.

They want the Lord Jesus to maybe be a way, but not the way. So the question of the hour is this.

Since Jesus is polarizing and they hate him for it, how will people respond to you?

If Jesus has enemies, in other words, will you have enemies as well? And what's the response to people who are enemies of Jesus that we have in our life?

What do we do? Take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 6. And the sermon's simple today, but hard to obey.

And that is we are to love our enemies. And we will have enemies because of the gospel sake, because people, unbelievers, don't love the

Lord Jesus. They just can't get it through their mind that Jesus alone could, the eternal

God, could take on flesh and become incarnate and live a perfect life and to die on the cross for sinners and be raised from the dead.

They don't like it that only Jesus and Jesus alone could die a penalty substitution on behalf of sinners.

It's too polarizing. And even Jesus' apostles, like Peter, who would say there's salvation in no one else.

There's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And so Jesus is polarizing.

His words are true, yet sometimes people don't respond well to them, those words, and they don't respond well to us either.

So today we're going to talk about loving our enemies.

If the world hates Jesus, and it does, they'll hate Christians. What do we do? If Satan hates

Jesus, and he does, what about hating us? And then what do we do? And here's the really convicting part for at least me this week.

I thought about, OK, how do I love my enemies? And of course, if I'm supposed to love my enemies, the implication is how do

I love my friends, which is even hard? How do we love our spouses, which is even hard?

Our children? How do we love people at Bethlehem Bible Church? If we're supposed to love enemies, we're supposed to love friends and family as well.

One man said, often we 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're desperate to safeguard our time, our money, and our emotional energy.

And then I wrote one word after that, ouch. It is a

Herculean task to love enemies, to love friends. And we'll see what the

Lord Jesus says about that today. OK, when I come to Luke 6, I say to myself, what's been going on in Luke 6?

First of all, Luke is the physician. He's a historian. He's a theologian. And he wants to present a comprehensive case so that you say, in fact,

Jesus is the Messiah. His audience had heard some things about Jesus, a little bits and pieces.

But he wanted to, he, Luke, wanted to make a comprehensive case so that you would walk away and you wouldn't say, I need more information.

Maybe he is a Messiah. Maybe he's not. I think I better study more. Are there other accounts? Everything you need in the book of Luke is there for you to say,

I, in fact, believe in the Lord Jesus. I know I'm a sinner, and he's the sin bearer.

We come to Luke chapter 6, and we picked up the Beatitudes a couple of weeks ago.

And we see the Beatitudes, and then the woes, and then we'll come to our passage. And so I think what we'll do is just quickly review, since Evan was here last week and we missed last week, we'll review what we did last couple weeks, and then we'll hit our passage up and running in verse 27.

Luke chapter 6, remember how many blessings were there and how many woes were there? Answer?

Here's a little hint. Here's a little fun fact for your Bible trivia. Luke loves fours.

Four blessings, four woes. We're going to see in verse 27 and 28, four commands. He's got all kinds of fours going on, so he loves fours.

And he has these four blessings. Remember, it says in verse 20 of Luke 6, he lifts up his eyes on his disciples and said, here's my ordination, exhortation.

You're going to go out in the field. You're going to go preach the gospel, and things are going to be difficult. Remember, verse 22, on account of the

Son of Man, they're going to hate you. They hate me. Matter of fact, one day they'll kill me,

Jesus could say. And so he gives four blessings, four stamps of approval.

Not you do these, you're blessed. No, you're already blessed. You believe in me, you're blessed. And I want you to know when other people curse you and other people revile you and other people hate you, remember in the back of your mind,

God thinks you're blessed. And so he sends them out with those blessings. Other people were there listening, and so now he gives the four woes.

Remember those in verses 24 through 26? Four times, woe, woe, woe.

And really, that's the language of misery. That's the language of doom. That's the language of hell.

If people stay in the state forever and ever, it will be forever and ever. And what

I think Jesus is trying to do here is he's trying to let the disciples know, people that are in a pitiful condition when their circumstances are so awful, that we're not supposed to hate them.

