My name is Gabe Richards.
Today's scripture reading is from Matthew 5, 38 through 42.
That's page 837 in the Bibles in the back of the pews.
You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I tell you, don't resist an evil one.
On the contrary, if anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.
As for the one who wants to sue you and take away your shirt, let him have your coat as
well.
If anyone forces you to go one mile with him, go to.
Give to the one who asks you and don't turn away from the one who wants to borrow from
you.
This is God's word.
You do have a Bible.
I would encourage you to turn on over to Matthew chapter 5 this morning.
I don't think we have slides up today.
I don't think they got loaded in there.
Okay, so we don't have slides today for our scripture, but turn over to Matthew 5.
If you don't have a Bible, there is a Bible in the back of the pew.
And feel free to grab that Bible, use it today and take it with you.
We would love to gift you with that Bible and help you in your Bible reading journey.
But Matthew chapter 5, and we're going to be in those passages beginning in 38.
So there's a story that I remember pretty vividly.
At least I remember how we felt when the story broke.
I was a young man, probably in my late teens, and I was a worker at youth ministry at our
church.
And we got news that one of the families in our church was out on the town.
I think they were going to a movie, going to a movie or coming from a movie.
And they were driving here in Sacramento, as so many people do every day.
When an incident took place on the road, you know, they call it now road rage, something
like that.
Someone cuts someone off, someone doesn't yield properly or use a signal.
Another party gets very agitated by that.
And they began to exchange either words or in the worst case, more than words, right?
Maybe some of you experienced that on the road.
Maybe some of you have been the rager on the road.
But I think we all know what we're talking about when it comes to road rage.
And this family was out in the evening and probably coming from the movie after a night
together.
And an incident took place where they got, somehow got into it with another driver.
And the family continued on its way and the driver seemed to leave the scene, the other
driver that was kind of engaging them.
What we found out later was that driver went really quickly home because he lived right
in the area, switched cars and got his gun.
Hopped back on the road and began to drive around looking for the vehicle that he was
engaged with again.
This all happened very quickly.
As he approached the vehicle in his car, he shot into the vehicle multiple times once.
I'm not exactly sure how many, I don't recall those details.
But what I do remember is that a young girl named Kimmy was in the back seat.
And Kimmy was struck by one of those bullets.
And in a moment, that bullet changed her life forever.
Kimmy was in our youth group.
She had been at one of our summer camps fairly recently.
And we heard the news that Kimmy was now paralyzed.
As a result of some road rage incident.
A point is in telling you that, is that as individuals, we're just not really good at
executing justice.
We're not very good about determining the fit response when we are sinned against.
In fact, we're quite in just oftentimes in our response to folks.
You guys have already heard my story, right?
My brother played was playing with me, mocking me and took my flashlight.
And so I stabbed him in the arm with a dissecting knife.
Not very good with determining what's the just response, am I?
This person on the road was not either.
He took it to a whole new level.
And Kimmy paid for it.
Verse 38 of our scripture today says, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth.
This scripture is Jesus reference back to the Old Testament.
And he's referencing a scripture passage out of Exodus chapter 21, out of Leviticus chapter
24 and a scripture that comes also from Deuteronomy.
It's in all three places.
It's just restated in a few different ways.
In Exodus, the passage says, if there is an injury, then you must give life for life.
I for I tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise,
wound for wound.
The scripture out of Leviticus chapter 24, beginning in verse 19 says, if any man inflicts
a permanent injury on his neighbor, whatever he has done is to be done to him.
Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
Whatever injury he inflicted on the person, the same is to be inflicted on him.
Whoever kills an animal is to make restitution for it.
But whoever kills a person is to be put to death.
You are to have the same law for the resident alien and the native alike, because I am the
Lord your God.
When Jesus pulls this quote, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, this isn't in isolation.
Those who are around him definitely know that this is in the Torah.
You can probably take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth as a shorthand for that
whole list.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, fracture for fracture, life for life, burn for burn,
and on and on.
What's actually kind of interesting about the eye for eye, tooth for tooth passages is
they're not unique to the Bible.
