In Paul Carrington's sermon 'Family Likeness; The Love of God,' the focus is on the final antithesis in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus challenges the prevailing religious norms by instructing his followers to love their enemies, in contrast to the teachings of the Pharisees. Carrington highlights the importance of reflecting the family likeness of God, emphasizing that true righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and is rooted in a love that is otherworldly and transformative. Historical examples, such as the Armenian genocide and the life of Patrick, are used to illustrate the power of God's love in action. The sermon calls Christians to not be ruled by earthly circumstances or the opinions of others but to embody the character of God, showing love and mercy even in the face of persecution and adversity. The ultimate goal is to align oneself not only with the prophets but with God himself, reflecting the divine nature in a world that often lacks compassion.

Good afternoon. We're going to be back in the Sermon on the Mount, so I'd ask if you can please open up to the fifth chapter of Matthew and find verse 43. It's going to be Matthew 5, 43. And we're going to be talking today about actually a lot of what we talked about this morning but specifically bearing the family likeness, the love of God. And so here we are really at the end of chapter 5.

And we're at, if you remember, the various antitheses that we've been talking about. We're at the final, the sixth antithesis. We've talked about resolving conflict when the Lord expanded on the commandment having to do with murder. We've talked about adultery. We've talked about divorce.

We've talked about truth-speaking and even retaliation. And now we're talking about this concept of the family likeness. And so let's hear from the King as he talks about the kingdom of heaven here in verse 43. It says this. Actually we'll start in verse 20 and then I'll just skip to 43, because that really helps us understand what the Lord is aiming at here.

He says, for I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. And then jumping down to 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, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father 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 who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so. Therefore, you shall be perfect just as your father in heaven is perfect. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Oh Lord, we come to you here again on this your day, Lord, and we just pray that you would make us a people moved upon by your word, Lord.

Give us ears to hear and Lord, I pray especially just for help to accurately convey your word. Lord, we pray that you would be magnified and glorified. It's your due, Lord, and it's your day, and we just pray that everything we say and do would be for your glory. Amen. Amen.

Well, here we are, and if you recall, starting with the Beatitudes, the Lord was making it very, very clear, right from the very words that came out of his mouth that the gates of heaven are shut to everyone who seeks to enter on their own merit. If you recall, you know, the the very first thing the Lord said is that the sinner must stoop when he said blessed are the poor in spirit, those who are acquainted with their own moral destitution and their own inability. And really the law has no way of declaring the sinner free. And so as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, there's only one recourse, and that is that you must be born from above. And that's really what the Lord has been doing as he's been declaring what it is to be a citizen of this new and beautiful kingdom.

And of course, with the prevailing religious climate of the day, the Lord Jesus is especially careful that his disciples don't fall into the pit of the Pharisees. And that's why we started in verse 20 because verse 20 really helps explain what the Lord is trying to do. And I think if we just summarize it, what is he doing? He's contrasting the perverse with the true you know their religion it masqueraded as peak holiness but it was all a sham that's what the Lord is really recovering and he came to set things right. And so what we find is that the Pharisees, they loved the God that they made, but they didn't really love the God that made them.

And that's gonna be the root of Jesus's confrontation with them really all throughout his ministry. And so some have called these verses that we have before as really the highest climax of Christian living That's what Martin Lloyd Jones had to say about verse 43 To verse 48. It's really the highest and the deepest and the hardest of all that we've come across thus far And it's I would say perhaps really the most difficult lessons are learned here, but the best commentary on these verses is really the Lord Jesus himself. And we'll see that, I think, as we go through. And so verse 43, we'll start there.

And the Lord, he says it like this. He says, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. And so in this antithesis, as we'll see, it's a bit different than the other ones that we've come across right the other ones for example with murder or adultery for example they were accurately stated but the understanding that the Pharisees were conveying was very truncated It was really the letter of the law, but without the spirit of the law, the intent, the design that God had behind those laws. You know, adultery, well, you thought it was just physical, according to the Pharisees. No, God's realm, it reaches right into the heart where no man can see.

Or when it came to things like murder, you thought it was just a physical act, but no, it had to do with hating your brother causelessly. But here, the Lord's confronting a teaching that is nowhere found in Scripture. Well, the first part is at least, you can go to Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18, and you shall see even there that the Lord said these words. He says, you shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." But the second part, they merged these two ideas together, the second part is nowhere to be found in Scripture, this idea of hating your enemy.

