Okay, this morning we're gonna come to one of, what I think is just one of the absolute high points of kingdom preaching in the Sermon on the Mount in the last few verses of Matthew 5. So you're gonna get your Bibles open there to Matthew 5. The end of the chapter is where we're gonna be starting in verse 43. This today is gonna be the sixth of the practical applications that Jesus taught about how we must live as Christians in his kingdom. We've talked about this throughout the last several passages. Jesus is not only concerned about our external obedience to laws and rules. He's actually been delving into the most urgent matters of our hearts. It's not enough merely to keep yourself from committing murder or adultery. You have to put to death every form of anger and lust in your heart as a believer. We need to have integrity in everything we say, especially in our marriage vows, doing what we said we would do, performing on our promises without trying to get out from underneath them. We discussed this last week that it's not enough to be sort of fair in the way that we treat other people, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Rather, in our personal lives, we must not retaliate whatsoever. But more than that, more than just not retaliating, we have to be gracious and merciful to people so that we refuse to defend ourselves and instead churn the other cheek or volunteer generously to go the extra mile to be a benefit to other people despite all their evil abuse of us. These are Christian virtues that are not only given to us by Jesus as the new law of the spiritual kingdom of the redeemed. He is also not just the law giver, but he is the example of all of these things. He's the best and the highest example of how to live our lives righteously. As we continue through his teaching, it's been inevitable, I think, that Jesus would bring us to the pinnacle of all of these matters of the heart, all of the things that concern our inner attitude. This is the one today when we come to that's like the top of the heap, really. There's a lot of different spiritual qualities we have to pursue as believers, but the greatest of them all really is love. And that's what Jesus teaches us about in our verses today. Look in Matthew 5.43. Read this with me, these verses starting here through the end of chapter five. Matthew 5.43. Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same. You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Lord, I thank you this morning for allowing us to gather, for giving us a desire to be here, to be taught by you, Lord. I pray that you would give us the desire to know better how to live in your kingdom, to be more like you, conformed to the life that Jesus lived. Pray, Lord, that you would teach us about love today, not just the love that we should have for our neighbors, but the love that we should have for our enemies. Teach us this. Show us your example. Help us to understand how these things apply in our lives, Lord. Give us the thoughts of our enemies today that are the way that you want us to think about them, to make plans to do with them what you would call us to do. You call us to love, Lord. I pray that you would help us to seek to be perfect. Father, like you, in heaven are perfect. Pray for your help in understanding these things today. In Jesus' name, amen. So today we see in the first verse the pattern of the five previous passages here in Matthew 5, when Jesus begins each little section by saying, you've heard it said, and then follows up with, but I say to you. Jesus has been drawing attention to the fact that he is delivering to us a new law, a different law that's suitable to a spiritual people who've been born again into the kingdom of God. We discussed this back in December as we started into this section of the Sermon on the Mount, this last half of Matthew 5, and we said then that Jesus confirms in verse 17 that he didn't come to abolish the law and the prophets. He didn't come to set them aside or to reject and ignore the law, but he came to fulfill it, which he unquestionably, unerringly did in every aspect of his life. He fulfilled all the requirements of the contractual obligations under the law so that we are not under that covenant any longer. And here, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus is setting forth a new law, In some aspects, yes, it's altering and adding to the law of Moses as a basis and a foundation given in the old covenant to the people of Israel, but this new covenant law is more stringent. It's more pervasive. It deals not only with the outward appearance of righteousness, but it calls us to an actual righteousness on the inside that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. By saying this, Jesus says, but I say to you, Jesus was primarily contrasting his new declarations of his law with the old law of Moses, which was passing away, even as he was fulfilling it that day. At the same time, in most of these passages, Jesus here addresses some of the way that the Pharisees were twisting and warping Moses for their own benefit. He's doing both. We see both of these things in our passage today. He's telling us new law while at the same time addressing the distortions of the old law by the teachers of the law. It will make sense here as we work through