Kingdom Come: Fight

Turn the other cheek.

Walk the extra mile.

Give to those who ask.

Love your enemies.

Some of Jesus’ most powerful teachings from the Sermon on the Mount have become so familiar to us that they are almost cliché. In some ways, this is an advantage–many of us have already memorized these words from Jesus with almost no effort! The challenge, of course, comes when we try to live them out because each raises such bewildering questions. Does Jesus really call us to be like doormats, simply walked on all the time?! How can we give to those who ask without going broke?! How can I love my enemies if they will continue to be my enemies?!

This week, we will dig into Jesus’ words again and see how, in fact, he means for us to live them and how he means for us to fight in his Kingdom.

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Sermon Transcript

Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: Kingdom Come: Sermon on the Mount
July 13, 2014

Fight
Matthew 5:33-48

Good morning. As has been our habit through this summer, we’re reading the Sermon on the Mount, most likely the most significant, impactful sermon ever taught. We’ve begun each week reading those Beatitudes. That word beatitude means supreme blessing. Who is really blessed in this life and in the life to come?

Jesus gives this surprising list: those who are poor in spirit, those who are mourning, the pure in heart. The reason the blessing exists for the people we don’t always expect is not because of something they’ve done to earn it, but because the kingdom of God is near. It’s at hand. The grace and goodness of God’s rule and reign, his gentle, kind, excellent will, is so close you can touch it. It’s at hand.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them up to Matthew, chapter 5. If you don’t have a Bible, you can slip up your hand, and we will put a Bible in your hand. We have some great Bible men and women who will give you a Bible. We’re going to be picking up where we left off last week in Matthew 5, verse 33.

Before we start reading, just as a reminder, Jesus begins this epic sermon with the Beatitudes, these blessings. Then right after he concludes these blessings, he says, “You are the salt of the earth.” He goes on and says, “You are the light of the world.” His emphasis is that as God’s people learn to receive the blessing of his kingdom, we become a true contrast society who, like salt, brings flavor to life and preserve in the midst of the direction of decay around us. Like light, we penetrate darkness, illuminating things that have been lost and things that have been hidden.

So there’s this deep calling between the receiving of the blessing and the embodiment of salt and light. It’s kind of interesting, because he says, “Here’s the blessed way of life, and here’s the outcome,” and it kind of leaves you with the question…How do we live that? How do we receive these blessings of the kingdom? How do we actually live salty or bright lives?

Jesus goes on to talk about how he’s going to give us the heart of God through the Scripture. He says, “I didn’t come to get rid of the Old Testament. I actually came to fully fill it, to show you the heart of God throughout.” Then he begins to unpack the ways of God that are so often different than the ways we live by default or that we learn from our culture around us.

We saw that as Jesus is unpacking each of these subjects, he’s doing it in these little triplets, triads, little sets of three. He’ll start with the traditional teaching. “You have heard it said.” Then he’ll talk about how there’s a vicious cycle usually associated with this area. When humans get off the tracks and sin in these areas, it creates awful cycles.

The third piece in these little triplets is he gives us what scholar Glen Stassen calls a transforming initiative, a little action step we can take, a way to step forward into the kingdom way of life in this area. Remember, we started several weeks ago looking at Jesus’ words on anger. He says, “You’ve heard it said you’re not supposed to kill.” That’s the traditional teaching.

Then he says, “But I say to you, even if you nurse anger in your heart, it’s like you’re becoming a murderer.” That’s the vicious cycle. We know what that’s like. When we hold on to anger, it grows and sinks its roots into us, and it becomes bitterness and eventually contempt, to the point where we devalue others and really become like murderers in our hearts. Jesus says, “Here’s the transforming initiative. The way out of this is to be reconciled.”

Last week we saw Jesus teaching on lust and divorce. Praise God we don’t have to do that again this week. Actually, no. It’s a good Scripture. We love it. We need it to do its work on our hearts. If you’re interested in that subject, listen to the tape. Jesus says, “You’ve heard it said, ‘Don’t commit adultery,’ but if you look at someone else with lustful intent…” The old teaching is, “Don’t commit adultery.”

Jesus is saying the vicious cycle is if you allow that lustful intent to work in your life, it turns you into the kind of person who’s incapable of real intimacy and covenant connection. The vicious cycle is that it ruins us. It leads us in the way of adultery. The transforming initiative is radical removal. Gouge out your eye. Cut off your hand. He’s not talking literally, of course, because if you’re lusting with your eyes and you lose your right eye, you can still lust with your left eye. He’s not talking about that. He’s saying, “Radical removal.”