And perhaps they thought that hating your enemy, those that are outside of your group, might have captured a true devotion to God. And what's interesting, as you read through the Gospels, you notice a kind of a bit of a pattern. How careful, how many times does the word neighbor come up on the lips of the Pharisees? They were so careful to kind of really narrow what it meant to be a neighbor and who was not a neighbor. They were really careful around this.

You really see this come out when the Lord Jesus himself, he sits at the well in that little town, that Samaritan town of Sychar, and he meets that woman. From her words you kind of get a sense of the tension that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans and probably the Jews and anyone else that wasn't a Jew. And that was kind of the idea is that while you can have this love for your own, it stops there and you have full right. In fact, you even have a duty to hate the enemy. And of course in a climate where the Romans were the oppressive force you could imagine you know just the tensions that existed there but what the Lord is doing really on verse 44 on down is he's flipping this prevailing view of righteousness on its head and whatever had masqueraded as true righteousness, forget it.

In verse 44 and 45 he says, that's what has been said. But I say to you, love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. And pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

That you may be the sons of your Father in heaven. For he makes his Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." Really, I mean, it's really quite simple. He's saying you have enemies. As a citizen of the kingdom, your duty is to love them. There are those who curse you.

Bless them. There are, you have haters, people that just despise you. He's telling you to do good to them. And those that spicably use you and persecute you, you're to pray for them. And I think if you take a careful look at church history all the way down, what you find is this mind-bending, This perplexing teaching that the Lord is conveying here, it works itself out.

It's really, you know, the love of God is really the weapon of choice that God has used down through the ages to conquer And to spread the kingdom. You know, you might say, well, it's the Word of God. And that's true. But the propellant behind going and proclaiming the Word of God is the love of God. Even the idea that God would send His only begotten son, what is the propellant behind Jesus coming?

God so loved the world. You see, so love is such a central thing. It's so, so important. And just keep that in mind today that God has assigned love as the great instrument of conquest in the world and He's commanded us to do these things. And notice in all four things that we just read that these are things that God does every single day.

And also notice that these four things were perfectly exemplified in the way that the Lord lived his life when he was walking the earth. And by conducting yourself in this way, what are we finding? This is an impossible way, isn't it? It's not a way that a man who's in his natural state can live. It's this otherworldly way.

But what you're doing in living this way is that you're reflecting your Father in heaven. That's what the Lord really wants to hammer home. He says that you may be sons of your Father 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. I love the way the Lord puts that.

He says, his Son. He makes his son. God can do as he pleases. It's his son, but he shines it on all of humanity. And then he not only does that, but Jesus says he sends rain as well.

And this doesn't take away from the fact that there is going to be a final judgment, that there is something called eternal damnation. God isn't a universalist by any stretch, but consider the season of grace that we find ourselves in right now. That's really something to consider. You know, right now, just think about it, here we are in Wake Forest, we're in church, and as you sit here right now, there are avowed God haters on vacation somewhere in the world, some of the most beautiful spots in the world, perhaps on a boat, enjoying the finest scenes, eating the finest food, drinking the finest wines, without a thought of God. But God is still giving them a beautiful day.

You fly over the country, or even fly over a pagan nation and you look down and you'll see this beautiful patchwork of farmland watered from heaven. Tells you something about God. Even as I mentioned, God-hating countries are filled with food, aren't they? And they have an abundance of natural resources under the ground or on the ground. And what's so amazing is that right now, some of you might even be suffering illness or loss.

But there are despisers of God that are the very picture of health God has given them health those that defy him. He still blesses their crops and their businesses their bodies and their bank accounts at least in this age of grace. That's really what God is doing. And this fact, this simple fact, this thing that God is doing in this age, sometimes that we can't quite understand, it almost caused the feet of the psalmist Asaph. Remember that young man, Psalm 73?

It almost caused his feet to slip when he tried to work us out. How is it I'm striving to serve God and I love God, but things aren't going the way I planned. And these people on the other side who don't even have God on their lips, or if they do, they're mocking and they're prospering in the earth. Until he went to the house of God, then he understood their end. But I would ask you, you know, just to be honest, have you ever thought or maybe said in your mind, if I were God, based on whatever situation you're confronting, have you ever said that?

