We're in Luke chapter six and
we're gonna be concerned with verse 27 through 36 today. And we might spend some more time
on that, but today will be kind of a introductory view of that. And before we begin the lesson on
this next series of verses. I just thought it would be a
good idea for us to look at the nature of whom we have to do
and how things here and in other places are viewed from the eternal
perspective. It looks like we lost our Zoom
here. It's still working from this
end. All right. Well, anyway, I thought it'd
be good to look at some first. how things are viewed from the
eternal perspective and give us some perspective on why Jesus,
Jehovah, the Son of God, why God the Father and the Holy Spirit
do what they do. And as man, we're prone to try
to reduce God to our level of understanding and to reduce Him
to our concept of how things should operate and to reduce
Him to our ever-changing ideas of justice and righteousness
and So let's just read through here in Luke chapter 6. And we
went through these kind of beatitudes of blessed are ye when the blessed
are the poor, blessed are you that hunger, blessed when men
shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their
company. And he's kind of going to be dealing with that in this verses that we're looking
at today. But I say unto you which hear,
love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them
that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And to him that smiteth thee
on the one cheek, offer also the other. And him that taketh
away thy cloak, forbid not to take thy coat also, give to every
man that asks of thee and of him that taketh away thy goods,
ask them not again, and as you would that men should do unto
you, do ye also unto them likewise. For if you love them which love
you, what thank have you? For sinners also love those that
love them, and if you do good to them which do good to you,
what thank have you? For sinners also do even the
same, and if you lend to them of whom you hope to receive,
what thank have you? For sinners also lend to sinners
to receive as much again. But love your enemies, and do
good, and lend, and hope for nothing again, and your reward
shall be great. And ye shall be the children
of the highest, for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the
evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
Well, that's a pretty challenging block of scriptures for us to
view as in this world here. And as we look at these things
from God's standpoint, from God's viewpoint is what I wanted to
try to do today. When we think of God in an eternal
sense, we only have a reference, a time reference from a linear
time reference in this world. And so in the scripture though, he says,
I am. And that's kind of an always
now kind of a sense, a standpoint. Turn with
me, as Norman always says, keep your finger here in Luke chapter
6, and turn with me over to Psalm, the 50th chapter. And I'm not going to read the
whole thing. We'll just paraphrase it a little
bit here. He's having a dialogue through
the psalmist here with the Jewish religious people. They were so meticulous in their
keeping of the law, but yet, as Norm always points out, They
were bringing the halt and the lame and the maimed and using
those for their sacrifices. They were juggling things around
for profit and allowing things to go on that even though they
might have kept the letter of the law, they certainly weren't
keeping the spirit of the law, which was to point to the Lamb
slain from before the foundation of the world, which is another
indication of the I Am. He was the Lamb slain before
Adam even was created, before the world. And as we look at this season
coming up where we celebrate his birth and everything, he
was the I am. And it's important for us to
keep that view here. And so as he's talking with these
religious folks, he says, you do all the sacrifices, you do
all the tithing, you do this, you do that. He says in verse
21 of chapter 50, these things hast thou done it. And, and I
kept silence. I didn't, when you, when you
skirted the spirit of the law, I kept silence. He's long suffering. And he said, thou thoughtest
that I was altogether such a one as thyself, but I will reprove
thee and set them in order before thine eyes. Well, there's a couple
of words here in this scripture, in this verse, where it says,
thou thoughtest, and here's the part that you should focus on,
is I was. Well, the translators translated
that, I was, but it's the very same word that we find in Exodus
chapter three, verse 14, where it says, and God said unto Moses,
I am that I am. And so if we looked at this verse
where God says, you think I'm just like you. He says, you thought
that the I am is just like you, that I would wink at these things,
that I would look the other way, that I could be susceptible to
injustice and substitutes for righteousness, even though you
may think that you're keeping the letter of the law I am, and I am, I am not a man. And in this phrase in here, it's
in the Hebrew, it's And it's used to describe three primary
conditions. One is to exist, and that's the
one that we find in I am that I am. And in other places, it's
translated to be or to become. And in other, it's to come to
pass. And sometimes it's translated
just like it came to pass, that same word. But here we find it's talking
about the eternal self-existent God. It's I am. And so a more
correct application seems to be referencing the almighty eternal
unchanging God. And it would be that first definition
to exist. And so thou thoughtest that I am. is such a one as thyself." But
God is not like that. God is so much more than that.
