Love Your Enemies

Christian Chapel

We are continuing our series from The Sermon on the Mount. One of the beautiful things about The Sermon on the Mount is that each text has the ability to stand alone apart from the rest of the teaching.

Pastor Chris has asked me to speak this morning from:

Matthew 5:43–48 ESV

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He 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 do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

One thing from The Sermon on the Mount that is particularly relevant to the context in which we have lived for the last ten years is this ethic of loving our enemies. It is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to those in other religions, particularly Muslims, who read passages like this and say, “It’s impossible for anyone to live like this.”

Maybe it’s hard for us to experience the same kind of shock that Jesus’ audience would have felt at this command to love their enemies, after all we live in the land of the free. Religious persecution for us usually means boycotting a person or business because of a stated difference in worldview. Very rarely does persecution in the United States result in loss of life, job, family, or property.

There is a couple who are friends of ours. The wife (we’re going to call her Noor) is from Nebraska while the husband (we’ll call him Hank) is from a country where religious persecution is the status quo. This couple met when Noor was working in Hank’s home country to share the Gospel with the predominant religion.

After giving his life to Christ, Hank began working with a Christian organization where he made friends with a couple who we will call Sam and Sarah. These friends also attended the same church as Hank.

One evening, police called Hank and said he needed to come and bail Sam out of jail. Hank knew they weren’t telling him the whole story and went to the police station with two other men from their church. It was very dark when they reached the station.

Hank’s heart was beating rapidly when police said that the men needed to go into another room and see if they recognized Sam. They entered the room where they saw a sheet-covered body on a bed.

Hank said, “We removed the cover and I recognized right away it was Sam.” All three of the men who had come began to weep over the loss of their friend who had been killed by Muslim extremists. Hank said, “We lost a very good, Godly man. Because of his faith and his work, he lost his life.”

Before too long Hank’s life was also in danger. As he continued to work for this Christian organization, he was under constant threat by a predominant terrorist group active in his country.

Eventually, Hank too was shot and almost died. However, Hank’s attacker wasn’t a radical Muslim but rather a fellow believer who feared that Hank’s work to share the Gospel was putting other Christians at risk.

If you talk to Hank today, he will tell you that he has completely forgiven not just the men who took Sam’s life, but also his own attacker. Hank’s resolve to share the Gospel with his countrymen is stronger now than it ever has been.

When you hear stories like that of Hank and countless other Christians around the globe, it’s not hard to see why those of other religions would hear the teachings of Jesus and say, “It’s impossible for anyone to live this way.”

This morning we’re going to first look at WHY Jesus would tell us to love our enemies, and then we’re going to look at HOW we are able to love our enemies.

Why We Love Our Enemies

By Loving Our Enemies We Share a Special Communion with God

Matthew 5:43–45 ESV

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

There are things about God that we can only learn or know when we choose to love our enemies.

Paul tells us in Romans 5:8

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus, as He was hanging on the cross experiencing the most excruciating pain of His life, says:

Luke 23:34 ESV

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

When we choose to forgive those who have trespassed against us we are entering into a shared experience with our Heavenly Father.

In his book Forgotten God, Francis Chan tells the story of having dinner in Seoul, Korea, with one of the twenty-three missionaries who were held hostage by the Taliban in 2007.

For those who don’t recall the story, the Taliban executed two of the missionaries before a deal was reached with the government of South Korea and the missionaries were released. This man told about the horrors of being locked up in a cell, knowing that martyrdom was a strong possibility. He also shared about the amazing time they had on the last day they were all imprisoned together (their captors later divided them into groups of three and took them to remote areas). Each of the twenty-three missionaries surrendered their lives to God that night and told Him they were willing to die for His glory. There was even an argument over who would get to die first. One of them had a small Bible that the missionaries secretly ripped into twenty-three pieces so each could glance at Scripture when no one was watching. The Word of God and the Spirit of God got them through the forty days of imprisonment. One of the most fascinating things this man said was about what has happened since. Now that they had been back in Seoul for a while, several team members have asked him, “Don’t you wish we were still there?” He says that several of them experienced a deep kind of intimacy with God in the prison cell that they haven’t been able to recapture in their comfort.

