The Ancients Were Told #8

So before we come right to the sermon, a word about Sunday school. Next week we come back to Sunday school. That is at 9.30 in the morning, in case you didn't know. One might be persuaded if you're here at 9.30 to think that you might not know when Sunday school starts. Some of you come a little late. And so please do come at 9.30 tomorrow. Not tomorrow. Not tomorrow. Next Sunday. For Sunday school, we're going to be starting a new quarter and we're going to be talking about the sacraments. The sacraments, the Lord's Supper and baptism, the title of the class is the sacraments. What, who, and why? And so we realized that we've never talked about the sacraments as a church corporately, so we're going to take a couple of months to do that, and so I do invite you to come next week at 9.30 for that class. Now, we're going to be continuing this morning in our study of the Sermon on the Mount.

In this section where Jesus takes the Old Testament law and he explains how the Pharisees had abused that law and had twisted its meaning to suit themselves and their own desires. Before we read our text, it's worth noting that this law that they've taken and they've twisted was only given because of the sin of the people. Before there was sin, there was no law. And one of the primary purposes, not the only purpose, but one of the primary purposes of the law given was to restrain sin, to hold it back, to give it boundaries, to keep it from spreading and getting worse and worse. And so you could say that the law was meant to put our desires and our corruptions on a leash or inside of a fence. And so our passage this morning is another example of an area where we need to be restrained. Over the last couple of weeks as we've gone through this, we've talked about adultery and murder and about taking vows, about divorce, and we've seen how the law restrains our own desires to do things that are wicked.

and that are offensive to God. And so my hope this morning is similar to the past weeks in that I hope God will help us to see how we need to be restrained. And what do we need to be restrained from? Well, our text this morning says that we need to be restrained from seeking our own personal vengeance, taking our own revenge, or seeking retribution. And after we see this, I hope that God will help us to respond like Christians when we're wrong, because that is the occasion when we want to get what we're owed. Our text this morning is Matthew chapter 5, 38 to 42. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too.

Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So, taken as a whole, this is a very difficult paragraph. Because at every point, it just cuts across the grain of our own sensibilities, the things that we would naturally be inclined to do. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other. If someone wants your shirt, give them your coat. If someone wants you to go one mile, go with them too. Give to those who ask of you and let those who want to borrow from you, don't turn them away. And we can take all those things and say, that's not what I'm inclined to do in every point. But before we come to those examples, I think we have to get an idea of what this passage is talking about generally. This is not a list of three or four or five little floating commands or words of wisdom. These things all go together.

And Jesus gives all of those examples as an explanation of this portion of the law that says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now those things might not on the face of it look like they go together. What does an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth have to do with going two miles when you're only required to go one? Well, that's my hope is that we're able to see how these things are put together this morning. We're going to start. By looking at the Old Testament law where it says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And the first thing we need to realize, and I think this is one of the primary failures of reading this text and also what the Pharisees were doing at the time, is to take that passage, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and to interpret it personally. And to think that if someone plucks out my eye, I can go pluck out their eye. This is vengeance. This is retribution. It's personal. It's between two people.

But this law was not given as a personal permission for you to go do unto others as they've done unto you. This portion of law, given in three places in the Old Testament in different iterations, is a judicial law. This is something that should be executed or carried out in a court of law, not in a personal relationship. And that's something, there is a lot to understand in simply realizing this is not telling you that if someone strikes you, that you have grounds to strike them back. This passage did not teach us that we can take our own revenge because that power, that authority to avenge the wrong is not ours. We do not have the authority to do these things. And this is difficult for us because when we suffer, when someone harms us, when someone does wrong by us, isn't our natural inclination to retaliate.

Immediately. You push, I push. You hit, I hit. You say something mean, I say something mean. You break something of mine, I break something of yours. Whether we're talking about little children or we're talking about grandmas and grandpas. This is what's in our hearts. Tit for tat. What this law says is it's not yours to do. If you have an offense, if something has gone wrong, this is to be sorted out in... A court of law. You remember in the Old Testament, Moses, when Jethro came to Moses and the people were wearing Moses out with all of their disputes. And Jethro said to him, he says, you can't keep this up. You're going to get worn out and the people are going to get sick of you. You need to appoint other rulers. Well, what was it that all of these people were adjudicating? All these judges were adjudicating. Personal disputes, things that had gone on. There were problems amongst the people. And they came to have their disputes.

