Sermon on the Mount (Part 9)

Matthew 5:43-48 and the Final Antithesis

We're going to be reading verses 43 through 48, our last portion of Matthew chapter 5 here in this first portion of the Sermon on the Mount. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.

We pray that you would help us as we read your word together, that it would be clear, that we would rejoice in its truth, and we ask that you would take the whole of what Jesus says here in this sermon, and that you would make it precious to us, that we would rejoice in it, that we would meditate upon it, and that through it, you would have your way in our lives.

We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 43, you have heard that it was said, "'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?

Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.'". So now we have arrived at the last of what is called the antitheses. We have six of them, and they all exhibit a pattern in which a precept or a concept of the old covenant law is first cited and then declared to be overwritten in a satisfyingly fulfilling way in Christ's teaching, so that what Christ says, you have heard it said, here's the old covenant law, but I say to you, here's what Christ's authority, Christ's commandment is.

This is not tossing away the old covenant. This is satisfyingly fulfilling the old covenant and saying what He is saying is in agreement with what came before, but here's how we're going to do it now, because there is a genuine change in the covenants between old and new, between Moses and Christ.

Jesus came teaching as one who had authority, not as the scribes. We see at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, this is what really stood out to the multitudes. What they were really amazed concerning is that Jesus, unlike the scribes, taught as one possessing authority in and of Himself.

The scribes, as is noted throughout the New Testament, were always citing Moses. Moses said this, Moses said that. Well, what about Moses? That was their job, who could blame them for citing Moses? Jesus came citing Himself.

He came saying verily and truly. He amened His statement before He ever said it. He came teaching with His own authority, and that stood out to the multitudes. That was amazing to them. So, whether directly quoting one of the Ten Commandments or summarizing old covenant laws, Jesus unveils the prophetic wisdom contained therein and showcases a righteousness that is far superior to, though not in contradiction to, the old covenant.

Love Your Enemies in Light of the Old Covenant

Now, when we come to this passage, particularly Matthew 5, verses 43 through 48, in conjunction with the previous passage, this portion of the Sermon on the Mount has often been visited by those who are trying to understand how Christians should understand various big topics like pacifism.

Is it okay for Christians to provide resistance? What about just war theory? What about the doctrine of the lesser magistrate? These are all important topics, and very often the focus of these things is put here in a passage in Matthew 5, the very end of it.

All of these areas are important discussion, and this passage is going to have something to say to it, but this is not a passage where the primary concern is about these things. These are questions of practical and systematic theology.

Jesus is talking about how things are moving from the old covenant to the new and how His disciples are to follow Him. Now, we can get to the application of those things by extension, but let's remember what the passage is actually about, and I would say just at the outset, so we have clarity, this is not a passage that is against self-defense, this is not a passage that is against the defense of one's family or defense of one's property.

That's not what this passage is about. Put yourself into the place of the original audience of Christ, the multitudes gathered there in the Sermon on the Mount, and He has been this person that is now fairly famous in the first four chapters of Matthew.

You see how wide His ministry has gotten, how many people are paying attention now to this Jesus of Nazareth, and He has been preaching the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It is near and present with you because, hi, I've arrived.

And He is proving that through His powerful works, His miracles, His healings, and His teaching. And so the multitude is hearing about this kingdom of heaven, this kingdom of heaven. They're going to be wondering, what is the relationship of this kingdom of heaven to what God has already said to Israel and about Israel throughout the Holy Scriptures?

What does Jesus have to do with David and Moses and the patriarchs? What's the connection here? And what kind of kingdom is this? Now, if you're one of Jesus' audience, you know how kingdoms work. Kingdoms have borders, except Jesus would go on to say, this kingdom doesn't have borders like that.

