Love Your Enemies // Sermon on the Mount

Discover the profound message of loving your enemies with our exploration of Matthew 5:43-48. This video unpacks the radical teachings of Jesus, providing insights into the nature of agape love and its transformative power. Learn how to overcome the internal struggle between flesh and spirit, and find out how prayer, boundaries, and divine perspective can help you love those who oppose you. Whether you're dealing with difficult relationships or seeking spiritual growth, this video offers biblical wisdom and practical steps for embracing God's unconditional love. Join us in learning how to love like Jesus and experience the freedom and peace that comes from following His command. 

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. The Church of the Lookout is in the fold of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with all-inspiring love. Visit us online at the lookout.church.

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Oh my goodness. What a sweet time in worship. Um I was just overwhelmed several times, just the presence of the Lord. Uh probably has to do with this topic and realizing, thank you, Lord, you've transformed me. Oh you've freed me, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you. Uh for those of you who don't know me, I'm Josh Robertson. Um, my wife, Carly, and I have been uh calling this place home again for the last couple years. And um, but it's been much longer than that. We have deep, deep roots here, and um we just feel really blessed to be home and uh feel blessed to be able to be up here and share with you guys. So thank you for allowing me. Um we are gonna continue our Sermon on the Mount series, and um perfect timing. Uh, we're gonna jump in today and to love your enemies. Uh seems a little relevant with something that has happened yesterday. Um, in case you haven't realized this issue of sin, this issue of living our lives, how we live our lives, how we operate in the spirit, it's still very relevant what we do and how we follow the Lord. And his truth is still very relevant. This topic is very important. And so um I look forward to sharing with you, but before I do so, I have to give honor where honor is due for just a second. This issue of love your enemies. My father, Walt Robertson, Dad, this guy, he's modeled it throughout my life. And I'm just so thankful. Thank you, Dad. Um, parents, friends, if you're whether you're a coworker, it doesn't matter what you what it is, but if you're trying to get somebody to understand biblical principles and you want them to understand the life of Jesus, I'm telling you, it's much better caught than it is taught. So model it. Model it for your children, model it for your friends, model it for your coworkers because it's way easier to learn when you can see somebody doing it as opposed to just learning it in a Bible school or something like that. So that'd be my encouragement to you. And um, let's go ahead and jump on end. Loving your enemies. Um we get this idea from Matthew 5, 43 through 48, and it says, You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father in heaven. He causes his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. And these words are uh powerful, they uh can kind of awaken your mind and your heart to we need to do something here, but why is this thing so hard? What you know what's the point of actually shifting your desires, shifting what you do to love your enemies? And how are you supposed to actually love your enemy even when they actively are acting like an enemy? Is there boundaries? Um, is there boundaries around this love thing? Like, are you supposed to just basically be a doormat to everybody, to the entire world? Uh to friends, family, coworkers, whoever, neighbors. And um, why do we need to pray for those who persecute us? How do you know if you're already loving your enemies? Well, there's just so many questions and so many things to wrestle with uh with this topic. First, I'd like to define an enemy. An enemy, a person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. So it doesn't mean it has to be somebody who's trying to kill you or anything like that, but it's somebody who's actively opposed or hostile to someone or something. Sometimes we label an enemy just because they're difficult to interact with. Um, they may not actually be, again, trying to cause you harm or anything like that. Um, but I've come to find that the principle of loving your enemy is it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Dealing with difficult people is the same principle. Uh years ago, um when I was first starting off building my career, I was kind of building two careers at the same time. One in real estate, one in IT. And uh I was building this IT career, and uh I finally worked my way up and I was uh a supervisor, and then along came as we were growing and corporate growth, all the changes, everything was happening. Uh this director was hired, and my new boss. And let me just say um, when God wants to teach you a principle, you usually have an opportunity to learn the principle. You know what I'm saying? When there's something you need to learn, you're usually gonna get an opportunity to learn it, whether you want to or not, sometimes. This boss, it was like it was he was my director. He was the kind of guy that he would never follow up with anything he would say. Uh he would just drop these crazy technology ideas in the room, like, hey, we're gonna go do this now. Go make it happen. And you're like, whoa, what are you talking about, right? Like, you don't know what you're talking about. Um, and you