Pastor Scott Andrews | June 2, 2024
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Luke 6:27-31
In the past few weeks, we have looked at the introduction to the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest man who lived. It’s been called the Sermon on the Plain – quite similar, but a bit different from the Sermon on the Mount. Now, it’s important we remember the context of the sermon. Jesus is up north, in Galilee, which is itself important. While He had spent time in Judea and Jerusalem, down south where you would expect a religious movement to be established and find credibility, Jesus spent most of His time up north, where the less desirables – the basket of deplorables – lived. In fact, the Twelve He named apostles would not make a list of who’s who in religious circles.
Which is interesting – Jesus always seemed to be taking the religious – the self-righteous, self-assured, those at the top of the 100 most influential religious leaders list – to task. He was constantly opposing their view of God and their reinterpretation of His law. You see, they thought they had it all figured out, that is, how to keep the Law – obey our rules, our traditions, and you’ll be fine. And so, they thought themselves justified before God and accepted by Him. In fact, they did see themselves at the top of the list.
And Jesus, who was God in the flesh, showed up and said, not quite. For starters, you don’t understand the purpose of the Law – it was never intended to justify anyone, not because there was a problem with the Law – no, it was good – but because no one could ever keep the Law. Understand what I’m saying – you cannot be good enough to be accepted by God, because no one can be perfect, God’s standard. He even said in that Sermon on the Mount, “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Understand what He said – their righteousness will not get them there – and unless your righteousness surpasses theirs, you won’t make it either.
That was challenging. So, the Law wasn’t intended to justify anyone, rather, it was intended to expose sin, even promote sin, to crush sinners, and drive us to Christ – who is our only hope. You see, Jesus showed up to Himself fulfill the Law, by which His righteous life could then be imputed to us, and our sin would be imputed or borne by Him. He came to live a perfect life, and die a death He did not deserve. So don’t miss it, He actually showed up to rightly use the Law and crush the religious – who thought they were keeping it – they weren’t.
For example, back in the Sermon on the Mount – again, a different sermon but quite similar – He confronted the Pharisees, you’ve heard it said, but I say to you – and drive the Law home to the heart where it always belonged. You’ve heard it said, don’t commit murder. And the Pharisees said – no problem – I got no murder here. And Jesus drives the Law home to the heart and said, but I say to you, don’t be angry – you see, anger is the foundational heart attitude that produces murders. So, don’t even say Raca or fool or idiot or jerk. If you do, you’re just as guilty as the murderer. And we take a big gulp – which is what we’re supposed to do. Oh, so in a sense, I have committed murder.
Next, you’ve heard it said, don’t commit adultery. Okay fine, self-righteous people think – I can do that. Jesus says, but I say to you, don’t even look at a woman or a man with an impure thought. Gulp – who can do that? That’s the point. Flowing from that one – Pharisees, you think you’re okay when you divorce your wife as long as you do the paperwork right – if you give her a certificate of divorce. I’ve got some bad news for you – anyone who divorces his wife causes her to commit adultery – and anyone who marries someone who has been divorced – you commit adultery. Suddenly, the righteousness of the Pharisees isn’t looking so righteous anymore. Suddenly, we’re all starting to squirm – there are some things there we don’t like, but Jesus isn’t done – He goes on.
You’ve heard it said, don’t make false vows, but fulfill your vows to the Lord. You see, the Pharisees had devised an intricate system which allowed them to lie all over the place as long as they said or didn’t say certain things. They were actually guilty of creative lying. Like us: we think of all kinds of ways to withhold the truth, to deceive, to tell white lies, to do anything but tell the truth. Jesus says, that’s a problem. If you want your righteousness to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees – tell the truth – talk straight – quit trying to figure out ways to lie and feel justified.
Who can do all that? That’s the point. No one can do these things – that is, no one who hasn’t had a change of heart – who hasn’t had God take out the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. Who doesn’t have the Spirit of God living within, causing us to live this way – not with mere external compliance – but with a heart to please the God we love – the God who has redeemed us. But, Jesus wasn’t finished – He went on, to say what He says here in our Sermon on the Plain. In the Sermon on the Mount, He said, you’ve heard it said, you shall love your neighbors, Leviticus 19 says so, and hate your enemies – which no Bible verse says – but the Pharisees were fine with that. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Which brings us to our text this morning. You see, in the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus has just finished those wonderful, soul-exposing beatitudes. Blessed are you who are poor – and woe to the rich. Blessed are you who hunger now, and woe to the well-fed. Blessed are you who weep now, and woe to those who laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, ostracize you, insult you, and scorn you – and woe to those when all men speak well of you.