And the long suffering of God is sometimes mistaken for ambivalence
towards righteousness. And as in the case of conditions
of unbelievers as written by the psalmist in chapter 50, as
long as the, you thought it's just as long as the bare legal
requirements were met, God would be satisfied. They pay the tithe,
they sacrifice the offering, even if it was halt and lame
and maimed and stuff they couldn't sell in the marketplace. They
thought God was, well, God should be satisfied. Just like Cain
said, here's my offering, you should be satisfied. If you view
things like I view, This is my works. This is what I consider
OK. What's wrong with my view? Well, we know what's wrong with
that view. It's not the view of I am who
is perfect in righteousness, perfect in justice, and omniscient,
almighty, and all those characteristics that we always talk about God.
And there's only one thing that satisfies His, and it's the Lamb
slain from before the foundation of the world, the I Am that was
slain from before the foundation of the world. And that affects
how God views the church, the elect, the sheep, the saved,
the redeemed. They all depend on His being,
I Am. the self-existent Almighty God. I change not. He's always the same. For him, we think in terms of eternity,
we have a linear view of time. Right now it's 1020. We think, We can remember back in the past
as far as we can remember, and we have the calendar. As I was
saying to Norm, if we could go calendar all the way back to
the beginning, we would say, well, that's eternity that way,
and from 1020 up into the future, that's eternity future. For God,
it's always, I am. No none to God are all his works
from the beginning of the world. He doesn't have a crystal ball.
and can say, well, I'm going to look down through time and
see who does what, and then I'll base my purpose on that. And it's the opposite. God is
in all of our time as we know it. And he says, I am And that
eternity for God is always now. And that's why when he writes
things that we see in the Psalm, like the 22nd Psalm, I'm hanging
there on the cross. I'm dry as a potsherd. All my
bones are out of joint. They've pierced my hands and
my feet. That's all written in the present tense of I am. It's not written like, this is
how I'm going to be. He doesn't say, In the future
I'm going to be hanging there and I'm going to be really miserable
and they're going to stab me and pierce me and spit on me
and pluck my beard out as it says in Isaiah. He describes
all those things as now. They plucked my beard, they smoked
me, they've done this. It's all I am and all those things
are now in God. So eternity is not a timeline
of things going off forward and back in the past. So when Jesus was talking to
the Pharisees, and they were bragging, well, we can look back
in the past and say Abraham was our father. And he said, before
Abraham was, I am. If he applied linear thinking
like what we have, he would say, well, before Abraham was, I was. I was back then. But he says,
curiously, before Abraham was, I am. And so he views the church
that way. He sees his churches in the I
am sense. And as we apply this indisputable
characteristic of God to the scriptures everywhere, and here
in Luke chapter 6, we can gain some sense of our relationship
with God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And beginning
in verse 27, And on through verse 36, we're brought face-to-face
with how God views things from an eternal aspect. And I think,
boy, this time of year, in a couple of weeks, probably Norm's going
to bring us some lessons on Emmanuel, God with us. And it helps us to view that from
the I Am perspective. I've just been studying a few
things on that this week. His view was he was the lamb
slain from before the fount. He didn't come to earth and then
say, well, I've read that this is going to happen to me. It
had happened in the I am of God. And he was successful. And when
he would go to his sheep, that's why he'd say, I must go. to Samaria. Zacchaeus, Norm brought up the
other day, I must go abide at your house. And all those times
that we read about him, he said, I must do this. I must, all his
steps were in the I am of eternity. And so as we look at these verses
here, I say, but, but I say unto you, We just have to view this from
that eternal standpoint. And our problem is we view them
from a physical worldly standpoint, and we have issues. How am I
going to love my enemies? Somebody that hates me, how am
I going to love them? How am I going to do that? It seems
contrary to our natural senses. Love your enemies. If I could get my hands on that
Chinese guy in that laboratory that making us all wear masks
and socially distance and doing all that, I'd wring his neck. It just seems contrary to us.
