Hey, good morning. It’s good to be with you here. We’re going to be again in Matthew 5,

verses 38-48. Matthew 5, verses 38-48.

And here’s what Jesus says. He says, As you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you. And do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You’ve heard that it was said, that 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 Son 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. I’m not a perfectionist about most things in life. I’m really not. I’m not a grass guy. Some people, you know, my next door neighbor, he’s a grass guy and his lawn looks perfect all the time. He cuts his grass multiple times a week. I’m like, what are you doing? Like, that’s not supposed to be fun. But he’s out there. He’s got the chemicals. It’s manicured. It’s like so bright green. Beautiful lawn. And then next to his is like, hey, I cut it. All right, at least I cut it. And that’s as much as I care to do with my grass. Now with painting, it’s very different. In high school, I painted for my uncle a ton. I’d paint all these houses that he would own. You know, whatever, rental mountain stuff. So I got really good at painting. And painting is a pain to most people because, you know, you have to do the trim and you have to go slow and it gets so messy. So I’m awfully OCD about that, but I’m good at it. I can paint fast and I can paint, you know, well. And so I know where that line is and I got to get in that line. It’s got to look great. It’s got to look great. So that matters to me. But the truth of the matter is we’re all imperfect in many ways. Even the things we think perhaps we’re really great at or important that are perfect. It’s not so. And Jesus particularly here, as he’s been talking about so much, he’s talking about love as it relates now in human relationships. And Jesus says you can’t, do well enough. Well enough is not enough. Good enough is not enough. Jesus says when it comes to other people, your relationships to be in the kingdom, your relationships under Christ’s rule and reign, he says it must be, and it’s a pretty stout thing for Jesus to say, must be perfect.

So Jesus presents himself as someone who has, if it is so, perfected love and shown us what perfected love is. And if we, if we are to be sons of the Father, we too must have a perfected love within us.

Jesus says, you’ve heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the evil, the one who is evil or the evil one. And that command is mentioned three times in the Torah. And I’ll read it for you a couple of times. In Exodus 21, verse 22, it says, when men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children, her children come out, but there’s no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fine as the woman’s husband shall impose on him and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, strike for strike. And again, Leviticus chapter 24, verse 17, whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. Whoever takes an animal’s life shall make it good, life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor as he has done, it shall be done to him. Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, whatever injury he has given, a person shall be given, shall be given to him. So what’s the issue here? The issue is fairness in human relationships, particularly justice when one person wrongs someone else. So God’s justice is always accurate. God’s justice is always fair. Commensurate to justice to the crime committed. So in the same way, human courts, human law, justice that we divvy out, it should always be to the degree of the offense, not more and not less. So that’s the way the Torah taught the people and that’s the way that we should divvy out laws well. So the ancient secular term for this was lex talionis, so the law of retaliation. So that was just a general principle even in the ancient world. But Jesus says something not in contrast to the law because remember, Christ has not come to do away with the law. He’s not come to say, hey, the law is bad and I’m good. He’s come to supersede the law.

Jesus is something better than the law. And so Jesus says, but I say to you, don’t resist, or it means go against, don’t go against an evil offender. So is Jesus teaching us if we’re supposed to follow him or his followers, like we’ve always got to suffer injustice, like whatever anybody’s going to do to me, whenever, however, well, you’re a Christian, so you’ve got to suffer that injustice. Whatever could happen to you or to your family, whatever’s happened in society, like it’s just unfortunate, let it be what it is. Not quite. First of all, think about the fact that Jesus whipped the money changers out of the temple. So if Jesus meant categorically you can never stand against injustice, he would be a hypocrite in what he said here and then what he’s done by throwing out the money changers. So that’s not what Jesus is getting at at all. If there’s one word that we’ve consistently gone back to in Matthew’s Gospel, it’s the word disposition. I’ve said disposition quite a few times. And disposition in reference to the human heart. So here’s what Jesus is saying. If we’re truly followers of him, the disposition of our heart can never be characterized with an overt obsession to get revenge. Never.

