Sermon on the Mount (Part 9)

We're going to be reading verses 43 through 48, our last portion of Matthew chapter 5, here in this first portion of the

Sermon on the Mount. Let's begin with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, we pray that you would help us as we read your word together, that it would be clear, that we would rejoice in its truth, and we ask that you would take the whole of what

Jesus says here in this sermon, and that you would make it precious to us, that we would rejoice in it, that we would meditate upon it, and that through it, you would have your way in our lives.

We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Alright, Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 43, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your

Father in heaven, for He makes His Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?

Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

So, now we have arrived at the last of what is called the antitheses. We have six of them, and they all exhibit a pattern in which a precept or a concept of the

Old Covenant law is first cited and then declared to be overwritten in a satisfyingly fulfilling way in Christ's teaching, so that what

Christ says, you have heard it said, here's the Old Covenant law, but I say to you, here's what

Christ's authority, Christ's commandment is. This is not tossing away the

Old Covenant. This is satisfyingly fulfilling the

Old Covenant and saying what He is saying is in agreement with what came before, but here's how we're going to do it now, because there is a genuine change in the covenants between old and new, between Moses and Christ.

Jesus came teaching as one who had authority, not as the scribes.

We see at the end of this Sermon on the Mount, this is what really stood out to the multitudes.

What they were really amazed concerning is that Jesus, unlike the scribes, taught as one possessing authority in and of himself.

The scribes, as is noted throughout the New Testament, were always citing

Moses. Moses said this, Moses said that. Well, what about Moses?

That was their job. Who could blame them for citing Moses? Jesus came citing

Himself. He came saying verily and truly.

He amened His statement before He ever said it. He came teaching with His own authority, and that stood out to the multitudes.

That was amazing to them. So whether directly quoting one of the

Ten Commandments or summarizing Old Covenant laws, Jesus unveils the prophetic wisdom contained therein and showcases a righteousness that is far superior to, though not in contradiction to, the

Old Covenant. Now when we come to this passage, particularly

Matthew 5, verses 43 through 48, in conjunction with the previous passage, this portion of the

Sermon on the Mount has often been visited by those who are trying to understand how

Christians should understand various big topics like pacifism.

Is it okay for Christians to provide resistance? What about just war theory?

What about the doctrine of the lesser magistrate? These are all important topics, and very often the focus of these things is put here in a

All of these areas are important discussion, and this passage is going to have something to say to it, but this is not a passage where the primary concern is about these things.

These are questions of practical and systematic theology. Jesus is talking about how things are moving from the

Old Covenant to the New, and how His disciples are to follow Him. Now we can get to the application of those things by extension, but let's remember what the passage is actually about, and I would say just at the outset, so we have clarity, this is not a passage that is against self -defense, this is not a passage that is against the defense of one's family or defense of one's property.

That's not what this passage is about. Put yourself into the place of the original audience of Christ, the multitudes gathered there in the

Sermon on the Mount, and He has been this person that is now fairly famous in the first four chapters of Matthew, you see how wide

His ministry has gotten, how many people are paying attention now to this Jesus of Nazareth, and He has been preaching the kingdom of heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand, it is near and present with you because, hi, I've arrived.

And He is proving that through His powerful works, His miracles, His healings, and His teaching.

And so the multitude is hearing about this kingdom of heaven, this kingdom of heaven. They're going to be wondering, what is the relationship of this kingdom of heaven to what

God has already said to Israel and about Israel throughout the Holy Scriptures?

What does Jesus have to do with David and Moses and the patriarchs?

What's the connection here, and what kind of kingdom is this? Now, if you're one of Jesus' audience, you know how kingdoms work.

Kingdoms have borders, except Jesus would go on to say, this kingdom doesn't have borders like that.

They would think that the kingdom has a capital city, and indeed, this kingdom does, but they think that that city should have walls, fortified walls made of actual stone.