And that's just, if you don't know what that word means, it just means judged. They had an objective third party come here, both sides, and say, okay, given all of the evidence you've given to me, this is what I think happened, and this is what I think is an appropriate repair or remedy for the damage. And here the law says, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now, that may seem very far off to you, and you may be thinking, well, the pastor's gone off into the deep end. He's telling us that we're supposed to have all of our problems adjudicated. And I'm saying, no, I'm not saying that you should have all of your problems adjudicated. We'll come to that later. But I do want to say to you, how often are you willing to have anybody speak into a conflict in your life from the outside? How much more likely are you to have a nasty, big blowout of a conflict?

rather than to have someone else step in and say, okay, we're going to sort through this together. Someone who's not in the situation, someone who's not affected by the outcome of the situation, a mediator. My experience in my own heart and as a pastor is that rarely are we willing to have other people step in and judge our case for us. We judge our own cases. We argue our own cases. And we decide in the process of that that we're right in what the penalty should be. Now, I ask you, When you're having a problem, when someone's sinned against you, when someone's harmed with you, do you have the self-restraint to stop at just a tooth for a tooth? Is your heart content with that? My heart's not content with that. You get me angry enough, and I want to grind you into the ground. And you may not have done anything worthy of that sort of treatment, but that's what my heart wants to do, and I know I'm not alone and unique. I'm looking out at you guys, and I've known some of the fights that have happened in your homes and in your families, and it's like,

That seems like a bit of an overreaction. Yes, you were sinned against. The way you responded, though, was over the top. But you realize when you see your own aversion to having a mediator or someone to come in, a judge, to adjudicate, when you say, I don't want any of that, you realize you want to take your own vengeance. That's why you don't want someone else coming in. This passage is not for you to judge what the crime was and what the remuneration, what the remedy should be. This passage was to teach. that there was a court of law, that there should be a mediator, someone who would work through the problem and figure out what's going on. And so when we suffer loss, it is not our place to seek an appropriate resolution, to say, this is the harm you've caused and this is what you owe me. We're supposed to go to seek justice from the hands of those who've been given the responsibility of actually handing out justice. Now, sometimes that's...

The civil government. Sometimes that's the elders of the church. Sometimes that's the HR department. But you realize if I mention any of those, you're like, I don't want to go talk to them. And why is it that we don't want to ever go talk to somebody else? Beyond that we don't want someone else judging the thing. Well, I think it's because we don't trust them. All of us could take someone who's in authority over us, whether that's someone particular, our parents say, children, your parents. Or us adults, we could say of our government, they're unfaithful. They didn't get the last one right. They screwed it up. They won't do anything about it. They've disqualified themselves because of their past behavior. And we could multiply our reasons for why we shouldn't go and have our conflicts adjudicated, spoken to, addressed by someone outside of the conflict. They're incompetent. They're unfaithful. They're wicked. They're lazy. They're corrupt.

Am I saying that some or even all of those things may not be true statements? No, I'm not saying anything about whether those statements are true or not. All I'm meaning to say is those statements, whether they're true or not, do not then give you the right to disregard what God has said. That's what the Pharisees were doing. These sentiments and the many we could reproduce that are just like them, in the end, turn out to often just be justifications for rejecting God's authority and doing what's right in our own eyes. This is a difficult issue that I'm happy to talk about outside of the sermon, about how to engage with hostile or unfaithful authorities. But you should recognize that it's very dicey for you to figure out how to do this sort of thing. How to appeal, when to appeal, what to expect, when to say something, when to keep your head down.

When to quietly disregard, when to openly disregard the things they've said. These are tough waters, and these are the waters that we swim in. This is what we've dealt with for years with regard to COVID. It's torn the church apart. It's absolutely torn the church apart because people are unwilling to live in any sort of tension about this stuff. And what I can tell you is that you can say that the authority is wicked, that the authority is wrong, that the authority is corrupt and godless. and you can still end up with something worse by tearing down the institution that God has given you. Now, that's hard. That's very hard. And if you characterize what I'm saying is, well, he just thinks that we should always do what the government says, and the government's always right, and that's just the Christian way to go, then you haven't begun to think about this situation the way it actually is. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm also not saying that you are in a place to judge those that God has vested authority in, and he who will...

