Part of it was what was said but not all of it. You’ve heard it was said but it wasn’t said. When he says, “You’ve heard it said,” he’s not saying, “God said.” Of course he didn’t say, “God said.” He said, “You’ve heard that it was said.” But the reality of it, it wasn’t said. He’s the inspirer of it, the giver of it. When Jesus says, “You’ve heard it said,” then he says, “You shall love your neighbor, hate your enemy,” he’s smart enough to know that the second part of that is not in the Old Testament anywhere. It’s not in all caps because it’s not a quote. He keeps saying something and he says, “And hate your enemy.” In my Bible, “And hate your enemy” is not in all caps. “You shall love your neighbor.”īut Jesus doesn’t stop there. The Lord said there, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor.'” And in my Bible, those one, two, three, four, five words “You shall love your neighbor” are all capitalized indicating that’s a quote from the Old Testament, from the law. Today we come to Matthew chapter five in verse number 43. They’re not quite as easy to see but actually they’re not that difficult to see either. You’ll see that today is no different and that helps then put the other two within context. Now we will come back to the third and the fifth but I’m looking at the ones … First of all, they’re the most obvious that make it so plain to us that the ethic that Jesus was subscribing to and conveying to his disciples was in every case Old Covenant ethics of morality. We’re going to skip over the fifth one and look at the sixth one. We skipped over the third one, looked at the fourth one last time. They’re twisting which has become so clear as we’ve been reading through this and we’ve already looked at three out of the six you have heard but I say to you statements by Jesus. That would be strange that God would correct himself and so who is he correcting? He’s correcting the false beliefs, the false ideas, false interpretations, things taught by scribes and Pharisees. Of course I have already talked in previous little lessons about how confusing that must have been if it were true to his disciples because often times people who hold to that premise will say, “Well, this is the New Covenant law, but yet Jesus was ministering under the Old Covenant.” Of course he’s quoting from the Old Covenant law, the Law of Moses and he’s making counterpoints but he’s not correcting himself. He’s expecting more out of them than God expected out of anyone before them. Jesus is raising the bar now that he’s come to the earth and he’s got a set of followers. But some folks were saying that that’s something that the world never heard before and that a new ethic, a new standard of morality. Everybody knows Jesus said that in the Sermon on the Mount. Loving your enemies, is that a New or an Old Testament concept? The question we’re asking today is about a very familiar commandment, love your enemies.
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