The passage we are looking at this morning deals with what is perhaps the greatest of all the themes of the Bible.  It is the theme of God’s love. 

When you read the Bible, I believe this subject sticks out more than any other.  Certainly, a lot of passages talk about God’s wrath and how he can become inflamed with anger.  We read many passages dealing with his holiness too.  As you turn the pages of Scripture, you can’t help but see that quite clearly.  However, these themes pale in comparison to the theme of God’s love.  This thesis presides over all the others.  For in the Bible you cannot help but see how God pursues his wayward people tenaciously and passionately.

Perhaps this topic is so prevalent in Scripture because so many are prone to doubt it.  I believe that it needs to be at the forefront of the Scriptures because it is so necessary for us to understand.  When we come to be persuaded that God really loves, then we are more ready to love him in return.  Trusting him follows right on the heals of having the assurance of his great love for us.

This last week my daughter and I went for a walk in the woods.  It is something we do somewhat frequently, but this time was a little different.  It was at night.  As we marched through the trails in the darkness, I thought about how much my daughter trusted me.  She was not afraid in the slightest bit to be out there in that creepy place.  She was not afraid that I would do anything to her while we were out there.  She had full confidence that she could follow me anywhere because she knew that I loved her.

The Lord wants us to have this sort of confidence: that we can trust him through anything and follow him anywhere.  So in this passage our Lord confirms his love.  He shows us just how great his love for us so that we may sweetly rest in it. 

In order to reassure us of his love the Lord talks first about the sheer extravagance of it.  The first mention of God’s love is found in the last half of verse 5, and it says that God’s love has been “poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” 

I. Its profuse extravagance

You might not notice it at first glance, but we understand how profuse God’s love is by those words “poured out.”  This word literally means “to spill” or “to run out greedily.” 

Now you can spill something and it is not all that big of a deal.  If you are almost done with your soda and you accidently knock it over, that’s not going to be much to worry about.  But if that soda “runs out greedily” then that is something completely different.  You get the idea that it is the jumbo size that you ordered and you haven’t even had the chance to take a sip of it yet.  Now it is all over your lap, running down your legs onto the seat and creating a huge puddle on the floor.

This is the same word used in the book of Acts when it talks about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  You know when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles it wasn’t as if God was using a dropper.  The Spirit is described as coming down in an overflowing manner, much like a torrent and it filled the room where the disciples were.  The funny thing about that passage is that the disciples were gathered in the upper room when the Spirit was poured out.  Then without any sort of transition the disciples are outside preaching to all the people who were gathered in Jerusalem.  It is almost as if the title wave of the Spirit came gushing down from heaven in such incredible deluge that they disciples were carried outside by the overflow of it.  You might have seen in pictures of a flood where a car is hit with a wall of water and then carried down the street by the overwhelming volume of water.  That’s what seems to be described in Acts chapter 2.

And that is exactly the same way God’s love is described here in this passage.  There is no shortage of God’s love.  God is not holding anything back.  His love comes down into our hearts in a lavish overwhelming manner!  The extravagance almost sounds sloppy because it reminds you of a child with the garden hose.  He just lets it all come gushing out. 

I’m glad that God’s word describes His love like this here because a lot of people don’t have that kind of view of it.  Some people (maybe you are one?) tend to think that God is up in heaven with a clip board taking an inventory of our lives and then rewarding with a pinch or two.  Or maybe we compare it to our own lives and how we always have a tendency to be a little stingy.  I know how we guys are.  When we want to show our wife  how much we love her, we will go and buy her some flowers.  And we can’t wait to walk in that door and overwhelm her with a nice bouquet of flowers.  But what do we do when we get to the store?  We look for the cheapest arrangement.  We look and say, “$15 for a dozen measly roses?  That’s ridiculous!”  So you go over and start looking at the carnations.

God doesn’t operate like that.  His love is never stingy, but always excessive.

