Love Your Enemies

In your Bible, if you look with me to Matthew chapter number 5, Matthew 5, and we're going to read verse 43 down to verse 48. I had a youngster come up to me today and he said, he said, why is church an hour and a half long? To which I replied, you know, it's important to make sure we give God his time and spend time with God's people.

He said, no, I mean, why is it only an hour and a half? My jaw fell to the floor as I lifted it back up and I thought, what a blessing. What a blessing. Matthew 5 verse 43. So this might be a long sermon, I don't know what that's going to do. Verse 43. You're all like, I don't know how I'm supposed to take that verse 43. He says, you have heard that it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. If you read verse 44 with me, but I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. That you may be the children of your father, which 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 you love them which love you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others?

Do not even the publican so? If you read verse 48 also with me, be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect. Our God in heaven, we rejoice with you that Christ has risen from the dead.

We celebrate the reality of his lordship, that he is King of kings and Lord of lords. And today we pray that your word would rest upon good soil. May the soil of our heart be soft and may we receive the word of God to conform and fashion us into the Imagio Dei, the image of Christ Jesus. I pray today if anyone doesn't know you that today might be the day of salvation. I pray that for those who are saved that you would conform and fashion us into the image of your dear son.

I pray that you would be glorified Lord in this service and all this we ask in Jesus name. And God's people said, man you may be seated this morning. Anybody here ever have to deal with somebody who is an enemy in your life? Anybody have enemies that have come against you? Maybe they opposed you, they wanted you to fail. They were people who maybe slandered you, gossiped about you, lied about you on purpose.

Maybe they even detest you. Here our Lord brings to us one of the most challenging statements in all of scripture. He tells us here to love our enemies. And yet it is with that monumental command that God gives here that he offers us a glorious freedom from the bitterness, hate and resentment that can fill our hearts. Today we live in a world that is filled and so often controlled by hate and vengeance. People fighting one with another, some are totally consumed with that.

They've never let go of a situation, they hold it and carry it throughout their life. And they don't realize that hate is slavery. Bitterness makes a terrible taskmaster. Christians whose mouths were created to glorify God and spread the gospel instead glorify hate and spread slander. Instead of seeing the other person as a soul that needs to be saved, they see them as an enemy that needs to be judged. Instead of being led by the Spirit, such a Christian can be led by the flesh.

So today I would ask you to examine your heart. Some today in our world who profess Christ cannot live for God because they're in the bondage of vengeance. They're holding on to a past heard and they're allowing some enemy in their past or in their current life to have more control over them than even the Lord Jesus Christ. Friend, let me ask you, have you allowed someone you don't even like to control you more than the God that you are called to love with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? Consider how foolish to obey anger more than obeying the Lord Jesus Christ.

And why would we allow bitterness and hate into our life when we can have joy and peace from God? Sadly, most of us have done this in our life. We've been captivated by some situation. We've been brought into it. It has begun to control our thoughts, our mood, our behaviors. Sometimes people say, well, that's just between me and that other person. If you have hate and bitterness, it affects and touches every single thing in every relationship and every person in your life. People come out of an embittered relationship in their past and they drag that carnal spirit, that hate, that bitterness and vengeance and they make their current spouse pay for the sins of their previous spouse. And it's not something outside of them that created that, it's something inside of them.

The problem's not external to us, it's internal. And Jesus made clear it is the truth that sets us free. And today I offer you freedom.

This is God's remedy. This is how citizens of heaven can live on earth as citizens of heaven on earth. This is freedom from God. And what you find in verse 43 through 48 is the answer to enemies, is the answer to the pains and injustices that we can face. Now before Jesus gets into this, he says this in Luke 6-27, which is a parallel account of the Sermon on the Mount. Some believe, some theologians believe that Jesus preached this sermon in the different cities that he went to and it became kind of a foundational message, very possible. But Luke 6-27 could have been a different setting for that. But listen to how he introduces this in Luke's account.

In Luke 6-27 he says, But I say unto you which hear, love your enemies, do good to them which hate you. And so he says, I want to tell you, I want you to, those who are willing to hear me, because before you can get to the heart of a person, you have to get into the ears of the person. One thing that an embittered person doesn't do well is they don't listen well. Ever get in an argument with your spouse in the heat of the moment when the rage is really flaring? Do you stop and say, honey, would you like to correct me? I'm sure I've crossed some lines at this point because right now I'm very sensitive to taking whatever is bothering you. I can see that you're very angry. I am boiling on the inside, but I'm ready to listen.

Tell me what you want me to change. Tell me what I did wrong because I am soft-hearted right now and just lay it on me. There's not one person in this room that's ever done that in their life, because we're not ready to hear when we're upset, are we? We're ready to speak, and that's why the Bible says be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, because when we get angry, we shut our ears.

And so Christ calls us to hear what he has to say. I have three brothers. We grew up in a house with all boys, and I got into a lot of fights. I think I was probably made to be an oldest brother, but I landed third in line, and that creates problems. Anybody have kids like that?

My second oldest was probably born to be an oldest child, so I have two first-borns, if you would, if you know what I'm talking about. So I had an oldest brother who I fought all the time. I brought the mouth. He brought the muscles.

