preaching from off and on for about eight months, I think, somewhere around there. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. If you turn in your Bibles with me there, and please stand for the reading of God's Word. 1 Thessalonians 5, beginning at verse 14. Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, uphold the weak, Be patient with all. See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good, both for yourselves and for all. Let us pray. Our God and Father, we bless you and praise you for your holy word. We thank you that you have breathed it. and that you give it to us, and by it you have given us life. We thank you for your spirit who illumines your word to us and gives us life through it. We ask that you would bless this reading and hearing and preaching of your word to the glory of your name. I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts would be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Well, since it's been a few months since I visited this text, I'd like to begin with a little bit of review. In my previous sermons on this text, I've noted the use of the term brothers here and its frequency in both the letters to the Thessalonians. First Thessalonians here is relatively a short letter, yet even for its small size, I've noted before the word brothers is more densely occurring here. in First Thessalonians than in any other book in the New Testament. It's 18 times. First Thessalonians begins with the familial language of love and care and unity with God the Father. In chapter 1, verses 1 and 4, Paul says that the church is the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And that phrase, the church in God our Father, is the only time that phrase occurs in Paul's writings. In chapter two, Paul uses, again, familial language. He says, we exhorted and charged and comforted you as a father does his children, and we nourished and cherished you as a nursing mother. And he uses the term brethren as well. Our relationship with God as father means that we are brothers in an organic living relationship. The scriptures refer to the church, to the people of God, as a tree, as a field, as a vine, as a body, as a living temple. God declares, I am your God and you're my people and I will walk among you and be with you and you will be my people and I will be your God. And that phrase is found throughout scripture beginning to end. That is the covenant promise that God makes with his people. That is his covenant. He is our God and we're his people. And because of his covenant, we're connected with God, we're connected and bound up as well with one another. Our covenantal union with God as father and with Christ as our elder brother means we're bound to one another. And because we're brothers, we have these commands, therefore. And our life in the body of Christ is to be lived out as brothers with others here, as blood brought relatives. Again, Paul uses phrases in First Timothy to talk about fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters. So as we again consider the commands here, we should hold before us the fact that the context here is the family of God. And as I've mentioned before it is also significant that these commands are given to the church at large. They are not especially given to pastors or leaders rather they are to the whole body or to the laity. In the previous two verses you might notice Paul says we urge you brethren to recognize those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord. But he doesn't refer to the elders there he's referring to the laities commanding them to recognize those who are over them. So, the exhortations here in these verses follow that language being given to the brethren and not to those who labor, not to the leadership. And regarding the idea of brethren, I think it's easy to forget that the people in our own very homes are to be regarded as fellow Christians, as brothers and members of the household of faith. fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children, siblings, you all are Christian brothers. And the first place which we should practice these things, these duties of Christian brethren, is in our very homes among our own family. The first command in verse 14 here is admonish, which we looked at several months ago, and that immediately flows into the second command to comfort the faint hearted. And I think that represents kind of a gradation down, if you will, from the first group, the unruly, and then that leads to uphold or strengthen the weak. And as I've noted, Calvin talks about the need for different remedies for different diseases. And Pastor Payne, last time I spoke about this, asked about the phrase in verse 15, I'm sorry, verse 14, be patient with all. And rather than a separate charge, I think this ought to be understood as the overall atmosphere and character or the ambiance, if you will, in which we're to obey these commands as we admonish and comfort and uphold. Patience is always in order with the faint, with the weak and even with the unruly. Calvin says this of this verse he says he recommends patience toward all for severity must be tempered with some degree of lenity or lenity even in dealing with the unruly. This patience, however, is, properly speaking, contrasted with a feeling of irksomeness. For nothing are we more prone to feel than wearied out when we set ourselves to cure the diseases of our brethren. The man who has once and again comforted a person who is faint-hearted, if he is called to do the same thing a third time, will feel I know not what vexation, nay, even indignation, that will not permit him to persevere in discharging his duty. Thus, if by admonishing or reproving we do not immediately do the good that is to be desired, we lose all hope of future success. Paul had in view to bridle impatience of this nature by recommending to us moderation towards all. The following verse in verse 15 issues from this command to be patient with all, and it is this verse that I'm focusing on today. See that no one render evil for evil, but always pursue what is good, both for yourselves and for all. Notice the comprehensive