that. But look at the first verse, Matthew 5.43. Jesus said, you've heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. We want to recognize first and foremost that love is not the new command, despite what some people think. Some people believe and talk about the Bible like the God of the Old Testament was a God of judgment and wrath, right? And the God of the New Testament is a God of peace and love. as if that's the distinction between the two testaments. Of course, we know that God has always revealed Himself as both holy and just and the justifier, the redeemer of His people. His hatred of sin and wrath against those who rebel against Him are just as apparent in the New Testament as the Old. And His faithful, loving kindness toward those who are faithful to Him is seen as clearly in the Old Testament as the New. Yet, we do read about the man Jesus of Nazareth We read primarily about Him being a merciful preacher, offering forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God our Father. It's true, isn't it? Jesus had abundant compassion for the sick, the poor, for those who were oppressed by demons. He refused to defend Himself or attack His opponents. He loved all people, including those who made themselves His enemies. Now, He warned some of those enemies at times about the coming judgment. that would be against them if they continued to refuse to repent in their life. But that was always motivated by His loving concern for their eternal welfare. While living and ministering in His humanity, Jesus modeled this perfect grace and mercy toward sinners for us to follow His example. But His loving kindness are not new things for God to display in the person and work of Christ. Do you remember how the Lord Almighty revealed Himself to Moses? back in Exodus chapter 34. Exodus 34.6 tells us about when Moses said, I want you to show me your glory. And God put Moses in a cave and passed by. And as he passed by in Exodus 34.6, we read that the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation." That statement, God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, is repeated in Numbers 14, Deuteronomy 5, Deuteronomy 7, It was confirmed through David in 1st Chronicles 16 and Solomon in 2nd Chronicles 7. This steadfast love of the Lord is a frequent topic in the Psalms. And so it is also into the prophets in Isaiah 16, Jeremiah 33, Hosea 10, Micah 7. Even after the nation was released from captivity in Babylon, we read the same thing in Ezra 7 and Nehemiah 1. That original revelation of God revealing his love to Moses in Exodus 34 was a powerful testimony that existed throughout the history of Israel. It was a witness to every generation of Israelites. It was sometimes a witness of blessing for their faithfulness, and sometimes it was a witness of cursing because of their infidelity to the Lord. But it was repeated to them century after century. It's the content of the prayer in Jeremiah 32, 17. Jeremiah's praying to the Lord in Jeremiah 32, 17. When he prays, he says, Ah, Lord God, it's you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you. You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of the fathers to their children. O great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of man, rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds." He repeats that same revelation of God from Exodus that was shown to Moses when God spoke. Jeremiah repeats it back to God. He speaks about the steadfast love that was simultaneously a blessing to those who pursued righteousness and a condemnation to the guilty of the wicked. I mean, repaying guilt with condemnation and rewarding the obedient. There are a lot of specific laws, regulations that God gave them to follow in faithfulness to Him and His steadfast love, but there's one that summarized everything. One statement, one verse that summarizes everything in the Old Testament about how people are supposed to treat one another. It's in Leviticus 19, verse 8. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. I am the Lord, I am the one with a steadfast love, and because of that, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There's the command. Love your neighbor. All the way back in Leviticus 19. A place where many wouldn't expect to find it. And how am I supposed to do that? How do you do that? How do you love your neighbor? It says, as yourself. with the same quality of care and quantity of service that you provide for yourself. You should use that standard to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Like I said, there's a ton of different rules for specific circumstances, but this is the overarching principle concerning how to treat your neighbor in your day-to-day life. Now back here in Matthew 5.43, Jesus was partly quoting this verse from the Law of Moses, a principle in the Law that everybody evidently knew. But in that day when they all quoted it, they didn't include the part about, as yourself. How did they say it? Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. You've heard that said, Jesus said. In fact, you say it yourself. That's not what God commanded in Leviticus. It's a distortion. of the law that the Pharisees were teaching. But to be fair, their teaching wasn't completely unreasonable. Martin Lloyd-Jones pointed this out, that this key verse in Leviticus 19.18 says not to take vengeance against the sons of your own people, rather love your neighbor as yourself. It leaves open the idea that perhaps vengeance against enemies is okay. And if you think about the nation of Israel for most of the history of the nation, God had commanded them to maintain a separation between themselves and the nations around them, hadn't he? I mean, when they left their slavery in Egypt and Joshua, after 40 years of wandering in the desert, led them into the promised land, they were commanded to exterminate the Canaanites, all of them, in the entirety of the land. There was no love for the Amorites, the Moabites, the Amalekites, the Jebusites, all the ites of the Canaanites, right? I mean, later, even though David at times spent time amongst the Philistines hiding from Saul, the Scriptures basically glorify his military exploits against those Philistines, saying that he slayed his tens of thousands of them as the enemies of the Hebrew people. There's even a few Psalms that he wrote when he calls down curses and destruction upon the enemies. They're sometimes referred to as the imprecatory Psalms. The Psalms where David is calling on God to curse his enemies. The 69th Psalm includes one of the more well-known imprecatory sections. From Psalm 69 verse 22 reads like this, Let their own table before them become a snare, and when they are at peace let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continuously. Pour out your indignation upon them and let your burning anger overtake them. May there can't be a desolation. Let no one dwell in their tents." That sound like love your enemies? I hope they go blind, get a stomach disease where they have seizures all the time and their cities become desolate because of all of the death and destruction that I want to see God bring down upon their heads. That's what some of these Psalms sound like. That idea permeates the Old Testament, and it's not only allowed by God, it's often commanded by God. And we see in that Psalm that David's calling down these curses from God upon his enemies. You could see how it might be tough for them to figure out how he was loving his neighbor there. In fact, it's one of the many statements that would have encouraged the people of Israel to actually hate their enemies. So do you see how love your neighbor and hate your enemy isn't completely and irrationally wrong? You see that? It's not the most irrational thing ever. But the distortion of the Pharisees was how they mixed up the public, political, military life of the nation of Israel with the personal lives of the people of Israel. There's a distinction here. God directed the kings and the prophets, and as He did so, He used the nation of Israel as judgment upon these surrounding pagan nations. Nationally, they were sent to destroy those nations because they had made themselves God's enemies. And God's enemies became Israel's enemies to destroy according to God's command. But that policy was not supposed to come home with them. It was not supposed to be what they brought back individually to use against other people who were their personal enemies. I mean, at the same time, we could see that if they had shown mercy to those national enemies, and in fact sometimes they did, it caused lots of problems. It was disobedience to God for them to be merciful to the nations that they were supposed to conquer. demonstrating that loving those enemies was actually wrong in that context. Do you see the difference? There's a vast difference. And we can confuse things tremendously when we don't understand the difference between the public, military, political life of the nation of Israel as a nation, and how that is differentiated from individual people who have relationships in their lives with people they know. They are not the same. They're vastly different. And this perhaps demonstrates this more than anything else. It's that God was actually commanding one attitude, one set of actions against the enemy of the nation, while demanding and commanding a different set of actions and attitudes from those who were individually enemies. And not only did the Pharisees mix up the public and private life thing, they confused the meaning of the word neighbor. They understood neighbor and enemy to be opposites. When you read the passage, don't you kind of think that? Neighbor and enemy must be opposites. But that isn't true in the personal sense. A neighbor is someone who's near to you in your personal life, a friend or a family member, or literally the person who lives next door to you, right? The person who lives next door to you in the house next door to you, the unit next to you, townhome, apartment, whatever, cardboard shack with a tin roof, the guy who lives next to you is your neighbor. He's your neighbor whether you like him or not. That guy's my neighbor whether he comes and shovels the snow off my sidewalk or burns my house to the ground. He's my neighbor. Isn't he? Neighbor and enemy are not opposites. That guy's my neighbor whether he's a friend or a foe. Personally, to me, he is my neighbor. I want you to understand this because Christians in our day get into all sorts of trouble. Because some Christians commit the same two errors that the Pharisees were perpetuating. We can mix up our