Matthew 5:33-48, What Is Your Goal?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

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Matthew 5:33-48 What Is Your Goal?

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Matthew chapter 5, beginning from verses 33 to 48, hear the word of the
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Lord. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the
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Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for the city of the great king.
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And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply yes or no.
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Anything more than this comes from evil. 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 the one who is evil, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
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And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let them have your cloak as well.
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And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
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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, for he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
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For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same.
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And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the
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Gentiles do the same. You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
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May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. What's your goal?
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Do you want to be rich, successful, be somebody? Well, everybody wants that.
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Maybe that's not really your goal. Your goal is what you finally want to achieve.
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The difference between those who've achieved their final goal and those who don't is the ones who achieve it take the next step.
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They have little goals along the way, mini goals, to get to the big goal.
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Nick Saban, now called the best college football coach of all time, told his players to, quote, trust the process, by which he meant pay attention to the very next step.
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You go through the process, you pay attention what you're gonna do next, the next play, the next workout.
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You don't think, wow, what I'm gonna do with the championship game. Think what is next. Don't overlook what is next.
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Financial guru Dave Ramsey has what he calls his baby steps. So you want to be wealthy.
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You really want to be wealthy? Maybe not Elon Musk wealthy, but you want to be comfortable at least. You out of debt.
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Well, don't just dream about, well, eventually I'm gonna have a lot of money. You have to take the next baby step.
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First, he says, get an emergency fund of a thousand dollars. Next, pay off all your debts, especially credit card debt.
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Get rid of that. Then increase your emergency fund. Then invest 15 % of your income for retirement.
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Then save for your children's college fund. Then pay off your house early.
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Then build wealth. And don't forget, give. Now for many of us, that means if you have a decent income and you follow these baby steps, you will arrive at your goal of being comfortably wealthy, maybe even millionaires.
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But for now, taking your next baby step, if you're just starting out, will mean you have to sacrifice some.
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You have to eat beans and rice and rice and beans. You have to drive a cheap car. You have to work extra jobs, side hustles, he calls them.
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You have to, as he says, you have to live like no one else now, so later you can live like no one else.
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What's your goal? Some specific goals are essential. These short -term goals, the next step, are essential for success.
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Goals provide clear direction that keep you from being distracted from the thing, whatever thing it is could interfere with you reaching your ultimate goal.
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Buying this car or eating out this often is keeping me from paying off my debt, so I just can't do it.
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I have to stick with my clunker. I have to eat beans and rice at home. Goals provide measurable targets to keep you on target.
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For instance, instead of simply wishing to get fit, kind of ambiguously, I'd like to be in better shape, set a goal, maybe of running a 5k in under 30 minutes by next spring.
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For your career, you might want to resolve to enhance your skills by completing a certification course, getting a degree, achieving some project.
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Maybe in your business, you might want to expand your customer base, provide delivery, do more advertising, set up a second branch across the town.
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Specific goals, baby steps, help you break down your larger aspirations, your ultimate goal, into attainable steps so you don't go off course and miss your goal.
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If you don't have any goals, just kind of live every day for what can
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I do today to have fun? You'll probably end up somewhere in life where you can't have much fun anymore.
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What are your goals? Well, if you're here, and you are, you probably have spiritual goals.
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Some people started going to church so long ago, or they were raised doing it, and they forgot there should be goal to it.
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It should be for a purpose. You'd think it's weird if someone kept going to school with no goal of graduating, just kind of keep taking classes at the community college or whatever.
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No degree, no ultimate goal. That's kind of odd. But some people do that with church. They've forgotten what's the goal of this.
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Hopefully not you. Your immediate goal right now, your baby step right now, should be to get the most you can out of this sermon.
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Now, if you fall asleep in this sermon, it might be because I'm boring. I realize that. But you're the one who has failed to achieve your goal for being here.
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If your goal was to sleep, you could do that better in bed at home. Why would your goal be to come here and sleep?
