WWUTT 1948 What Jesus Said About Retaliating (Matthew 5:38-42)

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You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you,

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Jesus says, do not resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.

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When we understand the text. This is when we understand the text studying

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God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you please let others know about our program.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. We're in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five and on to the next law that Jesus exegetes for his disciples.

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I'm going to begin reading here in verse 38 and go to verse 42 out of the legacy standard

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Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. 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 to give to him who asks of you and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

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So in this short passage, we have two very common Christian sayings, turn the other cheek and go the extra mile.

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And I thought about titling this turn the other cheek, but that was before I realized that Jesus is telling us to do more than turn the other cheek.

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After all, you have sinned against God and God did not merely turn the other cheek.

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He gave his son Jesus as a sacrifice for sins. So let us worship

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God and praise him all the more for the gospel of Christ as we consider this passage today.

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Now, the law that Jesus mentions is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

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That's in the law of God. And it is a just law. In no way is

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Jesus overthrowing the law of just measures of equal weights and measures, though many have assumed that's exactly what he's doing here.

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There's a famous quote attributed to Gandhi who said an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

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Well, it turns out Gandhi did not say that. It was his biographer, Lewis Fisher, who believed from Gandhi's teaching that Jesus actually thought an eye for an eye was unjust.

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But that's not what Jesus was saying. The purpose of the law is very simple.

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The punishment must fit the crime. The law of just or equal measures was to prevent excessive punishment or favoring one social class over the other.

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Jesus is not altering this law in any way in the Sermon on the Mount. It is

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God's law. It is a just law. It is intended for civic use to be imposed by civil authorities.

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But the Pharisees were applying it to personal matters. And that's what

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Jesus was rebuking here. Jesus was not overthrowing the death penalty, nor was he saying police officers can't use force.

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Nor was he saying that you can't be a soldier, nor was he saying a nation can never go to war against another nation.

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All things that have been repudiated by those who twist and abuse the word of Christ here in Matthew 5, 38 to 42, we are called to be a just people and doing justice means punishing those who do evil.

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Psalm 106, verse 3 says, Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times.

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Proverbs 28, 5 says, Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the

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Lord understand it completely. So when people read Matthew 5, 38, and they think that Jesus is overthrowing the law of God, then they are not listening to the

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God of justice. They do not understand his law. Rather, they pervert justice.

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They make the same mistakes that the Pharisees were making, who claimed that Jesus was speaking contrary to the law of God.

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The most common interpretation of Matthew 5, 38 is to say that Jesus is abolishing an eye for an eye.

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That's the most common teaching on this passage. Desmond Tutu, a South African Anglican cleric said,

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In the sentiment of Mahatma Gandhi, when we practice the law of an eye for an eye, we all end up blind.

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Red Letter Christian author Shane Claiborne used this passage in favor of abolishing the death penalty.

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You have heard it was said an eye for an eye, but I tell you there's another way. That's Shane Claiborne.

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This comes from people who claim to be Christians, claiming they love Jesus and they love the

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Sermon on the Mount. How can someone who says they love the Sermon on the Mount get this interpretation so very, very wrong?

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There's so many people out there. You can encounter people on the street that'll say, oh, I love the Sermon on the

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Mount. Probably couldn't tell you what's in it. Well why do people say they love it so much when they don't understand it?

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There's a couple of reasons that I would present to you. First of all, tokenism. And what do

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I mean by tokenism? It's when you take a person, a way of thinking or some kind of popular idea, in this case, the

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Sermon on the Mount, and you express admiration to impress people or qualify yourself or give the appearance of being virtuous.

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So they say they love the Sermon on the Mount to virtue signal. The second reason that a person says that they love the

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Sermon on the Mount when they really don't is because they read Jesus' sermon apart from the context of the

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Old Testament. So when a person has ripped the Sermon on the Mount out of the context of the rest of Scripture and they get to Matthew 5 .38

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where Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, what they think

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Jesus is doing here is they think Jesus is saying an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is bad.

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They think Jesus is saying this is a wrong way of thinking. But remember what

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Jesus said back in verse 17, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

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But when a person hears Jesus saying an eye for an eye is vengeful and wrong, what that person is doing is they're abolishing the law and the prophets.

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Let the hearer understand. As Vodie Bauckham has said, the God on the left side of the book is the same

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God as the God on the right side of the book. At the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesus was not absent, nor was he in disagreement.

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The same goes for the giving of the law of Moses at Mount Sinai. In fact, it was from Jesus himself that this law was given.

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In Exodus 21, just one chapter after the Lord gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, we read the following in verses 22 -25,

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When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm.

