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.

[NOTE: There is a long illustration in this sermon that I read from The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis. Due to the length of the section, I did not type it out in this post. Thus, it would be best to listen to this sermon rather than read it. To hear the audio of this sermon, please visit the "Sermons" page of this website and scroll to the bottom of that page.]

            They’re the words that everyone dreads when they go to the doctor: “We’re going to have to operate.” We hear those words when all other options have been exhausted, and extreme measures have to be taken. The Lord has graciously allowed us to understand His world enough to make many operations safe and routine, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still extreme measures.

            In our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we come today to Jesus’ discussion of lust, and His treatment plan for battling this temptation is quite simple: we’re going to have to operate. We must take extreme measures against this temptation, especially when we realize that Jesus simply will not allow us to downplay the severity of the sin of lust.
            Let’s work our way through Jesus’ diagnosis of this sin, then we’ll focus on His prescription for it.

The Diagnosis: Lust is Serious Enough to Make Us Deserving of Hell
            As we read these words, please remember that Jesus is not critiquing the Old Testament in His teaching. He is critiquing the interpretations of the Old Testament that the people had heard from their religious leaders. That’s why Jesus uses the introductory phrase that He does rather than a statement like, “It is written.” So, in v. 27, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’” That command, of course, is fine as far as it goes; it’s an accurate statement of command number seven of The Ten Commandments.
            But as they had done with murder, the Pharisees—who were the religious leaders of the people—had begun to measure obedience to that command by their actions. As a result, the attitudes of the heart were downplayed, but as Jesus shows us, we cannot minimize the importance of our heart attitudes.
            In v. 28, the Lord states, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Since God knows what is going on inside our hearts, He condemns the whole process that leads up to an act of sin. He knows when a thought is conceived in my mind, and He knows what I do to either put that thought out of my mind or nurse it along and feed it. Its kind of like the way that we look at weeds. We don’t just hate the leaves and the seeds that they produce—we don’t even want the roots around. In a similar way, God condemns the very roots of sin, which are found in our hearts.
            Now, its important to specify what Jesus means when he speaks of “looking at a woman with lustful intent.” To put it simply, its not the first noticing of another person that Jesus condemns—it’s the second glance, the look that is made with the intention of fanning the flames of lust in your heart.
            King David was not guilty when he noticed Bathsheba from the roof of his palace. As far as we are told, that was just an accident, and as the saying goes, “accidents happen.” No, King David’s sin came when he used that accidental noticing to feed a lustful desire in his heart. He had sinned long before he followed up on that desire because he had already committed adultery in his heart.
            So Jesus has backed us into a corner as far as our lust is concerned. He has cut off our retreat into the easy justifications that we want to use to tell ourselves that a “little look” is no big deal. To God, the very attitude is every bit as serious as any act that it may produce, so he gives it the same condemnation.

Now, in vv. 29-30, Jesus gives us his prescription for dealing with lust, and as I said before, it is simply this:

The Prescription: We’re Going to Have to Operate
            Less invasive procedures will not do; extreme measures must be taken. Let’s read the Lord’s words in these verses [READ vv. 29-30]. We have good reason to think that Jesus was speaking figuratively in these verses because He just told us that lust is a problem of the heart, and simply doing things to the outside of my body will not cure a problem of the heart. So He is not telling us the means through which to deal with lust, but the manner in which we must deal with lust. In other words, He’s not telling us the precise actions to take (“Just start cutting off body parts”), He’s telling us the attitude with which to fight against lust.
            The final outcome of lust is so bad that we should be willing and eager to get rid of anything that becomes like bait in a trap to us. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “If your right eye causes you to sin.” If something has become alluring to you, if it is enticing you to walk down the road of lust, you must put it away. None of this talk of “maybe just a little” or “just a quick glance—no! We’re going to have to operate; it has to go, or otherwise WE have to go out of the situation.
            I’d like to read for you several pages from a story by C. S. Lewis entitled, The Great Divorce. This is a passage that wonderfully describes the way that we must deal with lust and the way that we often try to minimize the need to take such drastic measures. This is a lengthy section, but I want to read it to you to feed your imagination some healthy food.
            You see, the war against lust is fought inside the imagination. This temptation often pits our desires or feelings against our intellect; our intellect knows better, but our desires are so enflamed that it is difficult to resist. In this stalemate between our intellect and our desires, the deciding vote, if you will, is cast by our imagination. Whichever force can captivate your imagination in that moment will almost always come out on top.
            That’s why we must feed our imagination healthy food. That’s why, when God wanted to teach us about the beauty of marital love and romance, He gave us a book of word pictures—a book of poetry in The Song of Solomon. So even though this passage I’m about to read is lengthy, I think it is well worth our time.
            In this book, Lewis writes of a group of people from Hell who are allowed to take a bus ride to the outskirts of Heaven. Keep in mind that he’s not writing to make definite claims about theology; he is simply writing a story. In the story, the people from Hell are referred to as ghosts, and on one occasion, Lewis gives us a very vivid description of the way in which lust must be handled.