They would think that the kingdom has a capital city, and indeed, this kingdom does. But they think that that city should have walls, fortified walls made of actual stone. And Jesus said, not so. They're thinking that the best way to preserve a kingdom is for the subjects to be very loyal to their king, and that checks out, but also that they would be in complete opposition to all enemies to that kingdom, that there needs to be a stern resistance to all enemies of that kingdom, and you should give no quarter and show no mercy to the enemies of that kingdom if that kingdom is going to survive and stand.

You don't make alliances with those who want to kill you. I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right? Not in terms of kingdoms. Now, this is what Jesus has to address in this antithesis, and notice this in verse 43.

Here's the antithesis proper. We have the old saying, we have the new saying. This is verses 43 and 44. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

So, we have the old saying, and we have the new saying. And here at the very end, this last antithesis is in parallel with the last beatitude. Remember, the last beatitude is very robust and talks about, blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

Here's your mindset. Here's how you should think about yourself in a situation where you are being persecuted for the sake of Christ. You should recognize that you're in solid company with the tradition of the prophets.

And it's a very robust thinking about how to understand one's enemy at the end of the beatitudes, so also here at the end of the antitheses. What about this old saying, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy?

Now, that first part, you shall love your neighbor, we certainly find quoted verbatim from Leviticus 19, verses 17 and 18, which reads, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him.

You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Now, sometimes when we read Jesus say, love your neighbor as yourself, and we instantly recall the Good Samaritan, the parable, and then we read the same thing in the Old Covenant in Leviticus, love your neighbor as yourself, we think that what Moses wrote and what Jesus said was the exact same thing to the nth degree, but it's not.

In the passage of Leviticus 19, it clarifies and identifies who their neighbors are in the Old Covenant. It is, and I quote, the children of your people. That description is said alongside of neighbor and brother in Leviticus 19.

Love your neighbor as yourself in the Old Covenant meant love your fellow covenant members, your fellow Israelites, right? Because you're all tribes, you're all children of Israel, the children of your people.

Love your neighbor as yourself meant, hey, you Israelites, stop bickering, stop fighting, love your neighbor as yourself. This is part of how you be covenantally faithful, and God will bless you for you all getting along, okay?

And they needed some encouragement in getting along. But when we come to the New Covenant, and the lawyer, the scribe asks, well, who is my neighbor? That's a very legitimate question because the way that Jesus was teaching and the way that Jesus was doing ministry didn't seem to really comport with the way that Moses talked about loving your neighbor because it's defined in the text in Leviticus that your neighbor is your ethnic kinsmen, the fellow Israelites, the children of Israel.

And then Jesus nuked that entire worldview and says, let me tell you a story about the good Samaritan. And if a good Jew hated Gentiles with a genuine righteous zeal, they hated Samaritans even more so.

And so Jesus went right for the critical point of how things are different now in the New Covenant when He defined neighbor not as the children of your people, right, but by asking that question, well, who then was the neighbor?

Was it the scribe? Was it the Pharisee? No, it was the Samaritan. He was the real neighbor, wasn't he? That's what I mean by love your neighbor. So the love your neighbor is certainly in the Old Covenant, and Jesus is saying, you have heard it said that you shall love your neighbor, and then He's going to say, but I say to you.

The change is going to be very interesting, and we're going to get to there. Jesus is not against people loving each other, right? He's not saying that's a bad idea, but He's going to take it beyond the Old Covenant scope of covenant faithfulness within the nation of Israel.

So the second half of the summary statement is, you shall hate your enemy, right? You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. You have heard it said. Now, some people say, well, there's no Old Testament text that says, thou shalt hate thine enemy.

It should be a really great verse, and it's true. There is no particular verse that says it just like that, but there are lots of verses in the Old Testament that says, hating your enemy is a great godly idea and obedience to God.

And so what Jesus is doing here is He's summarizing a whole host of passages from the Old Covenant, and He wants them to think about the significance of that and how things are different with.

Him.

So let's think about that. Let's go to Psalm 119, verse 113. So Psalm 119, verse 113. Remember that this particular psalm put into the acrostic of the Hebrew alphabet is basic education for Jewish children, right?