Jesus said, not so. They're thinking that the best way to preserve a kingdom is for the subjects to be very loyal to their king, and that checks out, but also that they would be in complete opposition to all enemies to that kingdom, that there needs to be a stern resistance to all enemies of that kingdom, and you should give no quarter and show no mercy to the enemies of that kingdom if that kingdom is going to survive and stand.

You don't make alliances with those who want to kill you. I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right?

Not in terms of kingdoms. Now, this is what Jesus has to address in this antithesis, and notice this in verse 43.

Here's the antithesis proper. We have the old saying, we have the new saying. This is verses 43 and 44.

"'You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.'"

So we have the old saying, and we have the new saying.

And here at the very end, this last antithesis is in parallel with the last beatitude.

Remember, the last beatitude is very robust, and it talks about, "'Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness' sake."

Here's your mindset. Here's how you should think about yourself in a situation where you are being persecuted for the sake of Christ.

You should recognize that you're in solid company with the tradition of the prophets, and it's a very robust thinking about how to understand one's enemy at the end of the beatitudes, so also here at the end of the antitheses.

What about this old saying, "'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' Now, that first part, "'You shall love your neighbor,' we certainly find quoted verbatim from Leviticus 19, verses 17 and 18, which reads, "'You shall not hate your brother in your heart.

You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.'" Now, sometimes when we read

Jesus say, "'Love your neighbor as yourself,' and we instantly recall the Good Samaritan, the parable, and then we read the same thing in the

Old Covenant in Leviticus, "'Love your neighbor as yourself,' we think that what

Moses wrote and what Jesus said was the exact same thing to the nth degree, but it's not.

In the passage of Leviticus 19, it clarifies and identifies who their neighbors are in the

Old Covenant. It is," and I quote, "'the children of your people.'"

That description is set alongside of neighbor and brother in Leviticus 19.

"'Love your neighbor as yourself' in the Old Covenant meant, "'Love your fellow covenant members, your fellow

Israelites,' because you're all tribes, you're all children of Israel, the children of your people.

Love your neighbor as yourself meant, hey, you Israelites, stop bickering, stop fighting, love your neighbor as yourself.

This is part of how you be covenantally faithful, and God will bless you for you all getting along.'"

They needed some encouragement in getting along. But when we come to the

New Covenant and the lawyer, the scribe asks, well, who is my neighbor? That's a very legitimate question because the way that Jesus was teaching and the way that Jesus was doing ministry didn't seem to really comport with the way that Moses talked about loving your neighbor because it's defined in the text in Leviticus that your neighbor is your ethnic kinsmen, the fellow

Israelites, the children of Israel. And then Jesus nuked that entire worldview and says, let me tell you a story about the good

Samaritan. And if a good Jew hated

Gentiles with a genuine righteous zeal, they hated

Samaritans even more so. And so Jesus went right for the critical point of how things are different now in the

New Covenant when He defined neighbor not as the children of your people, but by asking that question, well, who then was the neighbor?

Was it the scribe? Was it the Pharisee? No, it was the

Samaritan. He was the real neighbor, wasn't he? That's what I mean by love your neighbor. So the love your neighbor is certainly in the

Old Covenant, and Jesus is saying, you have heard it said that you shall love your neighbor, and then He's going to say, but I say to you, that the change is going to be very interesting, and we're going to get to there.

Jesus is not against people loving each other, right? He's not saying that's a bad idea, but He's going to take it beyond the

Old Covenant scope of covenant faithfulness within the nation of Israel. So the second half of the summary statement is, you shall hate your enemy, right?

You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. You have heard it said. Now some people say, well, there's no

Old Testament text that says, thou shalt hate thine enemy. It would be a really great verse, and it's true.

There is no particular verse that says it just like that, but there are lots of verses in the

Old Testament that says hating your enemy is a great godly idea and obedience to God.

And so what Jesus is doing here is He's summarizing a whole host of passages from the

Old Covenant, and He wants them to think about the significance of that and how things are different with Him.