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It doesn't make any sense. You have a goal that this, what we're doing right now, is helping you achieve.
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Well, the whole passage beginning in verse 17 begins by setting a goal, a righteousness that exceeds that of the most religious people.
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Remember this whole, this is an entire integrated passage from verses 17 to verse 48, and we're only taking part of it, but you got to keep that in mind.
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It says the goal at the beginning, a righteousness that exceeds these strictly religious people.
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That's the goal. If we don't have that, we'll never achieve our ultimate goal, entering God's kingdom.
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So that better righteousness, that exceeding righteousness, is our baby step to reach our ultimate goal, be in God's kingdom.
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To show us what that means, Jesus gives us six cases of how our righteousness should exceed the strict religious people.
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If you follow their guidance, those strict religious people, follow their guidance, you'll miss your goal. Okay, they're going the wrong way.
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Now with that, he concludes in verse 48 that your ultimate goal then is to be perfect as your
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Father in Heaven is perfect. Perfection, God -like perfection, is your final goal.
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Live like no one else by following these baby steps so that you can live like no one else.
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But beware the multiplication of loopholes that loosen God's Word, the subtracting of commands that effectively abolish the law, and the addition of traditions that distract you from your ultimate goal.
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So we see that in three parts here. First, multiplication. Second, subtraction. And finally, addition.
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There's no division here, sorry. First, multiplication, starting in verse 33. Jesus says, again, you have heard that it was said to those of all...
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That's kind of this formula that begins every case. You've heard that it was said. Here, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the
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Lord what you have sworn. And like before, like in every case, it is yes and yes, what you heard is true, and here's what it means.
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It's not, no, that's not true. I'm canceling it and replacing it. No. Here, yes, you should definitely perform to the
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Lord what you have sworn. Indeed, perform what you've said, even if you didn't swear it.
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You just said it. You didn't raise your hand, say, I swear to tell the truth, or sign a contract.
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You just said, I'm going to do this. The religious people multiplied their excuses, their loopholes that allowed them to not keep their promises that they had even sworn, depending on what they had sworn by.
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Like today, they thought that if you really had to be held to a commitment, then you'd do it in the name of the
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Lord or to the Lord. And you could take an oath, but to be taken seriously, to really have to be bound to do what you said you're going to do.
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But normally, you could break your word. Essentially, they believe, like people today, that there were degrees of commitments.
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There's the first -class commitments that you had to keep, and so you'd make those in the name of the
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Lord. And you'd be sure to keep them because they're in the name of the Lord, and God will get angry with you if you don't keep it. And there's the second -class commitments that you don't have to keep.
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If you swore on anything else, something else, just make it up. Notice in verses 34 to 36 how many things they multiplied that you could swear on and not have to keep your word.
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You can swear on heaven, you can swear on earth, you can swear on Jerusalem, you can swear on your own head, and it's all okay.
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None of those are binding. I don't know how that worked effectively. Someone came to me, I swear on my head, that car is great.
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Okay, I'm pretty sure you're not telling me the truth, but whatever, that's what they did. Now, today some say that their marriage vows have to be kept, but their commitment to serve maybe as a deacon or a church member or basically anything, they can just kind of blow it off.
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It's second -class, that's its meaningless commitments. Their, yes, I'll do one thing, and their wedding vow, that's the first -class, and that's different than their, yeah,
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I'll do that other thing, come mow the grass or whatever for you. That's a second -class commitment, just never mind that.
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The truth is, of course, that such people probably won't keep their wedding vows either if they're under pressure because they're not people of integrity.
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You don't suddenly become a promise keeper with your marriage vows if you're not one otherwise.
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This is probably why Jesus mentions promise -keeping, integrity, right here, right after adultery and divorce.
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Remember, adultery, plus adultery, then divorce, and now it's, oh, there's an order to that.
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Being a person of integrity, a promise keeper, is key to not being an adulterer.
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Here in verse 37, the Lord calls us to keep our word no matter what we swear on or if we don't swear at all.
