Good morning everyone!  Pastor Chris is away with his family this weekend on vacation.  So it is my privilege to bring to you the next message in this series from the Sermon on the Mount entitled God’s Children.  As we go through this message you are going to notice a couple of things.  One, Jesus shows us the truth about an attitude that sneaks into our lives very inconspicuously.  Second, it has nothing to do with Children’s Ministry.  With that being said, let’s dive into God’s word together.

            Let’s stand and read Matt. 5:43-48 together.  43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’[a] and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies![b] Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. 46 If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. 47 If you are kind only to your friends,[c] how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. 48 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

            In Jesus time loving your neighbor was quite easy and hating your enemy was a commonly held cultural belief.  But Jesus brings into the light, as only He can, this common practice and explains just how sinful it really is.  The Law of Moses does not actually say to hate your enemy but it was a very common belief held by the Jewish culture.  In fact it was an accepted part of Jewish ethic.  So Jesus uses this cultural attitude which is not rooted in the heart of God to radically shift people’s attitudes toward each other.  More than that Jesus says to do the exact opposite of what the commonly held belief was at the time:  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you!”

             This was a radical paradigm shift for those living in Jesus day.  In fact no one had probably ever heard this before Jesus came along.  Hating your enemy was just a given attitude.  Jesus says, NO!  You must LOVE your neighbor as yourself and LOVE your enemy and pray for him or her.  Can you imagine the looks on people’s faces?  There must have been so many frowns and confused looks!  But you see Jesus never let any sin slip by unnoticed.  Jesus always wanted those who were following Him to live lives that reflected Himself because He reflected His father.  Jesus was perfect in everyway living with no sin, not held down in any way.  Jesus knew that the human race was born into sin and so Jesus wanted us to be set free from the bondage that sin brings into our lives.  That’s why Jesus could never let sin pass even if it was a culturally held belief!

            So not only were the people to love their enemies, which would have been enough to cause all kinds of disagreements among the people, but they were also to pray for them.  Now I want you to think about this: Prayer is one of the practical ways love expresses itself.  Let’s read that again, Prayer is one of the practical ways love expresses itself.  It is easy to pray for a member of your family or for your best friend but your enemy, forget about it.  But that was exactly what Jesus was telling them to do!  The people in Jesus day would need to pray for the Romans and those working for the Romans who were considered traitors, hated by almost all Jewish people! 

            So what is our application today? Well can you imagine praying for Osama Bin Laden?  Or maybe Mahamoud Ahmidinijad?  Here is the awesome thing about Jesus.  His words never fade from the history of man.  Jesus knew that the application he gave to the Jewish people is the exact application we would have for our lives today.  There are people in our lives that we really disagree with or maybe they’ve done something to us that can really cause us to “hate” them.  Jesus says though that we are to not hate them for what they have done or who they are but to love them and pray for them.  This thought was not only radical in Jesus day but it is equally radical now!  What if the church started acting like the church?  I don’t mean accepting all kinds of sin and covering it up with twisted church doctrines but rather having a genuine compassion and love for all people desiring them to see Jesus and come to Him laying down their burdens and being set free from sin.  What a world this would be!!!

            Jesus explains that when we love our enemies and pray for them we are demonstrating what it means to be a child of God.  Jesus was not saying that if we love our enemies we become children of God because that cannot happen unless we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.  When we do become children of God we need to start acting like we are children of God.  People will see our God in us when we love those who persecute us and pray for those who do all kinds of evil against us because that is not the way our culture or human nature thinks.  Our culture would say sue the guy who bashed your windshield for no reason.  Jesus says pray for that guy and show love to him.  I am not saying there aren’t legitimate law suits but what I am saying is that Jesus commands us to love those who persecute us.

            The next section of this passage is kind of a smack in the face for Christians.  The reason being because we can very easily get caught up in the whirlwind that is Christian fellowship and forget to reach out to those who need Jesus!  Jesus says that if we only love others who lover us what reward will we receive?  Think about that, if we love only each other here in this room today, what good is that?  We need to love the homeless man living underneath the bridge in Pittsburgh.  We need to lover our neighbor who we may find to be not at all like us. 

Jesus hits us right where it hurts.  We need to reaching out to other people who aren’t like us so that we can share with them about the amazing truth about what Jesus has done for them and for all of us on the cross.  Jesus uses the example for the Jews that even tax collectors show love to other tax collectors and Romans.  And if you greet only your brothers and sisters even pagans do that.  What a huge stab to the heart of the issue.  Jesus is calling us to live our life in such a way that we reflect the perfection that is found in the love of our God.  So perfect in fact that he sent His only son to die on a cross for you and me.  You see where were once not like others in this room.  We once lived lives that were rampant in sin (even if only for a short while). We were like this until someone reached out in love and shared about Jesus and the power that is found in His love which transforms our hearts and minds!

Jesus calls those who follow him to a very high standard—perfection. Perfection is found in love.  You can not accept someone if you hold any kind of malice in your heart towards them.  You must let go of that and reach out in love.  Jesus mentions perfection twice in the gospels and both times it is regarding love.  We need to reach out to others who are not like us in love thus reflecting our God who is perfect to the world around us.  A lot of times I will hear someone say boy your parents must have hearts of God to have adopted that many children and gone through so much pain.  But I always try to say that my parents reached out to children in need with the love that God has ingrained in their hearts.  My parents may be the most loving people I know.  The only reason for this is because of what Jesus has done for them.  Their desire is to share that love and they found that adoption was the best way for them.  They were showing that they were children of God through their actions.  My parents could have never known that my brother Michael would cause so much damage to our house and do hurtful things to our family.  But my parents never wavered in their love for him.

In the body of Christ we are a family.  Rick Warren writes in his book The Purpose Driven Life that we were designed for God’s family.  Being a part of God’s family means loving others always.  We show that we belong to Jesus when we love that person that we just don’t get along with at the office or when we demonstrate God’s love to the person who is making more money than we are and they have only been doing your job for 2 months while you have been doing it for 3 years.  Jesus wants us to demonstrate that we are apart of God’s family by showing love to all people.  When the church acts like the church the world will be radically changed for Christ!  (I want you to understand that I am not saying accept all kinds of sin as good.  Sin is sin.  We are all sinful people.  But we must love one another and pray that those who don’t know Jesus will come to know Him because of our actions as a result of our knowing Him.  Thus their actions too will demonstrate the grace that has been given to them by Jesus when they realize their need for Him.  Jesus knows that sin destroys lives.  Loving our enemies and those who persecute us give us a lead into our enemy’s lives and help us to understand their pain.  It also helps us to reach out to them and tell them about Jesus so that their lives will not be destroyed by sin.  Jesus doesn’t want us to accept the sin but rather love people so that their sin may be forgiven as a result of us demonstrating God’s love to them!)