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Matthew 5:43-48 Blameless 5.5.19 · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  Good morning, church. Morning. It is great to see you. If you've got a Bible, open it up to Matthew chapter 5. If you don't have a Bible, there is one underneath the seat somewhere around you. We are incredibly blessed to be able to do this, aren't we? There are parts in the world where you cannot do, people cannot do what we do right now without...
• 0:35
  getting in trouble and being persecuted. When we come as a body, we've said this before, but our goal is to lift high the name of Jesus. And we do that by worshiping his name and then reading and studying this book. If you've ever wondered why, when you come to church, we study the Bible all the time, it's because God has the words of eternal life and no one else does. And they are right here. They're right here. And so we're going to...
• 1:07
  study the word this morning, and it's my privilege to get to share it with you guys. If you don't know me, my name is Sam. I'm the youth pastor here, and we've been in a series called The Hard Sayings of Jesus, and we're going to continue in that series this morning. And I just want to pray before we get going. I feel like I need to pray, so let's pray. Lord, as we
• 1:39
  Come before your majesty and your holiness in your word. We pray that you would speak to us. God, we don't believe these words are dead words, but your word says that scripture is alive and active. So speak to us by your spirit now, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.
• 2:01
  Amen. Right. So like I said, we're in a series right now called the hard sayings of Jesus, where we're looking at things that Jesus said that were either hard to understand or hard because you and I don't really want to apply them. And this morning, we're going to continue in that in Matthew chapter five. And this morning, Jesus is going to address the idea of spiritual success. Now, I don't know how you define that. If someone were to come up to you and say, hey, what does a successful Christian look like?
• 2:31
  I don't really know how you would answer that question, but one thing I'm learning is that many of us like to use quantitative measures to measure our spiritual success. Quantitative measures, like are you staying on track in a Bible reading program? That's quantitative, right? You check the box. How much do you pray? How much do you serve? How much do you give to the church, right? Quantitative measures.
• 2:59
  Jesus, however, in our passage this morning is going to command of us a qualitative measure instead of a quantitative measure to measure our spiritual success. And as we're going to see in a second, what Jesus commands is a seemingly impossible pill to swallow. And it's found in Matthew chapter 5 verse 48. Look at this with me. Jesus says, you therefore must be perfect.
• 3:29
  As your heavenly father is perfect. If you guys have been paying attention to the sermon titles in this series so far, they've all started with the letter B. And so I'm going to continue that this morning. The title of this message is going to be perfect. I'm just kidding. It's going to be blameless.
• 3:50
  Now, Jesus says you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Now, perfection is kind of a funny thing in the world and especially the culture that we live in. Because the world both prizes perfection and condemns it simultaneously. Here's what I mean. Our culture prizes perfection within the realm of like physical attraction and appearance.
• 4:16
  Right? We're constantly called by the culture, like, you've got to look perfect, you've got to smell perfect. Instagram, like, you ain't putting no nasty pictures of yourself on Instagram. It's always the perfect picture, right? Not when you first wake up, right? And so it's constant perfection, right? The new Avengers movie just came out, you know? And I noticed something that's kind of obvious, but none of the Avengers
• 4:45
  are out of shape. And that may be like, duh, but I looked at the poster and I thought, there's no chubby Avenger. And it's like, that's what our culture calls us to, right? It's like, this is the ideal. This is what perfection looks like. And so you have to attain that. But at the same time, as it's calling you to attain it, it's also going to condemn you for attaining it because you're just trying to get other people's attention and you're a hypocrite and you're self-righteous. Isn't that true? Like you can have it, you just can't talk about it, right?
• 5:17
  It both prizes and condemns perfection. But as the culture calls us to kind of the ideal life or the perfect life, I really do think that there is something deep down within the heart of every single person that knows we're not perfect, whether you're an Avenger or not. It just knows that we're not.
• 5:43
  And that's why when we read Matthew 5.48, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. That can take the wind out of us. Because Jesus is looking at you and me and saying, you have to be perfect like your heavenly father is perfect. And we go, perfect? As God is perfect. No one can do that. That's impossible, Jesus.
