Sermon – “Love the Unlovable”

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’[f] 39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. 40 If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. 41 And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. 42 Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away. 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor[g] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,[h] 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren[i] only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors[j] do so? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

19 ‘If a man causes disfigurement of his neighbor, as he has done, so shall it be done to him— 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him. 21 And whoever kills an animal shall restore it; but whoever kills a man shall be put to death. 22 You shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own country; for I am the Lord your God.’”

13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing. and 13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

17 Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. 18 If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. 19 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,”[a] says the Lord. 20 Therefore “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”[b] 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Always equips him. And anyone that steps into a puppet who steps out of the church to witness God is going to equip you you don’t have to be afraid a man a man. Now on down. The barrel lead it out. A man glory we’ve already heard the word this morning Amen amen. His grace flows down that second course his grace flows down and who is covered by His grace. Come on a show of hands who’s covered by His grace a man. And a man glory to God. I love it when they get quiet. Karen already imposes the challenge or the small inning if you’re called to go we’re called to go out of the church I’ve got another challenge for us love the unloveable Are you ready to love the unloveable. Are you ready to love your enemy. Lord help us a man by scripture this morning is going to come from Jesus Sermon on the Mount Matthew chapter five verses thirty eight through forty eight. And Jesus was preaching to the multitude he’s up on the Mount and all the people are down below listening so I’m going to do a little exercise for the small is I read this because if you open your Bibles and you look at Matthew chapter five verse thirty eight to forty eight every word is in read so every word is the words of Jesus Christ so as I read this to smore ning I want to ask you all of you close your eyes close your eyes and just in vision imagine yourself there. Below Jesus. I know it’s me speaking but I’m speaking his words are not my words so. Bear with me this morning and close your eyes and just in vision a juror there and listening to Jesus that day. You have heard that it was said and I have for an AA a tooth for a tooth but I tell you not to resist an evil person but whoever slaps you on the right cheek turn the other to him also if anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic let him have your cloak also and whoever compels you to go one mile go with him to give to him who ask you and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away you have heard that it was said You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy but I Jesus speaking says to you say to you love your enemies bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust for if you love those who love you what reward have you do not even the tax collectors do the same and if you greet your brother and only what do you do more than the others do not even the tax collectors do so therefore you shall be perfect just as your Father in Heaven is perfect. You may open your eyes they will be falsely presell or praise the Lord let us pray Heavenly Father we thank you and praise you we thank you for your word that you gave us all your word it helps us to grow and and to come to know you more to know your love Father God we know that you love this you do all this while we were still centers your word tells us and Father God help us to love as you have loved. Father if we learn anything today help us to know how important it is that we love everybody father because we know that you love everybody we know that you so loved the world that you sent your son that we might have a life Father God may your spirit be upon us today father may every heart every single heart go away move today may be touched touch from your throne room and father may we glorify you in Jesus’ name amen. You know many people. That would find themselves the victim of a crime or a buse of some sort or even a close family member or a child or a loved one that is a victim when it comes to justice we would rather use the Old Testament version of justice because with the Old Testament version of justice we feel that the punishment got the. Justice to deserve. That the victim or the perp the predator got the justice that was coming to him because in the Old Testament Leviticus twenty four nineteen through twenty two it says if a man causes disfigurement of his neighbor as he has done so it shall be done to him fracture for fracture so I am telling you if my neighbor come over and broke my arm he’s going to get his arm broken if he broke my leg he’s going to get his leg broke an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth as he is cause disfigurement of a man it shall be done to him and whoever kills an animal showery Stuart but whoever kills a man shall be put to death you shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own country for I am the LORD your God. An eye for an eye I mean that’s justice be in. Done been served this sort of law has a name its Lex tally on this and this law is the law of retaliation whereby the punishment resembles the offense in conduct and degree. If you beat your neighbor half to death you were going to get beaten half to death. If you killing you were going