Last week we talked about the countercultural teachings of Jesus that we find in the Sermon on the Mount.
And in particular, we discussed Matthew 5:38-42, where our Lord tells us that when we are insulted, we are not to retaliate.
And, when someone tries to take us for our stuff, our possessions, we are to give more than expected.
And when someone imposes on our time or our energy – our freedom – we should serve that person beyond the request or the order.
And we discussed giving to those who would borrow from us, give to the one who asks. Don’t hold on to stuff. Give to those in need.
And again, all of Jesus’ teaching seems to cut against the grain but last week’s topics really drive a wedge between the western mindset of my rights, my stuff, don’t tread on me! And they say it is time that we as Christians as Christ followers look at life in a whole new light.
In America, we say; if someone slaps you or insults you, stand up for yourself. Get your revenge. But God says NO! He says you trust me to be your vindicator!
In today’s culture we say if someone tries to sue you for your stuff, you counter-sue. Not only hold on to what is yours, but also take from them what is theirs.
But God says NO! He says be different, so different that people will have to question your motives.
Be countercultural. And, friends, there is hardly anything more countercultural in our lives today than a person who doesn’t hold onto their possessions with a tight fist. Loosen your grip and people will start asking “Why? Why do you react that way?!”
And in this world, even in the church sometimes, we are told not to help the poor. We are told it was their own bad choices that got them where they are; let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Or, we’re told not to give because those who are in need will likely waste what is given. But, God says, that’s not how Christ Followers behave!
Yes, you may be taken advantage of once in a while. Yes, a couple of the street corner beggars may waste what you’ve given them. But remember, it isn’t your money or my money or your stuff or my stuff anyway. Everything we have belongs to God.
Furthermore, we must always remember how destitute we were when we first asked Jesus to help us. That’s how the Sermon on the Mount began, remember?
Matthew 5:3: "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
How can anyone come to Christ with a humble and impoverished spirit, in need of compassion and in need of mercy; how can that person – me or you — ever find the love of God and then turn around and refuse to show the same kindness to others?!
But, we do it all the time, that’s why Jesus just keeps on driving home the same points again and again and again.
And tonight we are going to keep driving home the point that we are to be people that are in the world but not of the world, we are to be completely set apart as the children of God.
Now that does not mean that we build a commune and hide out and wait for Jesus to come back and say to Hell with the rest of those poor saps. No we are to be set apart by way of our response to the world. We are to be set apart in the way we choose to live.
We are to be set apart by being countercultural.
Now, if you thought the teaching was hard to accept last week, this week will be a doosey. This is the passage that will separate the men from the boys, and the women from the girls.
And before we get to it let me point out that, there are some teachings that those following Jesus had a hard time with. Sometimes He would say things and people would just say, “Sorry, Jesus, that’s too much for me to handle,” and they would turn away.
One time it was when he told a rich man to sell all his possessions and follow Jesus.
Another time He was teaching on His upcoming sacrifice for our eternal life and Jesus told everyone that His flesh was the bread of life and His blood was the living water. He said in John 6, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood.”
And this kind of teaching just turned people off, they said it’s too hard to understand or it is too hard to live out and they walked away.
Now, tonight’s teaching may not cause you to storm off. But as you try to put it into practice, some of you may give up and say, “That’s it! This is too hard, I give up.”
In order to keep that from happening we will discuss a little later HOW we can actually put these words into practice.
But first, let’s get to the passage.
Matthew 5, starting in verse 43: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Impossible! Right? It is the mantra of the churchgoer today. We all say it. I’m not perfect. Only Jesus is perfect.
But we’ll get to that. Let’s break the rest of this down.
Matthew 5:43
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
If you’ve been with us for a few weeks you’ve seen a pattern. Jesus says, You’ve heard it said…But I tell you…”
And what He’s doing is correcting wrong teaching.
He said that about their teachings on murder and anger. He said that about their teachings on adultery and lust. He said that about their teachings about marriage and divorce, oaths and promises, vengeance; and now He says it about their teaching on love and hate.
Now, the teaching on love your neighbor was correct, that was from Lev. 19:18 “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”
But, then the religious leaders of the day diverted from the word of God and made up their own rule to go with Love you neighbor. And this rule they made up fit in very well with their society and with ours today. They said love your neighbor and Hate your Enemy.
To which Jesus says to them and to us, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, that’s not the word of God. You’ve got to stick with the word of God.”
For example, in Exodus 23:4-5 we are told: 4 "If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him.
5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.
So Jesus says, don’t hate your enemies. Love them and pray for those who persecute you.
And even that is two pieces. Love and prayer.
Love is an action. Love is actually stretching out our hand to help.
Love is using our words to build up our enemy, not to tear them down – and that includes when they are around and when they are not around.
Love is avoiding the things that annoy the other person when those things can be avoided. In other words, you and I know what buttons to push to set people off. You may have done it to your brother or sister on long car rides, you may do it to a co-worker you don’t like, you may do it to your spouse. Love is NOT pushing those buttons on purpose. Love is an action.
