In Todd Bryant's sermon titled 'Love Your Enemies', he draws upon Matthew chapter 5 to emphasize Jesus' command to love not only our neighbors but also our enemies, contrasting this with the more commonly accepted notion of hating one's enemies. Bryant elaborates on how Jesus raises the bar set by Mosaic law, arguing that true love is action-oriented and should extend to those who may not reciprocate it, reflecting the character of God who blesses both the just and the unjust. He stresses that loving one's enemies is a way to shine light in a dark world and exhibit the qualities of God. Bryant also discusses the historical context in which Jesus preached, the authority with which He spoke, and the expectation of living by kingdom principles even in the present. Humility is highlighted as essential for loving enemies, requiring a proper perspective of oneself and a reflection on the grace received from God. The sermon concludes by encouraging believers to follow Jesus' high calling through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

In open to Matthew chapter five, Matthew chapter five. So Ken preaches this message saying that the love of God is premier. It is what we are to shoot for first and foremost. And then Lewis gets up and preaches the easy part right love your brethren. How hard should that be their family?

Well it's not always easy but our topic this morning is love your enemies. Loving your family can be difficult this sometimes can be even more difficult. Matthew chapter 5 verse 43, you have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your father which is in heaven. For he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if you love them which love you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, What do ye more than others? Do not even the publican sow? Be therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." In the first century in Israel, messianic expectations were at a fever pitch.

The nation had many freedoms. They lived during the time of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, you may have heard of that, but they were not truly free. Caesar ruled the day, and he had his local cronies, the herds, pilot, the military, all to enforce Roman laws. The Jews then had hopes that the Messiah, the long-awaited Davidic King, would rush onto the scene, set up his kingdom, and free all the Jews from the yoke of Roman occupation. But that's not all.

More than that, they were anticipating an authorized prophet, one like Moses, one who would offer more revelation, more divinely inspired truths from Yahweh himself. John the Baptist was asked in John 1-21, are you that prophet? He answered No. After Jesus fed the 5, 000 in John 6 with five barley loaves and two small fishes, the people declared, this is of a truth, that prophet that should come into the world. If you're unfamiliar with what they're talking about, God had told Moses way back in the law in Deuteronomy 18, the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee of thy brethren like unto me unto him ye shall hearken.

And the Lord went on to say, I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, like Moses, and will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him." That prophet is Jesus of Nazareth. And here in the Sermon on the Mount, we find Jesus acting in that very capacity as he explains precisely what his followers were to be like, what we are to be like. This is really first seen in the Beatitudes. You know those blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God, so long those are the Beatitudes. And since then, Jesus has laid down principles by which Kingdom citizens are to live.

As we witness in our various communities that the king is soon to return and when he does, the world will acknowledge him for who he is. Jesus in this sermon has addressed anger, lust, oaths, and retaliation before we even get to this section here in our text. This text raises the bar concerning love quite a bit from what the Jews at least in their day would have deemed necessary. Look what I'm about to preach here is not easy, but it is the Word of God. It is the Word of our King, and He plowed the way for us.

He is our great pioneer in that sense. He is our Lord. I have been assigned the topic of love your enemies and in this text we will see that one of the ways that Jesus' followers are expected to to shine our lights in a dark world is by loving counter culturally. That is, loving those who may not like us. And only if we do this do we really reflect the love of our Heavenly Father.

I hope you could see some of that at least when we simply read through the text. So Jesus begins here and he says, you have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. Now Jesus quotes something here. There is quite a bit of debate as to what he quotes. Now of course, love thy neighbor, thou shalt love thy neighbor.

Now that's a direct quote from Leviticus 19, 18. There's no argument as to what he's quoting there. It's that last phrase, and hate thine enemy. That's where the debate lies. Now many good expositors believe that Jesus states a misinterpretation of the law from the religious teachers in the first century just just down the street.

Those that would hold this position believe the hearers of this day heard this talk all the time, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. Well there's no question that the religious teaching in Jesus' day was bad, but there may be a reason to reject that interpretation. Throughout this section, Jesus has consistently quoted them of old, them of old, the ancients, the Greek says, their ancestors long ago. Look at verse 21, you have heard that it was said by them of old, right? Verse 27, You have heard that it was said by them of old.

