Who Do You Love?

Who Do You Love?

Matthew 5:38-48

In 1979, Tim Hansel published a book entitled "When I Relax I feel Guilty". Included in the book is this raw and provocative tidbit.

"I would like to buy three dollars’ worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy three dollars’ worth of God, please.”

As we come to the end of our series on Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says some things that make us uncomfortable. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” is one of those things. If we just select three dollars’ worth of God, we can skip over these things, but, as Jesus explains, anyone can do that; we are called to do better. In fact, his exact words are, “Be perfect.”

Today as we examine Matthew 5:38-48, we will hear Jesus delving into matters of the heart.  How does a new, changed heart respond when one is wronged?  When you’re hated?  We will be see that  ...

When you’re wronged, even

When you’re hated,  

The standard doesn’t change

1. Body
1. When you’re wronged (vv. 38-42)
1. Love Does Not “Get Even.”
1. “You’ve heard it said…”. — The lex talionis - law of retaliation.
1. “Established” - so to speak -  in  Exod. 21:24 “… eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
2. Repeated in Lev. 24:19-20 — “‘If a man causes disfigurement of his neighbor, as he has done, so shall it be done to him— fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him.”
3. This was intended to LIMIT vengeance, not excuse it.
4. Lev. 19:18 — 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.
5. Deut. 32:35 - “Vengeance is Mine…” (cf. Rom. 12:17-19 — Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
6. Still applied by some religions today.  In 2008 in Iran, a man was found guilty of throwing acid upon a woman who refused to marry him.  In a literal application of the sharia law of an eye for an eye, Majid Movahedi was scheduled to be rendered unconscious in Tehran's judiciary hospital today while his victim, Ameneh Bahrami, dropped acid in both his eyes.  Despite international outcry over the “cruel and inhuman punishment” which many nations recognized as rising to a level amounting to torture, the victim - according to BBC reporting as late as 2011 - has consistently demanded retribution for her injuries and has insisted that the punishment be carried out.
2. Martin Luther King notably said, This sort of violence “is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding…”.
3. So… What to do?   Well… we’re getting to that, but next…When you’re hated (vv. 43-44)
1. Love CAN’T hate!
4. Jesus here is quoting the common thought of the day, a strange combination of scripture and custom. He says, in verse 43, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” Well, the first part—“love your neighbor”—is straight from scripture. Way back in Leviticus 19:18, part of the Jewish Torah, God says, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus later quotes this as one of the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). This part comes right from God.
5. But the second half of the phrase, “Hate your enemy” – you won’t find in scripture. It’s not there. I looked! 
1. About the closest you’ll find is in part of a psalm of David, Psalm 139:21-22: “Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.” 
2. Here David is using the pledge of loyalty customary for a king of that time period: “Your friend is my friend, and your enemy is my enemy.” He is saying, God comes first.
6. But the lead religious people of Jesus’ day had taken this verse and run with it to conveniently suggest, “Love those who love you, and hate those who hate you.” Or, “Love people who are just like you, and feel free to hate people who are different from you.” They were mixing their own natural desires and feelings with what God’s word says, which prompted Jesus at another time to address who exactly is our neighbor? The answer: anyone in need. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37).
7. Illustration — Now I heard about a pastor who was preaching on this text, and he took a survey and said, “How many of you have enemies?” Well, practically the whole church raised their hands. Then he said, “Is there anyone who has no enemies at all?” One hand went up in the back. And the pastor called on the old man and said, “Well done, sir! How is it that you have not a single enemy?” The old man responded, “I’ve outlived them all!”
8. Jesus says, “Love your enemies.”
9. Illustration #2 — Hard words, indeed! Love God? Sure. Love our neighbors? Working on that one. But, love our enemy? How do we do that? More importantly, why would we do that?   Here’s one example….
1. A little girl was given candy by her friend. She got home to show her mother, and mother said, “Your friend was really sweet.”
2. “Yes,” said the little girl, “she gave me more, but I gave some away.”
3. Mom said, “Who did you give it too?”
4. The daughter said, “I gave it to a girl who pushes me off the sidewalk and makes faces at me.”
5. “Why in the world would you do that,” the mother asked?
6. “Because I thought it would help her know I want to be kind to her, and maybe then she won’t be so unkind to me,” the daughter replied.

