​            Words like “great” and “awesome” have lost a little bit of their punch in our language. We use them so often and for so many things that they’ve lost a little bit of their significance. For example, we might eat a really tasty pizza and say, “Wow! That pizza was awesome!” Or on the Fourth of July, we might rig up some kind of homemade bomb and when we set it off we say, “That was awesome!”
            I think it’s kind of humorous to put the dictionary definition of “awesome” into those statements. We’d feel kind of silly saying, “That pizza filled me with an overwhelming sense of reverence!” The dictionary does also mention an overwhelming sense of fear, so that might apply to your homemade bomb on the Fourth of July!
            Because of the way that we use words like “great” and “awesome,” when we talk in church about the Great Commission, we might wonder what’s great about it. Why do we call it the “Great” Commission, anyway? I’d like to give you four answers to that question today as we take a look at the commission that Jesus gave his disciples in Matthew 28:16-20.
            The event recorded in this passage is taking place after Jesus rose from the grave. The text says, “Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee [remember that Judas Iscariot is no longer part of the group!], to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.”
            That statement takes us by surprise in this story. What were the disciples doubting? Were some of them doubting whether Jesus had really come back to life?
            Most likely, their doubts were about their worship. The Greek term here includes the act of bowing down to someone, and even though the disciples were coming to understand that Jesus was God and the Messiah, he was also a human being, and the thought of bowing down to a human being would have been very foreign to the minds of these Jewish men.
            So most likely, they were having questions or doubts about what they should do now in the presence of Jesus. “Does he want us to bow down to him? After all, we remember him washing our feet and telling us not to act all high and mighty. What does he want us to do?”
            Jesus doesn’t address any questions of etiquette, but instead he gives them a mission, or we might say he commissions them for a job. Starting in verse 18, we begin to see why we refer to this as the “Great” Commission.
 
1. It comes from a great authority
            [READ v. 18] The first part of the Father’s plan for Jesus required him to submit to various human beings. He submitted to his parents while he was growing up, then later he submitted to the Jewish and Roman authorities.
            But the days for Jesus to submit to other humans are over. The Father has declared him to be the Lord of heaven and earth, and if only all men everywhere would worship him as such! But many people have not heard that Jesus is their Lord and Savior, or some have heard and they have continued in rebellion against him. And so, there is a need for the commission Jesus gives his disciples in verses 19 and 20.
 
2. It has a great goal
            [READ v. 19-20] What a lofty and satisfying goal this is, to call people to become apprentices of Jesus – to call them to embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior, then to make that fact known through baptism, then to learn from Jesus’ teachings how to navigate all the ins and outs of life.
            This is the greatest goal to which we could possibly devote our lives. What even compares to it? Accumulating a fortune that you just have to leave behind anyway? A fortune that your kids might fight over or even squander? Grasping for your 15 minutes of fame that might be gone even before you are?
            No goal could possibly be greater than this commission, and this commission also serves as the marching orders for the church. If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What should our church really be focused on?” there’s really no mystery to the answer. We are to make disciples of all nations, lead people to be baptized, and teach them how to live a life that’s based on the commandments of God. Now sure, some of the details will be different for different churches based on where they’re located and the resources they have, but our common goal is laid out right here, and it’s as plain as day.
 
3. It has a great scope
            Notice that Jesus told them to make disciples of all nations. Previously, in Matthew 10, Jesus had sent the disciples out on a short-term preaching tour, and at that time he had told them to stay within the boundaries of Israel.
            But now there was to be no such restriction. Since Jesus has all authority on earth, all the inhabitants of Earth need to hear the offer of peace from their crucified and risen King. The Gospel is not a message for Israel alone, but for all people. There is also no room for prejudice or racism in our efforts to spread the Gospel. The offer of salvation is made to all people, and all people need to hear it.
 
4. It comes with a great promise
            After giving his disciples this commission, he gives them this promise: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
            In may seem ironic that after giving this promise, Jesus left the Earth and returned to heaven just a few days later. But by doing so, he made it possible to be with all of his disciples all the time – at the same time, no matter where they might be. Remember that Jesus’ physical body could not be in two places at once any more than yours or mine can.
            But after returning to heaven, Jesus sent his Spirit upon his disciples on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit has come to live in every believer since that time. So Jesus has certainly made good on this promise, and he will continue to do so.
 
            The Spirit’s presence within us is a wonderful reality of the unity that we enjoy with Jesus through faith. Baptism is a wonderful picture of that unity as we symbolize the fact that through faith, we have died, been buried, and have been raised to new life with Jesus. Let us celebrate with those who choose to take this important step.

            As I’ve grown more mature, I believe I’ve developed the ability to stay fairly patient with people who hurt me or insult me. But when someone hurts my children, that’s a totally different story! That’s when my claws come out, and it takes everything I’ve got not to lose my cool.
            When someone hurts my children, I take that personally, and I can’t just pretend like it’s no big deal. To put it another way, I can’t be good friends with someone who isn’t good to my children. If you want to be close to me, you have to treat my children well because I love them dearly.
            According to the Bible, your relationship with God contains that very same principle. As God’s child, if you want to have a close, friendly bond with him, you must show love to your brothers and sisters in Christ. The way you treat them will either help you get close to God or it will hinder you from doing so. In fact, as we’ll learn today, we cannot truly say that we love God well if we do not love his children.
            This truth may rub you the wrong way if you are inclined to think of your relationship with God as an intensely personal sort of thing. It can be tempting to view our intimacy with God as being the sum total of nothing more than how much time we spend in prayer and how much time we spend in Bible study. If that’s true, then our relationships with other people don’t even factor into that equation.
            But the Bible forces us to factor other people into our relationship with God. Your relationship with the Lord certainly does have its personal elements, but what I hope you will see from God’s Word today is that it also has its interpersonal elements.
            Allow me to clarify one thing before we begin to look at some passages together. Some people have interpreted these passages as tests that you can use to measure whether or not you are truly born again. I do not interpret these passages in that way, and I would encourage you not to do so either. I think that interpretive approach has too many theological problems to be a good interpretation. Rather, I think these passages help me as a born-again person to measure whether I am walking in close friendship with the Lord or not. I would encourage you to keep these thoughts in mind as we proceed.
 
To Love God, You Must Love Others
            The Apostle John tells us in his characteristically blunt fashion in 1 John 4:20-21: “If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
            To John, the issue is cut and dry – if you think you’re loving God well but you hate your brother in Christ, you’re lying! You may not be trying to deceive yourself or anyone else, but that is the reality because loving your brother is part of what it means to love God. In the same way that staying faithful to your spouse is part of what it means to love them, loving your Christian family is part of what it means to love God.
            Now why does John place so much emphasis on sight and love? I think it’s because for John, love is truly expressed through the tangible sacrifices that we make for each other. I show love to you when I make a tangible sacrifice to meet the needs that I can see that you have. Notice what the Apostle wrote back in 3:16-18: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
            Also, the fact that we are physically together gives me extra motivation to love you. We’ve all heard that old phrase, “Out of sight, out of mind.” It’s easy to forget to think about someone if you don’t see them. But since I see you often, I can see it in your face when you’re sad about something, or I can see it when you might be in need of something that is necessary for life. The fact that I can see your needs should tug at my heartstrings and draw out the love that I am supposed to show to you.
            So I simply cannot claim that I am loving God well if I am not loving you well. This is easy to understand by comparison with our biological families. If I am causing pain and anguish for my siblings, how could I say, “I’m being a great child toward my parents?” That claim doesn’t fly with our biological families, and it doesn’t fly in the family of God either.
 
So we must love each other, and also…
 
We Must Forgive Each Other
            When we took a look at The Lord’s Prayer two weeks ago, we read these words from the Lord Jesus: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matthew 6:14-15).”
            In our day and age of cell phones, we’ve all had the experience of having poor reception. Perhaps we’re in an area with a weak signal, or something else might be causing interference. Whatever it is, when someone tries to get in touch with us, their call doesn’t get through because we have poor reception.
            Well, according to Christ, unforgiveness in my heart causes my prayer to have poor reception with God, so to speak. My behavior toward you has created a barrier in my interaction with God. It’s not enough for me to just faithfully follow my Bible reading plan or faithfully work through my prayer list. Until I correct my behavior toward you, that barrier will remain in my relationship with God.
            We saw the same kind of idea a few months ago when we were studying 1 Peter. In his instructions to husbands, Peter wrote this: “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered (1 Peter 3:7).”
 
            So from these passages, it should be clear – your relationship with God is not just a private matter between you and the Lord. Certainly, some parts of it are, but the way that you behave toward other people also factors into that relationship and affects the degree to which you enjoy a close friendship with God.
            So if we want to have a good relationship with the Lord, we must also have good relationships with other people by loving them and forgiving them when need be. When we will do that, we will find not only a greater unity with the Lord, but a greater unity with each other as well, and that unity will serve as a powerful testimony to the world that the message we proclaim about Jesus is true.
 
