Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / The Sermon On The Mount

Raising The Bar By Being Generous With Grace - Part 2 12/02/07

Message: ‘Raising the Bar…

                         by being generous with grace’ pt.2

Text: Matthew 5:38-48

Introduction:

ILL: There is a story about the former Boston Red Sox Hall-of-Fame third baseman Wade Boggs who used to hate playing at Yankee Stadium. Not because of the Yankees, they never gave him that much trouble, but because of a fan. The guy had a box seat close to the field, and when the Red Sox were in town he would torment Boggs by shouting obscenities and insults. And Boggs was a new believer, so he was wondering, "Lord, what do I do about this situation?" One day before the game, while Boggs was warming up at third base, the fan began his typical routine, yelling, "Boggs, you stink! You’re a bum!" Finally, Boggs decided he had enough. He walked directly over to the man, who was sitting in the stands with his friends, and said, "Are you the guy who’s always yelling at me?" The man said, "Yeah, it’s me. What are you going to do about it?" Wade Boggs took a brand new baseball out of his pocket, autographed it, tossed it to the man, and went back to the field. The guy never yelled at him ever again; in fact, he became one of Wade’s biggest fans at Yankee Stadium. Wade Boggs made a decision to love his enemy. (Marc Axelrod)

It’s easy to love people who treat you well.

·       Like your parents who feed you, give you a free place to live and buy you lots of nice things and even when it’s not your birthday.

It’s easy to love the people who treat you well.

But how do you treat someone who doesn’t treat you well.

·       How do you love the kid who always tries to trip you when you’re walking down the hall in school?

·       How do you love the guy at work who keeps trying to get credit for work you’ve done and then blames you for his mistakes?

Even the most mature Christian can have enemies because some people are just nasty, mean and hateful.

Transition: Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5:43 (pg. 740 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you.) Verses 43-48 are a continuation of theme and thought beginning in verse 38. And it was last week that we found that we raise the bar of spiritual expectations and actions by being generous with grace.

V. Matthew 5:43 ‘You have heard that it was said…’

Read: Matthew 5:43

Here Jesus is responding to an abuse and twisting of God’s Word found in Leviticus 19:18.

Read: Leviticus 19:18 ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.’

The religious leaders had distorted the truth in order to accommodate their own sin of bigotry. They taught that only fellow Jews were their neighbors so they could treat anyone else how ever they wanted.

Transition: Jesus now corrects this twisting of Scripture by revealing the grace in Lev. 19:18.

VI. Matthew 5:44       ‘But I tell you…’

Read: Matthew 5:44

Love your Enemy

Jesus said there’s a better way to deal with your enemies which is in opposition to the natural response of hating them. He tells his disciples then and now, to have compassion, to love your enemy. Loving an enemy means choosing to let your love override your feelings of hate.

Understand that this kind of love is not the warm fuzzy feeling of love, it doesn’t mean they will become our best friend…it’s love in the form of duty. We make a conscious choice to choose to love the person who is not easy to love.

Pray for your Enemy

One of the best ways to demonstrate this kind of  love for your enemy is to pray for them. Now…this is not praying that your enemy will die horribly in a plane crash or be struck by lightening. Instead, it’s praying in such a way, that your enemy benefits because of your intercession.  

The kind of prayer Jesus is talking about is always prayer for the good of your enemy. Remember, I have been saying from the very beginning of this sermon series that to truly understand and follow Jesus’ words here on the Sermon on the Mount will require radical obedience and life altering change.

Think about this kind of love…isn’t that what Jesus did while he hung on the cross? He prayer for the forgiveness of those who placed him there. Stephen did the same thing when he prayed for the forgiveness of those who were stoning him to death.

Praying for your enemies does at least two things.

·       First, it changes them. Prayer can impact them and their situation. IT can soften their hearts towards us. When we pray for our enemies we can make a difference in their lives.

·       Second, praying for our enemies changes us. It too can soften our hearts. When we pray for our enemies, we’re engaging in godlike work. We’re interceding for them just as Christ intercedes for us.

ILL: The story is told that Muhammad Ali was getting ready to defend his heavyweight title against Jean Pierre Coopman of Belgium. It was obvious from the first press conference that Coopman was a big fan of Ali. He kept hugging him and kissing his hand and repeatedly asking for his autograph. Ali said "How am I supposed to get myself mad enough to fight this guy if he keeps hugging and kissing me? He’s taking all the fight out of me!" (Marc Axelrod)

That’s exactly what Jesus wants us to do! He wants us to love our enemies, so much so, that it takes the fight out of them…and us! Romans 12:21 says "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

Loving and praying for your enemies, being generous with grace are a few ways you can do that.

 

Transition: The point Jesus is making is that he doesn’t want those who are his disciples acting like the rest of the world. He wants us to live above the level of spiritual mediocrity by the power of His Spirit. He wants us to live a life that in our own strength would be impossible. And, he says, if you do, there’s a reward.

VII. Matthew 5:45a   ‘The reward’

Read: Matthew 5:45a

Jesus said we’re to love and pray for our enemies ‘that you may be sons of your Father which is in heaven.’

This doesn’t means that be BECOME sons/daughters of our Father in heaven by loving and praying for our enemies. You can’t earn your position as God’s child. It’s a free gift from God through faith in Jesus Christ. However, you can display the fact that you are God’s child BY loving and praying for your enemies.