So this is how you learn your alphabet, okay? And in learning their alphabet, they also learn in Psalm 119, verse 113, I hate the double-minded, but I love your law, right? So now, you remember this, what you were brought up with, love the sinner, hate the sin.

Remember that?

Okay.

Jewish children were raised to say, hate the sinner, hate the sin. If you doubt me, then read Psalm 5. So you see right there, okay, so it's very particular, like that is a godly thing to do for a member of the Old Covenant.

Look at Psalm 139, Psalm 139, verses 21 and 22. This is David appealing to the Lord, appealing to even his integrity and desire to be pure.

Okay.

And then verse 21 says, do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. This is God. This is David appealing to the Lord and saying, you see my heart's in the right place?

And indeed, it was. This is covenant faithfulness for an Israelite. That they would hate the enemies of God and do so with a perfect hatred. This is exactly what they were supposed to do. Now, the more particular examples are going to be in Exodus and Deuteronomy.

So if you go over to Exodus 17, I'm belaboring the point because this is a bit hard to believe sometimes when we kind of gloss over the differences between the Old and the New Testaments and think that, oh, it's all pretty much the same thing.

Now, this is done in good intention because we know that God is one. He's the God of the Jew and also the God of the Gentile. And we also know that God doesn't contradict Himself, but He always is speaking the truth.

And so He's not going to contradict Himself in His holy word. The instinct, therefore, is to read this passage in the Sermon on the Mount. It says, you have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, they've heard that from those bad teachers, the Pharisees, but actually they heard it from Moses.

Okay.

And how Jesus is being consistent and how God is not contradicting Himself at all is one of those things that God wraps up and invites us to go search out, and in the glory of it, we find Christ. So we're going to get there.

But first of all, let's think about what is said in Exodus 17, beginning in verse 8. Here's the story. Now, Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua, choose us some men and go out and fight with Amalek.

Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses said to him and fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And so it was when Moses held up his hand that Israel prevailed.

And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands became heavy. So they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side.

And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

And Moses built an altar and called its name, the Lord is my banner. For he said, because the Lord has sworn the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. All right, so that's the background of what happened.

Amalek attacked. It was an underhanded attack. They were trying to raid the weak and hungry Israelites in the wilderness. And so God says, we're going to have war forever against Amalek. All right, so Deuteronomy 25, Deuteronomy 25, verses 17 through 19.

And remember, this is instructions. Moses is saying to the second generation who did not go through that big attack by Amalek. You know, these are all the newer generation. They don't remember what had happened in that big traumatic day.

But he says, now remember something when you get into the new country. Verse 17, remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt, how he met you on the way and attacked your rear ranks, all the stragglers at your rear when you were tired and weary, and he did not fear God.

Therefore, it shall be when the Lord your God has given you rest from your enemies all around in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven, you shall not forget.

And when you have generationally installed hatred of Amalek, you are going to take over the land of Canaan. And when you finally conquer all the tribes of Canaan and you possess your land and all is at peace, you're not done yet because you're going to saddle up and ride for Amalek.

You're going to take them out until not a single one of them remains, right? So God set his sight on Amalek. Now, does anybody know of a real famous Amalekite in the Bible? There's a couple of famous Amalekites in the Bible.

Haman was, and he was called an Agagite. It wasn't because he was bad at chewing his food. It's because there was a king of Amalek named Agag. Remember what Saul did or failed to do about the Amalekites?

He didn't destroy them all. He even left Agag alive. And then what did Samuel? Remember Hannah's little boy? What did Samuel do to Agag? He hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord. Now, how is that a righteous good act for a prophet and a judge to do?

Because God commanded it. He was demonstrating for Saul what Saul should have done. Okay, this is how we're supposed to treat Amalekites. And then Deuteronomy 23, verses 3 through 6. And it wasn't just the Amalekites that got the special treatment.

In verse 3 of Deuteronomy 23, "...and Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pthora of Mesopotamia to curse you.