I can tell you which one worked the best. He throttled me every single day. I never won, ever, until I got a baseball bat one time, but I still, I thought I won until I went in the house, and boy, my parents laid it on me. I thought I got whipped by him and by you guys, you know. But I remember after getting in fights with him, my parents would sit us down, and they would rehearse to us why we needed to get along and what we were doing wrong, and then they would do some terrible things to us, some horrifying disciplines. They would say, you need to look at each other and say, I love you. I never knew that the words, I love you, could have such hate in them, such venom, you know. And then they would say things like this, give each other a hug.

Oh, I'm like, I don't want to see him, touch him, and then we'd hug, and we'd be like, we're trying to break each other's back. But I can tell you, in those seasons of life, I had no ability to hear the lessons that my parents were telling me. And there are some, perhaps today, that you have some thing that happened in your life that was very painful, very hurtful, and I would ask you today, do you have ears to hear? Do you have ears that are able to receive what Jesus Christ has to tell you today, or do you wish to continue to live as a slave to bitterness and anger, into a person you don't even like, and reject the words of the one you say you love? Let me give you, first of all, what he says and teaches here in verse 43, which is the human standard that was being taught in the day of our Lord. In verse 43, Jesus says, Ye have heard that it had been said, thou shalt love thine enemy, and love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy.

This is the sixth and final, you have heard it been said, but I say, and to use statement from verse 20 down to verse 48. Again, Jesus is contrasting what the Jewish religious leaders were teaching compared to what the standard of God is. And he's pointing out how their standard had fallen short of God's divine standard. Though they had the Bible, they had the Word of God, the Old Testament, they had brought it down to a standard that they could live up to. Some have the false notion also that the Old Testament in fact taught that we are to hate our enemies, but that is not true. God's standard has always been for the believer to love their enemies. Let me give you some Old Testament verses. Exodus 23 verse 4 and 5, God says, If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass, his donkey going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help him. The last thing you would want to do if you saw your neighbor or someone you hated, his animal out, is to take time to stop doing whatever you're doing, sacrifice your time, energy, perhaps resources to return that animal to him.

Finders, keepers, losers, weepers, right? You'd be like, I'm going to add one more animal to my fleet of animals here, my flocks, and that's what your mindset would be. But God says that's not what we're to do. Proverbs 25 verse 21, the Old Testament says, If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat.

If he be thirsty, give him water to drink. Leviticus 19, 18, let's read that together. Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

I am the Lord. Now in Jesus's day, the Jewish teachers, they were called rabbis, omitted parts of the Old Testament scripture. When the Old Testament said thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, they omitted the statement as thyself. One of the Jewish scholars, Maimonides, wrote, If a Jew sees a Gentile, fallen into the sea, let him by no means lift him out, for it is written, Thou shalt not rise up against the blood of thy neighbor, but this man is not thy neighbor. This is the kind, so basically if they saw a Gentile drowning, they said just let him drown.

Sure wouldn't want these guys to be your lifeguard, right? You find the unloving nature that was present in the days of Christ, in the Jewish culture, in the story of the Good Samaritan. When Jesus says, Love your neighbor as yourself, one of the men seeking to justify himself said, And who is my neighbor? To which Jesus responds in Luke chapter 10. He says there was a man who was journeying down to Jericho and while on his journey some thieves came out and beat him and robbed him and left him for dead. And Jesus says it just so happened that a priest came by that way. And you would think, well, how blessed this man would be that a priest would come by, someone who had faith in God, who taught the law of God, surely he would be there to help the man. But the Bible says in Luke 10 31, But he passed by on the other side. And then it says that there was also a Levite, which was part of the priestly tribe, who came and also was there to walk by that way. And you would think, well, good, a Levite, another religious man, hopefully this man will help him.

But the Bible also says in Luke 10 32, And likewise a Levite when he was come to the place looked on him and passed by on the other side. Two men saw this guy on the road who he may have been a Jew, or he may have been a Gentile, but either case they left this man for dead. Jesus then says there is a Samaritan, who a Samaritan is a half Jew, half Gentile. They were despised by the Jewish people.

The Jews hated Samaritans. And the Bible says in Luke 10 33, But a Samaritan as he journeyed came where he was, and when he saw him he had compassion on him. And he went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him into the inn and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host and said, Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spinnest more, when I come again I will repay thee.

He gave the guy enough money to where two pence would take care of the guy for several weeks. And what he did was he treated that man on the side of the road like he would have treated himself. That's what it means to love others as yourself.

Do for them exactly what you would have done for your own self. And Jesus says, Which of them was neighbor? And the man said, The Samaritan.

It was like bitterness in his mouth. And Jesus says, Go and do that likewise. And so in that day, the people, the religious leaders, the spiritual leaders of the day, corrupted the system because they were the standards by which people were trying to live up to, and their standards was it was okay to hate others. I mean, it was a virtue in their day to actually hate Gentiles, to hate other people. They were intolerant.

They were exclusive to their own people. And so that's what you find going on in the days of Christ. Now, in face of this, you have Jesus bringing the divine standard in verse number 44. Look what Jesus says in verse 44. He says, But I say unto you, Love your enemies.