We're not supposed to say, you know what, that's right, they're gonna get that. We're supposed to say, that's awful, they should be rescued.

So Jesus gives four woes because he loves sinners and he wants them to think rightly about sinners as well.

So now we come to our passage today. Luke 27, there's three extra chapters to Luke.

Luke 6, verse 27 and following, loving enemies.

Now, I'm gonna give you a little Bible interpretation class really quickly. If you looked at verses 27 through 36 and said, you know what,

I'm gonna have to preach that next Sunday in front of Bethlehem Bible Church. What should I do? What's the passage about?

What's the outline? Trying to figure out the meaning of the text because preaching is not,

I've got a good little story for you and I'm gonna let you know about it. It's what does the text say and I'm gonna try to show you the text.

So matter of fact, when you get home today, you'll think, oh, I know that text better than I did before, after church than before.

So what do you do? Here's what we do. Here's a little interpretation helper. Number one, the word love is repeated over and over and over.

Do you see it in verse 27? Love. 32, love, love, love.

Verse 35, love. Any idea what this passage might be about?

These passages, love. And by the way, what kind of love do you think it is? You can't tell in your

English which particular definition of love, but in the Greek, any guesses? Do you think it's erotic love?

Do you think it's family love? Do you think it's friendship love? Or do you think it's self -sacrificial love, not based on feeling?

Any guesses? You're right. This is agape love. And so it shouldn't surprise us that the

Lord Jesus says, I want you to love people. I mean, I think, after all, did

God so love the world? I think He did. And we love because He first loved us.

And so here we have one of the first commands to the group at large, I want you to love. So that's a first little hint what this is about.

The second little hint in terms of interpretation before we look at the text in particular, look at verse 27 and then 35 and their veritable bookends.

Verse 27, love your enemies, do good. And what do you see in verse 35?

Love your enemies and do good. So it's not just about love in general, although that's good, but it's loving your enemies and doing good.

So this passage with the bookends, love enemies and do good, love enemies and do good. And of course, you see what

Jesus is doing because Jesus is sending people out to preach the gospel. He's sending His disciples out,

His apostles out, and they hate the Son of Man. They revile Him, they persecute, they insult.

And so how do you act toward people that hate you and hate Jesus? I'll say that again.

How do you act toward people that hate you and hate Jesus? I know what I wanna do in my flesh is to get them, is to have imprecatory

Psalms come down, is to say, you know what? What you reap, you're going to sow.

But is that the heart of Jesus toward sinners? I mean, think about it.

What was the heart of God toward you when you were an enemy of God as an unbeliever?

If you're a Christian here today, you realize what was God's demeanor toward me? And furthermore, when

God would send people into your life when you were an unbeliever to pray for you, to evangelize you, to come alongside and read the scriptures to you, aren't you glad that for the most part,

I don't know your particular circumstances, that the people that God sent into your life didn't act like they hated you?

Aren't you glad that they came alongside of you to love you and to preach to you and to be compassionate toward you and merciful?

So this is all about love, but it's about loving enemies and doing good. And then lastly, for an interpretive, hermeneutical, how do we look at this passage big picture before we dive into the details?

It's found in verse 35. Love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be the sons of the

Most High. Here it is. For he, that is God, is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Be merciful, even as your father is merciful. Love, it's true, loving enemies, it's more defined.

And you love your enemies for what reason? Because God loves his enemies, he's kind to his enemies, and he's merciful to his enemies.

So that's really what the whole passage is about, loving God's enemies because God loves his enemies.

One man said, if you see somebody that's unworthy, they need

God's grace, grace to the unworthy. And he said, if you see someone who's needy, it's

God's mercy. Mercy goes to the needy, and that's what we're going to see here, that unbelievers, of course, are the most needy because they need to be reconciled to God.

Our outline this morning is simple. Let me give you five aspects of loving neighbor found in verses 27 through 36.

With the additional side note that if you say, loving neighbor, yes, but what about my neighbor who's an enemy?