Verse 27, you have heard that it was said by them of old. Verse 33, again, you have heard that it has been said by them of old time. So Jesus has set a precedent here before we ever get to this text. Jesus, as the prophet like Moses, is giving authoritative instruction. I'm not.

I'm teaching. I hope I'm rightly going to preach this text, but I don't have any authority beyond what's said here in this book. And if I say something out of line with this book, you ought to just call it. But that's not our Lord. Jesus is giving authoritative instruction, inspiration to his followers, and he's really raising the bar above the mosaic code.

And now for what it's worth, The crowd seemed to recognize that Jesus was speaking by his own authority in making these commands, his commands. Look over in chapter 7 at verse 28, the end of the sermon. Chapter 7 verse 28, it says, it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings the people were astonished at his doctrine. Listen, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. What did the scribes do?

They did what I'm doing, right? They read and they tried to interpret. Jesus was far more than an interpreter of the law. He was not just some advanced scribe. He was not even the most advanced scribe.

No, Jesus is in fact God in the flesh. He is the prophet like Moses, and he is here commanding the people on how to live, and that with authority from heaven. And the people knew it. So again, what is he quoting then when he says, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy? What does he mean?

I think he's likely paraphrasing something from the law, and here's what I mean. Israel was actually called on to mistreat, in our thinking, to treat harshly their enemies under the law. Deuteronomy 23, an Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord, even to their tenth generation, they shall not enter the congregation of the Lord forever because they met you not with bread and with water in the way when you came forth out of Egypt and because they hired against the Balaam the son of Beorah and Pithor of Mesopotamia to curse thee. They treated you bad so you don't let them in. Deuteronomy 25, Here's another.

Remember what Amalek did to thee by the way when you were come forth out of Egypt, how he met thee by the way and smote behind most of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee when thou was faint and weary, and he, Amalek, feared not God. Therefore it shall be when the Lord thy God has given thee rest from all thy enemies round about in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it." listen, thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven, thou shalt not forget it. They're literally instructed to treat these enemies harshly. That could be said according to Lewis's definition, which I think is correct. We could call that hate, biblically.

It's not the love that Lewis just preached about, that self-sacrificing love. That means Jesus is here raising the bar for his followers then. Raising the standard for believers in this age. Now no matter where you find yourself in that whole debate, whether you're on the other side or this side, the instruction for Jesus in this passage is clear as crystal. Look at verse 44, but I say unto you, so they said of old, but I say to you, by the way at the end of this sermon he's going to say, he that doesn't keep these words of mine is like a man that has built his house on Sam." So this goes right along with what Lewis just preached for us.

But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. As Lewis literally just described a few moments ago, our generation simply has a very poor understanding of biblical love and that includes Christians. We are a sitcom generation. We have learned many of our ideas about love from the Hallmark channel or maybe worse like Harlequin romance books or something. People in our day speak of falling in and out of love regularly, we probably all said the same.

Wendy loves to share with people how she falls in love with me new every single day again. I made that up, that's not true, but it's a good illustration of what I'm talking about. The entire idea of love as merely an emotion is not what the Bible speaks about when it speaks about love. In scripture, love is an action verb and it points to the way we treat people. This passage will make that crystal clear.

If you didn't get it in the last passage, you missed it. It will become even more clear here. Jesus is not then telling you to fall in love with your enemies the way you fell in love with your spouse. He is not telling us we must get a warm fuzzy feeling in our stomach when our enemies walk into the room. We may get sick to our stomach when our enemies walk into the room, but what Jesus is telling us here is to treat our enemies well.

Again, under the Mosaic Code, the enemies of Israel could be treated harshly. Here, Jesus says his followers are to live to a higher standard. Back in the Beatitudes, Jesus said, blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. I'm sure you probably know this, but mercy in Alabama language is just not getting what you deserve. When you show mercy, blessed are the merciful, when you show mercy that means not giving someone that has wronged you what they might deserve.

Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy." Well this is a very similar calling here when Jesus says love your enemies, treat people well no matter how they may treat you. There's really no way to miss it. Jesus goes on to say, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. You can see then really that the call here is not so much to fall in love with your enemy like you did your newborn child, but to treat them well no matter how they treat you. If they curse you, what does Jesus say?

Bless them. If they hate you, do good to them. You see that's an action, that's not merely an emotion there, That's an action. If they hate you, you do good to them anyway. If they despitefully use you, and even if they persecute you, Pray for them.

Well, we can certainly see this in our Lord as he hung on the cross and he prayed, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Jesus did not say one thing and do another. He did not have that do as I say and not as I do mentality. No he commanded this here in this text and then he went on to live it out in pioneer fashion. Well what's the benefit of it?

I mean this is hard, right? It's like when our doctor says your cholesterol is too high you need to be exercising. Well I need a benefit because Exercise is tough. What's the benefit of this? What's the benefit of loving your enemy?

Because this is not gonna be easy. I mean, we prefer to have a fool me, want shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me mentality, right? Ain't nobody gonna do me like that. That's common at least down here in the redneck south. Well look, there's something far bigger than our ego.

Look at verse 45. So Jesus has said, love your enemies that in order that, that's the idea, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. He's not saying you earn your salvation by loving your enemies but he's saying you reflect the character of your father which is in heaven. For he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Jesus gets right to the heart of the why here.

Why should we love our enemies? Well, so that you'll be like your father in heaven. So that we may show ourselves to be the sons of our Father who is in heaven. Listen, our attitudes matter. Our actions matter.

They matter to God, but they don't only impact God, they impact those around us as well. I've come across way too many believers who seem to have been baptized in pickle juice or something, vinegar. But as Abraham Lincoln once said, quote, it is an old and true maxim that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." That's true. And here Jesus stresses that if we are to be like our Heavenly father, if we are to resemble him, if we are to represent him properly on this planet, then we must love our enemies. Here's where our modern definition of love as merely an emotion struggles to fit our doctrine and this passage right here.

I'm gonna tread really cautiously in saying what I'm about to say, but bear with me. We tend to think of love merely as an emotion and not an action at all. So when the Bible says in Romans 9, Esau have I hated, we see no possibility that God ever loved him at all in any way, form, or fashion. And let me be clear, salvifically, relationally, we might even say covenantally, Esau was hated. That is clear.

Romans 9 13, Jacob and our Lord the Esau have I hated. However, providentially, Esau received much good from the hand of God. If you go and read the Genesis account, you will find that God blessed Esau with a large family and loads of possessions. With that in mind, notice Jesus says here of the Father, for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Listen, Esau benefited from the sun rising up in the morning and the rain falling on his crops.

This is not some emotional brand of love. This is where our mind gets all messed up. We try to view God as black and white, like us. He's not like us. This sinning his sin to rise on the evil and good and sinning his reign on the just and the unjust, according to Jesus, that is a type of love.

But it's not an emotional brand of love. This refers to kind actions towards a person. Here's how David put it in Psalm 145. Psalm 145.9, the Lord is good to all. Good to all.

His tender mercies are over all his works. Now listen, David is not saying God is trying his best, wringing his hands to save everybody and they just won't let him. That is not at all what David is saying in Psalm 145. But David is saying, and so is Jesus here in this text by the way, that God is good even to the evil because the sun rises on them in the morning and the water drops on their crops. That is a type of biblical love and even Esau benefited from that.

If we don't acknowledge that, this text will make no sense at all. Here's the point. If the Father can bless the man who shakes his fist at God, can we not love the person that cut us off at the interstate or the intersection? Can we not love the person that dislikes our gospel? God is good to the evil, can't we be?

If we are to control our feelings and treat them well, then we are acting like our heavenly Father. If we aren't able to, we're not. That's Jesus' point here. And then notice Jesus squashes our normal attitude right here. We don't feel the force they would have felt in verse 46 and 47.

For if you love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brother and only, what do you more than others? Do not even the publicans so? Listen, publicans, Today we call them tax collectors.