Love someone we hate, who likesly hates us and wants to do injury
to us, who's hostile towards us. Why? How? How can we do that? The worldview in this does not
fit our thing. In our view of time and justice,
we think short-sightedly. We think in terms of our view of things that We're
only here a short time and we measure that by, when Norm and
I were talking about something called entropy, it was the degradation
of stuff. Most of my business, when I was
in the construction business, was stuff was rotting, stuff
was decaying. It was in a process of degradation. From the minute they built that,
back whenever they built it, it started to crumble. The wood,
as soon as they cut that living tree off and made lumber out
of it, the decaying process was going in. The metal that went
into it was starting to rust, and everything is starting to
go to pot, and we measure things by that. We say, well, This was built 50 years ago,
and so in 50 years, it's just really gone to pot. Or five years
ago, I could do a lot more stuff than I can do now. And 20 years
ago, I could really do a lot more stuff. But time has taken
its toll on us. And so we think of things in
those terms, and we think we could never achieve this. Love your enemy. Love your enemy. Do good to them which hate you.
And if I say, okay, today I'm going
to do that. Well, what about yesterday? What am I going to
do about that? And thank God for I am. Thank God for his eternal unchanging. He says, because if it wasn't
for that, you would all be consumed. So let's try to observe these
verses from God's eternal viewpoint. There's several key words at
the beginning of verse 27. It's the word, but. You know,
there's just so many times we see the ruin of sin and the fall,
and then there's always, but God, right after that. But God who's rich in mercy,
but God, but God, but God. And that word, but, means contrary
to what has gone on before, the effects of that are nullified
because of but God. And also it's unto you which
hear. It says, but I say unto you which
hear, love your enemies. And we know
that God gives the hearing ear and the seeing eye. And he gives
us all these scriptures, the I am's, that tell us how we should
kind of view things from a spiritual standpoint, an eternal I am standpoint,
and not as, you know, worldly, physical sense. Contrary to how
we should react from a physical standpoint, contrary to regarding
hatred between us and our enemies, he says, to you which hear and
We depend on God to give us that hearing. The natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, but their foolishness
unto him. Neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned. So we have to understand that
God gives us this spiritual sense of things. But we have to utilize them.
We have to employ them. And as we try to look at this
from the eternal aspect of God, with whom all eternity is always
now, we have to understand who the enemy is. And you know who
the enemy is? We have met the enemy and they
is us. And you, Hathe Quickened, who
were dead in trespasses and sins, where in time past you walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the
children of disobedience, among whom we also, we all had our
conversation in time past, in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
the children of wrath, even as others. And here's this contrary
word comes up again, but God, who is rich in mercy for his
great love, wherewith he loved us. Now let's ponder that for
just a minute. And suppose that if we applied
what those Pharisees and Jewish religious folks thought in Psalm
50, they thought the I am was such a one as them. And you know
what it says here, we were children of wrath, we walked according
to the flesh, and all those things that we do by nature before God
reveals His Son in us, we were at enmity with God. If He applied the, you thought
I was like you, He would just snuff us all out. There would
be no purpose in us even having a world or being here. But he
doesn't look at those things. But God, who is rich in mercy
for his great love, wherewith he loved us. And so if we go
back and snatch up our I am part of the lesson again, and apply
that to this last part of Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4 that we've
just been reading, his great love, wherewith he loved us,
is the I am love. It's not, well, I know old Mike
is gonna turn around in 1987 and I'll start loving him then. He loved us with the I am love
from before the foundation of the world. He loved us with the
lamb slain from before the foundation of the world that took care of
our issues. And then in time, as Paul said,
when it pleased God to reveal his son in me, then we realize
what He's done for us as the I Am, that He's loved us with
an everlasting love, an I Am love. And therefore, because
of that, He's drawn us with loving kindness. Because of His eternal
love, that's from Jeremiah 31.3, we always like that verse. Jeremiah
31.3, I've loved you with an everlasting
love. An I am love. That everlasting is the same
word as eternal. It's the same sense that we have
of before Abraham was, I am. The same I am that he mentioned
to Moses there in chapter 3 verse 14. His eternal I am view is
that of unchanging eternal love before We're born and have done
any good or evil before we've done any works. His love is unchanging and that
his purpose according to election might stand not of works but
him that calleth. Read that up in Romans chapter
nine if you have extra time. It's not based on anything foreseen
in us. It's based on His I AM love that's
purposed in Himself. In the eternal view, in that
I AM God's view, the church is always His through the finished
work of His Son. In our worldly view at times,
He decides when he'll reveal his grace to us in salvation.
