Valley View Chapel August 25, 2013 What Jesus Thinks About. Part 6 Love Matthew 5: Introduction

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1 1 Valley View Chapel August 25, 2013 What Jesus Thinks About. Part 6 Love Matthew 5:43-47 Introduction We have been looking at a series of statements that Jesus made to his followers. Each one contains the same formula: You have heard that it was said.but I tell you. In each statement Jesus quotes from something that had been taught to the people by the Jewish religious leaders. In some instances what they taught was flat-out wrong. In other instances what they taught was right but the application was wrong. And in this morning s passage, what they taught was half right and half wrong: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Matthew 5:43 (NIV) That was the prevailing attitude of the day: Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Let s drop down to verses 46 and 47 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 brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? (NIV) Here s the key issue for Jesus: What are you doing more than others? The HCSB translates it: What are you doing out of the ordinary? The NLT renders the question: How are you different from anyone else? The secular world, even the religious world, holds to a certain set of standards and values. Followers of Jesus Christ are not to be like other people. Christians are supposed to be noticeably different from most people. The Companion Passage How are you different from anyone else? That sounds a lot like what Paul told the Roman Christians in the 2 nd verse of the 12 th chapter: Don t copy the behavior and customs of this world. J.B. Phillips translated it: Don t let the world squeeze you into its mold. This idea of distinctiveness God s covenant people goes all the way back to when Moses received the Law on the holy mountain. God said in Leviticus 18:2-3, "'I am the Lord your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. (NIV)

2 2 William Barclay declared: We are not be like the chameleon which takes its color from its surroundings. When Paul said Don t copy the behavior and customs of this world he used a verb tense indicating a continuous attitude. In other words: Make up your mind that you will not live by the standards and values of the prevailing culture today, tomorrow and for the rest of your life. Human beings are not originators. We are imitators. Our pattern is to fix our mind s eye on a model we want to emulate and then we structure our priorities and activities around that model. And in the final analysis, there are only two models from which to choose: the world s way and there is God s way. The Apostle John employed the image of light and darkness to illustrate the contrast: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 1 John 1:5-6 (NIV) God s way and the world s way are more than incompatible. They are totally hostile, with no possibility of compromise. Later in The Sermon on the Mount Jesus forcefully announced: "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Matthew 6:24 (NIV) As they stood on the banks of the Jordan River poised to move across and possess Canaan, Joshua hurled the same challenge at the Israelites: Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. Joshua 24:15 (NIV) Today s text is all about choices: Are you going to do more than others? Are you going to be more than ordinary? Do you dare to be different? Crazy Love Francis Chan used the phrase crazy love to describe God s love. Jesus called on his disciples to have the God s kind of crazy love : "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. Matthew 5:43-44 (NIV) Immanuel Kant, the 18 th -century German philosopher, read these words and dismissed them as absurd. He said it was impossible to love our enemies. The rabbis, scribes and Pharisees of Jesus day would have agreed. In fact, they went even further than Kant. They not only said that it was impossible to love their enemies, but that all Jews were morally obligated to hate their enemies!

3 3 As the 19 th -century Prime Minister of Spain, Ramon Narvaez, lay dying, his priest asked: Does your Excellency forgive all his enemies? Replied Narvaez: I do not have to forgive my enemies. I had them all shot. Most of us don t shoot our enemies. But neither do we love them. We usually either avoid them or retaliate. Neither response looks much like what Jesus was talking about here. The Jews were OK with the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 to love your neighbor as yourself as long as neighbor had a narrow definition. As long as neighbor meant people like us people who look like us; people who have the same ethnicity as us; people who believe like us; people who agree with our values; people who are straight like us; people who vote like us; people who root for the same teams as us. Perhaps some of us have the same definition of our neighbor. If that s how neighbor is defined if neighbor doesn t include my enemy then I m good with it. An article appeared in The New York Times not that long ago entitled Depth of the Kindness Hormone Appears to Know Some Bounds." Nicholas Wade described how scientists have identified a specific, love-inducing, trust-building chemical called Oxytocin. Psychologists refer to it as the hormone of love. When Oxytocin is present in our brain, we want to reach out to help and bond with other people. Recent research, however, suggests that Oxytocin produces a brand of love that only extends to people in our "in-group." In other words, Oxytocin unleashes a narrow kind of love that extends only to "our kind of people." The study concluded that Oxytocin only increases our love and loyalty for people in our in-group. Conversely, it makes us more likely to exclude those who aren't like us. More than others Jesus said that his people should do better than that. What are you doing more than others? I want your love to be motivated by more than Oxytocin. I want you to be different. I want you to be extraordinary. I want you to do what other people can t do. In other words, I want you to love your enemies. When Immanuel Kant asserted that it was impossible to love one s enemies, he would have been right if love is a feeling. And that s how most people understand love - as a feeling of warmth, benevolence, good will, and affection. In almost 40 years of pastoral ministry, I ve seen more than one couple come into my office to make their case for a divorce. When I ask why, I can predict what they will say. The Righteous Brothers sang about it almost 50 years ago: You ve lost that lovin feeling. Now it s gone, gone, gone. If love is just a feeling, then I have nothing to say to the couple.

