Sermons
Doing the Impossible, Pt. 2
February 7, 2021
Ministry:
- Sunday Morning
Speaker:
- Jeff Crotts
Text: Matthew 5:43-5:48
Series:
- Matthew
Picking up where we left off from last week’s sermon:
- We considered what is normally thought to be an impossible standard.
- At the end of Matthew 5, in a verse, Jesus summarizes what it means to follow him in terms of what he has thus far prescribed.
ESV Matthew 5:48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Anytime someone expects “perfect” for doing anything, there is an inherent problem.
- We are not perfect so how can you expect it?
Parents relieve pressure from kids for academics or sports, saying, “…just do the best you can because nobody’s perfect” right?
“What do with do with Jesus’ expectation for all believers?”
- Scholars relegate this as hypothetical but unrealistic.
- An Old Covenant standard targeting moral behavior.
- Rendering it impractical.
- For Christians living by grace.
- “This teaching is dated right?”
Jesus raises the bar high, moving people to the center of his grace.
- To live what Jesus requires is only by grace.
You never score 100% saying, no anger, no lust, perfect marriage, promise keeper, non-retaliation, and loving your enemies.
- Sin natures protest laying any claim to perfection by means of will power.
Some counter Jesus another way, swinging the pendulum an opposite direction:
“Since we can never be perfect, this must be Jesus’ perfect righteousness received by his death on the Cross.”
- This is not a complete miss.
- We know sin’s domination pre-Christ.
- Being bought by Christ’s Cross.
- Our perfect standing, only by Christ’s sacrifice.
- Still, verse 48 is not about becoming a Christian but living as a Christian.
“So how does this work?”
Everything returns to seeing God’s Law as what engages the heart.
- The Law is meant to bring you to the end of yourself.
The Rabbi’s default was always “Law-keeping makes right!”
- Like parents chiding children, saying, “behave…and you’re in good standing!”
- Behavior-based religion always deadens.
- False-religion is always binary – saying:
“Behave just enough to keep your status with a higher power.”
- Jesus implodes this Satanic contortion, recasting obedience from “Behave!” to “Believe!”
- “Perfect.” By faith.
- Jesus says, “Be like me by faith.”
- “Being perfect” is synonymous with “Exercising faith.”
Matthew 5:1-11, verse 3 says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
- Being counted “inside” takes a posture of helplessness.
In terms of anger, it is never enough to say:
- “I haven’t murdered anyone so, I’m good” (cf. Matt. 5:21).
- “I have crossed lines before, but I’ve never fully committed adultery” (cf. Matt. 5:27).
- “My marriage fell apart, but we really weren’t compatible in the first place, so this was all for the good” (cf. Matt. 5:31).
- “My word is my bond, unless I need to fudge on it, when nobody will really ever know” (cf. Matt. 5:33).
- “That person deserved what they have coming because they started it!” (cf. Matt. 5:38-39).
- “I don’t have to love that person and in fact, I’m pretty bitter because he attacked me” (cf. Matt. 5:44).
Chapter 5 is Jesus exposes a tactic of using the Law as cover for sinning.
- It is often a painful process to take Jesus’ teaching at face value.
- Yet, this is Doing what our world claims is Impossible.
Two impossibilities made possible by God’s intervening grace cause Christians to stand out in a lost world.
1. God gives his children grace to not retaliate to abuse (vv. 38-42)
Verses 38-42 presents four scenarios.
a. Insulting your dignity (v. 39)
b. Suing for your possessions (v. 40)
c. Commandeering your service (v. 41).
d. Swindling your money (v. 42).
2. God gives grace when attacked to love and pray for the attacker (vv. 43-48)
Jesus, yet again says, “You have heard that it was said” (v. 43).
- This is the power of speech.
- Leadership is influence.
- Influence from these teachers was big
- On the surface, what they were saying was logical.
“You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy” (v. 43).
The Lord’s remedy – Deny your natural intuition.