So let's think about that. Let's go to Psalm 119, verse 113.

So Psalm 119, verse 113. Remember that this particular psalm put into the acrostic of the

Hebrew alphabet is basic education for Jewish children, right?

So this is how you learn your alphabet, okay?

And in learning their alphabet, they also learn in Psalm 119, verse 113,

I hate the double -minded, but I love your law, right? So now, you remember this, what you were brought up with, love the sinner, hate the sin.

Remember that? Okay. Jewish children were raised to say, hate the sinner, hate the sin.

If you doubt me, then read Psalm 5. So you see right there, okay? So it's very particular, it's like that is a godly thing to do for a member of the

Old Covenant. Look at Psalm 139, Psalm 139, verses 21 and 22.

This is David appealing to the Lord, appealing to even his integrity and desire to be pure.

Okay, and then verse 21 says, do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate you?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred.

I count them my enemies. This is David appealing to the

Lord and saying, you see my heart's in the right place? And indeed it was.

This is covenant faithfulness for an Israelite, that they would hate the enemies of God and do so with a perfect hatred.

This is exactly what they were supposed to do. Now, the more particular examples are going to be in Exodus and Deuteronomy.

So if you go over to Exodus 17, I'm belaboring the point because this is a bit hard to believe sometimes when we kind of gloss over the differences between the

Old and the New Testaments and think that, oh, it's all pretty much the same thing. Now this is done in good intention because we know that God is one.

He's the God of the Jew and also the God of the Gentile. And we also know that God doesn't contradict Himself, but He always is speaking the truth.

And so He's not going to contradict Himself in His holy word. The instinct, therefore, is to read this passage in the

Sermon on the Mount, it says, you have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, they've heard that from those bad teachers, the

Pharisees. But actually, they heard it from Moses, okay?

And how Jesus is being consistent and how God is not contradicting Himself at all is one of those things that God wraps up and invites us to go search out, and in the glory of it, we find

Christ. So we're going to get there. But first of all, let's think about what is said in Exodus 17, beginning in verse 8.

Here's the story. Now, Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua, choose us some men and go out and fight with Amalek.

Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses said to him and fought with Amalek.

And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And so it was when Moses held up his hand that Israel prevailed.

And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands became heavy. So they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it.

And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side. And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. Then the

Lord said to Moses, write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

And Moses built an altar and called its name, the Lord is my banner. For he said, because the

Lord has sworn the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. All right, so that's the background of what happened.

Amalek attacked. It was an underhanded attack. They're trying to raid the weak and hungry

Israelites in the wilderness. And so God says, we're going to have war forever against Amalek.

All right, so Deuteronomy 25, verses 17 through 19.

And remember this is instructions. Moses is saying to the second generation who did not go through that big attack by Amalek.

These are all the newer generation. They don't remember what had happened in that big traumatic day.

But he says, now remember something when you get into the new country. Verse 17, remember what

Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt, how he met you on the way and attacked your rear ranks, all the stragglers at your rear when you were tired and weary, and he did not fear

God. Therefore it shall be when the Lord your God has given you rest from your enemies all around in the land which the

Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven you shall not forget.

Generationally installed hatred of Amalek, you are going to take over the land of Canaan. And when you finally conquer all the tribes of Canaan and you possess your land and all is at peace, you're not done yet because you're going to saddle up and ride for Amalek.

You're going to take them out until not a single one of them remains, right?

So God set his sight on Amalek. Now, does anybody know of a real famous Amalekite in the

Bible? There's a couple famous Amalekites in the Bible. Haman was, and he was called an

Agagite. It wasn't because he was bad at chewing his food, it's because there was a king of Amalek named

Agag. Remember what Saul did or failed to do about the Amalekites?

He didn't destroy them all. He even left Agag alive. And then what did

Samuel, remember Hannah's little boy?

What did Samuel do to Agag? He hacked

Agag to pieces before the Lord. Now, how is that a righteous good act for a prophet and a judge to do?