The Power of Unity for Our Proclamation of Truth
            Did you know that Jesus literally prayed for you and me on the night before he died? Christians who weren’t even alive yet at that time – he had us on the mind, and he prayed for us. Notice what he said in John 17:20-23: “I do not ask for these only [meaning the 11 disciples, minus Judas], but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” That’s you and me and all believers who have not seen Jesus in the flesh but have believed in him through the apostles’ testimony in the Bible.
            And what was his desire for us on that night? “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.” Jesus prayed that we would have unity – the same kind of unity of mind, desire, and purpose that he has with God the Father.
            And why did he desire that unity for us? What purpose would such unity accomplish? “So that the world may believe that you have sent me.” When we live in unity, our fellowship has the power to convince people that Jesus truly is the son of God, sent into this world to save mankind.
            Can people learn that by reading about Jesus in the Bible? Certainly they can, but sadly, people have all sorts of ingenious ways of evading the plain truth that they read from these pages. But when they see us living in love, with a unity that our world has never achieved, they will not be able to deny that Jesus has the power to change the hearts of mankind, and the only way that he could have such power is if he is the Son of God.
            Jesus continued his prayer for us: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” How will we ever convince the world that we have been saved by a supernatural love if we cannot get along with each other? If they see us bickering and fighting with each other, why would they ever believe that we represent the God who is love itself?
            But if we show them godly unity and love, we give tangible proof of the truthfulness of the Gospel message that we proclaim. So when we love each other, not only do we enjoy close friendship with God, not only do we enjoy close friendship with each other, but we also draw others into the same kind of relationship with God that we enjoy. For we who have received the love of God, should we desire anything less than to see others enjoy that love as well? May we display the unifying power of God’s love in our lives today!
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            When I play board games, I’m the kind of person who likes to play as an individual. If a game is designed for me to have a teammate, that’s fine—I can live with that. But sometimes, I find myself at a gathering that has 12 people, but we have a board game that only allows for four players. Now what? Some of you don’t mind just pairing up with another person, but I would rather bow out and watch everyone else play than play with someone as a team.
            The reason for that is pretty silly, to be honest—when I think I have a winning strategy, I get so stubborn that I don’t want to have to work with anyone else! They may not see the obvious superiority of my strategy, and they may have the audacity to suggest a different plan!
            Playing a board game as an individual is one thing, but there are some activities in life that simply require partnership and cooperation. Communication is definitely in that category. We’ve all been in one-sided conversations before, and we can all attest that they are a far cry from real communication. Communication truly is a two-way street; it involves sharing and receiving. If only one person is truly interested or active in a conversation, communication simply will not take place.
            In the last couple of weeks, we’ve learned that God communicates to us through the Bible. Today, we’re going to start talking about how we communicate to God, and that is through prayer. Along with obedience, prayer forms a major part of how we respond to what God communicates to us in the Bible.
            Since prayer does form a major part of our response to God, it’s just like God to give us plenty of teaching about it in the Bible. Today, we’re going to start taking a look at the model prayer that Jesus gave us which we often call “The Lord’s Prayer.” We’ll take a close look at the Lord’s lead-in to that prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, and in that lead-in we will find the roots of fruitful praying.
 
The Roots of Fruitful Praying
            If I had to sum it up, I would say that the roots of fruitful praying are to pray in a manner that fits with what our God is like. We must pray in a way that is befitting the kind of character that God has, as He has revealed it to us through His promises and actions. In that light, we find two attitudes in Matthew 6:7-8 that could give us a disease in the very roots of our prayer lives if we don’t watch out for them.
 
Diseased Attitudes About Prayer
 
1. God can be manipulated into answering my prayers
            Notice the warning that Jesus gives us in Matthew 6:7 – “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” Let me focus here not so much on what these non-Jewish people did, but on what they thought – they thought their prayers would be heard because of their own actions. Their confidence for answered prayer was not in their god, but in whether or not they did things in the proper way.
            In this case, Jesus highlighted the practice of offering long, drawn-out prayers, but the actions could be anything. He could’ve mentioned offering the proper sacrifices or demonstrating sorrow in a visible way like cutting yourself, because those were also common practices among the Gentiles.
            This attitude toward prayer is a hallmark of false religion. There are many examples of this notion that I can make my prayers effective by my own actions. Consider the Muslim habit of prayer, for example. They believe that their prayers will be effective if they offer them at precisely the right times of day, facing the proper direction, and with the proper order of standing, kneeling, and bowing. Or we could consider Hindu practices, such as crawling for miles to a temple in order to show your sorrow over your sins.
            Whenever I start to think that I can force God’s hand by something that I do, I am catching a disease at the roots of my prayer life. Yet it’s very easy to slip into this mindset. I might think to myself, “If I just get down on my knees and stay there until my knees are raw and my back aches, then God will see how serious I am about this prayer business, and he will answer my prayer.” Or I might think, “If I can just work myself into tears about this, then God will see how desperately I desire this request, and he will give it to me.”
            I have a friend who preached at a church one time, and during the course of the service he prayed a prayer from the pulpit. After the service, the elders of that church were furious with him because he didn’t end his prayer in the way that they thought was necessary. They told him that he had to end his prayer with, “In Jesus name I pray.” They thought his prayer wouldn’t be effective with any other ending.
            My friends, let me be clear about this – when God grants us what we request, it is not because of anything we have done, but simply because of what God is like. He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He is willing to answer prayer because he is good, not because we have made him cry “Uncle!” by using the right postures or the right phrases.
 
Remembering what God is really like is the key to avoiding the second diseased attitude.
 
2. God needs to be convinced to care about me
            The Lord continued his teaching on prayer by saying this in verse eight: “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” In their religions, the Gentiles had no reason to think that their gods really cared about them. Perhaps their gods kept tabs on them, but there wasn’t really a notion of personal concern or affection.
            For that reason, their prayers were more like uninvited interruptions, and if you’re going to interrupt your god and make a request, it had better be good, right? You had better speak eloquently, or you better offer lots of compliments. Or better yet, you might try to butter him up by offering some gifts or making some vows.
            But what a drastically different situation we face when we pray to the true and living God – the God of the Bible! As Jesus reminds us here, he is our Father, and one way he demonstrates that is by keeping up with our needs – anticipating them and knowing them before we even realize that we have them!
            When we go to God in prayer, we are like a weary traveler who stops at a home to ask for shelter only to find that the table has already been set for our arrival! The bedsheets have already been turned down in expectation of our visit! Prayer is not a means to convince God to care about us because he already does!
            When we feel like God needs to be convinced to care about us, the result is that we will not pray about very many things. We will consider most things to be too insignificant to merit God’s attention, so we won’t pray about them. Consequently, we will miss out on a multitude of opportunities for God to strengthen our faith by showing his faithfulness through his compassion and care.
            We know God cares about the “big” problems in our lives. We know he cares when we are diagnosed with a devastating disease, or when we receive that eviction notice – but does he still care when we’ve lost our car keys for the third time in a week and we have to get to an appointment? Should we think that we have an invitation to pray even about that, or should we feel like it would be an interruption?
            I’ve certainly had my ups and downs with battling this prayer disease, but I can tell you that when I have chosen to pray to God about the “little” things, he has so often delighted my heart by showing me that he cares. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve prayed that we could find a child’s blanky at bedtime! And you know what? We still have their blankies!
            I remember a time a few summers ago when I was briefly working for Matthew over at United Suppliers. I was driving a delivery truck, and I usually had to leave pretty early in the morning to make my deliveries. On one particular morning I arrived at the warehouse and for some reason, my key simply would not unlock the door! It was like someone had changed the lock; I just couldn’t get in.
            Because it was so early, I didn’t want to call Matthew and bother him, so I said a prayer something like this: “Lord, I really don’t want to have to bother Matthew right now, but our customers need this delivery. Would you please help me get into the building?” I don’t know if an angel came and straightened out my key or something, but I put it back in the lock, and that knob turned as if it had just been freshly oiled!
            When we fail to pray about the little things, we miss out on so many opportunities for God to show his concern and to build our faith. God cares about you, and he even cares about the little details of life. You don’t have to convince him to care, so go to him with all of your concerns.
 
Now that we have dismissed these diseased attitudes about prayer, we might be left asking ourselves…
 
What is Prayer All About?
            If prayer is not a way to make God work for me, what is it all about? If it’s not a method to convince God to care about me (since he already does!), then what is its purpose? If it’s not even a tool to inform God about my needs (since he already knows them), then what is it really for? By remembering that prayer is part of a cycle of communication, I think we can readily see one purpose.
 
1. It is a way to express my love to God
            Even if you know that someone loves you deeply, it’s still good to hear it again, isn’t it? And even if I’ve expressed it to my loved ones a thousand times, it’s still good for me to say it again – “I love you!” Expressing your love has an interesting way of expanding your love. When you express your love to God, it reinforces that love and builds it.
            When you pause to pray, that choice communicates that you value your relationship with God. Even if you don’t speak the words “I love you,” your actions demonstrate it. Expressing love is a healthy and vital part of any relationship, and prayer is one of the ways that you can express your love to God.
 
And when we think about what God wants to build in our lives, I think we can see another purpose for prayer.
 
2. It is a way to express and cultivate humility in my heart
            Whenever you pray to God to thank him for something or ask him for something, that act is a tacit admission that you cannot live this life on your own. Praying to God reveals that you understand your need for him; praying to him even about the little things in life demonstrates that you know you need his power and intervention every moment of the day.
            Perhaps more than anything, a lack of prayer should be seen as a symptom not of busyness or forgetfulness, but of pride. When I do not pray frequently, my actions express that I believe I can make it through most of life just fine on my own. In those moments, I am treating God more like a safety net than a shepherd, as if he is simply something for me to fall on when I’m in trouble rather than a kind master whom I have to trust for every need in my life.
            I’m starting to think that the main reason that God answers prayer is this – because prayer expresses humility, and God has promised to give grace to the humble. James and the Apostle Peter both remind us that God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. Because God is good, he delights to respond with kindness and grace toward those who humbly approach him.
            Why would we ever hesitate to pray to a God like that? Why should we ever doubt whether he cares about the things that concern us? He has given us this wonderful way to express our love and our humility to him. May we not be negligent to use it!
​

            When we study the life of Jesus, we run across some events that we certainly can’t repeat and can hardly even imitate. For example, we read about Jesus telling people precisely what they we’re thinking in their own minds. Despite what our children may think from time to time, we all know that we can’t read other people’s thoughts! We also read about an event like the Transfiguration, when the glory of Jesus’ divine nature began to shine through him and make his body glow. We certainly have no way of imitating Jesus in that.
            But when we look at the Lord’s baptism, we discover that we can imitate him in this through our own baptisms – not in all the details of course, but certainly in the spirit of why Jesus was baptized. So today, we’re going to take a look at the baptism of Jesus to see how we might be able to follow his example.
 