[READ from The Great Divorce, p. 106-114. The final line, “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”]

            That is what we must remember if we are to gain victory over lust. It is a poor, unsatisfying substitute for true, godly romance—which possesses true beauty and power and satisfaction. It will be tremendous reminder for us if we fill our imagination with captivating pictures of godly romance. It will also be a helpful reminder if we remember the end game of lust as Jesus tells us here.
            The final end of lust for those who never repent and accept Christ as their Savior is Hell. That attitude in our hearts, which we so easily and so often tell ourselves is no big deal, in God’s eyes is deserving of Hell. My friends, if you have never humbly acknowledged that God’s verdict about you is true—that you are a sinner, worthy of punishment from God—I urge you to do so today, because there is hope for you! God loves you and does not want you to receive His punishment, so He carried out against His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, on the cross so that the penalty for your sins could be paid. And after Jesus died, God raised Him from the dead, brought Him back to life to show that all that He has promised is true, and we can receive forgiveness by placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior.

            But even after we make that choice, lust still produces devastating effects. How many people have we known or heard of who have walked down the path of lust and destroyed their lives through an addiction to ungodly material or a sinful encounter with another person? We can not only ruin our lives on that path today, but we may also forfeit rewards from God in the next life. If that doesn’t sound like a serious thing, we need to think again. God’s desire for you as His child is to join Jesus in ruling over the New Heaven and New Earth, just as Adam and Eve were created to rule over this Earth. You may lose the honor of a special role of service to God if you persist in a sinful lifestyle, so it is of the utmost importance that you take a serious stand against lust as Jesus commands us today. Lesser measures will not do; living with the pain, so to speak, will not suffice. You’re going to have to operate, so what is it in your life that has become like bait in a trap to you? It will have to go, but in the long run, you will never regret for a moment that it did.

            There are certain activities in life that can really get my competitive juices flowing—like mini-golf, for example, or bowling, ping-pong, and tennis. I can also get very competitive when I play board games, which has often made me wonder how I’m going to react when Adrianna reaches that age when she will want to change the rules of every game so that she can win.

            That’s actually an attitude that we all struggle with in our lives—we want to define the standards of life so that we come out looking good. That’s exactly what the Pharisees in Jesus’ day had done with God’s commandments in the Old Testament. The Pharisees, you will remember, were basically the pastors of the Jewish people at that time, and in a time when people did not have their own copies of the Old Testament to read, the Pharisees functioned for many people as the official interpreters of God’s commands.

            Ironically, their efforts to interpret God’s commands came from a sincere desire to follow them closely, but what their efforts produced was a set of arbitrary guidelines that did not capture the heart of God’s commands, yet they allowed the Pharisees to tell themselves that they were being perfectly obedient.

