Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Christian Character, Pt. 3 (11/28/2021)

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All right, let's have a word of prayer. We'll get started. Lord, thank you so much for the ability to be together today.

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And we ask you to bless those and protect those who are traveling. Some still not back yet from holiday and Lord, we pray for John Quinn as he's flying in the air over Europe and protect him, get him back to us safely, help him get his work done over there.

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And Lord, we just ask you to be with us during this Bible study time and may your Holy Spirit be our teacher and fill us with your spirit,

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Lord, so that we might get the full message that you have for us today in Jesus' name, amen.

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All righty, let me share my screen and we'll get started here. Oh, right, that should have us in the right place.

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All right, well, looks like we'll be finishing up our Romans chapter 12 today. Last time we covered those right there and those right there.

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So we covered quite a bit of ground last Sunday. And so we will move on at this point, but we found all of these different concepts that are revealing to us

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Christian character. And this was part of what we found in chapter 12 of Romans that tells us how to have unity in the church.

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Obviously we have Christian character. We treat each other kindly and with loving kindness and we exhibit these characteristics that are really the characteristics of Jesus Christ.

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Then we will get along with one another. So that's a great help. So that's what we've been talking about. So let's move forward and see if we can finish up chapter 12 today.

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And let's start with verse 17. Recompense to no man, evil for evil, provide things honest in the sight of all men.

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Let's take a look at some of the Greek words here to get the full idea of what we're talking about.

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This word provide, where it says, provide things honest in the sight of all men.

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I think we might take a look at that. Now, the first part of the phrase, recompense to no man, evil for evil, don't repay somebody that does something evil to you.

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Don't do something evil back. Now, what is our first natural response?

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And our first thought is to strike back, isn't it? And, but Jesus doesn't think that way.

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He wouldn't be that way. And always helps us to pray this wonderful prayer. Lord, give us the mind of Christ, doesn't it?

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So we understand the first phrase, but look at the second one, provide things honest in the sight of all men. I think we can get something a little bit more clear for us.

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If we look at the Greek here, this word provide is very interesting to me because it means to consider in advance.

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In other words, look beforehand before you need whatever this thing is, and already have it, make provision before you need things.

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So that's what the word means, all right? It comes from the little Greek word, noio, which means basically to think, all right?

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So it's telling us to think ahead of time, think in advance about things that other people need, about things in our own lives that need to be honest, as it says in the old

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English. But let's take a look and see what that word means in the Greek. Kalos is the word.

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It means beautiful or good or valuable. So it's telling us to think ahead of time and be able to provide valuable things that are valuable in the sight of all men.

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Now, I think if you look at the context of this passage, where you look back up and it says, be not slothful in business, that it can still be talking about providing for our own household, because one of the problems that the early church had was sometimes the people were so poor, especially in the church at Jerusalem, that the community thought, well, if God's blessing them, why don't they, especially the

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Jewish people who understood God's blessings were physical and spiritual, why aren't they blessed physically?

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So maybe God's not blessing them, so maybe what their message is isn't true. And that's a problem. We don't want the world to think that about us.

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So we need to be able to provide things that are honest, actually valuable things, virtuous, beautiful, important, good things for our own family, and then have extra to provide for others in our community.

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And when we do that, we have a better witness. People will listen to us more. And that's actually what the second part of verse 17 is talking about.

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And so, I went to church my whole life. I didn't pay attention much because I wasn't saved till I was 24.

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But even after that, as I would go to church, I never heard pastors talk about money or taking care of our families financially or all the things that the

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Bible teaches, both Old Testament and New Testament about the importance of that. But I see it crop up quite often, and here it is in the middle of Roman chapter 12, verse 17, where it tells us to provide things that are good, valuable things, virtuous things for our family, but also things where the men that are looking at us, the men that are watching us, all men, now that's the word pas, it means all kinds of men.

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So it means Jews, Gentiles, people from every race and every nation are watching us, and from every religion.

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They're watching us. And so, we need to show that God has blessed us, and we need to do all of the things we're supposed to do, the conditions for God to take care of our families financially, so the world can see that God is doing that.

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And we need to, certainly don't need to leave off the conditions because then God doesn't do it.

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He's not obligated to do it. It's an if -then. If we do this, then I will bless you with these things,

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God says. This says to think ahead of time and figure out ways to provide for your families, what that's talking about.

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You might not have seen that if we hadn't looked at the Greek. Verse 18, if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

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Here again, we see the word pas in the Greek. It means all kinds of men. So if you're a

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Jew, then you need to live at peace with Gentiles as much as lies in you, and as much as is possible.

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If you're a Christian, then you need to live peaceably with Islamic people, if it be possible, and as much lieth in you.

