Matthew 5:38-42, October 27, 2024

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So as we continue in Matthew chapter five today, I feel like I say something like this or something along these lines just about every week.
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But once again, we come to a set of passages that have been the source of a lot of confusion, the source of a lot of misapplication for different Christians over the years and different churches.
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And even better, we're coming to a set of passages that often get cherry -picked, cherry -picked by people who honestly hate
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God in order to serve some kind of gotcha type of attempt or to demonstrate that Christianity is inconsistent or the beliefs of Christians are inconsistent.
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As we consider our verses today, which are in Matthew chapter five, verse 38 through 42, the people that look at these verses, the people that hate
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God, these are the kind of people that drive around with that bumper sticker on their car, the one that says an eye for an eye leaves the world blind.
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The idea that if we were to follow scripture, we would all destroy each other. And as we'll see in just a bit, that whole idea completely twists the purpose of the
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Old Testament law that's being referred to in that passage. And actually, that idea, that interpretation represents the same kind of error that the
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Pharisees engaged in when they taught this passage. Because in fact, that eye for an eye kind of approach to justice is far more of a representation of what society at large, the approach that society at large would take to justice, not the approach that's intended in scripture.
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But what this comes down to, I think, in a lot of cases is that we as Americans, but not just Americans, I mean, if we're being honest, other nationalities are always very concerned about their rights.
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We're all very concerned about our individuality, about making sure we get what we feel like we're entitled to, about making sure that if someone insults us, that we have the opportunity to respond and insult them back and defend our honor.
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We're very concerned about our rights. And in some senses, that's pretty natural.
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In fact, our country was founded, at least in part, on the idea of rights. And we'll read this first part of the
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Declaration of Independence. It tells us as much. It says, we hold these truths to be self -evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
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Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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And that's certainly true so far as it goes. But our nature, our sinful nature as people takes that last part, the part about happiness.
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And what it tends to do is broaden the idea of happiness as far as it can get away with, to the point that happiness means that we can have everything that we ever want, that we can do anything that we wanna do, that we don't have to do anything that we don't like.
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And if somebody else does something that we don't like, that we are entitled to do whatever it takes for us to get ourselves back to the way that we believe it should be.
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And that's how we determine our happiness. But in all the discussion of rights, our right to happiness, our right to do what we want, a lot of times there's very little talk of responsibilities because a lot of people have rightly pointed this idea out.
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Everywhere there's a right, a right to do something, a right to have something, there's a corresponding responsibility that's placed on somebody else to meet that right.
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If I want to do something that infringes upon somebody else's happiness, do they have a responsibility to let me?
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Do I have a right to do that? If we're all concerned with our individual rights, where does that end?
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How do we figure out how this works and how do we make it come together as a society?
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It makes me think about the discussion of pronouns that we've had a lot lately, right? People want to define their own pronouns.
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In fact, they think that it's their right. But if we were being honest, every single one of us would have our pronouns as I and me.
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And these aren't pronouns, but we would also add mine and my to that list as well.
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But we always want to expand our concept of what rights are.
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Far into the material realm, to the point that we become entitled. And I think that's certainly where our society is at this point.
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And I'd be lying if I said that those tendencies don't come into my head as well. I don't, I include myself when
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I talk about these concepts that shows up in my thoughts, my attitudes, and my actions.
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But this truly becomes problematic for Christians because we become so focused on our stuff.
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We become so focused on ourselves, our feelings, our desires.
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Why can't I have this? Why don't I get to do this? When so -and -so does this, I don't get to do what
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I want to do. My time, my whatever. We've all done it.
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We've all said it. And what winds up happening is the protection of those rights that we believe that we have starts to crowd out everything else.
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In our intense focus on what we want, our
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I, my, me, and mine can get in the way of what we've been called to do by God.
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And it can definitely prevent us from acting in ways that are distinctly
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Christian. When we're so focused on the things that we want that we don't really care what other people want.
