Love Your Enemies, Part 2

You want to know something, people? Who's your neighbor? Your neighbor is anybody who needs you.

That's it. Anybody in my path with a need constitutes my neighbor. Not because they believe what I believe or think what I think or belong to my group. God loved us when we were enemies and He died for us and it's that very love that we're to have for others. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It could be a co-worker or someone at church or maybe even your own brother, sister, or spouse. It could be any number of people with one thing in common. They don't exactly treat you like a friend. In fact, they may treat you badly when all you're trying to do is show them Christian love. Maybe you think it's best just to avoid them, but does Scripture really allow you to insulate yourself from your enemies?

John MacArthur considers that today, continuing a timely study he calls Love No Matter What. But before the lesson, John, you have details to pass along to our listeners, specifically what they'll hear as they tune into Grace to You in February. We always say we're unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, so talk about why you teach the Bible verse by verse the way you do. Because that's the way God wrote it, verse by verse.

I'm just following the script. Since every word of God is pure, every word of God is true, since all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, God breathed, you have to deal with every word. The faithfulness of any preacher of Scripture is that he takes into consideration everything in the Scripture. It doesn't mean you get stuck on and and of, although sometimes you do, because it has so much to do with an accurate interpretation.

And since every word is true, and since every word comes from the mouth of God, we have no responsibility greater than to be faithful that in our preaching and in our teaching we unpack Scripture in its very most detailed way. So we're going to do that. We're going to keep doing it, and we're going to do it in February. This is coming up since today is the first day of that month, and today through the 15th.

We're going to continue our series, the current series, Love No Matter What. That's going to go on for the next couple of weeks, and then on the 16th we're going to move into a helpful time of Bible questions and answers. And I'll be fielding questions from the Congregation of Grace Church, kind of an open mic, and you'll have a great time listening to those. Then on the 19th of February and the 20th, a brand new interview, Signs of the Times. As you look at the chaos in the world, you see people going from bad to worse, you hear of wars and rumors of wars, you probably wondered, is the Lord returning soon? Where are we on God's timetable?

Why all the focus on Israel? What does this mean? How can I stay solidly grounded and sure-footed and joyful through it all? We're going to give you some help with that. So that's on February 19 and 20, Signs of the Times interview.

And then from the 21st to the 26th, How to Live in a Dying World. What does it mean to be salt and light? How can you be the kind of influence in the world that God wants you to be and equips you to be and make a real difference? You'll find out in this practical study from the Sermon on the Mount. And finally, from February 27 to March 1, What Must I Do to Be Saved? When a lawyer, a scribe who specialized in interpreting the law of God asked Jesus what it takes to inherit eternal life, the Lord's response was more than he ever expected. So we're going to dig into Luke 10 and find out what the answer to the question is, What do I do to inherit eternal life?

This should help you and energize your evangelism. Great days ahead. Stay with us through February. Thanks, John. It's going to be a great month here on Grace To You. And now let's get to today's message from the series, Love No Matter What.

Here again is John MacArthur. God has some very special and important things to say to us, to me through this. Let me read for you verses 43 to 48 of Matthew chapter 5, and you follow as I read. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he maketh his Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them who love you, what reward have ye?

Do not even the tax collectors the same? And if ye greet your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the heathen so?

Be therefore perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect. Let's go back to Genesis chapter 13 and see how the Old Testament honored this kind of attitude toward an enemy. Abram and Lot had a dispute. There were too many of them and their animals to occupy one plot of land. And verse 6 says that they had so many flocks and so many tents and herds and all of this that the land was not able to bear them.

They couldn't dwell together in the same place, for their substance was great so that they couldn't dwell together. And there was a strife between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and the herdsmen of Lot's cattle. So here you have enemies. You have a minor warfare.

How is it to be handled? Bitterly? Antagonistically? Watch Abram and you see the virtue of the man. Verse 8, And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen. For we're brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt take the left hand, then I'll go to the right.

Or if thou depart to the right hand, then I'll go to the left. Now listen people, that is an amazing reaction. Abram ended the fight right there because he said, Lot, you take whatever you want and I'll just take what's left. You pick out the best and you take it. That's how to treat an enemy.

Give them the very best that there is. And so Lot checked around, lifted up his eyes in verse 10, beheld the plain of Jordan, well watered everywhere, before, of course, the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It was like the garden of the Lord, the land of Egypt, as it comest unto Zoar, which is a very fertile area of Egypt. So Lot chose all the plain of Jordan and Lot journeyed east and they separated themselves, the one from the other. Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom. But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.