responsibilities and our personal lives versus our public lives. And think that I'm supposed to, like the nation of Israel was commanded to do, fight against the enemies, overwhelm them, conquer them, pray that they would be cursed and destroyed. Some misunderstand that this is the role of the church because they think that the church is Israel. Nonsense. The church is not Israel. This is one of the places where we know most clearly that the church is not Israel. Because God never commands the church to act like he commanded Israel against enemies. We're not supposed to go as the church and put on body armor with crosses on it and go over to the Middle East and destroy all of the pagan enemies, are we? Where's that commanded? Doing that in the Middle Ages, in the 10th century, in the 11th century, and even in our day. People who think this is the way I'm supposed to act are committing the exact same distortion that the Pharisees committed. By conflating the Church and the Nation of Israel. Without recognizing that we're talking about something entirely different. Something new. Not the reimagination of the old with the same charge. That is not true. Christians can get into a ton of trouble in this way in their personal lives by refusing to recognize that sometimes my neighbor is my enemy. It doesn't actually matter whether he's friend or foe. Now, yes, in the New Testament, there's sometimes militaristic language about things like the armor of God, but our mission is not the destruction of the wicked pagan nations. Oh, we should destroy arguments and spiritual strongholds, but we do that with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ Jesus. We are no longer in that old covenant where our neighbors are only a few of our own people in the nation that are ethnically similar to us, that are supposed to be protected by the military. In the new covenant, our neighbors really are everyone, everywhere, especially those with needs whom God puts directly into our lives. Jesus taught that, right? Love your neighbor. Well, Jesus, tell us, who's your neighbor? What parable did he tell to explain who your neighbor is? The parable of the Good Samaritan. Whoever you come across in life who needs some help that you can provide, he's your neighbor. Now, love your neighbor as yourself. And if you don't like him, Jesus is going to add something, as we'll talk about today. If he's your enemy, love him too. Why? Because he's still your neighbor. See? It's not neighbor versus enemy. Everybody's a neighbor. Some are enemies and some are friends. In Ephesians 2.14, Paul acknowledged the reality that there was a dividing wall that was erected by God Himself between the Jews and the Gentiles. A dividing wall of hostility that existed between them. It was a wall that was partially erected, like I said, by God Himself to maintain the purity of the Israelite nation until the Messiah should come. That dividing wall of hostility, Paul says in Ephesians 2, is only broken down by Christ Jesus, who is Himself our peace with one another. Paul adds that Christ made that peace by abolishing the law. Abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that He might create in Himself one new man, reconciling us both to God in His body, thereby killing the hostility. How does He get rid of the hostility? He gets rid of the law by fulfilling it. The law was, keep yourself separate. No intermarrying. Go over there and kill all these guys. Don't leave anybody alive. Don't bring any of their livestock back. Don't be merciful to their children and their women. That's all part of the law. It's all in there. You might remember when we were trying to understand the differentiation between the Old and the New Covenants, when we were working our way through the book of Hebrews, that worship in the Old Covenant was separation. Separation is worship. How do we know that? Because the temple had this big curtain separating God from the people. That's separation. What do we have now? The curtain's been opened. It's been torn down. We have direct access to God. Worship's no longer separation. It's not separation between us and God. It's not separation between us and other people. That dividing wall has been torn down by Christ. The hostility was killed by the new law that Jesus institutes right here in the Sermon on the Mount. That hostility is killed right here in verse 44. But I say to you, love your enemies. That's the destruction of the dividing wall, of hostility. You may not hate your enemies. Love your enemies, I say to you." Now to be perfectly clear, the word translated love here is a form of that Greek word agape. Agape love is the highest, purest form of unconditional love. It's the love of compassion, unwavering goodwill towards another. It's the love of God that has been poured into our hearts. It's the love with which God Himself embodies in the statement from 1 John 4, 8 that God is love. God is agape. It's not the love that a husband and wife share. It's not the love a parent has for a child or the brotherly love of deep friendship. It's more than all of those. It's first and foremost the love that we're commanded to have for God because He first loved us with this agape kind of love. His love to us is by definition undeserved, unconditional, unearned, holy, righteous, sacrificial. I