Matthew 5:38-42 Introduction Some years ago a man named Lucien had served the state of Kentucky "beyond the call of duty." One day he discovered that an old boyhood friend named Sam was serving time in the State penitentiary and had 8 more years to serve. shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. The skandalon ( G4625) , the stumbling-block is something which trips a man up, something which sends him crashing to destruction, something which lures him to his own ruin. So, it is said, Hillel arranged that the poverty-stricken son of a noble family should be given, not simply enough to keep him from starvation, but a horse to ride and a slave to run before him; and once, when no slave was available, Hillel himself acted as his slave and ran before him. A blow on the cheek, which is an injury to me in my body; "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek," which is not only a hurt, but an affront and indignity (2 Corinthians 11:20), if a man in anger or scorn thus abuse thee, "turn to him the other cheek;" that is, "instead of avenging that injury, prepare for another, and bear it patiently: give not the rude man as good as he brings; do not challenge him, nor enter an action against him; if it be necessary to the public peace that he be bound to his good behaviour, leave that to the magistrate; but for thine own part, it will ordinarily be the wisest course to pass it by, and take no further notice of it: there are no bones broken, no great harm done, forgive it and forget it; and if proud fools think the worse of thee, and laugh at thee for it, all wise men will value and honour thee for it, as a follower of the blessed Jesus, who, though he was the Judge of Israel, did not smite those who smote him on the cheek," Micah 5:1. It stressed meeting hatred with positive love rather than hatred. But he did know it. (1) Do not take the law into your own hands. Abraham Lincoln once said: "Die when I may, I would like it to be said of me, that I always pulled up a weed and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow." Greek morals had begun to infiltrate into Rome, and the descent was catastrophic. Therefore if when you are bringing your gift to the altar, and you suddenly remember that your brother has ought against you; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift ( Matthew 5:22-24 ). There is thumos ( G2372) , which was described as being like the flame which comes from dried straw. It is inevitable because the Church, when it really is the Church, is bound to be the conscience of the nation and the conscience of society. I say not that there is no evidence in the other gospels to demonstrate that He is really Jehovah and Emmanuel too, but that nowhere else have we the same fulness of proof, and the same manifest design, from the very starting point of the gospel, to proclaim the Lord Jesus as being thus a divine Messiah God with us. The next mile is of prime necessity; it is in your option to go or not to go, and your action will determine whether or not you have entered into the inner heart of Christ, and are His disciple, not in word only, but" in deed and in truth.". It may mean that we must be humble enough to confess that we were wrong and to make apology; it may mean that, even if we were in the right, we have to take the first step towards healing the breach. Matthew 5:39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. That is a great principle. So the second possible translation of this beatitude is: Blessed is the man who has every instinct, every impulse, every, passion under control. Even behind the Scribal and Oral Law there was one great principle which the scribes and the Pharisees had imperfectly grasped. We have to get down into the depths of the soul, before we understand the meaning of non-resistance. Tremendously heavy Christian influence in the forming of this nation and thus written into our very Constitution those safeguards to protect that religious freedom, freedom of worship and assembly in all because the Christian influence was strong and we weren't afraid to say, "One nation under God". Now, I shall proceed with all simplicity, the Lord helping me, first taking up the gospel before us, in order to point out, as far as I am enabled to do, the great distinguishing features, as well as the chief contents, that the Holy Ghost has here been pleased to communicate. (2SAPS), Charles Simeon writes that "TO render good for evil is a duty of indispensable obligation; and many commentators consider it as particularly enjoined in the words which we have just read. and that the best people had acted on, deserved to be formally stated. The word for such compulsion was aggareuein ( G29) . or that the Spirit of God had not His own blessed reasons for giving prominency to both facts? I had to ride the streetcar back to my apartment in the evening. I haven't come to destroy it; I've come to fulfill it. Esther In the old creation story we find God saying, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness" ( Genesis 1:26). The gospels are short; the materials used are not numerous; but what shall we say of the depths of grace that are there disclosed? That is why this beatitude is so demanding a beatitude. Old Testament law established a legal principle of ''eye for an eye,'' intended to prevent excessive revengepunishments were meant to be proportional to the crime. These were the two main consequences of the rejection of the Messiah by Israel. But this is no uncommon thing. When she left, she left louder than