Because God commanded it. He was demonstrating for Saul what Saul should have done.

This is how we're supposed to treat Amalekites. And then

Deuteronomy 23, verses 3 through 6. And it wasn't just the

Amalekites that got the special treatment. In verse 3 of Deuteronomy 23, an

Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation.

None of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you

Balaam the son of Beor from Pthora of Mesopotamia to curse you. Nevertheless, the

Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you.

You shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days forever.

And in contrast to the way you treat Moabites and Ammonites is, verse 7, you shall not abhor an

Edomite. Praise your brother. You should not abhor a descendant of Esau, you're not going to treat them with a special hatred because,

I mean, you guys are cousins. But if it's an Ammonite, a

Moabite, or an Amalekite, you're supposed to hate them. So you see that there is a lot of instruction in the

Old Testament that says, yeah, love your neighbor, and that's defined in Leviticus as your

Israelite brother, and hate your enemy, and there was a list of different types of enemies that you were supposed to hate.

And that was not a contrast. It wasn't something in the

Old Covenant where it says, well, you can either love your neighbor or hate your enemy. Those were consistent.

Loving your neighbor contributed to covenant faithfulness of Israel as much as hating your enemy did.

And you put that to the test as you read through the Old Testament and think about how that works.

What would happen if a member of the

Old Covenant tried to treat one of their enemies like, oh, just one of my neighbors, one of my brothers?

You read the book of Judges. They intermarried with them, hung out with them, they abided with them, and they became all a bunch like them, right?

When Israel treated their enemies as their neighbors, they ended up in all manner of what?

Unfaithfulness, idolatry, disaster, and under the judgment of God. They were specifically instructed to hate their enemies.

Now, this is not to say that no Gentile ever came into the faith that came under the heading of the

Jewish faith. We remember examples like Rahab and Ruth and so on.

But they rejected their idols and turned to the one true living God. The contrast is between the old saying, loving neighbor, hating enemy is consistent, but now here's the new saying, but I say to you, love your enemies, verse 44 of Matthew 5, but I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

Jesus says, love your enemies. Now, that's a...it's put into a continuous habitual act, and this should be your new way of life, is you should be always loving your enemy, and the reason why is this.

The reason for loving your enemies never goes away, so the love should never go away, right?

How good is your Father? How faithful is your Father? How gracious is God to you? This is your reason for loving your enemies.

That doesn't go away, so neither should the love for your enemies go away. Now when we think about enemies,

Christians, as usual, I think, fall into one of two pitfalls regarding the language of enemies, and I think one is defining far too many people as an enemy of the faith, and the other pitfall is refusing to acknowledge that there are any such enemies at all.

On the one hand, if you get into a personality conflict with someone who doesn't have the exact same peculiarities of belief that you do, pride gets poked, tempers flare, and the temptation is to label them as an enemy of Christ, and then you can crusade against them until you smoke their ruin on the slopes of Zion.

That's not the best way to handle that. On the other hand, we also need to be okay with naming particular people and confessing that they are indeed our enemies.

Now Paul does this. He's reading. Paul does this. Jesus does this. Particular people are named and said, you are an enemy.

Now why is it important to be able to say that? Because we are instructed to love our enemies, and if I don't know who my enemies are,

I don't know how to love them. Loving your enemies doesn't mean denying that they are an enemy, right?

You need to know that they're an enemy because you need to know how to love them as your enemy.

And Jesus gives some examples. Yes. It says, love your enemy.

Yeah. That's the problem, right? Because that's the question for the Old Covenant. It's like, love your neighbor, hate your enemies.

You've heard it said that way, but I'm telling you, love your enemy. Correct. Right.

And so when we think about the nature of love, right? So the definition of love is 1

John 3 .16, by this we know love, that Jesus laid down His life for the brethren, so also we should lay down our lives.

We know what love is because we look at Jesus Christ, we look at the cross, we look at what He's done for us, and so we know what love is.