Now we could talk a lot about the stupidity of Lot pitching his tent toward Sodom and how it eventually got closer and closer until he was in Sodom and finally he was out of Sodom and Lot's wife was a pillar of salt. But the point that I want you to see here is the fact that Abraham treated an enemy as the Bible would want us to treat one. He loved him as he loved himself.

Instead of seeking the land for himself, he sought the best for his enemy. The Bible honors that kind of virtue. 1 Samuel chapter 24 offers us another illustration. I want you to notice the first six verses. It came to pass when Saul was returned from following the Philistines that it was told him saying, Behold, David is in the wilderness of En-Gedi. Now Saul was busy chasing David. David was a threat to Saul's throne, a threat to his security. Saul had been trying to kill David, trying every way he could to find David and murder him. And so they said, David is in the wilderness of En-Gedi.

Go and find him. That's where he is and you can get him there. So Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and these are the crack troops, the best guys, the sharpshooters, you know, the SWAT team. Off they went to find David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats.

And by the way, I've been to En-Gedi and it is a treacherous and rocky area. He came to the sheep coats. And by the way, sheep coats were little stacks of rocks that they would put at the front of a cave to act like a fence to keep the sheep in. And there was a cave there and Saul went in to cover his feet.

Now that is a Hebrew expression for visiting, I don't know how else to put this, the men's room. What they did was they just went in and I don't know how to describe this delicately, but I'll give it a shot. Anyway, they had these long robes and they went in and they would just kind of get down on their hunches and they would put their robe around them covering their feet.

That's literally what they did. They had sort of a portable commode. And so Saul went in to this particular cave by himself to deal with that particular necessity. And while he was there, David and his men were in the same cave.

Interesting circumstance. And they were along the sides of the cave while Saul was in the middle. And the men of David said to him, Behold the day of which the Lord said. I mean, they said, This is it, David. I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand.

They said, The prophecy has come true. Here he is. Of all things, we are in the middle of nowhere in the wilderness of En-Gedi and in walks our enemy to cover his feet. He is there literally a sitting duck.

Well, what happened? The men of David said unto him, This was the fulfillment of the prophecy. Do unto him as it shall seem good unto thee. He's your enemy. Get him, David.

This is your moment. You know you're God's anointed. Get rid of this evil man, this enemy. So David arose and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe stealthily.

He snuck up behind him and took a snitch out of his robe. You say, Well, that David isn't what we had in mind. Well, we're not taking pieces of his garment bit by bit.

We'd like to do away with him. But just to show you the sensitivity of David's heart, it came to pass afterward that David's heart smote him because he had cut off Saul's skirt. He was convicted about that. And he said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master. The Lord's anointed to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.

You can feel that way about an enemy. After all, he's the creation of God. He's beloved by God. And David restrained his servants with these words and permitted them not to rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave and went on his way. David also rose afterward and went out of the cave and cried after Saul, saying, My Lord, the king! Oh, man, can you imagine the jolt that must have been to Saul? And when Saul looked behind him, David stooped with his face to the earth and bowed himself.

Amazing. He paid homage to this evil enemy, and David was a godly man, as was Abram. You see, virtue behaves toward an enemy as we would behave toward a friend.

Because an enemy is a neighbor. I want to show you one other illustration, 2 Samuel 16. And again, it's David.

2 Samuel 16, verse 5. And this must have been, oh, I can't recreate the terrible anxiety of this moment in David's life. David was a terrible father. You've got to be a terrible father to end up with an Absalom.

But he did. And Absalom, his son, with whom he was far too lenient, turned out to rebel against him. Absalom came against his own father, wanted to usurp his throne. Absalom not only came against David politically, but Absalom, frankly, broke David's heart. And finally, David just cried out with tears rushing down his face, Absalom, my son, my son, my son, when he heard of his death. But Absalom is after David, and David is running, fleeing from his own son.

David, who is the king. And in the midst of all of this, verse 5 of 2 Samuel 16 says, And when King David came to Bahurim, behold, there came out a man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son of Gerah. He came forth and he cursed continually as he came.

He's a profane man. And he cast stones at David and at all the servants of King David and all the people and all the mighty men on his right hand and on his left. He just started throwing rocks at all of them and cursing foully David. And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Come out, come out, thou bloody man and thou worthless fellow. David apparently was inside the troop a little bit and he was screaming at him to come out. The Lord hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul.

You know why you're getting what you're getting. You know why Absalom has turned against you? Because you dethroned Saul because you took Saul's place. And remember, this was a fellow from Saul's family.