Even some of you children, you know, mushroom cloud over the Raleigh Pride Parade. Or strike down that atheist debater right there on the stage and let everyone fear God or I know I just how I'd humble her based on how she's treating me or give him an unforgettable case of hemorrhoids that he'd never whatever it is you might look at someone and if I were God, if only I were God and really when we think in these terms we're kind of like John, you remember, and his brother, Lord shall we call down fire from heaven and burn up this city and of course the Lord rebukes them you don't even know what spirit you're of but what's so amazing to me is God he's calling us to be like him and he's not like me he's not like us I want to see something happen and I want to see it happen now. But isn't that a bit self-righteous? Because if God were to do the same, where would I be? So God is in a different category and yet Jesus is telling us that you're a son, to be like your father.

This family likeness is really what he's after and what that gives maximum glory to God. And so what's so interesting is that all of us know how to become a son or how to become a daughter of God. And we could all right now wax eloquent on the doctrine of justification. We could sit around and discuss imputation and propitiation for hours and all of these different things. But what does it really mean to resemble the father?

It's another matter. What does it mean to act like the Son? You know, to bear the family likeness. I think that's kind of what Mr. Brown was getting at a little bit this morning.

It's not just a doctrinal proposition, but there's something more to it. And I think that's what the Lord is really teaching here. And I think this is one thing I just ask you to come away with here. I think what the Lord is saying in these two verses 44 and 45 is this, is that God doesn't treat people on the basis of how they treat him. He's driven by a principle outside of his enemies.

There's coming a day, but he's driven by an altogether different principle. And we get a little bit of a preview of that in Ezekiel chapter 33 where the Lord says, as I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. This is the spirit of our God. And you know, I just finished reading a historical book on the Armenian genocide. Not Armenian, but the Armenian genocide.

And there was a part of this book, as I was reading, that I had to just kind of put the book down and reflect and it was this account here, you know, Armenia is a, Armenia just for the children, it's a small little country, it's about a quarter the size of North Carolina, very small, three million people and it's tucked kind of between Turkey and Azerbaijan there in the Middle East and it was actually the first country to declare itself a Christian country in 301 AD before even the Council of Nicaea. It had become a Christian nation with a Christian king. But by the 1900s the Ottoman Empire, you know Turkey, it began persecuting the Armenian Christians horribly and very first thing they did, the Turks did, and this is a good lesson for any freedom-loving people, they confiscated all the weapons of the Armenians. Don't give up your weapons. And then they began imposing stiff taxes just for Christians, the Jizya tax, they made life really, really difficult And then it kept getting worse and worse.

And then the Turks embarked on a series of massacres. Nearly every major Armenian inhabited town faced some sort of massacre there in Eastern Turkey. And in the end, this is in the 1890s, in the end of this first wave of persecution, about 100, 000 to 300, 000 Armenians have been slaughtered in some of the most horrendous, horrific ways you could ever imagine. Second wave would come in 1915 where 1.5 million of them would be killed, even more. And you know what's amazing here is that all they had to do To escape death and persecution was to convert to Islam.

And if you did that, you would be fine. In fact, in many cases, all that was required, you don't even have to say anything, but There would be a group, a family sitting in a room or in a public area and all you had to do was lift a finger and you would basically be declaring yourself a Muslim just like that and you'd be fine. And the cases of those who refused to bow the knee and refused to lift the finger, they're amazing. But there's one particular one that jumped out to me. There was this one Armenian theological student.

He had now become a Protestant. And he was miraculously rescued from a Turkish prison by a British missionary who kept lobbying the British Council and asking and asking. And the British Council finally persuaded the prison to let him go and this young man was freed. But For a whole year he was in prison and he was tortured daily and then deprived of food. It was unbelievable.

Well, upon release, this missionary took this young man, this theological student, and he brought him to another town. And in this town, this young man, this theological student, he met another man, a British man, who then tells the story of what actually happened. This man happened to be in the country for about a decade, and his wife was Armenian and all of that. He wasn't a missionary, but there he was living. And after witnessing all the atrocities that took place, he was in his 20s, this British young man, and his hair had turned completely white.

That's how bad it was. The levels of stress he was under was just unbelievable. He looked like he'd aged two decades by that time. And then this British man, he sees the bodily condition of this Armenian young man, and he concluded that, hey, this young guy is not going to be around much longer in this world. He was emaciated.

