1. "It may seem that what's past is more desirable to you than what's to come, because at least the past is fixed. In the past, at least you know what happened, and that is safe."

2. "Through all of this, Jesus makes it clear that the love of God is the source and reward of obedience to God."

3. "The Pharisees and scribes redefined the nature of the law to lighten the law's load. This is such a common instinct in the Bible and in our own lives."

4. "So, brothers and sisters, beware of the error of narrowing God's word to fit your own ends."

5. "Beware of allegiances that only affirm you. What we need as Christians is people to tell us the truth. We're not looking to be self satisfied and mutually affirmed in everything that we do."

6. "They mistook what seems right to us to be all that God requires of us. They mistook what seemed naturally good to be eternally good."

7. "This is so much more than the external conformity that the scribes and Pharisees were after. Jesus here is after your heart. He's after all of you. He's after your entire allegiance."

8. "In these and like circumstances, loving your enemies means returning good for evil. Jesus tells his followers not to seek retribution on your enemy as individuals. Instead, Jesus would have us leave vengeance to the Lord and seek the good of your enemy where you can."

9. "They can't take prayer from you. They can take everything else. But you can still pray. And so long as you can pray, you are still to love your enemies."

10. "None of Jesus' teaching makes sense and none of Jesus' commands can be followed apart from his work on the cross. The Sermon on the Mount can only be understood through Calvary; the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus' entire earthly life were directed toward him dying in the place of many of his enemies."

Observation Questions

1. According to Matthew 5:43, what had Jesus’ listeners “heard” about loving their neighbor and relating to their enemies?
2. In Matthew 5:44, what two specific commands does Jesus give in contrast to what they had heard?
3. In Matthew 5:45, what purpose does Jesus give for loving enemies and praying for persecutors, and what two examples from nature does he use to describe the Father’s actions?
4. In Matthew 5:46, what question does Jesus ask about loving those who love you, and whom does he mention as an example of this limited kind of love?
5. In Matthew 5:47, what situation does Jesus describe about greeting “only your brothers,” and which group does he compare this to?
6. In Matthew 5:48, what command does Jesus give about being “perfect,” and whose perfection is held up as the standard?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is the contrast between “You have heard that it was said” (v.43) and “But I say to you” (v.44) significant for understanding Jesus’ authority and his correction of the scribes and Pharisees?
2. How does Jesus’ command to “love your enemies” (v.44) clarify and expand the Old Testament command to “love your neighbor,” as the sermon explained?
3. What does Jesus teach us about God’s character in verse 45 by saying that the Father makes his sun rise and sends rain on both the evil/good and just/unjust, and how does this relate to the idea of common grace?
4. How do verses 46–47 show that merely loving those who love us and greeting only our own “brothers” falls short of the righteousness Jesus calls his disciples to?
5. In light of verse 48 and the sermon’s explanation, what does it mean that we “must be perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect,” and how is this goal connected to being sons and daughters who resemble our Father?

Application Questions

1. Think of a difficult relationship in your life right now (work, home, church, school). What would it look like this week to “return good for evil” in that specific situation, rather than protecting yourself or seeking subtle payback?
2. The sermon warned against narrowing God’s word to make it more comfortable. Where are you most tempted to soften or “edit” Jesus’ command to love enemies, and what concrete step could you take to obey him instead?
3. Jesus calls us to pray for those who persecute us (v.44). Is there anyone who has mocked, marginalized, or opposed you because of your faith that you could begin praying for regularly? What might you actually pray for them?
4. The tax collectors and Gentiles loved and greeted only “their own.” In your friendships, social circles, or church life, where do you see an instinct to stay only with those who affirm you or are like you, and how could you intentionally move toward those outside your “tribe” this week?
5. Since God loved us when we were his enemies and made us his friends through Christ, how might remembering the gospel change your attitude and tone toward someone who has hurt you deeply?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Leviticus 19:9–18 — Lays out God’s command for Israel to love their neighbor, including the stranger and those who have wronged them, which Jesus clarifies and fulfills in Matthew 5.
2. Deuteronomy 7:1–11 — Shows God’s specific command regarding Israel’s enemies and his choosing them not because of their merit, illuminating the sermon’s point about misreading “hate your enemy” and God’s free love.
3. Romans 12:14–21 — Calls believers to bless persecutors, avoid revenge, and overcome evil with good, closely paralleling Jesus’ teaching on loving enemies.
4. Acts 7:54–60 — Stephen prays for his killers as he is being stoned, providing a living example of praying for persecutors in the spirit of Matthew 5:44.
5. Romans 5:6–11 — Explains that Christ died for us while we were still sinners and enemies, grounding Jesus’ call to love enemies in God’s own saving love toward us.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Tension Between Old and New at the Turn of the Year