Setting the Stage
            To understand part of the significance of Jesus’ baptism, we have to place it in the overall story of his life. As you all know, Jesus was born into this world with tremendous fanfare and a number of supernatural events. The angels were working overtime, we remember, as angelic visitors came to speak with Mary, Joseph, and Zechariah, and then a whole choir of them appeared in the sky to announce the Lord’s birth to the shepherds. A supernatural light led some Wise Men from the East to the place where Jesus was, and they referred to him as the King of the Jews!
            And after all of those incredible events, we read about – well, we read about not much of anything until Jesus was around 30 years old! Apart from one story of Jesus demonstrating his knowledge in the Temple when he was 12 years old, the Bible doesn’t record any details about Jesus’ childhood. Apparently, he just lived a quiet and normal life for all those years!
            I have to think that the fact that Jesus lived such an ordinary life for so long must’ve been very confusing and frustrating for all of the people who knew about his incredible birth. Surely for so many years they were on pins and needles, just waiting for amazing things to happen through him, yet here he was, growing up just like a normal Jewish boy.
            Jesus’ baptism was the event that began to change all of that. From that day forward, Jesus’ life was anything but ordinary. It was extraordinary in every way, so the Lord’s baptism marked a major turning point in his life.
            This moment began to take shape when Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, began to baptize some of their fellow Jewish countrymen in the Jordan River. John likely earned his nickname “the Baptist” because what he was doing was so unusual to the Jewish people. You see, the Jews did not use the ritual of baptism for themselves – they used it exclusively for Gentiles who wanted to convert to their religion.
            The Jews thought of the Gentiles as needing a fresh start – a whole new beginning, which is part of what baptism symbolizes. They didn’t see themselves in the same light, however. Sure – they were aware that they committed sins now and then, but they believed their connection to Abraham put them on good terms with God from the moment they were born.
            But John came along and warned the Jewish people that that was not true. If they wanted to be on good terms with God, they needed a fresh start, too – just the same as the Gentiles did. They had to realize that your family tree does not make you right with God – your faith does, so they needed to repent of their sins and express their faith in God.
            So John’s call for the Jewish people to undergo baptism was very unusual. His ministry drew a lot of attention, and the fact that the public was focused on John seems to have been at least part of the reason why Jesus came to him to be baptized as well. Jesus’ baptism served as his coming-out party. This was his big entrance onto the public stage, and with the supernatural events that took place, it made for quite an entrance!
            Baptism is supposed to serve a similar role for us. It serves as our entrance onto the public stage as followers of Christ. When you place your faith in Jesus, that decision begins to transform you, but nevertheless, other people will not know that you have made that decision unless you tell them. Your baptism is meant to serve as your formal declaration that you are a follower of Jesus and that you want to be identified with him.
 
Matthew 3:13-17
            Let’s take a closer look at what happened when Jesus came to be baptized by John [READ vv. 13-14]. Notice how John initially resisted Jesus’ request to be baptized. After all, John’s baptism was designed for people to express repentance, and he knew full well that Jesus had nothing to repent of!
            But Jesus persuaded him with this reply [READ v. 15]. Jesus knew that it was God the Father’s will for him to be baptized, and this statement is just one of many that highlight the care and concern that Jesus had at all times to carry out His Father’s will. In John 4:33, Jesus described obedience as the very food that sustained his soul: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”
            In his eagerness to do the Father’s will, Jesus has given us precisely the example that we should follow. We must also have a careful concern to obey God’s will in everything. Before the Lord Jesus returned to Heaven, he spoke these words to his disciples in Matthew 28:18-20: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit (here is another reason why we baptize – because Jesus commanded it for his followers), teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
            It’s almost as if Jesus could have said, “Teach them to follow my example. Just as I obeyed the Father in everything, teach my disciples to obey all that I have commanded you.” For us, choosing to be baptized is an expression of our commitment to do all that Jesus has commanded us. And with such a public expression should come a new level of accountability with your brothers and sisters in Christ. We should celebrate with this young lady today and affirm the decision that she has made to follow Jesus. We should renew and recommit to our efforts to encourage her and help her learn as a child of God.
            Jesus was very careful to carry out the Father’s will, and on this occasion of his baptism, the Father wanted to make his opinion of Jesus publicly known so that everyone who witnessed this event might begin to understand exactly who Jesus was. Notice what took place after Jesus came up from the water [READ vv. 16-17].
            The Jewish people in this crowd who witnessed these things and who knew the Old Testament well may have had their thoughts turn toward Isaiah 42:1-2, which says, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”
            For everyone who witnessed Jesus’ baptism that day, the man that they saw go down into the water may have just seemed like a young man from Galilee. But when he came up from the water, they had unmistakable signs that this man was unique and special. From this moment on, Jesus’ life would never be quiet or private ever again. These people had heard from heaven that Jesus is the Son of God, and if they followed his life, they would start to learn exactly what that meant.
            God the Father’s declaration from heaven is filled with such love and compassion. It would be a terrible oversight for me not to remind you today that when you accept Christ as your Savior, you enjoy what we might call the “spillover effect” of the pleasure that God the Father has in God the Son. When you are born again, on the spiritual level your life becomes hidden in Christ, so that the deep pleasure that God the Father has in Jesus spills over onto you as well.
            Just because of your new status as a child of God, He takes great delight in you as well. This fact that we are joined together with Christ is also part of what we symbolize through baptism. The act of going under the water and coming back out again symbolizes that we have been joined together with Jesus in his death, his burial, and his resurrection so that now our destiny is tied up in his destiny. Because of what he has accomplished, we are a new creation – dead to ourselves and our old passions and desires and alive to God as his own children.
            May we rejoice today in all that Jesus has accomplished for us, and in how the act of baptism reminds us of that and symbolizes it for us. May we rejoice and celebrate with this young girl who is taking such a great step of obedience and setting a great example for us all!
           
​

            On this Mother’s Day, I would like to look with you at the story of one of the greatest women of faith in the whole Bible. Now, each of you probably has your own idea about which woman I may be thinking of. Some of you are likely thinking, “We’re about to look at the book of Ruth!” That’s a good guess, but that’s not where were headed today. Now that you’ve heard that, you’re probably thinking, “Oh – we’re going to study the story of Esther.” Another good guess, but wrong again.
            I would tell you the name of the woman whose story we’re going to read today, but the truth is the Bible doesn’t tell us her name! In fact, she was a woman who was not even supposed to be alive. Let’s find out about her, shall we? Turn with me to Matthew 15:21-28.
            This passage is in the Gospels, so of course it is recording an incident from the life of Christ. Verse 21 begins by telling us, “And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.” Before we continue, let me explain a bit about why Jesus was headed to that area.
            The district of Tyre and Sidon was north of Israel and was actually a different country. If you think of Israel as the United States, it would be as if Jesus had traveled into Canada at this point. The Gospel of Mark makes it a bit more clear that Jesus had crossed the border at this point in time seeking some rest and relaxation for himself and the 12 disciples. They had been engaged in ministry continuously for some time, and they were beginning to wear out.
            Here’s what Mark 6:30-33 says about that stretch of time: “The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.”
            So they were trying to get a bit of rest, but it was proving to be impossible to get away from the crowds. The same thing happened again just a few verses later in Mark 6:53-55: “When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was.”
            After all this, Jesus decided that they truly needed to get away from it all, so the beginning of this same story in Mark 7:24 says this: “And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden.” It’s important for us to realize, then, that Jesus had not come into this area to do ministry, either through teaching or healing. Remember that detail, because it will help us understand what is to follow in this story.
            Back in Matthew 15 now, verse 22 begins with, “And behold.” Don’t rush over that like it some throwaway word! It’s like Matthew is saying, “You’re not going to believe what happened next!” And what did happen next? “A Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.’”
            Two facts in this verse make this whole situation highly ironic. The first is the fact that this woman was a Canaanite. The Canaanites were ancient enemies of the people of Israel. They were the people who lived in the land of Palestine during the time of Joshua and the Conquest, the people whom the children of Israel were supposed to wipe out completely through battle. Now please understand that when God gave that command, he was not being mean-spirited or bloodthirsty or prejudicial. That command was a judicial act on the part of God, who is the rightful judge over all the earth. He was passing a judgment on the Canaanites because they were exceedingly wicked people. Yet the Israelites did not fully obey that command, and so the Canaanites continued to live in various parts of the Promised Land, which allowed this woman to be alive at that time and in that place in order to cry out to Jesus.
            The second fact is that this woman called Jesus the Son of David. If you do a search for that phrase in the Gospel of Matthew, you’ll discover that the religious leaders were outraged when anyone suggested that Jesus was the Son of David because that title connected him to all of the prophecies about the Messiah from the Old Testament. To call Jesus the Son of David was at least the beginning of faith in him, and in the Gospel of Matthew that affirmation was only made by the unlikeliest of people, such as blind beggars on the side of the road and this Canaanite woman.
            But Jesus responds to her in a way that seems a bit surprising [READ v. 23]. Now the sense seems to be that the disciples were saying, “Lord, just give her what she wants and get her out of here! It’s embarrassing having this woman carrying on like this!” What tremendous compassion from the disciples! A lot of concern for the woman, right? Their request basically amounted to, “Lord, use your power to get this nuisance away from us!”
            But Jesus reminded them of something in verse 24 when he answered them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That statement might sound a bit cruel or even bigoted to us, but we need to see it from a different perspective. Jesus had not been sent into the world to heal every person on earth at that time who was sick or demon-possessed. Please do remember that, because if that had been Jesus’ mission, then unfortunately we would have to say that he failed, because he never made it any further out of Israel than this.
            His first purpose in coming to earth was to offer to the Jewish people the kingdom that had been promised to them in the Old Testament. That’s why his earliest recorded sermons said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” It was not his highest mission to heal everyone he encountered, but to offer salvation first of all to the Jews, then the through them to the rest of the world.
            Also, with this response, I have to think that Jesus was setting the disciples up to see something they really needed to see – an example of great faith. Jesus told them several times in the Gospel of Matthew that they had “little faith,” so they needed to see great faith in action. Undoubtedly then, part of Jesus’ intention in verse 24 was to set up what came next.
            Let’s see what did happen next [READ vv. 25-26]. That statement almost sounds a bit rude, doesn’t it? But since it comes from the lips of Jesus, we have to conclude that he did not mean to be rude or prejudicial or hateful.
            I think Jesus was perhaps making that statement as kind of a proverb or a cliché, just like we sometimes say things that wouldn’t be very kind if you took them literally. For example, imagine that you were about to leave your house to run an errand and your spouse said, “Could you run this by so-and-so’s house?” You might possibly say something like, “Sure! If I’m going to go into town, I might as well kill two birds with one stone.”
            Now, you’re not really comparing that other person to a bird, and you’re certainly not talking about killing them! You’re simply using a proverb or a cliché, and I think that may have been the attitude with which Jesus made this statement. The statement itself was really a reminder that the woman did not have a right to ask this question. That didn’t necessarily make the question entirely inappropriate, but she could not lay any particular claim upon Jesus and expect him to oblige her request. In other words, Jesus was stating that she was not entitled to receive a blessing like this, not even in the way that the Jewish people could have made a case for receiving God’s blessings based on his promises to them.
            The woman’s reply revealed her trust in Jesus because she made it clear that she was not coming to him with an entitlement mindset at all [READ v. 27]. Notice how she agreed with what Jesus had said before she humbly made her request again. If I could paraphrase her statement, I think I would say this: “You’re right, Lord! You are not obligated to do this for me, and I can’t claim any right to receive this blessing, but I just know that with you, there are plenty of blessings to go around!”
            In other words, she was asking Jesus to help her not out of any obligation, but out of his mercy and grace. That’s an illustration of saving faith right there! When we ask God to forgive us of our sins, we are not asking for that because we feel we’re entitled to it. Rather, we are appealing to God on the basis of his mercy and grace, which is precisely what this woman was doing here.
            Jesus saw that clearly of course, so he complemented her and granted her request [READ v. 28]. This woman was a great example of faith because she appealed to Jesus on the basis of mercy and grace, not from any attitude of entitlement or obligation. That’s what set this woman apart from about everyone else in the Gospel of Matthew. The Jewish people had come to feel entitled to God’s blessings despite the fact that they were failing to obey him in many ways. But this woman understood the attitude that God delights to honor – an attitude of simple trust in him, through which we simply cast ourselves upon his mercy and grace.
            Finally today, notice how this woman exemplifies so many of the qualities that we appreciate about our mothers. She was persistent in seeking help for her child. She was not going to give up until her child’s needs were met! She was also very humble, and how many times have we seen great humility from our own mothers! They have frequently embraced thankless tasks simply out of their love for us. And many of us have seen in our own mothers examples of great faith in God. Make sure to thank your mothers for these things, and may we all learn from the great example of faith that we have seen in this Canaanite woman.
​

