Love Your Enemies

[00:00:00] Well, let's go to the Book of Matthew, chapter five. And let's finish up this chapter on the Sermon on the mount. [00:00:12] Matthew, chapter five. We'll look at verses 43 to verse 48 tonight. [00:00:28] Matthew, chapter five, verse 43. [00:00:32] Let's pray. And then we'll read through verse 48. [00:00:37] Our Lord in heaven, thank you for your word. Thank you for the scripture that you've given to us. Help us to understand the truth. [00:00:46] Help us to live the truth, Lord. [00:00:50] Lord, we thank you for the opportunity, for the abundance that you've given to us here at Choice Hills that we have extra. [00:00:59] Lord, we're not greatly suffering or suffering at all, really. Financially, our church is doing well. Well enough to help people who are in need. And thank you for the connection with Brother Robinson and from Swannano Heights Baptist Church and for the work they're doing, Lord, that they are putting love to action, trying to help people that are in need. And thank you that you put him there and put their church there to do that at this time. And thank you for protecting him and their people and their church and their building. [00:01:34] And, Lord, we just give you thanks for that. And we ask you that you help those people who are suffering, Lord. Give them mercy, Lord, if you be pleased, use this disaster to draw people to you. That they would call out to God, even though they might never have before. [00:01:51] And that, Lord, you would be found of them. And as we look at Matthew chapter 5 and finish this up on the Sermon on the Mount with this section here, we pray that you would guide us. Help me, Lord, to say what you'd have me to say in the right tone and demeanor and attitude that you'd have me to say it. And your people would be strengthened and helped. In Jesus name, Amen. [00:02:13] Matthew 5, verse number 43. The Bible says, ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. [00:02:24] But I say unto you, love your enemies. [00:02:28] Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. [00:02:38] That ye may be the children of your Father, which is in heaven. For he maketh his Son notice that. Don't you like that? His Son? [00:02:48] We don't need listen. The natural world is God's world, God's universe. We don't need to let you know we have been secularized to death, haven't we? Where God has been surgically, no offense, removed from our thinking. [00:03:07] God expects us to look at the sun and think it's his son and look at the rain and think, that's God's rain. And really, if we have a Christian worldview, that's what we ought to think. We see the flowers, we see God made that for us. We see the beautiful. We see the weather and the sunrise and the sunset and all those things and the crisp air. Like tonight we go outside. Our mind ought to think, Lord, thank you, thank you. For even in the natural world that you have made, that you have shown your goodness to us, that's not. Listen, that's not the scientific domain, all those science studies. It's God's area. [00:03:44] That's the kind of view we ought to have. Our Lord had it. Jesus, our Lord says his son. Right, his son. He could have said my son. That would be perfectly good too. Right? [00:03:57] That ye may be the children. Verse 45 of your father which is in heaven, for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same. And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans. So be therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Now look at verse 48. We're not going to spend a lot of time on verse 48, really. I think verse 48 is really saying is telling us essentially, among other things, to follow. The best example we have is the example of our God himself, right? And of course, of our Lord Jesus himself. But you know, for those that might say, well, you know, nobody's perfect. Jesus says, be ye therefore perfect. I know this is not necessarily sinless perfection, but although that's a goal, that's right. That's a way to aim. [00:05:05] But for those that say that, well, the Lord says actually do be perfect. We ought not settle for allowing sin or something less than full, full and complete maturity in our life. We ought not settle for anything less than that. We ought always be be working toward praying, toward improving, getting better, being more and more like the Lord, which is what verse number 48 is saying. Now go back up to verse 43. Now, we've seen. [00:05:39] We've seen adultery, we've seen murder, we've seen hatred, we've seen divorce, we've seen swearing and oaths and deception. We've seen retaliation. [00:05:55] And these are all different things that traditional sayings that the Lord addresses directly that existed in the society in which the Lord lived. And verse 43 is no exception. Notice what it says. Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. Now, the subject of loving one's neighbor. It's interesting that this is the last one because Romans tells us that angulations. It says, if you love your neighbor, all these other questions wouldn't even matter, right? [00:06:29] In other words, encapsulated in the idea of loving one's neighbor. If there is love for one's neighbor, there's no worry of adultery, there's no worry of deception, there's no worry of hatred, there's no worry of murder and divorce and all these things. Love is the fulfilling. Jesus said, loving one's neighbor as oneself is the fulfilling of the law. That's why the Lord exalts this one command, which actually is minor. I mean, in the context of Scripture, is a minor command we'll look at in a second. But the Lord exalts him by saying all these other things. Worried about, you know, and of course, as we've seen in Matthew 5, what are the Jews doing in every case? What are they doing? They're contorting the scripture to carve out some way that they can violate it. [00:07:20] But this at the very end, says, it says, listen, if you just love your neighbor, all these other things wouldn't matter because that gets straight to the core, straight to the heart, right? That's what loving one's neighbor says. So ye have heard that hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. Now look back at Leviticus, chapter 19 in the Old Testament, this verse in Leviticus, chapter 19 is the only verse in the Old Testament that says this. Okay, I know in our thinking, you know, as a New Testament Christian, our thinking is, well, this is all over the Bible. Well, the reason it is because Jesus made it all over the Bible. [00:08:03] He's the one that taught it. And he said the first commandment, the greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it. That's what the Lord said. He is the one that brought it to our attention and why it's such a significant point when he says, his new commandment is to love one another, right? And so. But in the Old Testament, there's only this one verse 19, verse 18. [00:08:27] Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. [00:08:36] I am the Lord. Now, of course, I'm not saying that because it occurs only one time in the Old Testament. It's not significant. Obviously that's not the case, but it is just one time. Furthermore, in verse number 43, the second part of the traditional statement, and hate thine enemy is nowhere to be found in the Scripture. Again, just this is our final reminder that what the Lord is addressing is not what the Bible says, because that's not what they were relying upon. It was the traditional sayings that they had been taught. And the traditional saying was not thus saith the Lord, but we always say, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. [00:09:21] Now, God does say, thou shalt love thy neighbor, but there's two other words as thyself. You see that they kind of conveniently left out the degree to measure the love. [00:09:36] Of course we can, we can throw, as you might say, we could throw a couple of pence at somebody and we can say, oh well, yeah, I love them. Or because we do some little piddly thing to help somebody, we can say, well, I checked that box. I loved my neighbor. But Jesus says, that is not what the Bible says. You left out the last two words as thyself, which speaks of degree. [00:10:06] And so that's the main difference between the traditional saying and what the Bible says. [00:10:17] The Lord does not spend much time addressing loving one's neighbor. You realize that he spends almost the whole section of these verses talking about hating one's enemy, because that was the part of the statement that was nowhere to be found in the Bible. In fact, our Lord directly contradicts it, just sets it to rest, puts it in the grave. That is not right. In other words, that's what he's saying. [00:10:45] Now, when you look at this at verse 43, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. What is the obvious emphasis is on the word neighbor and the word enemy. They're set, opposed to one another. Now take a, take a peek at Luke chapter 10. I want to show you one other thing before we get into the meat of what the Lord's saying here. Luke, chapter 10. [00:11:18] I'm sure you all are familiar with this passage of Scripture. [00:11:28] Luke 10 and verse number, verse 25. The Bible says, and behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? That's a good question. Jesus said, in essence, I won't read at all. Do the commandments. And he says, and you already know he's off the rails when he says, which? [00:11:59] Well, I said, do the commandments. You know, trying to pick and choose what you have to do. Is that not Matthew chapter Five, trying to pick and choose which to do, how to do, how to get around, how to keep them in one way and violate them in another. That's all. Matthew chapter five is all about this man. You can see when you meet, when we read in verse number 25, this man has been indoctrinated with the thinking of his religious world. [00:12:28] Which commandments? [00:12:34] And verse number 20, verse 28, the Bible says, and he said unto him, thou hast answered right this do, and thou shalt live. [00:12:46] But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, and that's the key. And