            In Matthew 5:17-20, we saw Jesus launch the opening volley of a thorough attack on the Pharisees’ mindset and traditions. Beginning now in v. 21, we will see him discuss some specific examples from the Pharisees’ traditions and reveal how those examples fail to capture the true spirit of God’s commands. He begins with their interpretations of God’s commandments against murder. Let’s read all that He has to say here about this subject, then we’ll break it down a bit more [READ Matthew 5:21-26]. Let’s look at a few points in this text, then we’ll discuss some implications of Jesus’ teaching.

            Notice how Jesus says in v. 21, “You have heard that it was said to those of old.” That’s an important phrase because it reminds us that Jesus is not critiquing the Old Testament itself—He is critiquing what the Pharisees had said about the Old Testament; their interpretation of it. When Jesus referred to the Old Testament itself, He would say something like “it is written” or “haven’t you read…,” so this little phrase reminds us that Jesus was exposing the Pharisees’ teaching, not any deficiency in the Old Testament itself.

            Notice also that Jesus countered that phrase with the phrase in v. 22, “But I say to you.” That little phrase made two very important points. First, Jesus was clearly setting himself up for the people as an alternative to the Pharisees. It becomes crystal clear in the rest of the sermon that Jesus wants the people to accept his teaching as authoritative rather than the teaching of the Pharisees, and this little phrase effectively puts the people at a fork in the road. What are you going to follow—that which was said to those of old, or that which I say to you?

            Second, with this little phrase, Jesus was claiming to have the authority to accurately express the mind of God. That’s an incredible claim that lays the groundwork for Jesus’ later claims that He is God. This point was not lost on Jesus’ audience, because Matthew reports at the end of this sermon that “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes (Matt 7:28-29).”

Now let’s take a look at some implications from Jesus’ teaching.

1. Don’t use superficial standards to assess your relationships with other people.

            What the Pharisees taught about murder was okay as far as it went, but as Jesus reveals, it didn’t go far enough. Their teaching was, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” God certainly did condemn murder through His commands, but He went beyond that to the very root of murder, which is anger. In Leviticus 19:17, the Lord said, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart,” but that point was apparently lost on the Pharisees, which is why Jesus criticizes their teaching here. Their traditions focused only on an external action like murder, and apparently, to them, any attitudes or even actions that stopped short of murder were okay.

            But Jesus declares that the mere attitude of anger is just as serious in God’s eyes as the act of murder itself, and actions like insults that we might think are less serious than murder are actually serious enough to make us deserving of Hell. That is a very penetrating assessment that calls us to consider not just our external actions toward others, but the attitudes that we hold about them in our hearts.

            This lesson holds an important implication for the way that we assess our relationships with each other. Let’s face it—its so easy for us to excuse anger in our hearts by looking only at superficial standards. Perhaps I’ve been angry at someone for a year but I’ve told myself, “What’s the big deal? I’ve never punched him! I’ve never slashed his tires!” Well, what a wonderful person I am! Let me pat myself on the back because I haven’t punched someone!

            But Jesus says we had better stop patting ourselves on the back and we better start examining our hearts, because the attitudes we harbor there are just as serious as if we had murdered someone. And if we have expressed our anger to another person through even something as “small” as an insult, Jesus instructs us to make it our top priority to ask forgiveness from that person.

2. If you have expressed your anger against someone else, make it your top priority to ask for their forgiveness.

            The Lord uses a very vivid example to get this point across. He was speaking at a time when the Jewish people were still offering animal sacrifices in accordance with the Old Testament laws, and He tells His audience that if they were standing at the altar of sacrifice, preparing to hand their sacrifice over to the priest, and they remembered that they had expressed their anger to someone else, they should immediately stop this ritual of worship and leave to go and be reconciled with that person.

            In other words, anger is such a serious matter that if I’ve expressed it against another person, I must make it my top priority to make things right with that person. It should even be a higher priority than performing a ritual of worship to God, and the reason for that is simple—God won’t be pleased by my ritual of worship if I am not at peace with other people. As Samuel explained to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22, “to obey is better than sacrifice.”