know, everything he would try to implement, he would just have try to have huge impact on everything and just drop these bombs on all of us. And I'm telling you, the frustration I felt. I'd come home daily, just weighed down, exhausted, emotional moments. Sometimes I'd sit by the bed with Carly and just cry, I can't do this, I can't do this. And this guy, he just felt like an enemy. Well, one day I'm crying out to the Lord, and the Lord prompts me, Hey Josh, you're not honoring him. You're not seeking the best for him, you're not trying to make him successful. You're frustrated because you you're trying to do it your way. And it was like, oh, Lord, okay, okay, I hear you. So I I switched gears. I started stepping into trying to, you know, do my part, shift my attitude, um and things kept moving. Eventually, this boss ends up getting fired. Shocker. His performance was horrible. So um I thought, though, if things were going really well for me at the moment, I thought I was actually gonna get his job. That's I was like, wow, okay, I've stepped into loving this guy and supporting him, and all of a sudden I thought I was gonna get his job. Well, turns out I wasn't done learning my lesson because that's not what happened. Um, they hired another director. This guy was equally as bad, just in a totally different opposite. Uh, like he was just completely different. He would come to reinvent the wheel and technology things just for the sake of putting his name on it. It had nothing to do with it, whether it was better for the organization. It was just so that he could change something. Has anybody ever experienced anything like that? Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. So one day I'm back in this cycle and I realized I'm actually passing him in the hall, and he asked me to implement this other technology thing. And I caught myself, and I literally, I was in the middle of fixing a crisis, and I remember turning, I'm like, you don't even understand how this technology works. And I'm saying this to my director, right? I knew within 24 hours I was reflecting back on this. I'm like, oh man, my heart was so clouded again. My brain, I was, I was not honoring my boss again. So here we go. We're on round two of learning how to honor and support and love my boss. Um it so this is a difficult thing to do. I've I've lived through it, I've gone through it. Um, but you know, God wants to get to our hearts and He wants to get to us. There's two calls of action here to this verse: loving and praying. I don't know about you, but my natural reaction when I go through this is this is this is tough. I don't know how to do it, I don't know what to do. And um, you know, it's easy when you start thinking about we should love our neighbors because, well, we might need to borrow some milk from them, might need to get some eggs, or we should love our friends because, well, if you want to have any friends, you're gonna have to learn how to do that, do this whole relationship thing. But when we talk about, you know, loving your enemies, I mean, that's a different thing. And that's what Jesus is coming along and he's saying, Hey, I want you to love your enemies and not only love them, I want you to pray for those who persecute you. And I know we all struggle with finding ways to do this and how to step into this. Uh, this issue has been around since the beginning of time. And um I was asking Carly about, you know, my wife, what her process has been with this. And she said, well, the hardest thing for me is when I'm struggling with loving an enemy, I want justice. I want righteousness, right? And if you know my wife, you know that she is just and she is righteous. But she's an amazing blessing and a powerhouse. Um, but you know, this was her struggle. She's like, I don't know how to let that happen. And she's wondering like, if I let this issue go, will others find out what the person has done? Will anybody, I mean, because what they've done, everybody needs to know about this, right? Like, they can't get away with this, right? Um, come on, has anybody felt this way? You don't want somebody to get away with what they've done, right? This is a very common struggle that we've all gone through. Even David, King David, mentions this. Uh, Psalm 139, um, verse 21. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. Sounds like David was wrestling with this. Turns out, sins of the father kind of thing, continues Solomon, David's son, Proverbs 25. Um, I'm not sure he had quite the heart of the Lord here, but uh kind of a funny verse. Proverbs 25, verse 21. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he's thirsty, give him water to drink, because in doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. I don't think that's quite the heart of the Lord, you know, the love that God is doing. Um, but it does remind me Solomon's way of handling the issue. I'm embarrassed to admit, uh, when I was younger, I would see people having road rage and you know, people who tailgate you, and it just kind of, I didn't ever know what to do. And then one day I had this brilliant idea. I know what I'll do. Instead of speeding up and cutting people off and going through this road rage thing, I'm just gonna slam on the brakes real soft and just crawl to a screeching halt. And then you can see them in the mirror when you're doing that. You slow way down below the speed limit, and they just start fuming, fuming. And then to top it all off, to heat burning coals on the person's head, as they finally get so angry and they want to pass by you. Instead of you making any gesture that's horrible, you actually be really polite. Hi, hi, oh, it's