Well, hey guys, welcome. Wow, you guys really are way far back there. Man, it's so different. Well, welcome to our new setup of the church service for today.
We'll see how it goes. Welcome. So as Pastor Dawn said, we are talking, this is the last week of the sermon series, we're on of the crazy things that Jesus has said. And it truly has been a magnificent series as we've been walking through this.
And as you see tonight, is this okay if I'm doing this over here, that's great. This text tonight is kind of the wrapping up that Jesus is giving to chapter five of a sermon on the Mount. And he's kind of wrapping it in a bow. And the way to think about this passage tonight is it's a very unique way.
Think about when whoever it might be, whoever your hero might be, your inspirational person, if you could just sit and have dinner with someone and you could just glean as much inspiration and wisdom from them, whoever that might be, that's kind of what the sermon has been. Is it's been just Jesus sitting with a crowd or more so probably standing with a crowd and it's massive crowd of probably thousands of people. And he's been going through different things. We've been going through the Beatitudes.
We talked about Salt and Light. We talked about us, we talked about marriage. And it all seems well and good, just like a dinner with an inspirational person would be. But then just like at any time to be inspirational, they got to give you a little kick in the butt.
They have to do something to kind of wake you up and you just kind of feel that pain and you're like, yeah, so my dad is sick. I'm gonna take this phone call so I can skip out of this dinner. It's kind of at this point now is when Jesus starts to talk about loving your enemies, the crowd's starting to go, okay, well, oh look, it's dinner time. We gotta get going because it's so hard for them.
It's a new thing. It's so different. It's not what they're used to. And that's what he's trying to get them to understand.
In our text tonight, Turn to Me is Matthew 5 and verse 43 to 48. And this is what Jesus says. He says, you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven.
He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. And if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? And not even the text collectors doing that. And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others?
Do not even pigans do that. And he ends it with verse 48, be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect. And as you see, it's completely different than you would see the rest of the text. What he's telling him is that our life is recalled to become more like him.
That's what he's been getting at that. And as we're living this life, we're gonna be doing things that are greater than ourselves. But as we do things greater than ourselves, we become into a part, we start to live life and out of our comfort zone, in places that aren't natural to us. And in this way, when we're living this life of the gospel and a life that represents the kingdom, we're gonna start stepping from the unnatural to the unnatural, allowing God's presence to be seen in unmarkable ways.
Because I can just imagine the crowd sitting there as he's going through these different things just from Matthew 5-1 to now. And him just soaking it all in, because it all seems so natural to them. But when he gets to this passage of love your neighbors and love your enemies and pray for them, it becomes unnatural. It becomes something that you just, I can imagine that there's crickets just chirping right now, because everyone's just kind of, I have some enemies, they kind of want to kill me and I don't want to beat them up.
I don't want to pray for them. I don't want to love them as I'm called to love myself. And so that's our first point tonight is this, is it to love your neighbor is unnatural. Sorry, love your enemy is unnatural.
And this is comes from verse 43, because he's saying, you've heard it said, and we've heard this time and time again for these past couple of sermons of Jesus was saying, you've heard it said, but I say this to you. So this is not a new case of misinterpretation. They've been doing it all along. And it's just something that he goes, okay, we're going to fix this.
We're going to take this truth, the nugget that you had and you've twisted it and you've skewed it and we're going to twist it right. And you're going to be amazed to see how when it's twisted right, to watch how much it's going to change your life. And it's going to change the lives of people that are around you. And this verse, the love your neighbor comes from Leviticus 19 verse 17 and 18.
And this is what it says. It says, do not hate your brother in your heart. Revute your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.
I am the Lord. And this comes from the time when God was meeting with the people speaking through Moses and this was a time Israel had gone out of Egypt and there were enemies of Egypt. And so they're on the run and they've been rebelling against God and these are the laws that God has set up for his people so that they would be set apart. And like most people, I'm sure if we saw these different things and we skim through it and say, okay, love your neighbors or something great, I got that.
What they miss in verse 17 where it says, do not hate. It's a simple few words but they missed out on it because it was so, it's so easy to love your neighbor because there's someone that like you. If you know your neighbor, you're going to like them. You're going to talk to them.