who will be judged by him for the way that they do their job. You are not their judge. You are their subordinate. And you will be judged for how you behaved. As I said, that's not actually the primary point of this text. But we've come so close to it in dealing with this question of retribution and the authority of civil courts in this text particularly, that it needed to be addressed. at least in passing, to say you should not think more highly of yourself than you ought, that you would do a better job, that you would handle it better. If you only have a vision of what others do wrong and have no sympathy for the pressures that they feel and the burdens that they bear, then you haven't begun to engage the actual situation. And to think that you would do it better is very foolish because anyone could look at our own authority and our own places in our lives where we've had some authority and they would say,

You know, I can point out the places you really swung and missed. And I can show you the fallout from your failures. Or they may look at your life and not be able to find any place where you've had any authority. And here's the thing. You need to be faithful with little things before you take on big things. This is what the Bible teaches us. So we should be humble. That doesn't mean that we're to be stupid or we're to be passive or we're to be blind. But we should be humble and realize we make mistakes. just as much as everyone else, and that they're not more corrupt than we are. Given time and given the power that others have, how sure are you that you wouldn't do something worse with it? All right, I'm done. What does this text, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, teach us? It teaches us two things. There's two primary lessons you can learn from this. One is what can be expected from the offending party. If you cause damage,

you may have to pay back up to everything you destroyed. You are liable up to the equivalent of the damage that you've caused. That's the first thing it teaches you. The other thing it teaches you, and this is the part that Jesus is more, that's more pertinent to this paragraph as a whole, is what the offended party may expect. You may only get an eye for an eye. You may not get a life for an eye or two eyes for one eye. This is where we get to the issue of retribution and revenge. When I said earlier, are you content with just enough? Or do you want more? We often want more. And so this passage is not a command that you will receive an eye for an eye, but that that is the most you may receive as judged by someone else. The Pharisees, on the other hand, taught that this passage was in line with their inclinations.

toward personal vengeance, that they were allowed to personally seek revenge as long as it didn't exceed these limits. And you can begin to see how foolish of an idea that is, how much it discounts our own sinfulness and our own inability to execute justice, especially when we're offended, especially when we're angry. It presumes that we have the wisdom to see it from the other person's perspective. How many arguments have you been in with your children, with your siblings, if you are adults, maybe with your adult siblings or with your parents or with your spouse, and you have no ability to see it from their side? You don't even have a desire to see it from their side because they're wrong. And that's all you need to know about their side is they're wrong. We're not nearly as objective as we would like to think. And the closer the conflict is to us, the less capable we are of being objective. What's interesting, though, is that the closer the offense is to us and the more upset we are, the more objective we think we are. The more we think, I know exactly how it all went. This is what you said. I never said that. Yes, you did. You said it. No, I didn't. Anyone else have those arguments? Yeah, I know you do because you come and tell me that you have those arguments. I never said that. Yes, you did. No, it isn't. This is what I said. Well, this is what you meant. These are the people we're going to leave to sort out justice?

And we expect that it's going to go well. What we need in that circumstance is the warning that Paul gives in Galatians. If you're going to bite and devour one another, see to it that you're not devoured by one another. Many times our conflicts are like putting two male betta fish in a tank together. And it's not over until one of them's dead. None of us should trust ourselves to make these sorts of decisions given the malice in our own hearts. And yet, I'm not saying that every one of your conflicts is going to be able to be adjudicated by somebody else. It's not. actually. For as tired as the people were of Moses and even of the judges that he appointed, they still had all kinds of problems that they had to deal with themselves on a daily basis, just like we do. So what do you do when the infraction or the damage or the sin isn't worth saying, we need to call the pastor or I'm going to call the police? What do you do then? Because this is actually the most common case that we face.

And we aren't going to be able to and shouldn't even get a mediator for every little problem. There have been times, it's an interesting thing, as an example. There are times when in premarital counseling, my wife and I will say to people or whoever's doing the counseling, we're here for you guys. Call us when you're having a problem. We want to help. And then there have been times, and maybe this will surprise you, maybe we've said this to you, you guys need to sort that out. This is not the sort of thing you should be calling us for. And you might think I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth or that I'm being dishonest or that we're lazy or we took personal offense and we thought we'd given you all the tools and so it's not our problem. But it's not that. When that's said to you, when you say that to your children, you hear a conflict in the other room and you hear, and you hear, and it's coming. The offense is coming to you to tell him he did it wrong and give me back the thing. It's not wrong for the parent to say, honey.