I’m going to go out and find all the people who have wronged me and I’m going to get mine. I’m going to defend me and mine, big or small. No one’s going to wrong me. No one’s going to do anything against me. I’m going to get even. It’s a heart disposition. And that kind of heart disposition, here’s what it reveals. It reveals that that heart, that life, is not interested in the eternal kingdom to come. It’s not where my hope is, where God’s justice and goodness flourishes. It’s in human relationships. Like, I’m waiting on that. Like, that’s what I’m waiting on. It says rather that I’m obsessed with the temporal kingdom here and now. What I have, who I have, I’m holding on to it. I’m guarding it. I’m pulling it in close to my chest. So an obsession with revenge, with getting even, is in fact an obsession with preserving oneself. Which is a lot. But I think Jesus presses it even further for us this morning. He says if anybody slaps you on the cheek, you know, you should just turn and let them slap you on the other cheek. If somebody takes your tunic, give them your cloak, too. Now, in our day and time, you know, if I walked up to you, or just, you know, here, and I whack, right in the, it means jawbone, I slapped you in the jawbone, that would hurt. And it would be more than anything condescending, wouldn’t it? In Jesus’ time, in this time period, to slap someone in the face open-handed, it was a special kind of insult. But I think whatever century, and you slap somebody in the face, like, that’s an insult, right? And what do you want to do? Like, I want to slap you back. Like, I want to hit you. What do you call that? What are we wanting to do there? We’re wanting to defend our own honor.

But Jesus says, just let them do it again.

So again, is Jesus advocating for extreme pacifism? Like, if somebody wants to maul me and my family physically, well, hey, you’re a Christian, so you sit there and take it. No. No.

But again, the implied question becomes this. Why is your personal honor so important for you to defend? And are you sure it’s worth defending because you’re its defender? Are you your own defender? Are you your own judge?

And Jesus says on top of that, if somebody takes your tunic, give them your coat. In Jesus’ day, people wore t-shirt and jeans. They had a tunic, which was their undergarment, and then a cloak on top. So if someone wrongly sued you, and they, they took your tunic, all you have is your coat. Leon Morris knows a person had an inalienable right to his cloak. It could not be taken away from him permanently. It’s voluntary surrender that’s significant. Because if you lost your tunic, because it was wrongfully taken, and you gave away your cloak, you would be naked.

Jesus says, give it up. So Jesus wants me to be naked?

Well, no, I don’t think Jesus, Jesus wants you to be naked. But again, it comes back to a disposition question in your heart. Why are you trying so hard to keep it? Why are your possessions, in light of other people, so important to you?

And then Jesus says, if somebody forces you to go a mile, take them too. Now we talked about Rome in this time period. And this time period, Rome rules. They held the Jews in tyranny. They were a nation state subservient. They were a nation state subservient to Rome. So they hated Rome. And they wanted Jesus to be their conquering king, right? Let’s throw off Rome and be our own empire. Again, that’s not why Jesus is here at all. And one commentator notes about Rome. Romans could legally demand local inhabitants to provide forced labor if they wanted. And they were known to abuse the right.

So it’s not like Jesus is even saying that about anybody. He’s saying, hey, think about the Romans who could say to you, hey, I don’t know how busy your day is, I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re going to put my military equipment on the back of your donkey and you’re taking me a mile.

Jesus says, hey, why not say to them, I’m going to go a whole other mile. Would that help you?

So is Jesus saying now the disciple of Christ should have absolutely zero dignity?

I think you kind of have to read in between the lines or just read the lines and understand them.

And if all that’s not, I think, enough to do away with personal pride and self-absorption. Jesus says, if anyone ever asks you for something, give it. Take your cold cash and give it away. All the things that you’ve worked to, all the stuff that matters to you. Well, maybe I haven’t filled out a form. Maybe they’re one of those people that paint handles and they could work if they wanted to work. So they really don’t deserve it if they’re asking. It’s not what Jesus says, is it? Jesus says if someone asks, freely give yourself away.

So I think if we’re considering Jesus correctly this morning, here’s what we’ve got to conclude. Jesus is characterizing Christ followers as people who have a profound disinterest in themselves.

Friends, perfect love then requires surrendering your rights. Surrender your rights.

Sin warps and disfigures and of all things, sin warps and disfigures. Sin warps and disfigures human relationships. Sin can never affect one person. Like, hey, my sins are my own decisions, so what I do, just me. That’s not true. You have not only been hurt, you have hurt. You have not only taken advantage of others, others have taken advantage of you. So it’s not something that one of us are doing it. It’s that we all see it happen to us and we do it towards others. And what happens when we’re wronged? Well, I’ve got indignation, right? I’ve got disdain. I’ve got demands of reparation. The knee-jerk reaction for us is when my cause, my person, it’s priority. It’s way up here. How dare you come against me? What can I do now to make this right? I want justice or revenge. But Jesus is challenging us if we’re followers of Him, and I think it’s a lot to take in. One, always bypass illegal, inappropriate revenge. Always. But secondly, Jesus is challenging us. Are there not times when we should even withhold from pursuing permitted justice?

