Trinity Baptist Church

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

Why You Need Your Enemies and Your Enemies Need You, Part 2

Jeremiah 29:7

 

I am always on the lookout for sermon illustration material and ideas.  The problem is when I find something I think might be helpful, I file it away or store it on my computer and then forget about it. 

 

While getting ready for tonight, I went back to review some of those things and came across an e-mail that circulated a few years back that contained a reading called “Enemies as Emissaries of God’s Grace.” You might like to read the whole thing.  If so, I’ll be glad to make a copy available or you can find it online by searching that title. 

 

Let me share a portion of it with you: 

 

    “If I keep a heavenly perspective and believe Romans 8:28, enemies are not really enemies… they are some of the best friends I have. What is sometimes meant by some to hurt me actually helps bring about a work of grace in me that wouldn’t take place any other way.

 

    When a supposed enemy attacks, God exposes the sinful blind spots that lie hidden in my heart. When friends extol my good virtues and praise me, I appreciate their expressions of love, but it is more important that I be told the truth especially when it will wound me deeply (Proverbs 27:6). Otherwise I will not work to become more like Christ and the blind spots I have will grow and further infect my soul.

    There are lessons I must learn that can only be learned in the crucible of adversity, pain, and difficulty. And God uses those perceived as enemies to expose the things that otherwise would never be seen, much less understood or removed from my life. And so what some might call an enemy is really my best friend, a helper, an emissary from God for my good! For the way to Christlikeness is the cross, and the navigator that God uses to direct me there are those who some might call enemies.

 

    Without people doing what they think will hurt or destroy me, I would never find the way to being more like Jesus. They are a required part of becoming holy. And because of that I must see them as my best friends!”

 

There is much more to the reading, but these excerpts will give you the intent of the writing.  And to be honest, I think many, if not most of God’s people never come around to embracing that kind of theology.  Do you ever think of your enemies or opponents as your best friends? 

 

And yet there is this biblical truth that comes from that.  If we believe God is in control of all the circumstances of life, it is not enough to simply say we believe that God has a purpose in everything that happens to us. That much is true, but not only does God have a purpose, it is a beneficial purpose designed to make me to be more like Christ, even though we often to do not see it clearly.

 

With that in mind, we return to our study of Jeremiah 29. 

 

The Jews had been deported from Jerusalem to Babylon. Many of their leaders had been killed, and many had been marched away in shackles. The Babylonians were quite ruthless in their treatment of their enemies. And now the Jews were in exile for 70 years, which meant (at least for the older folks) that most of them would never return home again.

 

And through Jeremiah, God has sent instruction for them to settle in Babylon and make a life.  And then He adds this instruction in verse 7:

 

Verse 7

 

So how do you do that?  How do you pray for someone you despise?  How do you seek the good of people you wish were dead?  How do you survive in a foreign land where everything you believe is ridiculed?  And by the way, why would you seek their prosperity after what they did to you?

 

It all goes back to the question I asked in the first sermon in this series: What do you do when you don’t like the circumstances of your life and it seems as if those circumstances aren’t going to change anytime soon?

 

God’s unfolding answer is to

 

First of all, remember you are where you are because I put you there (verse 4).

 

Then He says, settle down and make the best of your situation (verses 4-6).

 

And, seek the good of the city and pray for those who have taken you into exile (verse 7).

Last week, we looked at two key questions:

 

    1) Where do my enemies come from?

    2) Who are my enemies?

 

So how do we love our enemies, as Jesus instructed us to do?  How do we pray for them to be blessed and mean it?  After all, it’s a whole lot easier to read this stuff in the Bible than it is to practice what we read in the Bible! It is much harder to love our enemies on a daily basis.

 

Yet the command remains: “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27). We cannot escape it. This is a key part of our own spiritual journey from bitterness to forgiveness to freedom. To say it another way, we cannot be set free until we set them free to be blessed by the Lord.

 

So let me offer a third question and then an attempt to anwer it.  And by the way, I always feel complled to remind you in regard to sermons like this, it is much more an offering of Biblical counsel than a testimony of my own life.  I don’t share with you as an expert, but from the perspective of a fellow disciple seeking to do God’s will.  So let’s learn together,

 

 

Here are seven suggestions that will move us in the right direction.

 

 

 

Greet your enemies. We often overlook this simple step. One part of loving our enemies is to greet them graciously when we see them. Sometimes, and maybe most times, instead of turning the other cheek, we turn the other way so we won’t even have to say hello to someone who has hurt us.

 

In fact, some of us are quite good at looking the other way or ducking into a room or checking around the corner to see down the hallway to keep from even greeting those we don’t want to greet.  We can cross the street or use Caller ID or any other avoidance technique. 

 

You would think as a child of God we could at least have the graciousness to greet someone.  But the truth is, that’s not nearly enough.  After all, sinners greet one another.  Cutthroat business will shake hands with one another.  Opposing political rivals will embrace.  But it is a good beginning place.  One part of loving your enemies, and I would say it is an essential part, is to greet them instead of avoiding them.

 

 

Don’t you love to catch people off guard by being nice to them?  They don’t expect it and they would certainly never do it back to you!  But you disarm them by doing the right thing!  That’s what you do when you turn the other cheek or go the second mile. You disarm them by doing the very thing they least expect. You do it by speaking well of them when no one expects it.

 

 

General Robert E. Lee was once asked his opinion of a fellow officer who was widely known as one of Lee’s greatest critics.  The general responded that he thought the man was a very fine officer. “General,” his questioner replied, quite perplexed, “I guess you don’t know what he’s been saying about you.” “Oh, yes I do,” replied Lee. “But I was asked my opinion of him, not his opinion of me.”