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If we just say, yes, I'll do it, or no, I'm not going to do that. No, I'm not taking your money, illegitimately, wrongly.
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Let what you say be simply yes or no because that's enough if you're a person of integrity.
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After all, the goal of a commitment, whether a marriage vow or just a simple yes, I'll be there, is to keep the commitment, right?
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We make commitments when we feel like making them for the goal of keeping them, even if we don't feel like keeping them.
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So every commitment you make is as if it were made with a solemn vow or a signature on a contract.
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In verse 37, Jesus says, anything more than this, anything more than the yes or no, a vow, a contract, comes from evil.
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Now, that doesn't mean necessarily it's evil to sign the contract or make a vow or an oath, but the reason people ask you to do it is because of evil.
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It comes from evil. We have oaths, sworn statements, contracts for the same reason. We have locks on our doors because there's evil in the world, right?
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We know that. We know we just leave our door unlocked. There are some people out there who will just walk in our house and take things out.
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There's evil out there. So locks come from evil. So in the same way, we ask people sometimes to sign contracts or make a vow because we know that there are some people out there who can't be held to their word, who know they won't be punished for it.
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We'll break their word. It comes from evil. So oaths come from evil and it may be the evil of society that doesn't trust people saying just yes or no, unless they're threatened with punishment or for their perjury or just being sued for breaking a contract.
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Or maybe it's the evil of our own hearts that multiplies excuses for breaking commitments.
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People think oh I didn't vow it to the Lord. I didn't vow it in the name of the Lord. Just on my own head or just to that person so I can break it.
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Jesus says that's evil. Oh I didn't expect a situation would change like this. That when
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I made that pledge to give $50 a month to that missionary, I didn't know I'd see that sweet new ride
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I really got to have. Or when I vowed to love until death do us part,
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I didn't know it should be so hard to get along with. It just probably means that I'm so hard to get along with.
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God says in Psalm 15 that the one who dwells with him is the one who swears to his own hurt, even if it's gonna hurt, who keeps his word even when it hurts, even when
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I have to sacrifice that new car I'd love to have but I can't because I pledged the money.
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Or even when the marriage is hard, swears to his own hurt and does not change even when it hurts.
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Here Jesus is correcting traditions which had multiplied loopholes for allowing for breaking some promises.
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Jesus rejects the loopholes that all the loopholes are wrong and insists that promises must be kept.
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Since that is the case, a disciple need not, if we're following Jesus, we need not swear by something to be reliable.
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Oaths for the believer are rendered unnecessary, not unlawful. I mean we can do them if in this world we brought to court and somebody the judge makes us raise our hand and we can do it,
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I think. But that shouldn't make us any more honest or more trustworthy because we're always trustworthy because we're always honest.
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So a baby step toward the goal of the kingdom, of being in the kingdom of God, is that your word can be relied on without any need for further guarantees.
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This is very important for this church and really for any congregational church. What is it that gives us a right to call ourselves a church?
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To preach the word, to serve the Lord's Supper like we just did, to baptize people, to do discipline.
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What gives us that right? Is it the succession of bishops that we can trace back to Jesus?
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No. It's not a denomination that endorses us as a legitimate franchise that came along and said, yes, this is a legitimate church.
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It's our commitment, our covenant. Jesus said, two or three of you are gathered together in my name.
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In other words, to follow Him, to do what He said, to be His disciples. We gathered for that purpose.
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So that's our commitment to do that, to God and to each other, to be a gathering in Jesus' name.
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And that commitment is expressed in a particular covenant. The covenant isn't just a relic of the past that most
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Baptist churches have forgotten why they have it, which is true, they often have, but it's not really that.
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It's a concrete expression, like the wedding vows are a concrete expression of the commitment that holds the couple together.
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Church covenant is a concrete expression of the essence of what constitutes us as a church.