How do I love my enemy? How do I love my neighbor? How do I love my spouse? I think it would apply for all those here today.

So aspect one, loving the enemies of Jesus like Jesus loved his enemy is, loving enemies is a command, not a feeling.

Oh, this is going to help us so much because if you say, I remember my old pastor used to say, a guy would come into his office and say,

I don't love my wife anymore. And he would say, then repent. What the guy meant was,

I don't have the feelings of romance anymore, and I'm not like in love anymore. But the Bible, what's it teach in Ephesians chapter five?

Husbands, what? Love your wives as Christ loved the church. It's a sacrificial, it's from the will. It's not a feeling.

And so Jesus doesn't say, you know, by the way, if you feel like loving your enemies, you can. If you're led to do it, if God gives you an open door, that whole led thing, by the way, we can just get that out of our minds forever.

Here's how you do this, parents. Tell your children to clean up the room. In 15 minutes,

I'll let the room be cleaned up, and then we're going to go do something fun after that. And then you walk in after 15 minutes and it's a complete disaster zone.

And you're like, why didn't you clean up the room? Like daddy said, we're going to go do something fun after. And they say to you,

I wasn't led. But we do that very thing.

I wasn't led to love my wife. I wasn't led to love my spouse. I wasn't led to love my children. I wasn't led to love my neighbor.

I'm not led to love my enemies. Of course you're not. Who feels like they want to love enemies?

Because by the way, if you felt like it, why would the Lord Jesus ever tell you to do it?

And here he says in verse 27, but I say to you who hear, right? He's expanded his audience after the woes.

Anybody who'll listen, the disciples, you love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you. If you have spiritual ears to hear, we all need to listen.

Love, the two greatest laws, love God and love neighbor. Love is a command from Jesus.

This is not feeling based. This is a supernatural work of God for the fruit of the spirit. Galatians five is love.

So automatically you can say to yourself, I've been commanded to do it. I don't want to do it. I don't feel like doing it.

I don't know if I have the capacity to do it, but Lord, would you, what? Help me do it. Please grant me that fruit.

You say, well, this must be new. The Old Testament must not say anything about this. On the contrary, listen to Exodus chapter 23.

If you happen upon your enemy's stray ox or donkey, you must bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you, lying helpless under its pack, you must help him to lift it up.

Now in the context here, who are the enemies? Probably Rome, probably scribes, probably

Pharisees. And Jesus wants these men and he wants anybody that would listen.

When you have enemies for the gospel sake, how do I act toward them? It can't just be off the cuff.

It can't just be reflex. I mean, by the way, if I were to read verse 27, but I say to you, love your,

I would be thinking enemies. No, I'd be thinking friends. I'd be thinking neighbors.

But here Jesus says, love your enemies. You're going to go out and preach the gospel. They're going to be mad at you. They're going to despise you.

They're going to hate you. A lot of the men that heard this message are going to be martyred for the faith. What do you do?

There's an archbishop back in England in the 1500s named Thomas Cramner. And they would say this about Thomas Cramner.

If you want to be his friend, do him wrong.

If you really want to get to know him and become close to him, do something bad to him. And it was not really literal, but it was if you do something bad to him, he's going to love you and he's going to be self -sacrificial toward you.

Love your enemies. Do you have any enemies? I mean, maybe that's a deeper question.

I asked myself that this week. How many enemies do I have? Not because I'm dumb, stupid, sinful, or something else, but how many enemies do

I have for the gospel sake? We probably should have, this is going to really sound dumb. Spencer can edit it from the cassette.

Remember cassettes? We should probably have more enemies than what we do.

We are salt, true. We are light, true. And light exposes darkness and people aren't going to like it.

I want to love my enemies better.

I'm convicted when I don't. It's the heart of the person that's been affected by the gospel.

And we've been saved and glorious, redeemed and being sanctified. And we begin to love those we don't really want to love.

That's a sign of being a Christian. And we say, Lord, I recognize that I don't love my enemies like I should, or my spouse or my neighbor, but I want to do that more.

