Well, let's open to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6. And I don't know how far we're going to get this morning. It's my prayer that the Holy Spirit is going to intervene and teach us and move us by this Word this morning. You can see the title, Are We Living as Christ Commands? So we're going to read from verses 27 of chapter 6 through verse 35. Luke 6, 27. But I say to you who hear, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also. Whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you. And whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. And hear this, for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Lord, You presented a great, great challenge to us. A great, great personal challenge to me. Lord, we look at these words and see how short some of us anyway have fallen. And Lord, our prayer as we look into Your Word this morning is that You would miraculously work in our hearts. Empower, enable, cause us to respond in the way that You say here You want us to. The way we know You want us to. In Christ's name, Amen. Last Lord's Day, Luke began to present his first extensive account of Jesus' preaching. We looked at four beatitudes in Luke and four woes. And I want to remind us again, this is not a transcript of an entire sermon. One could read this sermon out loud in just a few minutes. Jesus preached for far longer. But these are Jesus' words. Words that the gospel writers wrote down. Were what they knew to be true. What the Holy Spirit had inspired them to set down for their readers. And in this whole passage last week, and this morning, and what we'll see in the weeks to come, are entirely contrary to what we know to be the natural man. They're contrary to human nature. They're contrary to worldly thinking and worldly wisdom. These four Beatitudes that Jesus started with. And He's saying, blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who are hated, ostracized for His sake, those who are weeping, And woe to those who are rich, well-fed, those who laugh, those who are thought well of by all men. These are entirely contrary to all human thinking. But we saw last week poverty of spirit, remorse over one's sin, and a hunger for a righteousness that none of us possesses are the very things that drive us to the Savior. That's where genuine saving faith is born. And Jesus wasn't saying that a lack of earthly riches was a guarantee of salvation, guarantee of eternal life. Neither would be the hatred of men a guarantee of eternal life. And at the same time, Jesus wasn't saying that every rich person is automatically eliminated from any hope of heaven. He's not saying those who are well-fed or happy now in this life are without hope. that popularity in this life disqualifies a man from heaven. But Jesus was saying that those who recognize their true condition, their lack of any righteousness of their own, their total inability to earn the blessing of God, are the very people who will receive His blessing. Humility is not in much fashion these days. It needs to be. It certainly needs to be in His church. We, Jesus is going to show us, need to stop sitting in judgment as though we are morally superior to all of the unbelieving out there. To all of those who oppose us and hate us. And hate Christ for that matter. Those who humble themselves, Jesus says, yours is the kingdom of God. So while the blessings and woes are contrary to all human intuition and human values, God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. This is what we've seen week after week now in 1 Corinthians. God has made foolish the way that we normally and naturally think. Now as much as we looked at last week's passage and saw that it was so contrary to the way of men's thinking, Jesus moves a whole nother distance this morning. He goes far beyond where He was even last week. He has many more things to say to His listeners that are entirely contrary to the wisdom of the world. to the ways of fallen man. And I want us to understand before we go into this passage, Jesus is talking above all else about the attitude, the heart attitude that must be within each one of His disciples. He says some things here. He's not telling us to give away every single item we own. He's not telling us that we have to starve ourselves and our families to death. He's talking about what's inside us. And what's inside us is a natural inclination to hate those who hate us. To not love them. To not do good to those who hate us. So look at these words here in verse 27 through 30. But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Now we may end up spending the whole morning on just those words. But there's more here. And it all is of a piece. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you, slaps you on the cheek, offer him the other also. Whoever takes away your coat, don't withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Now I ask you, are any of these things not contrary to the wisdom of the world? Are they not contrary to the way we naturally think? To love one's enemies is entirely contrary to the fallen human nature. But you know Jesus, just for some perspective here, Jesus died for those who were yet His enemies. So it's possible. God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet His enemies. That's not natural for us humans, but it is in the nature of God. Even for those who have been born again of the Spirit, to love one's enemies does not come easily, if at all. So these teachings here this morning challenge us to a new kind of hard attitude. We're going to be challenged to set aside that hatred we revel in. That moral superiority that we revel in. That we take comfort in. That Pharisaic kind of moral superiority that can come upon any one of us. Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is not the same as the fallen world. The kingdom of heaven is of a completely different and greater righteousness than the fallen world. In the kingdom of heaven, self-interest does not rule there at all. And Jesus taught that a true disciple of His is about the work of His own sanctification. So the challenge to love And to do good, to genuinely do good to those who genuinely hate us, seems impossible. If we're honest, it seems impossible. But we know from the Scriptures that that is exactly what it is to be Christ-like. And you should know, I'm talking to myself as much as to anybody here. This is as great a struggle as Christ could present to us in this life. He commands us here to think and to act not as we did before Christ, before His Spirit indwelled us. Not to act as our enemies act toward us, but from a transformed heart that He gave us to be not as they are, but as our Heavenly Father is. Look, this is where we all end up is as His heavenly Father is. As our heavenly Father is. Romans 8, 29. I have a feeling I'm going to be jumping all over the place here today. Romans 8.29 says not only did he predestine those he chose to glory, he predestined those he chose and called to be conformed to the image of Christ. So that he would be the firstborn of many brothers. So we talk about the change that occurs when a sinner is renewed to spiritual life. The Holy Spirit comes and indwells us. And what happens? We come to realize that the Son of God did indeed come down into the created world. Became a man and died to free us from an eternity in hell. While we were yet His enemies. And that He has accomplished for us adoption into the family of God. He's given us assurance of eternal life and glory. That being the case, the characteristics that should rule in our heart should not be our moral superiority, or our hatred, or our disgust with others. But gratitude toward God and a desire to honor Him by living in obedience to Him. And if you're looking for how He wants us to live, here it is. This is what it is to be obedient to Him. To love our enemies. To do good to those who hate us. To scrub that hate out of our hearts. Regardless of the reason or where it came from. Love your enemies. do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Now back in verse 22, you can look down. Jesus said, if you're hated for the sake of the Son of Man, You are blessed. If you're hated because you're a believer. I hate you Christians. You're blessed. But here in verse 27, Jesus makes a far broader statement of how a Christian should think and act toward all those who hate us. Regardless of the reason. Regardless of the reason. Now look at Matthew 5.43. In Matthew 5.43, we see that love your enemies was not what the Jews were being taught by the scribes. No. They taught, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. That's what they were teaching. Now the rabbis might have drawn such an inference from passages like Deuteronomy 23, beginning in verse 3. The command was, no Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord, none of their descendants, even of the tenth generation. Stay away from those Moabites and Ammonites. None of them shall ever enter the assembly of the Lord. Because they didn't meet you with food and water on the way when you came out of Egypt. Because they hired against you Balaam the son of Baor from Pethor of Mesopotamia to curse you. This is what Jesus told them. He told them to come out from all of those pagan nations and be separate from them. Nevertheless, the Lord your God was not willing to listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you because the Lord your God loves you. And look what he says in verse 6. You shall never seek their peace or prosperity all your days. Well, you can see where from this the rabbis might have gotten the idea. Go ahead, hate your enemies. And Leviticus 19, beginning in verse 17. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen. You may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. So you can misinterpret, misunderstand what God's saying. And end up saying something like, hate your enemies. But Jesus is clearing that up for us here in this passage. Don't go running to Deuteronomy 23 and say, okay, I can go ahead and hate whoever I want. Don't do that. You see, hatred is a terrible sin. You see, because hatred is to disobey Jesus Christ. And not only that, the law. This wasn't all new, what Jesus was saying. The law always emphasized love over vengeance. The next verse in Leviticus 19, you shall not take vengeance. Don't bear any grudge against the sons of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I'm the Lord. Now the rabbis, they overlooked the command of love