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And if our commitment to that covenant is meaningless, if there's no tie that binds us, if we're people of no integrity that say we believe something, are committed to people, and we're really not, we just kind of walk away.
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If it's not really our goal to keep it, then we have no covenant, and then we have no right to call ourselves a church.
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And Baptists in the past understood this, back when your word is your bond, a man is only as good as his word.
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Those used to be common sayings. People said that often. You don't hear it so much anymore. Eliezer Savage in the 19th century called breaking the church covenant, quote, a public offense of a particularly high aggravation.
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The Charleston Baptist Association stated that covenant breakers, quote, ought to be looked upon as truce breakers, proud, arrogant, dangerous persons, and to be dealt with as such.
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They didn't tolerate the multiplication of loopholes allowing you to break your promises.
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What is your goal? If it's to be right with God, one baby step is to keep your commitments.
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Second, subtraction. Now the religious people, they subtracted from what
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God has revealed. Jesus says, starting verse 38, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
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In Exodus 21 and Leviticus chapter 24, Leviticus chapter 24 verse 17 says in full, quote the whole thing, 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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But think about it. Who follows this law? Who implements it?
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Who puts it into practice? Who's a doer of it or be a doer of the word? Well who does this? Well the government does, particularly the judges.
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Not just for everybody, not just for you, for me, unless you're a judge. It was for the rulers so that their punishments were principled, not excessive.
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So if the judge just didn't like a defendant or he's just mean, so they executed people for mere assault or maybe he's too lenient, he likes a defendant or just very indulgent, so he lets criminals off with just a slap on the wrist.
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The principle guides the administration of justice so that the punishment fits the crime.
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So an eye for an eye is still true, even if it's not your responsibility to implement it.
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This is what in Reformed theology is called the second use of the law. Reformed theology is excellent at categorizing and at making everything sound boring.
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Just amazing at that. Reformed theologians have a gift for making things sound incredibly boring.
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But they're right, I think, in this case that in God's Old Testament law, there were three uses, three goals for the law.
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First, the evangelical use of the law, to make us see that we've sinned, that our righteousness isn't good enough, that we're not perfect.
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And so seeing that, now we cry out for mercy, have mercy Lord, and are saved. And the law then is what
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Paul calls a schoolmaster who leads us to Christ, who shows us our sin so that we flee to Christ for salvation.
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That's the first use of the law. Second is the civil use of the law, that is the laws of the government to be led by.
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You're setting up a government, what's going to guide your laws, your administration of justice? Well, God's laws. If someone hits you, the government says that that person should be hit.
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So the punishment justly is caning or flogging or the equivalent, something like that. You don't do it yourself now.
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You don't take it unto yourself to gouge out the eye or whatever you think was done to you, you do someone else. You're not the judge, jury, and executioner.
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You hurt the person who hurt you in the same way. The government does, and the violent people learn then that they're not going to get away with being violent.
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And the third use of the law is the personal for our sanctification, to reveal to us what is pleasing to God.
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As Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. The law gives us commands so that we express our love to God by keeping them, by following them.
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But their problem here is that they subtracted the civil use of the law from the government and made it for them personally, applying it to their personal vendettas.
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It would be like you if you saw someone commit an armed robbery and you grabbed hold of the person and threw him in your basement and you're going to hold him in prison for 10 years.
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Okay, no, you don't have a right to do that. The law doesn't tell you what to do, it's for the government how to apply justice.
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So, Jesus says in verse 39, I say to you, speaking of his own authority as God, you have your misunderstanding here,
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I say to you, a baby step on the way to being like God is not to resist the one who is evil. Here comes this famous saying, turn the other cheek.
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All right, now the government might should punish them for slapping you on the cheek, but you don't take it on yourself to do it.
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You turn the other cheek. If they sue you, give it to them. If they want your shirt, give them your jacket too.
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If they're, if an occupying soldier, an occupying army, a soldier from that, marching through your country, forces you to carry his pack for a mile, carry it too.
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Someone begs, you give, or at least give to charities that will help the beggars without enabling them.