to be killed. But my friends this law did not allow for private revenge because any punishment according to law God’s law all was handled by the magistrates or the judges only after the wrongdoing was proven. So you didn’t have a bunch of vigilantes out there seeking revenge it still had to be done according to God’s law. So even though the Old Testament law does give guidelines for punishment it states that we are not to seek revenge they were not to seek revenge because vengeance is to be left to God and God alone not man because God knows it of man harbors vengeance in his heart that is going to destroy him Leviticus Night Live it is one thousand eight hundred says You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge let that sink in for a minute do not bear any grudge against the children of your people but you shall love your neighbor as yourself I am the Lord. We must learn to love. It may not always come natural but we must learn it and tell you a vengeance will destroy I found a story. About a surge a vote man named Pippo he became a Bosnian Serb sniper. He himself shot three hundred twenty five individuals for the. Take of revenge before becoming a sniper Pippo was a partner in a Sara restaurant with a Muslim man the two were very good friends as well as partners. But it happened that Pippa’s mother was jailed and beaten by Muslims. In Pippo shares that whenever his mother found they got out of jail she was afraid to talk about it she was just. Mentally she would not even talk about it. So people Pippo picked up a gun and began killing Muslims he said I hate them all. He was killing for revenge he said killing is all I know how to do. He says I’m not even sure that I’m normal anymore he says I can talk to people but if someone pushes me the wrong way I will kill them. He said In the beginning I put my fear aside and that was good then as he continued killing he was able to put all of his emotions aside he said The night was good too he says but now they are gone his emotions are gone. He said after shooting three hundred twenty five people he has no fear no remorse no feelings at all he states plainly that I have no feelings for what I do he said I went to see my mother in Belgrade he said as she hugged me and I felt absolutely nothing. Felt nothing he said I have no life. I want no wife I want to do not want children I do not even want to think he says. So what the vengeance due to Pippa. Made him Nom if the strong had him he set out on his vengeful task because of what was done to his mother and now he has no feelings for his mother. It absolutely destroyed him inside. You know most all civilized countries have laws in which to invoke punishment upon those who do harm or steal or what other or what ever other crime they may do you know without such laws we would have absolutely no peace in a nation would we no peace at all you might think things are bad in our cities or towns now imagine if there were no laws at all. The wickedness would completely destroy our cities and towns. So then there lies that question that I began with can we love those that seem to be unlovable the Old Testament says so love your neighbor in the New Testament Jesus says Love your enemies. Love is a very important thing to out the Bible. God is love the word love appears three hundred ten times in the King James Version three hundred forty eight times in a New American Standard Bible five hundred fifty one times in a New International Version three hundred five hundred thirty eight times in the New Revised Standard Version and the numbers vary because of the different versions sometimes we’ll put the word love in for the word mercy but if you add mercy and grace and love all together which all show God’s love will be thousands of times. Stevedore Coby the offer the author of a book called Seven Habits of high Highly Effective People with a bestseller for quite a time in his book he tells them an exercise that he sometimes used with his students while he was teaching in college he required his students to think through what they would do if they had only the remainder of the semester to live he said that the exercises often produce some very profound responses though the dominant underlying principle was found to be love. If you had to decide what was most important. In your life what you want to most out of life. Would it be love. If you knew that you only had a couple months to live. How important would love be to you. Did you share your love with your family and as you receive your love your family and your church family I hope that it would be love. Because it is the most important thing is the most is the greatest gift love is the greatest gift. Love is a reason that God sent His Son. My tasks morning says For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that we should live First Corinthians thirteen one and one through three and VS thirteen says Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love I have become sounding brasserie clanging cymbal and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains but have not love I am nothing and though I be still all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned but have not love it profits me nothing and now abide faith hope love these three but the greatest of these is love. We could go out there and feed hundreds or thousands I could preach to the multitude but if we do any of these things without love it’s like doing nothing Love has to be what motivates us what moves us. Psychologist Erik from wrote in his book The Art of Loving he said that we must learn to love he said that we need to first learn the principles then we need to learn to practice them just like someone learning an art or learning. To do something if you want to learn Art what do you do you go to school you read you study you do whatever it is to to learn what you’re want to do you’ve got to study you’ve got to put time into it you’ve got to go to school you’ve got to whatever but then you’ve got to put it into practice we have to learn to love it may not come easy for us but we have