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All these different divisions that Satan has put among men, we have this exhortation.

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If it is possible, as much lieth in you, be peaceable with all kinds of men.

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Now, there are two phrases here at the verse 18, at the first of the verse. Not one phrase, two.

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One is, if it's possible. Well, that tells me sometimes it's not possible to live at peace with all kinds of men.

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So it's not commanding us to lay down and let people come into the home and kill our children, kill our wives, and take everything we've got.

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That's not what this commandment is at all. It says as much as possible. Well, in that case, it wouldn't be possible to be at peace with such a man or group of men that might try to invade your home.

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You need to give them both barrels of your shotgun if that happens. And a shotgun is a really good type of gun to have in the house because you don't have to be that great of an aim, right?

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But we're supposed to protect our wives and children. We're held accountable for that, financially, but also physically.

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And this is not a contradiction because that's why it adds the phrase, if possible. Sometimes it's simply not possible to be at peace with certain kinds of human beings that are not about peace.

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They don't care about peace. They don't respect life. They don't respect your life, your possessions, the laws of God, anything, and they're not peaceable.

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In fact, the Bible says as we get into the end times that men will be implacable. That means you can say, don't kill me, don't kill me.

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I got a wife and kids and they don't care. They kill you anyway. Implacable means you can't talk them out of being evil.

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So it's not possible in that case, but in cases where it is possible, then we should live at peace with all kinds of men.

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Now, the second phrase, as much as lies in you, that tells me it's not always in my heart to be able to do it.

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It's not always possible for me as David Mitchell to live at peace with this particular type of person.

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And so you got two aspects. It has to be possible, which means number one, you don't disobey other exhortations of the

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Lord, such as protect your family. But then it says as much as lies in you. So that means, you know, we have to make sure that we're growing as a

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Christian. We're also walking with the Lord as many moments of every day as possible, being spirit filled, because in my flesh, there is not much that lies in me that will be peaceable towards another human being that's not being peaceable, is treating my family or myself unkindly.

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They start to curse in front of my children or my grandchildren. And it's not always possible.

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Sometimes it's possible, but it doesn't lie in me to just let that go. So, I mean, you can't have a list of rules on when to invoke the second part, the be there.

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You gotta be walking with the Holy Spirit. You won't know what to do. You know, when something just happens in the spur of the moment and it threatens the way you think you should raise your kids and take care of your family, you're gonna react.

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So if you have time, take a moment and say, Lord, let me think like you would think first. And then as much as lies in you, be peaceable with every kind of man that you can be where it's possible.

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So there's a lot of ifs in that one, a lot of if then. You know, if it's possible, and secondly, if it lies in you to do it, then be peaceable with all kinds of men.

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So the only way we can even come close to obeying that is to walk in the spirit because there's no rules that tell us when we do and when we don't fight back.

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There's no rules for that. So you've got to pray for the mind of Christ. And, you know,

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Peter reached up with his sword and cut the ear off of the guard that was about to take Jesus to the cross and or to be questioned.

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And Jesus put the ear back on the man. He healed it. And perhaps

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Peter acted outside of Jesus's character there.

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And he acted in Paul's flesh, his character there. And so we have to be guarding against that. That's the lieth in you part.

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You know, we've got to be stronger and stronger as Christians. That's difficult for all of us, but we've got to keep moving toward that finish line and being more and more like Jesus.

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Next verse, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place under wrath for it is written vengeance is mine.

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I will repay, saith the Lord. Now, this one is an interesting one to discuss. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice.

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I found this one quite interesting because in the English, it's kind of interesting to ask the question, what does give place to mean?

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All right, does this mean avenge not yourselves, but, you know, don't give place to wrath?

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Is this one of those old English phrases where it swapped meanings since 1611, where actually what it should say is don't give place to wrath in your life.

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Let God take care of it. Well, or is it saying give place to wrath.

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So what's it saying? Well, you know, you really got to look into this. Are you, frankly, you just don't know.

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You may think you know, but you don't know. Well, let's look at the easy part first. This word avenge, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves.

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This is easier. Avenge means just what we know it means, vindicate or retaliate.

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Don't retaliate when someone treats you badly. We know that's what the first part of the verse is saying.

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Correct? Don't avenge yourself. You know, now I think it's in the context of verse 18, where it's possible, and as much as lies in you, don't retaliate to someone just because they slapped you in the face does not mean you have to hit them back.

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I've seen some pretty funny examples with hindsight of strong Christians actually living this out right in front of me.

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I saw one case. I've told the story many times. Even last

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Sunday, I told the story about a young man we were taking out, teaching him how to witness on the street, and he got punched in the face.