Tim Keller is a PCA pastor in New York, and he has recently written a book based on the parable of the prodigal son.  The title of his book is Prodigal God.  The term prodigal means reckless, wasteful and absorbed with excess.  And it is characteristic of the first son who takes his inheritance and goes and spends everything in a wildly extravagant lifestyle.  Keller makes the point though that the father figure in that parable is just as excessive with his love.  He spends his days looking for the son, waiting for him to come back.  Then when he sees him far off in the distance he runs to him.  He does one of the most undignified things, hiking up his garments and sprints through the village thoroughway, right where everyone could see him.  Upon reaching the debauched child he showers him with kisses.  He lavishes his love, and puts a ring on his finger and a robe on his back.  Then he calls for the fattened calf to be killed and prepared.  The party he puts together on behalf of this child is almost wasteful in and of itself because he spares no expense.

He is the Prodigal God, and he wants you to know just how profuse his love for you is.

I’m sure you will agree that if we stopped here you would have sufficient evidence of how great God’s love is.  But, if the truth be told, we are not even scratching the surface yet.  We can’t know the depth of his love until we consider who exactly he loves!  And if you look at what this passage says, you see that it has some of the most unlikely objects.

II. Its unlikely objects

This passage uses 4 words to describe us, and the picture it paints is not a pretty one.  You’ve all heard the expression, “He’s got a face that only a mother could love.”  Well, when you consider what this passage says about us, you wonder, “How could anyone love us, let alone God.”

The first word that we come across is the word “weak.”  The KJV is perhaps a little more accurate as it describes us as being “without strength.”  The idea is that of being impotent.  The word is typically used to describe sick people, or people who are infirm.  In Acts 4 it is used to describe a man who is paralyzed!  These are all people who are so weak they can’t do anything.

What does it mean that we are weak?  For what do we not have any strength?  What is in view is our moral inability.  When it comes to pleasing God we do not have any power to do anything that pleases Him.  We are completely impotent—we are like an ethical paralytic! 

The Bible uses this language to describe how depraved we are in a number of places.  The best reference is in Jeremiah 7:9.  In my version it says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.”  Some other versions say, desperately wicked.  The New International version says beyond cure.  In other words, there is no remedy because the illness is so far gone.  Today we might say it is stage 4 cancer, the deadliest and most severe.

If we think we are good, or have some goodness deep down inside somewhere, we are only kidding ourselves.  That’s why Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful above all things.  We lie to ourselves and make ourselves out to be more upright than we are and say that we can please God, at least to some degree.

That’s not what the bible says though.  When it comes to pleasing God we are completely impotent. 

The next word that the Bible uses to describe those God loves is ungodly.

Rob and I have been going through Jerry Bridges book, Respectable Sins, a book that deals with the sins we find acceptable.  Before getting into the different sins though, Bridges talks about ungodliness.  He says that we typically think ungodly people are people who extreme sinners.  You know, the kind who are murderers and rapists; people who are open blasphemers and God deniers.  Bridges says that is not necessarily so.  He says a person can be a nice, respectable citizen and still be an ungodly person.

Ungodliness has to do with living your life with little or no thought of God, his will, his glory, or of your constant dependence upon him.  That’s how we were (and are!).  Tell me, how often is God on your mind?  How often do you think about him or pray to him?  I’m sure that the thought of being in his constant presence is relatively rare. 

It is funny if you think about it.  God loves the ungodly.  God loves those who are facing the complete opposite direction.

The next word that is mentioned is found in verse 8.  It is the word sinners.  What is descriptive here?  It is that we are chiefly characterized by that which God finds most offensive.  We have a corrupt nature that we have inherited from Adam.  So we are slaves to sin and under the dominion of sin.  The power of sin is constantly at work so that everything we do is tainted with sin. 

It is a lot like one of those old smokestacks that you would find on an old factory.  It is black within and without.  And all that comes billowing out of it is nothing but the darkest, most putrid smoke.  You look at that smokestack and find it repulsive.  You don’t want to go anywhere near it, let alone have a loving, personal relationship with it.