phrases here. It is all with whom were to be patient. No one, always, anyone, for yourselves and for all. The two commands here are juxtaposed, they're opposites. Don't repay evil for evil, but, there's a but in there, pursue what is good. As Gary North says, and I like to quote, you can't beat something with nothing. Our God never commands us to stop doing something apart from giving us the right way. Our Father graciously always provides us a way of escape and a way of obedience. So don't repay evil rather instead but overcome evil with good. Now many today understand this idea to be only a New Testament teaching and an ethic that Jesus and the apostles introduced to the people of God. However, I would submit to you that the ethic of loving and doing good to our enemies is truly a whole Bible ethic. It flows throughout the Old Testament and New Testament. Now, Jesus and his apostles certainly introduced correctives to misapplied and misused scriptures among the Jews of their time, as well as instruction to new and immature Gentile believers who were growing as disciples and learning the ways of the Lord. But kindness to enemies and repaying good for evil is something that appears throughout scripture and has been practiced by saints throughout all ages of the church. Most of us are familiar with the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus' command in Matthew 5 verses 43 through 48 where he says, You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies. Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. So this phrase, you have heard it said, appears throughout Jesus's sermon here. So where did the people whom Jesus was addressing first hear this, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy? It was certainly not from God's law. In contrast, the command at Sinai, given regarding treatment of our enemies, actually requires the opposite of hatred. In Exodus 23, verses 4 through 5, we read, if you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it. And that echoes the command that God gives. I should say that command is echoed in Deuteronomy 22, where he says, help your brother's donkey. So we're to treat our brothers and our enemies the same. And it's not just the ones that we consider our enemies. Notice, it's the people who consider us their enemies, the one who hates you, whom we are to assist and do good to. Now, I believe this clearly demonstrates that Jesus is clarifying and upholding the law of God here in the Sermon on the Mount, as he does throughout his sermon. I did not come to destroy the law, he says earlier, but to fulfill it. Now the opposite of to destroy is not to end or abolish once and for all. Jesus means rather that he came to uphold the law to testify of its abiding validity and to fill out or completely explain and apply its meaning in the context of his disciples lives. The commands to not commit adultery and that you have heard it said not to commit adultery and not to divorce and not murder. carry a much greater scope than was taught by the Pharisees, who distorted and abused the law in order to follow their own desires and do what they wanted. They used God's laws as a means of autonomy and therefore of self-justification rather than the means of loving and following God. The command to do good to our enemies, as Jesus says here, is no different. And so Jesus gives us another example of, you have heard it said, but I say. Now consider the Old Testament saints who obeyed this command from God's law in Exodus 23. Jacob. Jacob is deceived by Laban into marrying his first born daughter. And yet Jacob continues to serve Laban and do good to him for the next 13 years. Jacob continues to be mistreated. And finally the Lord tells Jacob it's time to go. Listen to Jacob's rebuke of Laban in Genesis 31 as he's departing from Laban's house. He says, These 20 years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was, in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes. Thus I have been in your house twenty years. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed." Laban treats Jacob for twenty years as an enemy would. And yet Jacob does good to him. Joseph, Jacob's son, sold by his brothers into slavery. His brothers, who were supposed to have treated him with love, yet they hated him. And decades later, Joseph has an opportunity to repay them for the evil they did to him. And yet Joseph saves them from famine, welcomes them, provides for them, and offers them the best of the land of Egypt. And he even reckons their act of treachery as a blessing from God. He says you meant it for evil but God meant it for good. Consider David. David saves Israel from the Philistines by slaying Goliath yet Saul and Envy tries to kill it. David flees and for the next several years David has to stay one step ahead of Saul in order to preserve his life. And even when Saul came into David's cave unawares, and David could have killed him and ended his troubles, David spared his life. And David could have killed his son Absalom, who had treasonously stole the throne from his father. And yet David commands his men not to harm Absalom. And after Absalom's death, David mourns deeply for the loss of his son. This was the bent of David's life. In Psalm 35, David says this. Fierce witnesses rise up. They ask me things I do not know. They reward me evil for good to the sorrow of my soul. But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled myself with fasting, and my prayer would return to my own heart. I paced about as though he were my friend or brother. I bowed down heavily as one who mourns for his mother. Matthew Henry says of this verse, we ought to mourn for the sins of those who do not mourn for themselves. We shall not lose by the good offices we do to any, however ungrateful they may be. David did good and prayed for those who abused him, who hated him. Now, it's noteworthy, I think, that Jacob and Joseph and David were betrayed and mistreated by those closest to them. their brothers, relatives, and friends. And this is where it becomes difficult. Family wrongs hurt. Yet this is where we often most need to practice doing good. Children, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, in-laws, this applies to all of us. We expect more from those close to us, and despite the good that we offer to them, they treat us wrongfully. And in that moment, they become our enemy. And then we want to retaliate because of the deep hurt inflicted. Yet each of these saints, Jacob and Joseph and David, did not repay evil for evil to their adversaries, but instead loved their enemies and did good to them. Solomon, in Proverbs 25, verses 21 to 23, further explains this command, how we are to treat our enemies. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. For so you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you." In 2 Kings 6 and 2 Chronicles 28, respectively, we see the prophets Elisha and Oded prohibiting the people of God from taking revenge on their enemies in time of war, even. And they commanded to send their enemies away to their own land, fed to the full and cared for and clothed. We're not to repay evil for evil, but instead even to feed and to quench the souls of our enemies. And Paul repeats this command in Romans 12. He says, Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath. For it is written, Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." In Luke 6, which is a second version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that loving our enemies and showing mercy is not just a favorable Christian trait, but it's the very demonstration that we are God's children. He says, but love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return. And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore, be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. These are some of the hardest commands in Scripture, and they go against our very nature. We believe in justice and not merely justice for ourselves or for others but for ourselves first and foremost. Yet not only is the exaction of vengeance forbidden to us but the repayment in good is what we owe to those who are our enemies. Our Savior Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of those who had just nailed him to the cross. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Stephen likewise prayed for his persecutors, including Saul, who were stoning him. Before he died, he said, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge in Acts 7. And Paul, like Stephen, and Jesus and David, prayed for those who had betrayed him. In 2 Timothy 4, he says, at my first defense, no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them. Well, we might ask, what then should we make of the maledictions, the imprecations in scripture? Many of the Psalms are in fact prayers for God's justice and judgment and destruction of enemies. How can these things be in harmony with loving our enemies and doing good to them? The maledictory prayers in scripture are meant to bring about God's justice, the glory of his name and the advance of his kingdom. They are another way of praying, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This type of prayer is not self-centered and personal, though. Rather, it is God-centered and kingdom-oriented. Matthew Poole says this of this text. He says, but it is to be understood of private revenge rising out of malice that is to be forbidden, not of public censures. or of seeking reparations for injuries received in courts of justice. This private revenge cannot consist with that patience that God requires toward all men in the foregoing verse, nor is it conformable to the example of Christ. Consider Jesus, who prayed for his own enemies, and yet he pronounced woes on those who stubbornly refused to hear his word and resisted and denounced his coming and his kingdom. He said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. And he says, as he's going to the cross, daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves. And Psalm 35, which we read earlier, in which David prays for his enemies, in fact, begins with David's request for Yahweh to destroy his enemies. He says, Plead my cause, O Lord, with those who strive with me. Fight against those who fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for my help. Also draw out the spear and stop those who pursue me and say to my soul, I am your salvation. Psalm 35 is a very militant psalm, and it has both of these ideas in it of praying for David's enemies, and yet David's praying for his own salvation from enemies. Paul, in Acts 13, pronounces judgment on Elymas, the sorcerer, who resisted the gospel and withstood Paul and Barnabas' preaching. And Elymas is struck with blindness. And in Paul's second letter to Timothy, immediately before praying for the forgiveness of those who had abandoned him, Paul declares, Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works. There is no antithesis here, brothers. It is ultimately not our enemies we wish to stop, it is God's enemies. We are not praying for our kingdom, we are praying for God's kingdom to come. So we don't reward evil for evil. As Paul reminds us, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And so we can both pray for our enemies and against them at the same time. Now, not only should we not repay in kind the evil done to us, Paul says here in verse 15 that we're to pursue good for ourselves and for all, as he says in Galatians, that we are to do good to all men, especially to those who are the household of faith. Calvin, commenting on this, says, by this last clause, he teaches that we must not merely refrain from inflicting vengeance when anyone has injured us, but must cultivate beneficence toward all. For although he means that it should in the first instance be exercised among believers mutually, he afterwards extends it to all, however undeserving of it, that we may make it our aim to overcome evil with good, as he himself teaches elsewhere in Romans 12. The first step, therefore, in the exercise of patience is not to revenge injuries. The second is to bestow favors even upon enemies. Now, the word pursue here in the Greek, dioko, I think it's pronounced dioko, literally means to chase down. It's the same word that is frequently