Nevertheless, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. You shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days forever.".

And in contrast to the way you treat Moabites and Ammonites is verse 7, "...you shall not abhor an Edomite.". Praise your brother. You shall not abhor a descendant of Esau. You're not going to treat them with a special hatred because, I mean, you guys are cousins.

But if it's an Ammonite, a Moabite, or an Amalekite, you're supposed to hate them. So you see that there is a lot of instruction in the Old Testament that says, yeah, love your neighbor, and that's defined in Leviticus as your Israelite brother, and hate your enemy, and there was a list of different types of enemies that you were supposed to hate.

And that was not a contrast. It wasn't something in the Old Covenant where it says, well, you can either love your neighbor or hate your enemy. Those were consistent. Loving your neighbor contributed to covenant faithfulness of Israel as much as hating your enemy did.

And you put that to the test as you read through the Old Testament and think about how that.

Works.

What would happen if a member of the Old Covenant tried to treat one of their enemies like, oh, just one of my neighbors, one of my brothers? You read the book of Judges. They intermarried with them, hung out with them, they abided with them, and they became all a bunch like them, right?

When Israel treated their enemies as their neighbors, they ended up in all manner of.

What?

Unfaithfulness, idolatry, disaster, and under the judgment of God. They were specifically instructed to hate their enemies. Now, this is not to say that no Gentile ever came into the faith that came under the heading of the Jewish faith.

We remember examples like Rahab and Ruth and so on. But they rejected their idols and turned to the one true living God. The contrast is between the old saying, loving neighbor, hating enemy is consistent, but now here's the new saying, but I say to you, love your enemies, verse 44 of Matthew 5, but I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

Jesus says, love your enemies. Now, it's put into a continuous habitual act, and this should be your new way of life is you should be always loving your enemy. And the reason why is this. The reason for loving your enemies never goes away, so the love should never go away.

How good is your Father? How faithful is your Father? How gracious is God to you? This is your reason for loving your enemies. That doesn't go away, so neither should the love for your enemies go away.

Now, when we think about enemies, Christians, as usual, I think, fall into one of two pitfalls regarding the language of enemies, and I think one is defining far too many people as an enemy of the faith, and the other pitfall is refusing to acknowledge that there are any such enemies at all.

On the one hand, if you get into a personality conflict with someone who doesn't have the exact same peculiarities of belief that you do, pride gets poked, tempers flare, and the temptation is to label them as an enemy of Christ.

And then you can crusade against them until you smoke their ruin on the slopes of Zion. That's not the best way to handle that. On the other hand, we also need to be okay with naming particular people and confessing that they are indeed our enemies.

Now, Paul does this. He's reading. Paul does this. Jesus does this. Particular people are named and said, you are an enemy. Now, why is it important to be able to say that? Because we are instructed to love our enemies, and if I don't know who my enemies are, I don't know how to love them.

Okay?

Loving your enemies doesn't mean denying that they are an enemy, right? You need to know that they're an enemy because you need to know how to love them. And Jesus gives some examples.

Yes, it says, love your enemy.

Yeah, that's the problem, right? Because that's the question for the Old Covenant. It's like, love your neighbor, hate your enemies. You've heard it said that way, but I'm telling you, love your enemy.

Correct, right? And so, when we think about the nature of love, right? So, the definition of love is 1 John 3, 16. By this we know love, that Jesus laid down His life for the brethren, so also we should lay down our lives.

We know what love is because we look at Jesus Christ, we look at the cross, we look at what He's done for us, and so we know what love is. Love is a righteous and sacrificial devotion, that I'm committing myself to somebody in the right way for their good, even if it costs me.

That's what love is. It's a righteous and sacrificial devotion, committing myself to somebody else's good in the right way, even if it costs me. Now, we can do that for an enemy, we can do that for a friend, we can do that for a stranger we just met, we can do that for someone in our family, right?

