For our Old Testament reading, please take your copy of God’s Word and turn to the book of Exodus, chapter 23. Exodus, chapter 23, verses 4 through 9. This is in that portion of the book of Exodus that’s sometimes referred to as the book of the law. It’s an expansion upon and a further expression of God’s moral will for his people. And I hope that as we read it now, you’ll sense a sort of a New Testament flavor to it. Exodus 23, verses four through nine. Listen to this. This is the very word of God.
If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it. You shall rescue it with him. You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. Keep far from a false charge and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
And now for our New Testament reading, please turn to Luke’s gospel. We are presently in chapter six. and our reading this morning and the text for our sermon will be verses 27 through 31. But I say to you who hear, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
That’s the reading of God’s Word. Let’s pray for his blessing upon it now. Heavenly Father, hearkening back to some of those words we just sang, we pray now that you would teach us your way, oh Lord. Teach us your way. Until the race is run, Until the journey is done, until the crown is won, teach us your way. Teach us through your word even now. May your Holy Spirit be our teacher. For we pray in Christ’s name. Amen. We’re in that portion of Luke’s gospel that’s often referred to as the sermon on the plane. It’s a counterpart to Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5-7, which we know is the Sermon on the Mount.
And in the Sermon on the Mount, you have a series of statements from Jesus that follow a certain formula, something along the lines of, you have heard that it was said, but I say unto you, And Jesus uses that formula over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount.
And it’s interesting that he deals with various different categories of sayings. In some cases, he’s quoting directly from Scripture. So he’s saying, what you’ve heard said is true. It’s God’s Word. You have heard that it is said or that it has been written. And then he goes on to expand upon and to clarify the teaching of that particular portion of Scripture. In other cases, He is clearing away false and man-made additions to God’s law.
For example, and one that relates to the opening words of our text this morning. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus 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 throughout the sermon on the mount, In those series of statements, in that series of statements, Jesus essentially is raising the bar of righteousness. Because what had happened in so many cases is that the teachers of the law, the scribes and the Pharisees, they’d taken the bar, so to speak, the standard, and they’d put it down where it’s easy for people to clear it.
And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, you don’t understand. The bar isn’t down here. The bar’s up here. And so when God says, be ye holy, even as I am holy, he’s not talking about a low bar. He’s talking about a very high one. He’s raising the standard, and that’s what Jesus is doing here in Luke’s Gospel as well.
We just looked at in our last message from Luke, Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. You who are blessed and then in Luke’s. Version of Christ’s teaching here. He also has those corresponding woes. And the last Beatitude that we looked at back in Chapter 6 verse 22 is where Jesus says, blessed are you when people hate you. Blessed are you when people exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil. Now this passage here is dealing with that theme. Jesus is hearkening back to that idea that when people hate you and when they exclude you, you’re blessed. And he’s reaching back to that. And in this passage, he’s taking that theme and explaining to his disciples and explaining to us how we are to respond.
What we’re to do when people hate us, when they exclude us, when they spurn us and revile us. He’s already said that when that happens, if it happens for His namesake, we’re blessed already. God’s blessing is upon you when people treat you that way because of Christ and for His namesake. But how do we react? What should be our response when we’re treated that way by the world?
And that’s what this passage is all about. And it teaches us that the royal law of our heavenly King requires us to overcome evil with good. The royal law of our heavenly king requires us to overcome evil with good. Now here are my three points, if you want them in advance.
First of all, we’re gonna see what this passage says about the treatment Christians can expect from the world. Secondly, Christians’ response to the world’s treatment. And thirdly, summing up what God requires. treatment Christians can expect from the world, Christian response to the world’s treatment, and summing up what God requires. Now, as far as the treatment Christians can expect from the world, Jesus lists some various things that we can anticipate from the world.
In this world, Christians will have enemies. In this world, Christians do have enemies. It reminds me of what Jesus said in one of my what I think is one of the most tender and heartwarming verses in the New Testament, where Jesus says in John 16. In this world, you’ll have tribulation, but be of good courage.
I’ve overcome the world. wonderful, encouraging, emboldening declaration that Jesus our Savior has overcome this world. The world is in opposition to us, the world will hate us because it hated Him. But as if he says, don’t worry about that. I’ve already overcome the world for you. But he prefaces it with that very sobering statement. In the world, you will have tribulation.