C. The standard doesn’t change (vv. 45-48)

1. God sets the standard. God is the standard.
1. “You shall be perfect.”
2. “The word Matthew uses means “brought to completion, mature, full-grown.” We are made in God’s image. We are made to be like God, and when we love our enemies we are acting like children of God. The Bible teaches that we realize our full humanity only by becoming more and more like Christ. The one thing that distinguishes us and makes us like God is the love which never ceases to care for people, no matter what they do to us. We realize our humanity, we become perfect, when we learn to forgive as God forgives and love as God loves.
3. That’s exactly what the people in the village of Bambalang, in Cameroon, Africa discovered. Pastor Pius Mbahlegue tells the story in March, 2011, the village had a dispute with a neighboring village over traditional burial rights. The rival village attacked. 300 homes were burned, and 3,000 people were displaced. The residents of Bambalang were unable to return to their village until the Cameroon military came and drove the rival villagers out. The Bambalang residents returned and found nothing left. Even their rice field had been burned. The attack began on a Sunday and lasted through the following Thursday. As the villagers returned to worship the following Sunday, it was the very day planned to dedicate the Gospel of Luke which had been translated into their native language. As the residents read from Luke’s Gospel, they came to chapter 6:27 and read of loving your enemies. One resident, upon reading the words in her own language said it was like a dream, that the words were for her and for her village, and with that the villagers made the decision to overcome hate with love, and to love the rival villagers with the love of Christ. Thus, began a transformation in them, and in their relationship with the rival village. As one villager said, “I can’t hate them and not forgive them because I would want people to forgive me.”
4. And so we learn to forgive rather than get even because love forgives.
5. … We chose love over hatred because we are called to be like God and God is love. (1 John 4)

1. Conclusion 
1. A pastor tells the story of stumbling into his kitchen after a long day of work.
2. He put down his groceries and pressed the voice-mail button.
3. It was one of his church members: “Pastor, I’m doing the Scripture reading for Sunday, and I have that passage where Jesus says, ‘Turn the other cheek.’ You know that passage, right?
4. Do the other Gospels have that same passage?
5. Is it different in the other Gospels?
6. Could you let me know, because…no offense, but I think Jesus is wrong.”
7. We may laugh, but if we’re honest, many of us don’t want to be Christians—which means to be like Christ—when it’s time to love; to turn a cheek, give away our coat, go the second mile, give to a worthless beggar, or - gasp - to pray for those who hate us.
8. “God 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 have you? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?”
9. In Luke’s record of this sermon from Jesus, Luke 6 is the summary:  what we call the Golden Rule. He says in verse 31, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Jesus wasn’t the only one to preach along these lines. Other rabbis talked about not hurting others, since you don’t want to be hurt. Other cultures and world religions have similar edicts. But all of these are in the negative: “Don’t be mean to others, because you don’t want them to be mean to you.” Jesus takes it a step further: he moves to the positive: “DO to others as you would have them do to you.” You’re not merely restraining yourself from poor behavior; you’re intentionally pursuing good behavior, because you know that’s the way you would want to be treated.
10. What’s that look like, you ask?  Back in March 2005 Atlanta-area resident Ashley Smith was taken hostage in her own apartment by Brian Nichols, who had just shot and killed a judge, court reporter, and deputy as he was brought to court for a rape charge. A few years earlier, Smith’s husband had died in her arms after a knife fight. She told the killer she was raising her five-year-old daughter alone and needed to go soon to pick her up from a church AWANA group. But before that, she asked permission to read, and she read to the gunman her daily devotional from Rick Warren’s book, “A Purpose Driven Life.” She talked to him about how God cared for him and didn’t want him to hurt or kill any other people. She said his life mattered to God and that God probably wanted to use him to witness about God to others in prison. He eventually released her to get her daughter, and he surrendered to authorities. 
11. This is what it means to love as God loves.