Love is a righteous and sacrificial devotion, that I'm committing myself to somebody in the right way for their good, even if it costs me.

That's what love is. It's a righteous and sacrificial devotion. Committing myself to somebody else's good in the right way, even if it costs me.

Now we can do that for an enemy, we can do that for a friend, we can do that for a stranger we just met, we can do that for someone in our family, right?

The flexibility of the nature of love means that we're not called to some sort of uniformitarianism where we have to love everybody in exactly the same way, you know?

It's the old, you know, if you have 23 grandchildren, everyone gets one jellybean, because I don't favor any grandchild more than the other ones, but then they all complain about getting different flavors, and it's like,

I don't know. We have flexibility in our love for others that we're not called to,

I'm not called to love my wife in the same way that I'm called to love my enemy, I'm called to love them both. That's going to look differently, and that's okay.

It's the same definition of love, same principle of love, I'm committing myself for their good in the right way, even if it costs me, but it's going to be different if it's a fellow

Christian or somebody who hates Christ, right? And there's some examples.

So Jesus says, you know, we're going to, here's the general principle, love your enemy, and I'm going to give you some specific examples to get you started.

This is not an exhaustive list, by the way. This is a wise list. Bless those who curse you.

How do I know if someone's my enemy? Well, did they curse you? Might be a good signal that they're your enemy if they curse you.

If somebody curses you, cusses you, says vile things about you, how do you respond?

Bless those. Not affirm them in whatever they want to think, feel, and do, and so on, but say, you know, if you don't have anything else to say after someone cusses you out, it's like, well, you have a very creative way of swearing.

What will heap hot coals upon their heads, you know? It's like, I love your accent, where does that come from?

How do we find, be honest, be honest, okay?

You don't have to lie, flattery is a sin. Bless those who curse you, and, you know, be inspired by the way that Jesus dealt with his enemies, right?

If someone badmouths you behind your back, honestly compliment them to their face, right?

Honestly, underscore that, honestly. Do good to those who hate you, another example.

Do good to those who hate you. Now, when somebody hates you and they do bad things to you, then there's that moment where you're like, all right, how do

I get back at them? Again, develop the plan, you know? But rather,

Jesus is saying, make plans and execute these plans, do good to those who hate you, right?

Brainstorm about how to do good to those who hate you, and then follow through. Act in goodness to them.

If they gossip you and avoid you and brood and belittle you, invite them for a meal, right?

And this last one, I think, is the starting point. It's the last one listed, but I think it's the starting point to get us moving in all these things.

I mean, I don't know how to do good to those I haven't prayed for yet. I don't know how to bless those who have cursed me unless I've prayed for them.

How do I love someone who is my enemy unless I've prayed for them? This is so basic. Pray for those who spite you and persecute you.

So, the hurts and anxieties connected with my enemies are naturally there, must be brought to the

Lord so that I may leave them there with Him and gain the wisdom I need to interact with my enemies.

All, I think, has to start with prayer. So, thankful for the gift of prayer. Thankful to come with boldness and confidence to the throne of grace and mercy in my time of need.

And then we have this application, verses 45 through 48.

So, the new saying is, love your enemies. Here's some examples of how to get started. And then, verses 45 through 48, give a robust explanation and anticipation for the following two chapters of the

Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, do this, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes

His Son to 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 have you?

Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?

Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

So, one thing I want to note is that verses 45 and 48 are in parallel talking about the

Father. And then the middle two verses parallel each other about, you know, have you begun thinking about the way you relate to others, and is that really genuinely good?

But this attention given here about the Father in heaven is first featured in the Sermon on the Mount in verse 8, chapter 5, which is interesting given this context.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Now, we're here to the end of the chapter here, and we're talking about peacemakers.

It says, when you love your enemies, you're acting as sons of your Father in heaven. So, Jesus has kind of come full circle here.