II. The Three Errors Jesus Corrects (Matthew 5:43, 46-47)

III. The Two Commands Jesus Gives (Matthew 5:44)

IV. The Goal: Reflecting God's Perfect Character (Matthew 5:45-48)

V. The Cross as the Foundation for Loving Enemies

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Detailed Sermon Outline

How does what's old relate to what's new? How does what's past relate to what's to come? As we come to the close of one year and the start of a new, I'm sure many of us in this room are looking for a fresh start, maybe in some small ways, but also in some big ways. Perhaps 2024 wasn't the year that you had hoped. When it was beginning.

But now you're hoping that 2025 is gonna be the year for you. You have big plans, big hopes, big expectations at this beginning of a new year. You wanna leave the old behind and you're focused on what's to come. A new year you think brings new adventure, new opportunities. Maybe there's a new job.

A marriage, or a new home that you're eagerly anticipating, or maybe 2025, you don't have big expectations, but maybe small ones. You think it's gonna be the year of small changes where you can finally focus on the things that you've been putting off for so long that you really want to do. A new year does in many ways bring a new start for some of us in some ways, and as we're excited about what's to come. But for others, maybe you're not excited about 2025 at all. Maybe you can't think of what 2025 will hold because today you're struggling to see beyond this month or you're finding it hard to get through the next week.

Or maybe it's taking all that you have to get through today. Maybe even the past few weeks have been the loneliest time of your life. And you can't bear the thought of repeating another December with the same afflictions and alienation that you've experienced. You desire to have the hope that many around you seem to share, that newness, that freshness, that excitement about what's to come. But for you, your life may seem a mess.

It may seem like you just can't figure things out. It may seem that what's past is more desirable to you than what's to come, because at least the past is fixed. Because in the past, at least you know what happened, and that is safe. Well, no matter where we find ourselves, holding onto the past or eager about what's to come, our passage this morning meets us in this tension. How does what's old, as what we've heard, what we've seen, and what we've done bear on us and what's to come.

This morning we're in the book of Matthew, the first book in the New Testament, written by Matthew, one of Jesus' first disciples. The book's opening chapters demonstrate how many old promises, promises from centuries ago, have reached their fulfillment now in Jesus. Many of these we celebrated this Christmas, as we heard prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah all being fulfilled in the coming and birth of Jesus. Such fulfillment, though as Matthew points out, sparks hope in many, but dread in others. The events of Jesus's birth through the start of his public ministry have all happened in fulfillment of centuries old prophecy.

This morning we come to chapter five where we have the first major section in Matthew's gospel of Jesus's teaching. And it covers three entire chapters, chapters five through chapter seven. And this is the passage of what will later become known as the Sermon on the Mount. Prior to this, Jesus has triumphed over Satan's temptation in the wilderness. He's healed many, and he's already amassed a large following, even seemingly before he's given an extended teaching that we're coming to now.

Crowds were already flocking to him. Something new had arrived and people were excited. As his frame was spreading, what is it that Jesus would do? Well, you see it there in Matthew 5:1. What does Jesus do?

He goes up on a mountain, he sits down, and begins to teach his disciples. What's he going to say? What is this one who has come to fulfill this prophecy from the ages, what will he say to his followers? What new teaching will he give? Well, this week and next week, we plan to look at two passages in this teaching to observe what Jesus still has to teach us.