Help me to do that more. I know it shows your love for people like that. I read about a will that was written in the 1930s by Dr.

Donahue. This is the opposite of loving enemies.

Unto my two daughters, Frances Marie and Denise Victoria, by reason of their unfilial attitude toward their doting father,

I leave the sum of $1 to each and a father's curse. May their lives be fraught with misery, unhappiness and poignant sorrow.

May their deaths be soon and of a lingering, malignant, torturous nature.

May their souls rest in hell and suffer the torments of the condemned for eternity. And then

I read someone that says, quite frankly, we will see that what

Jesus requires his disciples to do for their enemies is more than what many are willing to do for their spouse.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus said, you've heard that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

And as most theologians know, if you begin to love people that hate you or love people that you're married to or love people that you're supposed to love at the church, even though you don't feel like it, the more you actually start loving them and doing good for them, the more you start feeling like you love them.

Very famous writer said, the rule for all of us is simple. Do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor, act as if you did.

And soon you'll find out this to be a great secret. When you're behaving as if you love someone, you'll presently come to love them.

Good, good advice. Verse 28 shows us some things that we could actually do to our enemies, for our enemies.

Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. So he's just kind of got these parallel things.

I want you to love them. I want you to do good to them. I want you to bless them. And I want you to pray for them. That's one of the best things you could do is if you have an enemy is to pray for them.

How do you pray for your enemies? How do you pray for the enemies of the gospel? I said this earlier, but I'll say it again.

I want to look up an imprecatory Psalm and pray that. And if you don't know what an imprecatory

Psalm is, it's a Psalm that says essentially, God, I want them to go to hell. God, punish them.

God, ravish them with your wrath. And then

I think to myself, would I want somebody to be praying that for me when

I was an unbeliever? I'm glad that didn't happen. Wouldn't it be much better to have an enemy of the gospel and then say,

God, I want you to change them. You granted me grace. You granted me mercy. You granted me salvation.

You granted me a new heart. I'm reconciled now to you. I'm a new creature in Christ Jesus. I don't love what

I used to love. I hate what I didn't hate before. And you know what, God? Would you do something in their life? And would you take

Paul, the Christian killer, and make him into an apostle? Wouldn't that be a better way?

Of course the answer is, of course it's a better way. Praying for your enemies.

It's been one of my struggles in life that if somebody does something to me in ministry or there's a church split or something that goes on, people leave and say things.

It's like, how do you fight bitterness? Well, you fight bitterness just like you fight the idea of loving, it's just like you fight when it comes to not wanting to love your enemies.

You just override your will and you do it and you pray for them and your heart begins to soften.

Because you realize, I'm not really any better. I'm probably worse.

I begin to pray for them. By the way, does this sound familiar?

When they came to the place called the skull, there they crucified Jesus and the criminals. One on the right hand and one on the left.

But Jesus was saying, Father forgive them for they do not know what they're doing.

And they cast lots, dividing up his garments among themselves. And the people stood by looking on and even the rulers were sneering at him saying, he saved others, let him save himself.

He's the Christ son of God, his chosen one. Our Lord Jesus on the cross, loving enemies, doing good, blessing and praying for.

Does this sound familiar? And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God saying, Lord Jesus receive my spirit.

Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice. The stones are hitting him.

Lord, do not charge them with this sin. Praying for his enemies, praying for the enemies of the

Lord Jesus. One man said, if you have enemies, you should just have a posture of submission and get down on your knees and pray for them.

Good advice. Second aspect is found in verses 29 and 30.

Loving the enemies of Jesus like Jesus loved his enemies. Well, number one, it's a command, not a feeling. Number two, how do

I do it? Number two, how do I do it? This is the way to love your enemies. How do you carry out these commands?

And did I mention Luke likes fours? I think I did. Here's four more.

Offer, verse 29, don't withhold, verse 29, give, verse 30, and don't demand back, verse 30.

This is in the context of persecution. This is in the context to have the right attitude. And I'll tell you ahead of time what it is.

