Words, Wrongs, and Radical Love

Intro

In the sermon on the Mount Jesus has shown us so far what living like a follower of Jesus looks like, he has shown us what our roles in the kingdom of God are salt and light, he has explained that he didn’t come to get rid of the law of the Old Testament, he came to fulfill it. To reveal it’s true purpose.

Last week we saw how Jesus gave us three examples of what it means for us to live in the reality of the law being fulfilled by Jesus. This is the section where Jesus gets super practical, on what it means to live as His follower, This week Jesus is going to give us three more examples of what it means to live following Jesus knowing that he fulfilled the law through His life, death, and resurrection.

I want to warn you about what we are going to read today. Many have described it as the summit of the sermon on the mount, because nowhere is the challenge of the sermon greater. Nowhere is the distinctness of the Christian life from the world more obvious, and nowhere is our need for the power of the Holy more compelling. It is time for us to see the full extent of what life with Jesus should lead us to.

Matthew 5:33–48 NIV

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. “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 children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Looking at each of these examples they all support Jesus main point of this whole section that Christian discipleship leads to greater righteousness.

In the first example to show what that means for us practically he says You have heard it said Do not break your oath but fulfill to the Lord the vows you made.

He is saying you have heard it said because they would have grown up hearing and studying this in the Old Testament. This saying is a summary of different scriptures saying generally the same thing. It seems pretty straightforward right keep your oaths. How can Jesus deepen that? What is there to add?

He starts out by saying do not swear an oath at all. Does that mean we shouldn’t go under oath in court or things like that. No the problem that Jesus was addressing is that the people he was talking to had been taught by the pharisees to now worry about the vow itself but the formula used to making it. And they taught that unless you went through a very official vow. You were not bound to keep your word. But Jesus steps in and says that is not the way my people are to treat the truth.

1. Let Your Words Prove Your Witness

Its kind of like when we were kids I think we all go through stages where if I really want someone to believe me there’s only one thing to prove im serious, and that is the pinky promise. My sister and I went through phase of that when we were kids. It got to the point that we didn’t believe a word the other said unless a pinky promise was involved. and that is what Jesus is getting to. It shouldn’t matter the manner in which we give our word.

If we are followers of Jesus who is the way the truth and the life. We should speak the truth, and it shouldn’t take us having to swear on the grave of a loved one, putting our hands over a Bible, having the exact legal terms spelled out in a contract, or even the sacred pinky promise for us to keep our word.

The only reason we do any of these is because we know our simple word is not likely to be trusted so we convince people to believe us by adding some sort of oath. Christians should say what they mean and mean what they say. Jesus is telling us let your yes be yes and your no be no because keeping our promises is how we reflect our promise keeping God who has never lied. Because if they don’t trust your word in things that are insignificant will unbelievers trust your word when you tell them about the most significant story you have to tell, how Jesus saved you? Our words prove our witness.

In the next section is where the challenge of the summer on the mount really kicks into high gear.

Matthew 5:38–41 NIV

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

Again yes they have heard it said their whole lives an eye for an eye. this is a summary of many of the laws Moses gives the people in Deuteronomy when God was setting up how they would govern themselves. and he gave them these civil laws on how the authorities should punish thieves and murderers. None of that was bad. We have laws today to make sure the punishment fits the crime and thats why God gave the nation of Israel these laws. But the scribes and the Pharisees evidently extended the principle of just retribution from the law courts where it belongs to the realm of personal relationships where it doesn’t belong.

It had gotten to the point that everyone was their own vigilante, It was like a bunch of Jewish Batmen running around enacting personal revenge and using the law to justify it. Even though the law specifily forbid this. so this excellent principle of retribution through the justice system was being utilized as an excuse to do the very thing it was given to stop, personal revenge.

So Jesus steps up and deepens the law.

2. Christian Relationships are Based on Love not Justice

You are not Christian Batman. Think about how corny that movie would be. what would he say “To the prayer cave, Robin!” “My parents were taken by crime. My sin was taken by Christ.” It is not your job to bring vengence to those who wrong you. You aren’t going to point them to Jesus by getting even with them. The basis for every relationship we have as believers should be love. A love that is a reflection of the supernatural love that God has shown us.

Looking at this section it can be easy to get some wrong ideas about what it means to not seek vengance or retaliation. Cause first he says don’t resist an evil person. Does that mean we sit back and let evil people hurt us and others. We aren’t supposed to stand up to help those who can’t help themselves? When he says turn the other cheek does that mean we are called to be some kind of hippies who wont defend ourselves or our families from abuse? absolutely not.

We are called in scripture to resist the evil one, we are called to speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves. Jesus never prohibts us from self defense. Turning the other cheek was refering to insults. a back handed slap to the cheek was seen as humiliating. Jesus is saying if someone insults you. instead of striking back to get even with your hands or your words, don’t seek justice for what they deserve. instead do what God did for you love them when they do not deserve it. A love that makes no sense except when view through the lens of what Jesus did for us on the cross.

