(upbeat music) - Good Wednesday, everyone. Thanks for listening. And listening in this season, we are in a season on the podcast looking at darker issues. Not by design, it just ended up that way providentially based on the questions that have come to us and the topics that have been on the table of late.

We've looked at whether we can be angry at God when life doesn't turn out the way we hoped it would. That was two Mondays ago in ABJ 1828. Then we looked at how to overcome anger in the home. That was in ABJ 1829. And then a wife asked about how to address her husband's ongoing sin patterns in ABJ 1830.

And then last time we addressed a wife who was betrayed. Her husband left her for another woman. How does she process the ongoing pain of that desertion? That was ABJ 1831. And today I wanna build off Monday's episode because in speaking to that mom of three young girls now abandoned by her husband, Pastor John applied the category of enemy and spoke of enemy love.

Those are Jesus's words, love your enemies, right? He commanded that to us in Matthew 544, a text Pastor John spent years studying. He published an entire book by the title, Love Your Enemies. This is his doctoral dissertation. So if that enemy category fits a former spouse, it raised a question in my mind as I listened Monday and maybe in your mind too, who else qualifies as our enemy?

How broadly does this category stretch? And that exact question is answered by Pastor John in his 1995 sermon on Matthew chapter five. Here he is. - Around this globe today, there are tens of thousands of Christians suffering and some of them laying down their lives just to believe, just to believe and to be obedient to Jesus Christ.

So the first meaning of enemy is those who persecute you like that. Love them, love them. The next meaning of enemy is less dramatic in verse 45, about halfway through it says, God causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

So here you have evil people and unrighteous people. And this morning, it was already getting light at 4.45 this morning. He's making the sun rise on all the evil people in the Western hemisphere here. From Argentina to the Hudson Bay, millions of millions of people who scorn the name of God.

And he made the sun come up on him this morning and he gave them breath and he gave them life and he held the planet in being. And he restrained anarchy and he graced them with warmth on their skin, breezes on their faces and green in the tree and grass under their feet and birds singing in the trees.

And you know what was happening when that happened? The heavens were telling the glory of God and the firmament was declaring his handiwork so that you here would hear this message before you got here. And that's what I was praying for you this morning. I looked outside and I said, God, you're already preaching it.

Preach it, preach it. Would you please open their hearts? Don't let them turn on the TV and just start watching stuff. Would you turn on their hearts? Would you cause them to reach up and turn on the dial of the sky and say, do it, say it. Say it to the cities.

Say it loud. Nobody deserves what happened this morning at five o'clock. Nobody. And he made it happen. He just brought it up. And look, he's still doing it. He's still doing it. There are people who didn't give him a rip this morning. They didn't give him the time of day.

He doesn't get two seconds of their day. And he's just gracing them, hugging them, caressing them all day long today. They'll go to lakes and they'll take walks and they'll ride bicycles. And he'll be saying, I love you. Come to me, look at me. I'm a glorious God. I can do this for eternity for you if you'll have me.

And they don't pay any attention. We need witnesses to the witness. The enemy in this context is those who resist God, who disobey his laws, who ignore him. So if you translate that down into our situation, your enemy is anybody who resists you, who contradicts you, who crosses you, who antagonizes you, who makes life hard for you.

Which means that the command, love your enemy, has an application to rebellious children, ill-tempered and insensitive and non-listening husbands, neighbors who complain about your dandelions. And you may not call them enemies and they don't call themselves enemies, but that's the kind of illustration we've got here. Most people don't think of themselves as enemies of God.

And yet God uses them as illustrations of how he graces people who are not whole toward him. A third illustration of what enemies means comes in verse 47. If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? You know, even the tax collectors do the same. And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others?

So who's the enemy here? Why is he using this in the context of enemy love? And the answer is your enemy is somebody who doesn't love you. If you love only those who love you, meaning you should also love those who don't love you. Or if you greet only your brothers, meaning you should also greet those who are your non-brothers.

So enemy here in this paragraph is thick. It starts with persecution and it ends with people who don't greet you, not your brothers, they kind of, that's Shabbat. He says, "If you only greet them, then you don't know enemy love." So if I ask now in a summary fashion, who are the enemies?

What's this text about? This text is about anybody that crosses your path. Love them and don't stop loving them even if they offend you, even if they dishonor you, even if they anger you, disappoint you, frustrate you, threaten you, or kill you. Don't stop loving them. And if you just look in the mirror for a moment, the mirror of this word here, you will feel like, I am spring loaded to return evil for evil.

We feel it in our families especially. People we know best can irritate us the most and we just, just like that, we're returning evil for evil. A harsh word gets a harsh word. A criticism gets a criticism. A complaint gets a complaint. We just, just like that, we're just wired to return evil for evil, which means this call is for a very profound change.

Isn't it? - Exactly. We're wired to return evil for evil. I pulled this clip from John Piper's 1995 sermon titled, "But I Say to You, Love Your Enemies, Part Two." You can find the entire message online, both parts. And being wired to return evil for evil was a text that came up in one of our most controversial episodes in the podcast, the one on guns in the home.

You might remember that back in APJ 306. I'm reminded of that as I listened to this episode. Well, if you have a sermon clip to share of your own, email me, give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio and make a note of what stands out to you.

Put the word clip in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Well, do we submit ourselves to every person? We have a Bible question on 1 Peter 2.13 that needs to get sorted out. I'm your host Tony Reinke and we're rejoined in studio with Pastor John when we dive into 1 Peter 2.13 on Friday.

We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)