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Then he grew up a scrapper. He was a fighter, but he didn't hit the man back. And we walked on down the street and he said, huh, now

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I know I'm saved, right? Well, so it was possible, and it lied within him not to retaliate, and that was very

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Christ -like, right? Well, I saw another example one time. I saw two women get into it, which is kind of interesting, where one of the women slapped the other one right across the face as hard as she could, and the stronger

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Christian of the two just braced her shoulders and just kind of did her lips this way and kind of went like that and did nothing.

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And I thought, that's remarkable because we could have had a brawl right there, but we didn't.

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And so, you know, these things happen. And Jesus's character, you know, is when he's reviled, he reviles not again, the

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Bible says. He does not feel that he's got to get you back. So he is the stronger of the people, right?

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He's the strongest because he's so strong, he can be meek. And we need to strive for that.

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So the first part of that verse to me is easier, but let's look at this give place to wrath part because to me,

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I look at that, to me, give place means allow the wrath to be there. And I'm thinking it seems to contradict the first phrase, but let's think it through a minute, give place to.

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Now, this word tapos in Greek can be translated give opportunity to.

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Well, I think that helps me a little because I start to think about this verse and where it says that I'm not supposed to vindicate myself but rather I'm supposed to give opportunity to wrath.

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Well, let's think about that. What does wrath mean? Or gay in the Greek, violent passion, justifiable abhorrence, punishment.

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Now, let me ask you a question. We as human beings, since we don't know all the facts, we can't hardly judge the hearts of men properly, certainly not every time, right?

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So do you really think it's telling us in verse 19 not to avenge ourselves, but to at the same time give place for ourselves to be violently passionate and to abhor a person and to justifiably abhor them and to punish them?

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How does that, that would be a complete contradiction. So when you look at the rest of the verse and you understand that in the

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Greek, there are no commas, and we see that little comma right before the word vengeance, that's not in the

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Greek. So really the second part of that verse says like, don't avenge yourself, but rather give place to justifiable abhorrence and punishment for it is written, vengeance is mine, sayeth the

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Lord. So who is it that we're giving place to who can put wrath on the enemy that just struck us in the face?

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Assuming we're God's child, we're the apple of God's eye because we've been saved and we're walking with him and they strike us in the face, we don't have to strike them back, but we give place to who?

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God. So now it makes sense, doesn't it? Rather than us striking them back, give place to God's wrath, let

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God take care of the person. He will, maybe not on our timetable, but he will take care of it. I've seen it in my life.

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I can't even give the examples because they're too personal, but I have literally seen it in my life where I just took it and took the abuse and waited, and all of a sudden the

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Lord took care of it and in big ways and sometimes in some cases. So that's what the verse means.

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And we have to be mature in the Lord to be able to live this, but we need to understand that it's not up to us to provide vengeance or wrath.

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Only God should be wrathful. We can't be righteously wrathful. We have to be, well, we can be, but my goodness, we gotta be so filled with the spirit to understand when it's righteous indignation or when it's our flesh.

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God doesn't have that problem. He knows he's always just. If he exhibits violent passion and justifiable hate and punishes somebody, he does it in perfect righteousness and perfect omniscience, knowing every fact and in perfect judgment.

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Therefore, we must turn this type of thing over to him, and that's what his teaching. Makes a lot of sense when we see it that way.

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What's interesting is as we get down in here where he says, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, sayeth the

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Lord. This word vengeance is the same exact Greek word as this word for avenge.

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Same Greek word, kind of interesting. So we're not supposed to have vengeance or avenge.

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It's the same Greek word. We're not supposed to do it ourselves, but rather give place to God to do it.

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Pretty clear. All right, let's go to the next verse. Verse 20, therefore, if thine enemy hunger feed him, and if he thirst, give him drink.

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That was pretty clear, isn't it? I don't know if we like it. I don't know if we like what it says or not, but maybe we could be a little more clear if we look at some

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Greek words here in a second. For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

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I've always thought that was fascinating. But let's look and see who the enemy is first.

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Who is this person that is our enemy, but when he gets hungry,

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I'm supposed to feed him. And when he's thirsty, I'm supposed to give him water. And when I do that, I heap coals of fire on his head.

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That last phrase, all that means is it surprises him, right?

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It makes him feel small because he mistreated me and I'm treating him well. That's all that means, all right?

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So don't take that any further than it's intended. It is a figure of speech used by the apostle

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Paul to simply say, it'll make him feel small. It'll make him feel like you're a bigger person and he'll maybe even see

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Christ in you when you do this. And that's the idea, but let's look and see who this enemy is, okay?

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It comes from a little Greek word, ecto, and it means hateful, but it can be translated your adversary.

