The Golden Rule (Part 2 of 2)

Jesus calls us as his followers to love others in a way that is distinctly different from the surrounding culture.

But are we standing out? You read it through just very briefly, then perhaps you will agree with me that Jesus is making clear one essential fact. Namely, that the test of real love is that it should be unselfish. This is quite staggering, isn't it? Do you grasp what Jesus is saying here? I wonder do I grasp what Jesus is saying here? Who love them, who do good only to those who do good to them, and who are prepared to make loans that are safe, aren't any better than the sinners that they like to look down upon.

See this distinction here is so classic. What credit is that to you? Even quotes sinners do that and it's interesting that sinners in your Bible will have two little gizmos around them, whatever those things are. Even sinners do that? Even sinners lend to sinners. You gotta understand the way in which these people would be inclined to spit out the word sinners. Because religious people are always so glad that they're not sinners. You go forward again to Luke chapter 18, the story to which we refer with frequency, because it is almost epigrammatic of the whole emphasis of the Gospel of Luke, the last collector, and what was the Pharisee saying? Well, the Pharisee was saying, God, I thank you that I am not like other men.

That was his big claim to fame. I'm here and I have my robes. I'm here and I have all of my religious stuff.

I've just come from a very good biblical conference, and I've been listening to a number of sermons, and of course my tithing is up to snuff, and I've been really fasting expected of fast, and I am so glad that I am not like that text collector over there. I thank you that I'm not like her. I thank you that I'm different from him. And Jesus says, okay, fellas, listen to the end of this story, it's talking to his disciples. He says, there's gonna be a quiz at the end of this.

Now let me finish the story. There is another guy, he shows up, and he simply says, without lifting his hand, he would have given me a sinner. Now he says, here's the quiz, which of the two men went down to his house justified or accepted by God? Now the answer of religion is obviously and always going to be the man who was not like the other man, who was a wretched sinner. If that had been the answer they had given, then they would have gotten it wrong.

Fortunately, they got it correct. They said, the guy said, Jesus, you're absolutely right. It's really too bad that there is so much of the spirit of the Pharisee that rises in my heart, and I don't know about yours. How I can take comfort in the fact that I do what he did, or I haven't been there like them. And as if somehow or another, that by the sheer externalism of that, I have now advanced my cause with God and simultaneously condemned these poor souls to a dimension of life which is virtually hopeless. That's, Jesus says, listen, if you're tempted to play that love you, if you do good to those who do good to you, if you lend only safe loans and always with the prospect of getting a buck at the end of it, then I want you to understand this. You are actually no different from the very riffraff that you're condemning. You are giving no evidence, he says, of the radical difference that is to mark the words of Jesus without corresponding action is to simply show ourselves that we're in the same class as the others. Do you realize how crucial this is?

I hope you do. Verse 49, at the end of the chapter, as Jesus finishes with yet another story, in order to distinguish very clearly between those who listen to the Word of God, which is everybody that is represented when the group, he said, there are people who listen to the Word of God and they do not put in into practice. Such individuals have built their lives on a flimsy foundation and when the storm comes they're going to come down like a ton of lead, to make metaphors. Those who will stand are those who hear my words and put them in to practice. In other words, there is honor even among thieves.

People who cheat on their income tax are still covering for one another. They're good to those who are good to them. It's not as a result of regeneration.

People are happy to have folks over to their house who like them. That is not a result of regeneration. It's understandable. It's understandable human behavior. And so Jesus says, think it out.

If that, he says to his followers, is the to you. It's not irrelevant. It's not wrong per se. It's nice to have people over.

It's good to be able to do these things. He's not condemning that. He's just saying that to live at the level of the patronal ethics of the culture does not mark us out as the followers of Christ.

We haven't done anything that is credit worthy. That brings us then to the action. The natural. As I said, it's supernatural. It's to a different dimension altogether. And the only way to prove by evidence that we are no longer common sinners, says Jesus here, is to love our enemies. Isn't that what he's saying in this section of the Bible? Most of us who are brought up in the kind of environment in which we are presently finding ourselves this morning Christians on the strength of various things that we did or various events that happened in our lives. Not that these events are irrelevant. We understand them as being precious.

Here's the deal. Jesus is saying that we prove ourselves to be the sons of the most high, not exclusively, not solely, but the application here is clear. We are because common sinners do good to those who do good to them and so on.

We are no longer common sinners and the reason that people know we're not is because of the evidence in our lives. And he summarizes verses 27 to 34 by coming back to it in verse 35 and saying, listen, love your enemies, do good to them and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. This is without question uncomfortable. Love your enemies.

