Sermon OTM Matthew 5:38-48 01/26/2025
Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun
Come Lord and join us here today
You Lord, you who are rich in mercy
Even when we were dead
Have made us alive
Teach us now
The work of mercy
The ways of compassion
The practice of forgiveness
The life of serving others
So our neighbor
Each, one by one, individually
Can know
Can feel
Can experience
Mercy.
Give to us a name or a face to hold with mercy
Or a prompt in the moment to be especially kind
Receptive
Gentle
Tender
And patient
So that together
Our neighbor and ourselves can know your loving care
To know your goodness in action
To know you are near
To know we are not forgotten
To know all shall be well
Tangibly
In real time
In that given moment
Amen
Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 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. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you” Matthew 5:38-42
Intro: Today we reach the end of this second part of the Sermon
But not until Jesus takes us all the way to end of the trail we’re on
– we’ve been following a theme that began with Jesus saying,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. . . . For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 5:17-20)
• we’ve seen the heart of the Law and Prophets is relational
• Jesus will confirm this later on in Matthew’s gospel when he is tested by a lawyer
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Mt. 22:35-40)
◦ notice he makes reference to “the Law and the Prophets” again,
and he says that love for God and others is the summation of those Scriptures
– so after issuing the challenge to live a true righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,
• Jesus demonstrated what that righteousness looks like, using four examples:
◦ murder, adultery, divorce, and swearing oaths
◦ it’s not only what we do or don’t do, but it is especially what is in our hearts
• now we’re down to Jesus’ last two examples
◦ all his examples have challenged what we think we know, but
◦ his last word on this theme will be his most disturbing
“An eye for an eye”
How do you respond when you hear about a gross injustice?
– is it mildly annoying?
very frustrating?
infuriating?
• what if you’re the one who suffers the injustice?
◦ have you ever felt it so intensely that it kept you awake at night?
◦ I’ve never met a child who hasn’t cried, “That’s not fair!”
• the passionate reaction of being treated unfairly,
◦ can be so overwhelming we feel its strain physically as well as mentally
– it is a perfectly natural response to want to “get even”
• but sometimes it isn’t enough to “even the score”
◦ the imbalance requires a more severe penalty — so,
“If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep” (Ex. 22:1)
◦ but this has to be tightly controlled, because if it’s left to us, restitution can turn into revenge
• a vendetta between two communities or two families,
◦ can continue in ongoing retribution after retribution over many years
The regulation Jesus quotes is found in three times in the Law
– the best way to understand it, is as setting a limit to revenge
• in fact, God says, “Vengeance is mine”
◦ for Paul, this means God takes revenge out of our hands
• so Paul says, “never avenge yourselves” (Ro. 12:19)
Amy-Jill Levine suggests that the intent of the command, “an eye for an eye” was not “physical mutilation.” She says, “Indeed, almost all rabbinic texts suggest that the formula must mean financial compensation. They get there by logic: since no two limbs and no two eyes are equal, the destruction of one could not be compensated by the destruction of another.”
– this is the first insight we need in order to appreciate what Jesus is talking about
• we know by now, that he will take us behind the command to the spirit of the Law
• he shows us what the Law was meant to work within us, what it was to make us
◦ Jesus is telling us, “You don’t have to get even; you can travel a higher road”
In case you forgot, each example Jesus gives follows a pattern:
1. Jesus begins with a quotation, “You have heard that it was said”
2. He then presents his alternative, “But I say to you”
3. Then he provides an illustration of what that looks like
– here, his illustrations are outrageous
• but we’ve already come across outrageous illustrations,
◦ like, tear out your eye and cut off your hand
• I believe we’re to handle these rules of responding to an offence in the same way
Last week I explained how the Bible sometimes uses hyperbole
– exaggerations that are not meant to be taken literally
• that is what Jesus is doing here
• he exaggerates to intensify the impact of the point he is making!