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So I don't think it's as strong a word as the English word enemy, because that means

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Hitler. If I'm in World War II, Hitler's my enemy. Stalin is my enemy if I believe in capitalism and freedom and Christianity, because Stalin was an atheist and he would have destroyed our nation if he'd had the ability to do it.

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Fortunately, the Lord didn't give him that ability. So those types of enemies,

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I don't think is who it's talking about here. I think it's talking about our adversary and that person can be found right there in church where you go to church.

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And if you're part of Park Meadows, hopefully not, but you've probably all had experiences in the past where a church member treated you poorly, said some really harsh words to you, made you feel terrible and you couldn't sleep at night for two or three days and you almost got bitter about it and there you go, right?

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That's your adversary. It could be a neighbor, it could be someone crossing the street with you and they say something ugly to you or it could be someone in another automobile passes you and does something ugly and that's your adversary.

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That's the kind of thing where the Lord is saying, look, if a person like that has abused you, you can be bigger than that person.

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And if they get in trouble, you help them and it'll really make them feel, it'll humble them, it'll make them feel small, it'll make them feel like you're bigger.

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Then they are better than they are and that you might even be a Christian. You might even have power they don't have.

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That's what this is talking about. It's not talking about in war, that kind of enemy.

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Now, obviously Americans, when we went in and we captured people, sometimes we would feed them and give them water, depending on which group of soldiers, right?

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But the regulations coming down from the top are that that's how we're supposed to treat even enemy combatants.

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So we treat them better than they treat us and that's because of our Christian heritage, but I'm not even sure that's a correct application of this word enemy here, so there's my thought on it.

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Verse 21, be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

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What a powerful, powerful verse, right? Now, our first inclination is when someone says a word that hurts us or hurts a family member, or they strike us or a family member, our first thought is to just be overwhelmed by it, to let the emotions rise up and to strike them back.

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And so now, according to Jesus's mind and heart, we just allowed evil to overcome us, right?

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And we shouldn't do that. We should not be overcome by evil. We should overcome the evil by good and verse 20 shows us how to do that, right?

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All right, so it's interesting that this is from the Greek word Nikeo, Nike tennis shoes gets their name from this

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Greek word, by the way, but they're talking about conquering and being victorious in sports, right?

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Well, it's the same word here. It's the Greek word to subdue and to conquer. So don't allow evil people and evil things, whether it comes from Satan or from the hand of one of his agents, to ever conquer or subdue you.

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On the contrary, we should conquer evil with good and the Lord shows us how to conquer evil with good in verse 20.

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And so there's the idea. Now, this is interesting because if we look at Luke chapter six and other places in Matthew, where we see the

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Beatitudes, I wanna discuss this a little bit because Paul could be quoting some of this information that he perhaps had read in his scrolls, in his scriptures that he was always asking people to bring to him, his books and his scriptures.

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And he may have had some of this information from what we call the book of Luke, the gospel of Luke.

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And this is Jesus speaking and look what it says. If you do good to them, which do good to you, what thanks do you have?

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Because sinners also do the same. Now, I think it's interesting to stop for a second, look at this word sinners.

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I remember brother Otis, the older gentleman, most of you have heard about, that came to our church where I had coffee with him 13 years and learned so much together with him and also from him.

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He used to say, brother David, we shouldn't allow our church members to call each other sinners.

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We shouldn't let people come up and pray and say, Lord, forgive me, I'm a sinner, forgive us our many sins.

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That little pattern that so many people like to pray in church, he said, don't allow that because we're not sinners.

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Well, I thought about that for a while at home after he told that to me at coffee that day, then

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I'm thinking, well, it seems like I sin sometimes and it seems like most

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Christians sin sometimes. And so what does brother Otis mean? Well, he means it in the same usage that Jesus used it.

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And you have to remember, Jesus was part of the old Testament economy. He was not in the new Testament, even though he's written about it, what we call the new

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Testament. It wasn't until after Pentecost, after he died, was buried rose again and ascended into heaven.

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And then he sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to the church. That's when the church age started. So he was already gone and he was in heaven at the right hand of the father at that point.

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So he was talking kingdom literature here, Jewish literature, old Testament literature.

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And so when you think about that, it kind of changes your understanding of the

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Beatitudes. And I remember when I first got saved, I used to love to listen to J.

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Vernon McGee on the radio. He is a great PhD theologian who graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary.

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And he was on the radio and I heard him all the time. He's in heaven now, but used to, he was live on the radio all over the country.

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And he taught all the way through the Bible verse by verse. And then he wrote a set of commentaries from his radio show.

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And I have that set in my library. And if any of you want some great books, see if you can pick up J.