This is not eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. This is not,

I think my father used to kind of act like this. I don't think he'd ever use the words, but he's like, you mess with the wrong hombre when you mess with me.

By the way, he was six foot four, 240. I did not want to mess with that hombre like that.

In the context of being persecuted for Jesus' sake, what's our attitude? How do you flesh out loving enemy?

Well, he gives four, like I said. Look at the first one. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.

What in the world? So you mean to tell me that if somebody tries to hit me,

I just let him? I have to be a pacifist? Now remember, when you study the

Bible, you have to say, what does Jesus say here in context? And I have to interpret scripture with other scripture.

And by the way, other scripture would say things like this. By the way,

Peter took a sword when they were gonna take Jesus at night, and he took the sword, and what did he do to Malchus' ear?

Well, he cut it off, because he was aiming it for his head. Don't you think

Jesus would have said, if you're supposed to be a pacifist, now you're first coming out of being a fisherman, Peter, and now you got a sword for some reason, get rid of the sword.

No, he let him have the sword. This has nothing to do with, if somebody's gonna punch you, you just let them punch you.

I remember one time, Jim McStay here at our church said, I'm going down to the Worcester Common, and there was this guy who was coming up to me when

I was telling him about Jesus is the only way, and the ravages of sin, and the only way of salvation, and he was gonna punch me, what do

I do? And Jim was in the military and everything, and I said, duck, stop it, move to the side.

We're just not to be punching bags when people try to hit us. If you're a dad, you should be teaching your sons, there's a time to hit people.

Luke, if somebody has taken advantage of your mom, or your three sisters, I want you to pummel them into submission.

There's a time to hit. So what is this?

Does this help you when Jesus said in Matthew five, if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Now what Jesus doesn't want is, slap for a slap, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, how do you love enemies?

Well, let's figure it out. I know most people are right handed, here's right handed fist.

If I'm supposed to hit them on the right cheek, so the person is standing there, their right cheek is there, how do

I hit them on the right cheek? Well, I guess I could do it in this fashion, but that doesn't really give me much power, right?

If I'm gonna hit, I wanna come up like that. Here's their right cheek, I have to go like that. So how do

I strike or slap someone on the right cheek? Answer, sneak up behind him.

No, the Mike Tyson deal. This is persecution and insulting.

And this is called, you know what? Your face, you Christian, doesn't deserve my fist, so I give you the back of my hand.

It's called an insult. It's called spitting in someone's face, but you don't deserve my hand.

You don't deserve my open hand, you don't deserve my fist, I give you the back. I'm gonna hit you in the face or the back of my hand.

And Jesus says, if they do that, if someone insults you, what do you do? Okay, then insult me again for the sake of, righteousness sake.

Nikita Khrushchev, ex -premier of Russia, was speaking at the Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship in Ohio.

We communists have many things in common with the teaching of Jesus Christ. My sole difference with Christ is that when someone hits me on the right cheek,

I hit him on the left so hard that his head falls off. Doesn't sound like loving your enemies.

When someone insults you, let them insult you. Luther said there was a crazy saint that took this verse and went wild with it.

He said this about this crazy person. This crazy person let the lice nibble at him and refused to kill any of them on this account, maintaining that he had to suffer and could not resist evil.

Is there a time to confront evil? Yes. Is there a time to attack false doctrine?

Yes. Was there a time where Jesus takes the money changers with a whip of course and drives them out of the temple?

The answer is yes. But when someone insults you for the sake of the

Lord Jesus, let them insult you. They hit you in the back of the face, they hit you on the face with the back of the hand, you just let them.

Sounds to me something like this. Jesus said, I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who plucked out my beard.

I did not hide my face from shame and spitting. This is religious persecution.

Similarly, here's a second one in verse 29. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. This is an attitude, this is lawsuits most likely.

Outer garment they take, give them the inner garment too. You can see there's almost some overstatement here, some hyperbole here too, because what are you gonna do, go without clothes?