And what I hope that we'll see is that although Jesus has come to establish something new, what he's teaching isn't new. It's old. But its meaning had been lost centuries ago. So turn with me now to Matthew 5:43. Matthew 5:43.

This is Jesus, he says, you, have heard that it was said, you, shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and He sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?

Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

In this passage, Jesus follows a pattern. It's a pattern he's developed in the preceding verses in chapter 5 where he cites a teaching that the disciples would have heard, likely coming from the scribes and Pharisees who were the Jewish teachers of his day. After citing them, Jesus corrects their error. He gets right to the heart. This is the sixth time Jesus has done something similar in chapter 5.

In all of this, he's presenting a righteousness that surpasses the supposed righteousness of the teachers of God's law. You see that back there if you want to flip back in your Bible to Matthew 5:20, where Jesus says, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. What righteousness is Jesus after? What righteousness is he teaching about? That's the righteousness that he illustrates in the rest of chapter 5 and the righteousness that we're talking about together.

This morning. Here in our passage, Jesus pushes past misunderstanding of God's law and gets right to the heart. I'm going to be referring to God's law a lot, and I think the best way to understand it, at least how we think about it and use it in this passage, is it's God's word. Here, particularly the Old Testament, the law is seen as God's word and his requirement for the world. So it's God's word and its requirements.

So here, Jesus corrects, in our passage, He corrects three errors, gives two commands, and defines one goal for His followers. And for those that are helped by it, that forms our outline. First, the errors. Second, the commands. Third, the goal.

The errors, the commands, the goal. Through all of this, Jesus makes it clear that the love of God is the source and reward of obedience to God. The love of God is the source and reward of obedience to God. So let's dive into the text. First, the errors.

Jesus here calls out three errors. You see that in verses 43 and 46 and 47. The first error is that of the Pharisees and scribes. Those thought again to be teachers of God's law. But instead of being teachers of the law as it's written, instead they narrow God's law.

Jesus cites their teaching that look there in verse 43. He says, you've heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. The teaching is partially correct. God does tell his people to love their neighbors. As we read a moment ago in Leviticus 19, God's people are to be a people of love who show love to neighbors and even those who've wronged them.

They are to seek what's good for them regardless of circumstance. The problem with this teaching though is the second part. Nowhere in the Bible does God tell his people to hate their enemies. Now it's not difficult to see why some reading the Old Testament may think that God's people were to hate their enemies. Deuteronomy 7:2 after all and elsewhere does authorize God's people to make war on their enemies and not just to make war on them as a form of political conquering them, but to wipe them out to see that there's no remaining survivor.

But even in this, it's a particular authorization for a particular purpose. Even though the error of the scribes and Pharisees may be understandable, what Jesus is pointing out here, their error, thinking that we're to hate enemies has severe consequences. It seems that what the teachers here are doing was narrowing God's law to make it more palatable. God's word is clear. God's law does demand that we love neighbors, that we love all people because of the love of God for us as we've already been thinking about.

But they redefined the Pharisees and scribes redefined the nature of the law to lighten the law's load. I want us to see for a moment that this is such a common instinct in the Bible. And in our own lives. Think back to the Garden of Eden. What is it that the serpent said?

Did God really say? You can hear that slithery serpent questioning God and coming to an assumption of Adam and Eve that surely God wouldn't want you to do something too hard. He wants your good. He wants you to be happy. He wants you to take the easy road.

He's not looking for your obedience. He wants you to do what seems right to you.

Don't worry about what he said. Redefine it to serve your purposes. You can see the seriousness of this error, an error that's both seductive, appeals to something in us, and it's also wicked. What it does is it dethrones God in our heart as we refuse to take God at his word. And that's what the Pharisees and scribes were doing.

They were refusing to take God at his word, so they redefined God's law. So brothers and sisters, beware of the error of narrowing God's word to fit your own ends. Another error that Jesus corrects is that of the self-absorbed tax collectors. Look there at verse 46 where Jesus says, For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

Implied here is a demand for Jesus' followers to be distinct. From those around them. Nobody in this day and age wanted to be like the tax collectors. They were a reviled people.

