7 Rivers Presbyterian Church, and Lakanto, Florida, sermons by Reverend Ray Cortese. All right, ready to read the Word of God? We're at the 6th chapter, the 27th verse, the Gospel of Luke. Why don't you stand if you're able and willing? Remember, these are the commands of Jesus. He is beginning a new community, a new nation, a new people. He has chosen 12 new tribal leaders. Hasn't he calls them apostles? And then he comes down off the mountain and meeting with God and he delivers the law of God. And this is the way my new community will be shaped and formed. This is the new culture I'm creating. Listen to the words that Jesus said, remembering that these words have never been said by anybody in human history before. No philosopher, no teacher, no religion. There is no evidence that anybody ever uttered what Jesus says right here. He says, I say to you who hear, love your enemies and 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 and 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. And just as you want people to treat you, treat them in the same way. And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, well what credit is that to you? Even sinners land into sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, do good and land expecting nothing in return. And your reward will be great and you will be sons of the most high for he himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful just as your father is merciful. And may God bless this reading of his holy and infallible word. You may be seated please. We live in a disputatious culture. And you might even be thinking right now, disputatious, that's not even a word. I'll challenge him on that. But this is what I mean. We live in a disputatious culture. We'll challenge people on almost anything. And these arguments are often the cause of great conflict. We live in a culture that says I have rights and I must fight to protect my rights. And if I am pushed, then I will push back harder. Hopefully maybe I'll even push before I'm pushed. And I will have long memories over slights and injuries that I have suffered. Almost anytime that anybody does anything, they say, well I didn't what? I didn't start it. I didn't throw the first punch. It didn't originate with me. I'm just giving back what I was already given. If you open the Saturday paper, you read that the story that Iran had captured 15 British Marines and sailors. And if you read the article, the article said that this was in response to what had previously been done to them. Such is the way. It always is when sheight blows up sooner or sooner, sheight in Iraq. And you say, what would lead you to strap yourself with bombs and walk into a schoolyard and blow up innocent children? Well, it's they did it first. They started it. And what is it that they did to you? When did this happen? And the answer will be, you know, in 686, it's not a wound of yesterday. It's not a wound of last week. It's hundreds of years old, grievances that are as fresh as yesterday. We live in a world of disputation, of disputes. And sometimes these big tribal international disputes are in the paper. But sometimes, it disputes right down in our world. A couple of weeks ago, there was an article on the paper about two families in Largo. One's a podiatrist. The other's a Christian school administrator. And they're fighting over a driveway that runs between their two houses. Neither has any legal record of any kind. But they're arguing over whose drugs should have rights to this driveway. One erected a fence that fence the driveway into their property. And so the other drove his SUV through the fence. They have now there's three civil lawsuits. There's an indictment. There's numerous. I think there's maybe 50 calls to the police. There is videotaping. There's an alleged choking in the battle for the driveway. I saw on spring break a movie called Prestige. Have you seen that? The Prestige. About two. It's a common in the art to have stories about disputes, revenge, anger, two magicians who were allies early in their careers, but when one injures the other, it sets in cycle an entire lifetime of an attempt by the two of them to destroy the other. Where did all this come from? Where did it all come from? Where did we get this way? As the Bible says, we were made for harmony with each other. You know, when you have a father, then the children get along. You know why they get along? Because the father, because there's a law, because there's justice, because there's authority, because there's rule. When you have a benevolent and assertive father, then the children know that there's law. They live inside of authority, and they also can rest. They don't have to fight for their rights and fight for what's theirs, because they can appeal to their father. They can trust their father. Their father will look out for them. They don't have to take matters into their own hands. So what happened to the human race when they said to God, you will not be our father. You will not be our authority. You will not be the law. We will not live in your household. We can do better without you immediately, humanity disintegrates into a war, and fighting with one another, and so wrestling. And brother kills brother, Genesis, chapter 4 tells us. And right after that, we read of a man named Lamick. This is right in Genesis 4, who says to his wives, I have killed a man for what? It's not an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth, it's even worse than that. He wounded me so I killed him. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamick, 77fold. And this becomes the boast of a great man. Anybody touches me, and I will enact vengeance on them. This is in the same chapter, basically, in which sin happens. We see this kind of disintegration of the human race. And then the question becomes, who could possibly do anything about this? Because it's always been this way. In fact, when we were in Kenya, this summer, one thing the missionaries told us that in the Kenyan culture, in the tribal culture, there is no cultural history, memory, experience, and their religions and their past at all for any kind of reconciliation, any kind of conflict resolution. It's never happened. Nobody's ever done it. And so when there's conflicts, even in the church, they said nobody knows how to ever speak face to face. Nobody ever apologizes. Nobody, it doesn't exist in the culture. Who's going to break into the culture and say no more? Well, that's what we read in Luke 6, then, didn't we? Is the Jesus enters into the world, and he says this cycle of retribution and revenge and violence will stop right here with me. My people will love those who wound them. They might say, oh, they're just God words. It doesn't really happen, does it? Well, just a few months ago in Pennsylvania, a deranged man, evil man went into a one-room schoolhouse, Amish schoolhouse, and he chased all the boys out, and he lined the little girls up against the blackboard, and he executed every one of them, and then he took his own life. And a couple days later, his body in the funeral home for his funeral, the funeral home was filled for the mass murder in the little Pennsylvania town of Nickel Mine. The funeral home was filled with the Amish. And when the reporters asked, why would you come to the funeral of the man who slaughtered your little girls? And the Amish elders said, we are sinners, too. God has forgiven us, and we are told to forgive, as he did, and the story went all around the world, because it is still an astounding thing in the midst of our world when any people choose to love their enemies. Take your sermon out loud, and we will discover this is the definition of a Christian. This passage tells us that, in essence, the answer to the question, what is a Christian? Is this? A Christian is someone who loves his enemies. It is such an absurd mercy that is asked of us. And it is asked of us. Listen to what Jesus says. He says, this is the way my family will behave. This is the way my sons and daughters will live. This is the way my culture, my people will conduct themselves in the world. Listen to what he says. I say to you, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Now, I remind you, this is not a sermon on marriage. 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. The Old Testament told us to assist our enemies, but nobody ever said anything like this. To love those who hate you and hurt you and oppose you and insult you and abuse you and who are ungrateful and needy and can give you nothing in return. Now, be one thing if the Bible said, here's what I want you to do. Don't take revenge on your enemies. Don't do the harm to your enemies that you like to do. When you have fantasies of retribution towards your enemies, do not live them out. When you want to use your tongue and you want to savage your enemies, hold your tongue. That would be fascinating enough. That would be difficult enough. That would be impossible enough. But Jesus goes way beyond that and He says, what? He doesn't just say, don't enact revenge on your enemies. He says, I mean, we can understand that. I mean, just avoid them. Stay out of their way. You know, don't lash back at them. But He says, love them. Do them good. Bless them. Give to them. Seek their well-being. Pray for them. Well, this is radical, unexpected, an absurd definition of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. One who loves their enemies. Now, hey, I could stay here in dwell on this point a little while longer. It's what preachers do. But could it be any simpler than this? I don't think anybody misunderstands what Jesus is saying here. Right? It's a straightforward as it could be. Love your enemies. Now, the application, let's make application together. The first thing we would say is it is a command that is not directed towards the state. Because people would ask, what about capital punishment? Or what about punishment of any kind? Is it mitigated by this command? Or what about war? Is war outlawed then by what Jesus is saying? And the answer is no. That's the wrong application of this command. Because the Bible is very clear that it is the mercy of God that establishes the state to wield the sword against the evil doer in this world. And when the state punishes the evil doer and protects the innocent, that it is acting as the agent of God's mercy and kindness in our world. Okay? So, an