 

Greet them, disarm them and (it’s going to get worse before it gets better)

 

 

And I’m talking about genuine goodness, not fluff and nonsense.  Doing good to your enemies means seeing beyond your pain and their meanness to their humanity. It means seeing them as people made in the image of God and understanding that there is something twisted inside that causes them to do what they do.

 

“Doing good” means that you do what will promote their healing despite the way they have treated you. The idea is, you make the first move. You send the e-mail. You pick up the phone. You make the contact. You bridge the gap. You set up the appointment.

 

Someone suggested there are four keys to being used by God to help others: Show up, hang loose, trust God, stay alert. Those four keys will work for you if you want to help those who have hurt you.

 

 

 

 

 

That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28). Paul said it this way in

 

1 Peter 3;9

 

There we find the same principle that is seen in verse 7 of Jeremiah 29. 

 

We receive a blessing by being a blessing.  And we don’t go around badmouthing those who bad mouth us. We choose not to think evil thoughts and we refuse to speak evil words against those who have wronged you.

 

Proverbs has a great deal to say about the power of words. “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21). Every time we open our mouth, life or death comes out.

 

Do you know why many people never get to the point of forgiveness?  They won’t keep their mouth shut!  At some point, we have to stop talking and start forgiving.  You can criticize the Babylonians, or

You can pray for them,  but you can’t do both at the same time!

 

As long as we talk over and over again about how others have hurt us, we will never find the strength to forgive. We will never “seek the good of the city” as long as we hate the people of that city. What God said to the exiles applies directly to us. We will never seek the good of our enemies until we stop speaking evil of them.

 

 

I told you it would get worse before it got better!  But if what we are learning from these ancient Jews is correct and our enemies are sent by God and He is using them to develop us into Christ’s image, then we ought to be thankful for them. 

 

Your enemy could not torment you apart from God’s permission. So behind your enemy stands the hand of God. And God would never permit it if he did not intend to bring something good out of it. You should take a picture of your enemy, frame it, stick it on your refrigerator door, and thank God for your enemy every time you look at the picture.

 

 

When Martin Niemoller, a German pastor, was arrested by the Nazis in World War II, he prayed daily from his prison cell for his captors. Other prisoners asked why he prayed for those who were his enemies. “Do you know anyone who needs your prayers more than your enemies?” he replied.

 

But what if you hate the person you are praying for? Tell that to the Lord. He won’t be surprised. Then say something like this, “Lord, I hate this person, but you already know that. I ask you to love this person through me because I can’t do it in my own power. I ask you for a love I don’t have and can’t begin to produce.” God will not turn you away when you come with an honest heart, admitting you need his love to flow through you.

 

Finally,

 

 

Here’s a simple way to do that. When faced with someone who has mistreated you, ask God to do for them what you want God to do for you. Seek the blessing for them that you want God to do for you. Think of it this way: The greater the hurt, the greater the potential blessing that will come when we forgive from the heart and by God’s grace bless those who curse us.

 

Think about it this way:  Let’s suppose you find yourself in “Babylon” right now. Perhaps you feel forgotten, overlooked, downtrodden, misused, and taken for granted. Maybe you don’t like where you are or the people you are around. If so, join the crowd because most people feel that way at one time or another.  I know some folk who must feel that way permanently because apparently life is always bad for them. 

 

So here’s the question. How is God going to reach Babylon? His method has been the same throughout history. God reaches the lost by sending his people to the lost. But what if they don’t want to go? He sends them anyway! That’s what he did with Jonah. And that’s what he did with the Jewish exiles.

 

And by putting them in the hands of the people they hated, the Lord was really saying, “You are my missionaries in Babylon. Though I put you there as a punishment, I also intend you to be a blessing to your captors.”

 

 

 

That is an amazingly uplifting and encouraging thought because it means that even when we have really, really, really, really, really, really messed up and when we are suffering badly for our mistakes, God continues to use us so that even our discipline becomes an opportunity not only for spiritual growth but for ministry to others.

 

Is that not incredible?  Unfortunately, many will never know the joy of being a missionary in those times because they will refuse to bless their enemies.

 

Whether we realize it or not, your enemy is a gift from God to you. Though you don’t know it and often can’t see it, the person who has hurt you so deeply is a gift from God to you. To say that is not to excuse evil or to condone mistreatment. It is to say exactly what Joseph meant when he said to his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

 

Our enemies humble us, they keep us on our knees, they reveal our weakness, and they expose our total need for God. Just as David needed King Saul to pursue him, to persecute him and repeatedly attempt to kill him, we need the enemies God sends to us. If we didn’t need them, he wouldn’t send them.

 

Therefore, we thank God who knows best, and we love our enemies the best way we can. Often God raises up an enemy to see if we really want to be like Jesus. He will keep our enemies alive and well as long as we need them.

 

Jesus had enemies. They killed him. He loved them anyway. Do you want to be like Jesus?

 

In 1957 Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on “Loving Your Enemies” at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. As he came to the end of his sermon, he said there is a little tree planted on a little hill and on that tree hangs the most influential person who ever came into this world.

 

In the cross of Christ, the love of God has broken through into human history. Now we know what love looks like in a world filled with hatred, distrust, bitterness, pain, mistreatment and abuse. As the hymn writer said, “See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down.”

 

It is a message from God that love is the only way. It’s the only way to heaven, and it’s the only way to live on the earth. If we believe in Jesus at all, we must say to our enemies, “I love you. I would rather die than hate you.” When Jesus walks with us, we will find the strength to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who despitefully use us.

 

Don’t get even with your enemies. Ask God to bless them instead. If you can let go of your anger long enough to pray like this, you will discover a wonderful benefit. When you pray for grace for others, you put yourself in a position to receive it yourself. So here’s a new reason to pray for your enemies: Your blessing depends on their prosperity.

 

Let’s pray