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If our goal is to have that righteousness that exceeds the religious people, that is to be like God, we'll have to be rid of the attitude, you know,
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I'm not going to let anyone push me around. I'm going to hold on to my rights. It's costly to reach the goal.
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And we might ask, you know, even if I have to lose my eye or my hand for the
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Lord, surely not my dignity. Just how much will the
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Lord ask of me? How much will this goal cost me? Oh, it'll cost everything.
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Eyes, hands, slaps, coats, an extra mile, even, yep, even your dignity.
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Everything. Now, this is more complicated in our day because we now have a say in the government.
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Now, in their day, an eye for an eye or two for two, that's the government, and there's me. I follow Jesus's teaching and really there's no there's no overlap between them.
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The king and his appointed judges implements an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. Me, I don't, it's out of my hands.
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But in our day, it's different, so we have to know both. We have a say in the government by our voting, by our serving on juries, or by expressing our opinion on what are the policies of the government, what they should be.
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Now, today, some very confused people, they subtract from the use of the law, just like the Pharisees, except the
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Pharisees acted like everything was civil. Their own personal behavior was guided by what were actually laws for the government, as if they had the right to implement an eye for an eye for themselves.
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Whereas confused people today, like the Anabaptists, subtract the civil laws and act like Jesus abolished the law that said an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth, right?
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That's what they're thinking here. They're thinking, you've heard there was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth, but the thinking said, oh, he's canceling it and he's replacing it.
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No, no. He said specifically when he started this section, remember, I am not canceling,
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I'm not abolishing the law and the prophets. Anyone loosens them, he is leased in the kingdom of God. So he is not doing that, but still there's so prevalent this confusion about particularly this teaching of Jesus that's just so common out there that people are led astray by it.
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Just in the last election, someone wrote that it was wrong for Christians to vote for leaders, like for president, who would hate their enemies for them.
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Well, you're confused, writer. He was subtracting from the law as if the laws for justice on evil people are abolished now.
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In fact, that is a principle we guide us in our voting. We're voting, we're not thinking, who's going to give us the most stuff, either by giving us the most welfare or relieving us the taxes the most so I can keep most of my stuff.
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That's not what guides us. We're thinking, who's going to implement God's law the best? Who's going to give the people, evil people out there, what they deserve?
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And who's going to keep the innocent people from being hurt? That's why guides are voting. Remember, again, we don't subtract from the law as if the laws for justice on evil people are abolished.
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They are not. That's not what he was doing here. What is he doing? He was setting a goal for our personal behavior, like third use of the law, while not subtracting this law as guidance for the government.
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An eye for an eye, which is called the Lex Talonis, the law of retaliation, is still a just principle for judges, for laws, for governors, for presidents.
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The principle is the punishment fits the crime. And it's a good principle for countries to be led by.
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For example, if a people unleashed thousands of rockets on the country just to the south of them, you can't complain when that country retaliates by making all their pagers blow up.
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They're doing the retaliation. That's what governments do. And we need to remember this now because not only we have our personal behavior, we can also have a say in the government by our voting, serving on a jury, calling for political change.
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We can't subtract this principle, this law of retaliation from God's Word.
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When the troubled and troublemaking 15 -year -old boy that we had right here in our ministry committed that murder in Yanceville, I could see myself, if I had the opportunity, they asked me or if I knew where he was,
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I could see myself going to him in jail, bringing him food or whatever they would allow me to bring, a
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Bible, and praying for him, wishing the best for him, doing whatever favors
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I could for him. Do you have a good lawyer? That kind of thing. And if I were called to be on the jury and the state proved his case beyond a reasonable doubt,
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I could see myself then voting to convict him and to give him the maximum sentence. Both.
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We could and we should. We should be friendly and supportive and giving to illegal immigrants, treating them personally well, helping them if they have needs, if we have opportunity.
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And if we thought it's the best for the country and we thought it was just, we could vote for candidates who would be tough on illegal immigration.
