Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / The Sermon On The Mount

Raising The Bar By Being Generous With Grace 11/25/07

Message: ‘Raising the Bar…by being generous with grace’  

Text: Matthew 5:38-48

Introduction: What do most people do when they are insulted, hurt or betrayed? I believe it was that great philosopher and military strategist Kahn Noonian Singh who once said ‘Revenge is a dish that is best served cold.’ Here’s a modern example.

ILL: A truck driver is sitting in a crowded roadside diner ready to eat his lunch. It’s not just any diner and any lunch. It’s his favorite diner on the road and his favorite lunch.  Just as the waitress brings the truck driver’s meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy,  and green beans to his table, a motorcycle gang swaggers in the door.  Most of them seat themselves at the table next to the truck driver but there’s not  room at that table for all of them. The gang members left standing turn to the truck  driver and bark, “Move! We want that table!” The truck driver calmly says, “I haven’t finished my meal.” One of the motorcycle  toughs takes his dirty finger, swipes it through the mashed potatoes and gravy, sticks  his finger in his mouth and says, “Hey, not bad grub.” Another gang member takes  the trucker’s cup of coffee and slowly pours it over the remaining food on the plate  and snarls, “You’re finished now!” The trucker stands, takes his napkin, wipes his mouth, walks to the cash register,  pays for his meal, and silently walks out the door. All the bikers are laughing now.  One of them says, “Ain’t much of a man, is he?” The waitress says, “And he’s not  much of a truck driver, either. He just backed his rig over your motorcycles.” (Michael Luke)

Our tendency when someone insults us is to strike back, to get even! Physically, verbally, or otherwise. It’s called revenge and revenge has a tendency to escalate.

 

ILL: This is how gangs work. You come on our turf, we come on yours. You mess with our women, we’re gonna mess with yours. You shoot one of us, we have to shoot one of yours.

I’m sure you’ve seen one driver get cut off by another. Many times, right after giving that special salute, the driver who was cut off retaliates by “getting even”.

People fight for the idea of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. We think it’s justice. The only problem is, sooner or later the entire world ends up blind and toothless. (John Beehler)

Transition: Open your Bibles to Matthew 5:38 (pg. 740 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you) Where we’ll find we raise the bar of spiritual expectations and actions in our lives by being generous with grace.

I. Matthew 5:38  ‘You have heard that it was said…’

Read: Matthew 5:38

Boy does this verse get so many of us in trouble. We think it’s ok to give people just what they give us. After all doesn’t the Golden Rule say ‘Do unto others as they do unto you’? No. It says ‘Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.’

See the difference? Unfortunately many don’t because they misunderstand what the law ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ really means.

Here’s the problem.

·       Say you’re living in a society with no police, no courts not even a king to render justice.

·       Say your neighbor pushed your daughter so hard that he broke her arm.

What would you do?

·       There’s no legal authority to report it to…to seek justice. You would probably take matters into your own hands and seek retribution.

·       Maybe you would try to injury your neighbor the same way he hurt your daughter…doubtful!

·       Instead, maybe in your anger you would try to hurt him more than he hurt your daughter…perhaps even kill him.

·       So, after you take revenge by killing your neighbor for breaking your daughters arm, your neighbors family thinks they’ve been mistreated and respond by killing someone in your family, setting up a cycle of retaliation and revenge between you and them.

Something like this actually happened in Genesis 34 in an incident between Jacob’s family and the Shechem family. So, the law of Lex Talionis (Law of Retaliation) was made a part of Mosaic Law. ‘A eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ Means you can’t punish someone more than what they did to you. Or in modern terms, ‘the punishment must fit the crime.’

If someone killed your daughter they would be put to death. BUT, you couldn’t then go and kill his whole family.

However, just as it is today, it was misinterpreted in Jesus’ time to justify personal acts of revenge.

Transition: Jesus wants us to raise the bar, to live by a higher standard, to extend or offer grace instead of demanding our right to retaliate.

II. Matthew 5:39a  ‘But I tell you…’

Read: Matthew 5:39a

Once again Jesus is redefining the Law, not because it was wrong, but because the religious leaders taught the people a wrong interpretation of the Law.

Notice that the examples Jesus gives are not dealing with life threatening crimes. Rather, they deal with matters of personal confrontation. When your personal space has been violated by others and you get mad.

Transition: Jesus is saying that the Christian is called to follow a higher standard in life than seeking revenge. We can spend our time demanding our rights, or we can be a testimony of God’s grace by being generous with it to those who offend us. Jesus gives us some examples of ways to offer grace rather than revenge.

III. Matthew 5:39b-42 ‘Examples of grace 1’

Read: Matthew 5:39b-42

1. Strikes you on the right cheek

This really isn’t what it seems. Sometimes when we read Scripture too literally we miss what it’s actually saying. We need to go back to see what striking someone on the right cheek meant to people in Jesus’ day. When we do that, we find it really meant insulting someone.

Most people are right handed today and it can be assumed the same was true in Jesus day. So a slap on the right cheek was not meant to harm you, but insult you.

So when Jesus says ‘turn the other cheek’ he’s not talking about an issue of self-defense. He’s saying, ‘just let it go, let the insult roll off your back.’