it frustrates the crud out of them. I'm telling you, this is not God's heart. It was an interesting, creative way I found to cope. Um don't do that, but it, you know, it might be better, I guess. It might be better than you know, racing to see who can get to the next spot, you know, if you if you're going through that. But um, don't you think this issue of trying to figure out how to love people as we're going through these challenges, I mean, this issue is something that Jesus was clearly dealing with uh at the time that these words were being written. You've got to remember the culture that Jesus was going through. Uh, I don't know, or you know, Jesus arrives on the scene, he has to teach them because we're too dense, not to murder, not to be angry. He had to clarify what's adultery, what to do about divorce, how we communicate, taking oaths. Uh Jesus had to be clear, hey, it's not an eye for an eye kind of thing. And you've got to remember all of this, what Jesus is saying, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, is at a time when the Roman Empire was occupying their place that they live. So this is very relevant. They've got soldiers that at any moment can just come along and say, hey, carry my stuff for a mile, right? They've got tax collectors that will at any moment show up, not only take money from you to pay Caesar, but to take extra so that they can live. That was their job. So I think this issue of cultural oppression, this issue of how do we handle the people that are oppressing us, trying to take from us, this is a very relevant topic that we continue to wrestle with today. And Jesus comes along and says, Hey, I've got the solution. It's so simple, but it's not really. Let's love your enemies. Christ is calling us to live like he does in not the world. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that. The word love used here in Matthew 44 is agape love. Agape love, if you've grown up around the church, you may have heard this. It's a Greek word that is often considered the highest form of Christian love, and it is described in the New Testament as a sacrificial, unconditional love that transcends circumstances. It is used to describe the love of God for humans and the love that humans have for God in return. Agape love can also refer to the love that humans have for each other. But did you catch that? A sacrificial, unconditional love that transcends circumstances. What the Lord is telling us is that loving your enemies does not mean you have to like their actions. It does not mean that you have to agree. It transcends the circumstances of what's going on. You can have boundaries and still love. But this is not dependent on somebody else's actions to love. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be best friends. You know you can't have a relationship, but you also feel this pull to love. And there is allowed to be healthy boundaries in your life, but you have to have the heart of the Father and love. And you can love without anger or bitterness in your heart and still have those boundaries. Big issue comes into play, though, is how do we get into operating in this way? How do we start shifting into loving in the way that Jesus is talking about? Because this is not a natural thing that uh we were really born to do. I mean, the sin nature inside of us is always at war. And this is where the second part of the action, the call to action comes into play. We must pray. The moment you start to feel frustration or recognize you feel heavy, you're consumed by an issue with another. This is the moment you have to stop and pause. This is when you ask the Lord, God, what is your heart for this scenario? What are you doing in this person's life? What are you doing in my life? And this is the moment where you have to just pause, stop, and seek the Lord. This is what the prayer part is all about. Uh a couple of years ago, uh my wife and I decided to invest with this guy. Um he's grown up in the area, he's a Christian, um, he's in the real estate world like we are, and he came to me with a proposal to go do this uh investment. And so we did it. We felt a piece from the Lord to go ahead and do it. And um, so it was a large, large sum of money. And um, we signed our contract, we did everything. Well, sure enough, nothing went as planned with this deal. Nothing. Uh he kept changing things up in the middle. Um, you know, this strategy would now turn into this strategy, this is no longer gonna happen this week. It's another 30 days, and it just everything just kept going on. Well, he had a year to pay us back. It was just part of the deal. It was pretty straightforward. It seemed pretty straightforward. Well, a year comes and nothing. Everything's another 30 days, another week. It just keeps going. Eventually, he stops answering my phone calls. He doesn't answer my text messages. Okay, does he think I'm just gonna let this thing go? What am I what's gonna happen here? I literally have to get to the point where I have to call his wife to get his wife to make him call me back, right? It's literally it's gotten to that point. And then eventually, even that falls off. Everything falls off. It goes goes on deaf ears. We eventually had to get a lawyer involved just to get some answers, like, what is going on here? And um the funny thing with that is while going through this, you know, he's been directly responsible for messing up this entire transaction, not taking any ownership. He's got a large chunk of our money. And um then we uncover that, oh yeah, he he was using some of the funds just casually to go ahead and gamble and you know, do random things like that. And it's and then as we uncover it, he starts saying, Well, we're the fault, we're the problem. It's my fault. And then he literally starts turning the tables like a narcissist would, and starts saying, Hey, I might have to sue you because you're interfering with my business, and blah blah blah. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, what the heck is going on? You could feel the weight that I was struggling with. I mean, I would imagine any of you can understand. All of a sudden, you turn in into the victim in a whole nother way, and just this oppression that I was feeling, and it was consuming my mind day in, day out. Carly and I were constantly praying and trying to figure out what's going on, but there's this tension. We just couldn't escape. My head was spinning. One day I'm leaving the gym and he had just blown me up like an hour before that. Some dumb response he gave me. I'm leaving the gym. I'm like, Lord, what do I do? What do I do? And the Lord says, I want you to pray for him. Pray for him. In that moment, I paused. I don't see it. What's your heart? And as I kept praying, you know, the Holy Spirit kind of whispers to you, if you're if you're listening, you gotta be listening. Um he starts he starts slowly shifting my my mind, my heart. And I just kind of in faith, God, I need you, I need you to heal this guy. Lord, I need you to touch his heart. I need you to change his mind. Lord, would you bless him after you teach him the lesson you want to learn? Would you help him to learn whatever it is you're doing? He says he's a believer. Help him to actually hear your voice and then bring him prosperity through it, Lord. And and I just started kept going and I kept like stepping into this, praying, just a decision. Father, I would I want your will for him. Not my will, your will. You have your way in him. As I kept going through this over and over, it was like the chains that had been weighing me down just started to break off of me. The weight I was carrying just started to break off of me. The problem wasn't resolved, but what I'm telling you is I became free from the weight by stepping into God's principle and praying for the guy who was trying to persecute me. And this is Jesus' way. It's not always about God even changing the other person through this truth. We can be changed. When we operate, when we step into what God has for us, we can be changed. And by the way, remember those two bosses I told you about? As I stepped into loving them, supporting them, even though I had to learn my lesson twice, and I hope I don't have to go through that again. But God gave me a lot of favor. He gave me promotion after promotion. More and more increase. Stepping into God's principles, stepping into these truths, will have dramatic impact. And it has the chance to not just change you, but to change others around you. It's not a get rich quick scheme, nothing like that. But this is such a hard thing to do. And one of the questions, why is this so hard to do? Well, Galatians 5, 16-17 says, So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want. This is why loving our enemies is so difficult. We have the sinful flesh nature that wants our own justice, that wants our own righteousness, and we want it to be done according to our will. But it's not our will that needs to be done. It's the Father's will, and we have to choose to step into his spirit, to operate into his way. And this is a willing choice that each and every one of us has to choose to do. Stepping into the spirit. He said, getting shot hurts. Still, my fear was growing because no matter how hard I tried to breathe, it seemed I was getting less and less air. I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed. But I realized I couldn't ask for God's help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed-up young man who had shot me. Isn't that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all God's children and therefore equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold. What a heart of the Lord to turn back, to recognize his own depravity, to recognize his own human nature, and to say, Lord, would you heal that man? Would you heal him? Not responding anger for anger, but stepping into God's way, into his love. That last verse in Matthew 5, 43 through 48, verse 48, it says, Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. But here's this is that's kind of a weird thing for us to quite understand. And I think it's better understood is this be complete in your love as the Father is complete in his love. Jesus died for his enemies. This is where he is a different kind of king. This is the kind of love Jesus is modeling for us. The entire Sermon on the Mount that we've been going over isn't just about how to behave. It's about discovering the love of God, discovering his ways as we die to ourself and letting that love change us and then reflect back to others in the world. And this is what we so badly, so desperately need. And here's the thing: when we love like Jesus loved, it's so much better. We align with his heart, not ours. We step into a new being. His way can free us. His way sparks hope and grace. His way sparks mercy for others. It can spark freedom. Not only do the burdens of life shift in us, but has the power to influence other people, as I've already mentioned. But it's still a difficult thing to do. I was asking my wife Carly again. I said, How do you know when you need to love somebody? How do you know when you're treating somebody like an enemy? And I was just curious what she would say about that. She said, every time she thought of someone who hurt her, and she would