Study inMatthew’s

Gospel

Presentation 23

Sermon On The Mount

Retaliation Or LoveChap 5 v43-48

Presentation 23

Presentation 23

IntroductionA composer wrote a demanding piece of music. It was seen to be a piece of exceptional beauty and infused with the character of the composer. All who heard it fell under its spell.

Then a new conductor took over the orchestra. He thought the original music too demanding and made what he called ‘necessary alterations’. He reinterpreted the music so that it ended up contradicting the composer’s original intention. Soon, changes that were supposed to ‘improve the performance’ began to produce the most bizarre sounds.

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IntroductionThen the son of the composer arrived, formed a new orchestra and conducted the music as his father intended. The audience were then overwhelmed by the difference in the quality sound.

Jesus is the Composer’s son, the piece of music is God’s law and the displaced conductor the scribes and Pharisees who had reinterpreted God’s law to their own ends.

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THE PHARISEES' PERVERSIONIn this sermon, Jesus is reclaiming God’s law from the perversion of the scribes and Pharisees. They’d changed the score, to enable them to become ‘law-dodgers’.

Jesus now takes them to task over what they taught about a man’s relationship to his enemies. The words of v43 ‘love your neighbour’ often quoted by the Pharisees are not in fact found in the O.T. text which reads, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. To omit the words ‘as yourself’ is to dilute what is a very high and exacting standard. Immediately we do so, we no longer ask, ‘Is this how I would want to be treated if I were in their position?’

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THE PHARISEES' PERVERSIONThe teachers of the law had gone even further in their dilution of God’s command by narrowing down the understanding of the word ‘neighbour’. It was restricted to mean only a Jew, one of their own people, race and religion. This encouraged the building of a protective wall around the Jewish race who then thought, ‘We will love only those on the inside of the wall’. Those on the outside, the Gentiles, they described as dogs whom they failed to love. They argued that since God’s word commanded them to love their neighbours then the converse must be true, God must surely intend them to hate their enemies.

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THE PHARISEES' PERVERSIONThis racism perverts the clear teaching of God’s Word. For God’s people are encouraged to love foreigners as themselves. “The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native born. Love him as yourself for you were aliens in Egypt” Lev.19v34.Commands were given by God to regulate behaviour towards those whom they classed as enemies.“If you come across your enemies ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there ; be sure you help him with it” Ex.23v4-5.Cf. the more positive injunction, “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat.” Prov. 25v21

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THE PHARISEES' PERVERSIONThe whole of the O.T. says with a single voice, ‘your enemy is your neighbour’ and the thing that makes him your neighbour is that he is a fellow human being in need. Therefore do the best for him you can. The scribes dodged that.

It is clear from scripture that God does not teach a double standard of morality, one for our neighbour and one for our enemy. But these teachers of the law had reshaped its’ teaching. Instead of allowing God’s law to challenge and modify their own wrong behaviour, they modified the law so that it could approve of their wrong behaviour. Fallen human nature loves to do that.

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RESTATEMENT OF THE LAWWhen Jesus told his hearers to love their enemies he was merely restating God’s law or restoring ‘the score’ to its original form. Love our enemies, ‘Impossible,’ you say. Of course it is, for only God’s grace can enable us to behave in this way. Now Jesus’ love that reached out to those who nailed him to the cross is the possession of every believer and resident in their hearts. Many Christians find great difficulty at this point and experience guilt as a result. In the 5thC Augustine wrote:“Many have learned to turn the other cheek but do not know how to love him by whom they were struck”.

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RESTATEMENT OF THE LAWChristians can sink into bogs of introspection trying to work out if they really love a particular person or not. What practical help can be given? First, we need to be able to distinguish between liking and loving. Liking involves feelings of emotion and the approval of the other person and his behaviour. But it is possible for God to say when he looks at us that he does not like the way we are, he does not like some aspects of our behaviour and yet he loves us. Love is not a matter of feeling but of the will. If our wills are surrendered to God we can love our enemies and want the best for them without necessarily liking them in the sense of approving of their character or behaviour.

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RESTATEMENT OF THE LAWSecondly, we need to act in love towards others. True love involves deeds. Cf. Lk.6v27 ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you’. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus puts flesh upon his teaching here. The Samaritan loved his neighbour, an enemy, by doing him good. This kind of do-gooder is often despised and ridiculed by a world whose wisdom is summed up in the words, ‘They got themselves into this mess, lets see if they can get themselves out of it.’ But that can never be a Christian’s response for it has not been the response of God towards us in our sin and rebellion. Love always interferes; not in a patronising way, not as an outlet for sentiment but as an expression of compassionate service. cf. Rom 5.8

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RESTATEMENT OF THE LAWThirdly, Jesus also makes it clear that words can express love. The way we speak to people and the way in which we speak about people is important. There is a danger of reserving a warm caring vocabulary of expression for our friends but when we speak of those we consider to be our enemies we draw from a different vocabulary list and our language is cold, cynical, caustic, humiliating.