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One is the second use of the law for governments, guiding our laws and justice, and the other is
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Jesus's law here for us personally to do good even to the evil.
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We do both without being a hypocrite. We subtract neither.
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What's your goal? If it's to be like God, both be good to the evil without subtracting from God's law.
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Third, don't add traditions to be on the level of God's Word. Jesus said in verse 43, you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor.
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Well, so far so good. That's from Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18. But then they added something to it, and hate your enemy.
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Okay, God's law did not say that. They added that. So this time when
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Jesus says, but I say to you, in verse 44, he is indeed abolishing what they had added, hate your enemy.
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They made that up. They added it to the law so that they could hate their enemies and feel still that they had kept the law.
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But the Lord Jesus said in verse 44, but I say to you, again on his own authority, as God, he is
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God, and he's saying, I say it. I don't have to quote some scribe, some Pharisee, some scholar.
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I say love your enemies and show you love by actually praying for the people who persecute you.
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We are not to be people who fight and claw our way to reaching our goals, even if we had to step on other people along the way.
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No, to be perfect like God who is good even to his enemies. Jesus is saying, you know, look around at what
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God does. He's good to his enemies. He sends them good things to these evil people.
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He sends their farmers like us. He sends them sunshine so their crops can grow, sends them rain so they can grow, so they can live.
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That's what God is doing for them. You should be the same way. Be like your father. Our father sends good things. We need to have a family resemblance to him, so we also send good things to those who hate us.
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He sends good things to those who hate him. So should we. He sends sunshine and rain and wicked, needy people like farmers in semi -arid
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Israel, good things they desperately need. And so if we're to be like our father, we should give good things even to those who hate us.
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Remember the Lord Jesus is speaking to Jews in an occupied Israel. The precise enemies he has in mind here are the
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Roman occupiers, the Gentiles who did not believe in God or keep the law, who were unclean, with whom they shouldn't associate according to their own tradition, who used their power over them to force them to carry packs a mile or insulted them or laughed at them, ridiculed their religion and their customs.
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The Romans just ridiculed, they scorned the Jews. But later in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, the
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Roman emperor sends to Judea a governor called Porcius Festus, which means pork feast.
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You know that's just an insult to the Jews, right? They're just mocking them. You people don't eat pork.
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I'm going to send you a guy whose name is pork feast. Just ridicule it. And that's the way the
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Romans were to the Jews. Eventually they ended up calling in Israel the land, or Judea, they called it
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Palestine. The Romans did that to insult the Jews. That's how we got using the word Palestine for that land to this day.
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Many of the Jews, they couldn't wait because of that because they were insulted, were God's chosen people. They couldn't wait to get back at them and overthrow them and cut their throats.
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And the Pharisees told them that it was permissible to think that way, that they could indeed hate their enemies.
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But the Lord Jesus here tells them that to be righteous, to be different from the Gentiles, who just like them love their own kind of people.
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The Romans loved each other, fellow Romans, and he tells us the same today. Be friendly and giving with people who are different from you, who make you feel uncomfortable with the way they dress or talk, who may at first treat you rudely, disrespectfully, who don't care at first about you or your feelings.
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And if you're just nice to people who are nice to you, that's nothing. Everybody does that. Be nice to people who are different, who are insulting to you, who sag their pants.
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What do you do? I hate that. Are you going to love them? And then may they insult you? Are you going to continue?
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There's nothing different, nothing righteous about just, well, we like our kind of people, just like us.
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They just know how to dress, know how to talk right. There's nothing godlike about that.
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Everybody does that. The pagans do that, to show grace to the ungracious. Well, that's amazing.
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That is the extent that righteousness will demand from you.
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I agree with the great commentator John Stott that perhaps no man in modern times lived this call to love our enemies better than Martin Luther King Jr.
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He had his house bombed. He lived day by day for 13 years under the constant threat of death. He was stabbed, he was punched, he was jailed over 20 times.