Now, first of all, this presupposes that we will have what? Enemies. You say, Well, I won't have any enemies. I'm too good of a person. Well, if you're a good person, you're probably going to have some enemies. Some people don't like you because you would be so good, right?

I'll never forget a few years ago, I was visiting this dear elderly woman and her husband, they're members of our church, and they're in their 80s, and this lady, I mean, if she walked out in the rain, she would, she's like sugar, she would melt. She is the sweetest, kindest, I mean, just like, and I thought, and she said this to me, she said, she said, You know, for years there was an individual across the street, they just hated us, they hated me, they would say bad things and all this. And I was thinking, How on earth could anybody hate you? You're like butter, like you're just so soft and pleasant and, I mean, just good night. Do you have Satan across the street over here? Like, what is going on? I thought, How on earth could anybody not like you?

But you know what is reality? If there was anybody that we would say, How on earth could anybody oppose them, wouldn't it be the Lord Jesus Christ? I mean, Jesus was perfectly loving, gracious, merciful, He healed people, fed people that were even His enemies. He was so kind, He did only things that were just, and yet the world hated Him so severely, they crucified Him.

They said, Such a man is not worthy to live. And if they did that to Christ, how much more would they do that also to those who follow Him? Jesus said in John 15, He says, If they hate you, they will hate Me.

If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you. Now, the Bible tells us that we are to respond to those who are our enemies with love. And the word love here is the strongest word in the Greek for love.

It's agape or agape love. This is a sacrificial love. This is, I am willing to deny myself. I am willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, if necessary, for your benefit. I will deny myself for your good. I will do whatever is good for you, even at the expense of myself. This is a giving love, this is a sacrificial love, and it is also a love that doesn't seek anything in return. It doesn't say, I'll do this if you do this for me.

It's saying, I'll do this no matter how you respond. Consider someone in your life who is an enemy. When is the last time you sought to deny yourself to make a sacrifice to benefit that person? That's literally what Jesus is calling us to. Preacher, you're telling me I need to love my enemies like that? No, Jesus is. Jesus is.

This is His command. But you don't know what they did to me. You don't know what they said about me. You don't know how much they wronged me.

You know, and I don't know. And I don't want to make light of how offensive people can be. I don't want to make light of how horrible people can be to each other. They can undermine you, they can hurt you, they can cause you to lose your job, they can physically do wrong things to you, they can hurt people in your family, they can slander you, they can mar your name.

There's a lot of terrible things people can do. But I would have to ask you the question, have they wronged you worse than you and I have wronged God with our sin? How has God, who is infinitely wronged by our sin, responded to us? And would you want God to treat you in the same way you have treated their sins?

Would you want God to respond to you in the same way you respond to them? Also, consider what hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness do to you. They control your life. You're a slave. You're a slave.

That's what you are. You have become enslaved to hate. You worship it. Some people love to hate. They love bitterness.

It controls them. They defend it as though it was their faith. And if anybody touches the God of hate in their life, they get angry at that. Because they have a right and you don't know what they... They cry out as though they're the God of their life, the sovereign.

Somebody touched the hem of their garment in some offensive way and now they have forever the right to be angry. Let me ask you, would you rather be controlled by hate toward that person or love toward God? Why would you allow that person to have more power over your emotions, your feelings, and your decisions in life than the Lord Jesus Christ would have power over you?

You say, I don't. Well, if you're not willing to love them and to forgive them and to love others like that, then you are letting their hate, your hate for them to control you more than Jesus. See, I don't like this sermon.

I'm not coming here to make you like it. I'm coming here to tell you the truth because Jesus loves you and so do I. Now, the word agapeo is not a feeling.

You need to understand this is a very important truth. Love in the Bible is not based on feelings and emotions. In fact, love can affect emotions, but you don't have to have any emotions in love. It transcends it.

True biblical love transcends the flaky, feelings-based, emotional-based love that the world defines. That's the basis part of love, the feeling part of it. It's the weakest part. It's the part that can come and go. You eat enough ice cream or you eat pizza too late and your feelings can be terrible about the person the next day.

I mean, it's that flaky. Love is an act of the will. It's not a feeling. It's defined by truth. John Stott said this type of love may involve emotion, but it must always involve action. It is not passive.

It is active. Love is service. It is not sentiment. I like what the missionary Amy Carmichael said. She said, you can give without loving, but you cannot love someone without giving. And that's why the Bible says God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. You know, God, I'm so thankful God didn't just have a feeling of love toward us, but God had an action of love toward us.

Anybody with me? I'm so glad the Bible doesn't say God so had such a strong feeling of love toward the people in the world. I'm thankful the Bible says God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And that's what love does. Now Jesus gives us three actions that the true believer is to make in response to their enemies. Three actions that the true believer is to make in response to their enemies. And again, because love is a choice and it's not a feeling, you don't have to feel it.

You just have to do it. That's why when people tell me, you know, I fell out of love with my wife or I fell out of love with my husband, you're defining that with the false statement that the world has produced. There is no such thing.

The Bible knows of no such language. There is no such thing as falling out of love with somebody. That doesn't even make sense. All that's basically saying is this.

God would say, no, no, no, no. You didn't fall out of love with Him. You chose to stop acting love out upon them.