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Vernon McGee's commentaries at a used bookstore somewhere. You'll love him. He was both, he was absolutely brilliant as a theologian.

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Now he talked like this, though he said, now, ladies and gentlemen, we're going into the book of Luke here and in the

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Beatitudes. We have to understand that this is millennial literature and thousand year millennial kingdom literature, not for the church age.

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And a lot of people, you know, if you just stop at that, you think, well, he can't be right about that.

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But if you read everything he said about it, which I'm going to show you a couple of quotes from him towards the end of the day today. But if you read everything he said in context of how he said it, he was absolutely correct.

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So, I mean, the point I want to make right now is that he is speaking as the king to the kingdom, not to the church age.

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And just like J. Vernon McGee said, if you look at the Beatitudes, you don't find the gospel in it. The gospel message, salvation by grace is not in it.

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It's basically law. So now what's interesting though, is we just got through looking at the epistles of Paul, which is inspired, which are inspired by the

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Holy Spirit in Romans chapter 12, where Paul seems to quote some of this information and give it to the church.

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How do we deal with that? Is J. Vernon McGee incorrect or what?

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So we're going to ask that question, let you think about it for a few minutes as we go. So let's see what

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Jesus says. And if you do good to them, which do good to you, what thanks do you have?

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Because sinners do the same thing. Now, in the context of Old Testament saints and of the

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Old Testament Jewishness and all that, what do they mean when they say a person is a sinner?

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They mean he's a Gentile, okay. But what they really, if you want to put that in our vernacular, it means an unsaved person, a person who does not belong to the

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Lord, or at least they, you know, they like, I'm not sure everybody in the world understands this. Like we do here at Park Meadows and I have heard other people say it, thank goodness.

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But most people think there's only two kinds of people, goats and sheep, like lost and saved.

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But there's really three because it's more than lost or saved. I mean, you got goats who are lost and they're lost forever.

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And you got lost sheep who are lost, but they're going to get saved at some point in their life. And the Lord knows exactly the day and hour they're going to get born again.

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And then you got saved sheep, right? Saved sheep, lost sheep, lost goats.

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So those are the three kinds of people in the world. So when they said sinners, the Jew meant that's a goat.

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Okay, now could they really tell if that's a goat? Because maybe it was a lost sheep who runs with the goats and he's not saved yet, but he will be saved.

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They didn't even get into that distinction. They should have, but they didn't. But basically what

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Brother Otis was getting at is we shouldn't call ourselves sinners because once we got saved, we're saved from our sin and we're not sinners, we're saved people.

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Because to Brother Otis, a sinner was a goat or a lost sheep at best, not a saved sheep.

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And he technically was correct when he said that. That's the proper use of this. We shouldn't go around saying,

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Lord, forgive me, I'm a sinner. And I know Paul said he was the worst, but when you look at some of these phrases in the

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Greek construction, it's interesting. And sometimes you can see it in English, like when it says the word sin, it usually means the old sin nature and like sinner type person, a person who's in habits of these things because they're not saved yet.

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But when you have the word, when you have the letter S added, you make it plural like sins, then it's talking about an act of sinning and Christians can do that.

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So you're a person who can sin, but you don't love the sin like the goats do.

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You don't love the sin like they do. You hate the sin, makes you feel bad when you do it. So you're not a sinner, you're a saved person who sinned.

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That's an important distinction, but I mean, I know most people can't understand it. You guys can, but so if you try to bring this information to your friends and your family at Christmas when you're together, might be wise not to bring up that distinction because they're not gonna care about it that much.

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But you and I, we're mature enough as Christians to talk about it. All right, so first of all,

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I just find that interesting, that usage because Jesus says sinners, sinners do good to people that treat them right.

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And he's telling you, look, if you're gonna be a child of your father, you're not gonna be like the sinner, which means the lost person, obviously in the context.

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So you can also do good to those who are not good to you because even the sinners can be good to people that are good to you.

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So you see the point, right? And there we see the same phrase enemy again here in a minute.

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And if you lend to them of whom you hope to receive to get paid back, how would the

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Lord thank you for doing that or call you a good person because you did that because even the sinners do that. Sinners lend to sinners and they receive the money back with interest and that's no big deal.

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So the Lord is clearly saying, when you lend to somebody, you don't need to think about it like you're gonna get paid back.

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And I'll tell you this just from experience. I think if you look at the highest level of spirituality, which is

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Jesus himself, if someone were to ask Jesus for his coat, he would give it to him. He wouldn't even think, well, are they gonna give it back?

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Am I gonna get it back? He wouldn't think like that. And that's what he's saying here. That's the highest level.