The suggestion in v47 is that the warm welcoming greeting which shows interest and concern for another is something which the natural man reserves only for those he considers his friends.

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RESTATEMENT OF THE LAWIf our enemies call disaster down on our heads and express in words their hope that some great harm should befall us, then Jesus wants us to call down heaven’s blessings on them and declare by our words that we wish them nothing but their good. Bishop Dehqani-Tafti was interviewed after the brutal killing of his son in Iran during the revolution. Asked what he thought of his son’s executioners he replied, that he thought their greatest need was to experience the blessing and forgiveness that could be theirs through Christ. There was no hint of bitterness or recrimination. He wanted the best for those who had taken from him the son that he loved.

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RESTATEMENT OF THE LAWFourthly, Jesus also taught that we should express love not just in word or deed but in prayer. Intercession for our enemies is the summit of Christian love. ‘Father forgive them they do not know what they are doing’.

Dietrich Bonheoffer, who for some years was the object of Nazi hatred before his execution at their hands wrote, ‘This is the supreme command, through the medium of prayer, we go to our enemy, stand beside him and plead for him to God’.

It is impossible to pray for someone effectively without loving them and it is impossible to go on praying without that love growing.

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RESTATEMENT OF THE LAWWe do not wait to begin praying until we can feel love within our hearts. We purpose in our wills to pray for our enemies and as we so make the surprising discovery that we have love for them in our hearts. Who is to say what God might accomplish through our persecutors.

George Whitefield the C18th evangelist reflected upon how God could turn persecutors into supporters of the gospel. He wrote:“I left my persecutors to God’s mercy, who out of persecutors has often made preachers. That I might be thus revenged upon them is the hearty prayer of George Whitfield”.

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WHY LOVE IN THIS WAY?Why are we to love in this extravagant way? To reveal our family identity, v 45 that we might be seen to be God’s children. God’s love is indiscriminate. God shows love to his enemies daily by giving rain and sun to make their crops grow. Instead of retaliating he shows them mercy and patience.

How different this is from the world’s example of limited and conditional love. Mere human love tends to be tainted and marred. Parental, filial, and conjugal love are marked by selfishness and self interest. We love in response to something we see in others- they are in our family, our club, our church or because of the return which we hope our love for them will bring us.

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WHY LOVE IN THIS WAY?Jesus makes it clear that this is precisely the kind of inadequate love that the despised tax-collectors and pagans exhibited. Their discriminate love was motivated by self interest. The love Jesus looks for in his followers is not natural but supernatural and by its display it reveals its source. “To return evil for good is devilish, to return good for good is human, to return good for evil is divine”.This divine love is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. When unbelievers experience our display of this extraordinary love they will come to recognise that God’s love for them is extraordinary

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WHY LOVE IN THIS WAY?By loving in this way we pursue the goal of perfection v48. Jesus’ words do not imply that he taught that perfection was an attainable goal on earth. This meaning would destroy the inner harmony of the Sermon of the Mount which advocates the need of daily repentance and forgiveness. The word ‘perfect’ carries the meaning of ‘complete’ or ‘mature’. It was used to describe a ship which had been fully fitted out for sea, or a legion of soldiers thoroughly equipped for battle. God does this work cf. Phil 1.6 ‘He who has done a good work in you will complete it.” Jesus is exhorting his followers not to be satisfied with a partial obedience to the law of love but to have it brought to completion, maturity that it might be fully grown.

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ConclusionWe need to ask, ‘Who do we love and how do we love?’ God’s standard for loving lies beyond the power of natural human attainment but within the scope of the provision of God’s grace for his children.

An old Navajo Indian woman was abandoned by her family and left to die. She was taken to a Mission hospital where her needs were lovingly tended over nine weeks. She could not understand the kindness shown her by the hospital doctor who visited her daily.

When asked why he did so, he looked after her and replied that it was Jesus who made him behave as he did.

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ConclusionOne day, one of the hospital workers asked this woman if she would renounce her idols and place her faith in Jesus for salvation. As she pondered the question the doctor popped his head around the corner and the woman replied, ‘If Jesus is anything like that doctor I could trust him forever.’

Does our love for those who have shown themselves opposed to us and the gospel cause them to reassess their stand and say,

‘If Jesus is anything like them then I will trust him forever?’

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ConclusionIt has been suggested that there is a haunting quality about Jesus question in v47 ‘What are you doing more than others’.

If we are Christians different principles should govern our thinking and behaviour, for we have different resources and a different relationship to God. We are called to be different. Is that difference apparent? Christian discipleship requires a high price to be paid - it will cost us everything. But it is the God who has given us everything who calls us to give everything for him and to him. Are we prepared to do that?