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And that distracts us from living in the way that Jesus describes in the Beatitudes. We'll continue to come back to the
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Beatitudes in case you haven't guessed it because those principles are just foundational for us as Christians.
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And also remember that the Sermon on the Mount is just continuing to build and it's building on the foundation of the
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Beatitudes. So we have this focus on rights. So that's one thing.
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Another way that people make a mistake in interpreting the verses like the ones that we're gonna look at today.
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And no, we haven't read them yet. So you haven't missed anything. But a way people make a mistake in interpreting these verses is by trying to make them into a list of specifically prescribed behaviors.
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And this will make a little more sense when we read them. But just like everything else, trying to make these into behaviors rather than greater principles.
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And then the other mistake that people make is to take the principles from these verses and try to pick them out and just take one of them and make a rule out of it.
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For example, as we read this, it says, if anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your garment also.
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If we were to just take that out and make a principle out of it, we would miss the point of all of this.
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So the idea of trying to take these concepts and make them rules is particularly ironic because as Christians, we like to make a lot of, we like to make a big deal rather out of the fact that we're under grace.
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We live under the grace of God. We live in the new covenant. We don't live under the old covenant rules. And that's true.
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But then when it comes time to actually live as a Christian, what we wanna do is take a look at these principles whether it's the
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Beatitudes or some other verse, and we wanna take them and make a rule out of them because we don't wanna have to stop and think about what it means to really live as a
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Christian and really live as Jesus did. We just want someone to tell us what to do so that we can make sure that we're following the letter of the law and living the right way.
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So these verses, Matthew chapter five, 38 through 42, if we use them in that manner, they can lead us to believe that Christians are just supposed to be this kind of pathetic doormat.
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A Christian's not ever to stand up for anything. A Christian's not ever to push back against evil.
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And beyond that, a Christian is to give away everything that they own if somebody asks for it.
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So now we have these poor downtrodden Christians they have no money, they have nothing, and now they're unable to make a single bit of difference in the world.
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They can't be salt and light because they haven't taken the time to really understand the meaning of these verses or no one's ever bothered to teach them, and the world just walks all over them.
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And we don't say anything because we believe to be Christians is to be meek in a way that we never respond to anything.
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So let's take a look at the passages so that we're not talking about this stuff in isolation and it's not an abstract concept anymore like it's been for the last few minutes.
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But Matthew chapter five, starting in verse 38, says this. But you have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
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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.
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And if anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your garment also. And whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too.
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Give to him who asks of you and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.
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Now a big part of the reason that we have to look carefully at these verses is because some of them on the surface have a different meaning or a different implication than they would otherwise.
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And I think a perfect example of this is verse 41. And whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too.
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That's easy to take in the wrong way and we'll talk about the actual meaning behind that in just a little bit.
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But what we actually see in these verses is one big overarching theme.
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And the overarching theme that we're looking at here is death to self. The principles that are contained in these verses are all designed to help us realize how much we focus on ourselves at the expense of everything else and to redirect that focus to what
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God would have for us in our lives. And as we begin in verse 38 here, what we notice is that Jesus is giving us a series of scenarios.
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And basically what happens is they kind of decrease in their level of severity, but ultimately all of them are pointing back to this same principle, the same death to self idea.
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And of course, in verse 38 and 39, we see our familiar formula that we've looked at over the past several weeks of Jesus presenting a teaching based on the
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Mosaic law and then correcting the faulty interpretation or the faulty teaching of the
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Pharisees. And also once again, we see what appears to be a pretty shocking twist on that teaching.
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And if we weren't taking the Sermon on the Mount in order, we might look at some of this stuff and ask if Jesus is contradicting or if he's changing the teaching of the
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Old Testament. But here, we've already read verses 17 through 19.
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We've already studied those verses. So we know that Jesus is not changing the teaching. Jesus is not changing the meaning.
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He's correcting the teaching. Now, what we see in verse 38, you have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
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This teaching can be found several times in the Old Testament. There's three places in particular,
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Exodus chapter 21, verse 24, Leviticus chapter 24, verse 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 19, verse 21.