The tax collectors in Jesus's day were largely associated with moral compromise and selling themselves for profit, selling their allegiance for profit. They were loyal to themselves and they kept company, as Jesus points out here, with those who'd mutually admire their cunning and deceitful allegiances.

They loved those who were like them. They were self-consumed and self-satisfied. Beware of the allure of allegiances that only affirm you. Say that again. Beware of allegiances that only affirm you.

What we need as Christians is people to tell us the truth. We're not looking to be self-satisfied and mutually affirmed in everything that we do. What unites us as Christians is that we're sinners.

And we need people to call us out in our sin. We need people to point out places in our lives where we may be prone to morally compromise. But what the self-absorbed tax collectors were doing, what Jesus would have his followers refrain from doing, is fellowshipping with people who were just like them, who would encourage them in their blindness and deceit. Jesus still points out a third error, and that's the error of the Gentiles. Their error was to insulate themselves.

Look in verse 47, Jesus says, if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Again implied is that Jesus' followers are to be distinct from the Gentiles who here are noticed by welcoming only their kin. They show warmth and hospitality only to those they're comfortable with, who here have the warm ties of years of family relationships and familial closeness. It's their bloodlines for the Gentiles that form their attachments, and there's no need to serve those outside of their family.

The Gentiles displayed a tribal affection that was insular, focused on their own family, the good of their name and reputation. Well, what is it that these three errors have in common? They all show partially what seems naturally good to us. It is natural to love your family. It's natural to love those who are like you and do good to you.

It's even natural to want to protect yourself from your enemies. The problem with these examples is that they failed to meet the standard of God's law. They mistook what seems right to us to be all that God requires of us. They mistook what seemed naturally good to be eternally good. They prize what seems good and what builds us up.

They prize what we just can naturally assume is for our good, for our safety, for our comfort. But as we'll see, God's law is not rooted in anything that comes naturally to us. And Jesus demonstrates this by giving us two commands that clarify the law's intent. Moving to point two, the commands. Look back there in verse 44.

Jesus says, But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Jesus here clarifies the intent of God's command to love your neighbor. He takes those who are most reviled in the Pharisees and scribes teaching and says, no, the command to love your neighbor goes to your enemies too. The command to love neighbor is comprehensive. There's no one who's off limits for you.

There's no one who's off limits for God's people to show love towards. Against the selfishness and insular affection of the tax collectors and Gentiles, and most pointedly against the narrowed, redefined way of the teachers, Jesus demonstrates that the command to love your neighbor includes those who oppose you, and seek your ruin. His words land like a ton of bricks. He gives no qualification. The command is clear.

To follow Jesus, to obey God, means loving your enemies. It means loving those who are most unlovable to you. By saying love your enemies, Jesus means for his followers to be characterized by an inner disposition or a resolve to do good to others, regardless of how they treat you. One scholar put it this way, is that the love that Jesus is after here is a love that's not controlled by the object. Does that make sense?

That the love that you give isn't controlled by the one that you seek to love, regardless of if they accept it, if they deny it, if they ridicule you, if they turn against you. Jesus would have his followers love their enemies. This is so much more than the external conformity that the scribes and Pharisees were after. Jesus here is after your heart. He's after all of you.

He's after your entire allegiance and he says that that shows itself in how you love those most unlovable. And these are more than just feelings of sympathy to those who oppose you. More than feeling sorry for those who seem to misunderstand you. Jesus would have his followers exude love and do good for those who treat them poorly. So with such a clear command, who are our enemies?

Well, I think as we think about this text and apply it to our lives, we can think of enemies and those that have enmity with us in a number of shapes and sizes. Starting with, I'll start it with some smaller enemies and we'll work to some bigger enemies. So on the smaller side, it could be that colleague who always seems to disagree with you and oppose you. Didn't Welton do such a great job leading us in thinking about who our enemies were and how we could wrong them and even wrong God? There's a whole category of people that we can think about.

Or it could be a colleague or it could be those close to you. Who often oppose you in smaller ways, who you don't see as an enemy to you. Maybe again, they're part of your family. But maybe now there's a certain enmity that's present. Maybe they oppose you in real ways.