Now you're getting your due, David, you bloody man. And the Lord hath delivered the kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son and behold, thou art taken in thy mischief because thou art a bloody man. Then said Abishai, and Abishai was loyal to David son of Zerah, Why should this dead dog curse my Lord the king? Now apparently dead dog was a bad thing to call somebody.

I mean that's probably the worst epithet Abishai could think of. This dead dog. You find frequently in the Bible that pagans are called dogs. Even in Peter, you hear Peter refer to dogs looking up their vomit.

And he has in mind apostates who go back to their evil ways. And to call somebody a dog was a terribly derogatory term. But to add the term dead dog is really strong. But we even say that, boy, so and so is a dead dog.

We use it in a little different term, but this is where it came from. Why should this dead dog curse my Lord the king? Let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head.

This was a pretty primitive time and that's what normally would have happened. And the king said, What have I to do with you, you sons of Zerah? So let him curse, because the Lord hath said unto him, Curse David, who shall then say, Why hast thou done so? What David is implying here is maybe the Lord told him to do this. You see, David is feeling the guilt of his failure with Absalom. And he's saying, How do you know but that God has not asked him to do this?

David said to Abishai and all his servants, Behold my son who came forth of my own body, seeks my life. How much more now may this bend you might do? In other words, look, I could care less about this guy. The pain is from Absalom. What he adds to the thing is minimal to me.

Don't bother with it. Let him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has bidden him. And I'm sure this is David's feeling. Whether the Lord did or not, I don't know, but he feels that he must have.

It may be that the Lord will look on mine affliction and the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day. And as David and his men went along the way, Shimei went along on the hillside opposite him and cursed as he went and threw stones at him and cast dust. And the king and all the people who were with him became weary and refreshed themselves there.

But David's heart was right at that moment. He loved with the love the Old Testament taught. The Jews were dead wrong in Jesus' day. The Old Testament didn't teach to hate your enemy.

That was their evil, prideful, prejudice teaching that. Neighbor encompassed even an enemy. Go back with me for a moment to Matthew and let me share this with you. Chapter 5, verse 10.

Earlier in the sermon, Jesus had said similar terms. Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake. How should you react?

How should you react? Verse 12, retaliate, know what? Rejoice. Be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven.

That's what David said. Perhaps the Lord will requite me someday for a right reaction to this cursing. In whatever human relationship you're in, that's what God is after, that right reaction. Maybe you've got conflict in your marriage. Maybe you've got conflict in your family between the children and the parents. Maybe you have conflict on the job. Maybe you have enemies at home and you have enemies at work and people who speak against you. Maybe a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law or a brother or a sister or another part of your family speak evil of you or your children and it's so easy in our human world to get these things going and these enemies and we become bitter and we begin to be hostile and instead of reaching out in love to the people, instead of seeing them as our brother and our neighbor as the Old Testament does, we begin to see them as the enemy and we miss the point of what Jesus says and we fall to the low level of Pharisaic religion.

That's not to be. So the Old Testament was very clear and Jesus is in absolute agreement with it. Can I introduce the teaching of Jesus to you in verse 44?

And I'll just introduce it today and we'll go into it next time. We saw the tradition of the Jews in verse 43. We saw the teaching of the Old Testament implied behind verse 43 but perverted and now the teaching and the truth from Jesus Himself. This is the Lord's corrective to the error of the Jewish system and He gives five principles to correct the faulty love of the Pharisees and the scribes. Five short statements, sequential statements that ascend to the very highest statement of all.

They have a beautiful flow and ascent and we'll see that next time. He says five things, let me just give them to you. Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, manifest your sonship, exceed your fellow men and imitate your God. And people, when we finally ascended to that fifth principle, you are going to see perhaps in a way you've never seen before what Jesus meant when He said you're to love your enemies. It is the most powerful statement, I believe, in the New Testament about the meaning of love.

Let's just take that first one for a moment. Verse 44, but I say unto you, love your enemies. Jesus speaks with authority here, He is the Lord of the Law, He is the Son of God. One of the things we learn in Greek is that Greek verbs change their form depending upon what pronoun is used. For example, you don't need pronouns like I, you, he, she, it, they, them, your, etc. in Greek because the verb form indicates which pronoun is proper. It's in the ending of the verb. So whenever the pronoun is put in front of the verb, it is put there for intensification.

It would have been enough to just have a verb form. I say unto you, I say could be several verbs, could be say lego, I say unto you. But if it is ego, lego, it means I say unto you and the emphasis is not on the saying, the emphasis is on the sayer. And so Jesus, by using the emphatic pronoun, is intensifying the fact that He speaks authoritatively. I say unto you, setting Himself up as one who can speak over against their system no matter who their teachers have been, no matter how long a list of renowned and well-meaning and well-known and astute rabbis there have been, I say unto you. And so He is the Lord of the Law.

