7th October 2024

7th October 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Matthew 5:38-48 focus v38-41)


Message (Alan Burke) 


We like it when people get their just deserts, actually we want people not only to get their just deserts but we want them to get much more than their just desserts, we want revenge for what has been done to us, we want them to suffer more than we suffered. You may not be like that but I reckon that the human heart is such that we are all the same but you’re just too polite to say it or too afraid to admit it to anyone else. Today though we hear Jesus challenging that heart attitude that we have. Jesus similarly as he has begun much of this teaching on the sermon in the mount says; “You have heard that it was said”. What he is doing is that just like before he is addressing a misapplication, a misunderstanding of the teaching of scriptures. What he speaks of here ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth’ is known as the lex talionis. Exodus 21 tells us; ‘but if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise’ (Ex 21:23-25, see also Lev 24:19-20). 


The principle being taught here is that the punishment should fit the crime, the consequences should be proportional. It prevented the sentence being too severe and it also prevented them from being unjustly lenient. These penalties though were not literally imposed. If someone put your eye out you weren’t getting a rusty spoon out to gouge their eye out, if you were burnt they weren’t getting the blowtorch out to make you suffer. Actually the only physical penalty mentioned in the law was flogging and that was limited to forty strokes as we are told in Deuteronomy 25:3. 


Jesus tells us as his followers not to resist an evil person. Who are the evil that this passage is referring to? Well from the context of lex talionis and the examples that Jesus gives it is one who acts in a way that not in accordance with how the Lord wants his people to live, someone who does evil, evil actions. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. The second scenario is that of someone wants to sue us and take our tuning we are to let them have our cloak as well even though the cloak was the outer garment was something according to the law you couldn’t take a cloak from someone (See Ex 22:26 and Deut 23:13). The third scenario that Jesus gives is that if someone forces us to go one mile we go with them two. The imagery here is that of what would have happened at the time, a Roman solider forces someone to carry their equipment for them and instead of resisting that they are to go further than what was expected them. In a sense the Roman forces that they so hated they were to help.  


For this teaching of Jesus is teaching us how to respond when someone does something against us, if their actions are evil, if we are unjustly treated. The overarching message here for us is that we are not to be those who respond in such a way that adds to the cycle of evil, if someone slaps us the correct response isn’t to slap them back it is to let it go, if someone sues us then we give them more than is required of us, if we are made to do something we don’t want to we go the extra mile. It is this passage that we get that expression from, going the extra mile. For the believer this is how we are to live, you might think that what is being required of us is too much but remember what Jesus has done for you, he was mocked, spat on, beaten with sticks, slapped, scourged, nailed to a cross and he didn’t retaliate all so that we who are by our nature evil, the enemies of God might become his children. Let us look to our saviours example and live as he requires us.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q2. What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?
A. The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.
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