He was scarred, all of that. And when he asked him about his health, the young man said to him smiling, if you had seen me when I first came out of prison, you would wonder at the change. In other words, he's like 100 times better than what he was when he first came out. And the British man was looking at him, and he was wondering what he possibly could have looked like then. And then he goes on to account of how he felt.

Christ so near to him when he was in the prison, he was recounting his experience, and he said, I thought I knew something before of the mystery of communion with him, but I felt like I had never tasted it until then. His sufferings brought out something he had never experienced. And the conversation continued and then it changed to the future. What are you gonna do now that you're you're free and you're out of prison? And the young man said well there are many I believe that God wants me to help and immediately the British man I mean he's living there and he knows of all the stories of the survivors and all these things, now homeless, many of them injured, every single person had lost multiple family members.

And he tells the Armenian man that, he says, yes, he says, but there are those more worthy of our pity than even they." And of course, the British man was shocked, but then, yes, of course, he began thinking of the poor women that had been taken into harems, Muslim harems, and that's really an affliction even greater than death, And so he conveyed that to the Armenian man. He says, yes, but there are still those more pitiable. He says, no man, no man cares for the soul of the Turk. The British man, he's recounting this many years later, he says, I felt like I had been shot when I heard that. And he went, the Armenian man walked away and the British man just found himself looking after this man and wondering what this man was.

How was he able to be like this? He was utterly bewildered. He had learned a new lesson though he was a Christian he had learned a new lesson in the school of Christ on what it means to love your enemies you know but as I mentioned church history has so many accounts of this you know what would you make of Patrick returning to the the land of his enslavement, where he spent six years, often in isolation, hungry, in back-breaking cold, watching over sheep, sometimes having to fend off wolves, all with the purpose of reaching those who had enslaved him. You know, do you ever think that Paul had that memory of Stephen, remember that, with his upturned face as he uttered his last words, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing. You know, you can look down through church history, even recently, Richard Wormbrand.

He spent 17 years in prison. But you know, for three years, he was in solitary confinement. And he was kept underground in solitary confinement. And each night, there in a dark prison cell, he'd deliver a sermon to an unseen congregation, preaching the gospel to no one but himself. And after a beating, his captor, you know, peers through the prison great door and hears his own name on the lips of the man he just beat.

You've got to wonder at these types of things. And of course, as I mentioned, there's no better example than our Lord Jesus Christ himself, is there? All through his life, but especially when he was on the cross with these men and their head wagging and all the mocking the jeering people gambling for his clothing. And he looks down from the cross and he says, forgive them father, they don't know what they're doing. You know, there's something that is otherworldly about the love of God that we are called to and so these four applications they confront the new made man don't they they they confront the justified man and I just want you to see there's something deeper that the Lord is trying to get out here you know he's declaring that the new man is ruled by heaven not by earth you're not ruled by circumstances you're not ruled by below but you're ruled from above That's what it means to be a Christian in the kingdom.

You're no longer ruled by another person, but you're ruled by God himself. And just as God's behavior doesn't depend on theirs, Jesus is saying that yours shouldn't either. That's really what he's after. And what's so beautiful is when we first began, we discovered in the Beatitudes, right? You remember when the Lord said that to be persecuted for righteousness' sake is to align you with the prophets.

But now he's gone even further and when you bless and you pray for those who persecute you you're aligning yourself with God. And that's what the Lord is trying to convey to us. And I just want to ask all of us here, have you ever thought just how much you're ruled by others? What they think about you? Those who may not like you or care that much for you?

You know, I think of our social media saturated world, and this is what one commentator said. He says, as long as a man is living for himself, he is sensitive. Are you sensitive? Well, what does he mean? You're watchful, You're jealous.

He is envious and therefore always reacting immediately to what others do and Other people not God Are now the controlling influence in your life Either they look at you a certain way or they don't look at you a certain way. They say something with a certain tone or they don't. And you're, do you notice what's happening? You're being ruled from below and not from above. This is what the Lord is after and he's saying no longer be free and be like your father that is in heaven.