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And the reason for that is because this was a pretty widely known principle, the eye for an eye, the tooth for a tooth thing.
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And it had been known and it had been in practice for thousands of years. This is also called lex talionis.
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And the earliest expression of this concept was actually in the Code of Hammurabi, which was an 18th century legal code.
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In fact, it was one of the first fully built out legal codes or legal systems.
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But the purpose of the lex talionis or eye for an eye concept, it was twofold. So the first purpose of this was to discourage people from harming others, right?
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The reason that it was to discourage people was because you can clearly see if you do something wrong to another person, they now have a legally documented way of responding or a legally documented punishment that can happen to you.
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But at the same time, it was also intended to ensure that when somebody unfortunately did commit an act that harmed another person, when they were punished, the punishment fit the crime, right?
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It's not one person punches another, so they're allowed to kill them. It's to make sure that the punishment fit the crime.
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Another important thing to note about this is that this concept of an eye for an eye was part of the legal justice system.
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And it's part of a legal justice system. Again, it's designed to dissuade people from acting improperly.
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And it's also designed to prevent punishment or to ensure that appropriate punishment was made in the context of a courtroom or a legal setting.
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Now, the reason that's important to point out is because this concept, this eye for an eye idea was not a guideline for personal retribution.
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It's not a way for you to take justice into your own hands. And when somebody does something to you, you say, well, they did that to me, so I'll do the same thing back to them.
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That's not what the purpose of this was. The purpose was this was to be managed and carried out within the confines of a legal system.
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Yet the idea that it was for personal justice is exactly what the
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Pharisees were teaching. This is how they interpreted. This is what they were telling people was okay.
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And then that teaching that you're allowed to just take revenge on people, an eye for an eye, 2 ,000 years later, led us to the point where people have that bumper sticker, an eye for an eye leaves the world blind.
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And if we were left to our own devices and handle things the way we wanted, that's exactly what would happen.
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Every one of us, at least to some degree, probably likes that idea because it gives us the opportunity to exact revenge on somebody that we feel has wronged us or has infringed on our rights.
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But that idea itself bears absolutely no resemblance to the biblical notion of the concept.
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And in fact, it's very much the opposite. Jesus teaches us that it was in no way intended to be the standard by which individuals could enact personal revenge for a wrong done to them.
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Even again, if this idea plays exactly into our desires for how to protect our rights and how to protect ourselves.
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So that idea makes what Jesus said next that much more disorienting.
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And I know I'm overusing this word, but I think it's shocking. So if we look at the first half of verse 39, he says, but I say to you, do not resist an evil person.
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So now
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Jesus is taking his audience and us from this kind of tit for tat or quid pro quo situation where we're able to protect ourselves to something completely unexpected.
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And we wanna take the first half of this verse, verse 39 first, because it's important that we understand a few things so that we don't go off in the wrong direction.
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Now, again, he's taking this teaching and all of a sudden saying, but I say to you, do not resist the evil person.
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So what does Jesus mean when he says that we are not to resist the evil person?
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Well, the first thing that we have to understand is that this is dealing with personal relationships. This is a prohibition on retaliation or revenge in your personal relationships.
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The idea of foregoing immediate retaliation or the idea of getting revenge on somebody who's insulted you, it finds support in other areas of scripture as well.
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And the reason for this is that the Lord is the final arbiter of each one of us.
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The Lord is the one who judges us. Judgment does not belong to us, it belongs to him. Just for a couple of examples, we'll look at first Romans chapter 12, verses 17 through 19.
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That says this, never paying back evil for evil to anyone, respecting what is good in the sight of all men, if possible, so far as it depends on you being at peace with all men.
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Never taking your own revenge, beloved. Instead, leave room for the wrath of God.
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For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And we also have this in first Peter chapter three, verses eight through nine.
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First Peter three, eight through nine. Now to sum up, all of you be like -minded, sympathetic, brotherly, tenderhearted, and humble in spirit.
