Luke 6:27-36
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Mike and I was going to walk out the back door, but Isaac had to mention my name in the prayer, so I decided to go ahead and come on up here today. I am not one of the pastors here, but I am an elder in training. Over the last several years in my life, I've been exercising the calling of God that I feel on my life and in my heart toward pastoral ministry. It's something that I have felt growing for a long time. A few months ago, I was asked to participate in the elder training process. I am working this calling out. I'm not just a pastor when I want to be. I am working this calling out with my friends, with my community group, and under the guidance of our elders here. They've given me this opportunity this morning.
I have a day job. I am a physician kind of by training, and that's what I do Monday through Friday throughout the week. Over the last several years, I have had the opportunity to teach in different settings here in our church. I've been able to teach some of your children in the kids city setting. We actually do an assembly similar to this, and we do 60 to 70 minutes of teaching and they don't complain. So no, we do just a couple short minutes of teaching with them and then we break out into classrooms and teach, and I've gotten to share the Scriptures with them there.
I had the opportunity to share the Scriptures with some of your teenagers in the student night setting. Just this last semester, I was able to teach alongside Isaac Hill, who heads that up, and we were working through the Gospel of John. We were blessed by that, and we were thankful to be able to share that with the teenagers in that setting.
I've also been able to teach some of you next door in the Sunday school setting just last week. I was able to do that. Our brother Scott Hill faithfully teaches that class week after week after week. That meets in our other building at 9:30. It's an excellent opportunity to study the word together, and he's let me teach alongside him and he's given me the opportunity to fill in for him when he steps away.
I was asked or I was given the option to pick the text that I wanted to, and I decided to pick something from the New Testament. We've been going through Samuel, right? We've been going through Old Testament narrative, and I was thinking, well, maybe let's step away from that and let's go into the New Testament for a little bit and spend a week here. I thought, what specifically would our congregation want to hear? And I thought, well, maybe something with a lot of imagery, a lot of pictures, a lot of symbolism, something that's got parts of it that are hotly contested and debated. And so, of course, I landed on Revelation. But I decided maybe something a little bit different would be more appropriate for our setting.
Today, we are going to be in the Gospel of Luke. We're going to be in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, verses 27-36. Before we start, I'm going to pray and ask for the Lord's help.
Father, we thank you for the opportunity to study the Scripture this morning. We've really got nothing apart from it. It tells us of you, and it's our privilege to be able to know it, to study it, and to have our lives changed from it. You know that I am a man desperately in need of grace, and I pray that you would meet me with your grace this morning in Jesus' name. Amen.
So let's open up our Bibles to Luke chapter 6, verses 27-36. This is on page 53 in the blue Bible. The blue Bibles are under the seats in the rows in front of you and you can grab those, and if you don't have a Bible you can actually keep that. We want you to have a copy of God's word.
Like I said, we are stepping out today from the Old Testament narrative in Samuel, narrative of David, of Saul, of the Israelite people, of Samuel himself at that time, and now we're kind of jumping into the New Testament narrative in the Gospel of Luke. This is the story of Jesus Christ.
Just briefly for some context, Luke wrote this gospel around 58 to 60 AD. It is a defense of the Christian faith. It tells the story of the Christ on earth and it shows us Jesus's mission which was to bring salvation to people as well as fulfill some of the Old Testament prophecies that were written about him. Luke himself was a physician, so we can infer he was smart. He was probably pretty cool. I'll leave it there. He was a companion to the Apostle Paul, and Luke spent years interviewing eyewitnesses, people who walked alongside Jesus. And he compiled all of that into this gospel account.
What we're going to look at today, this section does mirror another section in a different gospel. And that's common for that to happen. But it mirrors some similar teaching more familiar you might have heard called the Sermon on the Mount which is Matthew 5 through 7. This passage in Luke has some similarities to it.
So what we're going to study or what we're going to look at is what Jesus has to teach his followers about kindness and compassion. We're going to begin in verse 27.
“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 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.”
Now, we probably hear all that and think, "Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. That sounds good. That sounds fine." Especially when we hear that last verse, right? Because we can latch on to that because we've heard it before. That's one of those phrases that sort of has permeated and passed through our culture through generations. And it's something known as the golden rule.
Parents teach an aspect of this to their kids, right? When you hit your brother or when you're deciding, should I hit my brother? I want you to think, do you want your brother to hit you? And even at a young age, you can conceptualize that pretty well. I don't want to get hit. I'm not going to hit my brother.