And what does He say? The first principle as we move up the steps, love your enemies, love your enemies. And the idea we learn from the Old Testament is that your enemy is your neighbor. To illustrate that, look with me at Luke 10, Luke 10 verse 25. A lawyer came to Jesus, he said, what do I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, what is written in the law? And he said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, with all thy mind, and thy neighbor... what?... as thyself. Now the question is, the lawyer says, all right, if what you want me to do is love my neighbor as myself, fair question, verse 29, who is my... what?... neighbor?

Who is it? You want me to love my neighbor, who is it? Jesus said, let me tell you a story. A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and this man going down fell among thieves who stripped him of his raiment, wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead.

They beat him up and robbed him and left him on the road for dead. By chance there came down a certain priest that way and when he saw him, he passed on the other side. Now a priest was a man who represented God to the people, a man who stood in the place of God. A priest was one who connected people with God. A priest of all the people in society should have been one to behave as God behaved. He was God's representative. And the priest came along and he saw the man and he said, that man is not in my group. And he went to the other side of the road. Who wants to touch him?

He's not my neighbor. One of the rabble Jewish people who's probably not even belonging to my religious party. He was followed a little later by a Levite, one who was of the great heritage of the Levitical priests as well. And when he was at the place, he came and looked on him and passed by on the other side and he said, he's not in my group either.

Off they went. But a certain Samaritan, and that word conjures up all kinds of thoughts because the Samaritans basically were a race of people. Basically they were Jewish people who intermarried with the pagans who infiltrated the northern kingdom. They became half-breeds and the most despicable thing to a purebred Jew was for somebody to defile the uniqueness of being a Jew by intermarrying with a pagan.

Can you imagine? The Jew wouldn't even enter a Gentile house. The Jew wouldn't even eat with a Gentile utensil. The Jew wouldn't even eat food cooked by a Gentile. They wouldn't even go into a Gentile house because they believed the Gentiles aborted their babies in those houses and they were desecrated places. They believed the wildest and craziest things about the Gentiles and they despised them. When they came back to their own country, they would shake the dust off their garments because they didn't want Gentile dust dragged into their land. And when they went from the south to the north, they would go across the Jordan, up the east side and cross over at the top so that they wouldn't have to go through Samaria. They didn't want to defile themselves with that polluted land. And here came a Samaritan, an enemy, who would look at that bleeding Jew and say, "'Moy, good for him.'"

It's about time some of them got their due the way they've treated us. But the holy pious priest and Levite didn't see him as a neighbor and the despised and hated Samaritan did. And he went to him and bound up his wound, verse 34, and poured in oil and wine and set him on his own beast, brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the next day when he departed, he took out two denarii and gave them to the host and said, "'Take care of him and whatever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.'" Boy, he was magnanimous, wasn't he? He got involved and he bound up his wounds and he loved him and cared for him, put him on his beast and led the beast to the inn and paid the fare at the inn and said, "'I'll pay the rest when I come back, if it's more,' "'Which now,' says the Lord of these three, "'thinkest thou was neighbor to him that fell among the thieves?'

He said, "'He that showed mercy on him,' then said Jesus unto him, "'Go and do thou likewise.'" You want to know something, people? Who's your neighbor? Your neighbor is anybody who needs you.

That's it. Anybody in my path with a need constitutes my neighbor, not because they believe what I believe or think what I think or belong to my group. God loved us when we were enemies and he died for us, and it's that very love that we're to have for others. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary.

As you've seen today, God's standards of love are high. And to help you understand just how high the standard is that God calls you to and equips you for, let me encourage you to download John's current study titled, Love No Matter What, to review at your own pace. It's great material for small group or family Bible study as well.

Get in touch today. You can download the audio and the transcripts for Love No Matter What at our website, gty.org. In fact, at gty.org, you can download any of John's more than 3,600 sermons, all free of charge.

Just search for a topic or a Bible passage that you're interested in and start listening. And thanks for remembering that it's friends like you who help us connect people around the world with biblical truth through radio, television, and thousands of online resources, including our sermon archive, to help bring daily spiritual nourishment to people in your community and beyond. Express your support when writing to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. You can also donate online at gty.org or when you call us at 800-55-GRACE. And thanks also for your prayers for John and the staff. That's really the most important way you can partner with us in ministry. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, with a question to consider. There are a lot of things you might not love, a painting or a hairstyle or some food, but when is it all right not to love a person? Find out tomorrow when John continues unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.