mean, we can comprehend easily enough that we should have the same kind of love to God who has loved us. And we can perhaps see how it's necessary for us to love those who are closest to us with this kind of love. Especially the ones we enjoy friendship and fellowship with. But this is the same love that we're supposed to have to our enemies. That's a tall order, isn't it? Love your enemies like this. I need to clarify here another translation. The word translated enemies most often indicates a personal hostility. This is not a nameless, faceless, national enemy like the Gentiles or some other ethnic or national enemy. It's not the enemy far away. This is the enemy very near, the personal enemy, somebody you know and don't like, or someone you know who doesn't like you, or usually both. Right? It often refers to an adversary with whom you have some sort of personal rivalry or vendetta. It's that person who has hurt you and abused you. The person who's rude to you, looks for opportunity to insult you. Someone who, at times, is actively trying to cause you harm and loss. Might be physical, but more often than not, it's emotionally traumatic. This kind of enemy. Love that person. Okay, but how? The verse continues, right? Matthew 5.44 continues, Jesus immediately adds the first and what is probably the most important way for us to love our enemies, and that is to pray for them. I mean, that's especially true, Jesus said, of those who persecute you. If you're a believer and they're persecuting you for being a Christian, you can know without a doubt that there is a spiritual battle going on. If they attack you for being a Christian, it is because of the spiritual war that's in progress. That person then therefore must, in your mind, be the last enemy that you should hate. The person persecuting you cannot be the person that you attack in anger. because the Lord has put that neighbor into your life so that you will pray for them. You have to pray because you can't even see the real battle that's being waged against that person's soul as they persecute you. It won't be easy as they revile you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on the account of Christ Jesus, but your job in the persecution is unquestionably to love that enemy and to pray for them. Pray for them to repent of their hatred for the Lord and be saved. I pray that they could see the truth of the gospel and believe. Pray that the Lord will give you ability to love them, whatever that means. To turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile with them, to give them anything they demand. You have to recognize that the Lord has put you on the front lines to love your enemy and pray for them, because if you don't, nobody else will. It's one of the reasons why Jesus told us in the last of the Beatitudes back in Matthew 5.10, 5.11, that we will be blessed if we are persecuted because if we obey the Lord, we're going to become close to him as we love our enemies and pray for them. I mean, that's most clearly the case if we're being persecuted for righteousness sake. There's a little blessing if I'm being abused as an enemy for other reasons. There's really no blessing if I'm being abused because I deserve it, because I incited their hatred towards me by being mean to them or whatever, doing wrong things, saying wrong things to them. There's no blessing in that if they're mad at me because I did something to make them mad at me. Oh, there's a little bit of blessing, like I said, if they're mad at me for other reasons that I didn't cause but it's not persecution's sake. But if they hate me without cause, because of Christ, then I'll be blessed as I love that enemy and pray for them. I'll grow closer to the Lord, and I'll become more like the Lord as I pray for them. That's what verse 45 is about. See Matthew 5.45? There again, I just read it. "...so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven." Pray for them so that you'll be sons of your Father in heaven. It's the same thing we talked about when we discussed verse 9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. To be a son or daughter of God in this sense is to resemble Him. To act so similarly to how He would act that those who are watching would say that you remind them of how Jesus would act. That's what it would be. I see how you're reacting in this situation. I think that's how Jesus would do it. Wow, you must really be a son of God, the daughter of the King. That's our goal. We should want to be the spitting image of our Father who's in heaven. There's perhaps nowhere that we could more powerfully look like Him than when we are loving our enemies. that's actually seen most clearly and most regularly in the daily activities that demonstrate this kind of love. Look at the two examples that Jesus gave about how God does this in the rest of verse 45. For He, God, makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. This is sometimes referred to as common grace, the unmerited favor that God daily shows to all people indiscriminately. Jesus demonstrates the indiscriminate nature of His love by, even as He says it, He reverses the order of the two groups of people. First of all, He speaks of the evil and the good, and then the just and the unjust. Put the evil first or the evil second or the first, it