4 4 If love is an emotion, then I can t command any couple to love each other. If love is only a feeling, I can t even command myself to love my wife because feelings don t respond to commands. I can t command you, me or anybody to: Be happy! Be sad! Be angry! The love that Jesus is talking about has nothing to do with feelings. It has everything to do with the will. Jesus says: Make a decision to love your enemies. The love that Jesus commands us to show to our enemies is the same love that God showed to his enemies. John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Did God feel like giving his son to die on the cross? I don t think so. God made a decision to give his son as humanity s substitute. What kind of a world did God love? Paul told us what kind of world God loved in Romans 5:10, When we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son. (NIV) To the Colossians Paul wrote: You were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. Colossians 1:21 (NIV) God even shows his love to those who will never respond to his invitation for forgiveness and new life through Christ, He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:45 (NIV) Theologians call it common grace. Even an unbeliever enjoys a warm, sunny day. A Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or Jehovah s Witness still savors an ear of fresh-picked corn. God gives people what they don t deserve. Christ followers are called to give our enemies what they don t deserve grace, kindness, and compassion. Loving our enemies isn t complicated. How to love our enemies First, we need to admit that we can t do this in our own power. Humanly speaking, we can only love as far as our Oxytocin takes us and that s not nearly far enough to resemble Christ. We need to confess our need and appropriate the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul said that The fruit of the Spirit is love. J.D. Greear stated in his book Gospel: Following Jesus, being his disciple, means living as he lived. Well, I can t live as he lived. I can t love my enemies. But Jesus Christ, who lives within me, can love my enemies if I submit to his control.

5 5 Second, we have to make a decision to act lovingly toward our enemies. We can t control our emotions. But we can control our wills. We can make a decision to do loving things regardless of our feelings. Satan tells us that s hypocrisy. It s no more hypocrisy than getting up to go to work tomorrow even though you don t feel like it. It s doing the right thing. It s obedience. It s fulfilling our responsibilities. C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. Conclusion We are always changed for the better when we love our enemies. Sometimes even our enemies are changed for the better when we love them with Christ s love. Ghassan Thomas is the pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Bagdad, Iraq. His congregation erected a sign on their building that said "Jesus Is the Light of the World." The church was raided by bandits who left behind a threat on a piece of cardboard. It read: "Jesus is not the light of the world, Allah is, and you have been warned." The note was signed "The Islamic Shiite Party." In response, Pastor Ghassan loaded a van with children's gifts and medical supplies which were in critically short supply following the American invasion and drove to the headquarters of the Islamic Shiite Party. After presenting the gifts and supplies to the imam, Ghassan told the leader, "Christians have love for you, because our God is a God of love." The Muslim leaders, astounded by Pastor Thomas's act of love, apologized. "This will not happen again," [the imam] vowed. "If anyone comes to kill you, it will be my neck first." The imam later attended Pastor Thomas's ordination service at the church. The imam saw a vivid demonstration of Christ s love. And because he chose to love an enemy, Pastor Thomas turned an enemy into a friend. Oswald Sanders once said: The Master expects from his disciples such conduct as can be explained only in terms of the supernatural. Is there something about us that cannot be explained? Is there something in us that cannot be found in non-christians? If Jesus asked us: What are you doing more than others? Would we be able to answer: We love our enemies? He has given us the command. He has given us his power. If we love our enemies in his power, we just might change our little corner of the world.

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