            I bet most of you think you’ve never done anything particularly shocking or outrageous, but let me tell you, you are some pretty scandalous people! Maybe not “headline news” scandalous, but scandalous in a more subtle yet astonishing sort of way. Here’s why—because you are people who pray as if God actually wants to hear what you have to say. Let me explain what I mean.

            In the history of thoughts about God and religion, Christianity is kind of infamous because of the extraordinary claims that we make. We claim that God Himself became one of us, and that as a human He died to pay for the very sins that we had committed against Him. We claim that Jesus has provided the only way for us to be forgiven of our sins. But right up there with these incredible claims, we have to place the way we pray. We believe we pray, as William Barclay put it, to “a God of love who is more ready to answer than we are to pray.”1

            Our beliefs about prayer capture some of the most distinctive elements about Christianity, yet it is here, in this very activity, that we face some of our strongest temptations to think and to act just like pagans. But our Lord Jesus has warned us about some of these temptations, and we would do well to pay attention to His warnings today.

            The Lord’s teaching on prayer in Matthew 6 stretches from v. 5 to v. 15. He first tells us how NOT to pray before giving us the model prayer that we refer to today as The Lord’s Prayer. We’ll go through v. 8 today to see what Jesus has to say about the temptations we face to pray in the wrong manner.

The Temptation to Pray in order to Get Recognition from Others

            This is the same temptation that Jesus warned us about with respect to giving in vv. 2-4. Now he sounds the warning about the same temptation with respect to prayer: “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.”

            Of course, the desire is not merely to be seen by others as in, “Oh, there’s Bob praying over there.” It’s to be SEEN by others as in, “Whoa—there’s Bob praying over there. Let us all bask in the warm glow of his holiness!” Jesus may have been painting a humorous word picture here. The Greek word translated “be seen” can be translated in some contexts as “shine.” That’s what the Pharisees wanted—they wanted to shine in the eyes of others, like people in toothpaste commercials who have that little sparkle of light reflecting off of their teeth.

            They wanted to have that kind of recognition from others, and to a certain extent they got it. But as with the previous paragraph, the Lord states, “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” Any recognition they received completed all the reward they would ever get.

            Now, the Lord is not saying that we should never pray in public. It’s the motive that’s the problem, not the location. Jesus Himself prayed in front of large groups before some of His miracles, but in terms of his daily habit of prayer, Luke 5:16 says, “He would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” So that’s the example that He calls us to follow: “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”

            If you have a walk-in pantry in your house, that’s the kind of room that Jesus was talking about in this verse. It’s a place where you’d be shocked to actually run into someone else. Of course, choosing a place like that to pray reveals that you’re not praying for an audience of anyone but God. And for that, Jesus says, “your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

            So we must be on guard against this temptation to use prayer as a forum for showing off. A good way to do that is to do your regular praying in private. Then, if you are in a public setting of prayer, just be aware that this temptation may rear its ugly head.

The Temptation to Use Prayer as a Tool for Manipulation

            Jesus has more to say about prayer than He does about the other activities in this section—giving to the needy and fasting. Exhibit A in the lesson of how NOT to pray was the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jewish people. For Exhibit B, Jesus turns his attention outside of Judaism to focus on the Gentiles, which is simply a general term for anyone who is not Jewish. Its usage is similar to the way that we might refer to all Native Americans as “the Indians”—it’s a very general term that lumps together lots of people into one category.

            Here, the focus is not on ethnicity but on the way that non-Jewish people around Israel at that time practiced their religion. In v. 7, Jesus says, “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” What exactly does Jesus mean when He says, “do not heap up empty phrases?” The King James and New King James translations say, “do not use vain repetitions.” What is Jesus getting at?

            Some students of Scripture have thought that Jesus may have been speaking against the use of memorized prayers, since of course you are repeating the same words if you pray a memorized prayer on a regular basis. But I don’t think that memorized prayers were Jesus’ primary concern, at the very least. Obviously, the Lord does not want us to turn our brains on auto-pilot and just go through the motions, but you can do that whether you’re praying a memorized prayer or not. Just listen to yourself pray before a meal and ask how many times you’ve gone through the motions and used those exact words.

            All in all, I think using a memorized prayer can be just fine in the same way that singing “Amazing Grace” for the 20,000th time can be just fine. If your mind is engaged and the words accurately reflect the thoughts of your heart, then using a memorized prayer could be just as acceptable to God as praising Him by singing an old hymn.

            The key to understanding the Lord’s warning here is simply to keep it in context. He says, “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” One common thread in Gentile religion, whether it was Canaanite or Greek or Roman, was that prayer was an effort to convince a god who was indifferent toward you to intervene on your behalf. They had no confidence and no real reason to think that their gods really cared about them all that much, so their prayers had to persuade their god to act.

            Sometimes, they would butter up their god by piling on as many compliments as they could: “Oh great, awesome, majestic, wonderful, stupendous, spectacular deity…” Or they might remind their god of all the sacrifices they had offered, or make vows to do certain things if their prayer was answered. In some religions, they would cut themselves or do other painful things to try and move their god to show them compassion.

            And of course, the longer you did all of this, the better, because it would increase your odds of gaining your god’s attention. This is the kind of praying that Jesus is talking about. He’s telling us not to approach our Heavenly Father with the same kind of ideas that the pagans approached their gods. To put it another way, He’s telling us not to approach God the way we used to approach our teachers in high school when we would fluff up a research paper. Everyone knows an eight page paper looks better than a six page paper, so if you ran out of things to say too quickly, what would you do? You’d just fluff it up, right? Today you might search Google for a few more quotes that you could just stuff in there, even though you’re really not adding anything of substance.

            Basically, we were trying to manipulate our teachers to get what we wanted—a good grade. Jesus tells us that that is not the way we should view prayer—as a tool of manipulation to get what we want. We don’t need to fluff up our prayers and go on and on as though we can leave the Lord so flattered and impressed that He will answer us. Specifically, I think Jesus is warning us about two thoughts that can quietly cause us to pray in a manner that is essentially pagan.

            1. That God can be manipulated through prayer.

            It is so easy for us to think that if we get down on our knees and stay there until they hurt and our backs ache and our voices are hoarse, then God will see how serious we are about this whole prayer business and He’ll give us what we ask for. Likewise we can treat phrases like “in Jesus’ name I pray” as some kind of magical formula, and as long as we tack that on to the end of our prayers then God is compelled to give us what we ask for. My friends, the idea that effective prayer is all about standing the right way or saying the right things is not Christian prayer—it is paganism, but do you see how easily we can slip into this mindset?