So the command of Jesus to not resist evil shouldn’t be used to justify tempermental weakness, moral compromise, politcal anarchy or total pacifism. Instead what Jesus demands of all his followers is a personal attitude to evil doers that is prompted my mercy and love and never by an attitude that seeks to see them suffer. We are not to be a Christian batman seeking vengence nor are we to be Christian hippies who let evil run rampant, we are to be followers of Jesus who show the love of Jesus regardless of circumstance. Kingdom Relationships Run on Grace, Not Grudges. But how far are we to take it?

Matthew 5:43–45 NIV

“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 children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

The answer is clearly we are to take that love to its most extreme application. We are not called to just hold back taking revenge. which is a passive action. we are called to take it past the passive to the active. We don’t just hold back revenge we

3.Don’t Hold Back Love.

Love your enemies. I can think of nothing more challenging that Jesus calls us to do. because it goes against every single instinct we have. It’s easy to love people who love you. That’s not special, unbelievers do that. It may not the complete and perfect love that we learn to show by being in God’s family but I could never imagine tell an unbeliever they don’t love their kid. Clearly they do to the best of their ability. But what is hard. and there is no way unbelievers can do it because they don’t have the Holy Spirit to help them is love those who hate them, and actively oppose them.

It’s deeper than simply not striking back at the person who slapped you to humiliate you. Its deeper than not commentening back something mean, or not causing a scene at family dinner. It is a heart posture that when someone shows they are against your first instinct is still to act and pray for their good.

Theres a verse in here that I had always misunderstood until this week. and it speaks to this. When Jesus says the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. I always took the rain to mean something bad happening cause for us when it rains it means we cant go do what we wanted if it was outside. Water park days, picnics, and hikes get cancelled. but for them they lived in a desert. So they wanted the rain to fall on them. It was a good thing. So Jesus is saying good things are going to happen to the evil and the good. Our job is not to try to figure out why some people get more rain than others or get bitter when we feel like someone got what they didnt deserve and we didn’t get what we think we deserve.

Because here’s the most beautiful thing out of all of this. Jesus is not asking us to do anything that he hasn’t already done himself. When we were enemies of God he chose to not just hold back his wrath to give us a chance to come to him, He did not hold back his love towards us. Jesus came and died for you even when you were an enemy of God. I was never an enemy of God. yes you were and if you have never accepted Christ you still are. because you have seen that God wants you to surrender to him and trust him as the lord of your life and you’ve with your actions said no I’m good, without Jesus we are all enemies of God.

But God wasn’t content with that arrangement. He did not hold back his love for us by sending Jesus to die a death you were supposed to die, to pay a debt you couldn’t have paid, to give you the opportunity to not just become even with God. But to be brought into the family of God. In these verse Jesus calls his followers children of God. He refers to God as our heavenly father.

and our obedience that comes from our hearts is the evidence that God is our father. We demonstrate whose sons and daughters we are by exhibting the family likeness. Which is to love completely not even when it is hard but especially it is hard.

When he says here be perfect as our father is perfect. He doesn’t mean you will be morally perfect. It is in the context of love. He is saying show others even your enemies the unfailing, steadfast, eternal, holy, sacrifial, just, merciful, boundless, unstoppable, lavish, mighty, intimate, breathtaking, amazing, perfect love of God. Don’t hold it back. Jesus didn’t even hold it back while he was dying when he forgave the men who beat him and put nails through his hands, and feet. Talk about forgiving your enemies.

And yes it is hard. That’s what makes it worth doing

Show them who your father is by the way you love your enemies with that perfect love that only we can show because only those in the kingdom of God have experienced it.

Conclusion

I don’t know how you need to respond to the words of Jesus today. But i do know this every single one of us can do a better job at following the commands of Jesus to show others perfect love than we do right now.

Maybe your word has not been valuable you’ve not been acting like someones eternity may rest on if they think what comes out of your mouth is true or not and you need confess that to God, and go have some hard conversations with people you haven’t been honest with.

Maybe you’re here and your relationships have been based more around keeping things even and fair than the love of Jesus. Maybe you have become the type of person that people are afraid to critique or hold accountable because you will lash out, maybe you attack everyone who disagrees with you on social media, and you need the reminder today that you aren’t Christian batman and you dont bring justice that’s God’s job and you need to shift from thinking how can I give them what they deserve to, how can I give them what they don’t deserve like Jesus gave it to me. You might think Daniel I don’t know how to do that. If you have someone you consider an enemy or hold a grudge against. I want you to put a reminder in your phone to pray for them every day this week. Watch God change your heart.

Lastly maybe you are here today and you realized that you are an enemy of God. You are not a part of his family. You can’t even think about loving your enemies because you don’t even love yourself, but today the Holy Spirit started working on your heart to show you that God loves you that even though you are against him and have rebelled against him as an enemy, he chose to send Jesus to come live a perfect life and die a brutal death on the cross so that you can move from enemy to beloved son or beloved daughter. and today you need to come down and respond by placing your faith in Jesus to save you.