And that's how that happens. Like Paul said, when it pleased
God. And he says, after I give them
a new heart. They're in the world, and they
hate me. So I have to give them a new
heart to love me, and then I have to do all these things. And then
they're going to look back and say, whoa, where was I? Thank
God for the great I am, thy change not. Therefore you're not consumed. So if we understood God to act
as we in this world would, and as described in Psalm 50, thinking
that the great I am is such a one as ourselves, and we were all
his enemies, what would he do? It would just be bad for us. We're
all dead in sin. We're all disobedient, the Scripture
says. We're all at enmity towards Him. All children of wrath, even
as others. But God who is rich in mercy
because of this great I am love wherewith he loved us eternally.
He saved us by his grace and made us to sit together in heavenly
places in Christ. That's from Ephesians chapter
2. So what does that have to do with these Scriptures before
us. How does that impact our view
of these Scriptures that we're just reading here? Love your
enemies and do good to them that hate you. So, are we capable in this world
of always applying these words of the Lord? And what happens
if and when we fail? So, let's look at an example
of a guy named Saul of Tarsus. He clearly was an enemy. Enemy of Christ, enemy of the
church by his own admission. He tells Timothy in chapter 1
of 1 Timothy in verse 13, he says, I was a blasphemer, a persecutor,
injurious, but God who's rich in mercy, the great I am. He
said, I obtained mercy. And he said, because I did it
ignorantly and unbelief. He said, I thought I was doing
the right thing. I thought I was doing God a favor,
as it's going to tell us here. They are going to cut you off
from the church and think they do God a favor when they do that. The grace of the Lord was exceedingly
abundant. with faith and love, which is
in Christ Jesus." That's what he said. I was such a bad dude. I was on my way to Damascus to
arrest people, have them cast in jail. I was probably there
when Stephen was stoned, held their coats while they picked
up. You know, we think of stoning as like picking up a little rock and
throwing it. These guys were picking up football-sized rocks. The intent was to kill somebody,
not just wound them a little bit or inflict a little damage. It was to take a big old rock
and crush them with it. He said, the grace of the Lord
was exceedingly abundant. I was at enmity with the Lord.
I was an enemy of the church. But God said, love your enemies
and do good to them that hate you. What more good could have
been done to him than God saying, I'm going to save you. I'm going to reveal my son in
you. turn you around from where you
were. The grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith
and love which is in Christ Jesus. He looked at him with the I am,
not the Well, I'll wait till he turns around and straightens
up, or I'll foresee what he does. He looked at him with the I am
eyes. This is a faithful saying, he
said, worthy of all expectation that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Notice he doesn't
say, I used to be a sinner, or I used to be the chief of sinners. He said, I am chief. Kind of that same principle there. I am a sinner. To the church
he was viewed as an enemy, one who maltreated them even unto
death, and in the world view was someone that it would be
a stretch to say of their own volition that they loved him.