You stopped serving them. You stopped living out actions because feelings follow willful choice. Feelings were always made for the driver's seat. Feelings were always made for the passenger seat, I should say, or the back seat.

Choice and the will was supposed to be in the driver's seat. So you do what's right and the feelings follow that. And so what you choose to love will become lovely. Now Jesus gives us these three actions that whether you feel like doing them or not, it's not the question. This is just a choice to love. And He says the first thing we are to do in verse 44, He says, But I say unto you, literally, with action, to the sacrifice of yourself and the betterment of the other person, your enemies.

That's what it means. Love your enemies. How? Bless them that curse you. Bless them that curse you?

What's the first thing that usually is affected in our life if somebody really agitates us? You know how it usually comes out? Of our mouth. We slander them. We talk bad about them. We fire back. We PG-13 or just flat-out R-rated material coming out of our mouth.

I mean, it is just a verbal assault, isn't it? I mean, we get angry. We say things.

We shoot off at the lip. And here Jesus says, I don't want you to do that. He says, I want you to bless them. The word bless here comes from a Greek word, eulageo.

It's where we get the English word eulogy from. I've done 130-some funerals in my life. I've buried a lot of people. And I always sit down with a family and I ask them, I say, OK, I want you to tell me about your loved one. I want you to tell me what kind of a person were they?

What are some words that would define who they were? And I'll just sit back and it's a blessing when they begin to say, Mom was faithful. Dad was faithful. Boy, they loved God.

They taught us the Word. They brought us to church. They were faithful to each other. They were faithful to us. They were hardworking. They were kind to other people. They were generous.

They began to just pour out all these things. But I've sat down with some people where it's like, we didn't really have a relationship. We were always distant with Mom. We were distant with Dad. They drank a lot. They always had other priorities. They gambled all the time. They were wasteful with money.

We struggled to have. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to get up and say all that. And they're fighting to find something to honor their Mom and Dad with. Let me ask you a question as a rabbit. What would your kids say about you? If I sat down with your family, I said, I want you to tell me about Dad. What kind of man was he? How did he treat Mom?

How did he treat you guys? What are the words that would define them? If you're a young person today, what I just said doesn't mean maybe as much to you. But if you're in that next stage of life, it starts to mean a whole lot more. You start thinking about that. What would my kids, what would my grandkids say about me?

How would they define me? Would they be able to tell a pastor the things that I had done to love them and care for them? Or would they say, well, Mom and Dad, boy, they worked a lot. They never seemed to have time for us.

I just, you know, there's just not a whole lot of memories there. I've never had anybody die who said, boy, I wish I worked more. I wish I would have gave 70 and 80 hours to that. Let me tell you something.

Be a hard worker and be a hard worker that loves your family. It's not, when people tell me, you know, I worked 60, 70 hours, you think that impresses me? You think that impresses me? There was a day in my life I thought by telling people I worked 60, 70, 80 hours, I thought that impressed people, I thought that was like valuable. And then I realized that's sometimes very stupid and foolish. You think working yourself to death is real honor, really? Why don't you balance your life out enough to where you get rid of some things that you have to pay for and take that time to spend with your family because when you're at that last stage of life, you'll never look back and say, I wish I purchased more stuff and spent more time working to pay it off.

I've never been impressed anymore by people who say that. I say, you might want to think that through again. You might want to think that through again. Work hard with your family. Take them out hiking. Do games. Have things you do with them. Don't just spin your wheels.

That's all extra. That's not in the message today, all right? But Jesus says you need to bless them. You need to speak like you would a eulogy. You need to talk well of them. You need to only highlight the good in them. You need to lift up positive things about them.

When's the last time somebody did something wrong to you and in response you didn't say something evil, but rather you said, you know what, I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say anything evil about them, and instead you would only say something positive. You know what, but I know they're a hard worker. I know that they're faithful to work. Didn't they run their mouth about you at the boss?

Yeah, but you know what, they're a hard worker. I don't agree with what they did, but you know what, I'm going to leave that between them and the Lord. I'm going to pray for those guys, and I'm just going to leave it at that. What would the world think? What would the world think of us if we would respond such ways? You know what they think?

You've got something different inside of you. You're not controlled by hate. Number two, he says, do good to them which hate you. Do good to them. So not only do I need to verbally speak well of them, but now I need to physically do good to them. How do you respond to people who do you wrong, right?

You hurt me, I'll hurt you back. You speak evil against me, I'll speak evil against you back. The last thing we want to do is to do good to them. Some preacher said to do evil for good is human corruption. To do good for good is civil retribution, but to do good for evil is Christian perfection. I'll never forget my wife who was so wronged by this individual that it's one thing when you're wrong, but it's another thing when your spouse is wronged.

You know what I'm talking about? It even makes you more frustrated. I can let stuff go, but then I'm like, ah, she's such a sweetheart. And it's been probably about 10 years ago somebody really wronged her. And I remember it just was so frustrating. Like for me, I was trying to hold it in, just turn it over to God.

I knew like Bible stuff, but it's a whole lot harder to practice what you preach than to preach it, right? And my wife is so gracious. She's always been somebody. I'm so thankful for her. She never holds onto stuff. She never does.