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Not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but giving a blessing instead.
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For you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing. And then one last verse is first Corinthians chapter four, or one last passage, first Corinthians four, verses three through five.
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And this is Paul writing to the church at Corinth. He says, but to me, it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you or by any human court.
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In fact, I do not even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted.
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But the one who examines me is the Lord. Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the
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Lord comes, who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness, and make manifest the motives of the hearts.
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And then each one's praise will come to him from God. So again, that's a prohibition against passing judgment on someone else's actions.
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Paul himself says, he doesn't care if they judge him, he doesn't even judge himself, because ultimately it's gonna come down to what
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God says anyway. So while we can be clear that this idea of not resisting the evil person is a prohibition on our own retaliation, on personal retaliation, does that mean that Christians are never to resist evil?
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Does that mean that as believers, we are to just be passive in any situation?
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And clearly, the answer to that is no. If you think back to our discussion on Matthew 5, 5, in the
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Beatitudes, blessed are the lowly or the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. You recall that lowliness requires standing up for what's righteous, which is
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God, the things of God, the rule, the rules of God, the law of God.
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Christians are absolutely to resist evil. One of the places that Christians are to resist evil most of all is in the church.
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Listen to what Paul writes to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, verses 28 through 31.
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Acts chapter 20, verses 28 through 31, excuse me. He says, be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the
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Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.
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I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
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And from among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.
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So Paul is telling the elders that that's one of their primary duties is to protect the church. One of the greatest evils in the church is wrong teaching.
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Sometimes you have to fight back against people who claim to come in the name of God and teach things that are clearly against the word of God.
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You guys know about that as much as anybody. So Christians are to stand up to evil in the church.
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Christians are to stand up to any kind of perversion of the word of God or the teaching of God.
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Jesus is giving us an example of this in Matthew chapter five, as he's teaching in the Sermon on the
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Mount. But Christians are also to stand up to the government when they're not acting lawfully.
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We'll get to that in just a minute. We'll get to that in one of the next sections. But as we look at the second half of verse 39, this is where we really see the idea of denying oneself come into even clearer focus.
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So he says that when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other one, turn the other to him also.
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Now, culturally at the time, this idea of slapping someone on the right cheek basically was the ultimate insult.
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So we're not necessarily talking about the fact that you need to sit back and allow yourself to be physically assaulted.
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That's really not what this verse is about. They're not saying if someone is coming to beat you up, then just let them.
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What they're saying is that if someone insults you, if someone says something to you that just is an affront to your honor, an affront to who you are as a person, instead of clapping back at them, give them the other cheek, let them go again.
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They're not the judge. What Jesus is teaching here, dying to self is how we are to respond when we're insulted or otherwise slighted.
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And maybe this is getting confusing, but hopefully we can clear it up as we continue on with these other examples. So you can think of these, this first couple of verses, 38 and 39, is dying to yourself in the area of, what did
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I write down here? In the area of your reputation or the area of your honor.
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Now, as we move into verse 30, we're gonna see the idea of dying to yourself in the area of your security.
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So we see an example that takes things up another notch. Verse 39, we're being insulted.
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Now in verse 40, as we read this, which says, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your garment also.
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So now we're looking at our legal rights and particularly our legal rights in the event of a legitimate legal judgment.
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In this example, it doesn't make quite as much sense to us in our modern context, but in the context of Jesus's hearers, there was actually a law that prohibited anyone's coat from being taken.
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So if someone did something, another person could sue them for their shirt.
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That was legal, but it was not legal to take their coat because the coat serves so many other purposes.
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It was a matter of survival, kept people warm at night, and the coat was even used as bedding for them to sleep.
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So really the point is not what garment is being taken. So, you know, you can take the tunic, but not the coat.
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But Jesus is saying, if they take the tunic, give them the coat as well. So John MacArthur puts the principle this way.
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He says, the attitude of the kingdom citizen, one who is truly righteous, should be willingness to surrender even one's coat, his extremely valuable outer garment, rather than cause offense or hard feelings to an adversary.