who is my neighbor? [00:12:52] Now I said, I mentioned earlier, he said, which. There's a parallel passage where the person says, which? Which commandments. But in this case, verse number 29, he says again, looking for a carve out, looking for an exception, looking for some way to get out of the commandment of the Lord. He says, and who is my neighbor? [00:13:15] How does Jesus answer this man? [00:13:18] You know how he answers him? He answers him with a parable. The parable of the Good Samaritan. [00:13:24] The parable of the Good Samaritan. Now, on its face, it might be, we might not understand what, you know, why that was answered that question. But the Samaritan, in the case of the man who fell among thieves, the Samaritan was half Jew, half gentile. [00:13:39] He was despised by the Jewish people, and yet he was the one that helped the Jewish man who fell among thieves. That's how the Lord answered this question. But what's so telling to me is how this man says, and who is my neighbor? [00:13:57] And who is my neighbor? [00:14:01] You see, here's what the Jews would do, and you can see it in our passage as well, back in Matthew 5, what the Jews would do is they like to categorize people into neighbors and enemies. [00:14:11] That's what they did. They categorized people into neighbors and enemies. And the proof of that is in Luke 10, when the man says, and who is my neighbor? Now, we would automatically say, we would in our thinking, you know, with the whole Scripture and all that, we would say, well, I mean, why are you even asking that? But he did ask that. So. And so the person that is my neighbor is the person I'm obligated to love. But who is that? Who does that include? Who does that exclude? And so what they did is by defining the word neighbor very specifically, they narrowed it down. They narrowed the scope of the word and that command down to something very small. And often by tailoring the word neighbor all the way down, what they really did is they considered their neighbors to be the Jewish people and their enemies to be anybody that wasn't Jewish. [00:15:07] So it was racist. [00:15:12] It was a race centered view of the scripture. And so they said, well, the Jewish, our Jewish brothers we're to love and all the others we're to hate. But here's the thing. [00:15:29] When we do that, what we're doing is we're creating a place where we can violate the scripture, right? But that's not all. [00:15:37] When you look at, when you look at Leviticus 19:18, which is what we read a minute ago, which says, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, what you see there is a positive command to do good. Is that what you see? Is there any negative thing in thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? There's no negativity in that. There's nothing bad, right? It's purely good. Do good, love your neighbor. You love your neighbor as yourself. But what did they do? They took that and made an inference. [00:16:08] They made an inference about it. [00:16:11] They took the text of scripture and they assumed that, okay, these are our neighbors. So what do we do with people who are not our neighbors? Well, this says to love our neighbors. Therefore the conclusion must be that if they're not our neighbors, we must do the opposite and we must hate them. Therefore, the Bible must say then that we're to love our neighbors and hate our enemies. But the second part is nowhere to be found in the Bible. In fact, the verse in question only says the good. [00:16:39] Only says the good. [00:16:43] So what was the effect of this? So here's what they did again. They narrowed the word neighbor down to only the people they liked, right? And you could draw those lines any way you wanted, right? [00:16:56] And then they took a verse of scripture and inferred something that wasn't written there. [00:17:03] The hate part. [00:17:05] What's the effect? The effect was this. [00:17:09] The Jews now because of tradition, not the Bible, because of tradition, now had a justification. Now hear me, a justification, a pretext, an excuse to mistreat others at will. [00:17:27] They had a religious excuse. [00:17:31] God told us to love our neighbor, and God told us to hate our enemy. [00:17:40] In fact, it rises to the level of a command. So mistreatment is not just something that's permitted, but something that's commanded. [00:17:50] And this is all. Listen, this is all with a religious excuse, right? [00:17:58] My religion, God tells me to do this. [00:18:05] It is in every way just the same as every other thing we've read in Matthew 5. Looking for contriving a religious pretext to violate God's Word. [00:18:20] That's what they're doing. So I'd tell you this. [00:18:25] Be careful. [00:18:27] Be careful of taking scripture, and I'm talking about now, right now. Be careful of those who take a truth in Scripture and infer or assume or imply things from the verse of Scripture that are not actually stated in Scripture. And people do that all the time. Be careful of that. Be careful of that. That's exactly what they did. And it