It Ends With Me

Matthew 5:43-48

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 sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

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This weekend we observed the 20^th anniversary of the attacks on 9/11. It caused me to remember the events of that day so I will take a moment to share that with you,

On the morning of September 11, 2001 I was home from work when Kaye called me from the office and told me to turn the TV on, and when I did we all know the images that I saw.

When I stopped and listened to what the announcers were saying, immediately I knew that this could not be an accident, it seemed too implausible to me that an aircraft that big would accidentally hit a building that large it had to be some kind of an attack, and just as I finished that thought as if to validate what I already knew in my heart, I saw the second plane strike the other tower.

The images and news reports for the rest of the day angered me and saddened me, I remember wondering if there was anyone I knew that may have been in those buildings, or if they were one of the firemen or police officers that were responding to the scene, as many of my friends from school were close to the city, then my thoughts turned to the nuclear station just across the river from my brothers house and I wondered if that too would be a target.

As the day progressed and as the scenes on the TV became saturated with images of the chaos in these areas, the news started showing reports from around the world and then turned to images of Muslims around the world celebrating, and to this day I can still see clearly in my mind an older Palestinian woman dancing in the streets of the west bank and passing out candy to children and when I saw that, I don’t believe I have ever hated anyone as much as I hated them I wanted that place and everyone there to be obliterated.

Now today 20 years later, I don’t struggle with the hate that was in my heart for that woman and the other people that I saw rejoicing, only because I have come to understand what Jesus was trying to tell me in the opening scripture, Not just the obvious meaning to what he said, but the deeper meaning that was meant to not just change your attitude but your heart.

Hate is a powerful emotion, it is a human emotion and when you are a Christian and contrast the hate that is in your heart for a person or a people to the scripture that I read in the opening of this sermon in light of how we felt about what we were seeing on that day, you can almost feel yourself wanting to tell God that he can’t be serious, how can you not hate the evil perpetrated against the innocent people on that day, surely He doesn’t mean it in a case like this!

After all, look at the evil of these people; doesn’t their evil and barbarity call for such emotions, such hate?  And Christ tells me to Pray for them?

You almost want to say to God, “Sure I’ll pray for them, I’ll pray that a bomb drops on their heads or that they suffer a horrific death”

And the truth is, it’s not just on days like 9/11 its every day of our life when we see the wickedness of people in this world.

But when a Christian harbors hate in their heart I can’t help but think that it brings tears to the eyes of Christ.

In my head I picture God and Jesus surrounded by the angels all looking down through a hole in the clouds at the hate in the hearts of Christians, and I picture God placing a comforting hand on Jesus shoulder and as a tear runs down His face He turns and asks God, “Have they learned nothing from my sacrifice?”

When we look at our Christian heart we have to remember that light and darkness cannot occupy the same space and if we have died to ourselves and been reborn in Christ our heart no longer belongs to us but to Jesus.

2 Corinthians 6:14

“What fellowship has light with darkness?”

By definition hate and love cannot coexist in your heart if you have renounced the world and claim Christ. That is the fact of the matter.

When we look at the past, we see many things that have caused people to hate one another, I knew men that until the day of their death that hated the Japanese and the German people because of the suffering they experienced as POW’s at the hands of these people, and yet these men were Christians.

Many Blacks hate whites today because of something many of them never experienced firsthand, the suffering of the Irish, Chinese and Italians as new immigrants to this country by unfair labor practices and prejudices decades ago still lingers in the hearts of many I have seen it first hand.

Hate not only has the power to corrupt an individual but to be passed down from generation to generation with no end in sight.

And yet many of these people that hold on to this hate consider themselves Christians.

And when someone claims Christianity do, they think themselves exempt from this scripture?

1 John 4:20

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

It is human nature that when we suffer as a people or as an individual, that that suffering is often translated into hate for another person or another people and many Christians will turn to the imprecatory Psalms, imprecatory Psalms are the Psalms that ask for God to strike down our enemies or deliver them into our hands, as a way to justify our Hate.