That’s what God does though.  He loves impotent, ungodly sinners.  The last word that he uses is the word enemies.

The idea here is that of open hostility.  It is not just a rejection of God (what might be seen in the word sinner).  An enemy does more than reject his opponent.  He does more than despise him.  He attacks him.

This is perhaps the ugliest of all the terms used so far.  You could say He goes and saves the worst for last.  The think is that most people don’t see it this way.  To put our relationship with God in these terms, will make a lot of people object.  Nobody thinks that they are God’s enemy.  Everybody thinks the world of God, don’t they?  He’s the big guy in the sky.  If you ask them everybody is always on good terms with God.

The truth of the matter is that the exact opposite is true.  If we could get our hands on God, we’d kill him.  It is as simple as that.  All you have to do is look at what we did to Jesus when he came to earth.  What did we do with him?  We attacked him.  We whipped and beat him.  We crucified him.  We killed him.  We proved that we were God’s enemies.

You see.  God doesn’t love the lovely.  If he did, he wouldn’t love any of us.  He might love the angels and the creation, but he would not even lay an eye on us.  Yet, the love that he loves us with is that grand. 

You might say that the test of true love is what you are willing to love.  I said earlier, mothers are able to love a lot more than most people, aren’t they?  You could be as ugly as sin, and the only person who would love you would be your mother.

Well, the Bible says that we are as ugly as sin. And if our mother could see us as God does, she wouldn’t love us.  But God sees us just how ugly we are and he still loves us.

Hopefully by now you are beginning to see something of how great God’s love for you is.  His love is extravagant and it comes to the most unlikely people.  But we will not really understand how much God loves us if we do not consider the cross.  For the cross is the ultimate proof of his love for us. 

III. Its proof
In verse 8 it says, ‘God demonstrates (or proves) his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

What the Lord shows us here is that his love is not just talk.  His love is more than words.

A woman may question whether or not her husband lovers her.  She might ask him, “Do you love me?”  He can talk about how much he loves her all he wants.  He can describe it in the most eloquent ways, but if he doesn’t ever get out of his Lazyboy and show her that he loves her, what he has is not real love. We all know that talk is cheap.  If he never proves his love, be it by helping with the dishes or going out and getting a job, she will know that he doesn’t really love her. 

We all know that dying for someone is the highest expression of love.  As a matter of fact, Jesus says in the gospel of John, no greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.  It doesn’t matter if it is the guy in the fox hole who dives on a grenade or the father who takes the place of his child in an execution, those are the chief expressions of love.

The difference here though is that Christ died for those who were unlovable by nature.  Verse 7 points this out.  It says, “Romans 5:7  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.”  In other words, people don’t usually have this kind of love where they are willing to give up their lives for someone.  What’s more is that even in those rare occasions where someone does die for someone else, it is typically for someone who is close to them and it is someone who is worth dying for.  They are outwardly what you might call a “good person.”  They aren’t a profligate of some kind.

Christ’s death is the ultimate expression of love because he died to save those who were in no way appealing to him.  The fact of the matter is, he died to make them appealing!  That’s what it means that Christ died “for us.”  That’s the Bible’s way of saying He gave his life as an atoning sacrifice.  And the rest of the passage fleshes that out:  He died that we might be “saved”.  He died that we might be “reconciled.”  He died that we may be “justified.”  All of these words are pointing to the fact that his death was for the purpose of cleaning up the unclean.

But can you imagine dying for someone Osama bin Laden?  How about a serial rapist?  Would you say to the executioner who is ready to administer the lethal injection, “Wait!  Don’t put the needle in him.  I want to take his place.  I want you to inject the serum into my veins instead.”

I could go on and make the illustration more graphic.  But I would assume even the thought of giving your life for such a person is repulsive to you.  Yet, that is exactly what God did for you.  Christ went to the cross and died in your place.

Conclusion:
Surely, the expanse of God’s love could not have been shown in any greater way.  And when we behold all that is said of God’s love in this passage, we can’t help but confess that it most certainly is an amazing love.