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But I would say this, if you're not at that level and someone asks you to borrow money, they wanna borrow money from you, you need to at least think this way.

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All right, Lord, I'm gonna sleep on this and pray about it. It's okay for you to tell them that. Say, you know, I'll sleep on it, pray about it.

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Don't ever obligate yourself immediately. Don't say, okay, how much you need? Don't do that.

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Say, let me sleep on it and pray about it. That's good in business. It's good in family. It's good everywhere. And as you pray about it, you need to be willing, if you're gonna loan money to that friend or family member, you need to be perfectly willing with a totally free heart that if they don't pay you back, you don't care.

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Not that you, it's okay to tell them, you need to pay me back. I want you to pay me some interest and I want you to pay me, you know, at the end of the year,

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I want all of it back. It's okay to tell them that, but in your heart, you should realize they're probably not gonna pay you back and it's gonna be okay.

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And if it's not, don't loan them the money. Now, if you wanna go to a higher level, if you're

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Christ -like, you just, they need it and you think they're gonna use it for something good and not for booze or something, then loan it to them and you're probably not gonna get paid back.

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But I mean, this is the highest level that we're talking about. We're gonna comment on this, all of these things here in a minute.

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I'm gonna read some J. Vernon McGee to you and give you my thoughts on it. All right, so if you lend to them, all right, we saw that part.

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Look at verse 35, but love you your enemies and do good to your enemies.

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Now remember, enemy means your adversary, not really an enemy in battle. It's not talking about that.

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It's talking about people who've treated you badly in church or in your neighborhood or somewhere in town or whatever.

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Love people that are your adversaries, do good to them and lend to them if they need money, hoping for nothing again, don't hope they're gonna pay you back and your reward will be great.

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Now, where? Well, some people would say in heaven, but I think it means here and in heaven.

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I'll prove why I think that in a minute. And you shall be the children of the highest.

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Now, does that mean the way you get saved is by keeping these laws here? Absolutely not.

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It doesn't mean that way, especially not in the Greek. For he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

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Who is he there? That's God. And by kind, it simply means he gives them rain on their crops. He gives them sunshine on their crops and they hate him, but he's kind to them in that sense.

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And so we'd be more Christ -like and more like God if we can be kind to our adversaries is what the whole teaching here is.

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Be therefore merciful as your father also is merciful. So the whole thing is talking about showing mercy to people that don't deserve it, right?

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That's what it's talking about. That's a higher level. Now, let's look at this little part here because this can be problematic if we don't get this right.

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If you do these things, like you love your enemy, you do good to those who don't do good to you, you turn the other cheek, all the different things in the

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Beatitudes, then you shall be the children of the highest. Does that mean that these things cause you to become a child of God?

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Or does it mean if you are a child of God, you find it easier to do these things than the natural man?

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That's actually what it means. And you look at it in the

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Greek, it's the future middle tense. And interesting, the middle voice in Greek is something that English doesn't even have, but it means the subject of the verb is seen as acting upon itself and for its own benefit.

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So this is a decision that Jesus lets us make. In other words, it's not passive.

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It's not like God just does this to us. This is a decision we get to make every time someone abuses us in the moment.

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Now think about that, in the moment, we gotta take a second or two to say, Lord, give me the mind of Christ because if I just reacted with what my flesh is wanting to do right now,

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I'm gonna strike them back, right? So give me a moment, Lord, give me the mind of Christ.

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Now, Lord, what do you want me to do in this situation? That takes a few seconds, all right?

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But it's still left to us to act at that moment. Do we do good to this hateful person?

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Do we love this person with agape love, which means love that comes from my heart, not from what he deserves, because he doesn't deserve it.

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But my heart, my God -like heart can love him anyway. That's mercy. Will I do that or will

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I not do it? We need to make that decision. And it's in the middle of voice, which means we do it for our own benefit.

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So what does that mean? That means we will get a reward in heaven every time we do that from a sincere heart.

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But I think it's further than that. It can't be further than that. That's the best, right? But there is an earthly physical benefit as well, because look at verse chapter six, verse 38.

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If you went on down past where we are now, Jesus says, give, and it shall be given unto you.

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And that's in the context of all this stuff we just read. If you give to this person who doesn't even deserve it and you don't get the money back because he doesn't pay you back, which most of them won't, even people that go to church with you, they usually won't pay you back.

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I've experienced that my whole life. I still got a deacon at a big church in Dallas that owes me 5 ,000 bucks.

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Every time I go to that church for a conference or something, he greets me at the door like it never happened. How do you do that?

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I don't know. I don't know how you do that, but I didn't loan him the money without thinking, well, he's probably not gonna pay me back, all right?