We have talked to you guys and taught you how to sort this thing out. You guys need to go sort that out. Now, if you say that to a two- or three-year-old, you're not going to get nearly the mileage out of it that you will if you say that to a seven-, eight-, ten-year-old. If you're training your kids and giving them tools, one of the things you're teaching them is how to get through these things when they've been offended. The Bible doesn't teach us that whenever you get offended, somebody else has to sort it out. The vast majority of the time, you're going to have to sort it out with the person that you were offended by.

So how do you sort it out? That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? What do you do daily? We've already discussed our inclination toward an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You want to fight? I'm here. Let's fight. We can fight. I did this. Well, let me recount for you what you've done the last week that I didn't tell you about when you did it, but I've just been storing it up in my head for a situation just like this. The rest of our passage addresses this. How do you deal with these conflicts? I say to you, this is the Lord. But I say to you, do not resist an evil person. Now, I want to stop there for just a second. I could preach a whole sermon on simply that phrase. Do not resist an evil person in the way that that passage, that phrase has been abused to justify all kinds of ungodly responses to conflict. Someone will say, oh, well, this means that a wife who's getting beaten should just stay in the home and just tolerate because that's what she's supposed to do. She's not supposed to resist an evil person. No.

One thing we have to remember when we read Scripture is that whatever conclusions we come to in any given passage need to square up with the rest of what Scripture teaches. And if it doesn't, then we're wrong. And we need to go back to the drawing board and say, okay, I did the math problem. That's not the right answer. I guess I need to do it again because somewhere I made a mistake. And so this passage is one of those passages and what follows. that's been abused by pacifists, for one, as a justification for simply saying, come what may, we can do nothing about it. We just have to accept it without saying or doing anything to resist. Now, you should feel like, you ever play those games where you put your forehead on a ball bat and you spin in a circle and all of a sudden you stand up and you're like, I've just gotten done telling you, you need to actually not throw off the authority.

That's over you, whether that's ecclesiastical or whether that's governmental. And here I am now telling you, actually, this passage does not teach you that you're supposed to just take whatever comes and lands in your lap. Actually, the law is meant to restrain evil. And we need it to restrain evil. We need eyes being given for eyes and a tooth being given for a tooth and a life being given for a life. Because if we don't have that in our society, we will have utter chaos and anarchy. And I'll tell you, that's what we're headed for. Because we've lost the justice of God. You can't tell me that. You can't say that. You can't think that. You can't teach that. Crimes hand over fist are becoming mental disorders. What's going to become of a society that doesn't punish sin? What will happen is that only those who are strongest will prevail.

And there will be nothing to restrain them because the rule of law will have been cast aside. And so when this passage teaches us not to resist an evil person, it should never be used as a justification for simply accepting wickedness with no idea that it should be restrained. You should both submit to the authorities that have been placed over you and have them adjudicate your problems and petition them lawfully to execute justice and to do the right thing. That guy did something wrong. Punish him for it. Because if you don't punish him for it, we're going to get 100 more of him. And that would be bad for all the people who didn't do what he did. It would be very appropriate for Christians to argue and to work politically to that end. The problem is too often we don't work to shore up and to reform the situation because it's so broken. We say, we're just going to tear it all down and start over. And I say, all you're doing is pouring gas on a fire that's already smoldering.

And when it all burns down, you don't want to be the one standing there holding the match saying, I'm the one who did it. It will be worse for you. And if you don't care if it's worse for you, you should care that it will be worse for your wife and your children. You may have strength, but they won't. You remember when Jesus prophesied about the destruction of Jerusalem, and what did he say about the women in that day? Woe to the women who were pregnant and nursing children in those days. Why? Because they wouldn't be strong enough or fast enough or able to avoid the destruction that was coming. And so you should be very careful as a Christian.

not to promote something that's going to cause great harm to your women and your children. And if you think that what I'm saying is ungodly, I don't know what to say to you, other than to say you're not nearly as strong as you think you are, and you don't understand the ways of God. If Jesus' plan in this world was to come and to overtake this world with the gospel through force, he could have done it. All of his disciples thought that's what he was going to do. even up to the point where he was arrested and Peter lopped off the ear of the high priest. And Jesus says, what are you doing? Put your sword away. If I wanted to overdo that, don't you not think I could call down 20 legions of angels and just wipe all them out? And so this is difficult for Christians and especially for American Christians to understand that you don't rule by force. If you rule by force, you'll have to realize that there will always be someone stronger than you at some point.