- “Hating your enemy” under the guise of self-protection is natural and instinctive.
What jumps out is nowhere does Scripture command to “hate your enemy.”
- Though the Bible makes a few direct statements where God expresses “hatred” is never prescriptive for believers.
ESV Romans 9:13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
ESV Psalm 5:5 The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.
ESV Psalm 139:21-22 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? 22 I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.
ESV Revelation 2:6 Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
- These references (Romans 9, Ps. 5, Ps. 139) all need to be taken in terms of God’s Covenant action!
- Kingly adjudications.
- David’s voice comes with prophetic authority.
- David’s imprecatory role.
- Revelation is John who “hates the works” of sin.
God’s Word certainly commands believers to love.
- This is the theme of the Gospel.
- General love is always for all the world (cf. Jn. 3:16).
ESV 1 John 2:2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
ESV 1 Timothy 4:10 For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
“God’s love is unlimited in extent but limited in degree.” [MacArthur]
Matthew 5:43, reveals a false rendering to be measured against its origin from Leviticus 19:18.
ESV Leviticus 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
False teachers blatantly add from outside of Scripture and redefine terms from the inside Scripture.
“neighbor” was redefined as “kin” or “race.”
- Monastic communities (in isolation near the Red Sea) recited this dictum:
“Love the brothers; hate the outsider.”
- False religion is always binary in terms of people.
- Love your own and hate all outsiders.
- Come in or assume enemy status!
- Satanic religion.
God’s mercy and grace are always complex in terms of God’s love and justice.
ESV Jeremiah 8:19 Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land: “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” “Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images and with their foreign idols?
ESV Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!
Christians regularly accused of “Hate Speech.”
- This is a tragic miscasting of Jesus’ mission and God’s heart!
- We call out sins from Scripture.
- We know Jesus is the only way to Heaven.
- We warn Hell is eternal.
- This is not hatred but grace.
- As tensions mount in our country.
- The temptation is to polarize and self-protect.
- We must be faithful.
- Fight to love this world.
Ironically, the accusation that Christians “hate” and promote division is the exact opposite of our mission.
True unity is bound up in God through Christ.
At the same time, this binary false teaching espoused then is what exactly what our culture defaults to today!
Unity by superficial accommodations is racial discrimination.
- Anytime you are selective toward those you consider “kin” over against others, discrimination or favoritism is at play.
- Categories, beyond the Bible, bait people to love some and hate others.
- The liberal left claim solutions via social reform but have no solution for the heart.
Go back to the Bible and ask, “Who is our neighbor?”
ESV Luke 10:25-37 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?”37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
The “lawyer” asks, “And who is my neighbor” (v. 29) keeping pressure on Jesus instead of himself.
- He’s thinking he can score 100%.
- Justifying himself.
Verse 36 makes for a surprising switch up!
- Jesus flips the script on the Lawyer’s game.
- “Which of these three…?”
- The options are one “three”, not the victim.
- The Lawyer can no longer check the box in some kind of “find the neighbor” game.
- Why? “You are the neighbor.”
- Instead of searching to find a neighbor to feel better.
- You have to be a “Neighbor.”
- “Who is my neighbor?” – Jesus says, “YOU ARE!”
- The point is to be a neighbor to anyone in need.
- Why: “Love your neighbor as yourself” makes the first concern you.
By the way, this contradicts, “hating” anyone, even “enemies” (v. 44) – because again the issue is not who they are but who you are!
Jesus is not redefining the Law as if discrimination would have ever been allowable.
ESV Exodus 12:48-49 If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. 49 There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”
ESV Exodus 23:4-5 “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. 5 If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.
Verse 44 takes this to another level.
Jesus ramps this up to the “impossible.”
- Love neighbor, love attacker.
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (v. 44).
- From thinking counter-intuitively to acting count-intuitively!
I quoted this earlier in our series, but it bears quoting again.
C.S. Lewis was criticized for not caring much for Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, but he was misunderstood.