You're going to hang out because you see them all the time. It's easy to love them. But someone that has done wrong against you and that you have a garage against, it's hard to love them. And what's this idea of an enemy?
I look this up and the basically the word of enemy means an unfriendly repoment. An enemy can be someone who is wronged us, someone who hates us, seeks to harm us, costs trouble, an enemy could just be somebody on the opposing side. Someone who could easily just think differently than you could be your enemy. And you think at this time, there was so many different thoughts, so many different ways of thinking that of course they're going to have a ton of enemies.
And I'm sure Jesus had a lot of enemies and there's a lot of enemies of the disciples there that same day too as they were listening to this. But he goes even further and says, look, I know I'm calling you to be unnatural. By loving your enemy, I'm causing you to do something that's not natural. Because it's easy to love someone who loves you back.
But it's hard to love someone when they don't love you back, when they want to harm you. But he says, I'm going to push you once more. Because being a part of the kingdom of God, we're called out of our comfort zone. We're called to live lives that aren't easy.
We're called to break the normal society. He wants us to love our enemies. But he wants them to know that loving them isn't enough. Because anyone could do that.
He wants us to go even one step further to the point that the only way it's going to be possible is that God himself will have to be stepping in. And that's point number two, is be unnatural and pray for your enemy. It is, we talked about this earlier, when John was praying with over Nicholas Cruz. And we've seen the devastation and what has happened in Parkland and at Stoneman High School.
And we've seen that. And we can see how that reaction of loving him would be hard. But just imagine what it would look like for the church to be praying for him. Praying for his heart, praying for his family.
Because he is no different than us. He is a sinner. He has done some terrible decisions. Yes, that is not taking away from what he's done.
But he's still loved by God and isn't deserving of God's love and God's grace and God's mercy. And so why is God, why is God saying in verse 44 to pray for those who persecute you? Because by us praying for those who persecute us, he's getting us to understand that as we pray for them, it changes our hearts. It moves us from that natural response to a supernatural response.
I have no idea what it, or even if I know what it would take to love my enemy. And I know it would be hard. But you know who does? God does.
You know how I know that? Because there are two verses that we're gonna talk about. And the first one is Roman 5a. But God shows his love for us and that why we're still sinners.
Christ died for us. And we look at this. In that while we were still sinners. By us being a sinner, we're enemies of God.
We have no business being with God. God could easily just smash us like we're a Plato mountain that we build as kids. He could just easily be like, nope, you're done, like God. But what's he do?
He sent his son to die for us. That God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. So God did not send his son into the world to condemn it. Which he could easily have done because why?
We are his enemies. But in order that the world might be saved through him. Because God loves us and wants to be in our presence. Even though we're his enemies.
Even though we're deserving of death. The consequences of our sin, as it says in Romans, is death. But God wants us to overcome this. Because as we go praying and we see this transforming of a heart.
As we step from the supernatural to the supernatural. We begin to see that we're reflecting something greater than ourselves. We begin to see that we're reflecting the character of God. And this is our third point tonight.
Is that we're reflecting God. It's interesting that he goes from saying, pray for those to persecute you. To that you may be the sons of your father in heaven. Because when we pray for our enemies and when we love them.
We're being who God has called us to be. Who God created us to be. Why? Because we're created in God's image.
We're God's image bear. And as we do things that God would do. We're reflecting God to the world. Think about this.
For some of us, we might not have kids. But for those that do. Think about this. When your little child comes into your room at three o'clock in the morning and you're dead asleep.
And yes, I know your child may not be your enemy. But I'm pretty sure at three o'clock in the morning when you're dead asleep, I'm sure your child is your enemy. And you're like, I just want you to go to bed. But they just come in and say, Mommy, your daddy, I threw up.
What do you do? You just lay in bed and go. Go away. Like I don't want to talk to you.
No, you get up. You get out of bed. You come for him. You clean them.
You change their sheets. You sue them back to sleep. Because is that what you felt like doing? No, you did it because you love them.
In that verse 45 of being the sons of God. It's showing we do that because we are sons of God. It's not saying this is how you become a son of God. No, it's saying because you're his son, you will reflect the character of him.
