Sermon
A Christian's Treatment of His Enemies
Romans 12:20-21
July 31, 2005
Pastor Donald Sheley

I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles. If you're using the pew Bible, it's page 600. If you're using your personal Bible, it's chapter 12 in the Book of Romans.

Summer has gone by quite rapidly. In fact a couple...four or five more Sundays and the children will be back in school and the summer will have passed. We started our series in this particular chapter in the month of May, and so we've had 10 or 12 weeks in discussing our series entitled 'Behaving Like A Christian'. Today we come to the closing lesson in this particular passage, and the Lord willing, we want to spend some time in 1 Peter in the month of September and so we're going to take some of the Sundays in August and we're going to get acquainted Peter, the apostle Peter, and we are going back into the Gospels and into the Book of Acts because we must know the man before we can understand the nature of his writings and the reasons for his writings. And so the Lord willing, in the next few weeks, we'll learn about Peter and then we'll take his writings in his epistle of 1 and 2 Peter.

Today are Scripture text is Romans chapter 12 verses 20 through 21: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

And the words of Jesus: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans do the same? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Out of the Old Testament there is a passage that tells us how we are to treat our enemies. It says: "If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him."

Solomon writes in the Proverb: "Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice." And again, Paul pulls the text that we have before us today out of the Proverbs, where it's written there: "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you."

Now last Lord's Day we took the verses just prior to verse 19 and we talked about the subject of revenge, and the instructions were that we are not to take revenge into our own hands, but leave the matter to God and let Him settle the accounts that we may have. For we have learned that when we take vengeance into our own hands we often mess it up in a terrible way, so the Scripture says, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord."

Now we left behind us that one verse preceding it which was this: "If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men." Now the first thing we notice about Paul's challenge to Christians to live a life of peace, is his sobering realism. You'll notice he begins with these two phrases, "If it is possible" and secondly, "as far as it depends on you."

Now this way of speaking recognizes two potential sources of difficulty in this matter of being at peace with others. First of all, the behavior of other people may negate peace and there may be issues at stake that will make peace impossible even from the side of the Christian. For example, truth cannot be bartered away or sacrificed just to maintain peace. Purity cannot be violated and in justice cannot be condoned.

James says, "The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure, then peace-loving." So a prior, necessary Christian commitment to purity, and truth, and honesty, and justice, and other indispensable matters may make peace unattainable. I'm glad that Paul put that phrase in there because none of us desire to have enemies, but there are people who dislike us and are at odds with us. And so Paul says we cannot always change the attitude of others, but our attitude should be one of doing everything we possibly can to live at peace with one another.

Now there are some things that can help us in our relationships with one another, and in the middle of page 2 in our notes we've taken some verses out of the Proverbs and it tells us how to, in many cases, regulate or at least bring to peace some relationships that may exist in tension.

Number one: "Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all wrongs." Again, "A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult." Number three: "Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright." And I like this one. I have found that it works: "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." There have been times, and I'm sure you've experienced it, when someone is just absolutely venting on you and their words are violent and scorching, and if you'll just stand there and let them get it all out...and then you say (softly), what was it that you said?

A soft answer will bring almost an immediate cessation to that kind of a discussion. A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Another, "He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." Six, "Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out."

I was talking the other day to one of our new Christians and he said, you know prior to our being Christians, he said, we, my wife and I were always arguing every day, but he said now that we are Christians we know that is wrong. So he said when I sense that an argument is ensuing, he said, I go for a walk. He said, I've done an awful lot of walking the last few months, but he said I'm learning that in going for a walk and thinking about it and praying about it, then coming back I can resolve the issue quite quickly. Remember, it says starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; that's breaking a dam wide open, so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out.

And then one last one, "An angry man stirs up dissension." Now these are verses that tell us there are some things that we can do to promote and encourage peace even if the other person does not want it.

Now history proves abundantly that we are very selfish by nature, and as a result we want our way and we want our opinions heard. The sad thing is that when you go into the Scriptures, almost on page 3 or 4, you'll find that there has always been that problem of dissension between people. You have Cain with Abel, and as the result, Cain takes the life of Abel and we have first murder. All the way through the Old Testament you find the situations of tensions between people.