cringe, she realized there was some kind of bondage. There was a pain that hasn't been healed. There's something that hadn't been let go. And then she said this, and I quote, She would know she was healed when her first thought of someone that she saw as an enemy was when she wanted the best for them. She realized she needed God's eyes for them. I thought that was that's just beautiful. She would know she was healed when her first thought of someone that she saw as an enemy was that she wanted the best for them. She needed God's eyes for them. Our culture is tense right now. There's so much political tension. Um, you know, people don't know how to love each other. We're constantly fighting. Um, we don't always want what's best for others. We we just keep going, we keep in this fight. And my question to everybody is do you want to be free from frustrations? Do you want to be free from the negative emotions that you struggle with? With your coworker, a family member, whoever it is. Do you want to be free? I'd ask you to think about people in your life that Jesus wants you to pray for. For some people you some people you think of like enemies, some people are just people you don't like, but you can tell, you know that there's something, there's something in your heart that you feel in bondage to. You can sense it. You know, like what you ever think about the party you're about to go to and you're like, oh, but what if so-and-so is there? What if that person's there? I don't want to see them. Hey, red flag, red flag. There's something there that the Lord wants to free you from. He wants to free you from. Here's the thing: our wrestle is not with flesh and blood, though. Do you understand that we have a real enemy? We really do have a real enemy. And it's a live, present thing. There is spiritual forces going on influencing others. There is things going on where people are stuck in their own bondage from their own oppression of our real enemy. Hurt people, hurt people. This is what happens when people are being influenced by the powers of the demonic, when they're stepping. It doesn't even have to always be the demonic. It can just be walking in your own sinful desires. It can just be walking in your own flesh. And when we stay in that place, we will continue to live in a place of wounding, and then we will start wounding other people. And the cycle will just continue to go on and on and on until finally we let the work of the cross confront us and we go, Jesus has a different way of doing it. He has a different way of doing it, and we can step into doing it with him. I'd ask you, let's just pause for 10 seconds. I want everybody to pause and um ask this question: Who comes to your mind when you hear the word enemy? Go ahead. Some of you don't even need ten seconds. Some could use more time, but some of you know when you're harboring the anger, the bitterness, there's hostility. Why is this thing so hard? It's our flesh versus our spirit. That's why this thing is so hard. How do you love your enemy even when they're actively acting like your enemy? You love them. Loving someone is separated from their actions and circumstances. You don't have to be a doormat, but we do need to see them like the Father does and treat them as the Father does. Why do we need to pray for those who persecute you? Because prayer is the thing that aligns our souls with the Father's Spirit. I think Jesus specifically said, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you because he knew that it's the people who persecute you. Those are the ones that are the most difficult to love. Usually the people who are persecuting you, that are creating a headache in your life, that are weighing you down, those are the people that it's the hardest to love. And Jesus knew this. And so he said, Here's what I want you to do in this moment. I want you to stop. I want you to pray. Because when you stop and you pray and you start asking, Lord, what is your heart? What do you want? What's your way? It is what empowers you to step into his love. It is what will empower you to step into walking in the Spirit. When you stop and you pray and you seek the Lord's heart, this is how you do it. Prayer is the key that unlocks it for you. So when you get in that moment, when you're just in turmoil, when you're going through this tomorrow or this afternoon, I want you to stop and pause. Just say, Lord, what's your heart for this person? What are you doing? Father, show them, heal them, bless them, bless them, and partner with the Lord in his ways. Step into what the Father has for you. Because the Father loves you, but he also loves that enemy. He wants to change them just like he wants to change you. He doesn't see them as just the opposing side. He sees them as the child of God. That's what the Father wants. He wants us all to have the freedom to come to him and to live in the fullness of his love. He wants that for you, but he wants that for the other person too. And if we can align ourselves with him, we can make room to actually impact this world. Can you imagine what our culture would look like right now if this is the way we responded? Not getting caught up in disagreements, not getting caught up in political opinions. Because by the way, if you're a child of God, you live in his kingdom. You're not for a political party. You're not for a political party if you're one of God's children. You live for his kingdom, which means you do it the king's way. You love like he loves, and it will set you free, it will set them free. Father, be with us. Show us your way. Show us your way, Father. Open our hearts, open our minds. Come, Holy Spirit.