Sunday, December 10 , 2023 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Go ahead and get started tonight. Invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter five.

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Matthew chapter five, and we're gonna look near the end of the chapter to begin with. And let's begin with a word of prayer.

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Father, we thank you so much for gathering us together tonight. Thank you for the fellowship that we can have, the joy we can have in Christ, and pray that you would help us now as you look at your word to understand it and to appreciate it.

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And I pray that there would be by your grace an amen in our hearts, that it would make an impact in the way that we think and feel and live.

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We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. We're talking about the 10 commandments, and I noticed something in my files this last week that we've been talking about the 10 commandments for a long time.

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I don't know if you've noticed that or not. I didn't notice. But the good news is we're on number eight, and we're gonna try to finish up tonight.

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So 10 commandments, we have often seen them on the wall, those nice cartoon picture tablets, the stone curved tablets at the top, nice and square at the bottom.

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I don't know why they're like that, maybe because of the movie. Whoever did the props in the

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Moses movie, who was it, Charles? Charles? Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston, the guy with the big, humongous forehead, yeah.

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And we think of the 10 commandments on those two tablets, and we see the five on the first one and the five on the second.

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And they're short and they're pithy, they get to the point. But when we read them in their context in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, there's a whole lot of detail to them that root them and tie them inextricably to the life of Israel.

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And of course, we know that anything that God said to Israel, anything that God dealt with in terms of Israel, ultimately has its meaning and significance in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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So when we think about the 10 commandments, we are to think about these 10 words being about Christ, ultimately.

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And we've been thinking about the eighth commandment, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not deceptively take from someone else that which does not belong to you.

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And why that is, we remember that as God makes covenants with Noah and Abraham and Israel and David, in anticipation of the new covenant in Christ, he's dealing with those he has made in his own image.

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And every covenant that we see, whether it's Noah or all the way to David, God is talking to those with whom he's making covenant and he wants them to know how to relate to him, how we're to love

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God supremely. He's the creator, he's the one who makes the promises, he's the one who keeps the promises, he's the one who gets to tell us how to live and so on and so forth.

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And God is also concerned with how we treat one another. Telling Noah, no more of this killing people and getting away with it, there's going to be a capital punishment.

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And then talking to the Israelites, here's how you're supposed to treat one another in your community and so forth.

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But also, God always dealing with another set of relationships, what

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God has given to us. When God speaks to Adam and Eve, he blesses them.

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He makes them in his image, he blesses them, he lets them know that he's

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God and they're not, they're the creature, he's the creator who breathed the breath of life into them and so on and so forth.

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So he makes the rules, of all these trees you may freely eat, but you can't eat of this one tree.

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So Adam and Eve, they walk with God in the cool of the garden. They love him, they're to love him supremely.

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He also makes them male and female and brings them immediately into proper relationship with one another, husband and wife.

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And they are to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. They're going to be doing things together in partnership in a right way before the smile of God.

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So they are to love each other rightly. And then, look at all the things that God gave them and the way that they're supposed to use everything that God has entrusted to them as stewards of creation.

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And it is those three relationships that no other creature is bestowed with. The angels are not given the earth to manage.

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The beast, the lion is not said, now you shall love the antelope rightly.

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Right? So only those made in God's image are put at this particular intersection of relationships.

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And those are the concern of the covenants that God makes. So when we come to the covenant that God makes with Israel, and we come to the 10 commandments, all of the 10 commandments are dealing with facets of these three.

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Let's think about just for example, the one we're on, thou shalt not steal. So, now we can see how stealing will do something to the relationship with your neighbor, don't we?

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Right? In Israel's context, that guy has more donkeys than me.

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He doesn't need that one, I'll take it. Is that loving your neighbor rightly? All right, no, not at all.

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And well, that didn't belong to you. That wasn't something that was entrusted to your care, but you took it from somebody else.

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This isn't righteous stewardship of what God has entrusted. Shouldn't you be worried about your own things to manage and steward?

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And then why would you be stealing anyway? In thee, yeah, perhaps, yeah.

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I don't have to pay for it. Ultimately, we're shaking the fist at God if we steal, right?

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You didn't give that to me, I'll go take it, right? And this of course requires that just like Adam and Eve, we eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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We determine the knowledge for ourselves. I will determine what is good, what is evil. This is good for me.

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What's good for me is good for me. I'll go do whatever is good for me rather than letting God establish the rules.

