Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning that you might speak to us afresh. The same word, Lord, and yet falling upon us in a fresh way. And we acknowledge that we need to hear it again and again until it wholly renews our minds and fills our hearts with Your love and our hands with Your works. So Lord, put us in that place of hearing today. that being open to what You are saying to us, we may be found ready to do it. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We come to the fourth of our studies. the Five Commandments to Love, and I said last week that the New Commandment was in a sense the centre of the matter, the powerhouse if you like. I would say that today was the pinnacle of that love, the commandment by Jesus to love our enemies. We see in Luke 6 that Jesus expresses this command as a fourfold directive which is fundamental to us as Christians. I suggest we need to learn this fourfold expression so that we can recite it inwardly because it is fundamental to our being as Christ ones. Jesus said, so I say to you here, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you. Four directives there, if you like, within and the outworking of the commandment to love your enemies. The wonderful thing about Jesus as our Lord is that he commands us nothing that he himself has not done to the uttermost. You'll never get ahead of Jesus in loving your enemies or in obeying any commandment of God, which he is even now doing full bore, loving his enemies. Our Lord leads from the front. I have in my mind a picture of the American General who came to Australia, General MacArthur. He used to lead his troops from the front, walking with his riding prop up the battlefield, directing them and so on, having this amazing ability to not be shot dead. But he was known as someone who led from the front, how much more our Lord Jesus. And we see the pinnacle of the example of this on the cross. When they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And at that point Jesus said, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. He was loving his enemies, doing good to those who hate him, He was blessing those who cursed him, he was praying for those who were abusing him. And Achas lost to divide his garments and the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him saying, ah he saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one. And the soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering sour wine and saying, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. So there we see Jesus showing us what it means to love our enemies even in death. Now, I want us for the bulk of this study to answer this question, why is loving our enemies so important to a Christian? I suggest three answers to that, I'm sure there are a lot more. Just look at the three that I've numbered. We were God's enemies. Secondly, loving our enemies is the high point of true love. It's full extent. And then something that I'll call the crucible of the cross, which I'll explain in a moment. For the Christian, enemies are special. I want to emphasise that. For the Christian, enemies are special. One of the reasons is that the believer remembers that it was while he was the enemy of God that Christ, far from repaying him evil for evil, instead loved him so amazingly. So that the Christian can never forget that it was while we were enemies that we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. That is a deep, pertinent, sharp, poignant reality. God didn't say, oh there's a fine looking fellow, I think I'll have him. It was in the context of our thumbing our nose to God, our rebelling, our enmity, that God loved us. So with this love shared abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as Paul puts it, We are washed over by a superlative grace. Let us repeat that. We are washed over by a superlative grace. That's who we are. That's the condition that we are in. And this superlative grace extends even to our enemies. Such was the case for John Wesley when his heart was strangely warmed by the grace of Christ for him. He testifies about that occasion in his diary and says, Immediately I began to pray with all my might for those who had, in a more especial manner, despitefully used me and persecuted me. So there was a corollary to him being washed over by that superlative grace for himself in that immediately he thought of all those people, one of these Guts-for-Garters so to speak, and he felt a great compassion and love for them and began to pray for them. This was by that example clearly not a John Wesley thing, it was a Jesus thing. Something came upon him that transcended his, what we would call, normal human response. In like manner Paul instructs us how to live out of this abundant grace. He says, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honourable in the sight of all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. So to the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Now I'm quite convinced that's a metaphor. Any thirst quenching value of water would be quickly evaporated if you then dump burning coals on someone's head. And I think what it means is that it's an attempt to describe the effect upon the conscience of having had good dealt back to you in return for the evil you paid out. We'll develop that a bit more. So, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. We'll see in a