He moves on into the subject of divorce. He talks about that in the practice of the time, people were devaluing the covenant of marriage so much they were just dismissing their wives with a simple piece of paper. “You no longer please me. You don’t make me happy anymore. This is over.” Jesus is restoring the sanctity and value of marriage. He says the vicious cycle when we devalue marriage is that people’s hearts become so divided it’s like adultery proliferates.

This is the one instance, when he’s talking about divorce, when he does not give a transforming initiative. All he does with that one is give an exception. He says there are certain occasions when divorce is permissible, if there has been unfaithfulness. So we’re seeing these triplets, and Jesus is walking us through and showing us the way of transformation. We pick it up in verse 33. He’s going to hit the next one. We’ll read this little section, verses 33-37. We’re going to take the rest of the chapter in chunks.

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.” There was not a lot of hair dye back then. “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.” (Matthew 5:33-37)

We see the traditional teaching: “You shall not swear falsely.” Jesus is quoting… There are a number of Old Testament passages that lead to this direction. Leviticus 19:12 is one of those places. The Lord says, “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:12)
What’s going on here is a tendency among the people of that day to swear by… Well, they were too reverent, so to speak, to use God’s name itself, but they would swear by all of these things connected to God in order to augment or increase their trustworthiness. What Jesus is talking about at this point in the Sermon on the Mount is the human tendency to try to manipulate others.

He says, “Okay, in the Old Testament it’s very clear. Don’t swear falsely. Don’t involve God and his name in a lie.” But Jesus is going to press it a little bit further. He talks about this vicious cycle. He makes these references to swearing by heaven, by earth, by Jerusalem. You kind of go, “What’s going on here?” I haven’t heard a lot of people in day-to-day life say, “I swear to you by Jerusalem that’s true.” Nobody says that these days, unless you live near Jerusalem, I suppose.

What’s going on? We actually get a little insight into what was happening a little bit later in the gospel of Matthew. We get to Matthew 23, and this is the section where Jesus is really laying into the religious leaders for their hypocrisy. In verse 16 of Matthew 23, he starts bringing up this subject of oaths and swearing again. He says to them:

“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’

You blind men! Which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.” (Matthew 23:16-22)

Here’s what was happening. The religious leaders… We don’t know about the day-to-day life, but we’re assuming if the religious leaders were doing it, it was probably happening among the people as well. There was this tendency to try to bring in some higher power, invoking not necessarily the name of God, but something connected to God, to lend more weight to whatever it was they were saying.

But in fact, what they wanted to do was just have the freedom to do whatever they wanted. The goal of these kinds of oaths for these guys at that time was to get others to do what they wanted them to do while preserving the freedom to change it themselves. It’s a classic definition of manipulation: trying to trick others into doing what you want them to do.

We may not swear by Jerusalem or by the altar or anything like that today, but we also, in our culture, do the same thing. We are masters of manipulation. We’re masters at learning how to tell a story just so, so that someone else thinks a certain way about us or will do something for us. We’re masters of the half-truth. We just take a little piece of the truth, exclude a couple of other pieces, conceal some stuff.

What Jesus is talking about here is learning how to become truly honest people. I don’t like it when I’m talking to somebody and after about 10 minutes into the conversation they look at me and go, “Well, honestly…” It makes me think, “Well, what about the last 10 minutes? Was that dishonestly?”

This is what we do. We kind of feel the need sometimes to overemphasize our personal trustworthiness, our truthfulness, trying to convince people, and it slips so easily into that world of manipulation. What Jesus is talking about is when we do that we’re actually drawing God himself… That’s what he’s talking about. If you swear by heaven, it’s the throne of God. If by earth, it’s his footstool. If by Jerusalem, it’s the city of the great King.

All of those emphasize that when we do that, we’re actually drawing God and his presence into a manipulation, which is such a misrepresentation of the heart of God. That’s the vicious cycle. People start to think God is hypocritical, that God is manipulative. We see this in our culture all the time. That’s the vicious cycle.

So what’s the way forward? Jesus says it’s very simple. The transforming initiative, verse 37: “Just let what you say be simply ‘yes’ or ‘no.'” In the original language, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” The way you would emphasize something in the ancient world was by repeating it twice. Jesus is saying, “Just say it simply. You don’t have to say, ‘I swear it,’ or ‘I swear to God.'”

I remember when I was in high school that was a big thing among all of the high schoolers. People would try to convince each other of stuff, and they’d be like, “I swear it’s true. I swear to God.” Honestly, I didn’t like that. Jesus says, “No, get rid of all that language. Be the kind of person that when you speak, that’s what you mean. Be honest, be truthful, and see if that isn’t salty in a world of dishonesty. See if that doesn’t shine light in a world of deception.”