In fact, they appear in multiple ancient or Near East ancient texts about law codes.
One of the most popular one is the law code of Hammurabi.
And then the law code of Hammurabi, which dates before even Moses came on the scene,
they had a very similar law that said eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
But what was unique about the laws in the Bible is that unlike all the other ancient
law codes, the law applied across class because among the people of Israel and even with the
alien who would come, the foreigner who would come into their midst, they were not to treat
one another differently as if there was a class system, a hierarchy, one better than
the other one.
See, the law of Hammurabi said it's an eye for an eye if a peasant strikes a Lord and
takes his eye.
Right?
It's an eye for an eye, but not if a Lord and a Lord get into it.
They're above that law.
Whereas the Bible kind of flattens it and says for everyone the law applies.
These laws were never meant that someone could actually exact the same vengeance that's talked
about there.
So you read those laws and some of you probably go, oh, could you imagine living in that world?
Like fractures and burns and like we're giving each other all kinds of stuff.
The truth is none of the laws, even in the ancient, of the other ancient codes, none
of them were ever meant to be exacted precisely or the same way in the sense of an eye for
an eye.
They were the law codes that were more or less saying the courts needed to determine
the value of those things and exact them from the person.
In fact, as far back as we know, these codes really represented more like what we would
see in a lawsuit where you're trying to determine the value of something and you're trying to
get from that person the value.
So an eye for the value of an eye, the value of an eye for the value of an eye, the value
of a fracture for the value of a fracture or burn, what it costs the person who was
offended.
And in most societies where these laws existed, they weren't interpreted literally.
They were understood to mean that the eye had a value and if someone took another person's
eye, they owed them that value or a tooth or a hand.
A value was fixed to the loss and the offending party was liable to pay it.
But here's the point.
Why did those laws exist in the first place, even in the Old Testament?
Well, those laws existed because each person had to recognize that another person's life
and their body are no less worth, worth no less than your own.
They're worth no less than what you would place a value on yours.
An eye for an eye.
How valuable is your eye?
How valuable is your hand?
How valuable, right, is your foot?
And they were too even and we can read these and think that these laws are actually licensed
for us to get even.
Well, the law says eye for an eye, so he took something from me so I can get even with him.
But the thing is, that's not what these laws were at all.
In fact, they were quite the opposite.
See, how you read them are going to determine what you get out of them.
And these laws represented actually something quite the opposite.
They were necessary for humanity across lots of different cultures because we always want
to get even, but we aren't very good at doing just, justly.
We always want to get even, but we're not very good at doing it justly, and so we always
take more than is owed.
These laws actually put a ceiling, a maximum penalty allowed.
These laws flipped the script and actually said, you can't go more than this, an eye
for an eye.
See that story I told at the beginning was someone's inconvenience for some girl's ability
to walk.
That's not just.
Someone was inconvenienced on the freeway or on the highway or on the roads.
Someone was inconvenienced or startled or made anxious and they took some young lady's
ability to walk.
That's not just.
And the law that says eye for an eye put a ceiling and said, you can't take more than
the offense.
You can't take more than what was done to you.
And this put a limit on the evil inclinations of the human heart.
We are vengeful people.
We want to get even plus.
And notice the one in the Leviticus, the scripture I read, it even ends by saying that they have
to treat the foreigner as the same as the native born.
Doesn't just even the playing field among the people of God, but it even includes those
who are outside.
So by Jesus's day and time, these laws had come to represent this kind of sort of legal
right.
I talked about this last week about how these laws were interpreted and the law was regularly
used to the fullest extent with this kind of hyper focus on offenses.
Always looking to see, did you cross me?
Cause now I can sue you.
Does that sound familiar to nowadays?
Did you cross me?
Now I sue you.
You cross me.
Now I'm going to get my fullness out of it.
I'm going to get what's owed me.
Did you offend against me?
Ah, well then I have a lawsuit.
And Jesus comes along and says, it said an eye for an eye and an eye for an eye placed
a limit on what could, but what you really missed was the direction in tide that that
was flowing.