And this tribulation that Christians will have is not a nameless, faceless tribulation or trouble. That tribulation and that trouble will come from enemies. And this is an enmity that arises. It’s an ancient enmity and it comes from that basic, fundamental, primeval opposition of the seed of the serpent to the seed of the woman. And that’s where all the enmity comes from. That’s where our tribulation originates and all our trouble. And what does it look like?
He says in verse 22, people will hate you. It’s just a fact. Blessed are you when people hate you. And exclude you. And so in verse 27, he affirms once again that people will hate you. Praise God, they don’t all hate us and praise God that they don’t always hate us, but they will hate us. People will curse you.
Meaning. that because of who you are in Christ, they will desire and attempt to invoke upon you misfortune from supernatural sources, from God himself. They will wish that God would strike you down. They will wish that God will do evil to you because they hate you. They’ll wish upon you God’s own opposition. He speaks of the fact that people will abuse us.
And that word there in the Greek means to mistreat. It can mean to insult. It can mean to revile. This word abuse carries a lot of freight and it can mean a lot of things in a lot of different contexts. But in this particular context, it’s referring primarily to verbal abuse, verbal abuse that we get from the world. There’s only one other place in the New Testament where this Greek word is used.
It’s in 1 Peter 3.16, and I’ll just read it for you to kind of give you an idea of what this word abuse means here.
It’s where Peter writes, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior, and that word revile is the word that’s translated abuse here in Luke 6. When you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
So that’s the idea here. So people will hate you, they will curse you, they will abuse you, and they may even strike you. Jesus gives us instructions as to when someone strikes us on the cheek. Now, this type of striking that’s being referred to here probably refers to a kind of striking wherein physical injury isn’t necessarily in view. It’s more of an insult. In fact, people have made the observation that in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus makes this same statement, Matthew records it this way in the Sermon on the Mount, “‘But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek,’ the right cheek he specifies there in Matthew, “‘turn to him the other also.’ Since most people are right-handed, to strike someone on the right cheek would involve a slap like this. So the concept here is more of something like what we would describe as a slap in the face.
Not someone who’s out to injure you or to inflict serious bodily harm or death, but just an insult. That kind of abuse. And people may do that to you. either physically or verbally. People may even try to deprive you of or take away your possessions, and Jesus deals with that.
These are all things that we hope and pray won’t happen to us, but things that may very well happen to us in this present age, in this present life, as followers and disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, from the hands of those who hate the Lord Jesus Christ.
None of these things, in other words, should surprise us. They usually do, don’t they? We’re really blessed in so many ways to live in the society and in the culture in which we live, one which has a background and certain foundations and moorings in biblical Christianity such that we expect to be treated better. And so when we’re not, it’s a little bit of a shock sometimes.
But that writing to the Thessalonians, Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 3, 4, for when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass and just as you know. So the apostles warned the Thessalonian converts as God was beginning to form a church there in Thessalonica. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to suffer affliction now that you’ve named the name of Christ.
Matthew Henry’s take on it is this. Words that are as relevant today as they were the a couple hundred years ago that he wrote them. You must expect all the base treatment that a spiteful world can give you for Christ’s sake, because you serve him and his interests. You must expect that wicked men will hate you because your doctrine and life convict and condemn them. You don’t have to say it, but if you’re trying to live it, people will be convicted and they’ll hate you for it.
Christ previously said, and we referred back to verse 22, he said, you’re blessed. When you suffer in these ways. And Peter reiterates that in his first letter, chapter four, verse 14. He says, if you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
So again, praise God Thank God that we have so many blessings in this present life, even in a fallen world, even living in these fallen bodies, even surrounded by fallen people. We enjoy so much peace. We have so many good gifts from God. Christ himself even encourages us to be peacemakers, doesn’t he? He encourages us to pursue peace. And in Romans 12, 18, Paul wrote, if possible, so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all, but never forget that we live in an evil age.
This present evil age is fundamentally opposed to us and to our Lord. Those who are of this world will not be nice to those who belong to another world. So that’s the treatment Christians can expect from the world. And then Jesus goes on to explain how we are to respond to that. That’s our second point. Christian response to the world’s treatment. Jesus teaches us how we ought to react, how we ought to respond to the world’s ill treatment. And as we read these verses, I suspect, no matter how much teaching you may have received on them in the past, each time you come to these verses that are our text for this morning, they shock a little bit, don’t they? They’re startling. They seem radical, they seem extreme. And yet, are they really all that extreme? Are they really all that radical? Are they really all that new?