You know, we don't like them. Now? They disliked them a whole lot more. Back then. Look in the Jewish mind, publicans, tax collectors, were the Benedict Arnold's that had sided with Rome against their own people.

Worse than that, almost every one of them were rotten, skimming off the top of the taxes, overcharging and padding their own pockets as they robbed their own people and everybody knew it and Rome didn't care as long as they got their money. So when Jesus says you're no better than the tax collector if they heard this and they heard it a lot more loudly than we often hear. So Jesus says here if you merely love the people that love you back, what do you really have more than the tax collector? This is another rhetorical question and it doesn't take a lot of thinking to come up with the answer. The answer is nothing.

Nothing. Myra Hindley was an English serial killer, primarily of young children. She, along with her boyfriend, Ian Brady, were guilty of five murders. Interestingly, Myra had a tan and white collie named Puppet. Investigators, in trying to ascertain the age of that dog by x-raying her teeth accidentally overdosed the dog with the anesthetic that they gave to it.

Of the dog's death, here's what Myra Hindley is quoted as saying, quote, I feel as though my heart has been torn to pieces. I do not think anything could hurt me more than this has." End quote. The serial killer. She never showed an ounce of remorse for any of those human children that they murdered. But she could not think of being hurt more than losing her dog.

Guys listen, if we just love our dog because our dog shows us affection, we're no better than Myrahim. Even serial killers love their dog. And maybe even their mama. Look, we must love with a supernatural love, with a counter-cultural love, something that actually makes an impression in this world, something that is out of the norm, something that sticks out. Look, this world is, in fact, darkness.

But we're supposed to be the light. But if the light is dark, how can it shine? It can't. Look, Jesus said earlier in this sermon, verse 16 of chapter 5, let your light so shine before me and listen, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. And in this passage we are looking at this morning, It is explained that one of the primary ways that we shine forth our light is by loving the unlovable, by loving our enemies.

Then the Capur, verse 48, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." It's likely that Jesus here is not merely talking about the section that we've looked at this morning. It probably goes all the way back to verse 21 when he began this this series of contrasts you have heard it was said by them of old but I say to you he probably goes all the way back to verse 21 that means this includes the section we've looked at today but it's not limited to it but I'm not gonna rehearse all of that I'm doing this I'm gonna stick to my task I am the person in between you and food. We're going to be cognizant of our time. I'm sure you've heard it explained that perfection in the Bible refers to something more along the lines of maturity often. We call that perfection and there is some truth to that, but here the standard is set high.

God doesn't mature. God is in fact perfect and loves perfectly. Humankind is not the standard, right? It's easy for me to look at one of you or somebody out there and say, well I'm doing a little better than they're doing. We can always find somebody seemingly doing worse than we are.

But that's not the standard Jesus gives here. Jesus says, be ye perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Humans are not the standard. God alone is the standard. And look, I'm not suggesting we don't have disciples in this life.

I mean, we do have that. But Jesus is the ultimate disciple. He's the ultimate mentor. He is the supreme example. A.W.

Pink writes of this here, quote, the moral excellency of the divine character is the copy and rule set before us, and nothing short of that is our sincere, ardent, and constant endeavor, end quote. Amen, amen. God is the standard. Jesus is telling us to aim for perfection, and that includes loving your enemies. This is quite reminiscent really of that that off-given command, be ye holy for I am holy.

I'm sure you've read that in the Old Testament and the New. You know God is holy in that he is other than quite literally everything. He is other than creation. And guys, here we are called to be other than the world around us, different, set apart. They despise and they hate, but we're called to love.

Now, quick disclaimer, this does not mean we approve sin or we condone sin. It does not call for entertaining false teaching. Those things actually are unlovable or unloving, I should say. One of the most unloving things you can do is tell somebody that their sin is okay. That's not what Jesus is calling for, but it does matter the way that we treat others, even those that have wronged us.

It matters. Now again I'm not certain I can explain how jarring this would have been to the audience the day these words were preached. They knew the law gave them place to treat Israel's enemies harshly, and I am dead level certain that they applied it personally. They may have even used the law as an excuse to mistreat people. But as one commentator writes, quote, treating certain groups harshly was part of the Mosaic era, but it is not part of the new covenant era in Jesus.