Teachers in a classroom setting, right? As kids are going from, especially in younger ages, as they're going from being just at home to now interacting with people from other families, teaching them how to interact with those people, how they would want to be interacted with. And there's even probably some level in our workplaces that we apply this teaching, right? If you are wondering, should I put that in the email to everyone? Should I put that thing about my coworker in there? Maybe think, would you like to read that about you? Right? If you do that, that's probably a fairly safe way to navigate those different interactions.
So, we've heard this many times and we usually just agree. When was the last time you saw on CNN, golden rule is being revoked? We're anti-Golden rule, and the golden rule is canceled. Right? You don't see that happening. I actually did this week and Googled, is the golden rule outdated or something to see? I did find an article, but it was on a website I hadn't heard of, so I didn't click on it. I decided that that was probably not something that was being spread through the masses at large, so this would actually still make sense.
But if we are really going to understand what Jesus is calling us to do and really understand the weight of these statements, we have to go back and think about who he's commanding us to act this way towards. He says,
“Those who hate you, those who curse you, those who abuse you,
those who strike you, and those who take from you.”
Guys, this is not a call to be nice to your friends. This is not a call to be kind to the person that you sit next to on Sundays at church. This is a call to be kind to the people who absolutely cannot stand you.
Now, we have a tendency probably in our minds to think or to wonder, is Jesus overselling this, right? Is he going really far in how he's talking to us? But if you do half of that, it's probably fine. We have a tendency to think maybe this is just for effect. But to help us understand that, let's think about who he was talking to, who was standing in the crowd. That was a mix of Jewish people probably from Jerusalem and from Judea.
These are the people whose ancestors we read about when we studied the book of Exodus. These are the people who were enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaoh who never had a day off to rest from work, who made bricks to build up that kingdom, never seeing an ounce of the glory, an ounce of the honor for their own. Even when they were about to escape from Egypt, the Pharaoh in his final act sent his army out to die, trying to retrieve them and bring them back under oppression.
After that, they wandered through the wilderness for many years and they went through this cycle of oppression with other nations and judges, and God raised up judges for them. They turned from what God had said to them to do and they went back to their sin, and they're in this constant cycle of oppression.
And then right up to where we're studying on Sundays, these kingdoms said, "We want a king. We want a king." And they were given one. God relented, they were given a king. Ultimately that kingdom is fractured, and nothing comes of it, and they end up being dissipated and occupied by other nations, right? The Babylonians, the Persians—throughout history, these really prominent, massive empires occupied and oppressed this people group.
And now when Jesus is talking to them, they're under occupation still. They're under occupation from the Roman Empire. So he said all these things to a people that were hated, that were cursed, that were abused, that were struck, and that had every single thing taken from them. Jesus is not overstating or overselling this at all. This would have actually directly applied to the people that he was talking to that day. It would have probably been felt very deeply and viscerally by them. And this thing He was calling them to do would have seemed truly impossible.
Now, this teaching calls them into kindness, right? But what does it have to do with us? Two days ago, we celebrated a holiday that exists to show that we are not under another empire, that we are not subject to another regime. One of our pastors spent time giving missiles to people to shoot into the air just so they could show that a British soldier could not come into their house without a warrant and take their stuff and make them cook for them.
So we are not exactly under, in our current day and age, the oppression of another outside regime. Why this teaching still brings to bear on our lives is because things like hate, abuse, and stealing have been permeating cultures throughout all of time and they absolutely exist in our culture today. Even if you personally haven't experienced something like that or something that extreme, the point Jesus is getting at is not to minimize what you've walked through in your life actually, but to emphasize just how great the thing that he's calling us into is.
So I want us to go back through that text again and think about each one of these directives. Love your enemies. Love is sometimes a wishy-washy word or a phrase that our culture doesn't always know what it exactly means. But we do have some biblical data that tells us patience, kindness, not envying, not boasting, not making yourself out better than someone else. We have some terms for love that we can use.
Most commonly in our culture and in the Bible, we think about love in the sense of husbands and wives, spouses. That's a fairly easy example for us to grasp what love probably looks like. So here Jesus says,
"Love your enemies."
And tags it right up next to doing this. Or he says to love and tags this right up next to doing this to your enemies.
This is not like I'm driving down the road and somebody cuts me off in traffic and I say, "You know, I see him later," and I just wave them along. I'm going to be the bigger person. This is saying somebody's flying down the road and sideswipes me and I drive off the road and I hit a tree and I'm severely injured and my car is totally destroyed and I'm in the hospital for months and when I finally recover, I've got nothing left in my name. I barely have a car to drive. I'm going down the road and I see that same guy and his lane's ending and he's in trouble if he doesn't get over and I let him in. That's loving your enemies.