He also mentions our Father in heaven in verse 16, reminding us of where we ought to put our attention.

Chapter 6 of Matthew, this next chapter of the

Sermon on the Mount, verses 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 18, 26, and 32 all talk about the heavenly

Father. So, you can tell that right here Jesus is bringing forward this theme of having

God as our heavenly Father, as those who belong to the kingdom. And this is going to play a very important role when we think about how we live.

What our motivation is and who it matters to that we live this way. Now, I want us to think about the concept of favor in verses 46 and 47.

You see the pattern there. Jesus' general statement, you know, if you love those who love you, what reward have you?

And that's how the Pharisees and the scribes were operating. After all, they're citing Moses, love your neighbor as yourself, right?

It's like, hey, you know, we're both Israelites here. We're supposed to love each other, and there's a reciprocal reinforcement there.

And Jesus says, you know, even those scummy tax collectors do that.

When they have their tax collector conventions and they all get together, they're all buttering each other up too.

So, how is it that the scribes and Pharisees are any more righteous than the tax collectors they so despise?

And why would you buy into that model? Because He's already talked about that the righteousness of His kingdom is something far superior.

And so, He wants them to think about the Father rather than just getting favor from men, which is where verses 45 and 48 come in.

Now, He says that we should love our enemies. Why? That we would be sons of our Father in heaven, meaning that we're going to be living out like father, like son.

Remember that expression? Right? Like father, like son, coming from here. We want to mimic our

Father, right? Sons like to mimic their dad. If I do anything repetitively,

I know my youngest son, Jack, is going to start doing the exact same thing.

He just sees it. He mimics it. And Jesus says, and He's about to talk to them about, you know, about prayer and pray like a toddler.

So, He's not, you know, upgrading this idea of son too far.

He's saying, be like little children imitating their father in this. You're imitating your heavenly

Father when you love your enemies. Why is that? Well, because you noticed that God makes

His Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. And isn't that irritating? I mean, isn't that irritating?

We don't like to see the big wicked boogeymen prosper, right?

Have all this prosperity, have all these businesses, have all this farmland, have all these things.

And look, another quarter of profit, right? Once again, they've had good fortune.

It's like, why doesn't God just send a thunderstorm over there and just hit them with a bolt of lightning?

Well, once upon a time, God did. Long time ago,

God looked upon the earth and saw that it was filled up with violence. And so, He determined to fill it up with water and to flood the earth because the every intention of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually,

Genesis 6 says. And so, God flooded the earth. And after the flood was concluded, He said, I will never again flood the earth with water because the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth,

He says in Genesis 8. And so, He said, we're going to continue this though.

I'm not going to flood the earth. I'm not going to disrupt the seasons again. You're going to have day and you're going to have night.

You're going to have the seasons. You're going to have the planting and the harvest. You're going to have the rain.

You're going to have the winter. You're going to have all of that. That's going to continue. God particularly promises the continuation of life on earth, not because we deserve it.

He clearly says we don't deserve it. But God says because of His grace, because He's merciful, because He's gracious,

He is going to send the sun, the warmth of the sun.

He's going to send the rain. The seasons will continue. And all these people who deserve to die are going to receive

His sunshine and His rain. And what is the sign that God is going to continue doing this?

When we get a little nervous about those storms that seem to threaten us from time to time, is the rainbow, is the rainbow.

Now, we talked about that a little bit last week, that in this quest for justice, and often when we want to take justice into our own hands and make it vengeance, we still must remember that justice is amply handled in the hands of God.

He has appointed magistrates to punish evildoers by the sword, but all of the justice systems in the world, which we find so lacking and unjust so often, is always done under the auspices of God's rainbow reminding us, hey, we all deserve to die, and that life itself is a precious gift.

And let's not forget who the judge of all mankind is when you are very disappointed, and rightly so, disappointed in human justice systems.

