Love Your Enemies

Good morning. Happy April 19th. April 19th, 1775. In the morning, on the road out of Boston, it was pretty quiet, but a group of people started to gather together. These people were British soldiers.

There were hundreds of them, and they started to march in a tight formation under orders to seize colonial weapons from the town of Concord. They moved quickly and quietly, hoping to catch Concord off guard. What they did not know is that there had been messengers that had rode through the night and told all of the towns leading to Concord that the British were coming. By the time the soldiers reached the town of Lexington, a small group of militiamen were waiting in the village square. And they weren't what you would call an army.

Most of them were just farmers, blacksmiths, shopkeepers, and they were nervous, outnumbered, and they had been told not to provoke a fight, to simply stand your ground. The British commander walked into the square and ordered them to disperse. And for a moment, everything hung in the balance. No one moved. Then there was a shot.

No one knows who fired it. Was it the British? Was it a farmer? No one knows. But in an instant, the silence was shattered.

Muskets roared. Smoke filled the air. And when the air cleared, several colonists and several British lay dead or dying. The British thwarted the men of Lexington, and they pushed on to Concord, thinking that this was the only thing that was going to get in their way. But little did they know this was just the beginning.

By the time they reached Concord, the alarm had spread far and wide, and militias from all around had started to pour into the town of Concord. And at the North Bridge, they faced the British again. This time, the colonists stood their ground and they fired back, forcing the British to retreat.

That retreat was a long road home. And as the British marched back toward Boston, that countryside road turned into a graveyard. From behind trees, stone walls, and barns, colonial fighters struck again and again, thinning the British army. And what had begun as a simple mission to seize supplies had turned into a desperate retreat. And by the time that those soldiers staggered back into Boston, exhausted and bloodied, something in the world had changed.

This wasn't just a tension. It wasn't just protest. This was the beginning of war. The American Revolutionary War. And that single, mysterious shot in Lexington, the one that no one can trace, echoed far beyond that small town.

Ralph Waldo Emerson would call it the shot heard around the world. It was the genesis of the United States of America. And it was a shot that would inspire many other colonial nations to rebel against their imperial overlords. That moment changed how nations relate to power and what Jesus is about. To say changes how people relate to each other.

What if I told you that just as that moment 251 years ago stands as a rational, radical moment that would change the world forever. That there's a moment when Jesus stands before a crowd, when he's simply teaching, and there's a moment in that teaching where he says something that shapes humanity forever. A moment that changes how we think human relationships should work. A moment that opens a door for a new way of thinking about human ethics. A moment that has affected both Christians and non Christians since the moment Jesus said it.

In Matthew chapters 5 through 7, Jesus is elevated up on a mountain. He's before a large crowd of people. And many people have been compelled to not only see this man as a teacher, but to invite him in to change how they think, to change how they live. They have come to this place to learn a new way of life. So imagine with me that you are a first century Jewish person and you've been captivated by this man they called Jesus of Nazareth.

You aren't just curious, but you've been compelled to listen to him, to shape your your life after his words. And as he speaks, he talks about different subjects. He talks about murder and he talks about lust. And he eventually gets to the subject of recompense. And when I say recompense, what I mean by that is what do I do when I feel like I'm being taken advantage of?

What do I do when people are walking all over me? How do I get back at someone?

And this is what Jesus says in Matthew, chapter 5, verse 38.

You have heard that it was said, eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and, and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. Imagine with me, as you sit in this crowd, you are a Jewish oil merchant.

Every week you go and you buy the olives and you bring them to your olive press. And this is not easy work, but as you bring them in, as you get it ready, you strain your body over and over again, squeezing these olives, trying to get all of the oil out. It's hard work, but it's fruitful. It's a slow day, but you sell a couple of jars and it's Going to be just enough for you to feed your family that night. And not just your family, but your brother's family, too.

Because last week your brother fell and he's not able to work. And so you've got to provide for both your family and his family. And as you close up shop, you finally just take a breath and you relax. What a day.

But in comes one last person into your shot, and immediately you recognize that this is the tax collector, and he's come to collect on your profits. You explain to him that you can't pay today. Not only was it a slow day, but you have extra mouths to feed. You tell them about your brother, but the tax collector doesn't take no for an answer. And after a long day of work, when you just want to go home and you want to be with your family, he walks up to you and he slaps you across your cheek.