The flexibility of the nature of love means that we're not called to some sort of uniformitarianism where we have to love everybody in exactly the same way, you know? It's the old, you know, if you have 23 grandchildren, everyone gets one jelly bean because I don't favor any grandchild more than the other ones, but then they all complain about getting different flavors, and it's like, I don't know.

We have flexibility in our love for others that we're not called to—I'm not called to love my wife in the same way that I'm called to love my enemy. I'm called to love them both. That's going to look differently, and that's okay.

It's the same definition of love, same principle of love. I'm committing myself for their good in the right way, even if it costs me, but it's going to be different if it's a fellow Christian or somebody who hates Christ, right?

And there's some examples. So, Jesus says, you know, we're going to—here's the general principle of love your enemy, and I'm going to give you some specific examples to get you started. This is not an exhaustive list, by the way.

This is a wise list. Bless those who curse you. How do I know if someone's my enemy? Well, did they curse you? Might be a good signal that they're your enemy if they curse you. If somebody curses you, cusses you, says vile things about you, how do you respond?

Bless those. Not affirm them in whatever they want to think, feel, and do, and so on, but say, you know, if you don't have anything else to say after someone cusses you out, it's like, well, you have a very creative way of swearing.

What will heap hot coals upon their heads, you know? I love your accent. Where does that come from? How do we find—be honest, be honest, okay? You don't have to lie. Flattery is a sin. Bless those who curse you, and, you know, be inspired by the way that Jesus dealt with his enemies, right?

If someone badmouths you behind your back, honestly compliment them to their face, right? Honestly, underscore the honestly. Do good to those who hate you, another example. Do good to those who hate you.

Now, when somebody hates you and they do bad things to you, then there's that moment where you're like, all right, how do I get back at them? Again, develop the plan, you know? But rather, Jesus is saying, make plans and execute these plans, do good to those who hate you, right?

Brainstorm about how to do good to those who hate you, and then follow through. Act in goodness to them. If they gossip you and avoid you and brood and belittle you, invite them for a meal,.

Right?

And this last one, I think, is the starting point. It's the last one listed, but I think it's the starting point to get us moving in all these things. I mean, I don't know how to do good to those I haven't prayed for yet.

I don't know how to bless those who have cursed me unless I've prayed for them. How do I love someone who is my enemy unless I've prayed for them? This is so basic. Pray for those who spite you and persecute you.

So, the hurts and anxieties connected with my enemies are naturally there, must be brought to the Lord so that I may leave them there with Him and gain the wisdom I need to interact with my enemies. All, I think, has to start with prayer.

So, thankful for the gift of prayer. Thankful to come with boldness and confidence to the throne of grace and mercy in my time of need. And then we have this application, verses 45 through 48. So, the new saying is, love your enemies.

Here's some examples of how to get started. And then verses 45 through 48 give a robust explanation and anticipation for the following two chapters of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, do this that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?

Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. So, one thing I want to note is that verses 45 and 48 are in parallel talking about the.

Father.

And then the middle two verses parallel each other about, you know, have you begun thinking about the way you relate to others? And is that really genuinely good? But this attention given here about the Father in heaven is first featured in the Sermon on the Mount in verse 8, chapter 5, which is interesting given this context.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Now we're here to the end of the chapter here. And we're talking about peacemakers, since when you love your enemies, you're acting as sons of your Father in heaven.

So, Jesus has kind of come full circle here. He also mentions our Father in heaven in verse 16, reminding us of where we ought to put our attention. Chapter 6 of Matthew, this next chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, verses 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 18, 26, and 32 all talk about the heavenly Father.

So, you can tell that right here Jesus is bringing forward this theme of having God as our heavenly Father, as those who belong to the kingdom. And this is going to play a very important role when we think about how we live.

What our motivation is and who it matters to that we live this way. Now, I want us to think about the concept of favor in verses 46 and 47. You see the pattern there. Jesus' general statement, you know, if you love those who love you, what reward have.

You?