You arrive in the New Testament and you think, now it's the church and the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the church, and as a result, people should be happy and there should not be any dissension, but immediately you get into chapter 6 in the history of the church in the Book of Acts and you find people going at one another. Some feel that they've been neglected at the dinner table and others have been given too much, and as a result, there is dissension; there are problems in the early church. Why? Because the church is made up of human beings, and we all have our tendency to want it our way.

Paul had to write to the Corinthian church, he says: "It is reported to me that there is quarreling among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I belong to Paul' or 'I belong to Apollos,' or 'I belong to Peter,' or 'I belong to Christ.'" Such a state of affairs, I suggest, could never have occurred if men had been truly yielded to the Lord Jesus Christ in obedience.

Now there is some truth to the complaint that all of us as Christians have not always been peace loving. In fact, one of the tragedies folks, is when you read the history books many of the great wars were religious wars. And I note here in our notes wars among nations are seldom in our control, but what about the battles that have divided Christians from Christians?

And going again back into the pages of history - the early Christian church, of course, went through its turbulent times, but when we come to the year of 1054 there was the Western church which had its capital in Rome and there was the Eastern church in Constantinople. And there came up the conflict over one word in the Nicene Creed; it's FILIOQUE, and it means "and the Son."

And here was the problem: It had to do with whether it is right to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father and the Son", or whether the Holy Spirit proceeds only "from the Father." One word in the Creed, the Nicene Creed, and it divided the Christian church and so you have the Western, which was the Catholic church, and you have the Eastern church, which were the Orthodox churches, over one word.

Again, the leaders of the reformation divided over how Jesus was present in the communion service, Martin Luther insisting on a literal physical presence. He said, Jesus said, 'This is My body.' And Zwingli on the other hand, he said, no, it's simply a mere remembrance, because Jesus said do this in remembrance of me. And so as a result, in the Christian church there are those who hold to the physical presence of Christ and those who say, no, the act of communion is simply an act of remembrance.

Now some divisions within the church have been based upon important matters of theology and practice. But many are not, and the self-righteous, antagonistic, fighting spirits that lie behind these unnecessary divisions and perpetuate them, are a scandal among those who profess to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." So that verse 18 says, do whatever you can, if it is possible, as much as depends on you, you live peaceably with all men.

Now a medical doctor wrote something that I thought you would find very, very interesting. I'm at the bottom of page 3. Using the analogy of the human body, there are some diseases that can spread infection throughout the body of Christ. The mind can become swollen with pride. The heart can grow cold and indifferent because of sin. The digestive system can get clogged by sterile theory and unapplied theology, so the body can't digest what needs to be turned into energy or eliminate what needs to be released. When that occurs we start to fight among ourselves or we lose our equilibrium and find ourselves unable to stay balanced (spiritually) - I'll add that.

Sometimes a dreaded thing occurs in the body, a mutiny, resulting in a tumor. He says that a tumor is called benign if its effect is fairly localized and it stays within membrane boundaries. But the most traumatizing condition in the body occurs when disloyal cells defy inhibition. They multiply without any checks on growth, spreading rapidly throughout the body, choking out normal cells. White cells, armed against foreign invaders, will not attack the body's own mutinous cells. Physicians fear no other malfunction more deeply; it is called cancer.

For still mysterious reasons, these cells--and they may be cells from the brain, liver, kidney, bone, blood, skin or other tissues--grow wild, out of control. Each is a healthy, functioning cell, but disloyal, no longer acting in regard for the rest of the body. Even white cells, the dependable palace guard, can destroy the body through rebellion. Sometimes they recklessly reproduce, clogging the bloodstream, overloading the lymph system, strangling the body's normal functions--such is the description of leukemia.

And our doctor writes: Because I am a surgeon and not a prophet, I tremble to make the analogy between cancer in the physical body and mutiny in the spiritual body of Christ. But I must. In His warnings to the Church, Jesus Christ showed no concern about the shocks and bruises His Body would meet from external forces. He said, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church." He moved easily, unthreatened, among sinners and criminals. But He cried out against the kind of disloyalty that comes from within. Unity and love for one another--there are few doctrines more important than these! And so Paul in his instructions to us in our text says, If it is at all possible, as much as depends upon you, live peaceably with all men.

