“Love Your Enemies and Pray for Those Who Persecute You” | Matthew 5:38-48

Show Notes

Episode 713: 
In this episode, we tackle a challenging passage from Matthew 5, part of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. We discuss the daunting command to "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." This leads to a candid conversation about the implications of perfection in our lives and how it can sometimes feel overwhelming. We reflect on the nature of legalism and grace, emphasizing that while we strive for righteousness, we must remember that perfection does not equate to being sinless.

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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Good morning, good morning. Do you talk good good morning to you? And you? Yeah? Yes, yeah, yeah we should. I should add jazz hands to that. Yeah, hey, Rich, I don't know what what the heck was that? But hey, good morning everybody. Welcome to the Bible Guys. We appreciate you tuning in or watching whatever you're doing, but thank you for choosing us. Man, that's amazing, and what a day to tune in because you got good morning song. Yeah, and we have a would you rather segment? I love? Would you rather? Yes? All right, Chris, I'm gonna start, and I'm gonna ask you first, go ahead. Would you rather always know the perfect comeback or always know the perfect joke? Oh? You know me, I already know this is gonna be. You're gonna choose the perfect comeback because you like to be clever, and I'm gonna choose the perfect joke because I like it funny. I like to be funny, and I love humor more than I do. Like to be clever. I love I like to be clever too. I just like humor more. Yeah, I like I like the comebacks, so yeah, yeah, I would have chosen that one. That's awesome. I know you nailed it. You nailed that, I know you. Okay, okay, neverber too. Would you rather never have to do laundry again you probably don't do it now, or never have to wash dishes again? Do you wash dishes? You wash? Oh? Yeah? You cook a lot, cook a lot, so you make your messages a lot. Yeah. I would prefer to never have to do dishes again. Oh really? Yeah, yeah, to be honest with you, and I. Do do laundry sometimes. Do you My wife does the laundry ninety five percent? Yeah, and my wife does it often. Yeah, but I would say uh, but I would say that every once in a while I will do it and uh, And then it's sort of the same thing. My wife just has the habit of doing dish is more often than I do. It's a reminder she really likes it. It's one of her favorite things. As I'm saying it out loud, I'm reminded that I should probably do the dishes, but you know what she does, she loads it. I would do it, but she likes it so much. I don't want to take that away from doesn't know. No, I actually like washing dishes more than I like washing laundry, so I would say I would rather never watch laundry. So I love cooking, but I cook with every pot, pan and dish we have in the room. So yeah, it's it's terrible. Yeah. So when I'm done, there's a you know I made, I made a meal that barely fits on you know, that fits on like six plates, and the whole kitchen is destroyed. Yeah, so we look at it and go here we go. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Would you rather always get free dessert at restaurants or always get free appetizers? Oh? I already know immediately. And again this is you didn't have to think you're gonna be desserts. I'm gonna be appetizing. Oh actually, I think it might be appetized. Now. I believe Jesus has come back at any minute. You shud eat dessert first. That's one of my core values. But I order appetizers way more than I ordered desserts. At restaurants, and you enjoy them more. Yeah, I order them more. Ah, So I'd rather get those free because I'm already spending money on. Okay, there you go, there you go. So it's it's it's a it's. A it's practical math. It's practicality. Yeah, yeah, math. But you like appetizers better than desserts, well I don't. I'm not a dessert person. Yeah. So I'm not. A sweet because you don't like chocolate. Well I don't mean you're barely a Christian. I'm barely a sweet person. Yeah, I know. So I went to Season's fifty two. I'm going to promote a good restaurant. But they have they have little tiny desserts. And shot glass Yeah I love those. Yeah, and it's the perfect two bites, three bites, yeah, because you don't have to like, you know, like kill yourself for this dessert. But as she went up and she was turning the dessert trade and she was like, we have these ten desserts, right, actually thought to myself, I only like two of them, and all my kids are like, I can't choose, and I'm like I barely liked one of them or two of them. So the last time you came to my house, I had those little tiny cheese cake bites. Yeah, yeah, yeah remember those. Yeah, you are good you get two little bites. Yeah, yeah, yeah for dessert. Those are good. It's just too rich for me. Yeah, it's rich. So number three okay, oh no, number four. Would you rather live in a cozy small town or a bustling. Big This is an easy one for both of us too. You'd rather be in the big city and I'd rather be in the cozy small town. That's right, Yeahcthough I love small towns, but. My wife would much rather be in the small town. So