Not only does it hurt physically, but it's embarrassing to anybody that saw that. What do you do? Or let's say it's the Sabbath, and you're sitting with your family at the edge of the sea, Sea of Galilee. And as the water is coming in and out, in and out, and you're just relaxing. What a beautiful day.

And you notice that the patrol, the Roman patrol, they're changing shift. And as one group comes in, another group's leaving. And one of the Roman guards who's leaving, he comes up to you, and he draws his sword and he points it in your face. He says, get up.

I'm exhausted. I'm tired. Been working all day. I want you to take my stuff. One mile.

And you have this internal battle, right? You have this internal battle because you want to follow Jewish law and you want to follow Roman law at the same time. And Jewish law says, on the Sabbath, you do not work. And this sounds a whole lot like work.

But the Roman law says that if a soldier comes up to you and says, carry my stuff, you must carry his stuff for a mile. So what do you do?

Do you leave your family?

There are people in the crowd who. This is their life. When Jesus says this, there are people in the crowd who are hearing this and feel as if Jesus has seen them, that he's not just up there teaching that he knows them. And there are people like us who will read this passage that we just read, and we will walk away thinking Jesus just wants us to be passive. He wants us to face adversity and just don't do anything about it.

Just don't fight. Don't fight. Back there are people who are going to misconstrue Jesus teaching and walk away thinking, j just let people walk all over you and just don't cause any problems. And to that idea, I say, I wish it was that easy.

Jesus does not teach us to be passive. If that tax collector hits you, you say, hey, man, looks like you're having a pretty rough day. Here's my other cheek. Do you want to get some more frustration out?

Or if a Roman soldier demands that you carry their stuff, you're supposed to look him in the eyes and say, dude, you do look exhausted. What if I just go ahead and take it all the way back to your house for you?

That's not easy for most of us to digest. What Jesus is teaching in this moment is a kind of human interaction that the world has never seen. It's a kind of human interaction that's going to change the world forever. This way of living feels so unnatural that many of us can't even fathom being in that situation and responding in that way. And here is the absolute crazy part of this.

Jesus is not done talking. This is what he goes on to say. Matthew 5, 43. 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, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

If you were to look through all of Matthew chapter five, over the course of the whole thing, Jesus uses this phrase that we can see here. Go. You have heard five different times. And in all of these instances, he is referencing some part of the Jewish law, or what the people in the crowd would call the Torah. And after he referenced it, it's almost as if he references it and then adds to it.

And I want to be clear, it's not that he's undermining it or replacing it, but Jesus seems to be understanding something and trying to teach us something that the Torah can't quite get there just yet. The Torah is supposed to reveal our hearts, but what Jesus is showing us is that in our best efforts to read the Torah and to understand it, we have found loopholes.

And so if you look at. If you have a paper Bible and you're looking and you're following along with this, it should tell you which part of the Torah this is referencing, and it should point you to the direction of Leviticus 19:18. So let's just look at that together. This is what it says. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people.

But love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. This is what Jesus is referencing. And we can clearly see where it says, love your neighbor. But you will notice that part of what Jesus says is missing.

Where is the part that says to hate your enemy? In fact, you could go through the entire Old Testament, you can go through the entire law, and you will not find any place in which we are instructed to hate our enemy. What you will find is many places in which people do just that. But these are not parts of Scripture that are supposed to be a moral example for us. So what exactly is Jesus talking about?

Well, notice what he said. He said, you have heard that it is said. What he doesn't say is, you have read this in the law, you have read this in the Torah. He says, you have heard that it is said, which starts to paint a picture for us. It should give us a clue that Jesus believes that this Old Testament law has somehow been misconstrued.

There has been some loophole placed into this law.

It would appear that when God said to love your neighbor, people took that as an instruction to love your neighbor and then to do whatever they want to anyone else.

That when Jesus said, hey, I want you to love someone, I want you to love your neighbor, they said, okay, I can do that. And then they started to ask the question, who is my neighbor? Because then I get to do whatever I want to them.

And this becomes a very big debate in the life of Jesus. Who is your neighbor? Is that Roman soldier, my neighbor? Is that tax collector, my neighbor? Who is it that I'm supposed to love?