Maybe it's that child who seems perpetually defiant, or maybe the parent who doesn't seem to understand you. Maybe at times it's even your spouse, that one most close to you, or a lifelong friend who for whatever reason Whatever the circumstance, right now just feels like you're against one another.

Or maybe it's someone who's seeking to tear down your reputation for their own gain. Maybe they're not calling into question your faith or opposing you because of your belief in Jesus, but they're calling into question your character or your competence in an attempt maybe to take your job. Or in some vain attempt to build themselves up by destroying you. Whatever the case, again, enemies and enmity can come in all shapes and sizes, but Jesus' command still holds: Love your enemies. That means returning blessing for cursing.

It may mean when your colleague disagrees with you yet again, it means looking past your pride and seeking to learn from another perspective. It means when your child spurns you again to bear with him in patience. It means when someone seeking to tear you down to refuse to return in kind and instead look for ways to build them up. In these and like circumstances, loving your enemies means returning good for evil. Jesus tells his followers not to seek retribution on your enemy as individuals.

This is something that Paul picked up in Romans 12 that we just read. Instead, Jesus would have us leave vengeance to the Lord and seek the good of your enemy where you can. We should note here that unless we do misinterpret this text, Jesus is not making a claim of what makes for justice. He's not talking about what we should seek to do to order society, to restrain evil. Indeed, it's not loving to allow someone to persist in sin if they're a lawful means to stop it.

It's not loving to let them go on sinning if there's something that we can do to stop them from hurting others. But here, Jesus is focused on the heart of his followers when they're wronged. There may be a time where wrong is done at such a scale that a court or a legal system may help to remediate some of those consequences, however imperfectly. Such action Jesus is not ruling out here. Jesus is focused elsewhere and on something more universal and something more problematic.

And that's the problem of our heart. While telling his followers to love their enemies, Jesus then turns to consider how to love a particular kind of enemy when he says in verse 44, Pray for those who persecute you. What Jesus highlights here is there are those who may seek your harm because of your faith.

Rather than another word for the same group of people, like Jesus saying, Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, I think it's best to understand Jesus talking about persecutors as a particular kind of enemy. It's not that all enemies will be persecutors, but persecutors are definitely enemies. And what does Jesus say that we should do for these enemies? Is that we should pray for them. Jesus is defining a way to love those who are most set against you.

Or how to love your biggest and most vicious enemy, the one opposed both to you and the God you serve. He tells his followers to pray for their persecutors. And in doing this, Jesus makes it clear that loving enemies is not something of outward expression, but instead that of a deep inner resolve. Instead of functioning to improve your love for your enemies, I think what Jesus is saying here is that praying for your enemies is loving them. Appealing to God on their behalf is loving those who are opposed to you.

What he's saying is to pray for your persecutors when there's nothing else that you can do to love them. Still love them. Still pray for them. The first years of Matthew's gospel would have certainly known persecution. Many were acquainted with poverty and social alienation.

And unlike some who at the time may have seen love and kindness of one's enemies to be of some universal beneficence who may have had wealth to absorb some of those costs, Jesus' followers were maligned in society. Many of them were stripped of all their worldly possessions because of their belief in Jesus. The command to pray wasn't for them a strategy to win their enemies by their love. Instead, as Stephen did in Acts 7, the instruction to pray was a way to love your enemies even when they come after you to take your life. Even at death's door, Jesus would have you, He would have all of His disciples love their enemies.

They can't take prayer from you. They can take everything else, but you can still pray. And so long as you can pray, you are still to love your enemies. How is such a love like this possible? That brings us to our third and final point, that is the goal.

We should note, as I mentioned this a moment ago, that showing kindness to one's enemies isn't new or novel to Christianity. Such beneficence toward those who oppose you was considered virtuous as far back as ancient Babylon. The Roman orator Cicero, Greek philosopher Socrates, all noted that there's a virtue in loving those who oppose you. But what makes Jesus' command unique is the standard that he imposes. It's not a standard that starts in us.