I married the opposite of me. Yes, yes, yeah, But why do you love the big city? I get energized around people. Yeah, that's true. And so I like, for instance, we walked through the city of New York. We've all been there twice, Liz and I. But we go through the city and I'm like, I'm like, man, this is awesome. Yeah. Well I've been are more, but just twice with her, and and I've and I've said like, this is amazing. Like I walk through it and I'm like, whoa, that was an adventure. Getting from here to there is great. And She's like, oh, thank god, we're off those streets and we're sitting in this in this restaurant and by the way, there's too many people in this restaurant, right, we should have chosen the other one because it had less people on it. Yeah, that's what she said. That's what she says, right, And I'm thinking to myself, man, that was that was fun. So every time I'm in a city like New York Now I like Chicago, but it's it's all the same. I think that the big cities smell like garbage. They do, and people honk it the horn before the light even turns yellow on the other side, and are mostly rude because everybody's like just elbowing to get to get their position. And then in New York City, I've been in New York City, I don't know five times. Every single day i've been in New York City, I've seen rats in the streets. Every day. I'm like, is this a developing name? So smells like garbage? And every single day I've ever been in in New York City, I've seen rats and I just man alive right for everyone you see, Yeah, you know there's there's millions you haven't seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I love small towns. I love the small town thing anyway. So with Liz would definitely agree. Would you rather be instantly be able to instantly master any board game or any video game? Yeah, I'm gonna go with board games for me, and you're gonna go with video games for you. I'm gonna go with neither. Why Yeah, because uh have the fun of the game is mastering the game. Oh but you have to pick one. I'm not picking one. No, it says would you rather I Uh? Okay, So if you're gonna ruin board games for you or ruin video games, what should you rather know? I like them both? Okay, but you gotta ruin one. I have to ruin one. Uh, video games, believe it or not. Oh wow, because the board game thing is something I do with the family and vida games, you should somebody do by it myself. Oh good, that's a good, good reasoning, Jeff. Yeah wow. The insight into into the mind. Of the mind of Jeff. There you go, speaking about getting insights into the mind. We are you gonna do that? Yeah? I was gonna say no, no, no, go ahead. Finish, please please, please you do it. I was gonna say, speaking of insights from brilliant minds, I was going to give you a compliment. Jesus was pretty brilliant. I was gonna say, we have another brilliant mind who was actually quite more brilliant than you. Oh yeah, yes, I just like being said my name in the same sentence sentence as Jesus. Yeah, well we are, we are all made in his image. Nice, So we all call you very nice, very complimentary today. Chris, Yeah, I know what happened. I don't know. I don't know. You're a Jersey Vitamins. Today's flintstone vitamins just make you feel better today. Those weren't vitamins. Those are CBD gummies. Feel better till today. I love you, man, No sir, nohing, okay, okay, shoot, all right, so stand against that. We're gonna we're gonna jump into Matthew chapter five. We're going backwards today for some reason because. People weren't ready for this one yesterday. All right, here we get a prep for this, that's. Right, Matthew Chapter five, verse thirty eight. So we're still in the Sermon on the Mountain. Yep, Jesus said, you've heard the law that says punishment must match the injury, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say, do not resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek. Also, if you're suit in court and your shure it's taken from you, give your coat too. If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don't turn away from those who want to borrow. You've heard the law that says love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. In that way, you will be acting as true children of your father in heaven, For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you well of only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even crupt tax collectors do that much. If you're kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect. There you go. You know those words are very intimidating. Be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect. Sometimes I can see why, because you know, if you know me, you know that I don't like law and legalism, especially when Christians try to especially when Christians try to impose it. But there are moments in the scripture where my spirit sort of like jumps up and I actually think to myself, couldn't you have said what you mean there? Because certainly you didn't mean Okay, now go be perfect, and anything less than that is not good. Right. We've all seen enough movies to know what it's like to try to live up to you know, your parents' expectations of perfection. Right, We've all seen movies, so we all know that like it ruins lives. Right. Yeah. So then so