And that's how the Pharisees and the scribes were operating. After all, they're citing Moses, love your neighbor as yourself, right? It's like, hey, you know, we're both Israelites here. We're supposed to love each other, and there's a reciprocal reinforcement there.

And Jesus says, you know, even those scummy tax collectors do that. When they have their tax collector conventions and they all get together, they're all buttering each other up too. So, how is it that the scribes and Pharisees are any more righteous than the tax collectors they so despise?

And why would you buy into that model? Because He's already talked about that the righteousness of His kingdom is something far superior. And so, He wants them to think about the Father rather than just getting favor from men, which is where verses 45 and 48 come in.

Now, He says that we should love our enemies.

Why?

That we would be sons of our Father in heaven, meaning that we're going to be living out like father, like son. Remember that expression?

Right?

Like father, like son, coming from here. We want to mimic our Father, right? Sons like to mimic their dad. If I do anything repetitively, I know my youngest son, Jack, is going to start doing the exact same thing.

He just sees it. He mimics it. And Jesus says, and He's about to talk to them about, you know, about prayer and pray like a toddler. So, He's not, you know, upgrading this idea of son too far. He's saying, be like little children imitating their father in this.

You're imitating your heavenly Father when you love your enemies. Why is that? Well, because you noticed that God makes His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

And isn't that irritating? I mean, isn't that irritating? We don't like to see the big, wicked boogeymen prosper, right? Have all this prosperity, have all these businesses, have all this farmland, have all these things.

And look, another quarter of profit, right? Once again, they've had good fortune. It's like, why doesn't God just send a thunderstorm over there and just hit them with a.

Bolt of lightning?

Well, once upon a time, God did. Long time ago, God looked upon the earth and saw that it was filled up with violence. And so, He determined to fill it up with water and to flood the earth because the every intention of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually, Genesis 6 says.

And so, God flooded the earth. And after the flood was concluded, He said, I will never again flood the earth with water because the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, He says in Genesis 8.

And so, He said, we're going to continue this though. I'm not going to flood the earth. I'm not going to disrupt the seasons again. You're going to have day and you're going to have night. You're going to have the seasons.

You're going to have the planting and the harvest. You're going to have the rain. You're going to have the winter. You're going to have all of that. That's going to continue. God particularly promises the continuation of life on earth, not because we deserve it.

He clearly says we don't deserve it. But God says because of His grace, because He's merciful, because He's gracious, He is going to send the sun, the warmth of the sun. He's going to send the rain. The seasons will continue.

And all these people who deserve to die are going to receive His sunshine and His rain. And what is the sign that God is going to continue doing this? When we get a little nervous about those storms that seem to threaten us from time to time, is the rainbow, is the rainbow.

Now, we talked about that a little bit last week, that in this quest for justice, and often when we want to take justice into our own hands and make it vengeance, we still must remember that justice is amply handled in the hands of God.

He has appointed magistrates to punish evildoers by the sword, but all of the justice systems in the world, which we find so lacking and unjust so often, is always done under the auspices of God's rainbow reminding us, hey, we all deserve to die, and that life itself is a precious gift.

And let's not forget who the judge of all mankind is when you are very disappointed, and rightly so, disappointed in human justice systems. Let's remember who is the just one over all. And again, that theme comes back here as Jesus begins to talk about the Father in heaven who makes His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

And that if we love our enemies, then we are filling out that fullness of what we're supposed to be, that if we will love our enemies, we're doing so with an eye to who God is, loving Him supremely. And isn't it the hardest thing to do to treat our enemies rightly?

If we're supposed to love others rightly, the hardest people to love rightly are our enemies, aren't they? But if we will love God supremely and love others rightly, remembering that all that we steward in this creation is a gift from the Father in heaven, that's why it says we're perfect, the idea of mature, fully well-rounded.

We're made in the image of God. We're made in the image of God. And if we can love God the most and love others right and take care of the things that God has entrusted to us, aren't we living to the fullness of what God has made us to be, made in His image?