Now at the bottom of page 4 in our notes again we repeat the Scripture text: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" On page 5, I make the observation that our New Testament was written with the Greek language and it's full of beautiful synonyms. Its words are far more descriptive than we have in our English, and there are four words, major words, that are used in the Greek New Testament - I should say it's three of the four - are used to describe love. Follow along.

STORGE, it's the word which is used for love within the family. There is the word EROS, which is the word of passion and sexual love, and that never occurs in the New Testament. There is the word PHILIA, and that is the warmest word for love for it describes real love and affection for one's nearest and dearest friends; phileo, brotherly love.

But there's another word, AGAPE. If we regard a person with agape love, it means that no matter what that person does to us, no matter how he treats us, no matter how he insults us or injures us or grieves us, we will never allow any bitterness against him to invade our hearts, but will regard him with that unconquerable benevolence and goodwill which will seek nothing but his highest good. That's agape love, folks.

And Jesus never asked us to love our enemies in the same way as we love our nearest and our dearest. In the case of our nearest and dearest, we cannot help loving them. We speak of falling in love. It is something that comes to us quite unsought; it is something which is born of the emotions of the heart. When we think of using the expression of love with our dearest, you know, when we say to our wife or our husband, 'I love you', it's an ocean that flows (beats chest) from here. It's not unsought; it's there.

Friday evening I had the joy of having my three grandsons over, and when you have three young ones around you realize how old you really are real quick. But after I get finished with all the frustrations, I can just wrap them up in my arms and say, kids, I love you. It's there. It's something inside. It's the emotions of the heart.

Notice our notes- But in the case of our enemies, love is not only something which we cannot help; it is something which we have to selves to do. It is a fact of victory over that which comes instinctively to the natural man. Our enemies we say...So what, who cares? We turn them aside with bitterness and anger.

But listen, agape does not mean a feeling of the heart, which we cannot help, and which comes unbidden and unsought. Agape love means a determination of the mind, whereby we achieve this unconquerable goodwill even to those who hurt and injure us. So when our text tells us to love our enemies, it's a different thought. A love that flows between our nearest and our dearest comes as a part of our emotions, but when the Bible tells us to love our enemies, it says it's an act of the will that comes that makes the determination that I'm going to treat this person with kindness, with love, with graciousness, with Christ likeness; I'm going to do it because it's my responsibility as a Christian.

Let's read on: Agape, someone has said, is the power to love those whom we do not like and who may not like us. In point of fact we can only have agape when Jesus Christ enables us to conquer our natural tendencies to anger and to bitterness, and to achieve this invincible goodwill.

So the instructions that we have today to love our enemies is something we cannot do in our natural self. The Bible tells us that when we come to Christ the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and it's the Holy Spirit indwelling within us that helps us to love those who do not love us and who have injured us and hurt us. It's a love that flows supernaturally as the love of God flows through us.

Every person who has received and trusted in Jesus Christ is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and the fruit of His indwelling is love, and joy, and peace, and longsuffering. And thus, the text we have before us is a text that we can only do when the love of Jesus Christ is allowed to flow through us.

Now Paul in our text goes on to say, the way we treat our enemies is first of all we pray for them. Now you trying that. You take your enemy before God in prayer and you can't have an enemy in God's presence. Something melts within you, and so Paul says the way I handle this matter with an enemy I'm going to get on my knees and I'm going to ask God to fill me with His love.

I told you of a situation last Sunday that I wrestled with many years ago - one who had done much harm - and I had such a difficult...it took me months to work this thing through. Asking God, God, You've got to help me. I'd like to go burn that guy's house down. I would like to take and puncture every tire he's got on all of his cars. God, You've got to help me.

What I'm telling you folks, this kind of love doesn't come easy folks because it's a supernatural love, and the love of Christ must melt your own heart to help you to then express that love to the individual. And thus it only comes...I prayed week after week, month...God, You've got to help me. If You don't help me to love this person I can't go on preaching because I can't hold remorse and bitterness and anger in my heart and be an effective preacher. And I thank God, as I shared with you, God helped me.