So we turn over to Acts chapter 9 real quick. If you'll turn
over to Acts chapter 9, there was a, in verse 10, we're just
going to read 10-11 verses here. There was a certain disciple
at Damascus named Ananias, and to him said the Lord in a vision. Ananias, and he said, behold,
I am here, Lord. God knew where he was. knew him
in the I am of the church. The Lord said unto him, Arise,
go into the street which is called straight, and inquire in the
house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus. For behold, he
prayeth." and hath seen in a vision a man
named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him that he might
receive his sight." Doesn't that just tell you a lot about the
I am of God? Just that one sentence there.
He's praying right now. I'm with you Ananias. Saul over
there is praying right now. And here's what he's saying. And here's what he's in a vision
getting. And Ananias answered, Lord, I've
heard by many of this man how much evil he hath done to thy
saints in Jerusalem. And here he hath authority from
the chief priest to bind all that call upon thy name. It kind
of reminds you of old Jonah. Joe and I want you to go to Nineveh
and preach the gospel. And he says, not the Ninevites. Those guys are awful. We hate
them. They hate us. Not going. But the I Am said, oh yes. The Lord said unto him, go thy
way. Even though you think he's here
to arrest you, And he has authority from the chief priests. Go thy
way for he is a chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before
the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. And you know,
I think he was going to Corinth and the Lord says, don't be afraid. I've got much people there. They're
just waiting for the gospel because he chose by the foolishness of
preaching to save them. the I am. He says, for I am,
I will show him how great things he must suffer for my namesake. And Ananias went his way and
entered into the house and putting his hands on him said, brother
Saul, the Lord, even Jesus that appeared unto thee in the way
as thou camest has sent me that thou mayest receive thy sight
and be filled with the Holy Ghost. He must have had just so much
great faith in the great I am of it. It would have been like
reaching out to grab a, we were looking at some pictures of rattlesnakes
in Arizona yesterday that they have different colored ones.
They got pink ones and blue ones and orange ones and white ones
and yellow ones. They blend into whatever. He
said, I want you to go pick up that rattlesnake and give him
his. And so he did that. His brother Saul, the Lord Jesus
even that appeared to thee, sent me that thou mightest receive
thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately
there fell from his eyes as it had been scales, and he received
sight forwith, and rose and was baptized. And when he had received
meat, he was strengthened. Then Saul was Saul certain days
with the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway
he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. But all that heard him were amazed,
and said, Is not he this that destroyed them which called on
this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that
he might bring them bound unto the chief priests?" So we have
to look at this through the eyes of God. If he would have just
left it up to them in Damascus, they probably would have had
a different view. They probably would have ran
and hid or tried to defend themselves somehow or who knows what the
outcome, but in God's I Am view, he was a chosen vessel. from
before the foundation of the world, from before eternity. Now it seemed to us that God
might be considered unfair to those poor believers whom Paul
had persecuted already. But in the eternal purpose and
view of God, they are in the eternal I am now. And as Paul would later say,
He said, well, for me to live is Christ, but to die is gain,
in Philippians 121. And he said in 2 Corinthians
chapter 5, for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle
were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens, in the I am of the heavens. For
in this we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house,
or whatever form that we have in the I am with God which is
from heaven. If so be that being clothed,
we shall not be found naked, naked as Adam was found in the
garden. For we that are in this tabernacle,
this form, We groan, being burdened. Not for that we would be unclothed,
but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up in life.