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So this legal judgment is made. We're not to argue about it, to try to defend our rights when clearly we've wronged somebody else.
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But potentially we should even go farther than what's asked and give even more. This is all about our witness to God.
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Paul writes about lawsuits as well in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 6, 7, he says this, and this is particularly about lawsuits with believers.
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He says, why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? It's better to just give up what somebody is trying to take from you than to cause some kind of big fight, especially with another believer that damages your witness before the
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Lord. And even going so far as to risk your material security for the sake of God.
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Because what we tend to do and why this principle is so important is we grasp on so hard to the things of the world, we're getting our security from our possessions, from our money, from whatever it is that we have, and not from the freedom that God has given us, not from the liberty that comes to us through what
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Jesus has done. That's verse 40. Now the next one, as we continue the theme of death to self, this one is in our area of personal liberty or in the area of freedom.
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And what this is dealing with is legitimately passed laws. And once again, this is another verse that doesn't get its full meaning in the
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English translation and in our society. Verse 41, excuse me, says, and whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him too.
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And this has been misinterpreted in a considerable number of ways. But what this actually referred to was a law at the time, a law that allowed
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Roman soldiers, if they were tired, to force civilians, to force the people that they had conquered to carry their pack.
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The law allowed a provision for them to force anybody to carry their pack for up to a mile.
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Again, the idea was designed to relieve the burden on a soldier. But this is the rights and responsibilities thing, right?
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If they have a right to have their burden relieved, somebody now has a responsibility to take up that burden for them.
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And this placed a considerable burden on the citizen to carry this pack.
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So everybody hated this law. And I'll admit that this principle is one of the more difficult ones for me personally to work with.
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Of course, I feel that I should be able to disagree with any kind of law that I want if I think it's stupid or if it inconveniences me because I'm so much smarter than everybody else, right?
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Just like all of us. But Jesus is teaching us the very opposite of this. He says not only should we be willing to be inconvenienced by such a law, but when we feel like we've been robbed of our personal liberty, we should be potentially willing to surrender even more of that liberty to a legitimately passed law.
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We should be willing to surrender it for the sake of our witness and for the sake of God's righteousness. The aim here, again, is to decrease our attachment to worldly things, the things that we hold so dear, the things that are not of God, and to remind us of that freedom that we have in Christ.
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And the freedom that we have in Christ is one that no government can infringe upon. It's one that no one can take from you.
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Somebody can come along and pass a law that inconveniences you every day of the week, and they do all the time.
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But no one can ever infringe upon your freedom in Christ. Now, this brings us to what
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I mentioned earlier, the idea that Christians can resist evil when it's perpetrated by the government.
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So this is where things get a little confused sometimes. So we'll take a short interlude here to discuss this idea.
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I mean, this really, it needs its own sermon. It probably needs its own series of sermons, but we'll just take a brief look at it.
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We're probably all familiar with the principles in Romans 13. And the reason a lot of us are familiar with the principles in Romans 13 is because when the pandemic happened,
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Romans 13 is what a lot of Christians, and frankly, a lot of cowardly pastors, pointed to, to convince
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Christians to not go to church, to convince Christians that it was okay to close the doors of the church and not to gather in worship.
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Romans 13, one says this. Every person is to be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God.
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And those who exist have been appointed by God. We see this concept also in 1
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Peter 2, verses 13 through 17. 1
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Peter 2, verses 13 through 17. Be subject for the sake of the Lord to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do good.
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For such is the will of God that by doing good, you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.
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Act as free people and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as slaves of God.
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Honor all people, love the brethren, fear God, honor the king. So again, this goes back to a very important idea.
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Now, if you look at Romans 13, one, we look at the first two sentences.
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There are some very important concepts here. Obviously, the first sentence says every person is to be subject to the governing authorities.
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That's clear. The second sentence tells us something important as well.
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For there is no authority except from God. Now, what this functionally means is that no, governments can pass laws that are in opposition to God's word.