And so this goes back to what I was saying Christ is capturing here the family likeness. It's all impossible for the natural man to do these things and that's exactly the point here is that the righteousness, your righteousness is of an entire different quality than that of the natural man. That's what the Lord was saying there in verse 20. And so perhaps now you can begin to see when you start examining the lives of men and women who we've read about or maybe you know somebody in your life but why this is called the highest the deepest and really the hardest of all the things that we've heard thus far because we need to remember one thing though that that the Christian man isn't somebody who simply just tries harder right and just okay I'm gonna double up but these are things that are worked in us as we spend time with the Lord and he's not a man who just makes greater moral effort than everybody else who just happens to be much more disciplined, but it is someone who sat at the feet of Christ and who desires to follow hard after him and he wants that other nature that's dwelling in him to have the preeminence and not his old man That's always jousting and looking for opportunity.

It's the Christian man is someone who never lives far from this fact that I was forgiven and shown mercy when I didn't deserve it. So how should that condition how I look at everybody else around me. And so you have enemies? Is there someone, maybe even in the church, who's not particularly fond of you? Maybe someone who shows you contempt every time that you see them.

What does the Lord say? Love them. Hard. This is God's weapon of choice. Love.

What about news that gets back to you that someone maybe has maligned you or cursed you? What does Jesus say here? He says bless them. Wow. What if you sense someone just despises you and hates you?

They curse you. He says do good to them. And of course it gets even more out in the open and someone starts to spitefully use you, they're not even hiding it anymore, and persecute you. And Jesus says, he starts off in chapter 5, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, But then he goes on to say, pray for your persecutor. And some of us are too clever.

And we might start to pray maybe in precatory prayers. You know, Psalm 58, oh Lord, break their teeth in their mouth. Let them be like the snail which melts away as it goes. But no, the Lord is saying, no, pray for them. Pray for them.

And this is what Christ, he demonstrated this really all the way through. But look what he says here. And he wants you to understand, if you're a new man and you're claiming to be a new man Look what he says. He asked these series of questions these four questions. He says for if you love those who love you What reward have you do not even the tax collectors do the same And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?

Do not even the tax collectors do so? And so he's calling us to something different. The worst of men can be kind to those that love them. What does that show that you're any different? And Martin Lloyd Jones, he put it like this.

He says, the Christian is essentially a unique and special kind of person. This is something which can never be emphasized sufficiently. There is nothing more tragic than the failure on the part of many professing Christians to realize the uniqueness and the special character of a Christian. He is a man that can never be explained in natural terms. And when I went through looking at that Armenian man, doesn't that come to your mind?

How would you explain that man? How would you explain Patrick? How would you explain Richard Wormbrand? How would you explain you could fill in the blank with any number of people? It can't be explained other than they have been with Jesus and they have tasted and they've seen and so in verse 48 we see therefore you shall be perfect just as your father in heaven is perfect And I read verse 20 for a purpose.

See, Jesus doesn't just want you to be different than the Pharisees, but he wants us to be like God. Not just different, I'm not like the, no, are you like God your father? And we live in a cruel world and it's in this world that the character of God shines forth all the more brightly, the family likeness. How do you display the family likeness that you have been with Jesus, unless there's cruel circumstances or difficult circumstances, the way people treat you, that demonstrate that you have a father that is in heaven? And this is really how the Roman Empire was conquered I think you could also say this was how Ireland was conquered by this spirit that propelled a man out of love to go and proclaim the truths of the scripture because you know to the non-Christian, God is just God.

But to the believer, God is now Father. And so the question is, is there something of the Father in you? That divine nature. Well, that's what the Lord Jesus is really after. He calls us to take up his father as our example and to live in this cruel world as sons, as daughters of God.

So welcome to the kingdom. Welcome to the family of God where it's your duty to bear that family likeness in the world. So the key thing is just don't begin to calibrate your behavior to the way that you're treated or what's said about you or whatever, but rather calibrate yourself to the living God. That's what the Lord is after here. Well, let's pray together.

Lord, who is sufficient for these things, Lord? We can't do any of these things by ourselves. And Lord, what I find is that this just presses me more to lean on you and to ask you, Lord, more and more that this spirit would be mine. Oh Lord and not only mine but all of ours, fathers, brothers and sisters, we pray that you would help us to understand what it is to walk after you, oh Lord, and to love to be citizens of your kingdom. Lord, thank you for your word.

We pray that we would be people moved by it and helped by it. So strengthen us now Lord as we go into the rest of our day and and help us to walk as sons and daughters of you to bear that family likeness wherever we go and whatever circumstances come come against us whoever speaks against this Lord that we would respond in a different way give us hearts aflame to glorify you in this world Amen.