then when I hear words like this, be perfect therefore as your heavenly Father's perfect, I'm like, well, gee, thanks for that, Jesus. Couldn't you have said it better? I know? I know, Yeah, I'm giving you when you get to heaven. When you get to heaven, you're gonna say, hey, there's a couple things I'd like to fix. And one of them is so so I have a red. Pen any racer, and I'm a market like like like our friend who gave you that movie script, Ye, look it over, give me some suggestions to you all marked up and read that's right, that's. Right, and he's thinking, by the way, he's never given me another one since so but uh, that's not true. He gave me two. But but uh. But anyway, here's what I was going to say, is uh, in my humanity, I'm confessing sin here. I do think that sometimes, and I think like, I think like, Okay, this helps me understand legalistic Christians a little bit more because somebody could take that at face value and say, well, hey, Jesus said be perfect as his heavenly father, so therefore I'm gonna bark at everybody because you're not being perfect, and so grace doesn't abound, right and romans forget Romans. Jesus said be perfect. Right. So anyway, all that to say, I think I know what Jesus meant, which is you can never be sinless, but you can sin less, right, right. So in other words, we should strive to follow righteousness and follow the nature of our heavenly Father. Because what does the Bible also say. The Bible says that he is conforming us into his image right from glory to glory. He transitions us from glory to glory, and so therefore we are being made into the likeness of Christ. God continues to work on us. God wants us to sin less, even though that will never be sinless. And so therefore, you know, when I hear be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. You break that down, and what you do is you compare it to other scriptures. You compare it to You know, God's words is never going to contradict itself. The Bible is its own best commentary. We always say that, right, and so therefore you can't take that at face value. Legalists, if you're out there and you're a legalist, you probably don't number one, know that you're a legalist. But you know, if it's all about laws and enforcing God's rules and correcting people's behavior and judging people and all these sorts of things, it could stem from comments like this, You know, verses like this that maybe you can take perhaps a little bit out of context without measuring the heart of God or God's intention or what he says about humanity and sin. Yeah, so you know, the the law has a lot of purposes. One of them is to show that we can't keep the law perfectly. The fact that we need a savior. So the people who focus primarily and only on grace reject all the other purposes of the law. Right, but the law also shows us a better way to live. When when when when we have a society of people who are following God's laws out of fear of God, they're not stealing other people's stuff, it makes a better society. When men aren't sleeping with other men's wives because of the fear of God, it's better God's laws. It's a better society. When we're not killing each other out of fear of God and fear of God's judgment, then it's a better society. So so when we follow God's laws, it's also better. It's a better life. And so he gave them to us for two reasons. One, he's the architect of human life, and so he knows the perfect parameters as the end engineer of life, the perfect parameters for operating at peak operating performance. And then anything we do outside of those parameters typically causes a breakdown and inefficiency stresses on the systems, and it stresses our marriages, it stresses our finances, it stresses our social structures, it stresses our families. Right, it stresses everything. So the engineer of our and designer of human life knows the best ways. So if we see the laws of God as when we follow those, we're going to be operating in peak performance, and when we don't follow those, we're always going to be under more stress and everything in our life is going to be wobbly and inefficient, then we see the law in a different way. So on one side, if the law is to go to heaven, Paul said, hey, the lawges proofs to us we can't, right. And that's why the Pharisees were such a problem, because the Pharisees thought, that's how you got to heaven by keeping the law. But if you see the laws as these will set you up for peak performance, then it's inspiration. Right. And then you read a passage like this, be perfect even as your Father and Heaven as perfect. The word perfect in our minds means sinless. The Greek word for perfect means complete, lacking nothing. That's the meaning of complete. Yeah, and so or the meaning of perfect. And so from that standpoint, then we can look at God's character, we can look at God's God's ways, God's wisdom, and we can we can begin then working towards this completeness as a human in God's design for us. Right, that's a very different way of viewing this idea of perfection. You think that the word perfect could be a poor translation, It could have been better translated as complete. Well, so no, I think that when these words were translated, I think that English speakers knew the meaning of perfect in