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Christians are not obligated to follow those. You may suffer the legal consequences from not following those.
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I'm not saying that you're not gonna go off scot -free if you break a law that's passed, but there are times when we have to stand up.
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Now, there's a book, it's called God Versus Government, Taking a Biblical Stand When Christ and Compliance Collide.
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It's by Nathan Busenitz and James Coates. And Nathan Busenitz is at Grace Community Church and he is a teacher or a professor at the
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Master's Seminary. James Coates is a pastor in Canada. He is one of the pastors who kept his church open during the pandemic and went to jail for it.
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But what they say in this book, oh, and by the way, there is a copy of this book in the library upstairs right outside my door, so if you wanna read into this more,
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I got a copy of this so that you could do that. But they lay out five exceptions to God's command to submit to authority.
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Here's what those exceptions are. The first is an order to do what is wrong.
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The second is an order to stop doing what is right. The third is an order that contradicts another level of civil authority.
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The fourth is an order to stay silent in the face of evil. And the fifth is an order to turn yourself in.
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And again, we don't have time to go deeply into these, but they're scriptural examples, examples from the
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Bible of each one of these principles. But the point is, as Christians, we have these exceptions, but we have to exercise them carefully.
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We have to exercise them properly and wisely. See, I mentioned the pandemic.
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Because the pandemic caused a lot of churches to face questions that they had never considered before, to face issues that had never come up in multiple generations of the church in America.
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There were government prohibitions against meeting for worship, as you all know.
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And there are churches that went right along with those. And there were other rules, there were other things that were clearly in contradiction of God's word.
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And as it's happened before, and as we've seen the way that churches, that Christians, that people have responded, that highlights for us that we need to be ready for what the next instance of this is.
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We need to know scripture, and we need to be prepared for what happens when we're face -to -face with these situations, with these laws.
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I think a perfect example of this that we could potentially expect is the passage of laws like they have in Canada, and I think the
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UK as well, which are called prohibitions on hate speech.
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But what they come down to is they make the plain teaching of scripture illegal. This prohibition on hate speech, which should be in quotations, would mean that you couldn't do what
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I did a week or two ago, whenever it was, and talk about what God's definition of marriage was.
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You couldn't talk about what God's design for gender was.
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It would make that illegal, and that has happened in other countries. And the point is that we have to be prayerful, and we have to consider biblically when this is appropriate, and we have to submit joyfully in every other situation.
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If it's not violating God's word, and it's not forcing us to act against God's word.
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As Christians, we have a duty to submit to the government. An example of this that we all hate is taxes. There's no prohibition for paying taxes.
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Jesus says himself, render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and God to what is God's. So that's a little interlude on resisting evil when it's perpetuated by the government.
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Now we'll move on to verse 42. In verse 42, we begin to die to ourselves in the area of personal possessions.
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It says, give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.
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This is a hard one as well, and this is another one that causes us a lot of confusion. So let's look at what 1
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John 3, 17 and 18 have to say about this, because that passage speaks directly to this for the
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Christian. But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
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But little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
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This makes it clear that we are truly to care for one another, and we are truly to care for people who are in need.
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But like everything else, we have to exercise a little bit of wisdom. We have to exercise a little bit of common sense with this.
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Does this mean that you have to give everything that's in your pocket to every single person that's standing out at a stoplight with a sign?
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I don't think that it does, because you can't know why they're there.
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You can't know what the circumstances are that led them to be there. If you feel like that's a worthy cause, you are more than welcome to donate to it.
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But you're not required to impoverish yourself to remedy a situation that you don't understand.
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You're not required to give away your money to perpetuate someone's drug or alcohol habit, because that doesn't help them.
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That kind of charity hurts. 2 Thessalonians 3 .10,
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the second half says, if anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat. But all that said, what this is teaching against is the idea of selfishness.
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It's the idea of elevating our own comfort over the true and legitimate needs of others.