Am I the only one that has trouble with this? And when you preach on something like this it it's like standing on a rake all of the time. Every day you live your life then you stand and start to hit you on the nose, boom, hit you on the nose again. It's like, oh no, I don't want to love those people. I just want to preach about loving those people.

No, I don't want to have to do that. And Christ says, listen, don't get up there and blow smoke. This is first for you if you don't preach it to yourself. Don't preach it to anybody else. The story of the Good Samaritan must have fastened the people on their heels more than many and the story that Jesus told.

I almost can't wait to get to it. How this man set the bloodied beaten body of this individual on his and he brought him to an inn and he took care of him and the next day he took out two silver coins and he gave them to the innkeeper and he said, look after him and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. Or as I learned at his school in Scotland in the King James Version, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee. From this poor piece of humanity in the Judean dust.

Zero. Therefore, do you think that he did it because he was going to get something back? Do you think he did it in the hope that one day if he was lying bloodied somebody may do that to him? Or do you think he did it out of the love of his heart? He said, here is need I must meet it. Here is a burden I must bear it. That of course is what Jesus is saying and he uses the Samaritan as an illustration of love for our neighbor.

There was no prospect of a reciprocal agreement between this man and the Samaritan. Now you see the impact of this is not only striking now but must have been striking in Jesus' day because the world of Jesus' day was well used to an ethical system much like our own in which behavior was by what one owes to whom or by what one expects to receive from another. And that's the way most of us live our lives. Indeed we're very tempted to say that this is Christianity and what we do is we take the striking demands of Jesus and this absolutely supernatural dimension of unbelievable love and we might not scratch yours. And indeed Christian churches become the very emblems of that because they're little holy huddles of people who like to make sure that each other is taken care of.

So they do business deals with one another and they make sure that on the strength of all of these things they're all making taking care of one another and so they've got their own little closed shop that's called evangelical Christianity. You say, well is it wrong for us then to help one another out? Clearly not, the Bible makes it so. But it is certainly wrong for us to help out those who are our enemies. It is certainly wrong for us to love our brothers if we're unprepared to love those who are so clearly out with the framework, who are beyond the circle of our concern. Jesus says, I want you to act in a way that is absolutely counter-cultural. I want you to live your life based on an inverted order your enemies. And I say to you again, this is the most uncomfortable of demands on the part of the King Jesus. I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis's words when he was speaking about this. He says, I didn't go to religion to make me happy.

I always knew a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't that's the absolute reverse of what we say to people. Oh, come in. It's very comfortable here. Come in.

Come in. Be comfortable. Be warm. Be well fed. Be not perplexed. Be not overcome with the exposition of the Bible. Be blessed with a little blessed thought. We won't demand anything of you. Jesus doesn't.

All he wants you to know is that he's a jolly good fellow and he would like you to be a jolly good fellow too. Christianity in the western world. People in Russia that came through the events couldn't recognize this pale imitation of the real thing.

Our friends from mainland China haven't a clue how we came up with this. Those who have come through the barbarism of Kosovo and the times before in Nigeria and in other parts of middle Africa, they don't recognize this nonsense. For it is not the agenda of the king. It is our agenda and it is frankly unpalatable. The word of Jesus and the way of Jesus is to be very different from the political agenda, from the harsh rhetoric, and from the fiery language to which we have all become so familiar and unfortunately which many of us see the political agenda is way too easy because you can throw money at it, you can throw rhetoric at it, you can throw your spleen at it, you can throw fiery language at it, you can explain it in terms of the ethics of our day.

You fight, we'll fight, you shout, we will shout, you stand, we stand, you march, we'll march. It's not the king's agenda. Word about reward. Commonly understood that the patron would get back what he gave. The patron puts someone else in their debt and then they receive obliged acts of service and perhaps even homage. They understood that and so do we.

It's the way it works. But notice the Jesus way. In this case the patron gives without expectation of return, without strings attached, his reward will be great, he says.

If you love your enemies and do good to them and lend to them without expecting to get anything back, without operating in the modus operandi of your day, then your reward will be very great and you will be the sons of the most high. Not that as a result of doing this you will become the son of the most high but as a result of doing this you will reveal yourself to be the son of the most high because after all if you think about it God is kind to the ungrateful Is it a lovely morning and a lovely sunrise? It certainly was spectacular where I was as I drove out of my street. Do you know who enjoyed that sunrise?

Everyone that can see. Was this a sunrise just for Christian people? Just for the kids of the kingdom?

That because we had been redeemed we could see the sunrise and everyone else who remains unredeemed couldn't see the sunrise and frankly they woke up to a very gloomy and horrible day. Will be able to enjoy a lovely lunch? No.