            So imagine that you are driving to church one Sunday morning when you remember that you had insulted someone the previous week and had not yet asked for their forgiveness. It would actually be a greater act of worship to go and make things right with that person than to come to church. That is the kind of priority that we should give to confessing our anger to the people whom we’ve hurt and asking their forgiveness.

Jesus gives us a further illustration of the urgency of making things right at the end of this section.

3. It is much easier to be reconciled to someone sooner rather than later.

            This lesson is the point of Jesus’ words about the judge and the guard and the prison. Some people have wanted to conclude that Jesus was telling a parable here with the judge standing for God and the prison standing for Hell, but there doesn’t seem to be any need to make that connection. Jesus is simply pointing to real-life circumstances to encourage us to make peace with other people quickly after an offense has taken place.

            Its never easy to swallow your pride, confess your sin, and ask someone else to forgive you, but it is almost always easier to do so soon after an offense rather than later. Its just like a physical illness in many ways—if you deal with it in its earliest stages, your odds of beating it are much greater.

            Proverbs 18:19 describes how difficult it can be to reconcile with someone you’ve sin against: “A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.” That observation only becomes more and more applicable with each passing day after an offense has taken place.

With each day that passes, you better believe that Satan is hard at work to multiply the offenses and misunderstandings between you and that other person. He’s going to tempt that person every day to become more bitter, to build more bars around their heart so that you can no longer get in.

            So my friends, we must realize what a serious matter anger truly is. In the eyes of God, it is every bit as serious as murder, and when we have succumbed to it and expressed it against others, we must make it our top priority to heal that breach in our relationship quickly before Satan has time to exploit it. Obeying God in this matter is actually a greater act of worship than any ritual that we might perform, such as attending church, praying, or singing hymns. And if we know we’ve expressed anger toward someone else and we’ve not yet made our peace with them, God won’t be pleased with our rituals of worship, anyway!

            Now, let me answer a question that may have popped into your mind at this point—do I need to confess my anger to another person if its only been in my heart and I haven’t expressed it to them? That’s a good question, and I think the answer is a cautious “no,” and I say “cautious” because we need to remember that there are many ways in which we can express our anger beyond just the obvious ones like assaulting someone.

            Let me describe a scenario to help us think about this question. Suppose that I get a text message from Carmen one afternoon that says, “I made plans for us to go over to Billy Bob’s house tonight. Hope you don’t mind!” Now suppose that I start to think, “Oh man! There’s a big KU basketball game on tonight, and Billy Bob is a K-State fan so I know he won’t want to watch the game. How could Carmen be so inconsiderate? She’s just always thinking about herself and what she wants to do! You know, I remember a time six years ago when she did the same thing! This is twice now in six years! This is becoming a bad pattern in her life! She’s ALWAYS doing this kind of thing!”

            Now imagine that I allow myself to go on like this for a few minutes, just stewing in my anger. Then the Holy Spirit convicts me, and I repent of my anger and put it away. Would I need to confess that anger to Carmen? I think the answer is no, because I haven’t expressed it to her in any way. I still need to confess it to God and ask for His forgiveness, but I don’t think I would need to ask for Carmen’s forgiveness in that situation.

            Now suppose, however, that I held on to my anger until I got home. Perhaps I don’t say anything about it, but instead I just don’t say much of anything at all. I don’t give Carmen my normal greeting, and instead I just get ready to go over to Billy Bob’s house. Then I joke around with Billy Bob for a couple of hours, and we leave to go home and I’m silent again. We arrive at home and I just get ready for bed and go to sleep.

            Now would I need to confess my anger to Carmen in that situation? You bet I would, but why? How did I express it to her? First of all, Carmen knows that its out of character for me to be quiet like that and say nothing at all. She’s would know that something is wrong, and I’ve probably caused her some worry by leaving her in the dark about what it could be. Second, even though I didn’t say any harsh words to her, I didn’t speak any kind words to her either. I know I should speak kind words to her, and James 4:17 says “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

            Third, I am commanded to love my wife, but just think about the definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient—have I been patient? No! Love is kind—have I been kind? No! Love is not rude—have I been rude? Yes! Love is not irritable—have I been irritable? Yes!