But more importantly for some people, the question is, who am I allowed to hate? And this was a huge hot button issue during this time. And it makes sense when you think about the history of the people that are sitting in this crowd, these Jewish people. For 700 years, the people of Israel have been under the oppressive rule of authoritarian government governments from Babylon to Assyria, Persia, Greece, Egypt, and now Rome. All of them have been aggressively violent towards Israel.

And so to this minority religious group, when their law and their rabbis are telling them to love their neighbor, their natural question is, and who is that?

And to many rabbis during this time, the answer to that question is twofold. One, the answer, the first part of that answer is, your neighbor is your fellow Israelite. The answer for them was a tribal one. You can read all of Leviticus 19, I would encourage you to do that. But in this particular section of verses 15 through 18, the context of neighbor is actually synonymous with phrases like fellow Israelites or your people.

And the second part of this twofold answer of who is my neighbor? Comes a little bit further down in Leviticus 19, 33 and 34. And this is what it says. When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born.

Love them as yourself. For you were foreigners in Egypt, I am the Lord your God.

And so, just a couple verses later, we see that God is wanting Israel to be a place that brings people in and is a place of such opportunity that even if you weren't born here, but you come to this place much later, you will be treated as if you were. We will love you as ourselves.

But let's be fair. This doesn't quite answer the question, does that Roman soldier count? The Roman soldier is not an immigrant. He's a conqueror.

Does a tax collector count? You say to love fellow Israelites, but this guy betrayed us.

This guy didn't want to be with us anymore. He now works for them.

And so you can see, once you put yourself into this context, why they would struggle with this, why this debate would be so big. Who is my neighbor?

And what we see is that Jesus takes Leviticus 19 and he expands it. He expands it in a way that no rabbi or teacher has done. And he says this in Matthew 5:44, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Rather than deciding to draw the lines of what a neighbor is, he just simply goes to the other side of the fence and says, love them too.

Can we talk about the word love right now? I find the word love to be so incredibly useless.

Here's what I mean by this. I love pineapple on pizza. Who's with me? Where am I? Yeah, the elect.

I love pineapple on pizza. I love pineapple on pizza. I had it this weekend. My family had pineapple on pizza. This is no joke.

We had the pizza. We had two in the freezer. We're a small family, so we really only needed one. So we cooked one. We ate it.

My wife went to bed. I had such a good time with the first one. I went and got the second one, and I ate that one, too. I love pineapple on pizza. This is a true story.

It's magnificent. It's sophisticated. It's elegant. It's glamorous. I love pineapple on pizza.

I really do.

And on December 8th this past year, my wife gave birth to our daughter, Scout.

Thank you for the reaction. That warms my heart.

She's now four and a half months old and I will tell you that I love Scout. I love Scout. She's brilliant. She's beautiful. You should see her roll over.

It's awesome. Her skin is so soft. Her giggles melt my heart. I love Scout.

I also love pineapple on pizza like I love Scout.

But I love pineapple on pizza.

And those two things could not be further from the same feeling. What I feel for my daughter, what I feel for a late night pizza are two completely different feelings. And yet here I say, I love pineapple on pizza and I love my daughter. In no way, shape or form is that the same feeling. I would do anything for that little girl.

I would take a bullet for that little girl. But if you call me today and you say, hey, I just hung up a bunch of pineapple pizzas in my backyard, you want to shoot them? I'd do it in a heartbeat. I am down to clown.

Love is a useless word.

Fortunately for us, it's mostly an English problem. The language in which this passage is written in Matthew does not suffer from this. The word for love here is agape. Agape is not a word based on emotion. Agape is a word based on action.

Jesus is not asking us to generate warm, fuzzy feel feelings for our enemies. He is commanding an action. And so what is the action? If we keep reading, this is what we see. 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, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 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 own people, what are you doing more than others?

Do not even pagans do that?

Jesus appeal to us, interestingly enough, is one of weather patterns, which I find interesting. The way that Jesus looks at the world is everything is an absolute blessing from God. When the sun rises in the morning, Jesus is the kind of person that sees the sun rise and thanks God that He let the sun rise that day. He rests in the goodness of God by simply looking at creation around him. In Jesus mind, that sun does not have to come up.

It doesn't have to bless us with a new day, but it did. And that is God's goodness. That is God's blessing. And so the question is, does the Son only come up for the people that were good the day before.