led to a downstream a lot of bad things. But also, I want to tell you this. Beware, because Matthew 5 is full of people misusing the text of the Bible through tradition. [00:19:01] Be careful also of any groups or any preachers that use. Listen now, that use the imprecatory psalms. You know what I mean when I say that? Those are the psalms that talk, that call for judgment of the enemies. [00:19:15] Beware of those that use the imprecatory psalms to advocate for hatred and mistreatment of people that they considered to be their enemies. That's exactly what the Jews were doing, because the Lord says the opposite. [00:19:33] Now, as we've gone through the psalms, we've already covered an imprecatory psalm in our study on Wednesday night. And those are not easy to understand. [00:19:41] One author I read said that the imprecatory psalms are meant to be understood judicially, as in the way. In other words, in the way that God will judge the wicked. Okay, that's fine. But no matter if you have a good reason or not, the precatory psalms are a little bit hard. They're a little bit hard to understand, especially in the context of this. But remember, even our Lord in Matthew 23 had some very harsh words to say to the Pharisees, did he not? You know what I believe? Jesus prayed for the Pharisees. [00:20:18] That's what I believe. Jesus prayed for the Pharisees. You know why? Because they were his primary enemies. But then in Matthew 23, he's saying, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? [00:20:31] And of course, we know ultimately the Lord will judge. So the fact that Jesus says, love your enemies doesn't negate the fact that he will judge. [00:20:44] Now, let's go a little bit further. There are people, though. How many of you remember Westboro Baptist Church? [00:20:54] How many of you wanted to go visit Westboro Baptist Church? No, thank you. Westboro Baptist Church was the church. But back in the 2010s, I think they would protest at the funerals of soldiers that were killed in Afghanistan and in Iraq. And you know what? They did this very thing. They thought they had a Scriptural reason. And they never preached salvation. You know what? Well, besides the fact that they were faithless, but they didn't preach salvation. They preached damnation, not the gospel, but literal condemnation, like there's no hope for you. [00:21:31] And they listen. They used the Bible. I'm just saying, I'm trying to emphasize. It is so offensive to God to use his word to mistreat people, to use his word as a pretext, as an excuse to do harm to others. People have been doing that forever in a million different ways. They think if they have a Bible verse at their back, they can do whatever. [00:22:03] This is exactly where the Jews were in all of these different areas. [00:22:08] Ultimately, we know it was a misrepresentation of the Scripture. Now look at verse number 44. Jesus says, But I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. We might say these three things. Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and. And persecute you. Those three things are applications of the command to love one's enemies. [00:22:35] Now, what's interesting as you think about and you meditate upon this scriptural truth, what I think is. What I think what Jesus is saying about loving one's enemies is actually the outworking of the Command of Leviticus 19:18. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Let me explain what I mean. [00:22:57] A neighbor is what a neighbor is a person. We think of a neighbor as somebody who lives next to us, but the word neighbor just simply means somebody who's near. [00:23:07] Somebody who's near to us. [00:23:10] The moment that a person, even if like the McLean's from. Are from Colorado. Colorado. Did I say it right? No, I didn't. [00:23:21] Colorado. Sorry. [00:23:23] Even somebody from Colorado, the moment they come near me and they interact with me, they're my neighbor, they're near me. It doesn't mean they're. Just because they're domicile is somewhere else. That's irrelevant. The moment they, you know, I go to. I go to. If I go to Starbucks or I go to Chick Fil A and I interact with people in that place, those are my neighbors. Even if they don't live near me, right? They're near. They're my neighbor. [00:23:54] Anytime someone comes near enough to you or to me to interact with us, that person is then our neighbor and thus should be a recipient of our love. [00:24:05] In this way. Is it not true every man is our neighbor? [00:24:10] Every man, every person. [00:24:14] But think about this. In our day, ooh, social media. [00:24:21] Jesus said love Your or Leviticus says love, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Just concentrating on that again. I think what Jesus says about loving enemies is actually coming out of thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But think about the way people interact on social media and on the Internet. [00:24:38] They hide behind a computer and vent, just vent them. [00:24:46] I'm on X, right? I like to read X. It's got a lot of