From My personal meditations on scripture: If someone slaps me in the face, it may take great self-control to not slap back, but what is the point of offering my other cheek as if saying, “Here you go, slap me again”? Am I supposed to offer myself to the abuser for more of the same? How does it help? Does it resolve the problem? Would that please God? Well, it might please him more than if I were to take revenge. [At this point I got distracted by asking myself, “Why do we say ‘take’ revenge?”] Is turning the other cheek truly what our Father wants?
Anyway, if I’m insulted what would be the appropriate response of love? What would be an extreme example of that response? Perhaps Jesus is saying, better to error on the side of not reacting in kind than proliferate antagonism, animosity, and aggression.
I need more wisdom, more light on this passage. For now, I do believe Jesus is using hyperbole and perhaps even almost comically, (exaggeration is sometimes comical).
– it’s my opinion that at times Jesus intentionally used comical exaggerations
“If asked for your coat, give your undergarment too, and then hurry home because now you’re naked”
• I think his listeners most likely smiled – but got the point
• verse 42 is more along the lines of a realistic response
◦ give to the beggar, loan to the borrow
Another personal meditation: I believe Jesus wants to mold each disciple into a certain kind of person, from the inside out. In this specific example, he is illustrating the generous heart he wants each one of us to have.
“You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy”
“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 sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” Matthew 5:43-47
The “love your neighbor” is a real commandment
– “hate your enemy” is the liberty we take after we’ve done our duty to love
• this is pretty much normal human behavior
◦ in fact, it’s exactly how many Christians currently operate
• Jesus repeats two ideas we found in the Beatitudes:
◦ first, how the blessed person responds to persecution
◦◦ only this time he goes beyond rejoicing in anonymous persecution
◦◦ now we’re to love and pray for our actual persecutors
◦ second, the peacemakers will also be called “sons of God”
(here a specific identifier, “sons of your Father who is in heaven”)
◦◦ the Greek word “sons” includes daughters
◦◦ the point is that there is a family resemblance
these children of the Father behave in a way that is characteristic of God
– “For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good”
• the Greek word for evil is notoriously tricky to translate
v. 37, ponerou – v. 39, ponero – v. 45, ponerous
◦ it can mean sexual immorality, hardship, being overworked, pressured, diseased, wicked, and an evil person
◦ here it refers to the person who wrongs you
We find the command to love our neighbor as self in Leviticus 19:18
– in that context, it means others in the Israelite community
• but later in the same chapter is something we don’t often hear
“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself . . .” (Lev. 19:34)
• did you know that?
◦ we are to love the stranger who comes into our land as we love ourselves!
– if I were God, I would water the yards of all my children,
• and dry out the yards of the heathen
◦ I would discriminate in the ways I delivered my sunshine and rain
• that’s exactly the attitude when religion has gone bad
◦ like a baker who refuses to provide a cake for a gay couple
◦ we’re not God, so we’re not supposed to make discriminations he does not make
When Jesus says when we love only those who love us, we remember:
• that tax collectors were unpopular (associated with sinners, as in Matthew 9:10)
• and Gentiles were unacceptable to God, because they lived outside his covenant with Israel
– Jesus is asking, “What’s so special about your love?”
• “Do you expect a reward for loving only those who love you?”
◦ the implied answer is that there will be no reward for the love that does not go beyond one’s family, friends, and associates
(rewards will be a central theme in the passages that follow)
And now Jesus drops the bomb
“You therefore must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect” Matthew 5:48
“Perfect” translates a word I told you about last week: teleios
– it means complete, whole, a perfect fit
Jonathan Pennington, “To say that disciples must be teleios as God is teleios is to say that they must be whole or virtuous—singular in who they are—not one thing on the outside but another on the inside.”
– I think about integrity a lot – I admire people who have it
• I trust those people
• they live the truth of who they are – that is beautiful
Conclusion: I will leave you with these lines from Psalm 15
“O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent?
Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
and speaks truth in his heart (Ps. 15:1-2)
When the truth of our hearts, matches the truth all that we say and do,
we are living the Sermon On the Mount,
and becoming the people Jesus wants us to be