Doing good to those who hate you means improving the well-being of the person that actively hates you. When people hate us, we probably do one of two things. We either hate them back. "You're going to get into me. I'm going to get after you," like we're buttheads and have fights over things like that, or we just say, "No, you're not going to bother me. You're going to take the high ground and not say anything." And even we see this play out in kids in middle school and high school. There are either fistfights or people pretend like they don't hear what you say because that way it looks like it didn't bother me, and then at home they deal with the fallout of that.
But what doing good to those who hate you is, is when your neighbor comes to you and says, "I'm building a fence on my property and it's going to go five feet into your property line and I don't really care." No matter what you say to him, he's going to do that. One day you come home and it's not five feet on your lawn, it's 10 feet on your lawn. And if you live in a subdivision, that's a lot. So you are seriously out some space. And then when he comes home from work the following day, you're in his front yard. You've cut it perfectly. You're edging right along the driveway. You've got the leaf blower, and you're cleaning it off and you're making it look perfect.
That's actually improving the well-being of a person who hates you.
Bless those who curse you. Now, we don't have a great frame of reference for this currently. Blessing and cursing. I would wager that most of you who said bless this week meant it in the context of a sneeze. But that is not really what blessing is here. Blessing is I am praying for God's favor to be put on another person.
One of the famous examples we have comes from the Old Testament book of Numbers. God says to Moses,
"Go pronounce this blessing on your brother."
And it's
"The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace."
That's an actual blessing—wanting blessing for another person.
Cursing is also not the way we use it today or cussing. It's a little bit different than what we use today. Cursing is not foul language, rude gestures, inappropriate conversation, as we have it in our context. Cursing is more like the opposite of blessing in that I want your total ruin and total destruction to be brought down on somebody. We do have some Bible examples of cursing. Even just when sin entered in the world, God cursed the earth. And so you can look at different times in the Bible where we see cursing. But blessing and cursing are paired together.
So this is saying that while you are actively praying and asking God, "Will you give him 10 children who each have 10 children? Will you give him everyone in his family who is healthy? Would you make him live to be a hundred and fifteen, and pass away sweetly with his family surrounded by him? All his businesses, tens upon tens upon tens would have success and he would be rich and all the world's goods."
While you're asking that for a person, that same person is hoping that you're totally and completely destroyed off of the earth. While you're hoping for his peaceful end with him surrounded by his family, he's hoping your bloodline comes to an end, that you never find a partner, that you never have a child, and that your last name is totally and utterly destroyed.
That is blessing the people that curse you.
Pray for those who abuse you. This one is probably a little challenging for us to hear. The word abuse sits pretty heavy on our shoulders and even when we hear it, we recoil. Some of you have actually experienced real abuse in awful, awful ways.
Jesus here says,
"On your knees, intercede before the Father on behalf of the person who inflicted you this pain. Pray for those who abuse you."
To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. Just sort of by way of explanation, this is not a little essay on pacifism. Should we fight in wars? Should I defend myself in my house? Striking someone on the cheek is really meant to symbolize or show disrespect. That's what it meant in this cultural context.
And I think we probably have that translate to our cultural moment today. I don't know if I was at an award show—the Tonys, the Grammys, maybe the Oscars—and somebody got up and said something disrespectful about my wife's hair, I might get up and slap that person, and that would be a sign of disrespect given back to them. And I think everybody would be able to do that. And of course, I would go on to win best actor.
This is when the guy at work puts you down, mocks you in front of everyone, and then later the boss comes to you and says, "Hey, you know, so and so, he's actually up for a promotion. What do you think?" And this is you saying, "You know, I think he's pretty good at his time management skills. I think he's got good computer skills," and you start highlighting different things about him that he doesn't deserve to have highlighted about him, but you start highlighting these positive things. Instead of returning disrespect with disrespect, you give respect to him and speak honorably about him.
And from the one who takes 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.
So a cloak is like an outer covering like a jacket. A tunic is more underneath. It covers you from the shoulders down to the hips or ankles depending on how homeschooled you were. So this is saying be radically generous to the people who steal from you.