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So, we've thought about that, how stealing of course, goes against what it means to be made in God's image.

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And we put our attention last time upon Christ and thought about how he turns everything upside down and shows himself as a good shepherd, as one who provides.

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And he gives himself, right? He gives himself for the sheep. When we think about who

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God is, we think about who Christ is. And God has given us his son.

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How will he not also with him freely give us all things, all that we need? He works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

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So yes, of course, having given us his son, he's gonna give us all that we need to see all of that worked out.

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And so, ultimately, as we think about how this shakes out, we know that stealing is wrong.

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But in following Christ, it's more than just refraining from stealing. I can check that box pretty easily.

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Just don't take somebody's stuff, right? Check that box pretty easily.

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But Jesus says, there's more. There's more to this than just refraining from doing the crime.

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So let's go in the Bible and let's go to Matthew chapter five. And it's very interesting in this context, in the

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Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is explaining how things are going to work in his kingdom rather than in the

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Old Covenant. And he has set things up to say, you have heard it said, but I say to you, you have heard it said, but I say, the

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Old Testament is worthless, or we should throw it away or unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament. But he is saying that there is something, someone greater than Moses is here, something greater than the

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Old Covenant is here, just like someone greater than Solomon, someone greater than Jonah.

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So that's the theme in the New Testament. John was the greatest prophet of all the prophets that ever came throughout all the

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Old Testament, Jesus said. But John was absolutely correct when he said, I must decrease, he must increase.

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Someone greater has come. So it's not just a matter of refraining from stealing.

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Let's see what else is there. After dealing with the issue of murder and the issue of adultery and a couple of other issues, we come to verse 38 of Matthew five.

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Now, this is very interesting. What does Jesus say? You have heard that it was said.

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All right, so we're back into that pattern. You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

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Now, do you remember that principle from the legal system that God gave to Israel?

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System of lex talionis. If you cut off somebody's foot with your ax because you missed really bad, guess what happens to your foot?

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And if you don't want it cut off and you have to make an appropriate payment up to that value, whatever that valuation is.

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If you put out somebody's eye, guess whose eye gets put out now, right? Justice, one for one, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

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He says, you have heard that it was said, this. And this is justice, right?

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This is justice. This is what is fair. This is the law.

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Verse 39, but I tell you, not to resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.

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If anyone wants to sue you and take away your cloak, your tunic, let him have your cloak also.

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And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to him who asks you and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away.

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You can count that among some of the hard sayings of Jesus. Now, what's fair is that no one ought to steal from me and I won't steal from them, we're good to go, right?

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That's what's fair. That's what's according to the books. But Jesus says, we're gonna go beyond that.

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What happens if somebody takes something precious from you? What about your reputation and your honor?

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They slap you on your right cheek. That would be the relationship ending slap. You would take the backside of your hand and you would slap them across their right cheek.

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That was the Jewish way of saying, oh, we're done, right? I unfriended you, but stronger.

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I and my family and the circle of society that I am in, we just canceled you, okay?

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And so Jesus says, when that happens, do you cancel them back? No, no.

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So what is he saying there? He is saying, you are not going to reciprocate in kind, but that's the way they go, fine.

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You're gonna stay ready and available to continue to communicate the truth to them. Okay, verse 40.

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If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. There was a lot of lawsuits going on back in the days of Jesus and the apostles.

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And it was actually something that Paul instructed against to the Corinthians saying, what are you doing suing each other?

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You ought not to do that. And said, isn't there enough wise people within your church to handle some sort of dispute like that?

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Don't sue each other, right? That's a good lesson for our times today where it seems just almost instinctive.

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We just got to sue people to get things fixed, even between Christians. Jesus said, if he wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.

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Now, what did the Old Testament say about that? What was the cloak? And it was a very important garment.

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What was the cloak used for? And when we think about clothing, we kind of think of, yeah, it's necessity, but it's also style.

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And you only wear certain types of clothing in different seasons. We've got seasonal things, and sometimes that's functional, sometimes it's fashionable.

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But back then, clothing was one of those absolute essentials, and it was not cheap.

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Food, clothing, and shelter, just trying to make it by. And you didn't have a lot of clothes. When we hear about someone receiving a whole set of clothes, that was real wealth wrapped up in a whole set of clothes.

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So to take somebody's cloak is to take their protection from the cold and from the wind.