These men who had lived through witnessing their friends and colleagues being murdered, and who themselves had been abused and mistreated and at the very brink of death for the sake of the Gospel, are now saying, “We miss the communion we felt with God in the prison cell that we haven’t been able to recapture since.” They took the focus off of their enemies and put the focus on the presence of God.

Loving Our Enemies Brings Glory to God

Matthew 5:46–47 ESV

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

Nothing causes us to so nearly resemble God as the forgiveness of injuries. - John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople

Qureshi was born in 1917 in what at the time was Northwest India but today is part of Pakistan in a village called Pen Sultani. He was the son of an Imam, which is the Muslim religious leader.

As the son of an Imam he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, but after studying and memorizing the Quran in Arabic he began to ask lots of questions. Ultimately, after not getting any satisfactory answers to his questions he became an atheist.

Eventually his father passed away and in an attempt to erase some of the shame he had brought on his family he decided to try to take his father’s place as the Imam, but this didn’t last. He eventually left his position as a religious leader and again embraced atheism. When this happened, the other local religious leaders began preaching that Qureshi must be shunned by other Muslims.

Qureshi was eventually befriended by some missionaries who were willing to study the Bible with him and answer some of the questions he had about God and religion. After some time he decided to become a follower of Jesus, as did his wife and children. This infuriated the local Imam even more and so a declaration was issued: Qureshi’s family cannot interact with the community at any level. They cannot buy food from local merchants. They cannot come to the community well to draw water. They are to be completely excommunicated from the rest of the community. The Imam even went so far as to encourage the rest of the community to kill Qureshi’s family if they saw them out in public saying that they would be blessed by Allah for doing so.

This meant that Qureshi and his family were essentially trapped in their own home with no access to food or water; but in the midst of all of this, God was at work. It started in the hearts of the local Muslim women who were attracted by the message he was sharing as they had seen the difference in Qureshi’s behavior. He was no longer abusive to his wife and kids. These women began sneaking food to the Qureshi house at night.

This solved the issue of the food, but they still didn’t have access to water, so Qureshi decided they needed to drill their own well. Again the LORD was at work, this time through a Hindu man who dug a well for them for free. Qureshi said the water they drew from that well was the best tasting water he had ever had in his lifetime. So now, their food and water were both miraculously provided for them.

And then guess what happens: the village well dries up. So Qureshi and his family are confined to their house. They’ve been told not to come out into the community. They can’t buy the local food. They can’t drink from the local well. And now they are the only ones with water.

So what does Qureshi do? He opens his door and he says, “Everyone is welcome. You can come and drink of this well anytime you want.”

When we choose to love our enemies we are pointing people to Jesus, who also chose to forgive our sins and theirs.

We Are Made Complete as We Love Our Enemies

Matthew 5:48 ESV

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

A young woman was going through counseling with her pastor because of a violent assault she had experienced years before at the hands of multiple men. As part of their counseling they began making their way through the 23rd Psalm.

As she was praying one day during her quiet time, she stopped to reflect over Psalm 23:5

Psalm 23:5 ESV

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

As she prayed, she had a vision of the LORD preparing a table for her in the presence of her enemies. The next time she went for a counseling session with her pastor she relayed the vision to him. He was a bit confused and said, “You mean the LORD prepared a table before you in the presence of the men who attacked you?” Just as perplexed, she said, “No. My enemies aren’t the men who attacked me. The LORD prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies: fear. shame, and anger.”

As this woman experienced the overwhelming love of God, the enemies of her soul shifted into the background.

When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” He said this not expecting us to “forgive and forget.” God is not so callous that He would say, “Suck it up, buttercup!” Within the command to love our enemies is the acknowledgement that we have experienced a very real trespassing against us.