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  Now this command from Jesus, verse 48, comes after a long section in Matthew 5, starting in verse 21. So in fact, if you look at verse 21, you'll notice that there's a little subtitle above verse 21 that says anger. And then you go down a little bit and it goes to lust, and then divorce, then oaths, and then retaliation, and then love your enemies. And in Matthew 5, what Jesus is doing is he's heightening the application of the law to your life and to my life.
• 6:37
  And so where we think we're really good, Jesus takes the law to the next level. So he'll be like, okay, you haven't murdered anyone? That's great. Don't even be angry with your brother because then you'll be liable to hell. You haven't cheated on your spouse? Well, don't even lust after another person because you've committed adultery in your heart. You take divorce lightly? Well, I say to you that sexual immorality is the only grounds for divorce. And other than that, it's sin.
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  and you're constantly making promises and oaths to other people in order to convince them that you'll keep your word, why don't you stop making promises and actually just be a person of your word? Let your yes be yes and your no be no. And you think that it's okay to take revenge and retaliation on people who treat you badly. Well, I say to you, leave it to God to deal out justice, and you just walk humbly before other people. So where we thought we were great, right? Quantitative. How many people have I killed? Zero. And Jesus is like, well, you're angry all the time.
• 7:37
  So that's not great either. And when we think we're great, Jesus heightens the application of the law. And the peak of this section is where we're going to be today. It's verses 43 through 48. And you'll notice that the subtitle in your Bible is, Love Your Enemies. And so here's what we're going to do this morning. We're going to give us a goal. We're going to take the hard saying of Jesus in verse 48, right? Be perfect. And we're going to read through verses 43 through 47 and let...
• 8:06
  our understanding of those verses inform verse 48. Okay, that's what we're going to do. And so let's read the passage starting 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 and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those...
• 8:54
  We're going to tackle two things in this passage this morning. And the first of those things is what I'm calling old love. Old love. And this is from verse 43.
• 9:05
  Old love. Look at verse 43 again. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Now this was an ancient saying that reserved love for those you get along with. Right? Love your neighbor, hate your enemy. People you get along with, you can love them. However, it was also unfortunately a twisting of the law of God.
• 9:30
  Because what it did was it took a command from Leviticus 19, which I'm going to read in a second. And it kept part of it, took out another part, and then inserted other words in its place. And so it was a twisting of the law of God. Now, I'm going to read Leviticus 19, verses 17 to 18, where kind of half of this quote was from. And you compare Leviticus to Matthew 5.43. Listen to this. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor.
• 10:00
  You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Now, does that sound like Matthew 5.43? No. Like the first five words, you shall not hate. Well, six words. You shall not hate your brother. Goes directly against Matthew 5.43, this ancient pharisaical saying. They are not the same.
• 10:26
  You guys, the love of the scribes and the Pharisees may have been convenient to them, but it was a false love. It wasn't true. John MacArthur points out something really interesting about this passage that I think is crucial for us to know in order to understand it. Most of us, I'm guessing, if you're like me, maybe, you read this passage and you go, okay, but like, who's my enemy? I mean, really, who's my enemy?
• 10:54
  And John MacArthur points out something from this that is good. He says the context of Leviticus 19 and of Matthew 5 define enemy not as some sort of like foreign political enemy necessarily, although it can mean that. It means someone who's in your social community that causes friction between you and them.
• 11:22
  So when we're talking about enemies, it's like many of us would probably be like, I don't have any enemies. But when you talk about people that you rub up against, where there's friction there between you and them, we all have people like that, right? This is someone you'd rather not be around, right? Someone who inconveniences you in some way. And so when you read this passage, read it in light of that definition of enemy. Now, the natural fleshly thing to do with people that you rub up against,
• 11:52
  is to socially cut them off. You socially cut them off from yourself, and you label them as a problem, right? And we all know this is true. We can be honest this morning, right? But you're walking in the hallway, right, wherever you are, and you see someone coming that you really don't want to talk to, and you do the whole, like, oh, hey, how's it going, right? And you just beeline, or all of a sudden you have, like, asthma, really bad asthma, and you're like, oh, I can't talk right now, right?
• 12:22
  We've all done that. Come on. Come on. Right? You remain polite, but you don't actually care about the person. Right? That's old love. And now, church, that kind of love, that kind of interaction, it may preserve your social comfortability, but it's not love. It's a Matthew 5.43 kind of love. And what Jesus is going to say in the verses...