moment that this is very central to the whole Christian enterprise and mission. So, enemies are significant to us because we were one. Secondly, loving our enemies is the high point of true love. The real test of love is not loving those who are easy to love. Such love may be authentic, but it is not love at full stretch. As good as it is, there is nothing remarkable in loving your loved ones or loving those who repay your love. Go to it, it's wonderful, it's enjoyable, but it's not remarkable. However, if you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them, and if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that? For even sinners do the same, and if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to get back the same amount. So he's saying all of human society loves to that degree. Love, however, shows its true character and full capacity when it returns love for hate, blessing for reviling, good for ill treatment, and prayer for persecution. They were the four things in Jesus' directive. What stands out in human society as exceptional is when we love our enemies. There was an illustration, I should have gone back to it and refreshed my memory, where there was a murder of some young people or a young person in the Amish community by somebody outside recently in America, a couple of years ago, and very publicly, for once in their lives, The media told a good story. The Amish forgave this person and expressed understanding and compassion for them. And it was quite a striking thing. The world said, here is something you don't see every day. It was a wonderful testimony. So Jesus commands, 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, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful even as your Father is merciful." If you remember last study, we saw that Jesus, in the way that He loved us, ushered in a new deal. a kingdom that had a different deal about it, a different principle. It was a principle of loving one another as Jesus loved us. I think in a different form of words, this is what Jesus is speaking about here. You'll be sons of the Most High. You'll be children living in the kingdom under the New Deal. Let me pause there and see how you travel. How does that relate to justice? That's a very good question, Kingsley. I guess we could start by going to God's statement, vengeance is mine, says the Lord. So we always ultimately measure justice in the justice of God. In terms of civil justice, we may have a social responsibility to ensure that a felony is brought to account, and a very good illustration of that is these terrible cases of child abuse and so on. There's quite a different thing here between loving your enemy, understanding that person, having compassion on them. I know in the prison system I had occasion as a chaplain, prison chaplain, to encounter people who were in prison because of child abuse, in some cases their own children. Society would see these people as devils with horns, shocking people. They were just ordinary people. They were, in the cases I knew, dads who crossed the line they shouldn't have crossed and got into practices that were destructive for their children, but they were just people. As he came to understand them, and in one case somebody I knew, I couldn't believe that this person had gone down this road. I'd known him for a long time and I regarded him very, very highly as a very sane and stable person. He was a leader in a parish and always gave sound and a responsible judgement and so on. blew me away. So I continue to relate to him, I continue to love him, I continue to believe in the redemptive work of God in his life, but of course if I had been in a position of a professional having a responsibility to report, I would have had to dog him in. Is that helpful? Very good thing to remember, Geoff, yes. That's right. And that judgement came with a promise. There was a time for the judgement and then the return. Thank you, that's good. No, and indeed to exhort or rebuke in love, yes, that's right, yes, and that is a love. I can remember, do you mind me telling little stories that illustrate these things? You have to be careful of this as you get older because you can be a digressor who won't shut up. Mum and I belonged, when I came home from school, to the South Coast Choral and Arts Society of Victor Harbour. So we used to travel in to the practices for the Messiah and the Gilbert and Sullivan's that they did. And one day we were sitting there. in the practice and I was with the men, I was only 16, and the guy alongside me, who was a decent fellow actually, I respect him, he said, Rod, you've got a great big bogey on your nose. And of course there was a level of embarrassment in being told that and so on. But I was grateful that he troubled himself to tell me something that was awkward. And God bless the people who tell you you've got a great big bogey on your morality. That's love. It's much easier not to do it. Okay, let's crumble along to this thing called the crucible of the cross, whatever that be. It is vital that we as Christ-ones understand clearly the nature of Christ's cross as a moral crucible. A crucible is a heat-resistant container used to melt hard metals. They can be very small, they can be gigantic like the ones up at Wyalla. And the cross of Christ functions as a crucible in which the hardened human heart is softened and the conscience awakened. It