anybody else, when she talked she talked louder than anybody else and she was just purely obnoxious as far as I was concerned. It is the word skandalon ( G4625) . Now Jesus is talking about that deceitfulness of being able to say no, though it sounds like yes or saying yes when you really don't mean yes. We have thus in either case the same principle. There is in this passage a neat gradation of anger, and an answering neat gradation of punishment. Suppose a right-handed man is standing in front of another man, and suppose he wants to slap the other man on the right cheek, how must he do it? But here the great thing is the relationship of Joseph to the Messiah, and hence he is the one to whom the angel appears. His self-respect was thus saved, but the loan was never to be asked back, and it was in fact, not a loan, but a gift. Such conduct, in the most literal sense, is a hell-deserving sin. To give to some needy person was not something which a man might choose to do; it was something he must do; for, if he refused, the refusal was to God. Love must be the disciples governing principle, not selfishness. (iii) Worst of all, their Christianity was liable to disrupt their home life. Hence we read as the very first "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. John asked. No sooner does a man begin to teach than we know at once whether or not he has the right to teach. He did not need to argue; it was sufficient for him to speak. In a similar way, Jesus is not calling for a token external obedience jus to assuage one's own conscience. "The world stands fast on three things, on justice, on truth, and on peace." No doubt there is also the declaration of the Father's name, as far as could be then; but, still, the form taken is that of "instructing in righteousness." This gives occasion to his stern sentence upon their condition in the sight of God. Somehow we don't think of the poor in spirit as being very happy people, and yet Jesus, in beginning his description of the child of God declares. But two most important things have to be noted. We shall dwell a little more upon the three temptations, if the Lord will, as to their intrinsic moral import, when we come to the consideration of Luke. But the messengers were pressed men, i. e., each village or township was bound to forward the message to the next, and the first man that was happened on, however pressing his own business, was obliged to afford the use of his horses or mules, and go forward with the royal courier, giving him a mount and accompanying him. I'm telling you the truth, man". In point of fact we can only have agape ( G26) when Jesus Christ enables us to conquer our natural tendency to anger and to bitterness, and to achieve this invincible goodwill to all men. All of these examples deal with the attitude of one's heart in exhibiting patience and love, and Jesus ' intent in them is to raise us above the righteousness of the Pharisees to the higher righteousness of God's calling. The greatest of all Jewish days was the Day of Atonement. Had He anything to confess? So long as a man is like that, an inner battle is going on inside him. They had before known Jesus, and, I apprehend, savingly. But the motive under which the Christian lives is the motive of love; the Christian's one desire is to show his wondering gratitude for the love wherewith God had loved him in Jesus Christ. Seneca, De Vit Beat. The third illustration requires some background knowledge of customs in New Testament times to appreciate (Matthew 5:41). They are not such as any of us, or perhaps any man, would beforehand have thought of introducing, and into such a genealogy, of all others. They were tortured on the rack; they were scraped with pincers; molten lead was poured hissing upon them; red hot brass plates were affixed to the tenderest parts of their bodies; eyes were torn out; parts of their bodies were cut off and roasted before their eyes; their hands and feet were burned while cold water was poured over them to lengthen the agony. Think of what opportunity you'd have to witness to him in the second mile. To call a man moros ( G3474) was not to criticise his mental ability; it was to cast aspersions on his moral character; it was to take his name and reputation from him, and to brand him as a loose-living and immoral person. Where, in the mind of the Spirit of God, such a continual, conspicuous point of quoting and applying Scripture in all places and seasons to the Lord Jesus? Blessed are the meek: they shall inherit the eaRuth ( Matthew 5:5 ). But while clearly that limit is prescribed by the very nature of the precept, the resistance which it permits must have love to the culprit or to others as its motive, and not be tainted by the least suspicion of passion or vengeance. The tempest-ruffled sea mirrors no stars by night, nor is blued by day. Four real-life applications are tailored to fit the rule given in verse 39a. She bustled and scurried here and there with the clatter of dishes and the clash of pans; and every moment was torture to the tense nerves of Jesus. But we'll get more into this when we get to the seventeenth chapter or the nineteenth chapter when we look at the law of Jesus and divorce, because Jesus does then begin to amplify it there a bit. Let your light so shine before men, that when they see your good works, they will glorify your Father which is in heaven ( Matthew 5:16 ). And if someone takes your cloak, do not withhold your tunic as well. By the second century B.C. See F B Meyer's comments on The Second Mile. In the ancient world it was very different. They are doing nothing exceptional if they love only those who are friends, for even the ungodly do that. You should be doing more. Self-control may be for a moment off its guard--and then what may happen? And in noticing this, "if your right eye offends thee, pluck it out and cast" he's not speaking literally of just plucking out your eye and throwing it away because through that eye you looked at a gal and you go "ooh eee" you know, that'll be nice. Matthew 25:41. "Take heed [He says] that you do not your righteousness before men." Daniel Christianity had a double background. 