No, I'm just not gonna have any vengeance. I'm not gonna have eye for an eye. It's not that big a deal. If people that hate

Jesus persecute me and have lawsuits against me, what I have, it's theirs. It's not that big a deal.

I might be able to legally keep it, but I can just part with it. Because the bigger picture is, how do I love my enemies?

Sounds like Jesus to me. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts to each soldier a part in a tunic.

Now the tunic was without seam. They said among themselves, let's not tear it, but cast lots for it, that the scripture might be fulfilled which says, they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing, they cast lots.

Do you see what's happening here? We're to love our enemies, the enemies of the gospel, because God loves the enemies of the gospel.

Yes, the ones that don't repent and believe, they'll surely pay, but how many enemies of the gospel has

God made friends because he's been kind and merciful? Answer, every person that's here is a

Christian. Every Christian has started off as an enemy. You know, you look at nature shows, and you think, you know, what's their natural enemy in that habitat?

You know, who is the gazelle's natural enemy in Africa? Well, one man said, the natural enemy of man is

God. He's so holy, and we're not, and how does God act toward us? We're needy, and so therefore he's merciful.

How about this? Where do you think this passage is from? Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to what is honorable to do in the sight of all.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine,

I will repay. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Does that sound what this passage is talking about?

Sound like it? Answer's yes, that's Romans 12. How about this?

For when you do good and suffer for it, you endure. This is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

For to this you've been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his footsteps.

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

That's 1 Peter chapter two. That's how we're to respond. He gives another illustration here.

It's kind of an odd one, but it's still found here in verse 30, parallel to everything else.

He says, give to everyone who begs from you. True or false?

This has to do with panhandlers out in the middle of the street in downtown. By the way, it's interesting now, some of them have

Venmo, did you notice that? We don't have money anymore, cash, and so now you have panhandlers with Venmo signs.

Very interesting. I don't think it has anything to do with panhandlers.

This is in the context of how do you love enemies. It's in the context of Jesus sending out the men. It's in the context of, just don't have to be so set on eye for eye, tooth for tooth, tit for tat.

I'm just gonna make sure everything is just right. No, you just love people.

It's probably tied into the lawsuit section that's just before. Just be kind and merciful. Treat your enemies the right way.

He goes on to say, and for the one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. Certainly in a legal aspect.

Yes, but Pastor Mike, there's so many different situations I find myself in. If I only had a principle that would help me cut through the flow chart of all my difficult decisions on how to love people.

Please, could you just give me something that would help me so I don't have to work through all this and have to call people for advice.

I'm glad you asked. Here it is. Aspect number three. Here's the summary of love. There's a command to love, four ways to love, the summary of love.

Here it is. Verse 31. And I think it sounds familiar to you. As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

Makes it kind of easy, doesn't it? You're in a situation, you don't know how to love your enemies, and you think, how would I like to be treated?

Now, the concept is easy, but the implementation is more difficult. A parallel passage in Matthew says, quoting

Jesus, and everything therefore treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the law and the prophets.

So, somebody's persecuting you, they're saying things about you, and you say, well, you know what, how do I treat them?

It's hard to love my enemies. What I want done to me, I will do for them. Certainly is good in marriage as well.

And then we come to number four, the fourth aspect. Comparisons of love. Verses 32 through 34.

The comparisons of love. So we can kind of see the difference between His love and our love.

It's found in verses 32, 33, and 34. And you're gonna see the word love there a lot, and you're gonna see the word sinners.

Sinners in verse 32, 33, and twice in 34. And remember, when you see the word sinners in the gospel, what does it mean?

By the way, are you a sinner? Yes, am I a sinner? Yes. Are you this kind of sinner, in verses 32, 33, and 34?

In the gospels, the word sinner means this. Someone that's not Jewish, someone that doesn't have the

Mosaic law, someone who's a Gentile, and they just have no idea in terms of the intricacies of the law, and they live like they don't have any idea of even natural law.

These sinners here are just people that are just the worst of the worst, the flotsam and jetsam.

Is that right? Have you ever said when you're preaching the flotsam and the jetsams? You better not.