Or could it not be said that these very things reflect the character of our God? And they reflect his treatment of us. What must be our disposition toward our enemies? What must be our response to our enemies? Christ says it very simply, love them. Love your enemies. Love is primarily expressed in actions, not merely by feelings. And loving one’s enemy is not a novel concept. It’s certainly not a New Testament idea alone. That’s part of why we read that passage that we did from Exodus. We see this in the book of Proverbs as well. Consider just this one verse from Proverbs. Chapter 25 verse 21.
If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. If he’s thirsty, give him water to drink. That’s how we’re to treat our enemies. And what is that? That’s love. We’re commanded to love our enemies. And as for those who hate us, we’re to do good to them. That came right out of our passage from Exodus, and Jesus teaches it here in Luke 6. There are people who hate us, but we’re to do good to them. And that too reflects ancient, Old Testament, Holy Spirit wisdom. We saw it in Exodus 23 just a moment ago. And that ethic is woven into Christian life. It is the Christian ethic.
And so Paul could write in Romans 12 verse 21, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That’s the whole theme of this text. That’s the royal law of our heavenly King and he commands us that we overcome evil with good, not fight fire with fire. Not repay in kind. But love our enemies.
People will curse us and Jesus says bless them. Bless those who curse you. Pronounce benediction on those who hurl malediction. at you. And as for those who abuse you, pray for them. Think of that. Someone’s abusing you, whether it’s verbally or some other way. Jesus says, pray and to pray for those who abuse us is to render the greatest possible good to them in exchange for mistreatment that we receive. And that, in a way, is part of the genius of the gospel. Because according to the command of Christ, we’re to pray for those who abuse us.
And it’s really hard, isn’t it? To hate a person you’re praying for. The more you pray for them, and the more sincerely you pray for them, the harder it is to hate them in return for their hatred of you. You start to You start to feel divine things like pity and compassion.
Look with me again at verse 29. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. Now remember, I think this refers, at least primarily, not to attempts at bodily harm, but to something more insulting, a slap in the face, so to speak. And I don’t believe, in fact, I will assert that this verse, comparing scripture with scripture, this verse does not prohibit self-defense against physical harm, bodily injury, or death. would say the proper interpretation of the sixth commandment calls upon us to preserve life, which at times might include engaging in self-defense or the defense of another who’s in danger of bodily harm or death. But here, as well as elsewhere, what’s being prohibited by God’s word is private revenge. That’s off the table. And what’s being prohibited is a vengeful spirit, that spirit that’s so natural to us that says, I’m going to get him. I’ll show them. I’m going to take this into my own hands. I’m going to get back at them. That’s what’s being prohibited here.
Christians are commanded to respond. to ill treatment in a manner that is contrary to our fallen human nature, which means in our human nature we can’t do it. We need the Holy Spirit. We need grace. So it’s impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit. The Christian response to the world’s treatment, in other words, is a supernatural response. It’s a spiritual response. It’s not flashy. It won’t make headlines. And it wouldn’t make a very good movie. But it’s supernatural.
That’s the Christian response to the world’s treatment. But then finally, we’ve got this one verse that sums up for us what God requires. And that’s verse 31. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. The parallel in Matthew’s gospel is found in chapter 7 verse 12 and Matthew in his account makes an addendum to that. He says whatever you would have others do for you do so to them for this is the law and the prophets. Now there’s another Aspect of the teaching of scripture that Jesus says that very same thing about and he says this This is really the what the law and the prophets are all about this one thing and what is that?
It’s love your neighbor as yourself Verse 31 in our text this morning is often referred to as the golden rule. That’s why I titled the sermon, The Golden Rule, because really that culminates and sums up this entire passage. And the golden rule, what makes it golden is that it goes beyond the expectations that other ethical codes of man hold up. It goes beyond the expectations of other ethical systems and even religious doctrine. And part of what carries it beyond all those other notions, all those other systems of thought and ethical codes is that this command in verse 31 is active. It commands that we do.
I know you’ve all heard of the golden rule. You’ve heard that expression. Have you ever heard of the silver rule? You know what that is? It’s called the silver rule because it falls short of, and it’s not as valuable, it’s not as precious as the golden rule. The silver rule is this. It’s kind of the negative side of the coin. The silver rule is basically, don’t do to anyone what you don’t want done to you. That’s good. And hey, if everybody in society lived according to that rule, we’d have a much better place. The silver rule. If there’s something you wouldn’t want someone to do to you, don’t do it to them.