You are his ambassador. Because an ambassador is someone that reflects the person that has sent them. And God has sent us into the world to love and to pray for our enemies. And this is also something that should be kind of familiar for us.
This idea of being the sons of God. Because this isn't the first time we've heard this in the chapter. Remember back to Matthew chapter five. Sorry.
You verses earlier in verse nine of the beatitude that says this. Bless are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God. See, the blessing of being a true peacemaker is that you are loving your enemy. You are that son of God.
Because that's what a peacemaker is. They are making peace by loving their enemies, by praying for them. Because that's the gospel. The gospel is God who loved his enemy, sent his son to die on the cross source.
We saw that earlier in the two verses. But then he goes on in verses 46 and 47. And you kind of look at this and go, OK, I get this. Love your enemies.
Love your neighbors yourself. Hate your enemy. I get that. They misinterpreted it.
OK, we got to move to the natural, the supernatural. Going into verse 44 and 45. But what about this 46 and 47? It's a little confusing.
Like I don't get tax collector and the pagans. What is Jesus talking about? It just seems like he kind of was like, oh, squirrel. And totally took it off.
What in reality is Jesus is basically sitting there and bringing the point home to them. Because Jesus had this amazing way of taking everything that he said and making it applicable to whoever he was talking to. And in 46, he's talking about tax collectors. And in that day and age, tax collectors were not the most well liked.
Tax collectors in our day were kind of like, OK, whatever. We hate them around April 15 when we have to do our taxes. And it's terrible. And we're just like, why do we have to pay taxes?
Like, so aggravating. But the rest of the year were kind of like, whatever. But in that day and age, tax collectors, they were basically like the scum of the earth. They were no better than the mud that's on the bottom of your shoe.
Because the tax collectors were seen as traders. They were people who were Jewish descent. They were of the community. But they were working for the Romans.
And in doing so, the community was like, nope, you're cast out. Like, goodbye. We're not going to interact with you. Like, touching your money was considered unclean.
Like, it just was a whole mess to be interacting with the tax collectors. Because what they did was they would take the tax for the Romans. And then they would add on top of it their commission. And so they were just lying and cheating and stealing.
And so no one wanted to interact with them. But who did they interact with? They interact with the people that love them. They interacted with people that they needed the money from.
They only did it to get something out of it. And so this, and then you have verse 47, where he's talking about the pagans and the gentiles where they sit high to their family. They're saying, hi. It's no different than what he was talking to of the righteous.
Because he's letting them know, look, you're no different than them. Because you're doing the exact same thing as the tax collectors. And you're doing the exact same thing as the gentiles. People that you despise, you're no different.
Because you're not being remarkable. How are you changing the dynamics? What in your life is changing the dynamics in which someone will be able to see who God is. And I think that this, I grew up, for those of you that don't know, I grew up in Southern California.
Southern California or California in a whole, most people, when you think about it, there's about three things that somehow will end up on the list of when you think about California. Movies, entertainment, Hollywood, whatever. That's one. Earthquakes.
Always on there. And wildfires. We are probably the state that's known for always being on fire. Without end, there's always a fire.
Not a day that goes by that we're not on fire. Growing up, and still to this day, and my wife, Alicia, will laugh at this. Because I love watching the fire department and seeing disasters and understanding what is going on in disasters. And I just kind of get caught up in it.
And once it consumes me, but I will research and research and look up and study. And so being from Southern California, so many times and seeing so many of these massive wildfires, you begin to see how they fight these things. And how they will take on this task of battling these 100,000 acre wildfires. Because normally with a fire, you put water on it.
Unless it's a gas fire or something else, then there's another thing you would do. But a typical fire, you put water on it. It's a little difficult when you have 150,000 acres of brush and mountainside and canyons burning. And so while studying this, and my wife and I actually were watching a movie called Only the Brave.
And it's about a crew called a hotshot crew. And these hotshots are basically the Navy seals of firefighters. They're the ones that you see on the front line. And so as I was reading about these hotshots, and what they do, they are probably some of the most out of the box and creative thinkers I've ever seen.