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The one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

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But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

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Is that not fascinating? The very first time that the eye for an eye standard is mentioned in the law, it's regarding the life of an unborn child.

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If a conflict between men results in a woman being struck, even if it's an accident, it doesn't even appear as if she was involved in the altercation.

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If she's struck and her children come out of her, come out of this pregnant woman, but there is no harm, there will still be a fine, a penalty for those who caused this serious incident.

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But if her child comes out and the child dies, then capital punishment should be exercised on the ones who caused this to happen, and they shall be put to death.

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The Bible here places the life of an unborn child as equal to the value of an older man.

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Let's say the premature birth causes the child to have broken legs, and the child will be crippled for the rest of his or her life, then you shall take the legs of the offender who caused the premature birth.

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That's what this standard of just weights and measures is saying. If anyone ever says to you, abortion isn't even mentioned in the

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Bible, take them to Exodus 20, 13, you shall not murder. Then turn the page over to Exodus 21, 22 to 25, where it says that if an unborn child dies, if someone caused the unborn child's death, they shall be put to death.

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Isn't it fascinating? What you discover when you read the law of God. This is an expression of value.

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God places just as much value on the unborn child as he places on a full -grown man.

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You might say, well, then isn't the death penalty a contradiction? Aren't you taking another person's life?

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Then someone has to take your life, and then someone has to take the life of your executioner. It's a never -ending cycle.

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Nonsense. We're talking about justice here. If a person is killed unjustly, what was their life worth?

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God says justice is that the person who killed unjustly must pay the price with their life.

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A life for a life. Justice has been served. What you will never find in the law of God is any sentence of imprisonment for murder.

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That's not justice. When a man murders another man and receives a life sentence, society is saying the life that was lost is not worth as much as this criminal's.

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A guilty criminal is worth more than an innocent victim. That's unjust.

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Proverbs 18 .5 says, It is not good to be partial to the wicked or to deprive the righteous of justice.

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I've spoken in favor of the death penalty before, and I've had somebody tell me, Hey, he's locked away.

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He can't hurt anyone else. Sure he can. I have personally spoken face -to -face with a man in prison, nothing but a plate of glass between us who had just received a second life sentence because he killed another man in prison.

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It did not matter to him. He was already in prison for life. Therefore, there could be no further penalty if he killed again, he'd still be in the exact same place with absolutely zero consequences.

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At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, well, it would have been right at the start of the lockdown.

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So when people were told to stay home in quarantine, you know, that whole thing, two weeks to slow the spread.

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There was a story about a man in Florida named Joseph Edward Williams. He was released from jail on March 19th at the start of the lockdown as a preventative measure against the spread of the coronavirus.

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He was let go as a preventative measure against the spread of COVID -19.

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Do you know what he was in jail for murder? Guess what he did when he got let out?

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He went and murdered someone. He went to Tampa and killed a man and then was re -arrested on April 13th, less than a month after he was let go.

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If our culture placed more value on life than it does, Williams would have received a death sentence that sentence would have been carried out swiftly and he would not have been able to kill again.

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In Leviticus 24, 17, we read, whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.

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Yes, my friends, capital punishment is biblical, a life for a life. Verse 18 says, whoever takes an animal's life shall make it good, life for life.

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So if someone killed his neighbor's mule, he had to pay his neighbor to buy another mule. The life of an animal is not equal to the life of a man, but it's still worth something.

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Verses 19 to 20 say, if anyone injures his neighbor as he has done, it shall be done to him.

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Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him.

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This is the law of just measures. And one of the functions of this law was to make sure that an offender would not be excessively punished for an offense.

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This law protects offenders as much as it also protects the righteous.

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Now I've spent most of the devotional today defending that law that Jesus mentions in verse 38.

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You have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You might be saying to yourself, why are you telling us all of this? Well, as I said in the beginning,

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Jesus is not saying to overthrow the law and there should never, he's not saying there should never be any civil justice done for any crimes.

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That would be unjust. Rather, here's what Jesus is saying. Here's the point of this passage.

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Don't make a federal case out of everything. With regards to personal offenses, be merciful.

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As Jesus said in Matthew 5, 7, blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

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And in Luke 6, 36, be merciful even as your father is merciful.

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So this law, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, is good for civil cases.

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But when it comes to personal offenses, don't make a federal case out of everything.

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People are going to treat you unjustly. They will be unfair to you. They will walk all over you just because you love righteousness.

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How are you to respond? By entrusting yourself to him who judges justly.

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Consider 1 Peter 2, 19 -25, for this is a gracious thing, when mindful of God one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.

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For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, that is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

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For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.

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He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

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When he suffered, he did not threaten. But he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

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He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

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So because this is what Jesus has done for you, so how are you to be?