So, you're at the beach, you're on vacation, and you're walking down the street, and somebody picks your pocket and takes off, and you take off after them and you call the police and you got this guy. You caught him and the police look at you and say, "Well, he stole from you. Do you want to press charges?" And you say, "No." In fact, I had $100 in my wallet, but I'm going to write you a check. I'm going to write you a check for $200. Because this is what it means that when somebody takes your cloak not to withhold your tunic from them.
Also,
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
This really does summarize all of these directives well, guys. Sometimes we have such a strong desire for justice and it really, really irks us to see these perpetrators get away with things. But I do want to remind you that in the book of Hebrews, we're told,
"There is no creature hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account."
God will make these things right. People who commit injustices will be held accountable.
What he has not done is asked us in this text to mediate out and give out that justice. He teaches us to love. He teaches us to do good and he teaches us to give not just to the people that like us. Not even just to the people that are kind of indifferent to us or tolerate us, but to the people who absolutely cannot stand us and actively choose to oppose us.
Next here in the passage, he's going to talk to us about how the world accomplishes this. We're going to pick up in verse 32.
"If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners and get back the same amount."
I think Jesus chooses to give us this explanation here because we sort of gravitate towards this, right? We want to be nice to the people that like us really. Well, if your friend calls you on the phone and they've had a rough day and they're going on and on and you're listening and being empathetic and encouraging them, at the end of the call, they say, "Wow, thank you. You were so kind. Thank you for listening." You might think, "Yeah, you know, I guess in just in the friend group, I'm the kind friend. Yeah, that makes sense."
Or if your co-worker, who you actually do get along with, who helps you out, gets a busy project thrown at them and they're going to be there late and you say, "You know what? I'm going to pitch in and help them take some of that workload off them." And then a few weeks later, you hear them talking and they're saying, "Yeah, you know, he pitched in and helped me right when I needed to. He sacrifices himself. He's so kind." You might think, "Yeah, I am the dependable co-worker. I am kind. I do that. Yeah."
Or if your friend forgets their wallet when you go out to lunch and you spot him and then you think, "Well, now I've got insurance if I ever forget my wallet and I'm out with him." Or if he asks, "Can I—he's going to buy pizza." I don't have to chip in because I already kicked in and gave it to them. We encounter these kind of circumstances all the time.
And this is probably how we think without realizing. We trick ourselves into thinking that we are more kind than we really are. And the reason is because the people we like to be kind to are the people that like us. And so Jesus here very directly is saying that if you're kind to people so that you can just be praised and rewarded, then you are no different than the people who don't follow Christ or don't know Christ because even they are capable of that.
Jesus calls us into sacrificial kindness and sacrificial giving. He calls us to do this to our enemies. And he rebukes the kindness that results in our own advancement in our own gain.
In World War II, on December 20th of 1943, a German pilot by the name of Franz Stigler was flying in German airspace and he encountered a very badly damaged bomber flown by an American pilot with an American crew. He could see holes from multiple bullets in this plane and he could see the crew looked weak and near the point of death. And he had a moment where he could have gone different ways. He could have shot that plane as an enemy out of the sky, reported it back, and been awarded for what he had done. But that's not what he did.
He flew up alongside the wing of this badly damaged American plane and escorted it out of German airspace because he knew that a German anti-aircraft gun would not shoot up at a German plane. He escorted them out to safety and they landed in Switzerland. After that moment finished, the two pilots got out and saluted each other and then the German pilot flew back into Germany. This was never publicized because at the time telling people that an enemy showed kindness isn't good for the war effort.
We don't want to think that our enemy is capable of that, right? But interestingly, in the early 2000s, years after, they were actually able to meet and they became friends and they remained friends until they both passed away just a few months apart from each other in the same year. I think this is just in a small way an example of what it means to look like to be kind or to be compassionate to your enemies.
Now go back with me if you will to the crowd. The crowd that stands there before Jesus. Imagine being one of those people who has been taught since birth from grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, all the cycles of oppression that have kept that people down. And even as they walk out of town to hear Jesus talk, they pass by Roman soldiers who are an ever-present reminder to them of the inescapable enemy that always lurks where they are.
And Jesus says,
"Love those people."
Some of the people that followed Jesus were even part of zealous religious groups who wanted to commit political violence and wanted to commit assassinations. And they're standing there listening to Jesus.
"Love your enemies."
Even you guys put yourself in that position, right? Imagine standing there and think to yourself, Jesus just said,
"Love the guy who put me down so he could get a promotion.
Love the girl that used to bully me in school.
Love the person that inflicted the most emotional pain and suffering or even physical suffering that I've ever experienced."