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If they had to sleep out of doors on the road somewhere, you would take away their hope of surviving the night.

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This was their bedroll. This was what they would sleep on at night. And this was not something that you were to take away.

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In the Old Testament, there's instructions that says that if there was an issue legally, and the city elders were resolving something, and it was brought before the elders to judge, and there was some sort of cost that needed to be paid, in the instance where somebody's cloak would be taken away from a poor man, it had to be returned to him by nightfall so that he could sleep, right?

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What is Jesus saying here? Something that moves beyond that, right?

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And then he says, whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him too. Well, who, what does that mean?

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Well, again, living in this ancient Near East in the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, was something that was brutally enforced by a standing mercenary army of Romans and others that they hired for the job.

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And soldiers would often just grab somebody and say, you're gonna carry my pack for the next mile.

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And they were allowed to do that. Jesus said, what did they just take away from you? They took away your time, took away your energy.

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You don't have, you know, I've got things to do. I'm trying to feed my family, you know, what are you?

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Well, he said, go with him too. That's not fair. These people are doing wrong, unjust things, taking things from me.

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And I wanna make this square and even. I'm gonna get back at them. And Jesus is saying, you've heard, it said an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, but we're gonna do something different, he says.

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Verse 42, give to him who asks you and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away.

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Well, this is just turning everything upside down. That's not how it's supposed to work.

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That's not fair. That's not just, that's not right. If you look ahead just a little bit more, as Jesus is kind of wrapping up his thoughts on this whole section of, you have heard it said that I say to you, a very important summary section here at the end of chapter five.

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You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

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Well, that's interesting. I wanna go look this up, Leviticus chapter 19. Leviticus chapter 19 and let's go and see what it has to say.

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So in Leviticus 19 and verse 18, it says, and we can get back up to verse 17.

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You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him.

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You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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I'm the Lord. Love your neighbor as yourself. What are we kind of, kind of talked about the golden rule.

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Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, then what is

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Jesus talking about? Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

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Where is the Old Testament said they're supposed to hate their enemy all over the place. Don't you dare let an

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Ammonite or an Edomite come anywhere close to the temple of Lord. They are outcasts forever.

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The Amalekites are under the curse of God and you gotta take them all out. How often do we see throughout the scriptures, there was instructions very much so as Israel stood in that function as the servant of God to bring the judgment of God upon the enemies of God.

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They were required to hate their enemies and to be the servant of the Lord unto judgment against God's enemies.

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But now that Christ has come and he's the true Israel and indeed he does reign upon Mount Zion and he does indeed judge the enemies of God.

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That's not our business to hate our enemies anymore. Why? We're in him. So now what do we do?

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How's it different in his kingdom? We are free to not just love our neighbors but also love our enemies.

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Verse 44 of Matthew five. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

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Why? Verse 45, that you may be sons of your father in heaven for he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends his reign on the just and the unjust.

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Well, look there. Does God, how much does

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God charge for the rain that you got this year? Why did he give that free to you?

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How much does he charge for the sunshine every day? Or did he give that free?

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He gave that free to who? Just the people who love him and love his word and follow his son?

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Oh, he gave that even to the wicked. You know, all of the fields of Bill Gates and George Soros got all that rain and sunshine, didn't they?

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All this year, didn't they? You see how freely God gives?

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And so Jesus is saying, if you wanna be like your father in heaven, what is our approach to our enemies?

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It's not just a matter of you don't steal, but what about those who take advantage of you and steal from you?

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Are we supposed to be spiteful and, oh, you're my enemy, now I hate you? What is our response?

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And so you see that Jesus is describing how following him is not the same thing as keeping the law, right?

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Keeping the law that God gave to Israel through Moses, of course, involves many things, including sacrifices and so on, but also these moral mandates and 10 commandments, thou shalt not steal.

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Oh, that's good, we shouldn't steal. But more than that, more than not stealing from our neighbor is loving our enemy.

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That's quite a bit more than what we heard before. But that's

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Christ's business, bringing the fuller righteousness and the fuller revelation of God to bear upon our lives.

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So I wanna look at a passage or two about how that actually works out. Let's look into Ephesians chapter four, and let's look at the reasoning that Paul gives about how we're supposed to live now, especially about stealing, right?

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Ephesians chapter four, he works his way through a contrast about the new man and the old man, and he comes to verse 20 and he says, "'But you have not so learned

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Christ.'" Who are we learning? We're learning Christ. That's who we've got to learn.