Many of you didn't grow up the way I grew up, but I grew up learning that lesson very carefully, growing up in poor, gang-infested neighborhoods. You had to be mindful of the fact that you were never the strongest guy. You were never the biggest, toughest guy. You might have thought you were, but there'd be someone around the corner who'd have a gun, and all of a sudden, all your strength didn't matter. And we'd be foolish as Christians to walk around thinking in our little bubbles that we are strong enough to resist in our own strength. Not to mention that God... It doesn't set that example for us anywhere in Scripture, that his people resisted by strength and by power, unless God commissioned them. And then what we find are that their resistance is they're way undersized for the task, and that God in his power shows up and goes before them and wipes out all of the resistance, or confuses all of their enemies so they don't know which way is which, and they kill each other. So when Jesus says here, do not resist an evil person, we should not take this text as a...

a foundation for accepting all of the wickedness that's been done to us. And yet we have to realize how quickly and how easy it is for our hearts to turn against the authority that God's placed and to say, you know what, we'll do it better. I'll do it better. It would be better if they were gone. Do not resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. And whoever forces you to go a mile, go with him too. The main idea here is to simply not fight back personally, okay? This is not a political statement anywhere. This whole passage has to do with your personal offenses. When you have them and they rise to the level, go and get them adjudicated. The rest of the time, personally, this should not be the disposition of governments toward one another, okay? Governments need laws. Governments need police. Government needs armies. Government needs strength and weapons.

Because of the sinfulness of man. That's why God gave them those things. He gave them the sword to protect. But in personal relationships, whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also. This again is where you come into the situation of, well, my husband is abusing my wife, the wife. This passage, that's outside. That's the sort of thing that needs to go up to the court. And we need to be able to judge between whether this is a conflict that we're having between... between people that can be sorted out. And this is, no, this is in a different category. Someone else needs to step in right now. We need to call the police. We need him arrested. He needs to go to jail. We should note as well, though, that the things spoken of here, the physical attack, the legal lawsuits, or the forced government conscription are not insignificant things. To be struck physically, to be physically harmed.

I'm not talking about a husband to a wife or a wife to a husband or a parent to a child in a way that's obviously wrong and inappropriate. I'm talking about a simple, someone's angry at you and they come up and they hit you and they're going to make a point. They're going to be violent towards you. They're going to prove something. Now, this may be strange to you, but this is not uncommon. It's not uncommon where I grew up. We have a phrase, you know, someone has a bad day at work and they come home and they kick the dog. Right? Did the dog do anything? No. But the dog got kicked, right? Is it always the dog? No. Sometimes you come home and you're nasty to the people in your home because you had a bad day at work or you didn't get any sleep last night or you're sick or someone else is sick or you're stressed out about money or the holidays or who knows what. And the attack comes. In those situations, you turn the other cheek. You remember that when Jesus was struck, he didn't resist.

We were all sitting there waiting with bated breath. If you were reading the story and you had never read it before and you were sitting there and he gets struck, you're just like, do something. Here it comes. Here comes the good guy about to just wipe out all the bad guys. That's every good movie, right? Every good story has the bad guy almost on the brink of defeat and then, wow, here he comes, you know. And we're waiting for it. And he dies. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn your other to him also. In so doing, you'll be like Jesus. You should want to be like him.

You ever had somebody just, maybe they didn't hit you, but maybe they just went after you, accused you of all kinds of things. It's just not true. It's just not true. Maybe they had a bad day at work. Maybe they were drunk. Maybe they're in pain. Who knows? Whatever. And you're just their dog to get kicked. Have you ever held your tongue, bit your lip, and not responded? I told you guys a few weeks ago, the power of that is incredible. It's incredible. I've only been able to do that a handful of times in my life. But the times that God's been gracious enough for me to do it, it's borne wonderful fruit. But you only get the fruit if you cultivate the plant. The second example Jesus gives is of someone wanting to sue you for your shirt. Now, to us, that might seem strange. But to them, that sort of a shirt or a cloak would have been much more valuable. We should think of it not in terms of clothing, but in terms of like property, property like a vehicle.