And then we have prayer. Pray FOR those who persecute you. For, not against them.
I’m gonna let you in on a prayer that I learned that has helped me immensely. I didn’t learn this from a Christian, but I see nothing heretical about it, so here it is: “God, bless them (my enemy) and heal me.” Say it with me…
That is “God, I’m not praying that this person receive your wrath, instead, bless them in what ever way is within your will. I pray the same mercy will fall on them as I have been gifted with.” And, “God, heal me. I have unforgiveness in my heart, or self-righteousness, or selfishness, or anger, or…. Please wash my heart clean and allow me to return to fellowship with you, unencumbered, unblocked by my own sin.”
Pray for your enemies. Moving on.
Do all of that, so: 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
This goes back to being the children of God, the representatives of God in the world. We are to be shining His light, being ambassadors of His love and carrying the message of reconciliation.
Then He gives an interesting piece about the rain and the sun. Those are just basic elements of life. We all need the rain and the sun and He gives those things to everyone, even the people that rise up against Him and say He doesn’t exist, or who mock His power. He loves them all enough to provide the basic elements of survival — even to His enemies.
So too, we should be putting forth at least the basic level of civility and mercy and compassion.
I’m not saying invite them to your get togethers, although you certainly could. I’m not saying confide in them with your deepest and most intimate thoughts — if they really are your enemy that would be foolish. I’m not calling you to that and neither is Jesus. What He says is, there should be a general level of love a base line that everyone receives from us if we are Christ followers. That goes for our loved ones, and strangers and our enemies.
And, then He jabs all of us. We like to think that we are doing well; we like to think that we deserve a pat on the back when we show love to our friends and loved ones.
We talk about taking so and so out for lunch. Those who know we helped someone out with their power bill or their mortgage payment applaud us.
These are nice things to do, But Jesus says: 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
He says, that’s all well and good, but that’s a cultural response, that doesn’t raise questions that doesn’t point to God, that just points to us being generous. People will likely give you and me the praise for those things.
Instead we are to show that kind of love to those people that have wronged us. To those people that have come against us.
People should have to scratch their heads and just be confused and have to ask “Why?” once in a while because of the things we are doing to show love; because of the words we are saying to show love and because of the things we are NOT saying out of love toward our enemies.
Then Jesus really knocks one out of the park. He really goes against the teachings of the world, maybe, and the church for sure: 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
And again, we say Impossible! Our fallback response when we sin and when our brothers and sisters in the faith sin is, “Hey, lighten up. Nobody’s perfect.”
We all say it. I’m not perfect. Only Jesus is perfect.
And you know what, It is true that we are not perfect. But Jesus commands us here not to take solace in that. He says, “Be Perfect!”
What do we do with that?
Well, this is how I see it. Really, this is how Christians have seen it for centuries. We can’t do this. In fact we can’t do any of this. Not without help.
Jesus says that to be saved we must put our faith and trust in Him and believe that He is the Lord and that God raised Him from the dead. But we are also told that we were dead in our sin. So how does a dead man, how does a dead woman make a conscious choice to believe?
We have been told in this first chapter in the Sermon on the Mount to be humble, to hunger and thirst for God, to forgive, to be pure, to be peacemakers.
We are told to rejoice during the hard times that will be coming in this life, we are told to be more righteous than the most religious people that we know.
We are told not to hold onto anger and not to say hateful things to people. We are told not to lust even in our own minds, and we are told to honor our marriage covenants.
And finally, Jesus sums it all up and we are told to be PERFECT. Just as the Father — Just as GOD is perfect!
It’s impossible! I can’t do it! You can’t do it.
Time and time again I’ve tried. And time after time I’ve failed. For every step forward on my own strength and on my own power, I end up going many more steps back.
I…we can’t be perfect. Not without help.
Not without the help of God.
You see, it is by faith in God that we were saved from Death and saved from Hell, an eternity apart from God. But that faith was only available to us by the grace of God. The very faith that saves us is completely out of our hands, it is not of our works, not even our own choice. It is by God alone. Praise Him for including us and allowing us to find that faith.
And then once we understand that we depend on Him for our very salvation. We then proceed to put our dependence on him for everything else.
We say, Father God, thank you for your commands that we find in the Scriptures. We understand that this is the way we have been designed to live. We understand that this is our roadmap to freedom from the bondage of sin and earthly pursuits in our lives.
But, Lord, we need your help to walk these commands out, because the world is still trying to grow up around us like weeds in a garden to choke out your light, Father God.
We thank the Lord for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the life of every believer and we ask that we be made more aware on a day-by-day, moment-by-moment basis — more aware of the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to pursue the perfection He has called us to.
We can do it, if we let God the Spirit take the lead.
To close let’s read Philippians 3:10-14 (New International Version)
10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have I already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Let us all press on Press forward Let us all strain forward for the prize. Let us pursue Christ and His love, because in it we will find the perfection He has called us to.
Let’s pray…