He’s calling us to live honest lives. This is challenging sometimes, because how do we live honestly in a wise way? Do we tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, no matter what, all the time? This is one of the questions Dietrich Bonhoeffer dealt with. You guys may know Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany in the 20s and 30s into World War II, before he was eventually killed for his faith by the Nazis.

Up until that time, he was an individual who was deeply committed to the Scriptures, deeply committed to truth. In fact, he wrote a confession of the sins of Germany as the Nazi power was rising. He said, “Here are the places where we have missed it as the church, as a nation. These are the violations.” So he’s deeply committed to honesty, but at the same time he’s involved in this plot to help rescue Jews from the Nazi massacres and sneak them over to Switzerland.

You can imagine that kind of movement is going to require that there be some dishonesty along the way. “Do you have a bunch of Jewish people in your trunk?” “No, I don’t.” If you say, “Yes,” it’s bad news. So Bonhoeffer really wrestled with this. Here’s Jesus calling us to total integrity and honesty, yet even in the Old Testament you have situations like Rahab in Jericho. The spies come, and they’re hiding out at Rahab’s house. The soldiers are seeking out the spies. “Are the spies in your house?” Rahab says, “No.” But they are, actually. Is that acceptable?

Here’s what Bonhoeffer worked out. Bonhoeffer recognized that honesty and truthfulness were not only about the fact itself, but that every fact and every truth is a truth that happens in a context, and it happens in relationships. In order for us to be fully truthful, fully honest people, as Jesus is calling us to be here, we have to be aware of the relationships and the context of what’s going on around us so that we’re representing the greatest truth of God’s heart.

Now it’s a little dangerous. What I’m not saying is that truth is relative depending on who you’re talking to. That’s not it at all. Bonhoeffer is saying that as we apply this, as we take these transforming initiatives, letting your yes be yes and your no be no, we need to constantly be aware of the situation in which we find ourselves.

One of the classic examples is in parenting. As a parent with your child, that relationship demands that your child… Because you’re in covenant with your child and responsible for their protection and provision and everything else, it demands that the child be completely honest with you. “What happened?” You can always tell when your kids are telling you half-truth. My mom could tell. I was a terrible liar.

I tried lying when I was like 7 or 8 years old. I just kind of experimented. I’d seen my friends do it, but I don’t think I had really lied up until that point, at least that I could remember. But I’d seen it happen. I was like, “Ooh, that kind of worked out well for him.” So I tried lying. I’m sure my mom saw through the lie, but it was terrible for me. I was so nauseous. I was like, “Oh man, I can’t believe I lied.”

I went back to my mom and said, “Mom, I can’t take it anymore. I’m about to throw up. I lied to you.” Blessed are the pure in heart, I suppose. I still remember that. Not everyone has that. But this is the thing. In a parent/child relationship, as a parent, you need to know everything from your kids, but your kids don’t always need to know everything from you.

Sometimes there are things you’re wrestling with or problems you’re facing, you know, grownup, serious concerns that you do not need to unload on your 7-year-old. There’s a wisdom here. Your child says, “Mom, what’s wrong? Dad, what’s wrong?” because they can see that you’re troubled. There are times when you don’t have to say everything to them.

What Jesus is calling us to is a wise truthfulness, and that’s a far cry from the manipulative use of stories and half-truths and name dropping, whatever it is, to try to get people to do what we want them to do. Jesus carries on. He’s working through relationships from many angles. In verse 38 he said:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:38-42)

Okay, here we go. How do we fight in the kingdom? How do we apply this? I think sometimes, in the eyes of the world, people look at Christians and think they’re just these spineless people who have to turn the other cheek, who are essentially called to be doormats. A lot of us, for passages like these and several others… We read them, and we feel like God is calling us to do something, but we’re not exactly sure what.

We don’t want to be spineless. In fact, sometimes we don’t want to be spineless so much that we overemphasize our toughness. We hunt elk, and we emulate Old Testament heroes, Samson with the jawbone of a donkey, and everything else. Even still, deep down, we wonder, “What does this mean? What is Jesus wanting us to get at?” So let’s unpack this little section a little bit. The next one, loving your enemies, goes right in with it.

First, the traditional teaching: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” At first, that seems like a violent way of maintaining justice, but, in fact, at that time it was a way of limiting violence. Do this for a second. Just squeeze the finger of the person next to you. Not too hard. Just give their finger a little squeeze. If you don’t know that person, you can introduce yourself first and then say, “Can I squeeze your finger? Do you mind?”