I've been married 20 years to this woman. She never pulls out resentments. She never does that.

She has no, like, she doesn't, oh, you know, that person said this, or I remember 10 years ago, Josh, she doesn't do any of that, ever. It's incredible to me. Such a blessing. God has gifted me with such a wonderful wife. You see me up here preaching, but I can tell you the better half of me is in the service sitting, and she's not even in this service. I didn't even say this in the other service, so I'm not trying to butter her up, okay? Thank God for godly wives. Amen? But I remember this person so wronged her, and that individual ended up having a baby, and my wife made a nice meal for her, brought it over, and gave it to her, and just said, if there's anything else I could ever do for you, just let me know. I just thought, I would never do that. Like laxative and everything. I mean, oh, be shocked.

Are you shocked, really? Yeah, you'd be doing the same thing, yeah. Eat up! Eat it up! Eat all of it.

The pudding's the best, you know. I mean, that's how we think. We want to do wrong, but you know what? Just do good to somebody. You know what Romans 12.20 says? Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him.

If he's thirsty, give him to drink. For in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with what? You know where Paul got that?

He got that out of the Old Testament. Proverbs 25. Have you ever been overcome by some evil that a person did to you? Are you seeking to overcome evil with good?

So either in life we let hate control us, or we let love control us. If there's someone in your life that you just don't like, you perhaps even feel hate toward them, I can tell you one way to overcome that is by doing them good. Go out of your way to do something good for them. Husband and wife, if you have bad feelings toward your spouse, I challenge you to start doing good to them. Serve them. Let me say this. I sat down with a couple this last week, and they said, you know, I just really want to begin to serve the Lord more.

And they had some conflict in their marriage. And I said, I love your heart to serve God. I love that desire. I love your heart to seek counsel. I want you to know the first place you can begin serving God is serving your spouse. I said, you want to know what it means to serve your spouse? It means you're serving Jesus Christ.

Do you know what my first ministry is at Lighthouse? It's not to you, it's to my wife. And then it's to you. And to love that bride, to love her as Christ loved the church, which I fail at all the time. But I deeply love my wife. She is such a gift to me.

And to cherish her and to treat her. And you need to understand this, husband and wives, that how you treat them is exactly how you're treating Jesus. Let me ask you a question. If you went home today and Jesus came and you were going to feed him a meal, what would you do? Would you get his plate out? Would you ask him what he wants to drink? Would you make his plate? Would you clean up after him? Would you do his dishes or would you complain about it?

Nope, you'd do them. If we would start treating each other like we would have treated Jesus, that's what inside of a marriage? Some of us have never thought about that in our entire life. You know in heaven what they said? Lord, when did we see you in prison and come and visit you? When did we see you without clothing and clothing? When did we see you hungry and fed you?

When did we see you thirsty and give you the drink? He said, as much as you did it to the least of these, you were serving me. And if that's true of the least of these, how much more is it true to the one you are to love the most, which is your spouse?

Don't tell me you fell out of love. That's a joke. That's a lying joke from the world. Show me your love for Jesus by loving your spouse. And don't tell me you want to serve Jesus until you start serving your spouse. Is that making sense?

Probably laying in some conviction in here, right? And then the last thing he says to do is not only bless them, do good to them, but thirdly, he says pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. I mean, it gets even easier. Pray for them which despitefully use you. Does anybody feel like praying for somebody who really hurts you? They persecute you.

They use you in some spiteful manner. But you know what? By doing that, we're treating them like Jesus treated us. In Luke 23, 34, Jesus is on the cross and he said, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Never forget, I heard about a… In Philadelphia, there was a lot of crime going on which obviously still is, but it's been decades ago. And there was a group of businessmen who said they got together and began to have Bible study and praying together. And they said, I'm going to challenge you that any enemy in your life, I want you to spend the next 30 days and pray for them.

The next 30 days and pray for them. And there was a Marine in the group who was very outspoken and he stood up and he began to cuss and to swear and he said, I can tell you what, nobody's ever going to have me being kind and being forgiving and all this stuff to my enemies as he's using some foul language. And the head of that group said, I can tell you what, you may not, but he says, don't you tell me you won't until you've prayed for your enemy for 30 days.

Came back 30 days later and that Marine was broken. He ended up giving his life to Jesus Christ and over the years, he became the leader of that group that grew out and began to expand and impact all kinds of groups throughout Philadelphia. When's the last time you truly came and prayed for those who have hurt you? I can tell you today, friends, this altar should be filled with people at Lighthouse who say, God, help me to love my enemies. Help me to do them good. Help me to speak well of them and help me to lift them up in prayer.

Today would be a good day to come and pray for them. Let me give you six closing motivations for loving our enemies very quickly. Number one, what's a motivation for loving my enemy? Number one, I should be motivated to do this because it reveals that I'm a child of God. Look at verse 45.

He says you should do this. He says that ye may be the children of your father which 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. Jesus makes clear here that our love is what reveals our salvation. It reveals that we belong to God. Jesus said in John 13, he said, by this shall all men know you're my disciples if you have love one to another.