So Paul says, look at, start praying, and then he says you start blessing them in very practical ways. Well how you bless them? Well, he said, if your enemy is hungry, give him some food; if he's thirsty, give him something drink. Now what he is saying is you find areas of life situations where you can bring blessing and joy to someone else, that person who is injuring you.

Now he added something that's to me fascinating. He said when you do this you heap burning coals on your enemy's head. So I thought what's an explanation for that? So I went to a number of manuscripts and there were a number of explanations. One of them is this: when someone comes at you and they are just absolutely pouring out their vile words and their violent and their hatred, and finally when you let them finish you just simply quietly ignore them; do you know what happens to those words? They go right back the person who said them. Because when you absorb them and when you allow them to affect you, then he's achieved his goal. But if you just very graciously and very quietly, sometimes I just bow my head, those words immediately go back on his head and they return to him who said it.

Now there's another aspect to this pouring coals of fire on somebody's head. The applied is that really is a treat and nobody can stand, and as Christians if we take someone who has done us injury and we then treat them with kindness, that's like pouring coals of fire on their head. Because you're going to do one of two things with kindness, it's either going to melt you into repentance and forgiveness or it's going to harden you. It's interesting.

So what Paul is saying here is if I have someone which is at disagreement with me, the thing I do as a Christian I now start returning as much kindness, as much love, as much patience as a Christian should.

Some years ago I had this lovely lady come to church. She wasn't a Christian. Her husband and her were separated, and she came and she gave her life to Christ. And she said, you know pastor, one of the most miserable parts of a week is when my ex-husband comes to visit the kids. And I said well how do you treat him when he comes? Well I tell him what he's doing is wrong and I just really pour the coals of guilt on his head (I'm putting this in my words). And he hurries through his visit with the children and he rushes off.

And I said well now you're a Christian and we are going to handle this in a little different way. What am I supposed to do pastor? I said well what you do is the next time he comes, I want you have a nice supper on the kitchen stove, and I want you to have gone to the hairdresser and got yourself just as beautiful as you can be, and when he comes you promise yourself you're not going to say a thing about what the past is, what the present...you're going to be as gracious and you're going to be as kind as you can. She said, that's hard. But, I said, that's what our Bible says - if your enemy...you feed them with kindness, and you heap coals of kindness on their head.

So she did just exactly that. Here he comes knocking at the door and he's expecting this barrage of all of these negative thoughts and...come on in honey. And after your visit I've prepared supper for us. Supper? Finally he sits down to dinner. She's gracious. She talks about everything else in a very positive way, just doesn't bring it up.

This guy is raging with curiosity. What's happened? So when he comes back the next week she does the same thing. It's a lovely meal. She's prepared for his coming. Finally about the third or fourth week he said, what's up? She said, honey, I'm a Christian now and she said I'm serving Christ, and she gave her testimony. He said that's interesting. And she said, you know I really would like the day to come when you would believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior.

A number of weeks went by and she was gracious and that kindness just kept piling guilt on top of that guy. All right, he said, I'll go up there to church with you. So he came to church, we led him to Christ, and now he became a Christian. That was nearly 30 years ago folks. That marriage was healed and today it's a lovely, happy family.

You see if we do what the Bible says, even though it's against our basic nature, Paul said, if your enemy is hungry, you feed him; if he's thirsty, give him something to drink, but you heap coals of kindness on top of his head, and it will either melt into repentance or it will harden; and that's the risk you take, but we leave the affects up to God.

Let me give you two illustrations. You remember Saul in the Old Testament was the first king of Israel, but he ignored his sacred responsibilities and he took over the position of a prophet or a priest and immediately (claps hands) took away his kingdom and took away his position. And David is anointed king, but the time between Saul's deposement and David taking the king is - I think it's 13 or 14 years - and Saul chases David. He gets angry at him. David is playing his harp for him in his palace and old Saul flings his spear David and almost hits him, but David moves aside and leaves the room; and Saul tried that twice. He tried to kill David, but David was gracious.