We talked about that last week – be glad and leap for joy when opposed, for in the same way their fathers treated God’s prophets. So, we are to be filled with joy when hated, opposed. But what is our response to be toward our persecutors? Towards those who hate us, insult us, persecute us – to our actual enemies? Who hate us because of Jesus? Yes, Christians have enemies, not because we’re jerks, but because of the Son of Man. Again, we find Jesus’ words are not only countercultural – but so opposite to everything that wells up within us. After all, what about social justice? What about my rights? You can’t do that to me. How do we respond when wronged? Luke 6:27-31. But – that but is an adversative – you are not those under woe – you are the blessed ones, so I say to you who hear, when they persecute you…
That last one is the Golden Rule (so named in 16th or 18th Century) – and we kind of like that. But let’s be honest, those first few verses, challenging. Not as well-received, and I will tell you, all kinds of interpretive gymnastics have been offered to get around what these verses clearly say. Now, I do believe there is some balance in understanding these difficult verses, which I will mention – but let’s not focus so much on the qualifying balance as the words of Jesus.
We arrive today, after the beatitudinal introduction (I made that word up) at the main body of the sermon. And the main thought here is extraordinary, supernatural love. Because such love is to characterize followers of Jesus. And our love is to be intentional, indiscriminate, unconditional, and active, meaning, it does something.
Now, I should have mentioned earlier – the context of the sermon is the vast and rapidly-growing movement Jesus has started. People were coming from all over – excited to hear this man’s teaching which was unlike anything they’d ever heard; and they were excited to see His miracles. Maybe get healed or fed – you know, get some physical blessings of the kingdom. So Jesus, seeing the crowds and the bandwagon effect called a time out and said, this is the way of the My kingdom. And after the beatitudes, He says, my way is the way of demonstrated, unearned, undeserved, unnatural love. I asked the question last week, I ask it again: are we known more for opposing sin, or for loving sinners? We are going to find this must be supernatural because there is no way we will love people this way.
You see, this is not just any love, but agape love. You likely know there are different words for love in the Greek language. Primarily, there are storge, which is a natural love, eros (not found in the Bible) but is a romantic love; philia which is a brotherly love or affection; and agape, which is the strongest form of love in that it is a self-sacrificing love – a love given without thought of the benefits to be received. That is, not loving to get, but just loving and so giving, and we will see today, to give and give and give. It is actually a love for the unlovely – that is, undeserved. Even to those to whom you don’t want to give – to those who have only given you grief and pain and sorrow. Who would that be for you? Now in the context, this love is the response of the believer to those persecuting him or her.
Jesus gives four commands, followed by four examples, which form our outline:
- Four Commands – Love, Do Good, Bless and Pray
- Four Examples – Turn the other cheek, give freely what you have, give without expectation, treat others the way you want to be treated.
So let’s look at the four commands. First, love your enemies. Now, to be sure the command to love your neighbor is all over the Bible, starting in Leviticus 19 which says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Further, when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second greatest commandment is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. No problem – we get that. I’m supposed to love people like me – you know, my neighbor.
But the Jews had changed that a bit. Back in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also quotes them as saying, “you’ve heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” Now, those words are nowhere to be found in the Bible; however, it was widely accepted. They argued, if I’m only commanded to love my neighbor, I then must also be commanded to hate my enemy. And the Jews, especially the Pharisees, did it with a vengeance. They hated anyone who wasn’t a Jew. They actually had a saying that said if a Jew saw a Gentile fall into the sea, they were by no means to lift him out, for this man is not your neighbor. They saw themselves as superior, and everyone else as inferior. And based on their interpretation of this law, they felt perfectly justified in hating anyone who wasn’t just like them, certainly non-Jews. Kind of like many in the church today. It’s okay, right, if I hate sinners? Non-Christians, immoral people, Democrats.
But, the Pharisees didn’t stop with Gentiles – that wasn’t enough. As we’ve seen, they didn’t like sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors, either. Remember, that was the problem they had with Jesus – He was always eating with them, hanging out with them with them – and it bugged the fire out of them. They couldn’t understand how a teacher, a Messiah-like figure would ever stoop to hang out with common, everyday sinners like you and me.
And now, Jesus had the audacity to say, love your enemies. This would have been shocking. Understand, included in that, and everyone knew it, would be those dirty rotten, occupying Romans. Love your enemies. Really? Oh, and just in case you think your supposed to have some warm and fuzzy feelings for them, Jesus goes on, do good to those who hate you. He moves from supposed feelings to actions – do good to those who hate you, to those who have actually wronged you. One suggests these are unnatural deeds unnatural words, and unnatural prayers for your enemies. Return evil with good. How do you do good to those who despise you, or whom you despise? Very simply, you ask God to change your heart and start caring for them – in specific and sacrificial ways.