            I know I encounter a strong temptation to think like this when I need to pray for forgiveness. I can approach those prayers thinking that I need to make myself feel really bad, and if I can just feel bad enough then I can be confident that God will forgive me. But this is simply manipulation! Our confidence must not come from our own feelings but from believing the promises of God, and if I don’t feel like my heart is grieved enough over my sin, I can simply ask God to help me have an appropriate response when I sin.

The second thought that may cause us to pray like pagans is perhaps even worse than the first, because it so clearly takes our unique and holy God and puts Him on the same level as dead idols.

            2. That God needs to be manipulated through prayer, otherwise He will not answer.

            As I said a moment ago, when the pagans prayed, they didn’t think that their god had any particular inclination to answer their prayer. Their gods had to be persuaded, nagged, coaxed, flattered; their prayers were like an unwelcome interruption.

            But what a different picture is painted for us in Scripture! When we come before the throne of grace in prayer, we don’t come as trespassers or uninvited visitors but as long-awaited guests for whom preparations have been made. We come as children to a loving Father who is already inclined to hear us.

            He is not annoyed by our prayers—He has been anticipating them! That’s why Jesus says in v. 6, “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” God is already interested in our cares and concerns; in fact, He’s been keeping tabs on them. Like any good father, God is anticipating the needs of His children and He’s already working to meet them.

            Do you see why I say that prayer highlights all that is unique about Christianity? We are invited to speak anytime we like to our loving Father, who went to great pains to establish this relationship with us. He has already promised to meet our needs and is busy doing just that, so we can pray with the confidence that He is not only interested in us, but He is actually on our side, working to our advantage.

            Do you see what a subtle insult it is, then, if we approach God with the idea that we have to butter Him up or impress Him or bribe Him to get Him to take notice of us? Oh what a misunderstanding of God’s love and grace! We cannot say it better than the old hymn:

Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer,

Thy wings shall my petition bear

To Him whose truth and faithfulness

Engage the waiting soul to bless

And since He bids me seek His face,

Believe His Word, and trust His grace,

I’ll cast on Him my every care,

And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer.

Notes:

1. William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, 2 vols., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 1:227.

The ABC Network has been airing a show for the last few years called “Secret Millionaire.” In each episode, a self-made millionaire goes undercover in a needy area by hiding the fact that he or she is fabulously wealthy. After getting to know to some of the people and the organizations that are trying to help them, the millionaire gets to spring the surprise at the end that he or she is in fact very wealthy and would like to give them a financial gift.

            I’ve watched a few episodes of the show, and it is very heart-warming to see the gratitude of the people who receive those gifts. But the set-up does make you ponder the real motivations of the “secret millionaire.” Are they really “just there to help,” or is there more to it than that?

            A show like that causes us to think about how murky our motives can be when we give to those who are in need. This is a good time to talk about our motives for giving, because in the next two months, every charity that knows you’re alive will be making some kind of effort to reach out to you!

            Perhaps its divine timing, then, that we come to a passage in The Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus discusses the proper motives for giving to the needy. What is it that drives us to give to those in need? Do we give only when our name will appear on a banquet program as a “gold partner,” or are we driven by other motivations?

            As we move into Matthew 6, we also move into a different section of The Sermon on the Mount. Remember that Jesus’ main goal in this sermon is to move the people from following the Pharisees as their religious leaders to following Him. In the latter half of Matthew 5, Jesus had been criticizing aspects of the Pharisees’ teaching which had distorted God’s standards. Now in the first part of chapter 6, He is going to criticize aspects of the Pharisees’ behavior—specifically, the way that they carried out their religious acts. Let’s read Matthew 6:1-4, then we’ll take a closer look at Jesus’ message [READ 6:1-4].

The Warning: Mind Your Motives!

            The Lord begins this chapter with a warning that addresses everything through v. 18, and His warning is for us to mind our motives. He says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.” Its that last phrase that mentions the improper motive—we are not to perform our religious acts with a desire for other people to notice us performing religious acts.

            Now I mentioned a few weeks ago that this warning initially may not seem to fit with the command in 5:16 to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” As I pointed out when we studied that passage, Jesus is not talking about the same kind of activities in 5:16 as He about to address in chapter 6.

            In this chapter, Jesus will deal with activities that every Jewish person at that time would have thought of as religious activities—giving to the needy, praying, and fasting. In today’s world, the equivalent might be attending church, praying, and reading the Bible. If anyone in our society saw you doing those things, they would think of them as religious activities.

            But in 5:16, Jesus was referring to actions that people wouldn’t automatically think of as religious activities, such as meeting practical needs for people around you. If we’re helping the sick or protecting the vulnerable, we can freely let it be known that we are doing those things out of obedience to Christ, but as far as actions that are obviously religious, we don’t need to play those up to get other people to notice us. In fact, it is better if we just do them quietly.

            So if you’re helping an elderly neighbor with some yard work, you can let them know that you want to share Christ’s love through what you’re doing. But when you come to church on Sunday morning, you don’t need to honk your horn as you go down the road and wave your Bible out the window. And of course, in everything that we do, there is the question of our motive, as Jesus warns us here.

            So He warns us to mind our motives, but the reason He gives for doing so may surprise you. He doesn’t say, “Mind your motives because its just the right thing to do,” or “mind your motives because its your duty before God.” Instead, He appeals to our desire to be rewarded for our actions. Jesus states that if we do not properly mind our motives, “then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

            If you’re ever inclined to think that the whole idea of pursuing rewards from God sounds terribly selfish, then the next 18 verses might feel downright scandalous to you, because the only motivation that Jesus appeals to in this section is the motivation to receive rewards from God. But, since God does not tempt us to sin, according to James 1:13, then whatever Jesus encourages us to do cannot be sinful. Thus, the desire to be rewarded by God for our actions cannot be sinful.

            This desire actually drives us away from sin because we have to obedient in order to gain the rewards. We have to embrace God’s values in order to receive rewards from God, which will point us away from sinful behavior and toward godly behavior. All in all, the desire to be rewarded by God is a powerful motivation for good and another reminder of God’s grace. God doesn’t have to reward us at all, but He chooses to, which gives us simply one more reason to serve Him with all our might.

So the question that Jesus challenges us with is this…

What Kind of Reward Do You Want to Receive?

            a. To receive a temporary reward, make a big show out of your giving.

            If your motive is to receive a temporary reward like praise from other people, then by all means, draw lots of attention to yourself when you give. Don’t give a penny unless your name is slapped on a building somewhere; create a TV show to broadcast your giving; walk into church on Sunday morning and ask the usher, “Will your church accept large bills?” Make a big production out of it to get all the praise you can, because according to Jesus, that is all the reward you will ever get.

            The Lord mentioned some pretenders in His day who sought to bring attention to their giving. In v. 2, He says, “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.” That word “hypocrites” came into English directly from Greek; it is simply the Greek word ὑποκριτής. That was the term for an actor in ancient Greece; if you were an actor by profession, you were called a ὑποκριτής. There wasn’t a negative connotation to the word until Jesus began to use it metaphorically to refer to people like this—people whose supposed concern for the poor was nothing but an act. They simply wanted to be praised by other people, and in that culture at that time, giving to the poor was a way to get that praise. If there had been a better way, they probably would have done that instead.

            Jesus closes v. 2 by saying, “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” The New American Standard and the NIV are a little better here; they read, “they have their reward in full.” The Greek behind that phrase was a business term that was written on receipts to indicate “paid in full.” The debt was settled, the account was closed, and that’s exactly what Jesus is telling us. If our giving is simply an act, if our motive is to receive praise from others, then when we receive it, we have been paid in full. We had better enjoy that praise for all its worth, because we will receive nothing more from God.

But then Jesus gives us another option…

            b. To receive a lasting reward, be discreet about your giving.

            In vv. 3-4, the Lord states, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” What a memorable picture Jesus paints—to give so quietly with your right hand that your left hand has to say, “Hey, what’s going on over there?” To give in this way reveals a proper motive that pleases God. You’re not giving simply to draw attention to yourself but rather to extend love to a person in need, and thus display the heart of Christ.

            And for that, Jesus states that our Heavenly Father will take note of what we have done and will reward us for it. The Lord may reward us in this life with resources from which we can continue to give. That is the point of 2 Corinthians 9:7-11—“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work…You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.” We might say this is God’s idea of compound interest! If God gets a good return of generosity from the money He entrusts to you, He may just keep entrusting money to you so that you can continue to be generous.        Notice what the true reward is—it’s the opportunity to continue serving God in a special way. And whether or not we receive any tangible reward in this life, we will certainly receive the reward of praise and honor from God in Heaven and the opportunity to serve Him in a special way in that place. So long after this world is gone, long after the praise of men which other people coveted has died out, long after the curtain has closed on the actors, the ὑποκριτής of this life, your reward from God will remain. Is it not obvious which reward we should pursue?

            My friends, let us allow this offer to sink deeply into our hearts. God offers us eternal rewards for helping those around us who are in need. How can we help but turn our attention toward such an endeavor? For centuries after the church was born, the calling card of Christian people everywhere was compassion for the poor, the sick, and the dying. When unwanted infants were left to die of exposure in the Roman Empire, it was Christians who adopted them and who cried out against this practice. When the poor in the great cities lay dying because they could not afford physicians, it was Christians who personally took them in and cared for them. When plagues swept through the Empire, even though some emperors tried to make Christians the scapegoats for them, it was Christians who went out with no fear of death to care for the sick and bury the dead.