It's not a standard that starts in human wisdom. It's a standard that's rooted in God's character. And because of this, Jesus' command to love is comprehensive. It's a transformed disposition that's set on loving all, even those who oppose you. How is it then we can love like this?

How can we know what it means to love our enemies? Jesus can't point to and doesn't point to worldly examples of this because all of those are insufficient. He wants his followers to exhibit the character of God, and that's why he says in verse 48, you must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect. This verse jumping down to it now is a summary of our passage and the many passages that's come before it. In it, Jesus summarizes the law's standard for us.

Instead of that of the scribes and Pharisees back in 520 setting the standard for the law, Jesus makes it clear that the character of God is the goal of the law. Like God's demand for holiness in Leviticus 192, The goal here is displaying the character of God by our lives. The question is not one of status. It's not that you must earn perfection, then you will become sons. No, being sons is implied throughout the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus is talking to his followers after all. Jesus, the one who will show his followers the Father. In him, we know God. In him, we have Christ. But instead, what Jesus is extending is a standard.

He will have us be perfect. He will have our love be modeled after that heavenly love, after the perfect love of the father for the son. That is the standard of the Christian love. It's a love that overflows to our enemies. It's not about status.

It's not about notoriety. It's not about the respect of others, but it's about resembling your heavenly Father.

Jesus' followers are to be entirely devoted to God. What he says against the scribes and Pharisees, against the teachers, against divided loyalties is that your loyalty to God is to be united. Obedience to God's commands must be whole. They must be complete. They must lack nothing.

It must characterize your heart and your life.

Well, how does this work out? That brings us back to verse 45 where Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies so that they might resemble God. They are to indeed love as God loves. Look back at verse 45 where Jesus roots this admonition in God's character. Why should Jesus' followers love their enemies?

So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Jesus is showing here that loving enemies shows that you're sons. Again, it's not that loving enemies makes you sons, it's that it exhibits that you are sons. It's like my son Ernest imitating me, his father, but not because of, he's trying to please me to earn his place in his place in our home. Instead, he's imitating me because I love him and he loves me.

He wants to be like his father. So it's natural for him to want to exhibit his father's character. And that's what Jesus is after here. What you see your heavenly father doing, do the same things. Show love to those both evil and good.

And this is what Jesus said earlier in Matthew 5:16 where he says that we're to let our light shine before others, that they, the world, may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven. Even in our love, it's not about us. It's about giving glory. It's about showing what God is like. Loving enemies is connected to showing who God is.

The works of Jesus' disciples here are to display who God is and what he's like. They follow Jesus and Jesus shows them the Father and they are secure with him. So how is it that we can love our enemies like God? We look to the Father's love, look to the care that he provides for everyone, even those who oppose him. He supplies, as we see here, the needs of his friends and his enemies.

How does he do it? Well, look there again at verse 45. He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and on the unjust. This God is the God that provides for everyone.

He sustains life on earth. He sustains life of everyone regardless of their status. The sun that gives light to all, well, that's his. The rain that falls He directs where it lands. He controls the rain and sends it to water the fields of his friends and his enemies.

Just because the patterns are consistent and predictable sometimes to us doesn't mean that God has given up control. He sets the boundaries of the sun's rays. He controls every drop of rain, and through it, he supplies the needs of his enemies. It's God's common care for his enemies that his followers are to imitate. Such love here shouldn't be misunderstood to be grounds for universalism.

God's grace and patience toward those who are opposed to him, God instead is showing grace and patience to those who are opposed to him. God's love of his enemies is real and can be seen by his gracious provision for all. But Jesus Astutely, is careful to point out a certain kind of God's love. It's a common love that he gives to all, to those who are unjust and those who are just, to those who are good and evil. It is, in fact, a real working of God's love, but there's more love, there's a greater love to be had.

The care that he shows to all It doesn't save all. Many still seeing God's common grace remain God's enemies. And many, tragically, will die God's enemies. Friends, if you haven't repented of your sins and trusted in Christ, you are God's enemy. You are opposed to Him.