Because they have to study weather. They have to study the topography of where they're fighting a fire. They have to understand fire conditions. They have to understand how a fire works.
They have to understand burn patterns. And they have to understand, obviously, communication. But one thing they're always looking at is fuel. Because a fire always needs something to burn.
And so what they do and how they fight the fire is super unnatural. They fight these massive wildfires with fire. They go out miles and miles and dig these massive lines, probably 30, 40 feet of just bare ground. But then they step to the side facing the fire.
And they light it. And they set what's called a backfire. And this backfire burns up all the fuel between them and the wildfire. And so they will do this encompassing the entire fire.
Because then they're starting off this fire. Because they're changing the dynamics of the fire. They're changing the conditions in which they're fighting this fire. Because then once it's surrounded and there's no more fuel, they're able to contain it and put it out.
And that's what God is calling us to do. By loving our neighbor, by praying for them, we're changing the dynamics in which our culture is. By us being unnatural, we're fighting hatred with love. It's not something that you normally see.
You normally see that someone's mean to me and they hate me, I hate them back. But imagine what the world would look like is if someone hated me and I love them back. I cared for them. Because as we change the dynamics and we see this change and we begin to change our heart.
Because we're reflecting God. We not only pray for them as it changes us, but we pray that it changes their hearts. Because that's what we do, is we change the dynamics. And by changing the dynamics, we're able to influence.
And as our last point says, we're able to strive to be perfect. And this isn't perfect as in life. You have to be prepared and you have to be proper. You have to be flawless.
You can't make any mistakes. No. Because I'm sure, because when I read this first, I'm pretty sure I was like the rest of the crowd going, I don't get it. Well, you want me to be perfect like God?
No. That's not what he's saying here. What he's saying here is he's, this is the summary and the conclusion of all that he's been talking about. That everything is fulfilled and who God is.
So God fulfills it and he's the perfect. But as we pursue him, we become perfect. We're able to reflect that perfection to the world. And this is also Jesus kind of ending it.
By him saying be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect, this is him circling it back around. This is the little bow that he's tying on top of this chapter five to the group, to the people he's talking to. And what he's saying is saying God embodies all these characteristics, all these things that we've been talking about that I've been speaking on, the Beatitudes, the Salt and Light, me fulfilling the law, keeping your oaths, not divorcing, this, that, and the other. All of this, he's letting him know that look, we're going to get through this and we're going to, as we love and we step out of the natural into this unnatural, and as we begin to reflect the character of God, we ourselves begin to change, to represent the kingdom that we are becoming a part of.
Because as we live out the Beatitudes and we live out the Sermon on the Mount, we begin to understand what it means to be the kingdom of God. Because if you look at the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes and all the way through what we're talking about, you can see Jesus through it all. And you can see in each and every spot how Jesus is life represented this. And as we follow Jesus, we too will represent it.
I'll read through this, blessed are the foreign spirit. Jesus was the foreign spirit. You look at Matthew four when he was tempted and he's depended on God. Blessed are those who mourned.
And Matthew 23, when he mourned over the sins of Jerusalem and over the world, you see it or when Lazarus died, he wept. Blessed are the meek. Jesus showed great humility in John 13 when he watched the feet of the disciples. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
You see this in John three when he's talking to Nicodemus about righteousness and what it means to be born again. And you see blessed are the merciful. Jesus shows mercy throughout his entire ministry. And you see so many different examples of this.
And a great example was Mark chapter five with a woman who was bleeding for 15 years and touched his cloak. And he stops and turns around and says, who touched me? And he shows great mercy to her. Blessed are the pure and heart.
Jesus for Jesus that God's will be done and pursued God throughout his entire ministry. And he brings us up in Matthew six, 24. When he talks about serving two masters, that you can't serve two masters. You're gonna either love one, you're gonna hate the other.
Blessed are the peacemakers, Christ made peace. And he reflected God's character as he died on the cross. Blessed are those who persecuted or persecuted because of righteousness. Jesus was persecuted.
He was, that's, he was portrayed. He was tried. That was him being persecuted for righteousness. You will, blessed are the, are you when people insult you.