            You see, we have to remember all of the subtle ways in which we can express anger. Remember the first implication from today’s sermon—don’t use superficial standards to assess your relationships with other people! In that light, we probably need to confess our anger to others more often that we might initially realize. Are there times when it may not be necessary? I think there are, but they probably occur less often than we want to admit.

            Its never very hard for us to find ways to excuse our behavior, is it? We’re just like children playing a board game—we can always find a way to adjust the rules so that we come out on top. But my friends, we must not play that game. That is precisely the mindset that Jesus is going to dismantle here in The Sermon on the Mount, and He has begun with the ways in which we might justify our sinful anger against other people. We must take a sober look at ourselves in the penetrating light of God’s Word and allow it to reveal our hearts as they really are.

            If know that you need to make peace with someone because you’ve expressed anger against them, don’t delay. Don’t wait another day; don’t leave yourself or your neighbor vulnerable to Satan’s temptations. Do what you can to repair that breach, and pray for God to help your neighbor to be willing to do the same.

“Probable “Cause?”

Why the Difference in Translations of Matthew 5:22?”

Part 2

MCC               8/11/13

Sermon on the Mount Series

Intro

            Last week, we began to discuss the history of how the Bible has come from the pens of the original authors down through the years to us today. We talked about the important doctrine called inerrancy, which is the belief that the original documents of Scripture contained no errors and no lies. Now, to our knowledge, the original pieces of paper on which the Bible was written no longer exist, because they’ve simply worn out over time. Don’t let that thought trouble you, however, because basically no pieces of paper from that long ago still exist—they’ve worn out and disintegrated.

            I’ll bet some of you have a book that was owned by your grandparents, and I’ll bet that book has at least started to wear out. Now consider this—your grandparents’ book has probably been in your house, which means its likely been out of direct sunlight that could have caused it to fade. Also, for several decades at least, its been in an air-conditioned room, which means it was in relatively low humidity. And yet, its still at least started to wear out. Well, now imagine pieces of paper from 2,000-4,000 years ago that didn’t have those advantages. As we would expect, they would just wear out.

            So, to the best of our knowledge, the original documents of Scripture no longer exist, but what we do possess are copies of the Bible—in fact, we have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of copies of the Bible from over the centuries, some of which were written relatively soon after the original documents were written.

            Now as I also mentioned last week, those copies of the Bible don’t always agree about how a certain verse should be worded—which leaves us with questions like our question about Matthew 5:22 that led to this whole discussion. Today, we’re going to talk more about those differences. We’ll discover that those differences affect a relatively small number of verses and none of them undermine any central point of the Christian faith. In other words, we don’t find some copies that say, “Jesus rose from the dead” and other copies that say, “Ha ha—just kidding, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead.” But there are differences that exist between these copies, and critics of Christianity love to point that out, but we’ll see today that we really have no reason to be concerned about the text of the Bible that we hold in our hands in our copies today.

            Our discussion today is going to focus on the copies of the New Testament. The Old Testament has its own history since it has been preserved by two religions—Judaism and Christianity. Also, critics of Christianity really don’t pick on the Old Testament that much. If you hear someone on The History Channel talking about errors in the copies of the Bible, they will almost certainly be talking about the New Testament, so that’s what we will focus on today.

            Let’s return now to the outline that I introduced last week. Point #1 was this—the original documents of Scripture were written without any errors. We’ll move now to…

2. As people began to copy the original documents, they sometimes made innocent mistakes or inserted words to help clarify a statement.