Does the son only come up for the good teachers? Does the sun only come up for the good lawyers? Does the son only come up for the good police officers? Does the son only come up for the good accountants? Does the sun only come up for the good business people?

No. The blessing of a new day is not only for those who earned it, but it's a gift for all. And when God brings rain, does he make it so that when the rain falls, it only falls on the farmer's land of the righteous, pure, innocent hearted farmers that only they get the rain? No. It's for the righteous and the unrighteous.

Everyone gets the rain. Everyone's blessed. It's a blessing without borders. It's a blessing without property lines. It's a blessing that ignores socioeconomic divides.

It's a blessing that ignores party lines. It's a blessing that ignores the actions of yesterday. It's a blessing that ignores my biggest mistake. And it's a blessing that ignores yours as well.

And that is the way that God loves.

He brings new days to the righteous and the unrighteous. He brings rain to the righteous and the unrighteous. When Jesus asks us to love our enemies, this is not a command for us to generate warm, fuzzy feelings for our enemies. This is a command to bless our enemies. When Jesus gathered these people to teach them what life would look like if they decided to follow him, he never said it was going to be easy.

In fact, he said everyone else can take the easy way. Loving people who love you, well, that's easy. Blessing people who bless you, well, that's easy. Serving people who serve you, that's easy. Anybody can do that.

And so let me be extremely clear. This is not easy. Living this way is not easy. There are people. I know some of us need to hear this.

There are people in your life who do not like you, And there are people in your life who you do not like.

And it may be easy when we're confronted with these people to misconstrue what Jesus is saying here and to say, you know what? Rather than cause more waves, I'm just going to be passive. I'm just not going to react. I'm not going to fight back. And you know what?

By me not reacting, by me not fighting back, and by by me just kind of trying to push myself away from these people. You know what? It's better than nothing.

But Jesus did not ask us to be passive. He did not say, just remove yourself. He didn't say, don't Just do nothing. He said, no. What I want you to do instead is I want you to go out of your way to serve them.

I want you to bless them. I want you to love them.

And this is an extremely radical teaching, a teaching that no one taught before Jesus ever said these words. This is a teaching that anytime it's referenced, it's referenced to Jesus.

And what Jesus is telling us is that if we are to be in his kingdom, we will quickly find out that. That we have no right to withhold from other people what God wants to give. That we have no right to not love the people in which God loves.

If we decide to follow Jesus to be a part of his kingdom, and the rules of his kingdom are clear, we do not have any right to not love our enemies. That we must love them. We must bless them. We must pray for them, we must serve them. And maybe if I were you, and I'm still kind of here, if I were you, maybe you're sitting there, you're thinking, man, I don't know if I can do that.

What's our prayer then? That we would be left as who we are. That the almighty God that shaped solar systems and rainforests, the God who defeated death, the God that splits oceans, the God that creates humanity out of his breath and dust. That God who is as powerful as he is, do we not think he can change us? That we could become that kind of person?

Is that our prayer? That we would plead with God to change our hearts, to renew our minds, to shape us to be more like Him?

Let's be honest.

As we sit here, as we study scripture together and we get to this part where Jesus is talking about loving our enemies, every single person in this room has thought about somebody.

Maybe you've thought about somebody that doesn't really like you. Maybe you've thought of somebody that you don't really like. Maybe they're both. Maybe you've thought of a group of people. Maybe you've thought of a family member.

Maybe you've thought of someone in this room, we all have thought of someone. And I know you guys are probably sitting there thinking, cody, you don't get it. You're so sweet and caring and nice. You probably don't have any enemies.

But every day on my way to work, I drive through that roundabout at Smith Valley in Madison, and I have enemies.

And if you're a red Honda Civic, congrats, you made the list today.

But for real, we all have enemies. We all have people that walk into the room and we try to walk out.

We all have people that we hope don't make it to Thanksgiving.

We all have people that we think about when Jesus says this. And Jesus does not instruct us to sit idle. He doesn't instruct us to just ignore the problem. What he says is, pray for them, love them, bless them, serve them. That is what we're supposed to do.

So the question is, who is.

Who is the tax collector? Who is the Roman soldier? Who is the person that you've been thinking about, and what are you doing this week to bless them? As we leave this place, the sun will continue to shine on us, and it will shine on that person that you are thinking about. May we look at our enemies and may we bless them.