The verse before us this morning is perhaps one of the most difficult verses in the entire Bible.  And I am not alone in saying that.  In going through the commentaries in preparation for this message, I found them saying the exact same thing. 

Why is it that this passage is so hard?  It is not because it is an inconvenience.  It is a tough one because it commands something that is 100% contrary to our natural instincts.  This verse commands us to do something that goes against every inclination of our human nature.

And that is why I want to begin by reminding us how much we need Christ.  It behooves us right now to throw ourselves at his feet and beg for his Spirit because this verse is so foreign to everything we know.  If we are even going to begin to think about living out this verse, we need Christ to subdue our hearts and bridle the bitter inclinations that abide there.

Now the theme of the verse is easy to pick up because the word bless is used twice.  And when you think of blessing others, you might initially thing, “Yeah, sure.  No problem.”    But when you consider who we must bless and how we must bless them, then your attitude quickly changes.  And you understand how much you need the divine hand of God.

The passage says, “Bless those who persecute you.”  Right away you see there how extreme this is.  The difficultly of this verse becomes immediately obvious because of who it tells us we must bless.  

I. It is difficult verse because of who it tells us we must bless.
The objects of our blessing are to be the people who have made us objects of their hate. 

The language here is so vivid too.  The word for persecute means “to pursue passionately.”  It is the idea of being hunted.  It is like a lion going after his prey.  And those are the people who we are to bless.  The people who are pursuing us—those people who are hounding us, these are the people we are to bless. 

And you need to remember that the persecution being talked about here is persecution for our faith.  It is persecution because our Christ-likeness is impinging on someone else’s life.  It is persecution because we have been standing up against someone and speaking out against the life they have been leading or the things that they have been doing that have been wrong.

A lot of people think they are being persecuted because they have all kinds of people speaking harshly to them or harshly about them.  But the fact is that they are not really undergoing persecution at all.  What they are experiencing is the reaction of somebody to their sin.  They have acted, not in a righteous way, but in a foolhardy way.  So they are feeling the heat for it.

You can easily see someone who makes this mistake, can’t you?  The man who goes to work and whose boss is always nagging him because he isn’t doing his work quick enough or well enough.  You can hear the guy saying to one of his Christian friends, “Well, I really need your prayers.  I’m really taking a lot of heat from my boss.  He’s really coming down on me and he just won’t get off my back.  He is always dogging me and just won’t stop.”

That isn’t persecution.  That is discipline.  What that person is experiencing is correction.  The thing is that he isn’t responding properly to the correction.  His unrighteousness has brought the wrath of his boss upon him.

But that is often the case with people.  They think that they are being persecuted, but in all reality they are really being hounded because they are not living the way God wants them to.  They are offending other people because they are not showing the honor or the deference that they should be.  As a result they have all sorts of people coming down on them.

But what this verse is talking about is true persecution.  It is talking about being hounded because you believe in God.  This is someone who is being hunted because he is actively living out the law of God and promoting God’s ways.  It is this kind of situation that is being talked about.  And those people who are hounding and hunting us are to be the people we bless.

And that’s what makes this verse such a difficult verse.  It is easy to bless those who are our bosom buddies.  It is easy to bless those who bless us.  I would even say it is not all that difficult to bless those people who come down on us because of the wrong we do.  We might not want to.  But it is a lot easier than blessing those who despise you when you’ve never done anything wrong.  To bless someone who is attacking you simply because you are doing what is right, now that is hard.  

But the law of God calls us to it.  We are to be giving the highest respect everyone.  And our love and respect is to extend even to those who would be qualified as the worst enemies of God!  Even to those who mistreat us unjustly.

I know that this is hard, and the next part of the verse doesn’t make it any easier.  Because it not only tells us who we should bless, it tells us how we must bless them.