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That's who we've got to know. That's who we've got to follow is Christ. Verse 21, "'If indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.'"

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Okay, so we've learned Christ, we've heard him, been taught by him. What does this mean?

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Verse 22, "'That you put off concerning your former conduct, the old man.'"

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You know, the one that's not like Christ, the one that's not in conformity to him, the one that was ignorant of Christ, the one that did not care for Christ.

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"'You put off the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.'"

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So you put off the old man, and notice how the old man grows. Notice who the old man follows.

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You see? The old man grows corrupt according to what? Lusts, deceitful lusts.

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Isn't that interesting? You know what lust is? It's desire.

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And it's desire that starts working in the heart before your will is ever involved.

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Now, today, if you have particular desires bound up in your heart that precede any activity of the will whatsoever, people today call that your identity.

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If you have an inkling towards something, no matter what it is, and it hasn't even impacted your will yet, you haven't even gotten to the decision -making process, it's just there prior to any decisions at all, people today say that's your identity.

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God says that's deceitful lusts. It's a lie. In the heart of every rebel, there is enthroned a lie.

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That's just the nature of sin. So the whole growing in corruption, the whole twisting of a man comes according to the deceitful lusts in the heart.

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He says, put all that off, and rather do what? Verse 23, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

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There's gonna be impact made in your inner person. There's gonna be a renewal, a change, a reviving as a spring coming out of winter.

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And it's going to be according to what you have learned with your mind about Christ.

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You have not so learned Christ. You have to hear him, be taught by him, find the truth that is in Jesus, and that's gonna renew the spirit of your mind, and Jesus is gonna change you from the inside out.

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Verse 24, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God. Hear the language of being renewed in the image of God.

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Same thing that Colossians 3 talks about. In true righteousness and holiness. That's the whole background.

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So there's a contrast between the old man that is being formed according to deceitful lusts or the new man that is being formed according to Christ.

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That's the contrast. Verse 25, therefore. Now we get to the application.

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Therefore, putting away lying, let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

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So it's an identification of one another in the church. Verse 26, be angry, do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.

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And so far, you could say, well, that kind of reminds me of the ninth commandment.

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Do not bear false witness against your neighbor. But it's not put in the form of the ninth commandment, but put into the form of following Jesus.

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And be angry and do not sin. Remember what Jesus said about murder. It begins in the heart. Do not hate your brother from your heart, because that is what leads to true judgment and gives place for wrath and murder.

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Verse 28, let him who stole, steal no more.

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Longer. Yeah, okay. So we're kind of talking about the eighth commandment, aren't we?

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Thou should not steal. But it's the therefore of learning

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Christ, hearing Christ, following Christ. Therefore, let him who stole, steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.

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You hear this turnaround? You see, in the 10 commandments, thou shalt not steal, period.

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Following Christ, you have heard it said, but I say to you, here's something greater. Look at this. Not only do not steal, but labor.

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It's one thing just to not steal, but it's also, now it's something else. Hey, labor, and for what purpose?

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So I can have lots of money for me. Well, no. Let him labor, working with his hands what is good, but that he might have something to give to somebody in need.

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Now, that is a far turnaround from just merely refraining from stealing to don't just steal, but work, and work so that you can be generous.

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Now, that's what it looks like to follow Christ. That's what it looks like to follow

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Christ. So therein is the connection.

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Thou shalt not steal is a word ultimately about Christ, who is the end of the law under righteousness for all who believe, and in following Christ, you've heard it said, don't steal, but Christ says unto us, don't steal, but work, labor.

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Do something good, be productive, and then have something to share. It was said in Geneva in the good days when

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Calvin was there, that even those who were lame, who were blind, who had some sort of disability, that anybody who had any kind of mobility of their hands or their feet, or any kind of utility at all, that they were taught a trade, they were given things to do.

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They couldn't do very much, still dependent upon the benevolence and compassion of those who were in the city, but they would still be able to work and do something productive so that they would be able to share with others.

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That's a very Christian way of looking at it. I may be, I might not be able to do very much, but what

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God has given to me, I will make the most of so that I can think about how to be a blessing to others.

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All right, any questions or thoughts as we close our time together thinking about the

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Eighth Commandment? Ephesians chapter four, verses 31 and 32.

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Yes, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

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Boy, that last part puts it all into context, doesn't it? All right, well, let's close our time together.