I want you to think about Jesus.

Jesus, He could have come against us, we who carried the sins of the world, for we had sinned, and He could have demanded the full force of the law be executed against us, and every blow would have been a just blow. But Jesus did not do what He could have done. Jesus did not demand what He deserved as judge and king over us. Jesus endured the wrong of others, and He withheld justifiable retribution. He suffered all sin fully and completely. Jesus on the cross never allowed evil to best Him. Jesus did not seek justifiable temporal retribution from the law, nor did Jesus ever repay sin with sin. And why not? Well, on the first one, if Jesus had demanded justice against the people for what they had done to Him, that would have managed evil. It wouldn’t have vanquished it. Evil men are still evil men, even if, you know, they’re disciplined. And as to the second, Jesus never would have found Himself the same as the sinning party by repaying blow for blow.

Jesus has shown us on the cross and in the empty grave that He alone carried the weight of all of our sins, that are committed against us, and that we commit. So that when someone hurts us, and it hurts, do not get the disposition, which we do, that’s rogue sin right there. That’s sin unaccounted for, and I’ve got to do something about it. It’s not true. If you believe the cross, you believe Jesus already dealt with all the wrongs that will ever be done against you. And the acid test of whether or not you believe the cross has dealt with sin is your ability to love and to forgive, in the midst of enduring those sins against you.

So no, we don’t have rights as followers of Jesus. You know what we have? We’ve exchanged out those rights for a fellowship. And in fellowship with Christ, we’ve been relieved of the burden of what we’ve done wrong, and all the wrongs done against us, so that in Christ, God and man, and man and man, are at peace with one another again. Christ is my possession. Christ is my honor. Christ is my dignity. And nothing else.

A committee of ministers in a certain city was discussing the possibility of having D.L. Moody to serve as the evangelist during a city-wide campaign. Finally, one young minister who did not want to invite Moody stood up and said, Why Moody? Does he have a monopoly of the Holy Spirit? There was silence. Then an old godly minister said, No, he does not have a monopoly of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly of D.L. Moody.

Friends, I think this word is a difficult word for us, because let’s be honest, we’re Americans, and we got rights. We have a bill of them. I can say what I want, when I want, about what I want, and I can protect me and mine, and this is my land, and this is my freedom, this is home of the brave, and that’s great. Praise the Lord for a free country in which we live. But let me ask you in the very core of your person, in the disposition of your heart, whose kingdom are you living for, and which one are you willing to give up? Because it comes down to that a lot of times. It’s a very difficult area for us to surrender our rights and say, Holy Spirit of God, how do I look like Jesus in this situation? Because I know what I want to do. I know what my rights tell me to do.

Friends, we must be the kind of people that bless when we are cursed. We must forgive when we are wronged. We must give of all we have, and think little of ourselves and much of others. And I’m not minimizing hurt, because I realize that’s easy for you to say in a sermon, but you don’t know what’s happened to me. I’ve had some very atrocious things happen to me in my life. I’m not minimizing your hurt. What I want us to do together as a church is magnify the cross, and see how, though it hurts, the cross has already dealt with these hurts. It’s dealt with the wrongs.

Living life like this is different, and it’s hard, but it’s different, because it looks like Jesus. And it’s a witness to the world that we’re a people, that we don’t hold tightly to ourselves and what belongs to us. We hold tightly the freedom and the life that we found in Jesus Christ alone. So the question is, will we show a better way? Will we fight to maintain the disposition of Christ?