Matthew 27, when Jesus carrying his craft, going to the Golotha, people threw insults at him. But what did he do? He kept going. He kept pushing on because he knew what God's will was.
You know, Jesus was the salt and light of the earth. He was a great example of what it looked like to live a flourishing life of God. Obviously, Jesus did not murder. Rather, instead of becoming angry, he forgave.
He did not lust. He did not long after a moment. He didn't deal with that. He didn't deal with sin.
He dealt with temptation. He battled that temptation with Satan. He did not divorce. He did not go back on his word.
Then was divorce, oath and promises. He kept his word. He kept his covenant. What he promised and what he said he would do, he did.
And lastly, he did not seek revenge. And he loved his enemies and prayed for them. Even as he hung to the cross and he was nailed on the cross and died, he was still praying out for us. He even says, Father forgive them, but they know not what they do.
And so you see that as Jesus lived out this beatitudes and sermon on the Mount, and as we begin to step into that life and live this out and what we've all encompassed and been talking about of living a life that is reflecting the kingdom of God and reflecting this characteristic, that's what it looks like. Is it going to be easy? No. Is loving your enemy easy?
No. Is praying for them easy? No. But it's what we're called to do being at a disciple of Christ.
As we are living a life that's encompassing these words, the same way Christ did, we come perfect in four areas. This isn't the perfect and the flawless, like I had said. But in loving those who prayed or hate us, pray for those who persecute us and kindness to everyone, whether friend or foe. It's these four areas, character, area number one's character.
We're being like Christ, even though we will not live a flawless life like he did. And holiness that we separate ourselves from the view of the world and understand God's desires, which we follow instead of our own. And we're going to grow. Our spiritual development doesn't happen at once.
We're going to grow, just like you've seen, a baby turn into an infant, turn into a teen, turn into a soul. Each one of them have a certain maturity, certain actions that follow. And they're spiritual disciplines that help us grow in our spiritual maturity. And that's exactly what he talks about in Matthew 6.
Are these spiritual disciplines? But we'll get to that later in the year or in 2019. But that's to come. And lastly, we mature and get a perfect area in love because we seek to love others the way God loves us.
Because this is the gospel. The gospel is to love your enemies. We talked about this in Romans and in John that we're enemies of God, but he still loved us. And pursued us relentlessly.
Even when we turned his back on him, he still came after us. He did what was unnatural. He didn't have to pursue us. He didn't have to send his son to die for us.
But he wanted to. And the same way for us, we are called to do the same thing for enemies. People that might despise us, that might hate us, that might think differently than us, that might live a different life from us. We are called to love them.
And what better way to show them the presence of God and to show them the gospel in a world that is full of heat and that is without hope than to show them the gospel. A gospel that is full of hope and full of love and full of forgiveness. Because we have the ability to do that. It's our choice to follow these.
And it's interesting to think about. You see, just looking at the six intituses that we've been looking at, the first five were all internal. It was all you internally. Don't anger in your heart.
Don't lust. Keep your promises. Keep your oaths. Don't take revenge.
It's things that happen internally. But this last one, it's the only one that's called to be external. Why? Because through this, by loving our enemy, by being unnatural and praying for them that are persecuting us, we're able to reflect God.
We're able to let people see who God is. And in striving to, in doing that, and being perfect and striving to this perfection, people are able to understand who the gospel is and what the gospel is. Because that is what we're called to do. And that is what has followers of Christ and people who are among his kingdom.
That's what we're called to do. And so this week, as we go about our week, I just want you to think about this. And that how are we going to turn our enemies into our neighbors? How are we going to turn our enemies into our family?
In what ways can we love them? Can we share the gospel with them that they may understand? Even though that they may be our enemies, they're still loved. They're still valued.
And as we sing this song of resurrection again, I just want you guys to take this time to think about who it is that you may have hurt you, who it is that may have wronged you, who it is that there may be some obstacle in the way for you to show them love this week, or this month, or in the days to come, that while you loving them, they're able to see who God is. Or understanding maybe you need to take the time and just think about and reflect upon who God is to you. And how what is there in your life that is holding you back from reflecting God's character and who God is to the world.