2 Kings We are great gainers when we lose only our money, or other property, and risk not the loss of our souls, by losing the love of God and man. O the joy of following Christ! To the heirs of the kingdom the Lord is unfolding the principles of that kingdom most blessed and rich instruction, but instruction in righteousness. As earlier (verses 17, 18) the law is fully maintained in all its authority, we have later on (verses 21-48) superior principles of grace, and deeper truths, mainly founded upon the revelation of the Father's name the Father which is in heaven. When they came back from Babylon, they spoke Caldean. Zechariah And unfortunately, there are some people who take the name of Christian and then in the name of Christianity do weird things, and because of the weird things they are doing, they come into a certain amount of persecution.When I was going to Bible college in Los Angeles, I was working downtown at the Title Insurance and Trust Company. We shall see by and by why this disappears in the gospel of Luke. But it is not so really. What is Jesus' message? All kinds of things were classified as work. The expression has come to mean to help someone beyond what is required or expected of you. The gospel of Matthew bears internal proof that God specially provides for the instruction of His own among those that had been Jews. Reprinted by permission. Neither an icy faultlessness nor a faulty warm-heartedness is enough. Even Socrates said, "Is there anyone to whom you entrust more serious matters than to your wife, and is there anyone to whom you talk less?" The voice of God had said, "I hate divorce" ( Malachi 2:16). [Note: See Hagner, p. At that time the world was in danger of witnessing the almost total break-up of marriage and the collapse of the home. The himation seems to have been a large piece of woolen cloth nearly square, which was wrapped around the body or fastened about the shoulders, and served also to wrap oneself in at night. Writing of divorcement. What then is the real principle behind the whole Law, that principle which Jesus came to fulfil, the true meaning of which he came to show'? But he became angry as groups of teenagers without costumes kept coming to his door shouting, "Trick or treat! That court was composed of the local village elders, and varied in number from three in villages of fewer than one hundred and fifty inhabitants, to seven in larger towns and twenty-three in still bigger cities. Quintilian, the great Roman teacher of oratory, said of certain of his scholars, "They would no doubt be excellent students, if they were not already convinced of their own knowledge." Because he has had a true encounter with God, and as the result, the kingdom of heaven belongs to him. "Blessed are ye, [there is thus a change. The very form of the beatitudes is the statement of the joyous thrill and the radiant gladness of the Christian life. Jesus came to fulfill the law by dying for our disobedience. So serious a view did the Jewish teachers take of adultery that the guilty parties could be punished by nothing less than death ( Leviticus 20:10); but once again Jesus lays it down that not only the forbidden action, but also the forbidden thought is guilty in the sight of God. helplessness, and who has put his whole trust in God, for thus alone he can render to God that perfect, obedience which will make him a citizen of the kingdom, The Bliss Of The Broken Heart ( Matthew 5:4). Eeew, you know that gives me the chills thinking my hand lying there on the table with a saw, picking it up and stuffing it in my pocket, you know. That is the feeling about which Shakespeare wrote so unforgettably in Henry the Fifth in the words he put into Henry's mouth before the battle of Agincourt: "He that shall live this day and see old age. Hence, to gird up the loins became a significant figurative expression, denoting readiness for service, activity, labor, and watchfulness; and to loosen the loins denoted the giving way to repose and indolence, 2 Kings 4:29; Job 38:3; Isaiah 5:27; Luke 12:35; John 21:7. You know, they killed a member of our clan, we're going to kill a member of their clan. When a man is called on to suffer something for his Christianity that is always a crucial moment; it is the great occasion; it is the clash between the world and Christ; it is a moment in the drama of eternity. The worshipper is standing at the rail, ready to hand over his victim to the priest; his hands are on it to confess; and then he remembers his breach with his brother, the wrong done to his brother; if his sacrifice is to avail, he must go back and mend that breach and undo that wrong, or nothing can happen. (iii) The King James Version has it that when Jesus had sat down, he opened his mouth and taught them saying. In the same way emergencies are continually happening to us all. It is easy to see what an incredible novelty the Christian teaching