Now he that hath wrought for us the self, same thing is God,
the I am, the unchanging God, who also hath given unto us the
earnest of the Spirit. Therefore, We're always confident,
knowing that while we're at home in the body, we're absent from
the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight. And so in the
I am view of God, in his purpose, those people that were persecuted
and some even stoned, Who knows how many people have been affected
by the gospel, even Paul of Stephen, who was stoned, maltreated by
the religious folks, maltreated by people that were probably
sheep, but grace had not been revealed to them yet. It's just
the effects of the fall are just awful. And they're just more
than we can think. But in the great eternal view
of God, I Am, He sees them and has expressed His I Am love on
them. even though we commit these acts
and we're caught up in this worldly view of things. And when he says,
love your enemies, do good, who's a better example of that than
the Lord Himself? And I was talking about Malchus
this morning, and I was reading that this morning. When they
came to arrest Christ, The disciples they're going to defend him and
he says you know if I wanted to if I wanted to take the worldly
view I Could have 12 legions of angels here, and I could just
wipe everybody off that Even looked at me crossways, but that's
not why I'm here in the I am view I'm here to redeem the church. I'm here to redeem those that
I've loved the I am way from eternity. I'm the lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world. Peter whacked off Malchus's ear. I think all the Gospels have
that story. Peter drew his sword and smote
off the ear and one of the Gospels says it was his right ear. It
even gives us the detail that says, he smote off the servant
of the high priest's right ear. And one of the Gospels, I think
it's John in chapter 18 says, the Lord reached out and touched
his ear and healed it. Now, what do you think that fellow,
Malchus, thought about that? If somebody just chopped your
ear off, and you're bleeding, you know how bad you bleed from
a head wound, and that probably hurt like the Dickens. And probably,
you're thinking, man, if it had been this much further over,
he would have cleaved my head right in half, and I'd be dead
right now. But he got his ear, the Lord
reached out and touched that. If somebody cut your ear off
and then someone touched it and made it like new again, you'd
be thinking, who has power to do that? There he was witnessing
the gospel played out before him. And the Lord says, in the
I am view, love your enemies because all of you were enemies
until the Father revealed the Son in you, till grace was revealed
to you." So, we're getting kind of low on time here, but in this
eternal view, Paul, he's like us though. He still has to contend
with the fleshly nature. He still struggles against the
same things that we struggle against. In Galatians he said,
the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh
and these are contrary the one to the other so you can't do
the things that you would. And so, we might say, The inward man, I want to love
my enemies, but the flesh part of me says I want to pay them
back or I just want to distance myself
from them. I don't want anything to do with them. He had that
problem. which we all by nature have.
And he said, to will is present within me. And you could go in
and read all that in Romans, the seventh chapter. And he ended up and said, wretched
man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. He
says, the good that I would do, I don't
do that. The evil which I don't want to
do, that seems to be what I do. That's from Paul. If he has that problem, you know,
I'm doomed. He says, but I thank God through
Christ our Lord that he's taking care of these things. When I
can't do that, He's loved us with an everlasting love. How
does this relate to our verses here in Luke 6, 27? Well, there may be a Saul of
Tarsus somewhere in our acquaintances. There may be, like in Ananias,
it said, well, that person is evil to the core. So how do we contend with all
the times that we've not loved our enemies in the past and have
not done good to them? That's a problem that we have.
Everybody thinks, well, starting today, I'll do good. But what
about yesterday? But you know what he said? This
is the best part. After he says all those things
in Romans 7 about I can't do the things that I would. He says
the very first thing in chapter 8, he says, but there's no condemnation. There's no condemnation to those
that are in Christ Jesus. Thank God that He loved us with
an eternal, everlasting love. He said that Christ made me free
from the law of sin and death. For what the law couldn't do,
and it was weak to the flesh, God sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the
flesh. The eternal I am view requires much of us. And we should
always remember our own case. God commendeth his love to us
in that while we were yet sinners, the lamb slain from before the
foundation of the world died for us. So we're out of time
here. We're not quite out of notes,
but just remember that you that were
sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind, he has reconciled. We'll probably spend some more
time on that next time, and we'll look at Christ, who when He was
reviled, He reviled not again. He gave His back to the smiters. He did all those things that
we could never do, that we would not want to do. What He demands,
He fulfills. He supplies. So we'll stop there. Thank you
for your attention and Lord bless you and be free.