That's the evidence. In 1 John 4, 8 it says, he that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love. If you don't have love in your heart for other people, then you don't have God in your heart. How can Christ be in you and his love be absent? The Bible says in 1 John 4, 16, and we know and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. John also said hating our brother reveals we're not a true believer. 1 John 4, 20, if a man say, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he says, he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

Well, that's a pretty clear statement, isn't it? Oh, how I love Jesus and God says, no, you don't. No, you don't.

No, you don't. If you have hate for somebody else, that's not true. After Paul tells us not to be controlled by bitterness, wrath, anger, and to forgive one another, he says in Ephesians 5, verse 1, he says, be therefore followers of God as dear children. That phrase followers is the Greek word mimitai.

It's where we get the English word mimic from. It literally reads this way, be therefore mimics of God. Everything that's true of God, let it be true in you. God's loving, you be loving. God's forgiving, you be forgiving. God is merciful, you be merciful.

God's gracious, you be gracious. Mimic God in everything that's... We are to be the image, conform to the image of Christ, the Bible says. He's conforming us into the imagio Deo. We're to be conformed to Christ's image, to look like him, to walk like him, to have the mind of Christ. And he says in verse 2 of Ephesians 5, how we're to mimic him, he says, and walk in love even as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us.

To walk in love. This is what God does also in verse 45. He pours out his love on all the creation. He says he sends his rain on the just and on the unjust. He doesn't just send rain and sunshine on people that love him.

He sends it on people that hate him too. He doesn't discriminate and that's how we are to respond. If you're not loving anyone other than your own, you have reason to ask, am I really a Christian?

Am I really a Christian? Then secondly, it reveals believers live by a higher standard than the world. Look what he says in verse 46 and 7.

He says, for if you love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others?

Do not even the publicans so? I mean this, the self-righteous religious leaders of that day were good at saluting those who were in their circle. They would greet one another in their circle, but outside their circle, they were just distant from them. They wouldn't talk to them. They ignored them. They didn't care about them. They didn't greet them. They didn't care to greet them. It wasn't any of their business. They didn't care. They were selfish. And so the self-righteous scribes and Pharisees thought they were the standard before God, but they found out they are not.

And this was a verbal smack in the face to them because he says, if you greet only those inside your circle, your friends and close people, he said you're no different than the publicans. You know what a publican was? A tax collector, a Jewish tax collector. In that day, Rome was the authority over Israel. They had dominated them. And so to have a tax franchise, a Jew would buy that from Rome, and then they would tax their own people.

They would keep a portion of it and send the rest to Rome. And so you were hated by the Jews. You were the worst of the...

This was the bottom of the barrel. The publicans were because you basically were a traitor to your own people. And so they were not even allowed to testify in court. They weren't even allowed in the Jewish synagogues, which is basically the Jewish church. They wouldn't even let them in there. So these guys were the outcasts. The only friends the publicans had were other publicans and prostitutes.

That was their circle. He says if you only greet people that you know and you're friendly with and you like and they like you, he'd say you're no different than the people, the lowest citizens of the community. You're no different than the bottom of the barrel group. Your righteousness is no better than theirs. We only salute with kindness and greet those who are brethren.

We have no higher standard than tax collectors. Friends, here we see that God is expecting, listen to me, more out of the believer than he does out of the world. Let me ask you, Christian, do you greet with kindness those outside of your circle? Do you greet with those outside of your circle? If not, how are you different than the world? Sometimes people live their life in their little bubble.

They greet their family. They have their circle of friends. And what Jesus is assaulting here is any type of cliques, us-for-and-no-more mentality. I can tell you something. That is a cancer to God's people.

It destroys things. The last thing you should ever do is come into church, sit down, and have nothing to do with anybody else. People say, well, you know, I'm just a shy person. You know, it's hard for me. I feel uncomfortable.

Well, I would say this in the most gracious and kind way I can. Get over yourself. Did you hear that?

Did you hear that? I'll say it again. Get over yourself. That is a selfish mentality.

I will be as offensive in this service as I was in the early service. You know why we don't share the gospel with the lost world? Well, it makes me nervous, and I get uncomfortable talking to people I don't know. Well, the reason I don't share the gospel with them is because I serve myself in my comfort zone more than their need of salvation. So I'll elevate my own comfort over their need of Christ.

And the reason I don't go and talk to other people, even perhaps in church, and I just kind of stay in my own little comfort zone is because I really don't care about them. Well, that's not fair, Pastor. No, it is fair.

It is fair. You know, there's people that come in here every Sunday hurting, suffering, struggling, and they need somebody to come by and say, Hey, my name's Josh. How are you doing? And one dear lady I said that to today, tears began to fill her eyes, and she said, Pastor, my brother just died last week. Can you pray for me? Can you pray for my family? Well, what if I just came and I said, you know what? I'm just kind of shy, and I'm going to get up and preach, and I'm just going to sit here in my little chair, and I'm going to greet the three or four people around me that I know, and I'm going to leave, and no, no, no, no. That dear lady needs somebody to care about her soul, to care about her family.

There are people that are struggling. Listen to me. Don't leave here just greeting the same people you know. And if I offended you, good. I'm not here to make you like me, which I like when people like me. But I get enough hate mail through the years, I've lost interest.