Now if you just got your finger squeezed, squeeze the person who just squeezed your finger with the exact same amount of pressure. See if you can do that. However hard they squeezed your finger, squeeze their finger back with the same pressure. Did you get that? There’s a fascinating study by Sukhwinder Shergill at University College in London where they did this kind of test.

They actually had little electrical hookups so they could apply a certain amount of pressure and measure how much pressure it was, and they also had people squeeze each other’s fingers so you could measure how much pressure they exerted. So this is the test they did. They started off with two people sitting there, and they had the machine apply a certain set amount of pressure.
Then they told the person whose finger had been squeezed, “Squeeze your neighbor’s finger exactly that hard.” They squeezed their neighbor’s finger. Then they told the neighbor, “Okay, now squeeze their finger back with the same pressure.” They went back and forth. Do you know what they found? Every time they squeezed the other person’s finger, it was 40 percent harder than they had been squeezed. By the end of three or four rounds, people were squeezing really hard.

Why? Because it’s not in our nature to exchange an eye for an eye. A lot of times, we demand an eye for an eyelash. We want more than we lost. We want them to pay. So the traditional teaching, when God laid it out very clearly, “An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth,” he’s saying, “There’s not going to be this escalation of violence, where people are squeezing fingers harder and harder or, worse, killing each other.”
Then Jesus talks about the vicious cycle. This is very interesting, because he says in verse 39, “I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil.” That’s a little perplexing, because Jesus actually frequently resists evil in his ministry, with religious leaders, leaders in the temple who are taking advantage of people, Satan himself. I mean Jesus does resist, so what’s going on? How do we understand what Jesus is saying here?

Actually, when he says, “Do not resist,” that word resist in the original language typically means revengeful or violent retaliation. Jesus is saying, “Do not embrace revengeful or violent retaliation.” Then the second part, “the one who is evil,” in the original language can also be translated “by evil means.”

I know we’re a little technical at the moment, but a number of really bright New Testament scholars look at this sentence and say the best way to translate this sentence is to hear Jesus saying, “Do not retaliate revengefully by evil means.” Do you hear that? So that’s what Jesus is talking about as the vicious cycle here.
We know this is true. When somebody does something to us and we seek vengeance by evil means, that does not solve the problem. It creates a feud, and it cycles bigger and bigger and bigger. That’s the vicious cycle. That’s what Jesus is talking about here. So what are we supposed to do, Jesus? He gives them a handful of transforming initiatives, things they could have done.
Now these are initiatives that were most likely more specific to their time and place. Not many people are walking up to us and saying, “Hey, would you carry my stuff for a mile?” and having a right to do it, like the Roman soldiers did. He’s giving them transforming initiatives, but they’re specific to the time and place. So as we read these, we need to read them not so much as laws from Jesus, but more as illustrations. These are the sorts of creative activities we can take that will hopefully begin to defuse these cycles of finger squeezing.
The first one is, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” We have to pay attention to the details. What cheek is getting slapped? The right cheek. Here’s a little bit of context. In the ancient world, the left hand was reserved for unclean things. We’ll just say they didn’t have toilet paper and leave it at that.

You were not allowed to touch any other person with your left hand. It was basically kind of over here. You never had interpersonal contact with your left hand, for obvious reasons. So now, if you’re going to strike someone, it means you have to strike them with your right hand. Think about it for a second. If someone is going to strike you on your right cheek with their right hand, how are they going to deliver the blow? Yeah, it has to be a backhanded strike.
What does that mean in that time and place? It means a shameful humiliation of the other because they are considered to be less than human. Does that make sense? What’s happening here is Jesus is describing a situation in which… This was probably not uncommon. We’ve talked about the poverty. You have low people. You have people who have very little money.

Maybe there was a landowner or a military leader or somebody who was really frustrated with one of these tenant farmers, or something like that. He would walk up and strike them with the back of his hand to shame them. “You’re nothing. You’re like a dog.” Jesus says, “When they do that, show them the other cheek. Present to them again the other cheek, your left cheek.”
Now it’s impossible for him to backhand you across your left cheek, isn’t it? If he strikes you again, he’s going to have to strike you with his fist on the left cheek. If you strike someone with a fist, you’re striking him as an equal, no longer as an inferior. Do you see what’s happening? Jesus is such a genius. When someone treats you like subhuman, don’t fight back. Don’t punch them back. Stand up and make him hit you on the left cheek and treat you like an equal.