regarding chastity and fidelity in marriage was in a civilization like that. It is highly prized because it serves as a blanket at night and against rain and cold. Jesus himself was called a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber. No matter what men do to him, God seeks nothing but their highest good. Giving must never be such as to encourage him in laziness and in shiftlessness, for such giving can only hurt. The Greek said, "I hunger for of bread." Basically, Jesus is saying you should be a person of your word. In God there is this universal benevolence even towards men who have broken his law and broken his heart. Now you have heard that it was said by them of old time ( Matthew 5:21 ). Does this saying of Jesus then forbid a man to take an oath anywhere--for instance, in the witness box? His wife looked at him with a curious gaze and said, "George, it's only candy.". For them Jesus Christ was the Lord, and to no man would they give that title which belonged to Christ. What did the law constitute that he finds an uncleanness in her? Man was created to be like God The characteristic of God is this universal benevolence, this unconquerable goodwill, this constant seeking of the highest good of every man. A thing is teleios ( G5046) , if it realizes the purpose for which it was planned; a man is perfect if he realizes the purpose for which he was created and sent into the world. The cloak was the great, blanket-like outer garment which a man wore as a robe by day, and used as a blanket at night. Now you have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. Next, we have the call of the disciples, as we have seen. If I do not stand and suffer here, my conscience will be defiled; but this is in no way suffering for Christ's sake. A man might be on a journey, and in the midst of it the hot wind which brought the sand-storm might begin to blow. Most people are so concerned with their own feelings that they are not much concerned with the feelings of anyone else. Post-offices were then unknown. It will not happen very often, if at all, that anyone will slap us on the face, but time and time again life brings to us insults either great or small; and Jesus is here saying that the true Christian has learned to resent no insult and to seek retaliation for no slight. In such circumstances there can be no such thing as safety. Thus the contradictions looked hopeless; for it seemed, that in order to be the Messiah, He must, and yet He must not, be Joseph's son. They were men who wished to free themselves from all earthly things, and especially of the desires of the body. In His condescending love, He would lead hearts that were prepared of Him to desire the Messiah, and come from the ends of the earth to welcome Him. 5:23-24 So, then, if you bring your gift to the altar, and if you there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go, and first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. The plain instruction is, Suffer any injury that can be borne, for the sake of peace, committing your concerns to the Lord's keeping. No doubt its glistening whiteness made the connection easy. The barrow was being pushed by a quartette of men who were drunk; and as they pushed the barrow along, they were singing ribald songs, and joking and jesting among themselves. "Eighty and six years," came the immortal reply, "have I served Christ. . To me, I confess, it seems impossible for a simple mind to resist the conclusion. For what purpose was man created? That the right should have been struck is an incident which has happened to you altogether apart from your choice. The Revised Standard Version has it that a man must answer simply yes or no, "anything more than this comes from evil." In a worried world, the Christian should be the only man who remains serene. Do not even the Gentiles do that? Moreover he or she should be ready and willing to part with his or her outer garment as well. It should be even more visible in the ordinary activities of the world. The liberalizing of the law through interpretation.Now, this law of divorce had been extremely liberalized through interpretation. But even if to be taken literally there must be some reserves. The man who fights his battle for Christ will always make things easier for those who follow after. By this we serve Him and demonstrate His love. (Amplified Bible - Lockman), NLT: If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. It was Aristotle's fixed method to define every virtue as the mean between two extremes. That is, he calls man to confess his own ruin in view of the introduction of that kingdom. It's easy to think the worst of people to protect our own interests. There is the aorist tense, and the aorist tense expresses one particular action, done and completed in past time. Here again we have the basic fact--a man cannot be right with God unless he is right with his fellow-men. Wherever there is a strong Christian emphasis and a strong Christian voice, that society is being preserved and maintained. The second evil mentioned is where a man is litigious and determined to take all the advantage the law can give him, following us with vexatious and expensive lawsuits. In the end the word came to signify any kind of forced impressment into the service of the occupying power. He hears not only the words which are spoken in his name; he hears all words; and there cannot be any such thing as a form of words which evades bringing God into a transaction. [And] if a man would teach others to break the commandments, he