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He told his enemies, quote, we shall match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.
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Do to us what you will and we shall continue to love you. They did to him what they will and he was killed at the age of 39.
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That's the price to be paid. You may lose an eye or a hand, a jacket, your dignity, or even your life.
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How much are you willing to sacrifice to reach your goal? To be right with God? To live in his kingdom?
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Are you willing to live like no one else now so you can live like no one else or except the other saints later?
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To do that, our righteousness, our rightness must exceed that of the religious people and multiply it excuses.
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Subtracted categories so they could be judge, jury, and executioner. And added traditions to God's word.
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We must be, as in that last verse, verse 48, perfect. But how do we be perfect?
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Some, like this whole holiness movement, they take this command, be perfect, and they use it as a rationale to argue, well, then we must not be that sinful.
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Must not really be sinful by nature after all. That we can be perfect.
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We just try hard enough. We can achieve perfection. It's an achievable goal.
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We just got to follow the baby steps. After all, if it wasn't, if it wasn't achievable, Jesus would never have challenged us to be perfect, right?
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The challenge must be there because we can do it. It's in our grasp. We just try hard enough. Right? That's their reasoning.
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A pastor once told the story of a man in the holiness movement who believed that, who believed that doctrine, who believed that you can reach perfection if you just try hard enough.
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He even wrote a book called The Eradication of Anger. He claimed to have achieved the secret to having perfect control of his anger.
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The pastor personally witnessed this man lose his temper at his wife for not parallel parking the car properly. Now, some will believe we can be perfect.
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But if we try, if you really try, and if you're honest, you'll realize that's a bar you can't clear.
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And that's what Jesus is teaching here. That's a big part of his point in this passage.
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The goal of the law and of Jesus' teaching here is to show us that we haven't achieved that exceeding righteousness, that we haven't been perfect, and we can't.
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And left to myself, I cannot do it. As we were reviewing these six case studies, hate, lust, divorce, oaths, revenge, love, and then the conclusion, be perfect.
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Do any of us look at these and kind of go, check, done, done, done?
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Yeah, check. Got that one? And finally, yeah, yes, perfection. That's me. I've arrived.
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Well, I hope not. We have this law to see therein that we have not been free from sin.
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It's meant the law, it's meant to humble us, to see that our hatred is murder, our lust is adultery, our lies are not white, our niceness just to friends is not godlike love, our revenge isn't justified, that we are not perfect.
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So, we realize we're steeped in sin. Our goal is to be perfect, but we know now that we haven't done it.
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So, that knowledge humbles us, devastates us, fills us, as we mentioned earlier, with that godly grief.
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And so, it makes us cry out, wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?
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And the Holy Spirit whispers the answer, thanks be to God, through Christ Jesus, our
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Lord. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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And finally, we see our perfect Savior.
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The best example, the perfect example, is the preacher of this sermon himself, the preacher of the
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Sermon on the Mount. He had perfect control over his anger. It's not that anger itself is sinful.
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Jesus was angry at times at the money changers in the temple and the hypocrites who made burdens for people too hard to bear, but he never sinned in that anger.
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He was in control of it. He kept his commitment, even when it hurt. He committed to do the
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Father's will, and he kept that all the way to the cross, where it hurt.
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He turned the other cheek when he was slapped and beaten, even though he had all the power to retaliate. He let the soldiers take his clothes.
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He let them force him carry his own cross. He chose not to resist evil. He chose to let a pragmatic
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Roman governor, self -serving Roman governor, and the religious hypocrites to do to him what they will.
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Do to me what you will, and I will continue to love you. He even let them take his life, and he did all that so that he could be the perfect sacrifice for those who were his enemies.
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His hand never caused him to sin, but he held it out to let a spike be driven through it.
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And about those who drove those spikes through his sinless hands, he prayed, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
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He gave up, finally, his life, because as the son with his father, he sought to do good to those of us.
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To us, who were his enemies, he was what he now calls us to be.