to learn to do it if we want to learn to love the first thing we must do is get the a good idea of what love is and I’m going to tell you you’re not going to find the correct Adia what love is by looking the Hollywood. Are looking at society today. If you want to find out what love is get the Book of Love and read it study it dig into it because God is love he loves you he loves me he loves each and every one of us so this is the only place we’re going to find an accurate description of what love is this is the only place we’re going to learn how to truly love and love our enemies. The Bible teaches real love one of the most difficult verses in the Bible to swallow was found in my passage that I read Matthew verse for forty four but I say to you love your enemies bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. Whenever we learn to do these things. We will begin. To learn what love is when we begin to get to the place where Jesus wants us to be the word love as is used in this passage is agape it means moral love. There’s another type of love it’s phyla Oh this is a type of love it expresses personal affair. Action. Now we most likely would not have phyla love towards someone it’s going to smack us on the right cheek. For someone to commit whatever evil danced us we’re not going to have a fire load law for that person we’re not one of the we’re not gonna want to go give them a hug. Is going to be hard not to smack them back. But whenever we love of say as he says as a love that moral love We’re going to turn that other cheek. We’ve got to know what kind of love he’s talking about. We can learn to bless those who curse us we can learn to do good to those that hate us we can pray for those that spitefully use us or persecute us or do evil we can learn to pray for them Romans twelve seventeen to twenty one says repay no one evil for evil. No one have regard for good things in the sight of all men if it is possible as much as depends on you live peaceably with all men Beloved do not avenge yourselves but rather give place to rest for it is written Vengeance is mine I will repay says the Lord therefore if your enemy is hungry feed him if he is thirsty give him a drink for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head do not be overcome by evil but over come evil with good my friends if we allow evil to overcome us we will be just like Pippo the sniper. He was overcome with evil but we are to overcome evil with good. If we repay evil with evil that makes us. This is bad is the other guy. Someone does harm to us and we turn around and harm them back we’re just as bad as them you know I got a little conviction as I was reading preaching to myself here when I was a very young teenager just beginning the drive I had a one thousand nine hundred seventy three duster and back in those days the gas cap was just a little round thing to spawn right on or you could see it well me and buddy of mine we were out one night places we should in the been involved drinking and someone stole the gas cap off my car so I took vengeance in the my own hands I went and stole the gas kept the put back on my car. I did say yes confession here this morning and I feel bad about it I should have never did that but I took vengeance in the my own hands. We shouldn’t repay evil with evil. We should repay evil with good. Jesus said If you only love those who love you what reward have you do not even the tax collectors do the same you know tax collectors were despised lot back in that day. And they still are today they had an awful reputation of cheating hard working on a citizens out of their hard earned money you might say that nobody liked them probably the only one like them was their mother because you know mother loves which they might not have even liked by their mother I don’t know because some of them tax collectors are probably so greedy they would have cheated their own mother out of their hard earned money right. What Jesus is calling us his children to do is not the natural thing and that’s the point it’s not natural it’s not natural for us. You forgive someone that hurts us it’s not natural to turn the other cheek it is natural to want to break their arm too. It’s natural to put out there are they put our eye out but that’s the natural thing to do. For us to be able to forgive the tax collector in our lives is a supernatural thing. We are called to walk in the spear brothers and sisters not in the flesh therefore if we are still walking around the flesh we are not going to be able to the reach the level of love that Jesus desires us to reach and it’s the same level that he loved us for God so loved the world that He gave His only got the son Romans five while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. He didn’t come and just love the righteous He loved everybody. You might think what manner so much more evil in the world today than there was in Jesus’ day. In this audience that was listen to Jesus that day they were under a very very oppressive Roman government that would torture and murder people just to keep them in check. They knew what it was to have an enemy in Jesus saying You gotta love them. Right. Everyone listen to him probably thought Surely you don’t mean the tax collector sure you don’t mean these Roman soldiers Yes What about today can you love the Taliban soldier can you love the EK A al Qaeda soldier al Qaeda said that wrong. Can you love those ISIS warriors you’ve got to be kidding right. Well who are they. Are they your enemy. Are they the enemy of the church. Who did Jesus say were to love. The enemy. Now you might not have a fire. I love for them to want to go up and hug them. But can you have a moral love for them to pray for them you might say well. Yeah I can pray for Father send fire down out of heaven and destroy them. No. That’s not what I’m talking about. Can you pray Father can you send your spirit. To move in their lives break their heart hearts open their eyes if they might see open or ears father they might hear the truth that you love them. Can we pray that for enemies and really