translated in the New Testament to persecute. I think this demonstrates, as Paul uses this term, that we're to follow hard after, to give chase, to hotly pursue what is good for all men and in all cases. Peter also uses this word pursue in a similar exhortation in his letter in 1 Peter 3. He says, finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another. Love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you are called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. For he who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Rather than evil for evil, Peter exhorts, on the contrary, that we ought to return a blessing. The word blessing is eulogio, from which we get our word eulogy. It means a good word. And I believe by this, Peter means that the good we render and pursue is to be in our words. And this is evident by the psalm that he quotes here, Psalm 34, which addresses the use of our tongues. Let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. Our words are a primary means of our doing good and pursuing peace. We are to return good for evil, especially in our speech. Husbands, how do we respond when our wife fails us or doesn't respect us or worse, insults us? Do you bless her or do you return evil for evil and rail against her? Wives, how do you respond when your husband lets you down? or shows dishonor to you in your speech, in his speech or in his actions. Do you return evil or do you offer a blessing instead? Children, how do you respond to your siblings when they let you down or when they do something against you? Do you return a blessing? Employees, when your boss mistreats you, how do you respond? Do you continue to work hard and serve them and bless them as Jacob did for Laban? We pursue peace in our speech by controlling our tongues and using them for blessing. As we're told in Proverbs, the mouth of the righteous is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. And again, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. And again in Proverbs, pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones. We are to speak well of others and be a well of life even to our enemies. And as Luther said, put the best construction on everything in our speech. Another way it seems to me that we can do damage to others by the use of our tongues is by withholding our good words from them. Envy can often be the root of our failure to give praise or to commend another. We feel wronged or maybe deserving of something that someone else got. That should have been mine, we think. Rather than rejoicing in another or esteeming others more important than ourselves, we repay evil for evil by denigrating them or simply by refusing to compliment them or be thankful for their blessing. We want to reduce their joy or to destroy it altogether. Rejoice with those who rejoice, Paul says, and give thanks in everything, even in the success of another instead of ourselves. Now, it may not be obvious on the surface, but another way that we can bless others with our speech is by offering a needed rebuke or admonishment. This is a way we not only avoid repaying evil for evil, but can show love. The heart of the law in Leviticus 1918 is love your neighbor as yourself. And this command occurs in the context of Yahweh's command to not exact personal vengeance, to not hate our brother in our heart. He says, you shall not go about as a tail bearer among your people, nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Don't take vengeance. Don't hate your brother in your heart. Don't bear sin by refusing to rebuke him. Hold no grudge, but love him as yourself by rebuking him. God says in Second Thessalonians, don't count the one you admonish as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. And we ought to do good to show love by rebuking our neighbors and our enemies alike. Jacob reproved Laban, as I read earlier. David reproved Saul. Jesus reproved his own persecutors. When the man struck him, he says, if I've spoken evil, bear witness of the evil. But if I've spoken well, why are you striking me? This is doing good. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, Proverbs tells us. Matthew Poole talks about the withholding of good is to do injury. And the story of the Good Samaritan teaches that a failure to do good when we're able is to wish evil on another. And we can do this by even admonishing one another and even our enemies. Now, I think we can do injury to our children, parents, by failing to love them and reprove them. He who spares his rod hates his son, Proverbs tells us. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. So parents, don't withhold needed correction. As difficult as it might be on both of you, it's not loving them or blessing them. Be a blessing to them. Now, one final point of application I'd like to address is the tendency that some of us, maybe many of us, have toward rendering evil for evil on an unlikely suspect, ourselves. I resemble that. Now, please know I'm not a fan of the self-love craze that has befallen our culture and often befallen the church in recent decades. I believe at its core the infatuation with self-image and self-love is essentially humanistic and in principle opposed to the biblical truth of God being God and puts man above everything, including God. It is essentially worshiping the creature rather than the creator, as Paul says in Romans 1. But that said, I believe there is a proper and biblical approach to self-interest or self-love, if you will. We just read in Leviticus that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. And later in Leviticus, Yahweh says, love the stranger as yourself. In his exhortation to husbands in Ephesians, Paul commands husbands to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Now this is strange language, I think, to our ears. How does one love oneself? How does one love one's own body? Paul offers insight here as he goes on to say, no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord does the church. So we love ourselves by nurturing and cherishing, by feeding and guarding ourselves. And that's how husbands are to love their wives. That's