Verse 43, Jesus goes on to say, You’ve 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 persecuted, perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

So Leviticus 19.18 does say, love your neighbor. But guess what? Nothing in Leviticus, nor the entire Bible says. Hate your enemies. That was something the religious leaders had tacked on. It was something of a Jewish phrase that was passed around. Well, if that’s true, this must be true. Yeah, love your neighbor, hate also. I’m going to hate my enemies. And Jesus says, hold on. The law never says that. The law only says,

love your neighbor. In fact, what the law teaches us is to love your enemy. If you go back to Exodus chapter 23,

it says this, 23.4, if you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you should bring it back to him. If you see the donkey, of one who hates you, lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it. You shall rescue it with him. So I think sometimes we get this very false view of God. Like God in the Old Testament, He’s angry. And man, He’s just knocking down kingdoms. And He’s mad. And He’s got righteous indignation. But you know, now it’s the New Testament. And He’s like a little old man in a rocking chair. And He’s soft. And hey, let’s just love everybody. It’s not true. God had a heart for the wicked nations in the Old Testament. And Paul, when he’s evangelizing in Lystra, he says the very same thing. So the rain falls on the just and the unjust. God’s common graces too, those go out to the most wicked people who hate Him. Despite what the Jews had read into the passage, right, which we’re guilty of doing sometimes, despite what you and I want to be true, despite what you and I feel, it’s just not true that God from ancient times ever hated His enemies. And it’s not true to be one of God’s people that we were to hate our enemies.

Jesus says it’s natural to love your own kind. It’s natural to love your own friends, your own tribe, the people you get along with. That’s common.

But I want you to hold on to this truth. God’s love is not common, as we know love. God’s love is not natural. God’s love, friends, for us, it’s supernatural.

Jesus says it flows from His perfections. And then He says this very daunting thing to us. He says, and if you’re going to be a son of the Father, you must. You must. Well enough is not enough. He says you must be perfect.

Perfect love requires then loving the unlovable. Friends, if we’re followers of Christ, we must love the unlovable. Being sons of our Father in heaven, that’s the great will of our Father, and that’s the great into which Christ came to earth. Jesus did not descend to earth to say, hey, I’ve got a really encouraging word. I’ve got a self-help program for you to help you be your best version of you. That’s not what happened. Christ came to make you and I sons and daughters of the living God where we were once sons and daughters of His enemy. Paul says that in Ephesians chapter 2. We were subservient to the prince of the power of the air. So Christ has come to make us through Himself sons and daughters of God. And if our Father is perfect, He requires that we be nothing less. And that should mystify you. And it mystifies you not for some weighty, secret theological reason. It mystifies you for this reason. Everybody knows people are terrible sometimes. People can be so cruel. People can be so hurtful. Even the nice ones aren’t nice all the time, right? Good people wreck cars. Good people wreck relationships. So what Jesus is saying is stark. But what’s even more impossible than that is the pathway He demands that we get to this perfection.

He says, You must love your enemies.

And that is impossible for all of us. Because hating our enemy, friends, that’s as natural as breathing, isn’t it? And I do want to draw this distinction between loving people who wrong us, loving sinful men and loving sins. I think there’s a very false notion that floats around. Hey, if you were full of love, you would back off and let someone think the way they want to think, do the way they want to do, live their life, and we’ll all do this thing called co-exist. We’ll all go along with our own versions of good, which is ignorant when you think about it. Because if I have my version of good and truth and love, and you don’t affirm mine, you have your own, obviously you hate my version of good and truth and love. So it’s an impossible situation. If you truly love someone, you would not say, Oh yes, you keep along in your sin. That’s to hate them. To love them is the first recognition to recognize their way of life. It offends a holy God. But secondly, to help said person see that your sins negatively affect the people around you. That’s what it means to love someone, is to endure them and see how in their sins they have offended me, and they’ve offended a holy God.

But what it says about us, we discover in our response to said person.

The acid test becomes again, how do I respond to him? Do I love him personally in spite of said sin? And I let his sin control me? And responding blow for blow and hating the others he hates me? All I’m doing is what? I’m affirming sin. I’m affirming hate.

But I see in Christ this perfect love of enduring and suffering others. So that they may see a better way. They may see a perfect love. They may see a perfect father. Who sent a perfect son to love where love was not deserved. A love unwarranted, but a love everlasting and a love that’s good and a love that’s true. Hate then has no part in the Christian’s life at all. Right? And I’ve said this before, we like to pause. Like yes, I agree with that 99% of the time. But if you heard what he said to me, you would justify the pause button too. Like no, I should not have told him off. But it was one too many times. It was one too many times. I had to hit the pause button. There’s no pause button. You don’t have a pause button.