up to date information with news and things that's interesting to me. I'm on X. The kind of things that people say is just pure poison. [00:24:58] I mean poison. You know why? Because they can sit behind a screen and say what they want to say. I don't know them. They're not my neighbors. You're wrong. [00:25:07] They are your neighbor. You're interacting with them, you're talking to them. You might not be near geographically, but you are near socially. [00:25:18] You are required, but you understand what we do. Well, I can mistreat them and I can call them names and I can talk trash and I can insult because they're on the other side of the screen. They're over there on the Internet. Whoa. That's exactly what the Jews thought. They're not my neighbor. [00:25:37] And this has been a. [00:25:39] The advent of social media and the Internet has seen so much of just brazen ungodliness and just loveless communication with each other. It is everywhere. It is everywhere. And we think, we speaking very generally, we think that somehow it's different or better because we're talking over email or talking over text or over talking over messages or talking over, you know, Facebook or Instagram or whatever. It's not, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. [00:26:19] If I'm interacting with them, they are my neighbor. I am, I will give an account to God for how I speak at all times to everyone. Right, but let's look at the practical side. Verse 44. But I say unto you, thou, you love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Here's what we have. Speak good, do good, pray good. [00:26:49] What does that touch on, that touches, that touches the three main areas of our life as it relates to other people, what we say, what we do and what we think. [00:27:04] The Lord is not satisfied that we are merely able to refrain ourselves from blasting someone into orbit verbally. [00:27:13] He's not satisfied with that. [00:27:16] He says, bless them that curse you. That's what you say, do good to them that hate you. That's what you do. And pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. It touches every part of us, in other words, all the way from our words to our actions, all the way down to our very thoughts. What do you mean by that? Our very thoughts. [00:27:40] Praying for one's enemies. [00:27:43] You know, whenever. Whenever you have an enemy, the very first thing that you will stop doing is praying for them. You know why? Because it's a charade. [00:27:56] If your heart is not sincerely in tune with their wealth. Doing, doing, doing good for them, you will not pray for them. It deals with. Look, you can. We can. We can say nice things to people and we can, you know, do good things in front of others, you know, to make it seem, you know, to keep up the. The front. But listen, when we get down on our knees in quiet with just God and us, you know what we find? Whatever's really there is what we talk about. [00:28:25] That's what's really in our heart. That's what our prayer life is going to be like. [00:28:32] So the Lord addresses the Love is not just. Is not just external. It's all the way down. It's on the external, all the way down to the inside. [00:28:45] But this says, love your enemies. [00:28:49] Bless them that curse you, do good in them, Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Our carnal nature just absolutely recoils at this. [00:28:59] It is totally unnatural. When someone mistreats me, the enemy, in this case, curses me, hates me, despitefully uses me, persecutes me. What do I want to do? Naturally? What does every one of us want to do? Naturally? Naturally, we want to. [00:29:18] You probably know what I'm thinking. We were talking after church and I got a little. I got a little picture of Ms. Pam and being the lady from Detroit. That's why I was kind of grinning, because I was thinking she had her dukes up, she was ready to fight. [00:29:34] But that, you know, that's natural, is it not? When someone mistreats us, give it back to them, they curse us, give it back to them. We just don't use the foul language. But, you know, when someone does us harm, we give it right back to them. That is natural. [00:29:52] That is natural. But this kind of response we see here can only be done by the power of the Spirit of God. [00:30:01] And let me say this, and you all know, every one of us is subject to being mistreated at some point or another, whether verbally, physically or otherwise. Every one of us. It will happen. It has happened. It will happen again. [00:30:17] But if our response, if we find ourselves responding to mistreatment, which is this what these verses are saying, which we cannot control. We cannot control if people mistreat us no matter how hard we try. You know, that's a tough lesson to learn, but that's true. We cannot control how people treat us. But if we find ourselves responding to mistreatment by cursing, hating, persecuting and mistreating others, know for sure that we are not walking according to the spirit, we're walking according to the flesh, even if we're mistreated