will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but he who teaches those to keep the commandments shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven ( Matthew 5:19 ). Jesus does not mean we are to give indiscriminately to panhandlers who take the money and spend it on illicit drink or drugs. And the sum of all is, that Christians must avoid disputing and striving. And so the mission of the church to turn them from darkness to light; "You are the light of the world. It has often happened that a quarrel between two people has descended to their families, and has been inherited by future generations, and has in the end succeeded in splitting a church or a society in two. ", "I'm not going to put up with this!" The tragedy of so much so-called goodness is that in it there is an element of hardness and coldness and austerity. And he said, "in these two are all the law and the prophets"( Matthew 22:36-40 ). Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:12, "Being reviled we bless, being persecuted we endure it." It is one of the simple facts of life that we see only what we are able to see; and that is true not only in the physical sense, it is also true in every other possible sense. There is the word penes ( G3993) . If you're hungering and thirsting after righteousness, surely God will answer that hunger and thirst of your heart and you will be filled with the righteousness of God.Now we come into more positive kind of characteristics. We must be careful not to think that this beatitude calls actual material poverty a good thing. There were the Essenes, an ancient sect of the Jews. Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy ( Matthew 5:7 ). Goodness, "the implacable hunter," is always at their heels. It kept the meat from rotting or putrefying.And Jesus is saying to his disciples, ye are the preserving influence in a world in which you live. In the case of our nearest and our dearest we cannot help loving them; we speak of falling in love; it is something which comes to us quite unsought; it is something which is born of the emotions of the heart. But the Master says if there be a second blow, let it fall on your other cheek. In Luke the Sermon on the Mount follows immediately after what we might call the official choosing of the Twelve ( Luke 6:13 ff). I find that the screw-driver exactly fits the grip of my hand; it is neither too large nor too small, too rough nor too smooth. of a person's heart to the gospel. The Sermon on the Mount is nothing less than the concentrated memory of many hours of heart to heart communion between the disciples and their Master. (F. B. Meyer. 38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. On the other hand a man may have all kinds of faults; he may drink, and swear, and gamble, and lose his temper; and yet, if any one is in trouble, he would give him the last penny out of his pocket and the very coat off his back. Expostulation, argument, appeals to reason, might be employed first; but if these failed there would be necessity to use the only other argument that might be available. It being clearly understood that you put out of your heart all private revenge, all personal malice, and are living in a land where it is impossible to bring the wrongdoer before judge or jury, you may be compelled to act in a judicial capacity, doing for society what society could not do through its legalized officers and methods. It is sometimes the Christian's duty to bring to his fellowmen the necessary warning. In regard to healing, the injurer had to pay all the expenses of the necessary medical attention, until a complete cure had been effected. And that is why Paul the apostle wrote, "Christ is the end of the law to those that believe" ( Romans 10:4 ); because he has brought us into a new relationship with God that involves our faith in Jesus Christ as the basis for our righteous standing before God for he fulfilled the law. It contains the root hap which means chance. Christians must remember that God owns everything. ( Matthew 5:42-45 ). No one can honestly face Jesus and honestly listen to him without feeling that this is God's last word beside which all other words are inadequate, and all other wisdom out of date. Is our religion a thing in which we are conscious of nothing so much as the need of God within our hearts, or a thing in which we have comfortable thoughts of our own piety? It was to this custom that our Saviour refers. That is to be our great model. Would he have put forward the name of Thamar in such a connection? [42] And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold . To what painful feelings it might give rise! THE LIFE OF JESUS AS COVERED Theoretically no nation ever had a higher ideal of marriage than the Jew had. Such people are doing a godlike work, for it is the great purpose of God to bring peace between men and himself, and between man and man. This beatitude says: Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God; what it means is: Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be doing a God-like work. (ii) But the great ground of persecution was in fact political. Under Roman law you could be walking down the road and a Roman soldier come to you and he had his backpack on and all he would say, Carry this thing for a mile, and you had to do it under Roman law; you had to carry the thing for a mile. God makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil; he sends his rain on the just and the unjust.
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