Lewis’ response:
As to caring for the Sermon on the Mount, if caring for means liking or enjoying, I suppose no one cares for it. Who can like being knocked flat on his face by sledgehammer? I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition than that a man who can read that passage with tranquil pleasure.
Loving an attacker is not hypothetical.
In verse 44, Jesus takes “enemy” (v. 43) to “enemies” [plural].
- Applying this to all comers.
- Assuming encountering “enemies” is a baseline for life.
“What makes this Sermon, “hammer blows” to the heart.”
Do not miss “hammer blows” instead of driving you into the ground are what frees you to fly.
Counteracting anger, lust, and lacking integrity frees! And vice versa! Binds!
- Jesus leaves no room for what causes so much trouble in life.
- When you have an enemy and you will, Jesus limits your response to loving and praying for the enemy.
- You are saying to yourself, “What other option do I have but to love and pray for this individual?”
- Fight back? Gossip? No.
- This is counter-intuitive to our flesh but when anger is canceled out and your enemy will not reason with you then what else is left for your own joy?
- Jesus marks the path to joy with love and prayer.
- The only path a Christian can take.
- Prayer for “enemies” softens your heart and perhaps will soften an enemy’s heart towards you.
- Jesus prayed for his executioners.
“Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”
- While spikes were sunk into his flesh, Jesus both loved and prayed.
Alfred Plummer: “To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; to return good for evil is divine.”
[Hughes] The best illustration I know of to explain what Jesus is talking about comes from the life of one of my wife’s dearest friends. She and her family had just returned from the mission field and had rented a rather nice townhouse – at least it was nice compared to what they’d had on the mission field. She was a very creative person and did a wonderful job of decorating the place, and they settled in. Only one thing was wrong – the family who moved next door. They turned the front yard into a desert, broke the windows out of their house, were always using foul language, urinated in the front yard, and generally caused havoc in the neighborhood. The final straw was when on of the boys climbed into our friend’s yard and threw a whole can of orange paint over the patio walls. My wife’s friend was really angry. She did not like her neighbors. She was not happy with the Lord for putting her where he had put her. Realizing that her heart was not right, she got down on her knees and said, “Lord, you know that I do not like these people at all. God, help me to love them.” She did not feel any different, but she resolved to exercise love. She baked her neighbors a pie and took it to them, thus beginning a caring relationship. Those neighbors did not change, but she did. She had begun to love them. When those neighbors moved away, she wept. What an example of intelligent, volitional love that says, “I will love by the grace of Christ within me.”
Verses 45-48 tell us why we should love like this.
First of all, your faith stands out (v. 45).
- When the Bible identifies “sons” on earth, think of “sons” as extending of God’s glory and witness on earth.
- When you love and pray for your enemy you extend God’s witness in the world. Why?
- God’s love is indiscriminate to his image-bearers?
- God loves his world and all the people in it and most of it hates him.
- Most of our 6-billion-person world population is at war against God (cf. Rom 8:7).
“What is our response to our changing world?”
“What is the biblical balance of loving enemies while hating sin?”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who was executed as a co-conspirator to execute Adolf Hitler. What was his heart toward his enemy? He said,
“This is the supreme command…through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.”
John Stott responding to Romans 12:20 said.
ESV Romans 12:20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
“If you find that someone has burgled your home – you might find yourself calling the police and offering him food and water at the same time!”
There is a definite tension created inside the Christian’s heart.
- Loving your enemy and praying for your enemy never means being passively bullied.
“What does God’s love for the world look like?”
One example of this kind of love is the story of the little girl recorded in 2 Kings 5.
ESV 2 Kings 5:1-5 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.2 Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman’s wife.3 She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”4 So Naaman went in and told his lord, “Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.”5 And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing.
- Syrians were always terrorizing Israel, taking prisoners back to Syria (Like oppression of Rome over NT Israel, the group sitting and listening to Jesus).
- Naaman was strong, mighty in battle, decorated, formidable, captain of the Syrian army.