Let's remember who is the just one over all. And again, that theme comes back here as Jesus begins to talk about the

Father in heaven who makes His Son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. And if we love our enemies, then we are filling out that fullness of what we're supposed to be, that if we will love our enemies, we're doing so with an eye to who

God is, loving Him supremely. And isn't it the hardest thing to do to treat our enemies rightly?

If we're supposed to love others rightly, the hardest people to love rightly are our enemies, aren't they?

But if we will love God supremely and love others rightly, remembering that all that we steward in this creation is a gift from the

Father in heaven, that's why it says we're perfect, the idea of mature, fully well -rounded.

We're made in the image of God. We're made in the image of God. And if we can love God the most, and love others right, and take care of the things that God has entrusted to us, aren't we living to the fullness of what

God has made us to be, made in His image? That's the way Jesus is wrapping it up there in verse 48.

But I want to think a little bit about this covenant God made with Noah, because Jesus brings it up.

You see where He brings it up in verse 45? Can you see the rainbow in verse 45? You see the rainbow?

What happens when you get clouds and rain and sunshine? Rainbow. Do you think

Jesus was ignorant of that? I don't think He was ignorant of that. You can see how masterful

He is with the wind and the waves, and the storm stuff, right? Even as He's talking about the

Heavenly Father's continuance and blessing of rain and sunshine upon the just and the unjust, how

He providentially cares for all men in His creation, He speaks about it in terms of sunlight and storm.

That's meant for us to think about the promises God made to Noah. That's meant for us to think about the sign that is placed in the heavens, which is the rainbow.

Now, I want us to think about this

Noahic covenant and how it's fulfilled in Christ. Remember that the flood that came, as Peter would later say, it was both judgment and salvation, both wrath and salvation, because it was destruction upon the wicked, but also the floodwaters lifted

Noah in the boat up above the cursed earth and then brought them to safety and life continued.

In like fashion, we also have Christ and His cross.

Consider this, once the pinnacle judgment was done, God's promises to preserve creation due to grace for man, even though man continues to be evil.

So God judges the whole earth, all these people die and says, now

I'm going to continue the seasons and creation, even though you're all evil and deserve to die. Okay, well, if there's any question about whether God is just or not, that's already answered by the flood.

And why are we still alive then? Why is there evil in the world? How can God stand by and evil still be here? He's already answered that question in the flood, and all our lives are simply grace, just a blessing that we're alive.

But then think further, and even the way the New Testament ties in what happened in the flood and Noah and what happens in Christ.

Christ's death and resurrection are the satisfying fulfillment of this. The cross and the resurrection teaches us that God's justice is served at the crucifixion and the resurrection so that life may continue until God's timing is done.

Are you concerned about injustice and evil in the world today? If God is so good, why is there evil in the world today?

What's the answer to that? Look to Jesus Christ. His death upon the cross satisfies the justice of God concerning all who put their faith and trust in Him.

So if you're wondering about a murderer who gets to go to heaven because he puts his faith in Jesus Christ, you recognize that God's wrath concerning that murderer was satisfied in Christ.

And so Paul the apostle gets to go to heaven because of Jesus, because of Jesus, not because of Paul and what he managed to accomplish, because of who

Jesus is and what he accomplished. And what about all those who don't put their faith in Jesus Christ? Do you remember that Jesus rose from the dead?

Which is a clear signal because He's gone to reign at the right hand of the Father until He returns.

And what does He do then? He raises all the dead. How do we know there's a resurrection at the end of all things? Because Jesus rose from the dead.

And what happens at the resurrection at the end of all things? All mankind stands before God, sheep and goats, wheat and tares, good fish, bad fish, and God sorts it all.

In the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are assured that all justice will be satisfied.

We only have to look to Him. And so it is that the rainbow that we see in the sky in Revelation we see around the throne.

What is God's guarantee? What is God's guarantee that He's going to continue the seasons and the rain and continue life on earth and preserve all things and not bring it to an end prematurely because of all the evil?

What's the guarantee we have? It's Christ, because He will be satisfied.