The ungrateful and the wicked will also enjoy lunch. Will they enjoy seed time and harvest along with us? Yes. Do they deserve to? No. Do we? No. So how does God treat the ungrateful and the wicked?

With mercy and with kindness. You see how it all fits together? Can there be a greater reward? I'm sure there is but at least in part it is this. Then your reward will be great.

I thought I'd just conclude. Part of the reward must be this. When people say of us, my oh my, you know you look so very like your father. Do you know what that means to a child who admires their father? Who is a father who is well spoken of?

It makes the child stand up tall. It humbles them if they're honest. They say, well you know I thought of myself as a bit of a wretch really and so unlike my father in so many respects.

But the person down the street said, you know you're starting to look like your dad. That's what Jesus says. By your loving, by your lending, by your doing good, you so begin to look like your father. And the way in which he showers his love is not a little trickles spurting out now and then, but he has poured out his love. He's poured out his love into our hearts says Paul to the Romans, in order that out of our hearts may flow the love of the Lord Jesus.

He has showered his love upon us in order that we might shower his love upon those who seem the most unlikely and undeserving recipients of it. That I have got to grips with the instruction of Jesus in this sermon when I am content to simply support, for example, the welfare bill that whoever it is that sends me that stuff tells me I'm supposed to support and phone my congressman. Now don't misunderstand me. I always get letters people say, Alistair doesn't like you to phone your congressman. I love it when you phone your congressman. You heard it from me.

Okay? But if you think for a minute you're going to turn the world upside down by phoning your congressman, you should you shouldn't waste your money so quickly. But if I think that by supporting the welfare package I've actually taken care of loving my enemies, I am wrong unless I am prepared simultaneously to mentor the children of poverty, the boys and the girls who live without fathers. I'm kidding myself if I think that I can get by by fighting the gay rights lobby while at the same time totally unprepared to bring any measure of comfort, any message of hope to those who are facing the lonely and painful death as a result of AIDS. I cannot convince myself or anticipate applause for my attempts to support a to redress Wade, Roe versus Wade, if I am at the same time totally unprepared not only to open my mouth to speak to young women in their need but to open my heart and to open my home and to open my life and to open my checkbook to show them the radical difference that Jesus makes. And I ask you, think it out, the whole Christian world has been overwhelmed by a quarter of a century of the inundation of Christian people who having read and understood their bibles said to themselves we're going to shower the people with love we love.

We're going to show them the way that we feel. We believe that we're just an angry, miserable, rigid, censorious, pharisaical company of theologians. There's got to be a reason that Spurgeon not only preached evangelistically and taught the bible but he was involved in orphanages. There's got to be a reason that Moody was not only so effectively used in the wonderfully used in the social impact of his day, I personally cannot teach this without being immensely exercised by it in my own spirit. And I wonder if that does not find an echo in many of your hearts. Before in an earlier generation when the church got serious about these things it built orphanages it built into the realm of need.

We're building bookshops, atriums, gymnasiums. There's just a chance we may be missing a significant factor. Are you, day in and day out, beginning to look more and more like your heavenly father? That's Alistair Begg challenging us to reveal the family resemblance by loving others like Jesus loves. You're listening to Truth for Life weekend.

Alistair will be back shortly to close with prayer, so please keep listening. Our mission at is at the heart of all we do. We're all about teaching the Bible clearly and with relevance to everyday life. We believe the Bible is the word of God, that it is unchanging without error and self-affirming, and we trust God's spirit to work through God's word to transform the lives of those who read it or hear it proclaimed.

That's why we teach directly from scripture, why we don't skip over the like today's passage. If you'd like to learn more about the mission of Truth for Life, visit our website truthforlife.org. And while you're there, check out today's book recommendation. It's a book titled Name Above All Names. It's written by Alistair, along with his good friend Sinclair Ferguson, and together they explore the character of Christ. Your view of Jesus will be expanded through his identity and ministry.

Find out more about the book when you visit our website truthforlife.org. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. Father God, look upon us in your mercy, we pray, remove from our hearts and minds any kind of man engendered guilt, the clear demands of your word today. Grant that it may be that in a consideration of the love which is expressed most manifestly in Calvary, in the words of Jesus, Father forgive them for they know not what they do, that we may find ourselves at the place of usefulness. Help us, O God, then to ponder the truth and by your enabling to live it out. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. When somebody is kind to us, it's easy to treat them kindly in return, but how are we supposed to respond when somebody hurts us deeply? Join us next week to hear Jesus counterintuitive instruction. He is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.