            Why do we find asylums for the mentally ill in our world today? Why do we find sanitary, livable conditions inside of prisons? Why do so many hospitals have names like St. Catherines and Via Christi? Why is the debate in our country today NOT about whether the sick should receive care but simply how to go about it? Its because of Christianity!

            In our country today, we have many government programs that are meant to help the needy, but we must ask ourselves—do we really think the task is complete? Is there nothing for the church to do? It is not hard to envision a day for our nation when those programs no longer exist, and if that happens, who will step into the gap? If history teaches us anything about the care of the needy, it teaches us that Christians will answer the call.

            The only question that remains is, “What part are you playing?” What part am I playing? Are you only playing a part? Does your heart only open to others when the lights are bright and the cameras are rolling and the live studio audience is there to applaud your every move?

            “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”—James 1:27.

            Perhaps no culture in history has spoken about love more yet understood love less than our culture today. Of course, we have a tool today in the radio that allows us to lump all of our thoughts about love together and try to sort out the mess the results. For example, Burt Bacharach sings about love as kind of a “cure-all:”

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It's the only thing that there's just too little of

What the world needs now is love, sweet love,

No not just for some but for everyone.

But Carrie Underwood might have a thing or two to say to Burt, because she sings:

I bet all I had on a thing called love

I guess in the end it wasn't enough

And it's hard to watch you leave right now

I'm gonna have to learn to let you go somehow

Meanwhile, Tina Turner wants to convince us that love is nothing more than a physical sensation:

It's physical

Only logical

You must try to ignore

That it means more than that

[Chorus:]

What's love got to do, got to do with it

What's love but a second hand emotion

What's love got to do, got to do with it

Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

But Tim McGraw wants to tell us that love is something that can be life-changing:

Better than I was

More than I am

And all of this happened

By takin' your hand

 

And who I am now

Is who I wanted to be

And now that we're together

I'm stronger than ever

I'm happy and free

 

Its your love

It just does somethin’ to me

It sends a shot right through me

I can’t get enough

And if you wonder

About the spell I’m under

Its your love

Bob Dylan describes love as something that sacrifices for another person:

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true

There's nothing that I would not do

Go to the ends of the Earth for you

To make you feel my love.

But Katy Perry just wants to use your love without getting too concerned about you:

I just wanna use your love

Tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight

I don't wanna lose your love tonight

(You don't mean nothing at all to me)

(You don't mean nothing at all to me)

Perhaps we need to tell Katy what Willie Nelson once decided:

If this is what you refer to as love

Then I'd rather you didn't love me

            Now, some of those musicians were singing about different kinds of love, and therein lies part of our problem—we can use the word love in so many different ways. One English dictionary lists 28 different ways that we can use the word “love.” I can love God, love my wife, love basketball, love bacon, and have a score of love in a game of tennis—all at the same time!

            That might explain some of the confusion we have when Jesus commands us to “love our enemies.” We better find out in a hurry just what it means to love, and fortunately, the Lord will help us do just that. Follow along with me as I read Matthew 5:43-48 [READ Matt 5:43-48].

The Problem: Granting a License for Hatred

            The Pharisees teaching, according to Jesus in v. 43, was, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” There’s no reason to look for a verse in the Old Testament that says that, because there isn’t one. You will find a command to love your neighbor in Leviticus 19:18, but you won’t find a command to hate your enemy anywhere.

            In fact, in the laws given to Moses, we find just the opposite. Exodus 23:4-5 says, “If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back            to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.” And Leviticus 19:17 says, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.” Then, in the book of Proverbs, we find this statement that is repeated in the New Testament: “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you (25:21-22).”

            So how did it ever come about that the religious leaders were teaching the people, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy?” They may have been attempting to capture what the Old Testament says about God’s anger toward those who reject Him. Perhaps they thought, “Well, if its okay for God to be angry toward His enemies, then it must be okay for us, too.”

            Let me give you a very brief snippet of what the Old Testament says about God’s anger toward those who reject Him. In Malachi 1:2-3, for example, God Himself says, “I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.” God spoke through Malachi centuries after Jacob and Esau actually lived, so He’s talking about the nations that descended from those two men—the nation of Israel on the one hand (Jacob) and the nation of Edom on the others (Esau). The Edomites, throughout their history, had rejected God and even attacked the Israelites at times. God clearly states here that He hates them for their actions.

            Also, in Deuteronomy 7:9-10, Moses gives this description of God: “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.” Now the Pharisees may have read statements like this and concluded, “If we love those who love us and hate those who hate us, it sounds like we’re no different than God!”      But I believe the Pharisees forgot at least two important details about God’s love.

1. God takes no delight in the demise of the wicked

            Make no mistake—God is the final, appropriate judge of mankind, and He will ensure that justice is carried out. But like any good judge, He does not delight in the downfall of those upon whom He must pass sentence. Ezekiel 33:11 states, “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” Though God will surely deliver punishment when it is just, He always does so with a broken heart.

2. God consistently does good for ALL people—even His enemies!

            That is what Jesus points out in Matthew 5—He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Notice how Jesus calls the sun “His sun.” It’s God’s sun! He can do what He wants with it. Remember, there was a time during the plagues on Egypt when God caused the Egyptians to sit in darkness while the Israelites enjoyed light. He could cause the sun to shine precisely where He chooses, but He gives it to all men equally. If God carries out punishment upon a man, it is only after He has provided food for that man every day of his life; it is only after He has protected that man every day from an earlier demise; it is only after He has kept his heart pumping and his lungs breathing and his brain working. The moment of punishment is actually an exception in an otherwise constant pattern of mercy and grace.

           

The Solution: Love Your Enemies, Too, and Pray for Them

The failure to do good for our enemies is the reason that we so often fail to imitate God’s love, and it is the reason why the Pharisees’ teaching was broken. Their understanding was that they had no obligation to do good to their enemies, so the Lord tells us instead in v. 44, “But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies.’” This command really challenges the common notion of love that we hold today. I’d like to point out two extremes that we need to avoid when thinking about love that will help us understand what Jesus is asking us to do.

1. Love is merely an emotion

            This is the extreme to which we are most vulnerable today, because from every conceivable angle we are told to “follow your heart,” or “be true to your heart.” And so, when most people say, “I love you,” if you dig down underneath that statement, what they’re really saying is, “I have pleasant feelings when I’m around you.”

            Now if we equate love with pleasant feelings, then this command from Jesus is utterly ridiculous. We don’t have pleasant feelings about our enemies, nor can we simply conjure them up at will. But as we see in the rest of this passage, Jesus doesn’t define love in terms of emotions but in terms of actions. God loves the evil and the unjust by doing good for them. So we can see that Jesus is simply expanding upon the idea of the previous paragraph—choose to do good to others even when they do evil to you.

But once we’ve grasped the idea that love is not merely an emotion, then we must be careful to avoid a second extreme…

2. Love for our enemies does not involve our emotions

            It would be easy to justify hatred in our hearts if we defined love solely in terms of our actions. For example, let’s say that my enemy is hungry. I would not be fulfilling this command if I drove past him, threw some bread at his face and said, “Here, have some bread you filthy animal! By the way, can’t you see how much I love you?”

            If we are to learn anything from Matthew 5, its that God wants our actions and our attitudes to be aligned; He wants our hands and our hearts to be on the same page. So God does want us to do good to our enemies, but He wants those good actions to flow out of a heart of compassion, pity, and mercy.

            We won’t have the same feelings about our enemies as we have about our friends, but that’s not what God is calling for. I think we can truthfully say that God Himself does not have the same feelings about His enemies as He does about His children, but what He does have is a commitment to do good to all that flows from a heart of goodwill. That could be a good “shorthand” definition of love—a commitment to do good to all that flows from a heart of goodwill.

            Jesus then mentions a very specific way in which we can love our enemies when He says, “pray for those who persecute you.” There is a beautiful word picture in this statement that kind of gets lost in translation. The Greek preposition that is translated “for” in this phrase is the same preposition that is used elsewhere to describe Jesus dying “for” us, and of course the idea is that Jesus died in our place, as our substitute. Jesus stepped in for us and did something that we could not do—namely, offer a perfect sacrifice for our sins. So the word picture here is that we are to step in for our enemies to do something that they cannot do—namely, pray to God.

            Its as though we’re coming before God saying, “Lord, I know my enemy is shut out from your presence because He has rejected you, so I am here in His place to pray on his behalf and ask that you would show mercy to him and do good to him.” What a humbling picture, one that crushes the pride and the hatred in our hearts to allow the heart of Jesus to be formed within us.

            Jesus then calls us to do these things with reference to God, first of all telling us that this is how we can show our family resemblance with our Heavenly Father. He issues these commands in v. 44, then says in v. 45, “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” This is the way that the family resemblance will be carved within us—not by loving only those who love us, or greeting only those who greet us, because that’s just normal human behavior. Anyone can do that, so if we want to truly act like a chip off the old block and be like our Father, we must love our enemies and pray for them.

            Jesus finally sums up His discussion in v. 48 by saying, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I think the word “perfect” is an unfortunate translation in this verse. This Greek word can also be translated “complete,” and I think that word gives us a better understanding of this verse because of the way that we use the words “perfect” and “complete” in modern English.

            The word “therefore” tells us that Jesus is summing up or drawing a conclusion from everything He has just said, and in this section He has been challenging us to be complete people, to be whole, to have an integrity about our lives in which our attitudes and our actions are in sync. When our attitudes and our actions don’t line up, we’re like a jumbled mess of a person, like a Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde. Our actions and attitudes are not integrated—they are not a unified whole.

            But this is not so for God. His actions and His attitudes are in perfect harmony with one another, and so this is how the Lord calls us to be. And as we have been reminded today, God maintains this harmony between His actions and attitudes toward all people. This is another way in which we can be incomplete—if we display this integrity toward some people, but not all people. Our Lord’s challenge is for us to unite godly attitudes with godly actions, then act with that same integrity toward all people.

