Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
In Genesis 4, we see two brothers, the very first brothers offering their gifts before God.
When God accepted Abel’s but not Cain’s, anger arose in Cain’s heart to the point that Cain murdered his own brother.
The first brothers to ever exist and the first fratricide—brother-murder—was committed.
It seems in one moment, a brother became an enemy.
Since that time, the world has never had a short supply of enemies.
Enemies exist inside families like Jacob and Esau, between families like the Hatfields and McCoys.
They exist between nations like Russia and Ukraine.
And they exist even inside churches—the places that are suppose to flow with the love of God and make every effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit.
Perhaps someone said something that was offensive to you.
Maybe someone stuck their nose in my business and it made me upset.
It could be simply that someone did not respond to your joy or sorrow the way that you expected them to, or even ignored it entirely.
Maybe you were hurt by hypocrisy.
So many people have left churches because of an unkind word, a dismissive spirit, or some other painful experience.
To say that churches are filled with sinful people and this kind of thing happens is true.
To say that Jesus is the only perfect person to ever live is also true.
While both of these statements are true, neither is an excuse to let hurts continue unchecked.
The church is not to be filled with enemies, but with brothers and sisters who love one another.
And one of the ways to bring that about is related to the text we are looking at this morning.
Before we get into the text, I want to give two possible side-steps that people might want to take.
The first is to say something like, “Enemy?
I don’t have any enemies.
There are people that I might not like or have problems with, but I wouldn’t call them enemies."
To this, I would say, the Greek word for “enemy” in this text is echthros.
It is simply a person or nation with whom there is hostility.
So, if there is hostility between you and someone else, then at least for that moment, you and they have become enemies.
Secondly, it’s tempting to say, “I’m the one who has to deal with this problem?
They’re the ones that hate me!
Talk to them; not to me!” If that is you, then I say, this we’re going through Luke verse by verse.
The text that we come to now is a text that talks about your responsibility.
Their neglect of their responsibility does not give you an excuse to neglect yours.
So with that, I want us to look at four principles of response when it comes to loving our enemies.
The first principle of response is that our love must be remarkable to others.
The second is that our love must be reflective of ourselves.
Third, our love must be rewarded by God.
And finally, our love must resemble God’s love
Our Love Must be Remarkable to Others
Our Love Must be Reflective of Ourselves
Our Love Must be Rewarded by God
Our Love Must Resemble God’s
Our Love Must be Remarkable to Others
The first principle that we see this morning, is that our love must be remarkable to others.
Now there are certainly a number of commands within this one principle.
We are to love our enemies.
We are to do good to those who persecute us.
We are to bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us.
Then there are the examples of the good we ought to do for others.
All in all, it leads to this one principle: Our love must be remarkable to others.
Now, let’s talk about that love for a moment.
If you’ve been to church for long, you probably have an idea of what Greek word is used here for love.
It’s not storge - a motherly affection for people.
It’s not philos - a brotherly affection for people.
It’s not eros - a romantic affection for people.
It’s agape - a divine affection for people.
The non-believer can have any of these types of love except the divine love—agape.
This is why unbelieving mothers have an affection for their children.
Why grandparents who are atheists can love their grandchildren.
It’s why friendships can occur within humanistic societies or in gangs or even the mafia.
Buddhist men can fall in love with Muslim women and Taoists marry Wiccans.
But agape is different.
It’s a divine love.
It requires the divine nature to be within its actor, which Peter tells us we have through faith in Jesus Christ.
Thus the power to love as Jesus loves is already within us.
When we think about Jesus’s love, we find it astounding.
We cannot help but make remarks on how amazing it really is.
We talk about his love; we sing about his love; we pray and thank God for his love.
In other words, we find Jesus’s love to be remarkable, and he is calling us to have love that is just as remarkable.
On the heels of telling the disciples that they are blessed when people hate them, exclude them, revile them, and slander them, Jesus tells them to respond with love—his love that he is working within them.
The love that he empowers them with.
Love your enemies.
Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they had rejected him showing the amount of love that he had for those who were hostile to him.
Do good to those who hate you.
Jesus picked up the bloody ear of one of those who came to arrest him and healed him, rebuking his own disciples for their treatment of those who hated him.
Bless those who curse you.
This actually is a different word than what we saw these past few weeks.
This means to speak well of specifically to God.
A curse was sent Godward, and therefore so ought the blessing be sent.
This is in line with the next line of praying for those who abuse you.
Jesus, praying on behalf of those who crucified him, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they’re doing.”
Jesus gave us an example of what it might look like to love our enemies when he instructed us to turn the other cheek.
In Jewish tradition, this was a sign of insulting a person.
When someone insults, Jesus said, we ought to feel blessed because our eye is not on the insult but on the reward that we just gained because of it.
Therefore, we can turn the other cheek—waiting to receive another reward.
This isn’t meant to enslave people to their abusers.
Wives need not stick around and get beaten by their abusive husbands.
They can bless and pray from afar.
When Peter had been arrested, Herod was planning on putting him to death the next day.
Instead, an angel woke him, freed him, and led him to safety.
When Paul was preaching Christ, many of those in Damascus wanted him dead.
His friends lowered him from a wall in a big basket so that he would not fall into the hands of his enemies.
Jesus is not saying that one should stick around and take it from an abuser.
He is saying that we are not retaliate when insulted or abused.
At the same time, Jesus is not saying that justice cannot be served.
Again, we have proofs of Scripture that show that a person abused can still love and seek justice at the same time.
When Paul was arrested in Philippi, he was not only arrested but beaten in public.
Because of this though, a jailer and his family was saved.
When they were going to release Paul and Silas privately the next day, Paul demanded justice, not out of malice but out of a sense of justice needing to be served.
Our Love Must be Reflective of Ourselves
So we first see our love must be remarkable to others.
But we also see that it must be reflective of ourselves.
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