If someone wanted to take your vehicle away. If someone wanted your shirt, you might be like, okay, well, whatever. But if someone came and was like, I'm going to take your only vehicle, I'm going to go to court and I'm going to sue you for it, I'm going to take it. You'd be like, no, no, no, that's not how that's going to work. What's interesting, though, is that he says you're going to be sued here. And so here you have the defendant, the person having their coat taken away, being taken to this court, right? The eye and the tooth, the court. And what Jesus is telling us here is he doesn't say you shouldn't go and defend yourself. He just says you should be prepared to give your shirt also. Really the lesson here, if we get too far into the details of this and just try to distill out these very particular lessons, we're going to miss the main point. The main point is that as a Christian, you're going to suffer loss for being a Christian. You're going to lose stuff.

You're going to sacrifice it. And the lesson is that you would give it freely instead of having it pried out of your cold, dead hands. Hebrews commends people doing this very thing, the book of Hebrews. In chapter 10, verse 34, he says, you showed sympathy to the prisoners and you accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one. Now, doesn't that just cut across the grain? Don't you just go, if I had a black marker and I could just... That's the type of stuff we cross out because we're like, no, no, I'm not doing that. That's not okay. These are the ways in which we need to grow. Regarding the going two miles with the guy who was going one, at that time, Israel was an occupied land. They were occupied by the Romans, and it was common that the Romans could come in and stop you from whatever you were doing and make you carry their baggage. And there were rules about how far they could have you carry them, one mile.

So whatever you're doing, whatever trouble you have, whatever your family needed you to do, if a Roman soldier showed up at that time and said, you need to carry this stuff down there to the other side of the river, wherever it was going to go to, you'd realize the personal inconvenience, the personal cost of doing that, he forces you to go one mile, go with him two. The thing that comes to my mind in this, the tip of the spear with this is the draft in my mind. and women being daughters, my daughters, being able to be drafted. Because if you're like me, and I trust many, you know, you are, there's something that wells up inside of you that just says, no, nope, nope, that's not, nope. We got a problem because that's not going to be okay. I'm not going to, that's, you know. And yet you should, as you feel that, be like, okay, but how do I square that? Can that be squared with this?

Again, we could talk a long, long time about how to do this. What I'll say now is simply to say that there is nothing wrong with you avoiding or seeking to avoid unjust and unlawful treatment. Many, many times Paul hid himself to avoid being killed or fled the city. Many times Jesus retreated from a place when the Pharisees and the scribes got so angry, they'd say, well, Jesus left. You can look at something like that and you can say, this is not good. that's not going to go well. But what's likely to happen is if they show up at your door to draft your daughter, and you say, no way, no how, what's likely to happen is you'll get arrested, you'll be removed, and then they'll take your daughter anyway. So if you really have a problem with it, you would do well to look and read the times and see when that's coming and take proactive measures to prevent that. Instead of thinking that you standing there with your Second Amendment is going to stop it, because it's not. So if you can't avoid it, and it's lawful for you to avoid it,

Go ahead and try to avoid it. But here again, what is the lesson that Jesus is teaching? The lesson is that it's an admonition to us not to grumble and complain when we're made to do things that we don't want to do. You know, the example we have of conscription in the New Testament is Simon. And what did Simon do? Simon had to carry Jesus' cross. Now, who made him carry Jesus' cross? The Roman soldier. Carry that thing. He can't anymore. So we'd be foolish not to realize that sometimes when we're made to serve other people, their needs are greater than ours. The cost is greater for them than it is for us. And we're the ones who are able to make the sacrifice and to provide the strength or the time or the resource. And they can't. That was the situation with Jesus. He'd been beaten and treated so miserably and poorly that his body failed him in such a way that he could not carry his cross anymore.

And which one of us, if we knew what was going on, wouldn't have willingly stepped in and said, I want to carry my Lord's cross? Do you think that you'll never have opportunity to do something just like that in your own life? If you're asked to go one mile, go two. Be diligent in showing hospitality to strangers, for in so doing, some have what? Entertained angels without knowing it. And so we ought not to be so quick all of the time to think that we know better than God about how our lives should be ordered and what our priorities should be. How many times do you hear in your house when you tell the kids, pick up the Legos, go wash the dishes, clean the toilet? What does the kid say? I didn't make that mess. That's not my chore. You kids, this is the most basic daily opportunity you have to obey this passage. Go do it. And if your parents tell you, go wash the dishes, sweep the floor too. It would be such a blessing.