Plus, I love you enough to tell you the truth. If you came to this city and you were serving in the Marines or in the Air Force, and you started working up here at the base, and you lost your family, and you lost some friends overseas in military, and you came to Lighthouse, you didn't know anybody in this community, and you came down, and you sat in the front row, and you're hurting, and you and your wife are struggling, and you're going through some difficulties, then you came in and sat down, and nobody at Lighthouse came by and asked you how you're doing, and what's your name, and are you new in this community, and made them feel welcome. How would that person feel? These are supposed to be God's people? Well, I went to a bar, and those people greeted me better than the people at church. God forgive us when people down at the bar are more kind and outgoing and friendly than God's people. And all God's people said, Amen.

I'll step on toes all day long. We will not allow cliques. We will not allow some self-focused, selfish personality mindset in this church.

It's not going to work. I'll preach on it until it breaks if I have to. I feel like we have one of the most loving, kind people come in and greet one another.

That has to always be the case. And I can tell you sometimes you are suffering. Sometimes you are hurting. But just come.

You say, but I'm nervous. It's hard for me to look at people in the face. You know why? Because you serve yourself. And I know this is offensive.

Believe me, I know. I'm not like insensitive about it. I'm just going to say it. I don't have time. You know, I run out of time, so I just got to lay it down quick. I could butter you up for 15 minutes and then lay it down, but I'm just going to cut right to the chase, all right?

Give it to you like you get it. And so we need to know the truth. I don't want to get to heaven and find out God, I was selfish. And he says, who else were you serving when you kept to yourself? You weren't ministering to anybody else.

Publicans do that. Lost people, pagans, you're going to be an atheist and act that way. How on earth can you be a child of the king? You know, my brother, my next-order brother, he was so shy in church when we grew up. He would sit in the back row, long hair. He'd put his head down.

You know what? He ran with the rough crowd. I mean, I was bad.

He was worse. But we ran around with the wrong crowd, and he was real outgoing with his friend group. He got in church, man. He just sat like this. I'll never forget a pastor who came up and shook his hand and made him feel valuable, spent time with him.

You know what? I mean, he would take an F in school instead of getting up and giving a speech in school. He was so afraid. But he's preaching to hundreds, five, six hundred people in the church. He started three churches. God has revolutionized his life. What God could do if you just go up and just greet people, what God can do to somebody who feels like they're in a shell, God can open that thing up and say, God, I'm going to turn my life over to you. You use me how you want.

I'm not looking for comfort. I'll take a cross. Jesus died on a cross, and God forgive me, if I just won a three-inch cushion chair with lower lumbar support at a 71-degree rim, I need to be willing to do something for Christ that makes me a little bit nervous.

When's the last time your hands sweat for Jesus? That's what God's calling us to, okay? You say, is there another point here you can move on to?

We'll get there, all right? So you know what would be good today? Janie and Tony are down here. Get down there and say, hey, these are new family members of our church. Hey, join the church. Wouldn't it be good to, before we ran out and ate lunch, run down there and say, hey, I just want to say, so glad you've been saved, so glad to have you part of the lighthouse.

You say, but I'm not even a member. Get down there and let them know you're glad they're here. Ask them anything to pray for.

Just greet one another, love one another, whether that's people around your seat. You know, we've got some elderly people that walk out on crutches in the strollers, whatever you call those things, with the rollers, you know what I'm saying? Not strollers. Okay, don't send me a letter on that. That could be offensive.

That was not meant that way. Next week, I'll be coming out in the stroller, you know, if somebody hurt me. Wouldn't it be good to slow down and let them have the main walkway and open the door for them? You know, you see somebody walk out to the car with them and say, hey, can I open the door for you?

Wouldn't that be a nice thing to do? And so that's the mindset that needs to permeate the culture of lighthouse so that when we leave here and we go into the community, we pour that kind of mindset out upon a community. Thirdly, it reveals God's perfecting work in our life. Look what he says in verse 48. Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven and perfect. I'll never forget when the church was about a year old and we were meeting at the fairgrounds.

We had about 100 people. And I said, hey, I said, you think God expects us to be perfect and everybody in the room's like, no. I was like, raise your hand if you think God expects us to be perfect.

Nobody raised their hand. They're like, no. I said, let's read Matthew 548 and it says, be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

You could hear a pin drop. Everybody's like, oh, we've been deceived. And I said, aren't you thankful? Wouldn't you rather find out now God's standard than stand before him one day and find out his standard was perfection when you thought it was less than that?

Let me ask you a question. If God was okay with you being less than perfect, he would be okay with sin. So if perfection is sinlessness, if he would be okay with any, so is he okay with one lie a day, two lies? Is he okay with one perverted thought? Is he okay with one sinful word? Anybody glad God's standard is perfection? I'm so thankful God isn't okay with sin. You say, well, the problem is I can't live up to that standard.

Right? That's where mercy and grace come in, right? The Bible even says in 1 Peter 1, 15 and 16, be holy as I am holy, God says. His standard is absolute holiness and perfection. And so you know what that should produce in our life?

It should produce three things. The perfect standard of God. It should produce humility in us. It should humble our spirits. It should cause us to be dependent upon God's mercy and realize how much we need him. It should cause you every day to fall on your knees and say, God, thank you for your mercy.