here and underscored the words, the sons of your people. As if God had said all the others, you can go ahead and hate. And this is what they taught. This is how different this was that Jesus was saying, love your enemies. And it would go over just about the same way today. Given the near constant state of war that Israel and Judah were in. Sometimes with each other. We can see how these ideas developed. Hate your enemies. But they were wrong. Christ teaching here may have been new to the ears of His hearers, but it did not actually contradict the law. God doesn't contradict Himself. The Old Testament explicitly prohibited personal revenge. Left that to the civil courts. And if the Jews had actually and truly understood God's meaning in His law, they would have understood that Jesus was not teaching something that was entirely new in the law. Exodus 23, verse 4, God commanded that one should render assistance to his enemy. Look at the passage. If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you, notice the same two categories, enemy and one who hates you. If you see the donkey of one who hates you, lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him. You shall surely release it with him. So this wasn't brand new. What does Jesus mean, though, when He says we must love all men? Many words, at least four words in Greek for love. The first one is a word for natural affection. Maybe between sisters. Storge. And then there's eros, romantic love. Philia, the love of friendship, brotherly love. But the word Jesus used here isn't any of those. No, the word here is agape. The kind of love God has for us. It's the love of those in whom we see nothing deserving of our love. It's love that's not in response to any merit that we perceive in the one love. It's love without regard to any benefit to ourselves. It's a pure form of love. A godly kind of love. And it sees all the hatefulness and wickedness of the enemy. It feels his slings and arrows. And it responds, like Christ does, with a loving heart. With only one desire. And what's that? To see his enemy saved from his sin. When we see the things that disgust us in the world, do we stop and think, and is our first and only reaction, God, please save them? Or is it, God, send down your vengeance? The motive of this kind of love, this Christ-like love, is the desire to see God's blessings come upon even one's enemy. What did we do to deserve eternal life? What did we do to deserve having our slate completely cleaned? Are we really better than those who hate us now? I don't think so. Lenski says it's the desire to see God's blessings come upon even one's enemy, to desire for him the highest possible good. And this is what Jesus does. It's what He did. It's what He still does. And His love extends into every kind of sinner, every kind of wretch, every kind of person. There are things God says are perversions, abominations. We hate those things because God says He hates those things. And they are perversions. They are abominable to us. Our response to those people should be to pray to God earnestly that He will save them. I'm not doing any better in this regard than any of us. But we have to hear our Lord here this morning. We have to hear Him. There's nobody else to pray for the sinners of this world. And the sinners of this world hate Christ and His people. And Jesus says it's not enough to refrain from hating. He says, do good to those who hate you. One writer says, your favorable disposition of heart and mind must reveal itself in deeds. Now remember, these people were under Roman oppression for a century and a half. Well, a century anyway. And to be told they must love their Roman oppressors. was no less distasteful to them than for us to be told to love our godless leaders today. But we must pray, not for their destruction, but that God would save them and change them. Look, we were in that group. Don't ever forget that. We were in that group. But God, by His love for us while we were enemies, called us out of that group. And we must not think Jesus didn't realize how bad it was going to get. I love that group of futurists who thinks that, you know, boy, it's never been like this, really. Take a visit to Sodom and Gomorrah and see what they look like today. Too bad we don't have some videotape of the day after the flood when Noah got out of the ark and nobody was there. Now Jesus knew He knew how bad it would get for all these 6,000 years. And what He wants us to do is to pray for those who are His enemies, our enemies, and to desire His blessing upon them. This is what is doing good to those who hate you. Lenski puts this into focus. And I'm going to read his words. He says, I cannot like a filthy, vicious beggar and make him my personal friend. I cannot like a low, mean criminal who may have robbed me and taken the life of my spouse. I cannot like a false, lying, slanderous fellow who has vilified me over and over again. But I can, by the grace of Jesus Christ, love them all. I can see their condition and I can desire, even work to remove what is wrong in them. And I can pray that God will save them in that way. In that way, we can do them good. Our Father's not looking down and saying, how are you doing according to the world's standards? He's