acting of just punishment or of just war is sanctioned from one end of the Bible to the other by God. Nowhere in the Bible should we be led to believe that when innocent people are harmed, that godly people stand by and do nothing. Got it? Second application would be this is that if the Bible says love your enemies, you'll never accomplish it in isolation. These commands aren't given to you. They're given to the community. Jesus is saying, I'm establishing a whole new way of doing life. And in isolation, you will, matter of fact it's not just loving your enemies you won't do, you won't do anything the Bible says individually because you can't, because he didn't design it that way. He calls us to be a family, he calls us to be a community. That's why in this church we say, you've got to be in a small group. You've got to be doing life with somebody, you've got to be in a place where you're living this out with other people. Where you go to your small group and you can say to your small group, now hopefully you don't say, I hate so-and-so in your small group, particularly if it's a pastor that you're referring to. But you might say to your small group, I'm having the hardest time loving someone, and in fact I can't stand them at all, and do you think everybody in your group will say, what a, what a, how ungodly are they? Or everybody in your small group will say, you've only got one, you've only got one, I've got one for every day of the week, I've got one for every day of the month, and together as a group, we ask each other, as a community, how do we do this? I was at a rehearsal dinner last night, the young man who's getting married today stood up, and he said, I'm not a public speaker, and my words are going to be sort of halting here. But what he said was beautiful, he said, I'm so thankful that you've come to my wedding because we can't be married without you. And our marriage will not be a success without you. That's beautiful. It's mature. It understands that it's not about the bride and the groom. They're married, they're not in isolation. You don't run off and get married under a palm tree, just the two of you. You get married in community. Children are baptized into community. Matter of fact we're at that same dinner last night, and I said to one of the couples whose children are being married, I said, you've done such a good job with your kids. They're all delightful. I know you must really be proud. And the response of the father was, it wasn't us, it was the community. And they began to name Chuck Berry and Phil Gelston and Adam Jones, and Jennifer Jeffis, and one schoolteacher, and one youth director, and one person after another whose lives left an imprint on their children because we can't do anything without community. We were made for this community. We will not love our enemies alone. Third thing to say is, we dodged the command to love our enemies. You know why? Because we are so adept at seeing what's wrong with other people that we refuse to cast the spotlight on our own hearts. We dodged the command to love our enemies. How can you really focus the word of God and conviction and humbling your own heart when you just are so constantly aware at how irritating other people are? And what's so seriously wrong with other people that it becomes a way of giving you a sucker of life itself by seeing the flaws in other people. When I came into work yesterday morning after being away for the week, there was a lovely email in my desk that a member of the church had actually been sent to them and they felt compelled to share it with me. The person in the email said, I'm trying to find a church. It's terribly difficult. I went to Seven Rivers Church and I couldn't stand the preaching. I don't know what a jerk. Let's face it. Preacher doesn't talk about sending off at Seven Rivers. I went to this Baptist Church. They're youth groups too worldly. I went to this other Baptist Church and the pastors too, full of themself. And they just said, you know, conclude the email I was saying it is terribly hard to find a worthy church. I don't have the address to this person, but I'd love to write back and say, do you know how hard it is to find a worthy church member? Do you think finding a decent church is hard? You ought to try to find a decent church member. Do you know the problem with the church? It's you. It's you. That's the problem with churches. It's made up of you. And it's made up of me and yet the conservative church in North America refuses to turn the attention to ourselves. We could bother in church about wine and communion and singing unfamiliar songs in that inappropriate book I found in the bookstore. But we will not take our unloving hearts to task. Listen, there's always something wrong with your family. There's always something wrong with your spouse. There's always something wrong with the government. There's always something wrong with the world. There's always something wrong with your neighbors. There's always something wrong with your church. But there's never any of that that comes close to what's wrong with you. So God's Word is plain. Who is your enemy, who has been unkind to you, who is repulsive? to you. Paul says, if your