II. How we must bless them.
And it tells us that the blessing that we bless them with must be both pure and positive.

A. This blessing must be a pure blessing.
Paul specifically says, “bless and do not curse.”  In other words, you may not permit one drip of cursing to be pronounced.  If you do, your blessing has just been defiled, and you’ve just broken this command.

Now remember what a curse is in this instance.  This is not just cursing in that you say a bad word; what we typically think of as cussing.  That’s not what this means.  This cursing is the biblical kind of cursing where you call down evil upon someone.  And he’s saying, no matter how harshly someone treats you, you must not do that.

How hard is that?  This is so extreme!  Part of the reason it is so hard is because it is so radically opposed to our natural instincts.  When we are mistreated, our natural reaction is to get back at that person.  That’s most especially true when we are filled with righteous indignation.  We just become so inflamed and want to ring that person’s neck.

Here you can think of the disciples when they were rejected by the Samaritans.  I’m sure you can sympathize with them.  Jesus and his crew were on their way to Jerusalem and they had to go through Samaria.  And Jesus sent some of his band ahead to a certain village to make preparations for them so that they could be provided for along the way.  But the people of the village wouldn’t allow for it.  The disciples were aghast!  Who do these people think they are treating the Son of God like this.  This is preposterous!  They knew who Jesus was.  They had heard of his miracles and his teaching.  Now they are giving him the cold shoulder.  They are slamming the doors in his face.  The disciples are filled with righteous rage.  So they turn to Jesus and say, “Lord, do you want us to curse these people?  Do you want us to call down fire from heaven?”

But Jesus said, “No!”  Actually the Scripture says that he rebuked them.  In other words, he really came down on his disciples and let them know that that is not the way they are to act.

Now you have to wonder about this because the disciples had some biblical precedent for their actions.  We read in the OT about how Elijah called down fire from heaven, which came down and licked up 100-150 soldiers.  And you might ask, “What gives?”

Well, in Elijah’s case we have to remember that he was a prophet.  He knew what God’s will was, and really it was God who was calling down the curse upon those soldiers.  Elijah was just God’s mouthpiece at that moment.  Moreover, Elijah’s curses were not done out of a vengeful spirit.  The cursing at that moment was intended for the wider body of Israel.  The curses that Elijah called down were so that the rest of the people of Israel would turn to God and fear Him.

When you read the passage with the disciples, you get the sense that they were not concerned at all for the Samaritan people.  They merely wanted revenge!  They just wanted to teach those spiteful Samaritans a lesson.

And that is typically what we want, isn’t it?  We most likely do not care about that person’s soul or anyone else’s soul.  We just want justice.  We just want that person hurt because they have hurt us.  But God doesn’t want us to lash out at our enemies.  He doesn’t want us to curse them.  He wants us to give them nothing but pure blessing.

And if it is going to be a pure blessing, it needs to be a positive blessing.

B. Our blessing must be positive
In other words, we must really and truly “bless them.”  The word bless is from the Greek word “eulogeo,” which literally means to “speak well of.”  You know when you go to a funeral you may have to give a eulogy.  And in the eulogy, you speak a good word about the person who is laying in the coffin beside you.

That is what God wants us to do with those who persecute us.  Though they be dead to the things of God, God wants us to speak well of them and treat them with kindness.  That means we have no right to speak in a disrespectful manner to them or to slander them.  We never have that right.  Rather we must continue to treat them with the highest esteem and in accord with the law of love.

Perhaps an illustration from Paul’s own life might be good here.  Remember that toward the end of the book of Acts Paul is imprisoned for his faith by the Roman officials.  And once he was brought out to speak in behalf of his defense.  As he talked he spoke with the utmost respect, even addressing the scoundrel that held him captive without cause as the “‘most excellent’ Felix.”  Paul continued to honor his civil superior, even though Felix wasn’t worthy of much respect.

This is how God calls us to act.  To be positive in our blessing.  We are to commend the good things about them.  Or, if we cannot find anything of good report we are to remain silent and only let prayers be offered up on their behalf, that God would bless them.