Dawson right now, he’s coming into the age where he loves costumes. He loves putting on, he got this new costume yesterday, Jessica found. It’s this Batman costume. And he comes around the corner and you know, he’s Batman. I mean to himself, he’s Batman. He’s Spiderman or Darcy’s, you know, she’s got this Pocahontas dress. And like they’re wearing it and they’re just living the experience.

And it’s fun for them, but at the end of the day, they take it off and they’re just Darcy and Dawson. It’s not really who they are. And in the same way, friends, as Christians, we put on the costume of hate. Hold on, this is not who I am. Christ has called me out to love because he has loved me when I was unlovable. Christ was good to me. So he expects me to do the same.

Loving your enemies is not chiefly about changing them. It’s about changing you. It’s about you becoming who Christ has already called you out to be. Being who you were made to be in Christ. Never let a lack of reciprocation keep you from loving. It either is who you are

or it is who we’re not.

So friends, this is true and this is true about Jesus. That he alone is love. In him it is seen. In him it is known. In him it is experienced.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Corrie ten Boom. That’s a fun name. But Corrie ten Boom, she lived during World War II and she smuggled and hid away Jews from going into concentration camps. But eventually she was found out for doing this and she was put into a concentration camp herself with her sister. And her sister did not survive. And I just want to read you just a little excerpt from something she once wrote here.

It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed out land and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind. I like to think that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. When we confess our sins, God casts them into the deep oceans, gone forever. The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. And that’s when I saw him working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat, the next I saw his blue uniform, his visored cap and its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush. The huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor. The shame of walking past this man naked. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment of skin.

Betsy and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland. And this man had been a guard of that concentration camp. And now he was in front of me, hand thrust out. A fine message. How good it is to know that, as you say, all of our sins are at the bottom of the sea. And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course. How could he remember one prisoner among those thousands? But since that time he went on, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there. But I’d like to hear it from your lips as well. Miss, again, the hand came out. Will you forgive me? And I stood there. I, whose sins had every day been forgiven.

Betsy, my sister, had died in that place.

Could he erase her slow, terrible death simply for asking that of me?

It could not have been more than many seconds, but to me it felt like many hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do.

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching in my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion. I knew that. Forgiveness is an act of the will. And the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. Jesus helped me. I prayed silently. I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the filling. She prayed. So, woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretch out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder and it raced down my arm and it sprang into our joined hands. And then His healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears in my eyes. I forgive you, brother, I cried with all my heart.

Friends,

Jesus, the Son of God, for whom all things exist, by whom all things exist, He lowered Himself as a man. He surrendered His own rights. He did what was best for you and I. Christ, Christ loved us when we were unlovable. And by doing so, He defeated all sin. He defeated death, never did it best Him. Christ’s love is undeserved. Christ’s love is unexpected. Christ’s love is never ending. It is a sacrificial love that goes beyond all bounds. Friends, no, we were not good enough for Christ, but Christ lowered Himself and He raised us up to where He was.

Let me ask you, do you know that love? Do you experience that love? Have you let go of shame in your life? Have you let go of bitterness of how other people have wronged you?

I pray that we would all cling to the cross of Christ and learn what it means truly to be forgiven

and forgive.

And in the cross of Christ alone is love perfected. Would you pray with me?

Father, we need forgiveness

when we think our sins have outdone Your grace.

When we think there’s no way You could call this enemy a friend. Lord, that’s pride.

Would You expose our pride to think we’re unforgivable?

And Lord, would You expose our pride when we don’t want to forgive?

I pray that Your grace and Your mercy would find all of us at the foot of the cross this morning

with humility to see how only Christ is good. Only Christ is true. Only Christ is pure. Only Christ is love. Only in placing faith in His perfect life, His sacrificial death, the power of His resurrection, are we forgiven of our sins? Are we able to truly love people?

Thank You that we have that mighty gospel truth.

That we are forgiven and we’re set free to forgive.

Lord, I just pray that we flood every heart, every mind this morning. And if there’s one thing that is an indelible mark of Providence Fellowship, it’s a people who love as Christ has loved.

As Jesus has so humbly walked with us, Lord, would we humbly, patiently forgive and walk with others just the same?

Not that we are perfect, but that the Christ in us would complete His perfecting work. And so that in glory for all the ages that will come and will pass, we can sing along what Jesus has done, how Jesus has perfectly loved us.

And I just pray these things in His name. Amen.