That was flowing from an unrestrained evil heart that would do whatever it wanted to
get even in vengeance plus some.
And it was putting a restraint on that heart that you could only get the value of it.
And Jesus says, I'm going to actually take that law and make, fill it fuller and continue
on that trajectory down and say, maybe you don't even have to take what's owed you.
That's what we're going to see today.
Maybe you don't even have to take what's owed you.
Maybe you have the right to not have the right in the kingdom of God.
So he says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
That's what you've heard.
But I tell you, and remember, but is not, oh, I'm going to set this law aside, but this
is Jesus saying, I'm going to deepen it.
I'm going to get down past the surface level of what you could do on the exterior, on the
outside that I'm going to get down to the heart level.
And he says, now he says, but I tell you, don't resist an evil doer.
Don't resist an evil doer.
Now if you're like me, when you read that instantly, you start panicking.
I'm going to be taking advantage.
If I can't resist an evil doer, that means evil will prevail.
Evil will win.
I've got to be able to resist an evil doer.
And some of this has to do with this word resist that is really hard to translate out
of the Greek into English.
The word resist means set yourself against.
It means set yourself against.
It's kind of like if I walked over to the wall and I faced off with the wall and I set
myself against the wall.
And so you might think, OK, it's something more like a mirror.
It's something more like a mirror.
Or in other words, it says, but I tell you, don't retaliate in kind.
Don't mirror back to the evil doer what the evil doer is doing to you.
Don't return in kind.
When you stand opposite or you set yourself against.
When you set yourself against, don't return in kind.
It's kind of like standing against someone without making them an enemy.
Standing against someone without making them an enemy.
See at the heart level.
What it doesn't mean is it doesn't mean passive submission to evil doers.
It doesn't mean keep taking it.
Keep taking the evil.
That's not what it means.
And we'll look at three examples that Jesus gives in a second, but none of them require
a passive response of just keep taking it.
None of them.
In fact, we'll see in the three examples that Jesus gives something that's really, really
interesting about how he creatively twists and turns it back.
It's a kind of retaliation without retaliating in kind.
It's a kind of standing off or facing off with someone without mirroring back to them
the evil that they're doing, but doing something so much more like generous and gracious and
yet at the same time subversive to their position.
It's actually a brilliant passage of scripture in what Jesus is doing here.
If you notice also that the examples that Jesus gives a little bit later that we'll
examine none of them actually have to do with violent encounters.
We'll break that apart, but they do involve taking a stand against their evil, the person's
evil and doing something.
And there's something that Jesus has in mind.
You can imagine Jesus as he's saying it to these crowds that Jesus has got a little twinkle
in his eye and his voice goes up when he says it.
Right.
When someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him also the left with a little twinkle
in his eye looking for a response from people.
So let's keep going.
Jesus expands on the law and gets at the heart of the law, which was moving folks from executing
justice by overdoing the punishment to a place of equity where there was one for one.
That's what the law did.
And Jesus says, let's go deeper.
Keep following that line.
Keep following that trajectory toward qualifying all of your personal demands for justice with
mercy.
Qualify all your personal demands for justice with mercy.
Question is, do you trust God enough that you can leave your vindication to him?
Jonathan Pennington, a scholar who looks deeply at the Sermon on the Mount says as lust is
to adultery and anger to murder, Jesus speaks to the heart of the matter.
Do not be a vengeful, vigilante, self justified distributor of justice.
There is a righteousness greater and more beautiful than self justice.
And that is letting God be the judge and the righteousness maker, the one who will put
the world right.
Do you trust God enough that you can leave your ultimate vindication to him?
That's kind of the question behind all of this.
Craig Keener, another scholar says, we, kingdom of God people, have no personal honor or property
worth defending compared to the opportunity to show how much we love God and everyone
else.
I'm going to read that one again.
We, the kingdom of God people, have no personal honor or property worth defending compared
to the opportunity to show how much we love God and everyone else.
And so let's move through really quickly these four examples that Jesus gives on what he
means by don't resist an evildoer, don't set yourself against them as a mirror that returns
or retaliates in kind.