I need it every day. And it should cause us to worship him. Being a Christian doesn't mean you don't fail, friends. All of us fall short in different ways.

Sometimes even terribly we can fall. But it's not the perfection of our life that reveals our salvation. It is the direction. Perfection's the standard.

Direction's the test. And so God has called us to live for him, to follow him. And when we do fall at times and we don't live up to that perfect standard, that we would confess our sins and he's faithful and just to forgive us. Number four, loving our enemies is primarily an act of love to God and secondarily an act of love to our enemies. When you love your enemies, it's not primarily an act of love to them. It's primarily an act of love toward God. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my what? Commandments. And so the driving motive has to be our love for God.

It has to be. And I hope this individual wouldn't mind, but I sat down with someone recently and they shared with me something that just rocked my soul in such a blessed way. And they shared with me how years ago that a couple people had taken the life of their father and how when they began to share that, I was thinking, clearly they're going to ask me, how can I forgive these people?

How can I move past this? I'm so bitter, so angry. I mean, that's what I was waiting for. But instead, that's not what they said. They said, Pastor, I've forgiven them and I'm not even angry with them anymore. I just know that they need Jesus. They need saved. And I want to write a letter to them. They have life in prison. I want to write a letter to them.

Let them know I forgive them and how to be saved. Let me ask you a question. What's the Facebook post that somebody sent you that made them such an enemy of yours? Right?

What did that person do pull out in front of you? It's embarrassing, isn't it? I can tell you, friends, that our lives are a message. Our lives are preaching to people. That is so powerful in my soul to see that. And that is saying, I love God so much, I'm willing to love them. That's what the early church did. When Stephen was stoned, he said, Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing. And he prayed for those that were stoning him. This is an incredible love of God. Just know this. Whoever your enemy is, when you love them, you're loving Christ primarily.

They're secondary. Number five, loving our enemies allows God to rule our hearts and not our enemies. When you get offended or I get offended, we get hurt, somebody wrongs us. If we allow that hate to control us, we allow the enemy to control us. Why would I allow someone I don't like to control me when someone who gave their life for me is calling me out of that enslaved bitterness? Number six, it reveals what and who controls our heart. God can allow, I believe this, I believe God can allow, God can allow enemies in our life to reveal our hearts. You know, anybody ever had that person that's always like, no matter what job you go to, no matter what school you go to, no matter where you go, no matter what neighborhood you move into, there's always that person. Anybody know what I'm talking about? There's like, I thought I left them back in Wisconsin, man.

I thought they were, you know, and they're always there. There's just that personality, that person, that enemy. And I believe God brings those situations into our life because he wants to test us. I had a man tell me this that week, he said, you know, our heart is like a teabag and the trials of life are like the water that boils. God allows trials in our life so that our heart begins to reveal what's really in it. When that temperature turns up, let me ask you a question. What begins to be revealed in your heart?

What shows up? It's easy to say I love God and I love others, but when that trial comes, how do I respond? And then finally, we should love our enemies because we were enemies who were loved by God. Romans 5, 10 says, for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. You need to understand this, the reason that we need to love others is because we were enemies who God and Christ came and he died for us who were the offenders.

The offended one died for the enemy so the enemy might become a child. You're saved today, that's what's happened. Do you have ears to hear today? Do you have ears to hear? Are you Christian? Is your heart clean?

Do you have a co-worker, boss, neighbor, parent, child, ex-spouse, current spouse? We need to bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that spitefully use you and persecute you. I want you to leave here today being controlled by God's love, not man's hate. What decision will you make today will determine what you truly love.

When you become one who becomes obedient to God that shows that you love God but when we become obedient to hate and vengeance and bitterness and all that, we become a lover of self and a lover of sin. Today would be a good day for Christians to come and say, God make me clean, wash me, don't let me hold on to these things. If you're here today and you stood before God and he said, why should I let you into heaven, what would you say? If God said, why should I let you into heaven, would you be ready to give that answer? If right now you say, I'm not quite sure what I would say, I'm going to be standing right down here. We'll have men and women standing at that door and at this door down here. You can just come up and say, Pastor Josh or gentlemen or ma'am, I don't know how to answer that question. Pull you aside in a private room and sit down and show you from the Bible how you can know when your life's over, you'll be in heaven.

Wouldn't that be good to know? Wouldn't that be wonderful to know how to become a child of the king, to know you have eternal life? Today you can know that. Today you could come and be saved.

Let's all stand this morning. Father, we do thank you for your word today. We thank you for the love and the grace that you've shown us through Jesus Christ. Father, I pray that as you examine us, that you would search us, know our hearts, try us, know our thoughts, and if there's any sin in us that you would lead us in the way everlasting. Lord, how easy it is to be gripped by anger, to be gripped by bitterness. Some of these things, even now, people are pushing down.

They don't want to deal with. But all how those things are drug into every other area of life, how much that sin blinds us, how much it controls us, how much the enemy wins. Today may we come and be clean in your eyes. May you wash us. Lord, help us to love you, and in doing so, really understand what it means to love others. Lord, I pray for anyone today that doesn't know Christ, that today might be the day of salvation, that they might come and be saved. In Jesus' name, amen.