• 12:52
  after it is that he's calling you and me to a new kind of love. And so in Matthew 5, 43, we see the old love. And then in the rest of the passage, we're going to see new love. And so let's look at verse 44. Look at what Jesus calls us to. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. Now, Jesus says, when he says,
• 13:20
  but I say to you, he is claiming more authority than the authority in verse 43. Because again, that's not a direct quote from the Bible. And so Jesus is saying, you have heard that it was said by these scribes and the Pharisees, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, right? He's stepping up his authority above theirs. And what he does, I think, in this passage is he completely flips the culture of love that these people understood on its head.
• 13:51
  This kind of love is agape love. Now, in the church, we've heard that a ton of times, right? Show agape love. But I want to give us a definition that I hope will be helpful because it helps us understand agape love, but also helps us to apply it, all right? I think agape love means, or agape love, proactively seeks the betterment of others' well-being. It proactively...
• 14:20
  Seeks the betterment of others' well-being. Agape love recognizes that politeness is not the same as love. And it isn't content to wait for opportunities to bless others. I'm going to say it again. Agape love recognizes that politeness, although it is good, isn't necessarily the same thing as love. But it also is not content to sit back and passively wait for opportunities to bless other people.
• 14:51
  Agape love also showcases, according to Jesus, our family resemblance to the Father. Look at verse 45. For God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Now, this is a loaded verse, and I love it because this verse is referring to something that theologians call common grace.
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  Common grace. Now, what common grace is, is it's the favor and grace of God that he bestows on all people, regardless of whether they have faith in him or not. Right? The sun rises on Christians and non-Christians. The rain falls on Christians and non-Christians. This is the goodness of God giving gifts to humanity just because he's good.
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  And this includes other things besides the sun and the rain, like food, sex, and laughter, right? It's not like God holds back good food from you until you become a Christian, right? It's like, dude, you should place your faith in Jesus so you could have this coconut shrimp because it's awesome. And I made that flavor and it's great, right? Or like mint chip ice cream, repent, right? He doesn't hold that back. It's just his good gift.
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  Man, music. You guys, some of the best music ever produced has been produced by people who aren't Christians. Right? Like, when you sing karaoke, like, you're not singing K-love songs. Necessarily, if you are. I love you. God be with you. But, right? Like, you come up to karaoke, what do you sing every time? Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Dancing Queen by ABBA. Every time. Without fail. Right? But...
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  It's just God's grace on people who even reject him. It's just his gifts to them, and they get to enjoy his grace, even though they don't acknowledge him for it. Now, this common grace that God gives springs from God's unceasing intent to bless. God intends to bless. He's set on it.
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  And this intention to bless flows from his throne like a river that never runs dry. Like this is how good our God is. He's not all stingy, like find a little bit more grace on your life. It's just like grace on the whole world, even though many of them don't know me and don't want to know me. It flows from him. And so when Jesus says love with an agape love, he's saying when you love with this love, it makes you.
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  Like your father who is in heaven. Because his love flows forth constantly from him. And Jesus says, when you love with agape love, you will be sons of your father in heaven. But I don't think that's all that he's saying. When you love with agape love, you not only are sons of the father who is in heaven, but you are also like the son of the father who is in heaven. Jesus lived with this kind of love. As he's hanging on the cross,
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  He's looking down on the people who just drove railroad spikes through his hands, and he's saying, Father, forgive them. They have no idea what they're doing. Intent to bless. It's deliberate. It's proactive, right? Romans 5.8, which is a great verse to memorize, and it applies to every single one of us, but it says, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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  You know what that means? It means that God initiated your salvation. You may think in your experience that like your walk with God began when you had like a wake-up call moment or you hit rock bottom or you walked into a church one day. But what the Bible says is that God's love and his grace on your life was present far before you ever had a cognizant experience of it. It far precedes your experience in church.