Stand up for your human dignity. Don’t allow that person to treat you like a mongrel. Transforming initiative. Take nonviolent, ethical action to break the cycle. It’s beautiful. It’s interesting what Jesus does not say. Jesus does not say, “Turn someone else’s cheek.” It’s really easy when it’s talking about somebody else. “Yeah, I know he hit you, but let him hit you again.” No, it’s not that.

Nor does Jesus say, “Allow yourself to be beaten to a pulp.” This is not a passage about self-defense, you know, standing up for yourself if you’re getting attacked or someone is trying to murder you. That’s not really what Jesus is talking about. What Jesus is talking about is a very specific situation that is violent, but it’s more a violence against the human spirit. He’s saying, “Okay, how do we assert our dignity?”

The next one is, “If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” In the ancient world, typically you would wear two pieces of clothing. You would have your tunic, kind of your shirt, and then over that you would have your cloak. In the Old Testament, there were some pretty specific laws that if someone had to borrow money from you and they were so poor they had nothing to leave as collateral, you were allowed to take their cloak, their outer jacket, as collateral.

For a lot of people, that was all they owned, so that was a pretty significant item. That was a big cash piece, or whatever. “Hey, I need to borrow some money from you, but I don’t have anything to give you as collateral.” The guy could take my cloak as collateral so I could have the money, and as long as he has my cloak, I have to come back and pay him back eventually, and I can get my cloak back.

This is what’s interesting. The Old Testament says very clearly if you take someone’s cloak, their outer garment, as collateral, you have to return it to him every night, because what else is he going to sleep with and stay warm? So if you’re a loan shark, it’s kind of a hassle taking people’s cloaks. The way they got around it was by suing people for their tunic, their shirt, their undergarment.

So here’s Jesus again describing the scene. Almost certainly this is a scene where you have someone who’s so poor all they have is the shirt on their back and their cloak. They’re in the courtroom, and they’re being sued for their tunic, for their undershirt. Jesus says, “If somebody sues you for that, give them your cloak also.”

Now what happens in that scene? Here’s my cloak. You’re standing in the courtroom. How does the guy who sued you three seconds ago feel? You’re naked, but he’s shamed, because he’s standing there, and everyone in the courtroom sees, “Wow, look at how rotten this person is, just taking everything from this guy and leaving him stark naked.” Once again, you have Jesus showing us how to turn the tables to exert dignity. Do you see what’s going on here? Jesus is giving them creative ways of taking transforming initiatives in these situations they faced.

Walking the extra mile. The ancient Romans were allowed to ask someone to go with them one mile. That was the extent of the law. “Hey, I need you to carry these things. Come with me.” Impressment. I can have your animal or have you carry… Jesus says, “Okay, if somebody makes you go one mile, go with them the second mile.”

There’s something that happens in the power dynamic when you go one mile and then you go the second mile. The first mile is a sign of oppression. You’re being forced to do the first mile. The second mile is your choice. I’m with you. I’m making a choice. I’m no longer the oppressed. I’m the one just walking with you, talking to you, getting to know you.

This is the sort of activity that transformed the ancient world, because nobody does that stuff. Do you know what people do? People walk half a mile grudgingly, start counting steps, get to 5,280, say, “I’m done,” and walk away. That’s what everybody expects. So the cycle continues. Here’s what Jesus is saying: “Hey, turn the tables. Walk a second mile.”

“What are you doing? Why are you walking a second mile?”

“Well, because I live in a different kind of kingdom.”

The last one is, “The one who begs from you, give to him. Do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” This time the tables are turned. The first three examples are examples of people in oppressed positions, and Jesus is showing them how to turn the tables and express their dignity. In this last one the tables are turned, and the listener is in the position with money.

Someone comes up and begs from you. The tendency so often is when someone asks us for something we reduce that person to just a beggar or just someone who needs something or, “Well, they made a lot of bad choices in their life,” or whatever else it is. We sort of dehumanize them. Jesus says, “No, respect their request. Listen to them. Hear them out, and wisely figure out how you can give of your resources toward their honor and their need.” Do you see what Jesus is doing here?

How do we do this in our lives? Because we’re not getting backhanded slapped very often. We’re not walking miles carrying other people’s stuff. But there are principles here of creative, ethical, nonviolent resistance. If you’re in one of those situations… Maybe it’s your workplace. You feel like you’re constantly beaten down. You don’t know any way out of it.

Ask God. “Lord, what’s a creative way for me to reassert my dignity, the image of God in my life?” As Jesus says, not by evil means, but by real kingdom-of-God action. This is where living out the life of the kingdom becomes quite creative, quite beautiful, quite interactive, because it forces us to depend on God and trust God. “Lord, show me how this situation works.”