Read: Proverbs 15:1a ‘A gentle answer turns away wrath…’

Don’t retaliate by giving insult for insult….instead be generous with grace, as God is with you each time you insult him with your sin.

Grace, as you remember, is getting what you don’t deserve. So by not responding in kind when insulted, we extend grace because the natural response is retaliation. Get it?

2. Someone wants to sue you for your clothes

It’s hard to understand this one w/o an Old Testament background.

·       OT laws state that if someone borrows money they can use their cloths as collateral. This was most likely a heavier outer garment worn in colder months.

·       Only the really poor would need to do this.

·       If one of the parties reneged on the agreement, the Pharisees made sure the courts got involved.

Jesus is saying ‘Don’t bother going to the courts, just give him your other clothes as well. Let’s make this relevant.

·       If you are sued for damages or child support, you should resist the temptation to think ‘I’ll pay only what I have to, and I’ll do that with such an attitude they’ll think twice before suing me again.’

The principal here is that we not allow material things to get in the way of our witness for Christ. We’re not to be selfish like the rest of the world because we live by a higher standard. Instead we  are generous with grace and give what is asked w/o an attitude.

A free and unselfish attitude toward material possessions is indicative of a strong trust in God.

3. Someone forces you to go one mile

What’s this all about? Again context…go back to see what it meant in Jesus’ day. When you do this you’ll find that Roman soldiers could force Jews to walk with them for a mile and carry part of all of what they had with them.

Anyone remember when this took place in Jesus’ life? Yes, when he was told to carry his own cross. This is the law in action.

Again, lets make this real because notice that Jesus doesn’t say ‘Roman Soldier’ but  ‘someone forces you to go one mile.’ . This means anyone. Some people have authority over us. If they’re puffed up with power they can make life miserable for us. The natural instinct is to resist. But Jesus raises the bar, he gives us another standard, don’t just go one mile, go two, do more than what is required.

By doing this we display a willingness to submit to inconvenience in order to display the grace of God in our relationships to others. To do more than required, more than expected and to do it with love.

There are certainly boundaries but it’s amazing how some difficult relationships are smoothed over when we do more than what’s expected. It’s a testimony to the work of Christ in your life and an example of godly grace.

4. Someone asks to borrow money

We need to look at a parallel passage in Luke 6:34-35 which shed a bit more light on what Jesus is saying.

Read: Luke 6:34-35 ‘And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.’

Key here is the phrase ‘without expecting to get anything back.’

In other words, make the loan to the person in need, but expect nothing in return; if he can’t pay you back consider it a gift. I doubt Jesus could ever get a job at a mortgage company.

So, do we go broke and comply with every request for money? Well, there are a few guidelines in Scripture.

·       1 Timothy 5:8 ‘If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.’

·       Matthew 7:6a ‘“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs.

There are certain people we know will abuse or misuse the gift and so we need to use discernment before giving to them.

Jesus is not saying we should be foolish in giving our money away.

The Psalmist agrees

Read: Psalm 112:5 ‘Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely, who conducts his affairs with discernment’

I believe the idea here is to be seen as one who is generous, not gullible, but generous and gracious with what God has entrusted to us.

IV. Matthew 5:38-42  ‘Summary’

Let me sum this passage up by giving an example from married life.

·       A husband comes home from work and he’s had a bad day and he’s not in good mood. He walks into the house and trips over a toy. “Does this place always have to look like a scrap metal yard?” he yells at his wife. “What do you do all day, anyway?”

·       Now she’s hurt, and insulted. It would be a sign of weakness, she thinks, not to retaliate. It would only invite further hurts not to retaliate. So she lashes back at him, “What do I do all day!” “What do you think I do all day? I simply stand around all day doing nothing since there’s nothing to do with three children. I merely wait for you, my liege, the King of his castle, to come home. Who do you think prepares your dinner every night?”

·       Now she’s getting sarcastic. In her pain she goes one step farther. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I can’t hold a candle to your secretary, Miss Lumpy Sweater or whatever her name is.” Now she’s gone on the attack, just to make sure her husband is pushed back far enough to allow her to survive.

·       Now her husband is wounded, and  insulted. But he can’t appear hurt; no red-blooded male is going to put up with an insult like this. So he comes back with his own retaliation. The fight is on and as it escalates its potential for irreversible damage increases.

·       The entire situation can be defused, and can only be defused, when one person, either one, simply turns the other cheek, be generous with grace to the other. But both have an image and an identity to maintain. Both are fragile; both fear that appearing weak before the other would mean ceasing to exist themselves.

·          There’s only one way out of having the self-preserving kind of mindset. We have to remember that our identity isn’t something we build for ourselves and then spend the rest of our lives shoring up. Jesus Christ gave us our identity and he maintains us in it.

Because Jesus made us who we are, we can always know who we are, regardless of what others may think  or say.  (Jim May)

So…in this situation and others like it, we raise the bar of spiritual expectations and actions in our lives

·       by going the extra mile,  by doing more than expected, by giving more than asked, by turning the other cheek

·       by being generous with grace.