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  While you were still a sinner, he died for you and he didn't wait for you to turn your life around. This is the grace of God that he just showers it on you. Man, I'm preaching. I don't know where you guys are at. Amen. And so agape love makes us like the father and like the son. And so Jesus then continues in verses 46 and 47. Let's read those. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
• 19:44
  Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? We are not set apart as the people of God by expressing the same love as the rest of the world. You are not set apart when you love like the world loves. Rather, we are set apart when we love with intentional, proactive,
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  Agape love. Now, church, this is incredibly important because I think it's very possible for us to deceive ourselves, to trick ourselves into thinking that we're doing a really good job at loving people. And the whole time, all you're doing is loving people that are easy to love. And the people in your life that are really hard to love, like you're avoiding them. And you're like, well, I'm not mean. And it's like not being mean is not the same as love. It's not, right? It's not the same.
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  And so Jesus says, no, this agape love intends to bless all and it extends to all. Listen to this story. This is one of the greatest stories, in my opinion. As a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently, I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. The departed had no family or friends, and the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in rural Kentucky.
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  I was not familiar with the backwoods and got lost, and being a typical man, I didn't ask for directions. I finally arrived an hour late and saw that the funeral workers were gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. Only the diggers and their equipment remained and the men were eating lunch in the shade of a nearby tree. I felt bad about being too late for the ceremony and I apologized to the workers. I went to the side of the grave and looked down and saw that the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so...
• 21:40
  I started to play. The workers put down their lunches and gathered around with their hard hats in hand. I played my heart and soul out for that man with no family and no friends. I played for that homeless man like I've never played for anyone. I played Amazing Grace, and as I played, the workers began to weep. They wept, and I wept, and we all wept together. When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head hung low, my heart was full.
• 22:08
  As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, I have never seen or heard of anything like that, and I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years. That is one of the greatest stories, man. So much effort. Not the right thing. Reserving our love is like that. Only loving those who love you is like that. So much effort. It's kind of the wrong thing.
• 22:53
  Jesus calls you to something bigger, a new love. And so with all of that in mind, loving people with this agape, right? Proactive, intentional love. Now let's read verse 48, the hard saying of Jesus with that renewed understanding. You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. I think a major part of what Jesus means in this verse is that perfection in the kingdom is largely characterized by love.
• 23:24
  The word perfect literally means whole or mature, fully accomplished or complete. And so, church, when you think about Christian success, we love to use quantitative measures. Jesus calls us to a qualitative measure, which is love. And so this morning, I want to ask you, how are you doing at loving people?
• 24:02
  And not the people who are easy to love, because keep doing that. But how are you doing at loving people that you don't really necessarily want to talk to, maybe are harder to talk to? As the Bee Gees would say, how deep is your love, right? How are you doing at that? If you examine yourself this morning and you realize that your love is lacking and imperfect like mine is, I want to encourage you with something.
• 24:33
  There will probably be days in your life where you just fail miserably at loving people. And you revert back to that old kind of love. And you're reserving love for people that just the ones that you like and the people that you don't like, you avoid in the hallways, right? And there are going to be days when you do not live out the love that Christ has for you. And on that day.
• 25:00
  God invites you to trust in the gospel, to press into the cross, and to come back to his kind of love. Because there are going to be days when you love imperfectly. There's never a day when God loves imperfectly. Ever. His love is perfect 100% of the time. And so on the days when you and I mess up, run back to the cross. Run back to the grace of God that has enough forgiveness.
• 25:27
  And again, he's not stingy with it, right? And he'll welcome you with open arms and he'll pick you back up, set you back on your feet, and then remind you that the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. And what that means is that the ability to love with this kind of radical, agape, intentional love, that ability is available to you right now. You don't have to become like...
• 25:57
  christian avengers or like christian superheroes like man radical love that's just saved for like pastors and stuff no every one of you has a who are christians have the holy spirit within you so you can walk with this kind of love that jesus intends for you and you can walk in power and confidence that the love of god is being worked through you in order to bless other people and so this week
• 26:25
  Go into this week with an intention to bless your spouse. Go into this week with an intention to bless your kids. Go into this week with an intention to bless your friends and your coworkers. And I believe that the more that we do that, the closer we get to being perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. God, we are so grateful that...
• 26:57
  You initiated our redemption and that it is not of our works, but just by faith in your son. God, there is no other gospel besides the gospel of Jesus. And I pray for this church. I pray that we would go out into this week with a proactive intention to bless other people and that we wouldn't just remain passive. God bless these men and women in Jesus name. I pray.
• 27:31
  Amen.