a different way than you and I in this modern because English keeps changing. It's a living language, whereas Greek coin a Greek is a dead language. So when we go to the Greek, we know exactly what it means. It means complete when we say it in English in this modern way of saying it now, we mean it in a way that means sinless with no imperfections. But that's not the way that it's written as written completeness. There's a completeness to it. There's a note here as a matter of fact, that talks about it in the Life Application Study Bible, and it says, how can we be perfect one in character? Right? But in this life we can't be flawless, but we can be complete in God and aspire to be as much like Jesus as possible. So these are inspirational verses right where he's inspiring us to become more like a In holiness, like the Pharisees, we are to separate ourselves from the world's sinful values. But unlike the Pharisees, we're to be devoted to God's desires rather than our own, and carry his love and mercy of the world. In maturity, right, we can be complete in maturity. We can't. We can't achieve christ like character and holy living all at once, but we can grow towards maturity and wholeness. Just as we expect different behavior from a baby, a child, a teenager, and an adult, God expects us to continue to have different behavior in each of us depending on our respective stages of spiritual development. And then in love, we can seek to love others as completely as God loves us. Right, so we work in those directions so we can be complete in God yet have much room to grow. So God makes us complete while he's completing us. Because God's outside of time, and so he can give a command like this, be perfect even as I am perfect, knowing what He's saying is let me complete you. But when I see you, I see you beyond time. In Christ I've already completed you. Now let me do the work while you're living in time to keep completing you. And so this is why Luke six thirty six he says, be compassionate as your father is compassionate. And one Peter, he says, be holy even as I am holy. Right, So, so what God's doing is He's trying to grab our attention. Say, hey, the goal of me saving you and leaving you on this earth is for you to become more like me, develop my compassions, develop my holiness, develop my completeness in you while I'm making you complete. Yeah right, Hey, in this moment, I hope that God will allow me when I get to Heaven to pull a Jerry Maguire and say, you complete me. I hope God allows it. It'd be great, yeah, yeah, and he'll probably be thrilled, Yes, thrilled. So oftentimes we quote the you know, the the study portion of the life application Study Bible. I pulled off my shelf another Bible because we're no longer using the chronological Bible. That's right, right, So we've been in the chronological Bible forever. Yeah, right, But but anyway, I grab. It went back to the normal the traditional life applications. Stay yeh, yeah, yeah, I grabbed the study Bible. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. So what does it say about that? Verson? So, yeah, it does say that is something about completeness. It says, who can be as perfect as God? No one can be as perfect as God. But Jesus calls us, Oh no, excuse me, but Jesus does not call us to an exercise in futility. The word perfect implies completion and maturity, something that more than sinless perfection. Later, Jesus summarizes the whole law with two basic principles, the laws of love for God and love for your neighbor. Here in the same way, Jesus says that the law of love Verses forty three and forty four represents the full and mature expression of completeness. To live in a perfect way, God's love must flow through our lives to others, even to our enemies. That is a great connect to Dot's moment. Yeah, right, So Jesus is talking about that kind of love. Hey, you've heard it said this, but love your enemies. And he says, be complete as God is complete. He's talking about how God is love. Yeah, and so that is the measure of completeness when we love to the fullest extent. That's right, that's a great connect to. So so he has made us like him, like Christ. Yeah, that's that's the idea of sanctification. He's already set you apart to be holy while he's making you holy, right, and then he leaves it on us to make some of those choices. So he goes, you know, you've heard love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say, love your enemies, pray for those persons. In that way, you will be acting as two children of your father in heaven. So he goes, Okay, I'm gonna expect you to act like a real child of mine. And then I'm like, I don't like loving my enemies. I hate loving my enemies. Correct, But how many times have we had conversations, We've had choices where you and I have sad in meetings when we knew somebody had pitted themselves as our enemy or were angry at us in a moment, and we pivoted and said, let us be as generous and as kind and as loving as possible to this person. And even while they're calling us every name in the book and angry at us. Right, we've had these conversations before, and it's not that, oh, wow, look how good of a Christian they are. It's a choice to treat them well when they're treating us poorly. And when we do