first. So let me say this. Injury to me is not an excuse to give injury to another, even to the person who did it. [00:31:10] You see what this is saying? The Lord says not to answer in kind, but to answer with good in return. [00:31:20] Again, we religious people, you know, we find scriptural reasons to mistreat people. [00:31:29] We can talk ourselves into it with spiritual sounding language, but mark it down. If we are responding to mistreatment from others by mistreating them back, we are not walking in the spirit, but in the flesh. The flesh is in control of. Of us. [00:31:48] So we see. Jesus says, love your enemies. [00:31:52] Now, we already know that we don't have enemies, right? Because Jesus said to love your neighbor and anybody near us. Anyone with whom we interact is a neighbor. So what are these enemies? A Christian should have no enemies in the sense that we consider ourselves that person's enemy. [00:32:10] If we have enemies, that enmity must be one way. That person has set themselves as an enemy of us. But we view them as what? [00:32:20] As a neighbor, right? They view us as an enemy. We view them as a neighbor. [00:32:27] This is. Listen, this is not natural. I know this is supernatural. It cannot happen except that God help us, that's for sure. [00:32:38] There's an additional benefit, though. [00:32:42] Jesus says, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you. [00:32:48] Well, let me say this before I say that. [00:32:52] Think in your life. Do you have someone that you would categorize as an enemy who has maybe the better way. Because that's kind of a hard term. Maybe the better way is there's enmity between you and another person, right? If there's somebody in your life like that, you know what the Lord's answer is? [00:33:14] To intentionally, actively figure out a way to do that person good. [00:33:25] When their name comes up, say positive things about them behind their back. Right? [00:33:32] When that person comes up to you and you interact with that person, you say kind things. Whenever you have opportunity, you do something, do intentionally positively do something good. This is what the Lord says to do. You answer it with good. So ask yourself, what can I do? [00:33:54] What concrete thing can I do good to that person who has enmity with me? They're not my enemy. I don't have an enemy. [00:34:04] I have neighbors, right? Even Judas Iscariot, the very devil himself, right? [00:34:13] What did Jesus say when Jesus came to him and kissed him in the garden? He said, friend, wherefore art thou come? Judas was not Jesus friend, but to Jesus he was Judas friend. You see what good thing this is an intentional. Are we going to be obedient when we have an enemy? Are we going to be obedient to actively do them good? We need to figure out a way by actively to actively and intentionally find ways to do good to that person. [00:34:43] And one of those things mentioned here is prayer. [00:34:51] Here's an aspect of prayer that's very important. [00:34:54] Praying for your enemy. [00:34:57] It'll keep you from getting bitter. [00:35:00] Now, we've already seen that this. When the Lord says, love your enemies, he dealt with what we say. He dealt with what we do. But the prayer I posit is the Lord dealing with what we think the inside of us. [00:35:15] Prayer will keep us praying for our enemies, will keep us from being bitter. [00:35:20] Because prayer, unlike the other two, is a matter of personal communion with God. [00:35:26] God knows if our prayer is sincere. [00:35:29] And we will find it very difficult to pray for another person who is our enemy sincerely. Or rather, we'll find it very difficult to pray for them if our love is insincere. [00:35:44] And so what the Lord will do, listen now. He will use this command to pray. Pray for your enemies. He will use this prayer to soften our heart toward that person who has mistreated us because he says, you pray for them. And we know if we get on our knees and we're going to pray for somebody and we know that they are our enemy and we're mad and we're bitter at them, you know what will happen? The Lord will say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You hypocrite. [00:36:13] You hypocrite. Don't you sit here and pray to me as if I don't know your heart. [00:36:18] So the very prayer will keep our heart clean from resentment and bitterness. Because the Lord says, pray for them. He's like, I gotta pray. The Lord told me to pray. Lord told me to pray for that person. [00:36:29] Listen, that's the first thing. If you know you have an enemy, you better look, set time aside. Consistently resolve to consistently, sincerely pray for the good of that person. [00:36:43] I'm telling you, the Lord will change your heart. He will change your heart. He will make your heart soft. And if you have trouble with resentment or bitterness, he will take that out of your heart. [00:36:54] That's how he works. [00:36:58] You know, sometimes the sad thing is sometimes those enemies of which I speak are found within our own families. The people