I’ve told this true story before, but it bears repeating. Temple Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon, was growing, so they bought a house a few blocks away that was to be their youth center. But they noticed – on the street right outside the new youth center was a popular place for prostitutes to hang out. So, being nice Christians, they approached the prostitutes and asked them not to do their business anymore – move their practice elsewhere. Guess what? The prostitutes just laughed and continued working.
So, the church decided to start picketing them: carrying posters, I don’t know what they said, maybe “God hates sin” or something like that, decrying these neighbors. That didn’t work either. So, they decided to start taking pictures of their customers and make posters, that didn’t work either. About this time, one of the church pastors attended a conference. He was bewailing their situation, and another pastor gave him a bizarre suggestion: why don’t you try treating them as your neighbor? Why don’t you try talking to them, loving them and sharing Christ with them?
Apparently, they had never thought of that; but, they did it. They started loving them, caring for them, sharing Christ with them. They eventually even had a line item in their budget that allowed for the girls to go to a halfway house – or to buy a plane ticket home to get out of the lifestyle. Guess what happened? Their problem went away. Not because all the prostitutes went away – but because they started loving them as themselves. They started seeing them not as the enemy, but as someone being abused by the enemy. And they began seeing ministry happen. You’re not going to believe this, but some actually came to faith in Christ, left their lifestyle and started coming to church. Who would’ve thought? But only when they saw sinners as neighbors. And we remember the Pharisees were the ones who would take a bath after going to the market just in case they actually touched an unclean sinner.
Because their love was based on the desirability of the object loved – that is, what have you done to deserve my love – and what will I get in return for loving you? This object-oriented love is selfish love – it’s for what you can get. It’s why Pharisees would never love a prostitute or other sinners and tax-collectors. The kind of love Jesus is commanding is a “do good to others, even those who hate you.” Again, who is that for you? Who hates you, that causes you to hate them, despise them, ignore them? Try to love them by doing good to them – it’s what Jesus said.
We must move quickly – next, Jesus said bless those who curse you. So, we love our enemies, and we prove it by doing good to those who hate us, and now speak blessing. The idea is to speak kindly, to ask God’s favor on those who curse you – who speak poorly or unkindly to or about us. Now, when we’re talking about our enemies – who hate and curse us – the normal human response is vengeance. To get them back. They talk about me, they curse me, they’re unkind to me, I’ll pay them back…double. We even make heroes of those who get vengeance – who don’t take anything from anyone. But Jesus says, this is not the way of love – this is not the way of His followers. We are to bless – to pronounce a blessing upon them. To use good words toward them. And by the way, allow God to right the wrongs. Vengeance, after all, is His.
Last command – pray for those who mistreat you. Again, the human reaction is to return mistreatment with equal pain – you hurt me, I’ll hurt you. But, our Lord’s command is to pray for them. Why? A couple of important reasons. First, it’s obvious they are in need of a Savior, just like we were. We should pray that God will grant them repentance, and they will turn in faith to Christ. But another reason is you cannot long pray for someone without your heart being changed for them. Perhaps instead of repaying mistreatment with mistreatment, we should pray for them, share the gospel with them, and prayerfully hope God will change their hearts – like He changed ours.
Well, Jesus goes on to give four examples of how we are to treat those who mistreat us – how we love our enemies, do to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us. First, we turn the other cheek. That’s a famous saying, and one that is often misunderstood, and confused people. It’s been used to tell battered wives to stay in the home and say, can I have another. It’s what we’ve used when our kids come home having been beaten up by the local bully, and we say, turn the other cheek – all the while not quite feeling right about that advice. Listen, I don’t think Jesus is talking about slaps here. There is a civil law that says, you don’t hit your wife, or you’ll be removed from the home – a civil law that prevents bullies from beating other kids – bullies need to be held accountable for their actions.
So, if Jesus is not talking about hitting here, what is He talking about? Dignity. You have to understand at this time, to strike someone on the cheek was an insult. To do that for the Jews was one of the most demeaning, humiliating acts possible. It was degrading – it was humiliating. It was an attack of one’s honor – it was an attack on their dignity. So when Jesus says, turn the other cheek, He is in essence saying, do not retaliate – in fact, recognize it just doesn’t matter – turn the other cheek. Endure insult and humiliation without responding in kind. Do not retaliate or seek revenge. And so, has anyone ever been rude to you? How about this – have you ever been humiliated? The flesh rises up and you want to fight back – to dig back – to trade insult for insult – only one better. You can’t treat me like that. I’ve got my rights.