            As we close today, I want you to close your eyes and think about someone who could fit into the category of being your enemy. Perhaps it is someone who mocks you for your faith, or someone who tries to take advantage of you; maybe its someone with whom you’ve had a fight in the past or someone with different political convictions than you. As you think about that person, I want you to ask God to forgive you for any times in which you have failed to do good to that person from a heart of goodwill. Be specific if you can. Also, ask God to forgive you if you have failed to pray for that person. Finally, let’s ask the Lord to help us rely on His strength to carry out these commands we’ve studied today.

            There was once a champion boxer who became a Christian. After he accepted Christ, he began to study the faith intently, and after a few years he became a pastor. He felt like his new role as a pastor didn’t really fit with boxing, so he left his successful career as a boxer, which really upset some of his friends at the boxing club. They felt like he’d become “holier-than-thou,” so one evening they decided to go to his house and see if they could provoke him into a fight.

            Several of the friends went together, and when the pastor opened his door, one of the men—without warning—punched him right in the side of the face! The blow knocked the pastor to the ground, but he got up and said, “Hey, what’s this all about?” Without answering, another man punched him in the other side of the face. The pastor was dazed for a moment, but he got up, and this time he started rolling up his sleeves. He looked at the men and said, “You better get ready, ‘cause I’ve turned the other cheek, and now I have no further restrictions from the Lord.”

            Today we’re going to look at the famous statement in which Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, and I don’t think He meant, “Let the other guy get in two punches first, then take him out!” But just what did Jesus mean? That question has been tossed around for a long time and for good reason, because this paragraph contains some of the most challenging statements in all of Scripture; yet, they are also some of the most familiar. Let’s read Matthew 5:38-42 [READ Matt 5:38-42].

            These verses encourage us to remember a couple of very important principles of biblical interpretation. First, we must keep statements in their context in order to understand them correctly. How many times have other people misunderstood you because they’ve taken something you’ve said out of context? We can do the same thing when we study Scripture. If we don’t consider how the context of a verse helps us understand that verse, then we run the risk of misinterpreting it. In this paragraph in particular, some people have isolated the statement, “Do not resist the one who is evil,” and have drawn conclusions from it that probably weren’t even on Jesus’ mind when He spoke those words.

            The second principle is that Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture. Since all Scripture comes from God, it all fits together; so if one statement in the Bible isn’t immediately clear, we can look at other passages in the Bible to give us some additional insight. This principle is very helpful for interpreting this paragraph since it’s a collection of short statements that seem to touch on very different subjects. When we keep in mind that Scripture interprets Scripture, that principle becomes a tremendous aid for interpretation.

            With these principles in mind, let’s dive into this passage. We’ll take the same approach that we’ve taken over the last several weeks of first looking at the problem that Jesus addresses and then looking at His solution.

The Problem: Misusing Scripture to justify revenge.

            In v. 38, the Lord states, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” That’s a very short snippet from a statement in the Old Testament that was given as a guideline for judges to ensure that any punishment they meted out truly fit the crime—that is wasn’t too lenient or severe. Its very important to remember that this was a guideline for judges; it was not a license for people to take justice into their own hands.

            We find that statement three times in the Old Testament; I’d like to point your attention to Deuteronomy 19:16-21: “If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

            Again, notice how this guideline was given to the judges as a policy for them to follow. The problem was that the Pharisees and the people had turned this guideline into a license for revenge. So a principle that had been given as a guideline for justice had been twisted to excuse all kinds of injustice, because when we try to give people who’ve wronged us what we think they deserve—and that’s what revenge is—the end result is almost always injustice. If you push me down, I’m liable to think that you deserve to have your face rearranged like a Mr. Potato Head doll! Revenge does not produce justice, therefore it doesn’t line up with the character of God.

The Solution: Repay no one evil for evil, but overcome evil with good.

            In v. 39 the Lord says, “But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.” Remember how important it is for us to keep this statement in context. The remainder of this paragraph will clarify what the Lord means. I think viewpoints that would tell us to never do anything to resist evil are guilty of taking this statement out of context. I believe the rest of this paragraph and the rest of Scripture reveal that Jesus means something much like “don’t fight fire with fire” or “don’t stoop to their level.” If someone does evil to us, we are not to respond in kind.

            In the rest of this paragraph, Jesus seems to clear away several of the limitations that we might want to place on a principle like this. When we think about refusing to take revenge, we want to draw our own lines in the sand to outline what we think we should tolerate, and if someone crosses our line in the sand, then we feel justified to take revenge. We might say, “I’ll let it slide if this guy talks about my daddy, but if he talks about my momma, he’s gone too far.” When we draw arbitrary lines like that, we become just like the Pharisees, and the rest of this paragraph wipes away any of these lines that we might draw.

1. No actions are exempt from this command (v. 39b)

            In the last part of v. 39, Jesus mentions an act that was deeply insulting to the Jews: “But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Some people have applied this statement in discussions about defending yourself from a physical assault, but I don’t think Jesus was addressing that matter. What He describes here is an insult, not an assault.

            He may have been making an intentional reference to Lamentations 3. Part of that chapter describes the good of waiting for God to make right all of the wrongs that you have suffered, and in one section we find these words: “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust-- there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults (Lam 3:26-30).” Here’s a good example of allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture—Lamentations 3 clearly equates a slap on the cheek with an insult, so this sheds some light on what the Lord means in Matthew 5.

            This was a deeply insulting act to the Jews, but even then—even then—the Lord says that we should respond with patience, grace, and kindness. Jesus Himself was the perfect model of this response. 1 Peter 2:23 says, “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten.”

            The Jew of that day may have said, “I’ll put up with a lot, but if someone slaps me in the face, I’m going to take matters into my own hands.” But the Lord says that we cannot single out actions to make them exempt from the prohibition against revenge.

2. No rights are exempt from this command (v. 40)

            We Americans love our rights. We are weaned on the idea that there are unalienable rights that no one can legitimately take from us (and that is a good way for a government to act toward its people). But Jesus tells us, in this context prohibiting revenge, that we should hold even our own rights loosely enough that we will not take revenge if they are violated.

            In v. 40, the Lord says, “And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” The basic Jewish wardrobe had three pieces of clothing to it. The first was the loincloth, which was wrapped around the groin; it was basically underwear. The second piece of clothing was the tunic, which was much like what we call a “dress.” It was a single piece of clothing worn against the body that covered the chest, the torso, and hung down over the legs. The third piece of clothing was the cloak, which is basically what we call a “coat.” It was the outermost piece of clothing which was also used a blanket at night, and for that reason, Jewish society gave people a virtually inviolable right to keep their coat.

            If the ancient Jews had had a Declaration of Independence, it would have said, “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life and the right to hang on to your cloak.” According to Exodus 22, if I gave you my cloak as collateral for a loan, you were required to give it back to me at night so I could sleep in it.

            Yet Jesus tells His audience, “Don’t hold even your right to your cloak so tightly that you will not be willing to give it up rather than stoop to the level of an evil and unjust person.” Remember that Jesus is not saying all that could be said about lawsuits or about rights in a republican form of government like ours; rather, He is telling us not to consider our own rights to be all-important. There are goals like honoring God for which we should be willing to sacrifice our rights if the other alternative means dragging God’s name through the mud.

            Once again, our greatest example of this attitude is Jesus Himself. Philippians 2:5-8 describes the extent to which He humbled himself to carry out the plan of salvation: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped [in other words, something to be held on to at all costs], but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

            Think about Jesus’ rights as the Creator of all things. He has the right to the worship and gratitude of His creatures. He has the right to display His glory as God. He has the right to execute judgment against our sins, yet He laid down His own rights to knowingly and willingly endure the greatest injustice the world has ever seen.

            We are to hold our own rights in a similar way. There is no right that we can place into a special category and declare that the violation of that right somehow gives us permission to take revenge. As Philippians 2:5 says, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”

3. No people are exempt from this command (vv. 41-42)

            Jesus goes on to mention two kinds of people whom we’re often tempted to think are taking advantage of us—those who rule over us and those who ask us for help. First, the Lord says in v. 41, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” The land of Israel at that time was ruled by the Roman Empire. The Jews hated that fact, of course, but there was little that they could do about it. Under the laws of the Empire, soldiers had the right to force private citizens to give them all kinds of assistance, which included carrying their gear up for a distance of up to a mile.

            Now, just imagine if the United States was conquered by a foreign nation and foreign troops lived right here among us and had the authority to make us serve them. You can imagine how deeply we would despise that, so you can imagine how the Jewish people felt as well. But the Lord said that even in that situation, we should be willing to extend generosity and good will. We should be willing to go above and beyond to show kindness even to those who don’t show the same treatment toward us.

            Well, its one thing when someone can force you to help them, but its another when someone simply asks you for help, which is the situation that Jesus mentions in v. 42—“Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Once again, remember that Jesus is not saying all that could be said about the subject of giving. Clearly, Jesus is encouraging us to be generous; in fact, I think He’s saying that our default response toward others should be generosity.

            We should not have to be coaxed into helping others, kicking and screaming the whole way. Rather, we should respond with a generosity that has to be reined in so that it is not reckless and actually harmful. This is not an easy attitude to cultivate because it is so easy to think that people are taking advantage of us when they ask for help, and that’s the link that connects this statement to the rest of the paragraph. Whether we suffer real injustice or we’re only tempted to think that others want to take advantage of us, we are not to respond by doing evil. Instead, we are to overcome evil with good.

            Now the reason that we are ever tempted to take revenge on others is that we feel like the person who has done us wrong is going to get off the hook if we don’t do something about it. If we don’t carry out “justice,” we fear that justice will never be served. But the Bible tells us that that simply is not true. Romans 12:19 states, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” Again, the Lord Jesus is our perfect example. To return to 1 Peter 2:23, it says, “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” This is the way to squash that desire to take revenge—to remember that God will sort everything out in His time. Our role, then, is to do good to those who do evil to us, in the hope that they might repent and embrace Jesus.