mean it in here. That’s what he’s calling us to do. We’re to pray for their souls. Because they’re human being just as we are. Sometimes what they do might seem in human but they are human beings just like us they were born into this world the same way as us. They had mothers who love them. But the difference is a vow the devil to deceive them into this obeying God they think they’re doing the work of God but they’re actually following Satan’s wicked plan of destruction. Hard as it is for us to understand but they are human they are loved by God Can you ever see that they are loved by God. God does not like what they’re doing but he loves them nonetheless it’s his desire that they would turn from their wickedness because God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ that’s found in the word brothers and sisters. Verses forty four and forty five again says but I say to you love your enemy bless them they curse you do. Good to them that hate you pray for those who spitefully usu and persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven that you may be sons and daughters of your Father in heaven for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good he sends his rain on the just and on the unjust when the sun comes up in the morning it shines on the evil person as well as the righteous person whenever the rain comes down it blesses the righteous and the UN righteous does it not. All receive the blessings from heaven. Because we are all human beings with a mind with a soul with a body. They just like us I want to share another parable or a parable for Matthew thirteen twenty four thirty. Jesus said another parable put forth to them saying the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sued good seed in his field but while man slept his enemy came and so tares among the wheat and went his way but when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop than the tares also appeared so the servants of the owner came and said to him Sir did you not so good seed in your field how then does it have tears he said to them an enemy has done this the servant said to him Do you want to go and gather them up but he said no less while you gather up the tears you also up root the wheat with them let both grow together until the harvest and at the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers first gather together the tears and bind them in bundles to burn them but gather the wheat into the barn so they gathered the tears together and threw them into the fire to be burned to be destroyed but the wheat is gathered into the barn which is the kingdom of God But why did he say no let them grow together because in that day the tears the tears look so much like the we will as they’re growing if you couldn’t tell them apart. So if they would try to gather them up they were surely going to gather Poor up some of the wheat along with it. The tears are the on righteous of the world today the WE DESERVE THIS they look so much alike don’t they. Look so much alike. We’re to love the unloveable. There’s a man named Gary Leon Ridgway. You’ve probably heard of him is probably better known as the Green River killer. In two thousand and three he confessed to the murders of forty eight women in two thousand and eleven Ridgway was convicted of the murder of Rebecca a rare zero bringing that victim count up to forty nine by his own confession though he says he may have murdered as many as sixty women. He especially desire despised prostitutes and targeted them for his killings. At Ridgway’s two thousand and three sentencing the families of the victims had the opportunity to speak out in address Ridgway directly and understandably many many of these family members were very angry they lashed out at him for the unimaginable grief that they put him that they put these families through. And he sat there stone faced as he listened these family members call him a monster say that he’s going to burn in hell receive the punishment that he’s due. On and on and on these family members but when it came time for Robert role the father of teenage victim Linda Jane rule to speak. Ridgway found he showed a little emotion. Because Mr roll was he got up there. He said you know. Many people here today hate you. They truly hate you and despise you he said but I’m not one of them. He says you have made it difficult to live up to what I believe. And that is what God says to do. But I forgive you. Imagine his teenage daughter murdered and he stands there before that man that day in two thousand and three says I forgive you. Ridgway began to cry. Love broke through the hardness of that heart. He finally showed some emotion. That’s what love can do. Love Can Break through the cold hard heart that even the most wicked man someone that would kill off the sixty people. That’s the power of love friends. That is the power of love. Are you ready to love the unloveable. Are you ready to pray for your enemy are you ready to pray that the Holy Spirit would move in their lives are you ready to forgive your enemies. Our greatest example was our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is an upon our cross. He looked as as he’s hanging there blood running down his face from the crown. In pain from the nails driven in his hands and feet and what that he did he looked down to the same soldiers that now in that cross said father. Forgive them. For they know not what they do. My friends I’m telling you many of these people that are out there doing evil things they know not what they do they need Jesus and how they going to need how they ever going to know Jesus unless a church shares Jesus with them Are you ready to love the unlovable. Yes Are you ready. I pray that God will move in our hearts and help us to share his love his moral love his a cop a love with those that need Jesus Christ. But that’s when your heart. Because power love cannot be stopped. It cannot be stopped. Because God is more powerful than anything in the universe and he has love a man in her closing him is. How fitting they will know we are Christians. How. A man.