So, are you revealing your identity as God’s child to the world around you? Can people tell you’re a Christian, by how you treat those who treat you poorly?

Transition: Jesus gives us an example of this kind of impartial love for all people in the last part of that verse.

VIII. Matthew 5:45b            ‘Common grace’

Read: Matthew 5:45b

God sends the blessings of sun and rain, upon all people…good and evil. This is called ‘common grace’ He doesn’t just bless those who love him.

Think about this.

·       What if God were to say to you ‘I’ll give you sunshine all day today if you’ll go to church on Sunday.’ Maybe your attendance would increase?

·       Or what if God said ‘I’ll send you some rain for your grass and flower beds provided you pray everyday for at least 15 minutes.’ Maybe you’d pray a bit more

I think we should be thankful that God doesn’t give sunshine or rain based on our goodness or withhold it for the lack of it. How about you?

Transition: Next in our text, Jesus gives us a few examples of how to be impartial in our love for our enemies.

IX. Matthew 5:46-47           ‘Example of grace 2’

Read: Matthew 5:46-47

ILL: A story in the Sunshine Magazine about a professor of psychology illustrates how difficult it is to love others. Although he had no children of his own, whenever he saw a neighbor scolding a child for some wrongdoing, he would say, "You should love your boy, not punish him." One hot summer afternoon the professor was doing some repair work on a concrete driveway leading to his garage. Tired out after several hours of work, he laid down the towel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and started toward the house. Just then out of the corner of his eye he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh cement. He rushed over, grabbed him, and was about to spank him severely when a neighbor leaned from a window and said, "Watch it, Professor! Don’t you remember? You must  ‘love’ the child!’ At this, he yelled back furiously, "I do love him, in the abstract, but not in the concrete!" (Jeffrey Anselmi)

The point is, it’s easy to ‘talk’ about loving our enemies when we don’t have any…at the moment.  We all agree that loving our enemies is God’s standard and something we should do, in the abstract…until someone really gets under our skin and all we want to do is throw something at them.

Love only those who love you

Jesus says that we must raise the bar, we must live according to a higher standard than the world around us by loving those who don’t love us. He makes it real by saying that if we only love those who love us, we are no better than tax collectors. This was a huge slap in the face to the Jews who hated tax collectors.  

·       You can replace Tax Collector, with the guy who cut you off then made offensive gestures to you.

·       You can replace the tax collector with the guy who took the parking place you were obviously waiting for…who gives you evil looks as he gets out of his car.

I think you get the idea…love them? Yes. Easy…no. That’s why we need to ask to be filled with the Spirit of God and then walk/live in the power of God’s Spirit.

Greet only those who greet you

Next Jesus gets even more specific.

It’s great to have friends; it’s not so great to exclude others or never to expand your circle of friends. As simple as this may sound…it’s important to greet other people and Jesus makes it an example of how we show love, be generous with grace.

When we have out Church Family Greeting at the beginning of our worship celebration each week, we get up and go greet someone.

·       In fact, lets do that again. This time greet someone you didn’t greet earlier and don’t be afraid to travel around the Worship Center instead of just turning to your right or left to greet someone.

Greeting one another is a display of God’s love and grace and people will take notice.

Summary

Here’s the point of this section.

·       Work for the blessing of your enemy.

·       Be nice to those who are not nice to you.

·       Greet people, say hello to people you don’t know in church,  on the street, in he workplace and in school.

Transition: Anyone can hate, it takes a child of God who is generous with grace to live above the level of spiritual mediocrity and love others. More people have been drawn to the church by displays of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world. Let’s be generous with grace and love people into our church fellowship and into God’s Kingdom!

X. Matthew 5:48        ‘The Standard’

Read: Matthew 5:48

Let me make this short and simple. Jesus isn’t saying we’re to be sinless…he’s saying that we are to be mature...to grow up, to work to become more Christ like.

The Greek word ‘Perfect’ here actually means ‘mature.’

·       To live in such a way as to reflect godly character to others.

·       To live in such a way that others say ‘Wow! That _____ really takes this Jesus stuff seriously. I’d like to know more about the kind of God that would make such a drastic change in _______’s  life.

Bottom line is that Perfection is God’s standard. It must be. Imperfection can never be God’s standard for our lives. Because God himself, is our standard and he is perfect.

·       While you may never hit perfection if you shoot for it, I can guarantee that if you shoot for imperfection, you’ll hit it every time.

Our standard, as well as our desire as a disciple of Jesus Christ should always to be like God.

Conclusion

How? How can we even begin to live like this?

Pastor and scholar John Piper says that if you take Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as a whole, all the commands assume, they presuppose, that a profound transformation has happened, a new birth has taken place, before our righteousness can surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees.

We don’t earn or merit our place as a child of God or our entrance into heaven. We receive it as a free gift and a gracious promise. Then we live in such a way that shows where our treasure is and who our God is. Loving our enemies is one proof that the power of the Kingdom of God has entered our lives.

Jesus has called us to a higher standard, to a different life…a life of being generous with grace, just as God has been generous in his display of grace in our life.

We raise the bar of spiritual expectations and actions in our lives by being generous with grace.