You’re in school. There’s a bully situation, or maybe there’s a teacher situation, or maybe it’s somebody who’s coaching you in your sport, or it’s a parent in the sport, or maybe it’s someone who’s coaching your child in the sport. How do we deal with those situations when there are insults flying and they’re dehumanizing us? They just seem like intolerable situations.

Jesus is a master of these sorts of things. We need to ask him, “Lord, what do we do? What does it look like to turn the other cheek? What does it look like to give also our cloak, to walk the extra mile, to give to the one who begs? Show us, Lord.” These are the principles. These are some examples. What are the transforming initiatives we need to take in our lives? Then Jesus presses it just a little bit further 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 sun 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 do you have? 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? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)

That phrase in verse 48 about perfection… Remember, what Jesus is talking about is wholeness, moving from poor in spirit at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount to the point of perfection, which literally means a wholeness, integrity, of life. Jesus is now summarizing, bringing it all together, “Love your enemies,” and then calling us to that righteousness that exceeds these Pharisees and the scribes, that deep, profound, kingdom-of-God righteousness.

“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Love your enemies.” The traditional teaching here is, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” It doesn’t appear in the Old Testament exactly like that. There are some passages. A few of the psalms, 137 and 139, talk about enemies in some language that reflects this.

But this statement itself most likely came from a community of separatists who were around Israel at the time, the Qumran community. It was known that they would say, “Love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.” Now Jesus is taking it, and this time he reverses the order. We’ve been looking at these little triplets. Typically it goes traditional teaching, then vicious cycle, and then transforming initiative.

This time Jesus flips the order to mix things up at the end of the section, to signal to us, “Okay, this is the end of one of the sections of the sermon.” He gives a transforming initiative right after the traditional teaching. He says, “You love your enemies.” Then he goes on and talks about the vicious cycle, that if we don’t love our enemies, we’re just like everybody else. “Don’t even the Gentiles love the people around them?”

If you greet only your brother, that doesn’t separate you at all. In fact, what that does is creates a vicious cycle of cliques. These kinds of cliques exist at every level of society, whether it’s school, when you’re in high school, and there is this sense of, “This is our circle of cool people, and that’s their circle of uncool people, and that’s their circle of really uncool people.” We do this. We draw these little circles.

Then, as we get older, we think we grow out of it, but actually we don’t. We continue. When Jesus starts talking about loving your enemies, for them, almost certainly, immediately they would have thought of some people groups. “Romans, big enemies. My landlord, big enemy.” It just would have popped into their minds.
Sometimes for us, because we don’t live under foreign oppression, it’s a little harder for us to recognize who we might be thinking of as enemies, but let’s dig in there a little bit. Who might we see as enemies in our lives? Is there somebody you work with who’s an enemy, so you try to quarantine them? Maybe it’s your boss. Who else might be an enemy in your life?

A lot of times we make enemies or maintain feelings of animosity toward whole groups of people. You can recognize if you’re feeling this way about a whole group of people if you encounter someone and they’re from this group of people and you immediately feel a sense of, “Ugh, I don’t like this person,” simply because of the group he or she is associated with.

What are some of these? For some people, it’s religious groups. “If you’re that religion, you’re my enemy.” Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist. For some people, it’s political. “If you’re in that camp, you’re my enemy.” If you listen to the language, the political rhetoric, swimming in our society, it is very much enemy language. For some people, it’s sexual orientation. “Oh, you’re from this camp.”

Some people draw circles around denominations, even within the big umbrella of people following Christ. “Oh, you’re from that group” or “You’re that way” or “You do that.” We draw these little circles around ourselves, and we don’t press beyond them. Jesus says it creates these vicious cycles of siloed people who never press beyond and learn to really embrace, engage, and love our enemies.

Now listen. Loving your enemy does not mean you have to agree with your enemy. It does not mean you have to condone your enemy’s activities. It does mean you need to get to know them, value them, think of ways, “How do I love this person?” Why? Jesus gives the motivation. He says, “Because God has his sun shine on the just and the unjust alike.”

God is not partial. He actually shows favor and makes love available to all. So if we’re going to be the kinds of people who reflect the heart of God, we need to also have open hearts to love others. This can be challenging. This is challenging. How do we love our enemies? How do we do this well? Jesus is really pressing us here.

I think, for me, the question that comes up is…Does this really work? Is it possible to deal with our anger? Is it possible to be free from lust, to live in a way that’s really valuing marriage, to be honest? If we’re really honest people, aren’t we going to be taken advantage of? Aren’t people going to just run roughshod over us, sneering as they go by, “Naïve Christians”? Can we really turn the other cheek and give our cloak also? Does this work? Loving our enemies, nonviolent resistance, does this really work?