And this really begs the question of how do we pray for our enemies?  I mean the greatest blessing we can offer them is our prayers, isn’t it?  The greatest thing we can do for our enemies is speak favorably of them to our God.  So how do we pray for them? 

When we pray for our enemies we should pay that God would pour out upon them the greatest blessing he could ever give someone:  a spirit of repentance.  We pray he would bless them by putting a stop to their wicked ways.

You will notice that I didn’t say that he would bless them and prosper them in their wicked ways.  That would be no blessing at all to them, would it?  That would be a curse to them.  That would only mean letting them heap misery upon themselves and the others around them.  What we want is a positive prayer, a prayer that seeks their welfare.  So when we pray for our enemies, we should pray that God bless them by correcting them and causing their wicked ways to cease.

This week I was doing some research and I came across a good quote from Martin Luther on how to pray for our enemies.  Luther said,  “We should pray that our enemies be converted and become our friends, and if not, that their doing and designing be bound to fail and have no success and that their persons perish rather than [infringing upon] the Gospel and the kingdom of Christ.”

That is a great prayer for our persecutors.  We should pray that they be converted and be our friends, or that their plans would fail rather than letting the gospel be perverted or hindered.  Luther went on to give the illustration of a Christian woman named Anastasia.  Anastasia was married to an idolatrous man who was a notorious persecutor of Christians.  He had hated them so much that he even threw his own wife into a horrible prison, in which she had to stay until she died.  But despite being treated in such a way she sought to bless her husband.  She wrote to a Christian friend and asked him to pray for her husband that, ‘if possible, he be converted and believe; but if not, that he be unable to carry out his plans and that God soon make an end of his ravaging.”  And Luther says, “Thus she prayed him to death, for he went to war and did not return home.”

“So we, too, pray for our angry enemies, not that God protect and strengthen them in their ways, as we pray for Christians, or that He help them, but that they be converted, if they can be; or, if they refuse, that God oppose them, stop them and end the game to their harm and misfortune.”[1]

But Matt, it’s like you are praying imprecatory Psalms.  How is that positive?  How is that pure?  It seems like you are cursing them more than blessing them.  I admit that if you are doing that with a spirit of revenge and no care for the gospel ministry, then that is wrong.  But if you are seeking their welfare and the welfare of the gospel, then such a prayer is warranted.  If any harm comes to them, the blood is not on your hands.  It is God who is breaking out against them. 

Our problem is though that most likely we would use such a prayer in the wrong way (with the wrong motive).  Most likely our desire for revenge would cloud our minds and we’d simply want the person injured, rather than converted.

That’s why we must deal with our own hearts before we deal with our enemies.  That’s why we must go to Jesus and seek the power of God.  Because God always calls us higher; and this is perhaps the highest of our callings: to bless, and not curse our persecutors.

Conclusion:
When in Egypt some years ago a minister held a service for some soldiers who were in the area. The minister asked a big sergeant who was a bright and shining Christian to tell the rest of the men how he came to know the Lord.  As he recounted his testimony he said this, “There was a private in the company who had been converted before his regiment came to Egypt.  We gave that fellow a terrible time.  The devil got possession of me, and I made that man’s life a positive burden to him.  Well, one night, a terribly wet night, he came in sopping wet and tired.  But before getting into bed he got down on his knees to pray.  My boots were heavy with wet and mud, and I let him have one on one side of the head and then on the other side.  But he did not retaliate.  He simply continued on with his prayers.  The next morning I found my boots at his bedside.  The night before I had just kicked them off and let them sit, caked in mud.  But I found them cleaned and beautifully polished.  That was his reply to me, and it just broke my heart.”

The sergeant was so amazed that his foe would respond in such a way, that he ended up giving his life to Christ.  I’m sure loving that sergeant wasn’t easy.  But the love that he showed was certainly the power of God.

May the same spirit fill our hearts and may God give us the power to bless and not curse our enemies.

[1] http://www.the-highway.com/articleJune00.html