You parents, these are the things you should teach your children. You should not be ashamed of putting them to work cleaning up messes they didn't make. Don't you as an adult spend your life cleaning up messes you didn't make? And messes you make? How many conflicts in our lives, in our marriages, with our children, in our workplaces would be avoided if we would simply seek to do these things we've talked about this morning? But it's only possible if we'll set aside our priority of personal retribution and vengeance. That's not my job. That's not fair. I didn't do it. You can't make me do that. Last time I did, you didn't listen and do what I wanted. We're very quick to argue, very quick to fight, very quick to hold a grudge, very quick to accuse, very quick to resist, justifying to ourself all the while that what we're doing is the right thing to do. It's the wrong thing to do. It's not the Christian thing to do.

We come to the very last verse. Give to him who asks of you and do not turn away him who wants to borrow from you. Now, here's what stood out to me. Simply the change in terms. If you look at the way that Jesus constructed the previous things, whoever slaps you, wants to sue you, whoever forces you, now he turns and says, whoever asks of you or wants to borrow from you. And I think it's instructive to us. and to our hearts to realize how quickly we turn simple requests into demands and get angry at the occasion. Has anyone ever asked you to do something and you just completely overreacted because you thought they were like, I mean, it's like they had their foot on your neck forcing you to do something, and they just asked you a question. This is how we respond. Again, in this passage, is Jesus telling you that if a drunk comes up and asks you for some money so he can get, you know, I need somewhere to sleep tonight, it's going to be really cold, and he's obviously intoxicated, that this passage teaches you,

You're under obligation to the Lord to give him your money. No. It's not what this passage is teaching you. Why should you not give a drunk your money? Don't think real hard about it. What's he going to do with the money? He's going to go buy another drink. That's what he's going to do. You might say, he'll tell you, that's not what I'm going to do, man. That's not what I'm going to do. Liar. Liar. I'm sorry. Liar. When I was reading Martin Lloyd-Jones on this, that's the example he gave. And he just said, you're not doing anything wrong. By saying no, he says, I don't give my money to drunkards and to swindlers. I just don't do it. But to those who have real needs, I give. Give to him who asks of you. Do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. We might put it in terms of paying it forward. It's holiday season. I don't know if any of you have gone through a Starbucks or whatever food line and you pull up there and they say, oh, well, the car in front of you paid for you. I had that happen last week, two weeks ago, something like that. Really nice, you know?

It's a really sweet thing to do. So I paid for the next guy behind me. But there was this twinge in there. You know, I asked, well, how much is the bill of the car behind me? Because I knew my bill was only like, you know, five bucks. What if the guy behind me, what if his bill was like 12 bucks? Do I have 12 bucks? Am I willing to, you know, that $7 difference is a whole nother trip through the drive-thru. Then they messed up our orders and I had to see face-to-face the guy behind me. I did pay for his meal and it was only a few cents more than mine. You'll be glad to know.

I had it in my heart. You have it in your heart. You don't want to give it. You just don't want to do it. You have these thoughts. Well, what if, well, what? Somebody, surely somebody's going to not keep it up, you know? Surely someone's going to just, thank you, take their McMuffin and leave. But it shouldn't be you. It shouldn't be you. Pay it forward. When someone comes and treats you poorly, trust God to sort out the offense by turning the other cheek and loving them. Give of yourself and of your resources or sacrifice. When I say give of yourself and your resources, I'm simply saying you're going to sacrifice. And it's not a sacrifice. It's not like I'm going to delay having this. I'm going to give something away and I'm not going to get it back. Give of yourself and of your resources for the sake of other people, even your enemies. Now, I don't want to talk too much about how to treat your enemies because that's the next text. But even for people who treat you poorly, even for your enemies, even for your spouse, when they're just being foul.

And they don't have any good reason in the world to be that way because we've all been that sort of husband or wife. Love your spouse. Love your children. Our disposition should be to give, to forgive the offenses that are committed against us and to move on doing what's required of us, even if it's not a perfect articulation of justice. I'll tell you, in personal relationships, mercy is always better than justice. Mercy is always better than justice. This is God's way of dealing with us, is mercy and not justice, or at least not justice to us directly. It's mercy to us because it was justice to Jesus. So we ought to be that same way with other people. Let's pray.