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So it's between him and the Lord at this point, and that's how we have to think of it. But when we do do this, look what it says happens.

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Give, and it shall be given unto you. Good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and running over shall men give into your bosom.

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Now think about this. It is a man or woman that you loan that money to who didn't pay you back.

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It's not a group of men and women. It's a singular, right? This is plural on the receiving end.

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So when we do good to a person and we show mercy like God would show, and they treat us despitefully, they don't pay us back, they don't even look at you when you walk by them because they can't face you anymore.

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God says that God will ensure that other people will pay you back with interest.

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They'll pay you back good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. That's a whole lot more money than you gave away and lost seemingly.

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You get a whole lot more back while you're on this earth. That's clearly men doing it on the earth and space and time.

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That's not in heaven. Now we do get rewards in heaven too. So we get both. Isn't that cool? The Lord tells us that.

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So we need to think about that when we're acting, when we're in that moment, we're thinking of how are we gonna react here? We're gonna do it in the flesh?

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Are we gonna be Christ -like and have mercy on this person and receive a reward for it?

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Well, I'd like to have the reward, so I'm gonna do that. That's how we might wanna be thinking about it.

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Okay, so let me talk to you a little bit from J. Vernon McGee, and I wish

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I'd have made it where it popped in one at a time, but I didn't. So just focus at the top, read along with me. This is what

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J. Vernon McGee said about the beatitude part, which obviously Paul was quoting from some of that, wasn't he?

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In Romans chapter 12. He says, J. Vernon McGee says, the Sermon on the

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Mount is the law lifted to the nth degree. For example, Jesus said, you say that if you go out with another man's wife, you committed adultery.

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I say, if you look at her and lust for her, you've committed adultery in your heart already. That is a much higher, more difficult law to keep than the 10

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Commandments, as the Jews read the 10 Commandments. This is really Jesus explaining to them the 10

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Commandments. This is really Jesus interpreting God's law and saying, it's a lot higher than you interpret it.

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So J. Vernon McGee is correct when he says, it's the law lifted to the nth degree, or you could put it this way, it's the law lifted to God's viewpoint of how he interprets the law.

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Think about that. Man could not keep the law in the Old Testament. So how could he possibly keep the

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Sermon on the Mount, which is even higher? That is, how could he do that in his own strength?

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Because J. Vernon McGee was battling a lot of preachers who were uneducated and they don't study and they preach stuff that's totally ridiculous.

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And that's going on today. It was going on back in the 70s and 80s when J. Vernon McGee was on the radio too.

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But he's battling these preachers to say, well, the Sermon on the Mount, you gotta live by it if you're gonna be saved.

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You gotta live by this. And that's the same as saying you gotta keep the law to be saved, which is false.

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We live under grace, not law. So that's kind of the point he's making here is, look, if you really think this is a list of things you could do to make you be a child of God, you are totally wrong because this is a higher level of law than the

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Jews interpreted the law and they couldn't keep that, okay? So then he points out there is no gospel in the

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Sermon on the Mount, J. Vernon McGee. All this is a quote from J. Vernon McGee on this page here. There's no gospel in the

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Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount does not tell you God's plan of salvation in the church age.

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It just doesn't tell you. What it is is teaching you law, even a higher, more difficult law to keep than what the

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Jews thought it was. And then he says the modus operandi for Christian living is not found in the

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Sermon on the Mount. That's fascinating. He says it gives the ethic without supplying the dynamic.

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Now think about what that means. It gives you the ethic, but it doesn't show you how to live it.

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Interesting, don't you think? That's the difference between Jesus preaching in the

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Old Testament to the Jews and between Paul taking some of this information, putting it over in the epistles of Paul, which is directly to the church and saying, here's how we interpret it.

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Here's how we live it now. And I'm gonna end with that in a minute. But this is beautiful how the

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Holy Spirit gives it to us from Jesus, where he lays down the highest level of law there is. And really, as you'll see,

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I agree with McGee. In fact, I said it last week before reading this. So you know I'm agreeing with part of this is you've heard me say some of this stuff.

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And it's been so long ago since I read this. I don't think I was remembering him. I just agree that really what these things are is they are a list of Jesus's character.

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It's just Jesus showing himself to us. And we're looking at that as human beings saying, wow, how do we live that?

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Well, he doesn't tell us how to live it in the midst of the Beatitudes. He just tells you to live this way. Doesn't tell you how to do it.

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But you know what? He sent the apostle Paul to tell us the mysteries. And the apostle Paul included some of this information in Romans 12.

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And then he shows us how to live it in the book of Galatians and some of his other letters and even in Romans.