doesn't matter. He's good to all of them the same. He shows His love to them on a daily basis with things that have the regularity of things like the sun rising and the rain falling on the land. Oh, God sometimes decreases these things or increases them as a form of judgment on particular people for His purposes. But generally speaking, these are regularly occurring things that He pours out, gives indiscriminately. There are even seasonal patterns in most places for most years where His common grace is even somewhat predictable. That's why we take it for granted. It's predictable. That's the point. You see, the sun's going to come up tomorrow, even for those who don't believe in the God who makes it rise every morning on the evil and the good alike. The rains will fall again on those who hate God and curse the name of Christ. The common grace is a type of love that God exercises towards His enemies, and we must do the same with ours. You see, love isn't just how we feel or what we say. Love is what we do. The kindness we show in our actions. It's particularly the things we do for the good of others. So as you pray for your enemies, ask God to show you what they need on a regular basis so you can do that for them in love. It's what we read in Romans chapter 12. We looked at these verses last week, but remember this Romans 12, 17. It says, Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. Think about it. Consider it. Try to figure out how you can do this. Verse 20 gives you some ideas in Romans 12. If your enemy's hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. I mean, give thought to what God's giving you that you can do for your enemy to satisfy some need he has. If he's hungry, give him some food. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. Overcome evil with good. We could say that's the same thing as defeat your enemy with love. Overcome evil with good. You continue on in the passage here in Matthew 5, 46, Jesus said, If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Jesus is here referring to the common practice of the Jews in that day. Not just the Pharisees, but really everybody who was remotely devout. If you were remotely serious about being a Jewish guy, you kept your separation from those that were not part of the acceptable crowd. We know it wasn't just the Pharisees. Even when Jesus went and talked to the tax collectors, hung out with the prostitutes, when He was hanging out with the Gentiles, the woman at the well in Samaria, the Samaritan woman, when the disciples came, what did they say to Him? Oh, it's good that you're opening up doors and trying to be inclusive. That's what they said, right? No, they said, what are you doing? What are you doing with the Samaritan? Don't you know the kind of person this is? Come on, Jesus, we've got to get away from such people. Even Peter and James and John were talking like that. It wasn't just the Pharisees. It's because for centuries daily life in Israel was separation from enemies. It was separation from those not like us. But now, here, Jesus is throwing that out. He eliminates all the distinctions, all the prejudices, New Covenant kingdom citizens are to be inviting everyone into the kingdom. We're supposed to go to those people and say, come with me. Not, stay away from me. Unclean, unclean. No, go to them. Compel them to come to the feast. That is a total reversal that demonstrates the church is not Israel. The church is the kingdom. And we're supposed to go invite everyone into the kingdom, not just loving those with whom you're most comfortable. I said it earlier, love is the pinnacle Christian virtue. And we have to love both the lovable and the unlovable. Those who love us and those who hate us. I mean, what's going on in your heart? Think about this. What's going on in your heart if you only greet your brothers and sisters that you know and like the most? What's going on in your heart? If you have two options, and you go to the one that you like the most. Are you any different from everybody else in the world who's doing the exact same thing? That's the question Jesus opposes, isn't it? That's what he posed. To tell the Jews that even the tax collectors and the Gentiles do that was to tell them that they weren't acting any better than the people they disliked the most. You're acting just like the guys that you want to condemn. Don't you see that? Don't you see the hypocrisy of that? Condemning them for doing what you're doing? You're no different than them. We could change this. Let's modernize it for a minute to some other group in our day that might be our enemy. I mean, any of you got woke liberal family members who voted for the wrong guy for president? All those guys love their own, don't they? They love their own. Don't your God-hating friends greet each other with a handshake and a hug when they meet one another? Of course they do. What are you doing more than all of the rest of them? How are you acting any different than the world? I mean, have you seen that everybody in our lives is really a neighbor, no matter who they voted for, whether they're a friend or an enemy, no matter what political policies they advocate for? I'm only picking on the politics, but how many dozens of other issues could there be that make people our enemies? No matter who they