enemy is hungry, you feed him, and if he is thirsty, you give him drink. Eric Hanaker was the premiere of East Germany, the head of the Communist regime, the employer of the Stasi, the secret police that made life hellish for so many of the citizens, but particularly for Christians. And when the Berlin Wall fell and when the people of East Germany were liberated from Communism, he was stripped of all his power and all his prerogatives and all his villas and all his perks, and he literally became, the Communist Party wouldn't even own him, or care for him, and he literally became destitute and homeless. There was a pastor named Uva Homer who had housing for the poorest of the poor, and he wouldn't give Eric Hanaker one of those apartments. It didn't seem fair to him that Eric Hanaker should have an apartment to live in when all these people he made poor when these apartments were designated for them. No, he wasn't going to give Eric Hanaker one of those places that the poor so desperately needed. No, he brought Eric Hanaker to live in his own house. His children were denied a college education because they were Christians, but he brought his enemy. He was persecuted by the secret police, but he brought his enemy to live in his house because that's what God's people do. They love their enemies. I read this week of a woman who bought a town home in early retirement she was so excited. She decorated particularly the patio. That was her place of refuge, a place which had beautiful flowers and flower pots and nice patio furniture and just could enjoy the mornings and the end of the day, and all was going swimmingly until the neighbors moved in. The neighbors to put it mildly were coarse. Their fights, their loud noise, their rambunctious parties, their expletives, they were even known to urinate on the lawn and all of it sort of reached fever pitch when she came home one day to find her patio smashed and destroyed by the children from the town home next door. She hated, she loved these people, but she was a Christian. And convicted by God and that the Bible doesn't just say, love your enemies, it says, do them good. She began to make meals for her neighbors and bring them to them. She offered her babysitting free of charge. She began to look to opportunities to do them kindness. She invited the woman who lived there over for coffee and that makes all the difference. When you hear other people's stories and is objectionable as you find them and is nasty and foul and as much as you load them, when you start to hear their story, you start to realize what they are just like, they are wounded just like you. And that behavior comes from somewhere and from some life experience. You know, I remember a woman that used to go to this church that if she was in your small group, your small group shriveled and died. I mean, she was a small group killer and she would never shut up and she interrupted everyone. She dominated the whole small group. You know, if people said, I'm not coming back to the small group, you would just nod your head and say, you know, I don't blame you. I'd leave too, but I'm the leader. And small group leaders would come and beg the pastors, please, please, you know, take her away, take her out, take her somewhere. She's killing us. And she was impossible to love. And then the small group leader said, you know, I got to sit down and actually one on one with her and learn that when she was a little girl, her father completely rejected her. Almost worse than abandoning her. She actually lived in the house with them, but he never spoke to her. Never. And she's a deeply wounded person. It makes all the difference, doesn't it, to hear people's stories. And so this woman, she heard the neighbors stories and her heart began to break for the kind of life story that created a family that was such a mess. And she said that when they moved, she wept to see them go. Martin Luther King, they put a fire bomb under the porch of his home in Montgomery, Alabama. His children, his wife were asleep inside. Death threats, hatred, the most severe sort of mockery and inhumane treatment, born. And yet in a sermon in October of 1957, he said, I have looked into the heart of racist in our nation. And I say to you, I refuse to hate you. I refuse. I would rather die than hate you. I love you. This is the way of the people of God. Now this is the absurd mercy that God tells us to give our enemies. Now the question secondly is, how, where do we get it from? Where do we get such a mercy to give to other people? Jesus says it is the mark of the Christian. It reveals that we are God's children. And you see it right in chapter 6, verses 32 through 34. Jesus says if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? The sinners do that. He says if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that? And if you lend to those to whom you expect to receive, well come on, what credit is that to you? Now the word credit is the word chorus in Greek, which is the same word as the word for grace. So Jesus is saying, if you love those who love you, where is the grace in that? Where is the unconditional favor in that? If you love those who love you, then they have earned your