It’s attributed, actually, to Confucius. But you find similar sayings in other ancient teachings, including some of the ancient Hebrew writings, some of the Apocryphal writings. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Book of Tobit from the Apocrypha. It’s a Hebrew document from the 3rd century BC. It said something along those same lines. Whatever you hate, don’t do to others. But it comes short, you see. It comes short of what God requires. It lowers the bar. It lowers the bar because it’s not active, it’s passive. It’s just a you do you, mind your own business, live and let live.
But the requirement of Christ, The royal law of our heavenly king goes past that. It’s active, and it requires that we love our enemy, and we show love in tangible ways to our enemy. Christ’s people are commanded to do good, which is exactly what Christ did. He went about doing good.
Now, look with me briefly at verse 30. the beginning of that verse. Give to everyone who begs from you. That’s the only directive in this whole series of directives and commands from the Lord that’s not related to some evil done to us. This is just Christ saying someone asks of you.
Give. The ESV translates the Greek word there as beg. Give to everyone who begs from you. And it translates it the exact same way, the same word, translated the same way in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 5. Give to everyone who begs from you. I would just point out that the Greek word there almost always simply means to ask. In fact, it’s not in the New Testament. It’s not a common word used for beg there. So the situation in view here is probably something along the lines of what we find in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 15. Starting in verse 8, the idea is this.
If among you one of your brothers should become poor in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hands to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.
So it might be better to render that gift to everyone who asks from you. In other words, Christ is not obligating you as you’re walking around in Westminster, California. Every time a person asks you for money, he’s not saying you need to give every single one who asks you money. That’s really not the spirit of this commandment.
It’s that we be generous. It’s that we’re being called to liberality in the in the very best sense of that word. We’re being called to charity. We’re to give according to the ability that we have. And we’re to give according to the true needs of our poor brethren. But even there, it’s not only allowable, but it’s necessary to make qualifications. We’re supposed to give, we’re supposed to be generous, but in an appointed, a God-ordained order and priority.
So if, for instance, you’re the head of a household, your first financial priority is to your household, to your family. You need to provide for your for those of your own family, of your own house. Scripture says that if a man doesn’t provide for his own, he’s denied the faith and he’s worse than an infidel. So that’s priority one.
And from there expands the household of faith. And Galatians says, let us do good to all men, especially to the household of faith. And then from there, it can expand out to others. But Christ commands us to be generous, to give generously, to give liberally, to give in love. The second great commandment, we mentioned it once already, love your neighbor as yourself. That’s the standard. We’re to love our neighbor, but how? As we love ourselves. No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it, cherishes it. That’s true.
So once again, these commands of the Lord and that one in particular, the second great commandment, what it does is it exposes our innate deficiency. It shows how we fall short because we don’t always love our neighbor as ourselves. Sometimes we don’t even love our neighbor at all. So there’s this deficiency that we have, there’s this inability.
And we need the Holy Spirit’s power to live this way. We need Him dwelling in us and we need to be influenced and guided and led by Him. So the way that we act and even how we feel toward our enemies is a kind of a barometer, isn’t it? It’s like taking our own spiritual temperature. Our disposition toward our enemy is an expression of how merciful we are. And if we’re in the habit of extending mercy, and if the Holy Spirit is doing that work in us, if that’s the kind of people we’re becoming, if we extend mercy, it’s an indication that we have been recipients of God’s mercy, and that we’re just, out of love and thanksgiving because of the mercy that we’ve received. We then extend mercy to others.
We make his mercy known in our lives. So I say the Lord Jesus is our heavenly king and his royal law requires that we overcome evil with good. We must not return evil for evil. Every imperative in today’s text requires of us the very opposite of that. It requires our gracious response. And our gracious savior sets the example for us in every single case, doesn’t he? We have him to look to, we have his command, we have his teaching, but we also have his example.
Because the world hated him. And he went about doing good. People claimed that he had a demon. He gave them words of life. People struck him. He held his peace. Man crucified him. And even as he was dying on the cross, he prayed for them. He said, Father, forgive them. Christ came into a world that was hopelessly lost, plunged into wickedness and evil, and he overcame evil by doing the greatest good ever done. He gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory now and forever.
Amen. Please pray with me. Father, the bar has been set very high for us. It’s a bar that we could never clear in our own strength. Thank you. that you’ve given your spirit to empower us, and we pray that you would work in us that which is well-pleasing in your sight for the glory and the honor of our Savior, who went about doing good to those who hated Him, who prayed for those who abused Him. Lord, may we be His imitators. Give us the grace to do that, and may we commune with Him by grace through faith as we now come to the table. We ask in Christ’s name, amen.