that, we're acting like God's children then. And so there is this choice, and it's a part of that maturity. And so I love the note here in the Life Application Bible saying, just as parents have different expectations for babies versus toddlers, versus children, versus teenagers, versus young adults versus mature adults, I think God has a different perspective on us. And one of the things he wants us to begin to learn is, Hey, you're going to be tempted to treat them like an enemy. What would it look like if you started just making the hard decision to love them this time? Right? And so earlier in this passage it says, I say to you, love your enemies, pray for your enemies. And Luke he goes on and preaches the same message, and he says, love your enemies, pray for enemies, do good to your enemies. So it's easy for me to say I love my enemies. Oh, I love my enemies, and you don't know praying for my enemies. I can pray words, but you don't know. I can pray words and still have a bad attitude. But it's hard to do good to my enemy. I just have to choose to do good in some way to be a blessing. And so there is a choice to that, and that is us acting like children of God. So it's not so I can go to heaven. It's because I'm going to heaven. It's not so I can be saved. It's because He saved me. Now I wear his name. I don't just go get to go do whatever I want to do. Now I'm supposed to be looking more and more and more like him. And if I'm going to grow up and I'm not going to stay you know, stuck as a toddler spiritually, well, then that means I'm gonna have to make some grown up decisions. And by the way, when we hear the word enemies, sometimes we may think I don't know enemies, you know, like we think of like, you know, enemies on the opposite side of a war something, right, But that's not the definition of enemies. The definition of enemy could be somebody who is perhaps pitting themselves against you in a meeting, right, and yet they're really not your true enemy, but yet they're behaving like an enemy to your well being in that moment. Right, Right. So there's varying degrees, right. So just like yesterday when you said there's very degrees of worry and you said, like the far end of worry is terror, right right, but it is true. So the far end of enemies could be you know, al Qaeda, yeah, right. But then you can have a coworker who's truly not your friend, but you know, maybe like a good acquaintance who maybe perhaps has malicious intent in a moment because they're having a weak moment or something like that. You know, they sort of slip into the category of like not your friend in that moment, which is sort of in the category of an enemy. So there's very degrees, which means God calls us not just to okay, fine, if I ever into contact with you know, somebody oversees that, I'll love them. Yeah no, no, no, that's not what God's saying. God saying as you go through life, to love anybody who's not your true friend. Love every treat everybody with respect and love and forgiveness and kindness who pits themselves against you, even in a weak moment, because that is the character of Christ. I did a survey one time, and I asked, how many of you have preaching this message? And I did how many of you have enemies? And I just forget. Everybody would raise her and say, oh, I know I've got enemies. And I had this lady go, I do not have any enemies. And I stood there for I was caught off guard for a second. It was a small group. It wasn't a preaching thing. It was a small, small group, maybe forty people, And so I was like, really, yeah, and she said yeah. I said, oh, I think you're misunderstanding my question, right, I'm asking you. You think I'm asking have you chosen to be enemies against somebody? Yeah? And she goes, I don't have a single enemy. I said, you don't have anybody who treats you bad, and she goes, oh yeah, And the lady sitting next to her starts this starts their whispering, you know, back and forth, and I said, so it doesn't have to be that you've chosen enemies. And then God says, love those people you've chosen to hate, right. It's also those people who've decided to pit themselves against you and work against you. And Jesus said, if you're a follower of me, people will hate you, right. And it's even those people that have decided to make us their enemy, even though we're not choosing them to be our enemies. We love everybody, even if they've chosen to make us their enemy for some reason, they're working against us. They don't like our faith, they don't like our politics, they don't like they don't like something about it. They don't like our race, they don't like the neighborhood we live in, they don't like the job we have. I don't know. They don't like our family, and they've just decided to work against us. Jesus says, love them also, And so a lot of us can be a little bit fair, say, and we go, oh, no, I love everybody. This verse doesn't apply to me. Well, there's people who've pitted themselves against you, and every one of us has people like that. That's right, Yeah, that's right, and it could be in the smallest of ways. Yeah right, yep, So love them, do good love. Them, love them. Okay, that's a great place to end, and we will pick up tomorrow and hopefully we'll see that on the Bible. Guys, M.