- The Lord allowed Syria to win a battle (2 Kg. 5:1) – do not know who the other side is.
- On one of these raids, Namaan carried off this little girl from Israel.
- Namaan made here his wife’s servant (cf. 2 Kings 5:2).
- Namaan though strong, was also weakened by his incurable disease of leprosy.
- This little girl has an answer.
ESV 2 Kings 5:3 She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
I love the little girl in this story… she is definitely a co-laborer with God…a minister of reconciliation. She is extending the light and the blessing to the one who took her captive. She has complete faith that if Naaman were to see Elisha he would be healed! She had faith in her God that He is not only able to heal but is also willing to heal…. even an enemy of Israel!
ESV Luke 4:27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.
- Just because God loves the whole world, this does not mean God will save the whole world.
- But, this also does mean God will extend grace to all the world.
- Again, “God’s love is unlimited in extent but limited in degree.”
Verse 45 makes this practical by likening our extension of God’s witness of love to the whole earth to the way he provides sunshine and rain to the whole earth.
- In other words, God does not limit where the sun is going to shine, or the rain will fall.
- He does not limit beauty or the sublime for only Christians to see.
- Everyone eats and drinks from this blessing.
This is called common grace but why is this powerful if it is temporary?
- Common grace is not saving grace.
- However, it is common grace sets the stage for saving grace.
- Common grace is God’s witness of himself.
ESV Psalm 19:1-4 To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.2 Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.4 Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them, he has set a tent for the sun
ESV Romans 1:19-20 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
- Common grace not only reveals God’s nature but also reflects God’s patience.
- God has the right to at birth immediately send everyone (under this world’s curse) to Hell and he doesn’t.
- Everyone who rejects God’s witness according to God’s justice could be sent to Hell.
- But by God’s common grace, he is patient.
ESV 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
Verse 46 poses the question that “…if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”
- The “reward” in view is eternal life.
- Jesus draws a clear line between those who stand out, doing the “impossible” and those who will not.
- It is all too common for people to “love their own.”
- Or, to love people back when they love you.
- Religious leaders were making “Normal Behavior” the acid test for being right with God.
- Why social justice is so popular in churches today.
- No one disagrees with feeding the poor or helping the victimized.
- Everyone believes these causes and this is why church leaders rally massive groups around these causes.
“A good cause that now becomes marketable.”
Let’s rally around this cause: “The way to know whether on not you are a true believer conference: Loving and Praying for people who threaten you and your family! Dragging your name through the mud!”
Mainstream Christians would say, “This is out of touch!”
Verse 46 “Tax-collectors” represent government scams.
- Allowed to meet quotas by overcharging you.
- Jesus’ method was meant to expose the heart by stating the obvious.
- You are not a “son of [the] Father” just because you embrace common grace.
- Everyone loves common grace.
- Likewise, everyone knows “tax-collectors” without question were duplicitous.
“loving people because they love you” does not mean your heart has changed.
Verse 47 puts a stamp on this saying “And if you only greet your brothers, what more are you doing than others?”
- If you only “greet” or “welcome” people who are just like you, how are you different at all?
Then Jesus says what would be so offensive to the Jewish person.
“Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”
- Being distinct from Gentiles was how a Jew defined holiness.
- Racial separation was synonymous with being right with God.
- Jesus is really getting under their proverbial skin stating, there is no behavioral difference.
- You are acting just the “same” (v. 47).
Conclusion: We end where we began.
“You therefore must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48).
- Here Jesus summarizes the only path forward.
- What is impossible from the world’s standpoint is made possible by only one means.
“Intervening grace”
- You receive grace by crushing hammer blows to our prideful hearts.
- Is it hard not to retaliate against your attacker?
- Is it hard to love and pray for your attacker?
What is hardest of all, is letting go of your pride. Repenting of self-righteousness and relying on Jesus’ grace mercy.
- Then and only then will you extend Jesus’ witness on earth.