Don't mistake this gracious provision for you, of even being able to hear his word preached as his eternal pleasure in you. That can only be had through turning from your sins and trusting in Christ. So do that. Turn from yourself, turn from your selfishness, your isolation, turn from your sin and shame, turn to Christ and be counted God's friends. If you have any questions about what that means, I'd love to talk to you at this door afterwards or find any of us at the door, talk to somebody around you.

This is what Christianity is about. It's about we who once were God's enemies now being God's friends. So brothers and sisters, consider where we would be if God hadn't loved his enemies. What are the characteristics of God's love here and most fully in Christ? God's love is free.

It's unmerited. We don't deserve it. We were his enemies and God's love of us is not controlled by its object. He bestows his free love, love that he's always had to us. We are recipients of that love.

He doesn't wait for us to make ourselves lovable or to become his friends. His love is in fact what makes us lovely. Him choosing us and uniting us with Christ is what made us his friends.

He loves because it pleases him and because it pleases him, it'll never change.

And this is not just a New Testament teaching and that's what makes the Pharisees error so appalling. Deuteronomy 7:7 reminds us that God did not choose Israel because of anything they had done. They once too were God's enemies. Isn't this what we were meditating on in Romans 4 with the example of Abraham? Abraham wasn't searching for God.

God found him. God called him. The Pharisees and so many like them assumed the love of God and their love for others grew sour. They missed that God is the one whose love is powerful enough to make enemies friends. God's love is seen not only in the way that he corrects our erroneous thinking or in the fact that he gives us commands and tells us what to do.

God's love is more fully seen in the very one speaking these words to us. Did you notice what Jesus says when he gives the command? He doesn't say, this teacher said, this is actually the correct interpretation. Do you notice what he said? Look there in verse 44, the first three words, but I say.

Who is it that teaches like this man? The answer is no one. The power of God's love is seen most fully in Christ. You see, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not just another teacher, though he does teach. He's not merely an example for us to follow, though we should follow him.

He is God. He's the one who's ascended the mountain, sat down, opened his mouth, and taught his disciples. He's the one that whose teaching gets right to the heart. His teaching uniquely carries authority and his teaching is adorned by his life. There's nothing that Jesus taught that he didn't obey.

Unlike the hypocrites who added to God's law and didn't keep it, Jesus kept his word perfectly. He loved his enemies and it led him to his death. And there on the cross, stripped of all worldly things, what does Jesus do? He prays for his persecutors. He is still loving his enemies.

He was perfect. His love is perfect. And don't miss this point. It's that death, brothers and sisters, that made us his friends. It wasn't some cosmic niceness that did it.

His death is what purchased our friendship.

Apart from such love, apart from the cleansing from sin that the cross provides, we would have remained God's enemies. Certainly this is what Paul has in mind in Romans 5 when he says, you, once were enemies are now counted friends. How is it that we're counted friends? Not by us, but by Him. By the penalty for our sin and death being paid.

Our enmity against Him, against God, was so heinous and so idolatrous and ran so deep that Jesus would have to die to redeem us. When looking here at the Sermon on the Mount, many do marvel at Jesus' wisdom. It is amazing. Others are inspired by his example or amazed by his power. But friends, don't miss this.

None of Jesus' teaching makes sense and none of Jesus' commands can be followed apart from his work on the cross. You can't love your enemies the way that Jesus prescribes here. Without first coming to terms with what Jesus did on the cross. The Sermon on the Mount can only be understood through Calvary.

The Gospel of Matthew and Jesus' entire earthly life were directed, are directed towards him dying in the place of many of his enemies. It's then through the cross that we grasp the hope of verse 48, where we're called to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Our Father in heaven is the standard of the law, but he's also through Christ, the gracious supplier of all that we need. He died in the place, in our place, while we were his enemies, and now united to him by faith, he now lives to make us perfect. Let's pray.

Father, we do give you thanks that you have supplied our needs in Christ.

Jesus, you came and lived the perfect life. You came teaching, you came healing, you came preaching, and all of these things, you came to die as a substitute. For those who once were your enemies. Lord, help us to treasure this. Help your love for us to motivate us to love our enemies as would please you.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.