            What kind of mistakes are we talking about? Let’s discuss a few…

a. Mistakes in spelling

            In many cases, this was probably the result of a copyist confusing letters that look very similar. Think about how easy it would be in English to confuse two “v”’s that are side-by-side with a “w.”

b. Eyes jumping down the page of the original copy

            We commit that mistake ourselves at times, and it would have been easier for some copyists to make that mistake since the earliest copies of Scripture were written INALLCAPITALLETTERSWITH NOSPACESBETWEENTHEWORDS.

c. Confusing different letters or words that sound similar

            We know from historical records that people would sometimes read the text of Scripture and have several people copy it at once. That’s a little more efficient in a situation when everything has to be copied by hand, but that introduces the possibility of some other mistakes. Imagine if we were copying an English document that way and we came to the word “there” or the word “to.” Think about how often people misspell those words!

d. Faulty memory

            By this I mean a copyist forgetting something during the time it takes to look at the original copy and then write out what was on that page. This would seem to account for some of the differences in minor details that we see between some copies.

Now my outline also noted deliberate insertions that were sometime made in the text, so what kind of insertions are we talking about?

a. Changes in spelling and grammar

            Think about the way that English is spoken differently even within our own country. In some places, people say “pop,” but in other places they say “soda.” In some places, its fine to say “ain’t” even though English teachers don’t like it. Well, the same situation was true with the Greek in the New Testament, and in some copies we see copyists cleaning up spelling or grammar that apparently seemed wrong to them.

b. Changes to harmonize stories found in more than one book

            In the gospels in particular, we find stories that are recorded in more than one book, but frequently the authors emphasized and included different details. But sometimes, we find copyists who were apparently trying to make Luke and Matthew’s account of a story read exactly the same, so they added a detail from Matthew’s account into Luke’s account or vice versa.

c. The addition of words frequently found together

            The most common example of this kind of addition is with the words “Lord Jesus Christ.” You’re probably familiar with some verses that refer to the Son of God simply as Jesus or as Christ or as the Christ. Well, some copyists had a habit of writing out Lord Jesus Christ in all of those verses, even if their original copy didn’t necessarily have all of those words.

d. Changes made for doctrinal sensitivity

            We see a clear example of this in the birth narratives of Christ, where some copyists made slight changes to avoid calling Joseph the father of Jesus. Apparently, their concern was to remind us that Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus and that Jesus, or course, was born of a virgin.

e. Addition of miscellaneous details

            This habit has produced some humorous results in various copies of Scripture. For example, in Revelation 4:8, when the living creatures in Heaven sing, “holy, holy, holy,” a few manuscripts have the creatures singing “holy” four times, six times, eight times, or all the way up to 13 times!

            The title of the Book of Revelation has also been expanded in some copies over time. The earliest copies simply call it “The Revelation of John.” Later, after John was declared a saint by the Catholic Church, some copyists changed it to “The Revelation of St. John. Eventually, there was one over-achieving copyist who called it “The Revelation of the all-glorious Evangelist, bosom friend of Jesus, beloved to Christ, John the theologian, son of Salome and Zebedee, but adopted son of Mary the Mother of God, and Son of Thunder!”

            Now, it is very important to realize that we don’t even find notable mistakes and insertions in very many verses of Scripture. Let me explain—in the Greek New Testament that has been compiled by comparing all of the ancient copies with each other, there are 138,020 words. In that whole document, there are only 10,000 places where notable differences exist between the ancient copies. That ratio equates to roughly 1% of the text. In other words, for 99% of the text of the New Testament, there are no notable differences between the ancient copies. That’s an incredible fact when you consider that we have over 5,000 ancient manuscripts of the Bible!

Even for that 1% of the text, point #3 of our outline is true…

3. By comparing the numerous ancient copies of Scripture that we possess, we can spot those mistakes and insertions and correct them.

            When there is a notable difference between the ancient copies of the New Testament, we are normally left with a situation like what I’ve portrayed in your bulletin handout for today. Normally, we will find many manuscripts that have exactly the same reading. Then, we will find some that have some of the various mistakes or insertions that we just discussed.

            Now notice one thing about my little illustration here—do you still get the same basic message from all of these statements? Of course you do! So for this very small percentage of the text where we find a notable difference between the copies, our doubt really isn’t about the message of the verse, just the exact, original wording of the verse. Also, its not that we’ve lost the original words of Scripture—one of the variations surely must capture the original wording, we’re just less than 100% sure about which variation that is.