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You know, we can't look at a situation in church and say, oh, you know,
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I know that so -and -so can't afford to buy groceries or feed their family this week, you know, assuming it's not due to some kind of irresponsibility, mismanagement, or something like that.
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You say, oh, I know they can't afford to do this, but if I help them buy groceries, then
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I wouldn't be able to go out to dinner this week. You have to be careful with those kind of rationalizations.
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And there's no prohibition against Christians having personal wealth. But like everything else, we have to recognize that what we do have is a gift from God.
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And to defend it as though we were entitled to it, even when we're faced with the legitimate need of someone else, is to rebel against a clear command of Scripture.
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And I know we keep having all these sort of qualifications, but this isn't a command to live as a communist or a socialist.
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It's not to force us all to live with our property in some kind of communal situation.
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But it's a call to live according to the Beatitudes. It's a call to show love to others, and it's a call to help meet legitimate needs in the church and in our community.
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So we have to resist the urge to look at these things in a legalistic sense. And maybe there's not a clear -cut answer for a given situation.
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But you can ask yourself questions like this. If you're faced with a need, and you have the ability to meet that need, but you're hesitating, ask yourself, do
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I know that this need exists? Do I know that it's a legitimate need? And can
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I meet this need? And if we say yes to all those things, but something's still stopping us, we have to ask, am
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I hesitating because I'll lose some level of security or comfort? Am I hesitating not because I won't be able to meet my basic needs, because you should be able to meet your needs as well?
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But if there's something above and beyond that, that you just really, really wanted to buy this week, and somebody else can't even eat, that's the sort of situation that we're looking at.
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And like we've said a few times already, the overarching theme of this section comes down to being willing to die to yourself for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of righteousness.
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Martin Lloyd -Jones sums it up, he says this, no man can practice what our Lord illustrates here unless he is finished with himself, with his right to himself, his right to determine what he shall do, and especially, must he finish with what we commonly call the rights of the self.
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In other words, we must not be concerned about ourselves at all. The whole trouble in life as we have seen is ultimately this concern about ourselves and this concern about self.
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And what our Lord is inculcating is that it is something of which we must rid ourselves entirely.
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And at this point, I have to remind us once again that the reason we take the Sermon on the Mount in the order that it was given, and we don't pick and choose principles, we don't take one beatitude, we don't take one of these six antitheses and just pull it out individually and build our life around it, is because these aren't things that we can do on our own.
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This is a process, a process that begins with salvation, a process that involves the power of the
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Holy Spirit, because it goes against everything that we want to do, to die to ourselves, to be generous with other people when it might inconvenience us, to obey the government when it irritates us, to endure insults from others.
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But it's only, again, through the power of God, working through the Holy Spirit, that this is even potentially possible at all.
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So what do we have to do? The first thing that we have to do is we have to be honest with ourselves in these situations.
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And again, questions can be helpful, but the biggest question that we can ask in any given situation, whatever the right is that's being given up, or however it is that we have to die to ourselves, just ask, why does this offend me?
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What's the greater principle at stake? Is it my feelings? Is it my comfort?
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Is it my security? Is it my reputation? Or is it the glory of God?
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We'll start to realize when we ask that question, how the idea of self really controls us.
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How the idea of wanting what we want just takes over our lives most of the time.
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Martin Lloyd -Jones also said that self was what led to the original sin that now plagues mankind.
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The desire for the fruit. You know, sort of had a fire lit under it by Satan, but it was that desire.
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Well, yeah, I should have this, but it was the desire for the fruit that led Eve and Adam to eat that fruit, which led to the fall and all of the sin that now plagues mankind.
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Because if they could have been subject to this desire for what they wanted to the point that they would have given up perfection in the garden, think about how much it distracts us now in a sinful world.
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This inordinate focus on self, it distracts you from God, because you can't focus on who he is or what he's done when you're spending all your time making sure that you right every wrong that's been done to you, that you answer every insult that's ever been made against you, that you make every dollar and you acquire every comfort and every freedom that you feel that you're entitled to.
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And Scripture is full of this concept as well.