closest to us. Right. The closest neighbors. [00:37:10] Right. [00:37:13] I think if that's the case, and it often is. Listen, in this human, in this world is often the case, we ought to apply these things all the more quickly now to wrap up here. Verse number 45 says this. That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. [00:37:34] Children in the sense of being like him. Like a child is like his Father. [00:37:40] For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. The Lord doesn't make the sunshine and the rain fall because those people deserve it. [00:37:51] The unjust don't deserve it. Even those who are considered to be the just and the righteous don't deserve it. The Lord doesn't do it because there's. Because he. Because that person deserves it. He does it because he himself is good. You understand? So when we do good, and our Lord is our example, when we do good to others who have mistreated us, we don't do it because they deserve that kind treatment. No, they don't deserve it. They have mistreated us. [00:38:25] But we do it because our Lord set the example. Think about that. [00:38:31] How our Lord loved his enemies. You think of Christ in the garden? Of course, with Judas. But even in the broader sense, did not the Lord love his enemies? [00:38:43] The Bible says we were aliens and enemies of God by wicked works. We had set ourselves against God. [00:38:53] And he said, well, I was never God. Yes, you were. And I was too. [00:38:59] You know what God did? [00:39:01] He loved us. [00:39:04] We loved to hate on God. [00:39:07] And God demonstrated his love for his enemies by nailing his own son to a cross. [00:39:14] There's no greater picture of that than this here. It talks about. Of course, the cross hasn't happened yet. So we're talking about the sun and we're talking about the rain. And that's good, and that's a Dem. But it's no wonder that the God manifest in the flesh also did this very thing, is it not? In the most spectacular way possible. And you know what the result of it was? Those who were once his enemies became his friends. [00:39:40] Look at this, verse 46. For if ye love them which love you, what Reward have ye, do not even the publicans the same. [00:39:47] And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others do not even the publicans sow? What's the principle here? The principle here is this. [00:39:55] It is totally natural to love those that love you. [00:39:59] Right? The worst sinners do that. [00:40:03] Totally natural. That's not hard. That's regular, right? [00:40:08] But what if the Lord did that with us? [00:40:12] But he didn't. You know what he did? [00:40:15] He loved his enemies. That's us. He loved his enemies. And as a result, naturally men love those that love them, right? And so what the Lord did is he stepped forward and said, okay, I will love you. Even though you have set yourself against me. You're my enemy. I will choose to love you. [00:40:34] And because the Bible says we love him because what he first loved us, his enemy became his friend. His enemy. I responded to God's love because he loved his enemy first. Now, I'm not going to guarantee that if you love your enemies that they're going to turn on a dime and they're going to become your friends. I can't guarantee that. [00:41:00] But if it ever happens and you're ever reconciled with that person who is your enemy, you know it will be because you have chosen to love them and they responded positively to that love. I can guarantee you this. If you choose to answer them their maltreatment in kind, you will be for enemies forever. [00:41:22] Somebody's got to take the first step. You know who the Lord Jesus says should take the first step and to choose to love the enemies. He said, follow my example. Come on, sheep, follow my example. I loved you when you hated me, when you were my enemy. And now you're my friend. Now you're the object of my love. And I'm the object of your love. [00:41:51] Verse 46 and 7. [00:41:53] Even though it's natural for us to love those that love us and only those that love us, our Lord calls us to a higher principle, a divine principle. [00:42:09] I say a divine principle because He Himself set the example. [00:42:14] You know what will happen? [00:42:16] The religious world. That's where we live, the religious world. Yeah. They love those that love them. People that go to church and all that. They love those that love them. That's not the principle here, though. [00:42:28] When you love your enemy, that sets you apart from everybody around you. [00:42:37] Because that is not natural. That's divine. That's of God. That's super. And you can only do it with the help of God strengthening you and the spirit of God working in you. [00:42:52] This is one of the many ways that we can follow in our Lord's footsteps. So do you have any enemies? [00:43:01] I would encourage you. Think what? Consciously think. [00:43:07] Do I pray for them Sincerely? [00:43:11] Consciously think. What thing can I do to show them kindness? [00:43:20] That's what the Lord says to do. Let's pray.