are, we need to see that everybody in our lives is really a neighbor, and that doubly obligates us to love them because they're, whether a friend or an enemy, we're supposed to love our neighbors and love our enemies. Like I said, you're doubly obligated to love those people that you find most difficult. And how to love them as we love ourselves, right? Love your neighbor as yourself. Now, that doesn't mean that we celebrate their sin with them. By definition, that's not love. If the Bible calls something sin, we can't say that going along with it is somehow loving our neighbor. I love my neighbor because I celebrate whatever sin they're involved with, that they want me to parade with them about. I mean, 1 Corinthians 13 says that love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. And sometimes the most loving thing we can do with our enemy is to tell them the truth, the truth about their sin, the truth about God's coming judgment, as the introduction to the gospel by which they can be saved from that sin. Pray for them. Ask God to help you with the timing of when to talk to them. Don't celebrate their disobedience, but don't leave them in their sin either, as much as it depends on you. Because God didn't leave you in your sin, did He? Even when you were His enemy, Romans 5.10 says that you were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Romans 5.8 says that God chose His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ Jesus died for us. His death on the cross was the single most perfect act of love in all of human history. An act of love while you were still His enemy. And so we must be perfect in love for our enemies as our Heavenly Father is perfect. See that last verse? It's 48. be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, particularly in this, the way that you love your enemies. There's much more that we have to say about that verse. We'll say it next week. We'll come back. So don't think I'm going to leave that hanging as if it's only talking about love your enemies, but it is at least talking about love your enemies the way that God in His perfect love loved His enemies. That love is the top tier of all of God's perfections that we're able to emulate in our daily lives. Love your enemy. Love your neighbor, even if he's your enemy, just as your Heavenly Father loved you when you were the enemy. I want to tell you, if you haven't been moved by the perfect love of God to surrender your life to Christ Jesus, I want you to stop today and figure out why. Jesus has already died on the cross to pay for your sins. God's already loved you even as you continue today to be his enemy. Where do you think that's going to end for you if you keep trying to hold back your life from him? I just want to tell you, stop playing around with God's love for you and come into his kingdom. Become a child of God. He will adopt you into his family as you trust Christ as your Savior and follow him as your Lord. God's perfect specialty is loving his enemies. That's one last word for those of us who are believers. No matter how much we do this, no matter how far we've come along in trying to obey this command of the kingdom, we need to act more like the sons and daughters of the king who loved us when we were his enemies. I mean, stop dwelling on your hurts. Stop cataloging your traumas. Stop keeping track of the insults that your enemies have laid upon you. Instead, be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Love your enemies and pray for them. It's about as simple as it gets. Lord, I thank you for your word this morning. I thank you for teaching us these things and living out the truth, the commands of the law in such a way that we could see how to do these things because we know you, Jesus. I pray today, Lord, that you would use this to move your enemies to surrender to you. You would call them by your grace into the kingdom. that they would see the futility and the wickedness and the emptiness of their sin, that they would come to you. You've already laid down your life, Jesus, for them to love them, to call them in this way. Lord, I pray you would give them pause to stop and think and try to figure out where they're headed. They don't turn to you. Lord, I pray for those of us who know you and love you, who know the love that you've given to us in Christ. when we were still your enemies, while we were still sinners. Christ Jesus, you died for us and shed your blood for us. Lord, help us to see this, that our obligation, our highest calling is to love our enemies, just as you have done, to love them as neighbors, just as we love ourselves. Lord, help us to do these things, to know how to apply these things into our lives. Lord, put the enemies in front of our face, in our minds, and give us the prayers to pray for them even now, Lord. Pray that we would do that now, that you would tell us who we need to do this with in our lives today. Give us the ideas, Lord, about how to love them in our daily lives, to give them what they need. Lord, I thank you that you employ us in such a high calling in your kingdom to act like you. Lord, I pray that you would work these things into us, that we would be sons and daughters of our gracious and merciful God most high. We pray these things today for your help in all of it, in Jesus' name, amen.