And all for whom He died will be saved, a multitude that no man can count. We can't count that high.

And it will only happen at the time that it's ready. Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares? The servants say to the master, let's just go ahead and rip it all up right now.

He says, no, no, for the sake of the wheat, we're not going to do that. We're going to wait until the proper time.

Why is God just and waiting to the proper time? Because of who Christ is. And so life continues until such time as Jesus returns.

And again, about every three months, there's a new fear scrolling across your screen about how life's going to end.

And you'll notice that every new announcement about how life's going to end and how everything's terrible and everyone's going to die in horrible ways is tied to some great evil wickedness of man.

We all know the reason why this world is in bad shape is because of us. We're made in God's image.

We can't escape that conclusion. But time and time again, we are invited to fear.

We are invited to fear. We are invited to fear. But we need to remember not to fear our enemies, but to love our enemies.

We are to pray for our enemies. We are to bless our enemies. We are to do good for our enemies. And in all of that, remember that we're not supposed to be afraid of our enemies, that they're going to bring the world to an end and bring great disaster upon us.

Remembering that we are sons and daughters of our Father in heaven. Now, an important question,

I want to close on this. How is it consistent that we move from the old covenant to the new and the old covenant said, love your neighbor, hate your enemies.

There's the old covenant. And this is satisfyingly fulfilled in Christ who says, love your enemies in this way.

Jesus Christ is a satisfying fulfillment of all the covenants. So when it comes to matters of justice and wrathful destruction of God's enemies, the enemies of the kingdom, that is entirely put into the hands of the

Son, the servant. And when the Son and the servant were in the shadow, Old Testament, that was someone called

Israel. Israel was called the Son. Israel was a servant of the Lord. And God said,

I have wrath and judgment to be dealt out against these Canaanites, these idolaters who have ignored my message from Abraham for 400 years.

And so He instructs Israel to lay waste to the Canaanites and the Philistines in the promised land, didn't

He? Because they were the Son. They were the servant in shadow to execute that judgment.

But now we're no longer in the shadow, dearly beloved. We are in the substance. We're in Christ. And we see that Jesus Christ is

God's anointed ruler, has a rod of iron and a sharp two -edged sword that proceeds from His mouth.

You know what? He causes the rise and fall of the enemies of God, and He handles the business. Okay? That's why it's consistent.

That's why we can love our enemies because Christ is the Son who takes care of the enemies.

He will judge them. He will smash them like clay pots with a rod of iron. That's His job. He's the Son. He's the servant.

It is unsurprising that in the history of Christendom, that nations took up arms in the in their fight against one another, or as brothers in arms against Muslim invaders.

I think it's a really good thing that the Muslim armies were defeated at the Battle of Tours by Charles Martel in 732

AD. That was good. That was a good thing. It was good that Christendom was not subsumed by an

Islamic caliphate. But I can say that while also not endorsing all of their messy theology.

Okay? And in the not -too -distant past, the favor of God and the pleasure of Christ Himself have been invoked on a variety of wars waged by our own

American empire. And that stirs the heart of the Christian. He was also patriotic.

But it's important that we need to circumvent that emotion to see that many of those claims are built on old covenant structures that have their fulfilling resolution in Christ.

I want to be clear. I think a nation filled with magistrates who bow the knee to Christ, who take up arms to defend their people against evildoers, and ask

God's providential favor upon their righteous efforts is a good thing. That's the way it should happen.

But that's a far cry from taking an old covenant approach of insisting that territory far away from your nation is sacred and belongs to your church.

You see the difference? Okay, we'll leave it there. We have two minutes.

We're concluding. Any questions or thoughts to be closed? All right, well, let's close with a word of prayer.

Father, I thank You so much for the time You've given us in Matthew 5, this summer session, and I pray that You would continue to bring to mind these famous, catchy sayings of Christ and help us to remember the wisdom that is there, the goodness that is there, and help us to rejoice in that truth.