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If you look with me briefly at Luke chapter nine, we're gonna look at verses 23 through 25, a very clear teaching of Jesus, starting in verse 23 it says, and he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
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For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it.
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For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? This is in clear contradiction to a lot of Christian teaching that goes on today, that invites you to accept
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Jesus as your Lord and your savior, to fix all the things that are wrong with your life, the things that are wrong with your life are you.
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And we have to be willing to push that aside to accept what
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Jesus has done. Which brings us to the second thing, what we have to focus on is that we have to focus on the cross because the cross was the ultimate act of selflessness.
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The ultimate act of dying to self and literally dying before being resurrected and of submission to God as well.
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So Christ died for our sins, but he died so that we would become like him.
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Romans 8 29 says, because those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son.
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Ephesians 4 24, and to put on the new man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
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And then 2 Corinthians 3 18, but we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the
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Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the
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Lord, the spirit. When we look at Jesus, at no point did he spend a whole bunch of time focusing on what it was that he wanted.
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He continually said throughout the gospels, he was here to do God's work. He was here to do the work of him who sent him.
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And he was crucified that we would become sanctified and sanctification or holiness means becoming more like Christ.
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There was a evangelist named George Mueller famous for caring for and providing educational opportunities to orphans.
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In fact, I read somewhere that somebody even said that they were mad at him for elevating these orphans up beyond their place in life.
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You know, the education that he had given them and elevated them beyond where they ever should have been. He sums up this concept with this quote.
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George Mueller said, there was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Mueller and his opinions, preferences, tastes and will.
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Died to the world, its approval. Died to the approval of even my brethren and friends.
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And since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God. And that's the reference to 2
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Timothy 2 .15, which says, be diligent to present yourself appointed to God as a workman, who does not need to be ashamed accurately handling the word of truth.
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But this quote, which sums up this section so well, obviously it's hard. Because it's easy to die to the approval of the world.
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A lot of people do that. Those who consider themselves nonconformists say they don't care about what other people think about them.
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It's easy to not care about the approval of those who don't know you. I mean, we can't all do it, but it's not that big of a thing.
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It's harder to die to the approval of your friends and your family.
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But even that's doable. What's really hard is to die to yourself, to die to all those things that you want, all those things that you think that you're entitled to.
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Yet that's what Scripture calls us to. That's what
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Scripture calls us to as followers of Christ. So I wanna close with two things.
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The first thing I wanna close with is Galatians 2 .20. So you can turn with me to Galatians 2 .20
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as I turn there myself. This is a familiar passage,
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I know. Galatians 2 .20 says, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer
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I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh,
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I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. And then the second thing
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I would close with is a question that you can ask in pretty much any situation.
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You can ask, it's probably best to ask it when you're at your most frustrated, when you're at your worst, if you're offended, if you're mad at a situation, just ask yourself, am
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I doing this for myself or for the glory of God? And that will tell you where you are in this spectrum.
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Am I doing this for myself or am I doing this for the glory of God? Let's go to the
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Lord in prayer. Father, thank you once again for your word.
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We continue to be challenged and confronted by your teaching.
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It seems as though every week it gets closer and closer to home in one way or another, as we love ourselves.
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And sometimes we love ourselves beyond anything else. God, we thank you that we have a
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Savior, that we have your Son who by all rights was entitled to love himself beyond anything else, yet loved us more than that to the degree that he was willing to sacrifice himself for what you sent him to do, which was conform us to his image.
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God, I pray that you would continue to help us along this path because we know that we can't do it for ourselves because of all the times that we've tried and failed to follow you perfectly.
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And we know that perfection will never happen. And thankfully, perfection doesn't need to happen,
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God, because Christ died for those sins. He justified us before you and gave us the opportunity to walk in sanctification, to walk in holiness.
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God, we thank you for this love. We thank you for this grace and this mercy. Lord, once again, open our hearts, open our minds, and have us continue to open our
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Bibles to see what you have for us. Lord, we love you, and we pray all these things in your name, amen.