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Jesus says, do not resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other 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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You've probably heard about this, that there was a law among the Romans that a soldier could ask you to carry his bag for him, but he couldn't ask you to carry it any further than a mile.

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Jesus is saying, go the extra mile, go too. The Jews didn't care for the

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Romans that much. I mean, they were under their captivity. So they considered the Romans enemies and the

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Romans weren't that fond of the Jews. Yet Jesus is saying here, that person, you probably consider an enemy.

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Go with him to the extra mile. Give to him who asks of you and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

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I know of a man, a Christian author who was betrayed by some very close friends. This was a couple who had worked with him at one point, but they fell into very serious sin and that sin led to some financial difficulty.

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Rather than repent and ask their church for help, they came to this author and they demanded of him that he pay up on a sizable debt they believed he owed to them.

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They showed him the paperwork. It was a financial oversight that was several years old.

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He asked for some time to investigate the matter and they gave him one week. He did his due diligence and he took up the discrepancy with his bank.

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It just so happened that this couple banked at the same place. So a bank clerk was able to look into both accounts and she assured the author that he did not owe the money this couple insisted that he owed.

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It cleared when he paid it the first time. He went home and prayed about the matter and he and his wife were reminded that Jesus said, let every charge be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

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That's Matthew 18, 16. So a couple of days later, he went back to the bank and he spoke with a different financial examiner.

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This clerk reviewed the matter with fresh eyes and got the same result. She also assured the author that he did not owe this couple the money.

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If they had any further questions, they could come into the bank together. The author shared that with the couple and he even offered to go to the bank with them, but they remained indignant.

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They demanded that he pay up. But in frustration, the author replied that he had investigated the matter thoroughly and he was not going to pay what they were demanding he pay.

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Later that very same evening, his conscience began to weigh on him.

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He was reading his Bible and he was reminded of another word from Jesus. This one in Matthew 5, 40 to 41, if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.

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And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him to in first Corinthians six, one through eight, the apostle

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Paul rebuked the Corinthian Christians for taking one another to court. He said to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.

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Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?

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But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers. Would this couple try to sue the author?

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He didn't know already. He had been astounded how quickly they had been turned by their sin.

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But he wondered if going ahead and paying them the money would defuse any further escalation.

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It was a lot of money, but was it worth the legal battle that might happen if he didn't pay?

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Would they be dragging mutual friends into this, forcing them to have to choose sides? And as an author, someone with a public platform, what was the possibility that this would become a bigger deal?

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The gospel would be mocked by unbelievers observing the behavior of these

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Christians. It didn't matter to them who was right or who was wrong. So the author and his wife made a decision.

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They were going to pay the money. The author contacted the couple personally and expressed his embarrassment about the mistake, which was true.

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He wrote the check himself and his wife delivered it to them by hand. When he was later asked by a member of his church why he did it, even after two witnesses at the bank told him that he did not owe them the money, he said,

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I'd never been faced with such a situation before. But here I had a real opportunity to live out the words of Jesus.

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If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him too.

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So I paid the money to the glory of God. My only regret is that I did not pay them sooner and I did not pay them more.

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My brothers and sisters in the Lord, do you understand what you deserve for your sin?

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And do you understand what you have been given instead? You have betrayed

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God and you have gone after your sin in rebellion against God.

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And it's sin that begat sin that begat more sin. What do you deserve for this treason against God is death and more than death, but eternal punishment at the hand of God who is eternally just.

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But what you receive by faith in Jesus Christ is life and more than life, but eternal life and more than eternal life, but life with him as a fellow heir of his eternal kingdom.

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Romans 6 23 says the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. We know God is merciful when we know God is just. If you do not know the

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God of justice, then you do not know the God of mercy. Isaiah 30 18 says, therefore, the

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Lord waits to be gracious to you. And therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.

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For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all those who wait for him.

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We try to take matters into our own hands. We try to seek our own justice against those that we believe that that they have wronged us.

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And we do this in view of other people. Social media has made that really, really easy, has it not?

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That you can go against the person who wronged you and you, you can make it a public case before everybody else.

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Look what it is that person did. Is that the right response?

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Or should we be turning the other cheek? Should we be going the extra mile? Should we have the mercy that God shows to us every day?

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As it says in Lamentations 3, his mercies are new every morning.

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The next part of this in the Sermon on the Mount, we get to verse 43. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

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And that's the passage we'll pick up on when we come back to the Sermon on the Mount next week.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here. May it be convicting to our hearts. Very easy for us to want to retaliate and have it our way and get the last word.

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But what is the merciful way that we should behave? In view of the mercies of God that have been shown to us, teach us how to do that today.