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So in the Beatitudes themselves, we have the ethic, but not the dynamic. Living by the power of the indwelling

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Holy Spirit is just not one of the truths that's taught in the Beatitudes, J. Vernon McGee correctly says.

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It is not contrary to Christian living though, because there were some preachers in McGee's day that were saying, hey, this is not even for Christians.

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There's no way a Christian can live this way. Well, that was wrong too. And he's pointing out that error. In fact, it expresses the very mind of Christ.

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See, that's what I've been saying. I think it's a picture of Jesus. But you will never attain them in your own strength, my friend,

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J. Vernon McGee says. You have a marvelous electric light bulb here, but you do not have a generator here that produces the power that will make light.

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And he said, it's not the light bulb that's important, it's the light. And you got the bulb, but you don't have the power to turn it on.

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It's found in the Beatitudes themselves. And that is so correct. I love the way you put that.

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The primary purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to set before man the law of the kingdom.

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I believe he's absolutely correct. He's talking about the millennial kingdom that's in our future. He's laying down the law for the future thousand -year millennial kingdom.

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We're talking about the king here. This is the manifesto of the king and the platform of the

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Prince of Peace. It is law. It will be the law of this world during the thousand -year millennial kingdom.

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It brings conviction and it lets man know they have sinned and that none are righteous, not one, and that all have fallen short of the glory of God.

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And that's what J. Vernon McGee felt like the use of this whole passage is in the church age.

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And I think he's so correct if you read everything he said. So now we've covered all these different things about Christian character, and really they are all the characteristics of Jesus Christ, 17 of them that I could count.

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And they're all things that we would not do on our first thought when someone treats us badly.

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Our first thought would be to do the opposite of these things. What does that tell us? We cannot do these things in the flesh.

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And that's what J. Vernon McGee was saying. So we go back to Galatians 2 .19,

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and now the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul gives us the dynamic.

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We got the ethic from Jesus. Now we get the dynamic on how to live that way from Paul. For I through the law am dead to the law that I might live unto

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God. So there's no way that I do this by keeping the list. I am crucified with Christ.

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That means my old flesh that can't possibly keep this list of law is already dead anyway.

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And the law is written for living people on the earth. I'm counting myself already crucified, dead, buried, and resurrected.

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It doesn't even apply to me in a true sense because I'm already on a higher level.

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I'm seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Nevertheless, I live, so I'm still in space and time.

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And he says, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. So the life that I now live in the flesh, in this body, he's saying,

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I live by the faith of the Son of God. Not my faith, but Jesus' faith.

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And that's how I walk, and that's how I live, and that's how I can even come close to these beatitudes.

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I live in this body by the faith of Jesus Christ who loved me and gave himself for me.

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I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness came by the law, then

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Christ is dead in vain. So he's agreeing with J. Vernon McGee. It's not a list put there for you to try to keep in order to be saved.

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You can't do it. A lost person, you shouldn't even show that stuff to lost people. There's just no way in the world they can deal with it.

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But to your children, and I say lost people, I don't know about goats, but like your children in your family that are still young, maybe they're lost sheep because they hadn't been born again yet, but you think they're sheep.

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Obviously, we always think our children are sheep, and we should think that. We should live as if they are and teach them the

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Bible. And part of the teaching is we teach them these beatitudes and say, this is how God would handle people that treated him badly.

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This is how Jesus handled people. So we need to be more like this. And you teach them these things, and it is law, but you teach it to them anyway.

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And then when they come to a point where they are born again and the Holy Spirit indwells their body and begins to lead them in how to properly live, then they have the dynamic or the power to actually begin to live that way.

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And that's obviously what the Apostle Paul taught. So we are done for the day.

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Be sure you go out to our church website, click on the archives there and click on Dr. Erwin Rocky Freeman and listen to some of those lessons by Dr.

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Freeman. And they're just magnificent. And I'm so proud of Ben Mitchell for getting so many of Brother Otis's on there.

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He's been finding tapes, old tapes where Brother Otis taught Sunday school and digitalizing them and loading them every week out there on the website.

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Those are really fun to hear. You've heard me talk about Brother Otis. You can actually hear his voice. You can sometimes hear my voice when

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I was in my forties talking in the background, trying to answer one of his difficult questions. You'll hear different people in our church.

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Some of you guys that have been in our church a long time might even hear your own voice on there. So that's pretty fun. All right, guys,

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I think we're done for the day. I appreciate all of you so much for being with us today and may the

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Lord bless you. And I know this is the end of the weekend of Thanksgiving holidays. We all had a wonderful time and thinking about all the great things

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God's given us. He let us live in the best time in history. At least my viewpoint, we do. And so bless all of you.

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We love you. And we will see you next time, hopefully in person in church. All right, bye -bye.