When you see the word sinner, you should be saying to yourself, the most extreme sinful person, unbeliever.

Paul in the epistle says, I'm the chief of sinner. That's true, we sin. But this word used, it could almost have a capital

S to it in the gospels. Somebody that sins and sins and sins. That's all they do. What's your job? I sin.

And so he gives these three questions and these three answers for a comparison. Verse 32, and it all has to do with reciprocal stuff.

We don't do things based on what they'll do for us. We don't do things based on reciprocal nature.

We do things because we want to love God. It's best for them. If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you?

What's the answer? That's not supernatural. That's not extraordinary. People love you, you love them back.

That's just regular. For even sinners love those who love them. Even the most irreligious, even the ones who don't have anything to do with the

Bible, Gentiles. They don't do supernatural things.

We're to do a supernatural thing because we have the spirit of God within us. Verse 33, if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you?

It's reciprocal. It's not that big a deal. Even sinners do the same. Thieves are nice to other thieves until they steal from them.

Here, Jesus is saying when it comes to loving enemies, it's a higher order.

It's a supernatural thing. This is not coming to you, dear Christian, because it's within your wheelhouse.

The Lord's gonna have to help you do that. This is just normal behavior. No, I want supernatural behavior.

And then he gives a final comparison in verse 34. If you lend to those whom you respect to receive, what credit is that to you?

The answer is there's no credit. Even sinners lend to sinners to get back the same amount.

So he's saying there needs to be something more than just a regular, unbelieving love where I'm nice to people because I get something.

And then lastly, loving the enemies of Jesus, the fifth aspect, here's the reason. And we started out with this, but it's good to be reminded as well.

Verses 35, 36. Love your enemies. There's the bookend again.

Everything in here had to do with loving enemies. Do good, lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be the sons of the

Most High. That's what you'll show yourself as. For he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Be merciful even as your father is merciful. How merciful is

God to unbelievers? Now, when unbelievers receive good things from God, what do we call that?

What kind of grace is that called? Common grace. Some say

I wanna call it common mercy because grace is for believers, for unworthy people who are turned into believers, and mercy is they have a need.

If you wanna call it common grace, you can. If you wanna call it common mercy, you can. But I want you to remember that God is merciful to people who are ungrateful and evil.

What are some of the things that he's kind to them with? How is he merciful to them?

Well, does it rain on them? And of course, for us, a lot of times we think rain is bad because we don't wanna be bothered, but of course, rain for the crops.

By the way, how often does God have the sun go up on the unbeliever and come down on the unbeliever?

I mean, it's a daily dose of mercy, is it not? How about unbelievers? Do they have taste buds?

Do they enjoy their family? Do they have ears that can hear wonderful music? The constant wave after a wave on the seashore of God's mercy is over and over and over, and Jesus is saying,

I want you to love enemies because God loves enemies. It's easy for me when

I hear somebody on the TV, on the internet, a false teacher, something else, and they're saying all these horrible things about Jesus.

Seriously, I say, God, stop their tongue. There's nothing wrong with that. But what

I need to be doing is say, stop their tongue, and God would you, from the text, verse 35, ungrateful and evil.

Yeah, you paid your taxes and you were kind to people and you didn't jaywalk, but the way

God sees us as unbelievers is ungrateful and evil. I think of that Romans 1 passage.

They didn't acknowledge God and they didn't see to give him thanks. And God is so merciful and so kind.

I was talking to Gary about this the other day. Think about when you got saved. I got saved when I was 29.

I wonder if in heaven the Lord will show me, I don't need to know, and it's not that big a deal if I don't know, how many times

I could have died before God saved me at 29 years old. Cars coming, choking on food, all these other things.

Just how God keeps the elect unregenerate alive long enough to believe.

I would think that was mercy and kindness, and yet I was still ungrateful and I was still evil. As the sun goes up,

God's merciful. Sun goes down, God's merciful. Sun goes up, I'm ungrateful and evil. Sun goes down,

I'm ungrateful and evil. Year after year after year, 29 years, what did

I deserve? And then you think about God's kindness and God's mercy. And if God does that for us,

I'm actually convicted and shamed that I would even have to be told to be nice, to be kind, and to love my enemies.