When we have been wronged it is only natural for us to want to seek revenge for that wrong but we must remember in Deuteronomy 32:35 God tell us “Vengeance is mine”

But stop and ask yourself why does God say that Vengeance is His? It is because only God knows the hearts of man and only, He knows the whole picture.

We do well to remember that when David penned these prayers, he often asked God to search his heart and to see if he was justified because David knew he was a sinful man as well but that he truly sought forgiveness for those sins.

For example, Psalm 38:18

For I confess my iniquity; I am full of anxiety because of my sin.

And in other Psalms he asks that if God finds him at fault, then that God would deal with him accordingly.

Psalm 7:3-5 

O Lord my God, if I have done what they say, or am guilty of unjust actions, or have wronged my ally, or helped his lawless enemy, may an enemy relentlessly chase me and catch me; may he trample me to death and leave me lying dishonored in the dust.

Now let’s look at another psalm

 Psalm 109:1-5

O God of my praise,
Do not be silent!
² For they have opened the wicked and deceitful mouth against me;
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
³ They have also surrounded me with words of hatred,
And fought against me without cause.
⁴ In return for my love they act as my accusers;
But I am in prayer.
⁵ Thus they have repaid me evil for good
and hatred for my love.

David wrote this Psalm, but in your mind can you not see Christ uttering this on the cross if He were not the Son of God?

Instead, Christ tells us to pray for the person or the people that have wronged us. We are called to rise above our human nature and ourselves and look at our enemies not through our own eyes but through the eyes of Christ, because we too were once enemies of God, remember?

Paul and Peter did not come up with the following words on their own, they penned the following words because it was first spoken by Christ Himself, they are just passing along the teachers lesson.

Romans 12:17-21

¹⁷ Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. ¹⁸ If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. ¹⁹ Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰ Therefore

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

1 Peter 3:9-11

⁹ not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. ¹⁰ For “He who would love life and see good days, Let him refrain his tongue from evil, And his lips from speaking deceit. ¹¹ Let him turn away from evil and do good; Let him seek peace and pursue it.

So if we were once enemies with God and yet he died for us, how much easier is it for us that He asks us to only pray for our enemies?

9/11 brings out many emotions for us as a people, but for those of us that are Christians in this country who truly seek to be like Christ, we need to replace that hate for our enemies with sorry and pity, and even understanding, because as the saying goes “There but for the grace of God go I” which by the way is taken from

1 Corinthians 15:10

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

The people that seek to do harm to us or to persecute us are as deserving of God’s grace and forgiveness as we are.

I realize that on a day like today, and in a time like this time in our country, this can be a bitter pill to swallow but it is our pill to swallow, and those of us that will not see past the hate on either side of an issue are in danger of not receiving God’s Grace and forgiveness themselves.

The things that God needs to punish for He will punish; the people whom He will pour His wrath out on are for Him to decide.

There is no hope for the world outside of Jesus Christ and as His followers it is our Job to ready the way for His return.

We are to be not just reflections of Christ but also the modern John the Baptist, we are the voice crying out in the wilderness for people to repent and ready themselves for the Day of Judgment.

This weekend is a solemn day for many people in this country and even some in other countries.

They have lost loved ones in the attacks that we have paused to remember, outside of God’s grace and salvation they will never see them again, the people who perpetrated these attacks are dead and gone but the legacy of hate that they left behind still resonates in the hearts of many like them.

It should be our prayer today not just for the families and those who were innocent and taken from us, but for those who are following a false God, a false Gospel, and those consumed with hate regardless of where that hate comes from.

We need to pray for 2 things, first we need to pray for their conversion because even those we deem unredeemable are not out of Gods ability to redeem.

The second thing we need to pray for on an occasion like today, is that the evil that people would do would be restrained and replaced with a conviction in their hearts and souls.

In closing I will leave you with thought. If hate does not stop at the Christian heart, where does it stop, If Christians cannot separate the person from the sin who then will love the sinner, if the Christian cannot refrain from evil thoughts and evil ways what hope is there for the lost?

We are called to be a new creation, filled with the Holy Spirit, are we?