Jesus says, it doesn’t matter. Take it on the chin – turn the other cheek. How in the world can we do that? How can we allow people to insult us publicly, to humiliate us, and not want to engage in verbal warfare? We have to go back to the beatitudes and remember kingdom people are broken people. We realize we have nothing and are in need of all things. And when attacked, it reminds us of our own brokenness, and it just doesn’t matter. Kingdom people are characterized by humble, non-vengeful, gentle spirits. It was Charles Spurgeon who once said, “If any man thinks (or speaks) ill of you, do not be angry with him, for you are worse than he thinks you to be.”
Second, whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. The coat was the outer garment, the shirt was the inner garment next to the skin. And it was often the most anyone had. This one’s hard for us to understand. If you come up to me this morning and take my shirt and my coat – I may leave here looking kind of stupid – but it’s not that big a deal – I’ve got more at home. Not the average Jew. He usually had only one or two shirts, but only one coat. And that coat was often used as his blanket at night. In fact, the Mosaic Law required that if you borrowed someone’s coat, you must return it by sunset. Why? Because without it, you would at best be very uncomfortable at night. And Jesus says, if someone takes away – either by borrowing or stealing – your coat, give him your shirt, too.
Very simply, Jesus is saying, earthly possessions, those things we hold so dear – don’t hold on to them too tightly. It hurts more when they’re ripped away. Sinful human nature is selfishly possessive. But kingdom people realize it all belongs to God anyway – we’re not to lay up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy – we’re to lay up treasures in heaven. Earthly things, in the eternal scheme of things, just don’t matter. So be willing to give it all away. That’s tough for the materialistic society in which we live – where self-worth and success are defined by how much we own. But the kingdom person realizes it’s not the external that matters – it’s what’s in here. It’s what we’ve been saying all along – it’s a matter of the heart.
You see, Jesus takes it a step further in the next example, “Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours (again, either by borrowing or stealing), do not demand it back. Again, the bottom line is, it just doesn’t matter. Now, here’s the qualification we all want – yes, we have a judicial system that makes borrowing something or stealing something and not getting it back against the law. And there’s legal protection for such activity. But the point Jesus is making is, it’s just stuff. And don’t forget the context – the issue is we are being mistreated because we are followers of Jesus. So in the mistreatment, don’t forget you are a follower.
The last one before we close – the Golden Rule: Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. A couple of important, interesting points here. First, while this principle was not unheard of, it was usually stated in the negative. That is, don’t treat others how you don’t want to be treated. But Jesus, as He often did, flipped it on its head – treat others the way you want to be treated. Can you imagine how our society would look if we applied that rule? True, we can’t expect that of the unbelieving world. But, we should expect it of believers – that is, we go out of our way to treat others in the same way we want to be treated – with the same gentleness, kindness, love and respect is the idea.
But that leads to another thought – we don’t treat others this way in order to be treated the same way – that’s not the point – as one said, it’s utilitarian. The point is, we have an internal standard by which we act – we treat others as we wish to be treated – regardless of how they treat you. Such are followers of Christ.
So, who is this for you? That is, who are your enemies, who hate you and mistreat you? You probably have someone who jumped right to mind. The person who opposes you at work – maybe a colleague or a boss who is out to get you. They’ve made it very clear – they don’t like you, and they’re committed to seeing you take a dive. Jesus says, love your enemies – do good to them, bless them, pray for them. Maybe it’s a classmate who picks on you, tries to make you look bad in front of others. Jesus says love them, pray for them. Maybe it’s a family member who has hurt you more than you ever thought possible. Jesus says love them, pray for them. Jesus is our example – as He hung on the cross, He prayed, “Father, forgive them.” Stephen is our example – as he was being stoned, “Father, forgive them.” That is so convicting. But, we love them not for what they are, but for who they are – sinners in need of God’s grace and forgiveness, just as we were.
In 1567, King Philip II of Spain appointed the Duke of Alba as governor of the lower part of the nation. The Duke was a bitter enemy of the Protestant Reformation. His rule was called the reign of terror, and his council was called the Bloody Council because it had ordered the slaughter of so many Protestants. It is reported that one man sentenced to die for his faith managed to escape during the dead of winter. As he was being pursued by a single soldier, the man came to a lake whose ice was thin. Somehow, he managed to get across the ice safely, but as soon as he reached the other side he heard his pursuer screaming. The soldier had fallen through the ice and was about to drown. At the risk of being captured, tortured and eventually killed, the man went back across the lake and rescued his enemy, because the love of Christ constrained him. That’s loving your enemies. And you want to know, what happened – did the soldier let him go? The book did not say – because, it doesn’t matter. Kingdom, extraordinary, supernatural love is expressed, regardless of the consequences.