Some people have studied this. There are some historical examples where nonviolent resistance has been immensely impactful on large scales. You think of Gandhi in India with the British. You think of the civil rights movement with Dr. King here in the South and across the United States in the 50s and 60s. Nonviolent resistance changed whole nations.

People look at that and say, “Well yeah, it worked, but the only reason it worked was because they were operating in a society or a culture that held a Judeo-Christian ethical system.” So the British in India, because they had some foundation in the Bible, had to respond to the nonviolent resistance, or America in the South had to respond to the civil rights movement.

Actually, what Jesus says (this is so powerful) is that this working does not depend on the environment or the government in which we find ourselves. Do you know what it depends on? It depends on the reality of the presence of God who is a good Father and sees what we’re doing and sees injustice and knows what we need even before we ask him, and he looks out for us.
This does not depend on the situation or the structure or the environment. Like, “Okay, the Sermon on the Mount only applies if you have this, this, and this in place.” Jesus says this hinges on the reality of God, that God is a good Father. This is what he’s saying here, even with the oaths. He says, “You’re not just swearing by heaven. It’s the throne of God. God is in that.”

Loving your enemies. He says, “God is the one who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the just.” You get into chapter 6 (we’ll unpack this more later). Again and again, Jesus is emphasizing, “Your Father sees you. Your Father knows. Your Father rewards you. Your Father knows what you need and takes care of you.” That’s what makes this work. Does it work? Yes, because of God.

I was talking to my parents this weekend. We were talking about these passages. They were married at the beginning of the 80s, and my dad got a job in the Milwaukee Symphony right after they got married. My dad was a bassist. He played the big upright bass. He’d always practice in the basement. I remember a lot of the tunes he would practice. It was a really cool job, it was kind of what he had wanted to do, but it was not a very well paying job.

When they moved to Milwaukee from Ohio where they had grown up… My mom had worked at Ford. She was a floor manager of the plant. So she had a car. They sold her car and used the money from the sale to put a down payment on a house. They bought this little house on 41st Street, just west of downtown Milwaukee. It turned out it wasn’t really a great neighborhood, but that was the house.

Shortly after buying the house… My dad had a Mazda RX7 wagon with a rotary engine. He always tells me about how brilliant the rotary engine is, but the problem with rotary engines is they also blow up. That’s what happened to my dad’s Mazda. My parents are kind of stuck, because now they have no car. My dad works downtown. How are they going to get around?

They start shopping for a car. They go to this used car salesman, and they find this late-70s Mustang. When I heard this story I was like, “Ooh, cool, Mustang.” But something happened to the Mustang between the late 60s and now. There was a time in there where it was not that cool. Maybe it was to you. After the first service, someone came up to me and said, “I had that ’78 Mustang.” I was like, “Did you love it?” They were like, “Yeah, at the time, but it was kind of an awful car.”

So they used their last $850, and they bought the Mustang. My dad is a car guy. He had fixed his own cars all along. They had driven it, and they were like, “This is great.” Two days after they buy it, it throws a rod. The engine is done. Apparently, the salesman had put something into the engine to hide the sound of the knocking.

My folks take it back to the salesman and say, “Hey, you sold us a lemon. This car just blew up.” He said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll fix it. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’ll fix it.” One week goes by. Two weeks go by. My parents are riding the bus. Right around that time, actually, my mom became pregnant with me. I think it was a little earlier than they were expecting but still a blessing.

My folks don’t have any transportation, so my dad would ride the bus to work with his bass, and my mom would ride the bus to go get groceries. She used to walk a few blocks, get the groceries, and ride back. So they’re kind of wrestling through this. They were part of a little small group. One of the other musicians at the symphony was a believer and had a small group and they were together. They were mostly older couples than my parents.

As the weeks stretched on, they kept telling my parents, “You need to sue this salesman. He is a swindler.” My parents were like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” They’re like, “Take him to court. Get your money back.” (Because my parents have zero money. None at all.) That was also right around the time when investigative journalism was starting to pick up. So they were like, “Okay, if you won’t sue him, call WTMJ and get the reporter down there to ask him hard questions and expose him.”

My parents heard all of this counsel, but at the same time they were reading this very passage: “If somebody takes your shirt, give them your cloak also.” And they’re reading others, like Romans 12. They really felt like they needed to obey the Word of God. They just felt, “You know what? We need to obey this.” So after two months, they go back to the salesman, and they say to him, “Listen, we’ve been praying about this a lot, and we feel like God has really led us to give you the title back to the car.” And they gave it to him.