What would you be thinking? You would be thinking what they were thinking.
Why? Why on earth would we ever do it? They're awful. They are horrible. Why would I ever love them? And if I wanted to, how could it be possible that I could be capable of that?
And as the tension rises in their minds and as the tension rises in our own minds and these questions develop, Jesus tells us the answer:
"But love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful."
Jesus says that in order to be kind to our enemies, we must understand that God himself was kind to us. See, the answer we come up with is, "Oh, when they apologize to me, then I'll be kind." When they start changing their actions and I actually see it, then I'll be kind. But Jesus says,
"No, kindness to your enemies can only be achieved one way, and it's by understanding God's kindness to you."
Follow this with me. Jesus here teaches,
"Be kind to your enemies."
He roots that kindness in God's kindness to us. Why does that actually make sense? Romans 8:7-8:
"For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."
It makes sense because before we knew Jesus Christ, we were God's enemies. And you might not think that's possible or you might think, "No, that's too much." Well, God, the infinite, existing before anything else for all time, spoke a world into existence, put people on that world to worship him. And I'm not even talking about going through the Ten Commandments and you lied. I'm sure you did. No, no, no, no. I'm talking this God is worthy of our worship at all times. And every time we sit and enjoy our house and we enjoy our family and we enjoy our truck and whatever, and we don't roll it up into worship of the almighty God, we have sinned and we are God's enemy.
Is it that serious? Absolutely. It's that serious. The only way that we can be kind is to understand that God forgave his enemies. And the people that were standing there that day, they've got no idea what's about to come. That he would go through a total sham of a trial and be convicted of a crime that he did not commit.
That he would be physically tortured, beaten, assaulted, that he would be given a purple robe and a crown of thorns, total mockery, so that he might feel shame. And they would make him pick up the cross and walk up the hill, put it up, and they nail him to it and hang him up there in front of everyone to see to execute him.
And while he's up there, we have his words recorded for us:
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The beauty of the gospel is that Jesus Christ died for his enemies.
Romans 5:9-11, we read it this morning:
"Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
But more than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."
The story of the Bible is the story of God's kindness to us. So if you today don't know Christ in that way, that's the type of kindness I'm inviting you into. If you do know Jesus, he really does want you to be kind like this. Let's take time to ask the Spirit to reveal the areas where we overlook this teaching.
So, who hates you? Who have you hated? Who curses you? Who have you wanted to see destroyed? Who has abused you? Who has disrespected you? Who has taken from you your time, your money, whatever it is? Is it really important that we be kind to these people? Yes.
Romans 2:4-5:
"Do you despise the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?"
Kindness is crucial, but we need the help of the Spirit in order to do this. We cannot do it on our own. In our sin, we try to be kind and sometimes it doesn't work. And sometimes we try to be kind and we actually end up being rude and it goes the total opposite direction.
This is not how we naturally think about being kind. We think, well, it's genetic. Have you met that family? They're all smiling. That's not my family. We're sarcastic. We don't do that. We think someone is kind because they don't have the stress we do. If you had my job, you'd understand. I'm way too stressed out to just be kind to everybody I meet. I use it all up at work.
We think we don't have to be kind. Look at my kids. I spend all my time raising those kids, teaching those kids, and trying to be kind to those kids. I don't have leftover to give to the people outside of that. We think when things get better, then I'll be kind. My retirement account's in good shape. My bank account's in good shape. When my house is the house I want, everything's fixed up. When I'm good, then I'll be kind to other people.
This text would suggest otherwise.
We're going to have the band go ahead and come back up here as we close. I think that when Jesus says in verse 36,
"Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful,"
that actually sums all of this up really well.
What is mercy? Mercy is having compassion and kindness on someone whom it is within your power to punish. Our prayer today should be that God would help us to know in our minds and feel in our hearts the depths of the mercy he poured out on us in Christ so that we may reflect that mercy to the world around us.
Some of you need to consider that you are an enemy of Christ but that he died for you and he is welcoming you into his kindness. Some of you have basked in his kindness for years and not for a second thought about how you might reflect that kindness to other people.
If God would go so far as to die on the cross, then you can pray a blessing on a person that's cursed you. You can be kind to the people that make your heart race when we say words like enemy and abuser. The world can't do this. They can be kind to who's kind to them. Only the people of Christ can be kind to their enemies.
By God's grace, may we be a people who understand the mercy of God in our lives. And may this translate into us being merciful and kind to the world around us.