When we choose to love those who have trespassed against us, we find ourselves suddenly overwhelmed by the presence and love of God as He prepares a table before us in the very presence of our enemies. As we love our enemies, the sins committed against us are allowed to be a part of our story, but we don’t give them permission to define who we are. Only the love of a Holy God can do that.

While we’re talking about why we love our enemies, it is just as important to clarify what we are NOT saying. We are not saying that justice doesn’t matter to God. We are just trusting God with what justice looks like. It is not “just” for us to hold others accountable for trespassing against us when our Heavenly Father has so graciously forgiven our trespasses against Him.

Loving our enemies means we have released them from any debt we are owed that was created by their trespass against us.

Now, we’ve talked about the easy part, and maybe all of this makes logical sense to our heads which want to follow Jesus and do what He said to do. How do we get this to translate to our hearts?

How is someone who has suffered physical, mental, emotional, and verbal abuse at the hands of others supposed to love their enemies?

How is a follower of Jesus in Iran who has lost a husband at the hands of radical Islamic extremists supposed to love her enemies?

How is someone who has experienced the betrayal of a spouse who has broken the vows they made together before God and family supposed to love?

The answer is going to be so simple that you might be tempted to think, “This is what we came to church today to find out?” :-)

How We Love Our Enemies

John 15:1–11 ESV

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

I was praying a few days ago, and during my prayer time I was listing all of the things that need to be pruned in my life: “Lord, I’m selfish. I have issues with anger. Father, I have so much pride and selfishness. I am insecure.” I was going through my regular grocery list of things that I needed the LORD to prune and I told Him, “LORD, I don’t know how to get rid of all of these things.” The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “You don’t get rid of these things. I do. Your job is to be pruned. My job is to do the pruning. Just spend time with Me.”

Jesus has promised us that if we abide in Him we will be pruned. Apart from Him we can do nothing.

Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. We want our lives to reflect the Vine, Jesus. If viticulturists have a particular grape vine that produces big, healthy, juicy, delicious grapes and they want to produce more of that same kind of vine, do you know what they have to do? They don’t plant seeds from the grapes .(where do seedless grapes come from?) They prune a branch from the original vine and they plant that.

As we allow the Holy Spirit to prune us, He takes what is pruned, buries it, and produces the same kind of fruit as the original vine, Jesus.

How do we love our enemies? We abide in Jesus. Loving our enemies is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, and it has to be, because it’s bigger than any one of us.

Several years ago when Sarah and I were first married we took the job as Youth Pastors at a church here in Oklahoma. Before our first Wednesday night at the church we were “warned” about a young girl in the youth group who was 13 years old and a proudly professed lesbian.

After the first Wednesday night service at this church, this young lady approached me and said, “I need to talk to you.” We made our way to the corner of the room and she said, “I just want you to know I’m a lesbian.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “Is that all you’ve got to say?” I said, “No. I’ve got two things to say:

1. I love you. I’m your youth pastor. This is your church, and

2. According to the Word of God what you are doing is wrong. But remember,

1. I love you. I’m your youth pastor. This is your church.

What we eventually found out about this young lady as we spent more time with her was that she had been sexually abused by her earthly father from the time she was two years old.

Sarah and I began spending lots of time with her. We wanted her to see what healthy, godly love from an adult male looked like.

We did some discipleship with her that involved unpacking some of the things that had happened to her and that she had lived through when she was younger.

One day as we talked she was walking with us through one of the times when there was some pretty serious abuse happening in her life. She asked the LORD, “Where were You when that was happening?” Our gracious God responded by saying, “I was right there next to you.”

This morning as we have been studying The Sermon on the Mount, maybe we don’t understand religious persecution, but as sure as I am standing up here there are some of us in here who have been trespassed against. The Holy Spirit is here today asking you, “Will you love your enemies? Will you release them from any debt you are owed that was created by their trespass against you?

As we love our enemies:

We share a common table with the LORD who understands what it’s like to love His enemies

God is glorified

We are made complete

**Close in prayer. Ask people to consider where God was when they were trespassed against**