saying, how are you doing according to the standards of my kingdom? And what is the Christ-like way to respond to the cursing of others? It's to speak kindly to them and to ask God's blessing on them. They curse you, what are you going to do? Curse back? What's that going to do? It keeps the cycle going. We're called to end the cycle of criticism, cursing. I trust we're beginning to see here that Jesus is not at all like self-indulgent fallen men. That's not what Jesus is like. He's nothing like that. He's nothing like anybody we know, or like we are for that matter. And He says, if you're indwelled by the Spirit, you shouldn't be like that either. You shouldn't be like self-indulgent fallen men. You should be like Me. He's calling us to be like Him. Do we hear Him? Do we hear Him? This is what God's doing, as I mentioned earlier. He's conforming us. He called us to be conformed, to be like Christ. So we must, first of all, earnestly seek Christlikeness every day. Every day. That's one reason why we must come to the Word of God and spend some time. Give Him a half hour every day. So He speaks to us. We're not going to become Christlike or godly by reading the newspaper. or by watching the TV. No, the only place that works in our hearts to make us godly is this book. And prayer, time with God. So nobody said it, but I'll ask the question. What happened to an eye for an eye? What happened to that? Unbelievers love to quote that Old Testament verse. Well, what we have in Jesus' teaching here this morning, it's another in a long list of illustrations why we can't just leaf through the Old Testament, pick out a few verses out of context of the whole counsel of God, and somehow arrive at truth. Doesn't work that way. Can't arrive at God's truth and God's will on any passage in Scripture, how it does or doesn't apply to us, without properly understanding all that the Bible says about whatever that particular subject is. So, eye for an eye. Look at Exodus 21, 22. Here's their law. If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, but there's no injury, he's going to be fine. He shall pay as the judges decide. Not as the husband decides, as the judges decide. If there's any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But the penalty is to be applied and carried out by the court, by the judges. Leviticus 24, 17. If a man takes the life of any human being, he shall surely be put to death. One takes the life of an animal, shall make it good, life for life. This is the law of compensation. If a man injures his neighbor just as he has done, so it shall be done to him. And again, fracture for fracture, eye for eye. But again, enforced by the court. Matthew 5.38. Jesus addressed this. You've heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now here's what Jesus has to say about this. But I say to you, do not resist. Do not take a stand against an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to him who asks of you. Do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. Eye for an eye was the law in ancient Israel. It's not the law in the kingdom of God. So in our passage this morning, Jesus shows us that that law, eye for an eye, the law of lex talionis, the law of retaliation, was not given as a way to conduct our personal relations with one another. It was a law to have an orderly society, to purge the evil from the midst of the people, as the Word says, to regulate their conduct. and to give rise to societal order. And the purposes of this law are stated in Deuteronomy 19. Was each man to take vengeance for himself? You know the answer. No, it was for the judges. Deuteronomy 19.18, the judges shall investigate thoroughly. And if the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him just as he intended to do to his brother. And thus, here's the purpose, you shall purge the evil from among you. It was church discipline in the wilderness. The rest will hear and be afraid and will never again do such an evil thing among you. Remember, God created this people through whom to send the Savior. So the law stated principles of administration of justice for society. Not principles of personal ethics. Not principles of personal morality. But what had happened in Israel and then in Judah, the law that was given for the social administration of justice had become the basis of their ethical thinking. They started to think this way. That's why you got rabbis out there saying, hate your enemies. That wasn't God's intention at all. The kingdom of heaven operates on an entirely different level of righteousness. And He's called us into this kingdom, by the way, before you say, well, okay, that's out there. No, no. This is what He's called us into if you're a true believer. He's not teaching us here how to govern in the fallen world. That's not what this passage is about at all. Civil law of the Torah has got no application to personal relationships in the kingdom of God. We need to learn to understand the distinction between the two. In the kingdom of God, this greater righteousness reigns. Writer named Caird says, he who retaliates against evil thinks he's manfully resisting aggression. In reality, what's he doing? He's making an unconditional surrender to evil. See, by responding to hate with hate, we give Satan the victory. Jesus says as the people of God, these values do good to the one who hates you. Love your enemy. These values should describe Not only the way we live, but especially the way we think. And look, as hard as this is. And I know it's hard. It's hard for me. In verse 29, it doesn't get any easier. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other. Now there are those who think this speaks of a physical assault. I believe they're incorrect. He's talking about an insult here. Natural and unregenerate heart, though, is self-centered. Wants to stand on its rights. That's what the natural man does. He stands on his rights. You're not going to do that to me. Jesus says this is not the way of any disciple of Mine. Jesus isn't telling us to allow ourselves to be beaten to a bloody pulp. It has nothing to do with a physical assault. has to do with the formal insult of the slap on the cheek. You can picture those guys with the French outfits. And they got the little gloves. And they take the glove off. And they kind of give the other person one of these. Yeah, that's what he's talking about here. But in ancient times, a slap to the right cheek was considered a great insult. Compensation had to be paid, either monetary compensation, or in some cultures, if you insulted someone in this way, they could cut off your right ear. That was the way to compensate somebody. But Jesus says, when insulted, don't respond with an insult. Metaphorically, offer the other cheek as well. Again, he's not saying just let yourself get beaten to death. And we saw in Romans, thought of of course, as a doctrinal treatise. But Paul gave us five blessed chapters on how to live as a Christian. Paul says in Romans 12, overcome evil with good. Don't contend with evildoers. Overcome their evil with good. Look at Romans 12, 18. If possible, he says, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Now that doesn't mean if a guy comes up and says something nasty to you, okay, he's broken the peace. No. He's going to tell us what Jesus is telling us. Respond with good. Never take your own revenge, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it's written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him a drink. For in doing so, you'll hear burning coals on his head. But verse 21, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. If we respond in evil, we respond in hatred, revenge, any of those things, we fail to overcome evil. Evil overcomes us. So Jesus is telling us, if we're to become Christ-like, Well I know you don't want to hear this. We must learn to overlook wrongs done to us. We should not, when insulted or hated by others, break out into hatred ourselves. But respond to the evil done us with a hope and a prayer for their repentance. I told you it wasn't going to get any easier. But Christlikeness, folks. And look, these are fruits of the Spirit. Here they are. Christlikeness requires patience, forbearance, willingness to forego our rights. Think, Christ didn't have a right to not have to go and die for our sins? A willingness to suffer wrong. in order that we may overcome evil with good, that we may honor the name of our Lord and leave vengeance to Him. So turning the other cheek here means to show in attitude and word and deed that one is not filled with the rancor, the hatred that the other person displayed, but with a Christlike spirit of love. Don't be looking for exceptions here, folks. Don't open the Bible and look for some loopholes. Jesus' words are as clear as could be here. Now Augustine makes this point. Christ does restrain our hands and our minds from revenge. from revenge. But when we have it in our power to protect ourselves and our property without exercising revenge, the words of Christ don't prevent us or prohibit us from inoffensively turning aside the attack. I'm not talking about self-defense here. He's not saying don't defend yourself. He's saying don't seek vengeance and don't hate and don't respond with hate in your heart. respond with love in your heart. So whoever takes away your coat, give them your shirt too. Now the coat was a normal outer garment. Shirt or the tunic was the usual undergarment. The coat was also used as a blanket at night. So it was of greater value than the shirt. You could take the shirt under the old law in satisfaction of a debt. I owe you money. I don't have any money. I'll give you my shirt. But not the coat. Taking the coat was prohibited. Look at Exodus 22, 25. If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, you are not to act as a creditor to Him. You shall not charge Him interest. If you ever take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge... This is the coat. ...you are to return it to him before the sun goes down. But that's his only covering. It's a cloak for his body. What else is he going to sleep in? And it shall come about that when he cries to me, I will hear him. Jesus says instead of being filled with bitterness and a lust for retaliation, somebody take something from you. Show the opposite heart attitude. And wait till we get to 1st Corinthians 6, verse 7. Why not rather suffer the wrong? It's already a defeat for you, Paul says, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? And again, Romans 12, 18 and following is very, very instructive. So look at verse 30 now. Now he says, give to everyone who asks of you. Now he's not saying give everything you have to anybody who wants it. He's not saying that. Adds a second point here. Whoever takes away what is yours, don't demand it back. Matthew 5.42, in his allusion to these things, says, "...Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you." And Luke adds that same statement in verse 35 here. "...Lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great." Now see, sometimes this comes down to, do we really believe in these heavenly rewards? Are we willing to wait for these heavenly rewards? He says, lend, don't worry about if you get it back. You've got a great heavenly reward. But what do we do? We value getting the thing back more than we value. Or maybe more than we really believe. The test here is one of the places where our trust or lack of trust in the Word of God is tested. And this verse also reflects the heart of Old Testament teaching. Look at Deuteronomy 15, 7. Now this is the Old Testament. If there's a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns, in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand from your poor brother, but you shall freely open your hand to him, shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks. This isn't new. No. Verse 9, beware that there's no base thought in your heart saying, well wait a minute, the seventh year, the year of remission is coming up. And your eye is hostile toward your poor brother. So you don't give him anything. You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you. Wow, he said the same thing way back in Deuteronomy, out in the wilderness. He'll bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings. if you are generous to the poor man. For the poor will never cease to be in the land. Therefore, I command you, saying, you shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land. Now obviously, if Christians took this one absolutely literally, the world would consist of two classes of people. We'd have all of these saintly paupers who had nothing And then we'd have these wealthy idlers who were just fat and happy in an earthly sense. Obviously, if we gave and lent to everyone who asked, we could quickly divest ourselves of everything. We would quickly be unable to even feed our families or give to anyone. So we have to understand here, Jesus is teaching us something. His aim isn't that we completely become destitute and that all His people become destitute, but rather a readiness among all His followers to give liberally, to give with a cheerful heart, even to lend to our enemies, expecting they won't pay us back. Why? Well, there's a point here, and He's been building to it this whole And he won't be done with it here in this passage this morning. The point is this, to aspire to be like Christ, to make that a greater goal than the accumulation of earthly possessions and earthly wealth. What do you desire more? New car, new house, or to be like Christ? So the Christian should never refrain from giving because of his love for his possessions. I want to hold on to that. That's not a good reason not to give. There are cases where it is a good idea not to give. Like where an addict asks for money to buy drugs. It wouldn't be loving to give to that addict. But love has to be the decider. Love must decide whether we give or withhold. Not a love of our possessions. Not a love of money. And Jesus reminds us in verse 35 here that we should not withhold giving or lending even to our enemies. Why? You ever wonder about why that would be? Well Jesus tells us It's because God Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. To give and to lend to those in need, even to evil men, is godly. Is godly. One more thing I want to say about this, though. A couple things, actually. At the same time, each disciple has to work out for himself, in every situation, how to apply this instruction. Because if you go out into the world, there will be somebody asking you for something virtually every day. And we have to be ruled by love and the best interest of the person asking. Augustine, 1600 years ago, says, quoted by many by the way, the text says, to give to everyone that asks, not to give everything to him that asks. You've got to think about these things. But love has to be the motivator. Now the second part of this, whoever takes away what is yours, don't demand it back. Now, was Jesus really saying that under no circumstances should anyone ever make any effort to regain stolen property? Well, in three days I could not come up with a black and white answer to this. And I didn't get one this morning either. But Lenski said something that really hit me here. He said, the disciple loses less by letting his things be taken wrongfully than he does by, with a selfish heart, lusting and clamoring to have them returned. Lenski's on to something here. And you know, the point here, Jesus' desire is not for our accumulation of worldly wealth and worldly possessions. His desire is for our sanctification. That's what He's concerned about. Our sanctification. our holiness. That's what he's looking for here. And there's no