Let alone my spouse, let alone people at church. Be merciful even as your father is merciful.

The father has compassion. The father has pity. The father says,

I see someone and they're in a need. What's the greatest need anybody could ever have? Forgiveness, salvation, and I'm gonna meet that need.

I mean, who's like God who could come up in a wise way, keeping his justice upheld but showing mercy?

The answer's all found in the incarnate Christ Jesus. Jesus said in Matthew's account of this same sermon for that he causes sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Day after day after day after day, is there any reason you can think of, dear

Christian, that you shouldn't love other people? Is there any reason you shouldn't be loving your spouse?

Is there any reason you shouldn't love your enemy? And everything in this passage shouts this.

Don't do what you normally wanna do. You're nice to me, I'm nice to you. You love me,

I love you. That's just called a standoff is what that is. That's reciprocity.

That's just, you know, I will love you if you do this. Now think about, what if God did that to us before we were Christians? I will love you if you'll do these things for me.

And what would be happening right now? That'd be a standoff because love goes first.

Grace goes first. Grace is initiating. Grace is taking the lead. Jesus is saying,

I love you, the Father loves you, by sovereign initiating grace. Now you go love other people.

You don't have to wait for a time. You don't have to be led. You don't have to do anything except begin to serve.

And it's okay if you don't have enemies. Maybe some of the enemies are behind your back. But if you don't have any enemies, then

I want you to think to yourself, what ways, in what ways should I love my neighbor? In what ways should

I love my spouse? My children. Sometimes I meet people and they'll say,

I haven't talked to my sister for three years. I haven't talked to my loved ones for four years.

I haven't talked to my mom or dad for such and such. I haven't talked to my spouse for days. If you're a

Christian, doesn't that sound bad? Doesn't that sound wrong?

Doesn't that sound unlike God? So I just say to myself,

Mike, in so many ways you don't wanna do this, but deep down, by the grace of God, I want to do it.

That's a sign of a Christian. I want to do it. God, help me to do it. Love your enemies. As the time goes on, even if you think the government is going to be more pro -Christian,

Satan still hates Jesus. The world still hates Jesus. And we're gonna have to figure out how to love people because Jesus, with his polarizing words, will give us lots of enemies.

So all that to say, it's pretty quiet in here. I wanna say, class, do you have any questions? If you don't know what to do, you say, how would

I like to be treated? I better treat them that way. I regularly say to husbands, and I wish

I practiced my own advice more often than I do, I know when you get home from a long day at work, you wanna get home and you wanna have your wife say,

I got your favorite food, I got everything ready for you, I got babysitters for the kids, I got tickets to the such and such, your favorite boxing game, your boxing match, all these other,

I gotta get home, man, that's gonna be, Kim has got me dialed in. Lots of times she has me dialed in.

But if that's what I want done for me, I don't have to finish the sentence.

You are loved. God has loved you with an everlasting love. He's loved you with an eternal love.

He's going to make sure you get to heaven. You're gonna make it, dear Christian.

That's all the love of God. He's poured the love of God by the Spirit into your hearts, Romans 5. He loved you when you were an enemy.

He loved you when you were helpless. He loved you when you were ungodly. He's been merciful to you. Count your blessings, name them one by one.

Count your many blessings, see what the Lord has done. And in light of all that love, then we say, we could love anybody.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. I stand convicted and would ask on behalf of the church and in front of you, we don't love like we should.

Would you please forgive us? And would our love today start even immediately following this service, loving other people at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Father, I pray if there's anybody here today that has problems with one another here at the body, you'd help them to go love each other.

And they'd even meet halfway because they both feel so convicted. And Father, I pray that we get home, that we would show sacrificial love to our spouses and children.

And then our neighbors, and then the world that hates Jesus. Thank you for being kind and merciful in his name we pray, amen.