love. Where is the unearned love? Where in your life is their evidence of you loving other people who haven't earned it and don't deserve it? Because when you do that, it is an evidence that you are a child of God. Because when you show unmarried favor, it is evidence that you have what? Received it. You have honestly received it. So it is unmarried favor. Christians are able to give it because they have gotten it. If you look at verse 35 and 36, it's the key to the passage. Jesus says, love your enemies, 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 himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Who are the ungrateful and evil people that God has been kind to? You. You. You're the enemies of God. You know, we don't like that. Harsh. It's severe. Okay, maybe I ran away from God and wanted to do my own thing, but I never had strong feelings against him. From the very beginning, the Bible says that there is enmity between the heart of men and the heart of God. If you don't think you had strong feelings about God, why when Jesus came into the world and God made himself vulnerable, did we instantly execute him? It is in our hearts to hate God, enemies of God. But the Bible says that those who are enemies of God, he has made his sons and his daughters who sit at his table in fellowship with him and how did that happen? What does the Bible say? That though we struck him, he blessed us in return. You don't think your enemies of God, the Bible says we're guilty of the murder of the son of God. When you pull the hair out of his beard, when you slapped him in the face, he turned the other cheek. He loved you when you hated him. When you nailed him to the cross and when you spit in his face and you cursed him, what did he do? He prayed for you. Father, forgive them. He blessed you. He prayed for you. He loved you. You'll never give mercy or you will only give mercy to the degree that you believe you have, what, been the recipient of it. And that's why loving our enemies is a test of whether you're a Christian because the Bible says if you don't do it, it just sort of reveals you. It reveals that you don't believe you've ever been loved. That you are the enemy of God who received his unmerited favor because if you really believe that you would give it. Jesus tells this fascinating story about a king and the king has a man who owes him an unpayable amount of money. Let's just call it millions of dollars. And so the king decides to rest the man's whole family and throw them all in prison. But the man begs and he begs for mercy and the king's heart is soft and he forgives the entire debt. But then the man goes and finds a person who owes him a pittance. Let's call it a hundred dollars. And he grabs that person who owes him a pittance and he chokes him and demands the money. And when the king hears of it, what does he say to that? Ungrateful man. He says, you wicked slave. I forgave you all your debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave in the same way that I had mercy on you. So there it is. Listen, whatever grievance you have today, whoever is your enemy, whoever your bitter against, whatever they've done to you, added all up and you know what? It's a hundred dollars.
You murdered the son of God. He forgave you who rebelled against the king. You let a coup against the king of the universe. What happens to people who try to overthrow the king? They lose their life.
But the king lost his life for you. Brothers and sisters, be merciful in the same way that God has had mercy on you. Those who are going to serve communion are going to start to make their way forward. Why do we take communion? Why do we take the Lord's supper? Because it is a powerful reminder to us of what? Jesus died and received what we deserved. And this beautiful truth is what? Those who are wants his enemies are now welcomed into his house and at his table. Before you bow your head, there's in your bulletin in the sermon outline. I want you to turn it over on the other side. And there is a place for you to apply the sermon because I don't want us to be hearers of the word and not doers of the word. So you have heard Jesus say to you, love your enemies. And so I ask you, how are you going to apply that? Who is your enemy? You don't check all four of those statements. Just find one of them that might apply to your situation. Surely God would reveal to use someone that he would have you move toward in love, that you have not been loving. Would you pray, Ruth, me right now? Would you bow your heads? God, would you show us? Would you show us who we have not been charitable towards? Who we have not loved? Who we despise? Lord, I would imagine a lot of us in this room couldn't even think of anyone because we are so unaware of how unloving we are. It's not the absence of an enemy. It's that we have so little experience really opening our hearts to you. So Lord, would you almost surprise us by showing us how unloving we are so that Lord tasting of your mercy, we might find ourselves strangely desiring to give it to others. Would you do this, Lord? And would even this time of coming to your table allow us to freshly experience your mercy towards us? We pray in Jesus' name, amen.