question, folks, Lenski's on to something. It's certain it's better to suffer a loss of earthly goods than to let passions, lust for material things, take hold of our soul. God's going to deal with the wicked man. Again, it's a question, do we believe that? I'm going to save much of this for next week, week following, I guess it would be. I do want to say this, though. Look, Jesus is calling His people to think and to live in light of the blessings we've received from God, in light of the kindness He has shown us. In light of the kindness, He shows even to those who at present are our enemies. See, God's giving them that beautiful sunset. Well, maybe not today, but tomorrow. God's giving our enemies that beautiful sunrise. And, you know, Jesus is showing us here, it isn't hard for us to care for one another, to do good for one another. We know that love is returned. Even sinners in the fallen world relate to one another in that way. Guy walks into the saloon. There's another guy there. Let me buy you a beer. Some unregenerate people are very giving people to those they see as deserving of their generosity. But Jesus says, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Those called into the kingdom are called to love and do good and lend to even those who have declared themselves to be our enemies. How can one do what Jesus commands here? I don't have a foolproof answer. To obey the command of our Lord will require effort. One has to have an intentional focus on doing what our Lord says here. You're not going to do this without it. A focus on loving our enemies and persecutors and praying a lot and staying near the Lord in His Word. Our desire to obey God and honor Him and become like Christ has to overcome and outweigh our distaste for, our resentment of those who hate us. That's really what it boils down to. And the difficulty is made greater. I understand this. Those who are our enemies are almost always enemies of God. Deniers of God. Followers of false religions. False gods. People who distort Christ and His Word. But as I kept praying about this and asking the Lord to show me, what do you want us to know here? Here's what came to me. If we didn't realize it before, what Christ is showing us this morning is that hate is a grievous sin. Hate is a sin. It's a sin against the one we hate, and it's a sin against God. Even though they hated us first. That doesn't even factor into the equation. Hate is a sin. And you know what? All sin. See, we sin because we like sin. Hate, like all sin, gives us some measure of satisfaction. Hatred of others makes us feel morally superior. Makes us feel better than those we hate. You know what it is? It's rooted in a kind of Christian Pharisaicism. That's what hate is. I'm this. Look at you. You don't deserve my love. Well, Jesus looked down on us and saw we didn't deserve His love either, but He loved us anyway. So, if we're going to have any hope of living like Jesus wants us to, we must acknowledge and repent of the sin of hate, wherever it exists in us. Oftentimes in this culture and the way the world is today, our hatred is of people we've never even met. Jesus is calling us to adopt a way of thinking and living that's radically different from the ways of the world. But we have a shining example of this on the cross at Calvary. Father, forgive them. Amen. They'd just beaten him nearly to death. Mocked him. Spit upon him. Jeered him. Driven nails into his wrists and ankles. Flayed him with whips. They'd cut pieces of bone into the ends of the rope. Ripped his backside completely open. And then they raised him up on this cross. Mocked him some more. And he prayed to his father. Now what would we pray? Father, relieve me of my suffering. That's not what he prayed. He prayed, Father, forgive them. And what Jesus was doing there that day, by the way, was suffering and dying for us while we were still his enemies. There's our example. Couldn't be any brighter example of love of one's enemies than that. Now it may be inconvenient, may disrupt our lifestyle to begin living in a Christlike manner. certainly can interfere with our sinful pleasures in this life, may keep us even from accumulating worldly goods. Those things our lustful hearts still desire. But we must seek earnestly to draw nearer to our Lord day after day after day. And Scripture promises, draw near to Him and He will what? Amen, brother. He will draw near to you. drawn near to Him. Here He is. And He hears our prayers through Christ. So I'm going to stop there. He's given us so much to think about here this morning. And we're not, we've still got a ways to go in this passage. But we've got plenty to think about. And I pray, brethren, that He's going to work in each one of us to make us more like Him. Well let us pray. Heavenly Father, we're overwhelmed by the righteousness, by the holiness of this Word, by the sanctity of the Word spoken by Your Son. Lord, I pray that we won't leave here without a desire to be Christ-like above all else. that our desire to be conformed to His image will overrule and overcome every other desire in us. And I pray, Father, that you would remove from us everything that's in us that hates others, regardless of the reason, regardless of the origin, in Christ's name.