            So remember, we’re only talking about 1% of the text—about 10,000 places. And in the vast majority of those places, we have a high degree of certainty about which of the variations captures the original wording. Evangelical scholar Norman Geisler concludes that there are only 40 places out of those 10,000 where we truly have significant doubt about which variation captures the original wording. We know one of them must, we’re just really not sure which one. And again, we’re only talking about 40 places out of the entire New Testament. As Dr. Geisler likes to say, we have 100% of the text, and we are sure about 99.5% of it.1

So for that small number of places, point #4 of our outline is true…

4. In some verses, the exact wording of the original documents remains uncertain. This uncertainty is one factor that lies behind the differences we find between translations.

            These differences show up primarily between the King James and New King James Version on the one hand and new translations such as the English Standard Version on the other. When the King James Version was written in 1611, the translators obviously could only work with the Greek manuscripts that had been discovered at that time. In the 400 years since then, archaeologists have discovered many more manuscripts, and newer translations have been able to take those into account when they make decisions about that small number of places where we find significant differences.

            This is not to say that the King James and New King James Versions are poor translations—not at all! Remember, we’re talking about a very small number of places, and its possible in some of those places that the King James has it right and the newer translations have it wrong!

            So how should we sum up all of this information? First, we must acknowledge that there are differences between the ancient copies of the New Testament. That’s true, and we need to acknowledge that its true. We need to get out ahead of skeptics who only mention this tiny part of the whole picture. Some people have their faith shaken when they learn about these differences because they learn about them from a skeptic who only mentions part of the story. Worse yet, some people conclude that their church has been deliberately hiding this information from them. All of this confusion is totally unnecessary because Christians have nothing to hide about the Bible, especially after we hear the whole story.

            So yes, there are differences between the ancient copies of Scripture, but the vast majority of them are insignificant. They consist of spelling mistakes and other mistakes that are easily spotted and corrected when we compare the ancient copies with one another. And among the 40 or so places where we do have a fair degree of uncertainty about the wording of the original text, we know we possess the original wording in one of the copies, and none of those instances undermine a core doctrine of the Christian faith. We don’t find copies making different claims about the virgin birth of Christ, the deity of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, or salvation by grace through faith.

            Let me address one final question that arises from this whole discussion—why did God allow people to make mistakes as they copied the Bible? Why didn’t He just see to it that the copyists did their work perfectly? I think the answer is this—the fact that we do not find 100% uniformity between all the copies actually disproves a claim that many people have made about the Bible, namely, that there was a deliberate conspiracy in the past to change the teaching of the Bible. The fact that we find mistakes actually disproves that claim. Let me explain what I mean.

            Think about the difference between the produce that you grow in your garden and the produce that you see in the grocery store. When you harvest produce from your garden—say, tomatoes, for example—they don’t all look exactly the same, do they? They will be slightly different sizes and slightly different colors and some of them will have some flaws.

            But when you see tomatoes in the grocery store, what do you find? They all look exactly the same—they’re the same color, the same size, and the same shape. That uniformity tells us that there was a lot of human manipulation in the process of bringing those tomatoes to the grocery store. Someone threw out all the imperfect tomatoes and shipped out only the ones they wanted to have on display.

            Now, the fact that we don’t see complete uniformity in the copies of Scripture tells us that there has been no human manipulation over the copying process. If there was ever a conspiracy to change the message of Scripture, we would find uniformity in the copies because the conspirators would have destroyed all of the copies that they deemed imperfect. The history of the Bible as it stands shows us that there has never been centralized, human control over its copying and preservation.

            But consider this, even without that kind of centralized, human control over the copying process, we have received a Bible today that has no notable differences in over 99% of the text. I think we can conclude that God was overseeing the process, and He did so in a way that disproves the claims of those who want to attack the Bible.

            In the end, we can echo the words of the Apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians 1:20—“Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Indeed He has!

Notes

1. Norman Geisler, When Skeptics Ask, p. 160.