He goes, “Whoa, whoa.” He’s all kind of surprised like this. He goes, “Whoa, whoa. Well, I’m going to fix the car. My wife is a Christian, actually. She has been praying for me. So I’m going to fix this car.” My mom looked at him and said, “God did not say to us that if we gave it back you would fix it. We’re reading his Word. All he said is we need to give you the title back.” He goes, “Well, I’m going to fix it. I’m going to fix it for sure.”

So my parents leave. Something happened. When they handed it over, they just felt this release in their hearts. They got on the bus, and they’re riding it back, and they’re just rejoicing. A couple of days go by. They never hear from the salesman again. But my mom was feeling pretty optimistic, because they had obeyed God.

She was convinced that God was going to provide a Honda Accord. She would look in the mailbox every day, like, “Maybe I’ll win a sweepstakes,” or expected there just to be a Honda Accord in the alley. That was a time when there was a lot of “name it and claim it” preaching, so they were listening to this. I’m pretty sure my parents maybe named and claimed a few Hondas.

A month went by. Then two months went by. Three months. My mom keeps getting more and more pregnant. They’re riding the bus. There were days when my dad, if the weather was good… It’s Milwaukee, but if the weather was good, he’d ride his bike to work, and then he would meet my mom at the grocery store. She’d get off the bus and walk.

My mom would have two bags of groceries and me on the bus. It’s her third trimester now. My dad would be riding his bike behind the bus with a bag on the handlebars and a grocery bag in his backpack. My parents are just kind of scraping it out, and God is not providing. They’re starting to wonder, “Does God know? Does he see? Is this what we’re supposed to do? Did we make a mistake?”

Around that time, they heard news. There was a little church on the east side of Milwaukee. It was about an hour and a half to two hours to get there from where we lived if you didn’t have a car. They heard about this little church meeting in a house. In those days, you didn’t have a website. You couldn’t just go and watch a few of the preacher’s sermons and be like, “I might like that,” or whatever. It was just word of mouth.

In Milwaukee in the early 80s, there were not many churches around. So my parents heard about this little church and said, “We need to go check this out.” They’re newcomers to the community. They’re from Ohio. So they go check it out. They get up at 7:00 and ride the bus for a couple of hours. They finally get to this place, and it’s just an old Victorian house. If you’ve ever been to the east side of Milwaukee, you know exactly what kind of house this is.

They go in and go downstairs in this musty basement. There are about 40 young people in there. They’re all a little bit hippy but also cool, and they’re reading the Bible and worshiping. The Spirit of God is there. It’s just so blessed. They come back home, and they say, “That was pretty powerful. We need to go back. That’s a place where it seems like God is at work. The Spirit is moving. This is important.”

So they go back the second week. At the end of the second gathering, a young couple about my parents’ age just walked up to them and said, “We’ve never met you. We don’t know anything about you. We just feel like God has put it on our hearts to give you these keys.” They hand my parents the keys to a car. It was not a Honda Accord. It was a Plymouth Volare. We had that car for six years. It was a huge car. It was a huge blessing for our family.

The next week, my mom went into labor with me, and they drove the Plymouth Volare to the hospital. If they didn’t have a car, they would have had to call a cab or ride the bus to the hospital. I was talking to my parents. During those months, between the time they obeyed what they had read here and God provided a car, that was a really hard time for them. “Does this work? Is this going to work out? Can you really live this way?”

The reality was that when they needed it, God was there. We do have a good Father who sees us. He knows us. He’s calling us to live this way, but he’s not going to leave us alone trying to live this way. He’s with us. That’s what Jesus is saying over and over again. “Trust me. Trust my Word. Trust your Father in heaven. This is the blessed way of life.”

Does this work out? Think about it from Jesus’ perspective. Did it work out for Jesus? When he was arrested, he turned the other cheek. When he was crucified, he walked the second mile. They gambled for his clothes at his feet. Jesus looked out and saw all of these enemies crucifying him, mocking him. He said, “Father, forgive them.” Does this work out? Can you really do this? Does this work?

The question I would ask is…Did it work for Jesus? Yes. Why? Because there is a God in heaven who is a good Father, and he sees you, and he knows what you need, and he will take care of you. It may not be the Honda Accord the next day. It might be a Plymouth Volare that eventually rusts all the way through on every side. But you have a Father in heaven who knows you. He knows what you need. He sees you in secret, he sees you in public, and he’s with you. Let’s pray.