works like this. We, the human race, poured out our anger at God in the crucifixion of His Son. As He died, He bore our sins and prayed for our forgiveness. The cross reveals then God's righteous love for us in the face of our depravity and enmity. So there's a moral contrast there, poignancy there. It is a moral crucible designed to melt the hard heart that is set in its stubborn, angry self-justification. So Adam replied to God, I'm doing my best Lord, but I'll tell you it's hard working with a bunch of turkeys like you and Eve. The woman you gave me, she gave it and I'm doing my best here. So here's the human heart. It didn't take long. stubborn in its self-justification, its self-righteousness and its willingness to blame God and man. But the crucible of the cross breaks that down. For those whom God is calling, it does just this, as Wesley experienced and wrote about. He said, Charles Wesley, died he for me who caused his pain? for me who him to death pursued, amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?" We have the old hymn, when I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, that breaks down that hardness. Now, here's the thing for us in this study. The crucible of the cross is at work in our lives as we take up our cross and love our enemies. So the sufferings of Christ continue in his body for redemptive purposes. Is that too much jargon? Can you see what I'm saying? It continues to work. We carry in our bodies the killing of Jesus so that the love of Jesus may be revealed through us. Paul explains this in 2 Corinthians 4 and in these words which I have here in the sheet, gives a consequential or causal situation and repeats it three times, so that, so that, so. Yeah, look at it. He says we always carry in the body the death of Jesus, so that means that if people want to persecute Jesus they persecute Christians. So we carry that crucifying effect so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies. Well, how would the life of Jesus be manifested in our bodies? by obedience, which is? When Jesus was crucified, that was his opportunity to reveal the love of God at full stretch. He never had a better opportunity. He was born for that opportunity. This is why he came. We as Christians can get down in the mouth because we encounter some persecution, and Lord knows in our country it's meagre. But that is our day for which we are born, because that is the opportunity to reveal the life of Jesus. Now, the interesting thing about this is whenever I've tried to explain this, preaching God's Word, I have been amazed at how little Christians are across this. And yet it is our bread and butter. We should know this thing like the back of our hands. And we'll need to know it like the back of our hands so that when it happens to us, and we do carry the killing of Jesus because somebody's attacking us and attacking Christ in us, If we don't know this like the back of our hand, we'll just respond with good old usual human defensiveness and payback or whatever. But if we understand, in fact if we get up and prepare ourselves in the morning for this opportunity, then we can exercise the crucible of the cross. sense? For we who live, Paul says, are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake. That is, we who are in Christ, we who are Christ's ones, we who bear His name and represent Him to the world, are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake. If something is likely to get up my nostril in the media, it's the portrayal of clergy. It is always negative. They are either irrelevant or buffoons or utterly pathetic and corrupt. Rarely do you get a good one. And this relentless portrayal and sort of, if you're one of them, this is what the world is constantly putting at you. As I say, that could get up my nostrils. Could make me quite aggro. But I need to understand that of course, that's my bread and butter. That's my opportunity to demonstrate the love of Christ. So we have been given over to death for Jesus' sake so that, see those words, so that, this is what it's for, this is why it happens, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So here's the principle in brief, death is at work in us but life in you. Do you get it? Because you need to get it because that's our stuff. That's who we are. That's where we are. And that's what's happening, isn't it, to Christians all over the world. Just to clarify, do you want to talk about that? Questioner 2 I remember when my father was visiting in Adelaide, he spoke about the persecuted Christians. He often asked, don't pray for us, pray with us. Because if we didn't stand for Christ, there wouldn't be the persecution that we're experiencing. And it was not as though, as they say, bring it on. It was as though they fully accepted that in that situation, the only way they were going to reveal that Christ was, was by speaking out and accepting persecution. I don't think I need to work on it anymore, because I find that really quiet. The word bread is not right, but I find it quite hard to understand because I think, as you said, the persecution we have here is meagre. But the persecutions are a bad thing. It's not something that we avoid. I can't wait for the Kurdish Christians who are coming out of Morocco to have a good day, and I hope we find water and bread along the way. It's their life. And it seems one of the early fathers, Justin Maddox, said