End quote. And guys listen, we've been given the Holy Spirit to enable us to do this. You say, this is hard. It is. It is hard.

Look, Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia, You've heard this, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. So if you caught it, but right there at the top of the list, number one, love.

And guys, an unforgiving, unloving attitude is a fleshly affection. And Paul said, they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Perhaps if we cannot get over ourselves, if we're all still our own hero, maybe there's something bigger going on. Maybe we've got a much deeper problem than we think. Maybe we have a heart problem.

Maybe we don't in fact know the Lord. But the good news is hate is a sin for which Jesus died. If this sermon has brought you to see you don't know Jesus, then I would encourage you to repent. Change your mind, turn against your own self, and trust him for salvation. Now, it's odd to me that this world hates our king.

They do not want him. They wouldn't have him for anything in the world, not to be political. But we have 350-ish million in the United States. And if you look at the two we got running, it's hard to fathom. It could be much worse.

And they wouldn't take the guy that's preaching love your enemies. They hate him. They'd rather have these two any day of the week. They will fight tooth and nail even when Jesus returns. Revelation 19, I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, their armies gathered to make war against him who sat on the horse.

Look, they may fight Jesus but they're not going to win. It's just going to be over. The strange thing is this passage before us today highlights what the world is like when Jesus reigns. Why would you not want to live in a world where the world loved those that wronged them? We don't just treat our neighbor well, we treat everybody well.

That's a wonderful place to live. Well listen, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father right now and he's coming one day and in this time our citizenship according to Paul in Philippians 3 is in heaven but we are commanded to live by these kingdom principles now because we are kingdom citizens now. How are we gonna make this happen? That's the real question, because this stuff ain't easy. We're gonna have to change something about our attitude if we're going to love our enemies.

What do we need? In a word, we need some humility. We need to be humble. Humility is defined as freedom from pride and arrogance. Here's maybe a better definition, a modest estimate of one's own worth.

We can't forgive somebody, it's probably because we think too much of ourselves. My father had a saying when he met an arrogant person. Here's what he'd say, you may have heard this before, I don't know, but for me it's original with my dad and I'll never forget him saying it. Here's what he always said. He said, I wish I could buy him for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth.

Listen, I've met not a few Baptists just like that right there. We need to get over ourselves. Guys, listen, if we are going to love our enemies, we need a better view of ourselves. Let me put it this way, we're gonna love our enemies, we need a scriptural view of ourselves. Paul wrote to the saints in Rome saying in Romans 5 8 that God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The Apostle John in his first epistle just after the text Lewis preached a second ago, chapter 4 verse 7, he says, beloved let us love one another for love is of God. Everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. Listen to this, in this was manifested the love of God toward us because that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him here in his love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins beloved if God so loved us we all also to love one another now there he's talking about loving the brethren but he is in fact telling us we need to take an account of who we are so that we can love properly and if we aren't loving properly we've got a wrong view of our own selves. That's where it starts.

So what do we have to glory in? I mean we believe in sovereign grace. You came to a Bible conference at a church that the name of it is sovereign grace, right? And if anything ought to make us gracious, it's a biblical understanding of sovereign grace. We didn't earn God's love, it was freely given to us.

And it was given to us by a holy God whom every single one of us had offended. When we were unable to forgive, to treat those who did not deserve it well, perhaps we need a reminder of what God has done for us. Surely the goodness if we can love other members of God's family, if that is true, Louis just preached a marvelous sermon on that, But it's not optional that we love our enemies too. It's not love a limited group of God's family if you get around to it, it's love all the brethren, but it's not only love the brethren, it's love your enemies. Listen, let me say it this way, this is the law of Christ.

And this is the way those of us who have committed to Jesus as Lord are to live. It's a high calling, but be encouraged if you are truly converted then the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you and you are then equipped to carry out this command. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the text. Thank you for the theme of this conference as we not only preach but listen, help us to apply the truths from your word that are presented to us today and help us to better be a reflection of your character when we walk out of these doors.

Thank you for Jesus who died for us even when we were enemies. Help us to remember to treat people well the way that you treated us. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.