Let's pray.

Dear heavenly Father, what you are asking of us, we simply cannot do by ourselves.

So, God, by your holy spirit, we would ask that you work through us, that you move through us.

That you would change my heart. You would renew my mind, you would shape me to be more like you.

God, you are the perfect example of this.

That when you were on the cross, when they nailed you to the cross, you looked down, you said, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. This wasn't just words for you. This is how you lived. God, I so desperately want us to look like that, too.

God, you are so good.

It's in your name we pray. Amen.

What a challenging message from Cody. I was looking at my notes, and one of the things I wrote down is that part about prayer. And I don't know what your next step is, but I trust in a God who will lead you in your next step. What's next for you? Maybe you don't have the courage yet to act in a loving way towards that enemy, but I know that every single one of us can take a few moments to pray for those people that came to mind.

What's your next step? We want to help you take your next step and you hear us talk about it every single week. There are a number of ways that we can come alongside of you. One is that we will have a next steps team down here at the front of the room. In just a few minutes, I'll invite them down.

We have something special we want to share with you. Before that moment, you can text the word next to the number that you see on the screen. 317-707-9997. And it'll lead you to a form to express how we can come alongside you. You can come to one of our next steps classes.

We offer Next Steps classes every single week with the first four weeks of every month. This week we have Next steps engage at 11am in room 502A and D. There's a big Next Steps banner. It's a it's a great Next Steps class to take if you want to know how to get engaged engaged here at Greenwood Christian Church and how to go from this place and be engaged in our community and our world. Next week will be Next Steps Baptism. We want to help you take that Next step.

If you need prayer, we want to come alongside you and pray. You can go to greenwoodchristian.com prayer and share your prayer request or scan the QR code. We have something else that's really exciting to share with you that can help you with your next steps. Some of our group leaders have been using this for a while, but we haven't, at least in a long time, shared this with you as a church and want to make you aware of it. The church has purchased a right now media subscription for our entire Greenwood Christian Church family.

It's purchased and can be shared with anyone that's connected to Greenwood Christian Church and you can actually share it freely with other people. You may be asking what's rightnowmedia rightnow Media is a faith based, faith encouraging, faith equipping streaming platform. Think of it as a faith based Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. It's got all kinds of resources, Bible studies, educational videos, a whole complete kids library, cartoons, live action shows to encourage us as we strive to live faithfully for King Jesus. And our church has purchased this, we pay for it annually and we want you to take advantage of it.

And to hear just a little bit more about right now media, check out this short video. In the Beginning God if you can believe these four words, you can believe the rest of the Bible. I have fallen in love with the work of Paul as I've studied the book of First Corinthians and I believe you will too. This is where Jesus taught in Capernaum and you have to understand this scene in the Book of Romans, Paul lays out a logical case for why the Gospel is the answer to humanity's problems right now. Media it's for groups.

It's for personal devotion. It's for parents. The bullseye of parenting is to raise children who become like Jesus. It's for kids. This is Phil.

We're digging into the Bible, which as we've mentioned is more than just a book. It's for tough times. So when you recognize that you're trying to have a conversation with your spouse and they're not ready to talk. It's not helpful to keep pressing me up. It's for every phase of life.

Prodigal Son story is my favorite story because God fixes a problem with a party and now it's yours. We've purchased a RightNow Media subscription for everyone in our church. So check your inbox for the digital invitation and download the app for instant access to thousands of biblically based videos. Get equipped. Get inspired.

I want to share with you how you can access that if you don't yet know. As our Next Steps Team comes to the front of the room, you can respond to the link and click the link that was in your Friday email if you received that. If you don't receive that email, you can scan the QR code that's going to linger on the screens for a while. You can also text the word one word right now to 317-707-9997. You can also go to greenwoodchristian.com rightnow and I'll have you create a free account and you'll have access to that library immediately when it brings you to the homepage.

You're gonna see the Greenwood Christian Church name if you click that. There are some curated libraries that we've already put together to help you whether you're new to faith or or you want to relearn or look at some of the essentials of faith. Eventually we're going to have kids things on there and students and children and things for families. So feel free to check out right now media and let it be a blessing to you as it has been to many of us already. Now, as we close, I want to encourage you to leave this place to love God, to love your neighbor, to love your enemies.

Go in peace.