that The death of the martyrs is the seed of the church and wherever there is persecution the church grows more than it does where there is a lesser persecution. So the good news is that in Australia persecution of Christians is increasing. In the press and in other ways too, we'll shortly have a situation in Australia where a Christian who holds certain biblical views will be barred from a number of professions as considered. This already happens in the UK and Canada and other Western nations where they've taken these things. If you hold certain moral views about things, you are considered not to be You are able to be a marriage celebrant, to be able to be a social worker. Numbers of professions are closing off to people who say, no look, here I stand, I can do no other. And that is our opportunity, rather than us to be sort of morose about it, it's our occasion. Let's finish this up with a couple of wonderful illustrations. The first one is Stephen. And what I want you to notice here is that in Stephen's death we see the same love of enemies as we see in Christ's death upon the cross. Those two go together. The true character of a Christian is seen when they are under pressure. The true character of anybody is seen when they are under pressure, isn't it? When Stephen was under the pressure of being stoned by his countrymen, the character of God shone through him wonderfully. They cast him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And falling to his knees, he cried out in a loud voice, with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he said this, he fell asleep. So his last concern was for his murderers and he interceded for them. We can have no doubt that Stephen's witness made a deep impression on the young man named Saul and served to place Saul in the crucible of the cross. It is subsequent to that that Saul heads up the Damascus road, breathing threats, but something is cooking in his head. He's got coals put on his head. And the second illustration is Andrew. This story comes from a non-biblical source but it seems to be reliable because this is where we get the cross of St Andrew. What's the shape of the cross of St Andrew folks? That's right, it's in the Union Jack of the Australian flag. The Apostle Andrew preached the Gospel far and wide and as an old man he came to the town of Patras in Greece. His evangelistic work in Patras was so successful that the proconsul, who'd been away at the time, came back, was enraged and ordered that Andrew be crucified. Picture the scene. A cross had been set up on the seashore. Andrew, however, protested that he was not worthy to die on the same kind of cross as his Lord, and he had them fashion the wood into the shape of an X. Aegeus had ordered that Andrew be tied, not nailed, to the cross in order to prolong his sufferings. For three days and two nights, Andrew hung there, exhorting the Christians and pleading with the unsaved to turn to the Lord. The crowd, which had swelled to more than 2,000, marvelled at the wise words of this gentle and pious white-haired man of Gollum. Finally, at around 75 years of age, Andrew passed into the presence of the Lord he had served so faithfully for almost 40 years. Now we come back to our world, a world awash with enmity. In our peaceful Australian setting it may be hard to think of anyone who we could really call our enemy. No one wants to kill us, wound us or ruin us. The ever-present works of the flesh, Paul says, are enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions and divisions. Are they among us? So sin lurks in friendly places. The colleague who secretly envies us and plops our downfall. The neighbour who simmers with resentment towards us. The child who quietly wishes that we would hurry up and die so they can have our money. The offended spouse who wants to pay us back. Someone wrote a book on marriage entitled The Intimate Enemy. I won't try and explain that, I'll just leave it there. So there is enmity in the world we live in and we live with enmity as human beings whether we are a Christian or not. It's all about those works of the flesh. But furthermore, the world is at enmity with God, and the people of God bear daily the brunt of that enmity. Jesus said that because of the Gospel, a person's enemies will be those of his own household. So responding to enmity with love will be the daily fare of the believer. It is good for us as Christians to know this fourfold command off by heart and to set our hearts each morning to live it. So let us finish by going back to the front where that fourfold command is and look at it afresh. Is it worth learning off by heart? Is it worthy of your time and effort? I suggest to you it is your life. It is the very stuff of your Christianity. So let's say it together, but I say to you, love your enemies, do good to those who hurt you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Let us pray. Lord, this New Deal is truly exceptional. It is something else to the world around us. And we know that it has only ever been fulfilled in our Lord as a human being. But Father, we are in Him and we did not choose Him, but He chose us to go and bear the fruit that lasts. And this Father is the fruit that lasts, the fruit that comes from loving in this way. We pray therefore that we may every day be awash with this extraordinary grace. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.