            There was once a farmer who was a very ungodly man. He rejected God and mocked the Christians in his community, yet he consistently had better yields from his farm than they did. One year in particular he had a bumper crop, and like usual, he was telling all the Christians how stupid they were for worshiping God. But one wise old farmer simply told him, “God doesn’t settle all of His accounts in October.” Remember that my friends; God will one day settle all of His accounts, and He will see that justice is served. He doesn’t need us to do it for Him now, and He won’t need our help then. Until that day, let us not repay evil for evil, but overcome evil with good.

            Today, in our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we’re going to read about Jesus touching ever-so-briefly on the subject of divorce. I’m sure the epidemic of divorce in our country is well-known to you, but I think we can take an interesting look at its history by looking at the history of the TV show Divorce Court. That show first came on the air in 1957. Now, I think the fact that a producer thought people would even watch such a show reminds us that divorce was such a novelty at that time. A show about divorce proceedings would tap into people’s curiosity about something that wasn’t very familiar to them.

            But as divorce became more common in our country, Divorce Court’s ratings fell. It survived until 1969, but was cancelled through all of the 1970’s. It was revived in 1985, but was cancelled again through most of the 1990’s. It was revived again in 1999 and has managed to stay on the air from that time until today, but there’s no telling how many people we would have to ask before we found someone who deliberately chooses to watch that show. People don’t need to watch a TV show about divorce proceedings today because sadly, too many people have lived through a divorce themselves.

            Jesus’ words in this section are words that our culture today desperately needs to hear. Later, in Matthew 19, Jesus would be asked specifically about divorce by the Pharisees, and He made a statement in that passage that is an excellent summary of God’s perspective on this subject: “What God has joined together, let not man separate.” That is God’s desire, and it should be our goal.

            As we study verses 31-32 today, we’ll focus first on the emphasis of Jesus’ teaching, then we’ll look at the exception to His teaching that He Himself mentions in v. 32.

1. The emphasis of Jesus’ teaching—Divorce followed by remarriage is adultery

            Let’s begin to read through these verses. The introductory statement that Jesus uses, especially when you read it in Greek, makes it clear that He is continuing the same train of thought from the previous verses. In those verses he told us that lust in the heart is the same as adultery in God’s eyes. Now, if I may paraphrase, its like Jesus is saying, “While I’m on the subject of adultery, let me mention something else that God considers to be adultery,” and He goes on here to mention divorce and re-marriage.

            In v. 31, He says, “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’” That statement of the Pharisees’ teaching is based on Deuteronomy 24:1-4, but it is actually a misrepresentation of that passage. Moses had prohibited a situation in which a divorced and remarried woman might return to her first husband if she was divorced again or if her second husband died, but the religious leaders had become more interested in the procedure of divorce that Moses mentioned there. Moses really had not intended to discuss when divorce might be permissible, but that’s what the debate became among the religious leaders.

            In Jesus’ day, the situation regarding divorce was much like it is in our own culture today—divorce was increasingly common, and divorces were granted for very trivial reasons. The religious leaders’ concern was simply to make sure that divorce proceedings were carried out properly, but Jesus reminds us that God’s concern was much different. So He says in v. 32, “But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

            Jesus took a wide-angle look at his culture and announced that people were committing adultery all over the place, because they had been taught to simply make sure that the paperwork for divorce was filed properly. The marriage bond had become something that could be dissolved almost on a whim, but Jesus announced that those who treated their marriage in such a way, leaving one and entering another in such a casual way, were actually committing adultery in God’s eyes.

            What a lesson that we need to learn today! When marriages end because of “irreconcilable differences” or because “things just didn’t work out,” we need a clear reminder of God’s opinion on the subject. To treat marriage in such a casual way is an offense to the God who designed it, and we actually commit adultery when we use our own rationale for dissolving our marriage bonds and entering a new relationship. When we use a rationale for divorce and remarriage that God does not permit, we can call ourselves ex-husbands and ex-wives, but to God, we are adulterers and adulteresses.

            Now Jesus language in v. 32 seems a bit strange. Why does He say, “everyone who divorces his wife…makes her commit adultery?” Jesus was assuming that the woman would enter a new relationship, which was the most typical result of divorce at that time. In the Jewish culture, only a husband could initiate a divorce, and the prospects for a divorced woman were very bleak. Remember, this was not a time when a woman could really get a job on her own outside the home to support herself. She could try to return to her parents’ home, but there was no guarantee that they would receive her back. She could beg, but of course, that is very unpredictable. She could try to earn her own income, but you can imagine what kind of profession that might require.       Most of the time, a divorced woman would enter a relationship with another man, and Jesus said that in that situation, both the woman and the other man would be committing adultery.

            I think it is very important that we allow this emphasis of Jesus to sink in lest we move too quickly into a discussion about the exception that He mentions here. As soon as we start to talk about an exception, our sinful hearts will try to find ways to make the exception bigger and bigger. That’s exactly what the religious leaders in Jesus’ day had done. The Old Testament mentioned a divorce procedure as a detail of a larger scenario, but the people took that detail and ran with it.

            The possibility that we might commit adultery through divorce and remarriage should provide a strong push away from divorce in any situation. That is the real emphasis in Jesus’ teaching. We should not search for exceptions; instead, we should allow these words to push us away from divorce in the same way that the previous passage pushed us away from lust, since the outcome for both can be exactly the same—adultery.

With that being said, Jesus does mention an exception to his teaching in v. 32—a situation in which divorce and remarriage would not be condemned as an instance of adultery. Those words are just as authoritative as everything else that Jesus said and everything else the Bible says, so we can safely act upon them. We could state the exception like this…

2. The exception to Jesus’ teaching—Divorce followed by remarriage is not adultery when adultery led to the divorce

            Remember again that in that culture at the time, only a husband was allowed to initiate a divorce. What Jesus is saying is that if a woman was put away by a husband who was engaging in adultery, God did not consider the innocent woman to be an adulteress if she got remarried. This exception makes sense in light of Israel’s laws and history.

            In the laws that God had given to the people of Israel through Moses, adultery was supposed to be punished by execution. For example, Leviticus 20:10 says, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” This law is repeated in Deuteronomy 22:22—“If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.”

            If the people had obediently carried out that command, it would have clearly put an end to the innocent spouse’s marriage because his or her spouse would be dead. The innocent spouse would thus become a widow or a widower, and such people had always been allowed to remarry under God’s laws. So in that situation, there would have been no confusion—the innocent spouse’s marriage would have ended with the death of their spouse, and thus he or she would have been free to remarry.

            But the people of Israel had never consistently carried out the death penalty for adultery, which resulted in confusion—as sin always does. What was the innocent spouse supposed to do now? They were now divorced, but their spouse was still alive. Would they be committing adultery if they got remarried? I believe the exception that Jesus mentions here was meant to cut through that confusion and tell us that the innocent spouse was free to remarry after the divorce had taken place.

            Now, we as a community of Christians can also create confusion about divorce and remarriage if we fail to follow God’s commands. We don’t live under the laws of the Old Testament today, so we are not to enforce a death penalty for adultery, but God has given us clear instructions on how to deal with a person in our church who might commit that sin. Matthew 18:15-20 outlines a process of loving confrontation that we are to follow in an effort to lead that person to repentance. But if that person will not repent, Matthew 18:17 says, “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”—in other words, someone who is outside the family of God. We’re not supposed to hate that person, but to bring clarity to the decisions that we need to make as a church, we are supposed to consider that person to be an unbeliever.

            At that point, the Bible’s teaching on marriage in 1 Corinthians 7 becomes applicable. Let’s turn there together so we can read vv. 12-16. This letter was written by the Apostle Paul, and he begins this section by saying, “To the rest I say (I, not the Lord).” All that Paul means by that statement is that he’s about to touch on a scenario that Jesus had not specifically talked about during His ministry on Earth. Let’s read his words [READ vv. 12-13].

            Now when Paul writes that the unbelieving spouse is willing to live with the believing spouse, surely he means more than “inhabit the same house.” I believe he’s saying that if you are married to an unbeliever, if your spouse is willing to honor his or her marriage vows to you, you should be willing to honor your marriage vows to your spouse. But then beginning in v. 15, Paul discusses the scenario in which the unbelieving spouse is not willing to honor his or her marriage vows [READ vv. 15-16].

            So, if someone in our church is abandoned by their spouse, whether that spouse is pursuing adultery or has some other motivation, I believe the innocent spouse is free to be divorced and to remarry if they desire to do so. To bring this back into the context of adultery, if someone in our church commits adultery, we are to lovingly confront that person to help them come to repentance. But if that person refuses to repent and persists in adultery, we are to consider that person to be an unbeliever. Then, on the basis of this passage in 1 Corinthians 7, we should allow the innocent spouse to get a divorce and to remarry if they desire to do so.

            This exception mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 5 is divinely authoritative; thus, it gives us a basis as a church to act with clarity in situations of adultery. But we should never forget that God’s basic assessment concerning marriage is this: what God has joined together, let not man separate. As Christian spouses, we should realize that there is no scenario in which we could get a divorce that would not be the result of one of us directly disobeying God. If husband and wife are both obeying God, there is no scenario for divorce—but happily, there doesn’t need to be one in that situation! God does deal graciously with an innocent spouse who is abandoned by a sinning spouse, and we need to acknowledge that so that we don’t put the innocent spouse in a bind, but may God help us all so that there would never be another divorce among Christians. Rather, may our marriages be what God wants them to be—a beautiful picture of the love and respect that exists between Jesus and His bride, the Church.