One day when Saul was out there chasing him, he was hiding in a cave and he's back in the recesses of the cave and old Saul's army is coming close, in fact, old Saul comes into the cave, and while he's there, unknown to him, David slips out of one of the recesses and cuts off a little chunk of his garment and goes back in the recesses. And when Saul leaves and then David comes out and goes on the other side of the mountain, he said, Saul, I've got part of your garment. I could have killed you. But I made the commitment I will not touch the Lord's anointed.

And Saul of course cries out David - and I have the words there for you in your text - David you have been much more kinder than I. You've given goodness for my evil. But Saul gets harder, his heart gets harder; he keeps chasing David. Finally David is watching over an area and Saul is down here in the valley and he's got all of his men around him and he's sleeping. And the Bible tells us that God caused a deep sleep to come on Saul's army. So old David sneaks down and walks into the camp and picks up old Saul's jug of water and his spear and takes it off.

He goes on to the side of the mountain, (calling) Saul, I've got your spear and your water sack! And all of a sudden Saul realizes that here David once more could have taken his life. But David chose to treat his enemy with kindness.

And you know the story. Ultimately, Saul goes to battle with the Philistines and he's wounded and he wants his servant to kill him, but what happens, he falls on his own sword and commits suicide - a hardened heart that didn't respond to love and kindness.

The other example is our wonderful Christ. Jesus came to His own and the Bible says His own received Him not. It says that the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but Jesus didn't have anywhere to lay His head. And in the early moments of His ministry He's got a crowd, but it doesn't take very long the crowd starts turning against him. The religious leaders defy Him. They are bound and determined, they are going to kill Him, and all He is is doing good and kindness. And finally they take Jesus and they nail Him to a cross, and He never did anything ill to an enemy, and He could hang there on the cross with those nails in His hands and say, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And Jesus won; He is the savior of mankind, and He's the most wonderful example as to how we should treat our enemies. We treat them with kindness.

Now Paul ended this chapter with one little sentence, he says, do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good. What he is saying is this...never allow the evil of bitterness and unforgiveness and rancor, never allow that evil to overcome you. Don't allow evil to overcome you, but you overcome those tendencies through the love of Christ and you treat with goodness those who treat you with evil.

Now this is our chapter. It has been filled with a lot of very specific directions. But when you listen to what I've said today and you listen to the Scriptures, some of you have got some homework. Because you've allowed or there are situations where you have responded negatively and unchristianly to people who you should have treated with kindness and love.

I had a man come in the office this week and he said I am from another religion, but, he said, I've been coming to your church the last few weeks and he said you're getting to me. He said you've got me thinking. I said that's good. He said, by the way, it's fun coming to your church. I said, good.

He said you know those verses that you've been taking out of the Scriptures, he said, I'm trying to make them work in my Christian life, and he said, I'm trying to learn how to raise my hands. He said, I'm trying to learn how to clap my hands with song. But, he said, those verses are really getting to me, and he said... So he had some questions. He said I've got these questions, and how do you work this out? We talked to him for some time and he said, that's good. I'm going to go home and try that. I want this Christianity to work.

I had another lady come to me and she said, you know pastor, I've allowed a relationship to be injured for five years and it's been miserable and it's been ugly, and I've been listening to these verses from this chapter and I realize I can't take any more revenge on this situation. So this week I went to this person and for the first time in five years I asked them to forgive me. We both broke down, we wept together. And she said, O the power of doing what the Bible tells us to do.

And I pray that this passage, this 12th chapter of Romans, has helped you because it's helped me. You see our world looks on and they say why don't you Christians act like Christians? Their expectations of us is exceedingly high. And sometimes we disappoint them so terribly, because we don't live up to our testimony. Now we've got some instructions from the Scriptures for the last few weeks, my prayer is that we all put them into practice. Let them change our lives.

Father, we don't want to just be hearers of Your word, we want to be doers. And we've got some very, very specific directions of what to do. We don't have to flounder and guess. We are to hate what is evil. We are to cling to what is good. We are to rejoice with those who rejoice. We are to weep with those who weep. We are to bless those who persecute us. We are to leave revenge into Your hands, and we are to love people who don't love us, with a love, a determination, an act of the will that causes us to respond in kindness and in graciousness. We know what to do now. We need Your Holy Spirit to help us, dear Jesus, please help us. And everybody said, amen. God bless you.