how we are to love ourselves. So why do some of us inflict pain on ourselves? Why do we do self-destructive things? Why do we beat ourselves up? I believe this is because, for many of us, at the core of our being, we're repaying evil to evil on ourselves. And, you know, I think especially teenagers are prone to this. I was. Really struggled with some things and I became bitter and angry and entered into some self-destructive behaviors for a number of years until the Lord converted me. I think that one thing that I've exhorted my own children is as you're growing up, your conscience is going to become a little bit more awake than it was when you're younger. And you see things that you didn't see before and you'll see inconsistencies and hypocrisies and you'll feel things that you didn't feel before and injustices that you didn't notice. And it's important as you grow to be careful not to become bitter, but to know that God is in control and God loves you. We can get angry at people, even ourselves, for the sins that we see. We expect others to be perfect and we want the world to be perfect. We want to be perfect. And when we can't obtain or create the perfection that we seek in the world we want, Rather than turning to God and hear his voice speaking graciously to us and offering forgiveness in Christ, we shut our ears and we turn inward on ourselves and we consume our own souls in wanton unbelief. One of my favorite songs of late is a song by Andrew Peterson and the title of it's Be Kind to Yourself. And he wrote the song for his daughter who was struggling with really self-hatred. And Andrew Peterson says, you know, he really relates to that. In his introduction to the song, he says, I can be angrier at myself than any other person in the world. And I get into a cycle like a snake eating its own tail. And he said a friend of his was talking to him about this, and his friend basically pointed out that self-hatred is just another form of self-worship. And Peterson goes on to say, if you're bowing down to the altar of self-hatred, you're bowing down to the altar of self. You're spending all that energy on your own sin and not on the people God has given you to love. And if your attention is on that, then it's not on the cross of Christ. Peterson's song, some of the lyrics are this. He says, I know it's hard to hear it when that anger in your spirit is pointed like an arrow at your chest. When the voices in your mind are anything but kind, and you can't believe your father knows best. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. How does it end when the war that you're in is just you against you against you? You've got to learn to love. Learn to love. Learn to love your enemies too. You can't expect to be perfect. It's a fight you've got to forfeit. You belong to me whatever you do. So lay down that weapon, darling. Take a deep breath. and believe that I love you. Be kind to yourself. You've got to learn to love your enemies, too. Job, when confronted with the awesome power and holiness of God, even as righteous as he was, he declared, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. And Isaiah, upon seeing Yahweh in his glory, says, woe is me. I'm undone. And after Jesus demonstrated his power and glory in the miraculous catch of fish, Peter implores Jesus, depart from me, O Lord, for I'm a sinful man. Each of these men recognized their own failures, sin and poverty before God and essentially despised themselves for it. Yet God spoke peace to each of them. Job was restored to health and declared by God to be acceptable to him. Isaiah was cleansed from sin by God's sovereign act of grace, touched by the coal from the altar, and was sent then to prophesy to the nations for Yahweh. And rather than fulfilling Peter's request and leaving him, Jesus tells Peter, fear not, for now on you will catch men. You're forgiven. Come, be with me. Rather than exacting penance from us or destroying us, God speaks peace to our hearts. Cleansing us from our sin and imperfections and telling us not to fear. Do yourself no harm as Paul says to the Philippian jailer. And God doesn't allow us to continue focusing on ourselves rather he sends us out on mission to do his will in the world as he did Peter. But we have to believe his promises and receive them. Often we hear that the answer to self-hatred is you just have to forgive yourself. But that's not the gospel. You and I don't have the power and authority to forgive ourselves. There's only one who does. Jesus, the Son of Man, who has power on earth to forgive sins. So instead of repaying evil for evil to our own selves or to others, we must cast ourselves upon Jesus Christ and his love, trusting him that he owns the punishment that we deserve. We read in Colossians 1, and you who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight. In Romans 5, we read that God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Here comes the Ben-Hur quote again. My favorite movie. In the end of the movie, Ben-Hur, after a long and difficult inner struggle with bitterness and a desire for personal vengeance, Judah returns from watching Jesus's crucifixion and hearing him on the cross pray for his murderers. Father, forgive them. And Judah says, I felt his voice take the sword out of my hand. Brothers and sisters, that's you and me. God has loved us, who once were his enemies, and by the death of Jesus Christ has reconciled us and made us not just his friends, but his children. He has taken the sword out of your hand and out of my hand and committed to us the word of reconciliation. And by his spirit, he's empowered us to go forth to love and to do good to our enemies so that they might become his own friends and children as well. Fear not. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. We thank you that you have brought us to yourself that you have reconciled us who were once enemies and made us your friends. Grant us, O Lord, that we might love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us. Bless us with the power by your spirit to do this for the sake of the kingdom of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.