What does he mean by that?
The first one comes out of verse 40.
On the contrary, if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also.
If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also.
Can I come up here really quick?
I'm going to slap my son.
Everyone perked up and came out of your sleep.
No, I'm just kidding.
The writing of the New Testament is right-handed oriented, right?
We're in a kind of a world where if you're left-handed, it's like, you're the same, you're
equal, you're okay.
There's nothing wrong with you.
You're right.
No, it was a right-handed culture, right?
For the most part, everyone was right-handed.
So everything is written right-handed oriented.
And so to slap someone on the right cheek, where's your right cheek?
If I'm right-handed, I'm not going to use my left hand to slap him.
That feels really weird.
No, actually, I will use my right hand.
And so the kind of slap that he's talking about is a kind of slap that would have been
a backhanded slap on the right cheek with your right hand, a right hand to the right
cheek.
Now, that changes what kind of slap that is, doesn't it?
We kind of almost know this culturally, or at least culture before, or British or French
culture or whatever it is like, right?
This is an insult.
It's an insult.
It's an affront.
It's saying to the person, hey, I dishonor you.
I'm going to treat you at a lower rank than I am.
I'm going to treat you as lesser than I am.
That's my backhand.
And so Jesus' response to this idea, someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him
also the left, right?
Well, now if I'm going to hit him with my right hand, what am I going to do?
An open-handed slap, right?
You can have a seat there.
Backhanded right hand, right cheek, open-handed to the left cheek.
Now, the open-handed was interesting at this time culturally because the open-handed slap
was the sign of a dispute between social equals.
Whereas the backhanded was a way of saying you're lesser than I am.
You're like a dog or an animal.
An open-handed slap was like saying we're equals.
We're equals.
And so in the context here, as Jesus is talking about with this background, this cultural
background, Jesus is saying when someone insults you with a backhanded slap, offer to them
a challenge.
Offer to them a challenge.
A challenge to instead of demeaning and dishonoring you as lesser, offer them the opportunity
to treat you as an equal.
This is resistance, not in kind, but of a different kind.
It is one that is concerned about the trajectory of the other person's life, the one who's
insulting you.
And a willingness to put yourself out there in order to truly love them for their good,
which includes pointing them away from their own faults and towards the truth.
And Jesus is saying, put yourself out there and show them the error of their way.
Put yourself out there in a loving, generous way that might even put yourself in harm's
way to get another slap.
But in their culture, there would have been an immediate kind of gasp like, oh, like the
backhand, sure, dishonor.
But now to treat them the other way, to equalize him, there would have been an immediate moment
of self-reflection in the perpetrator.
The person who was slapping goes, wait a sec, what's going on here?
What's happening?
This is an interesting theme as we move to the second one.
Verse 40, as for the one who wants to sue you and take away your shirt, let him have
your coat as well.
Now, something you need to know about the cultural context of this passage is that most
folks had two pairs of clothes that they wore on the top here.
They had a shirt and they had a coat.
There's a Greek word for both of them that's translated from the Hebrew, but more or less
it was a tunic and a coat, a tunic and a coat.
And at this time, fabrics and clothes are very expensive, very, very expensive.
And so in the Torah, in the Old Testament law, there was laws on the books that protected
you from having your clothes taken from you.
They could take a lot of other things from you, but your clothes were kind of like, you
know, there was a social welfare program that said, you can't sue someone and take their
clothes, come on.
Certainly not their shirts, partly because if you took their shirt, you would expose
their nakedness.
And so you get to keep your shirt.
It's kind of that last barrier, but your coat, which was usually made of wool and very expensive
and most people only owned one shirt and one coat.
Your coat, well, the Old Testament law allowed that if someone sued you and you had nothing
else, nothing in all of your possessions, they could take your coat as security, kind
of like a bail bondsman, right?
As security, they could take your coat, but every night they had to come back and give
it to you because your coat was also your blanket.
And we can't have people who are cold sleeping in the, you know, the brisk cold of the Middle
East.
And so they couldn't take your coat from you.
No one could permanently take your coat from you and no one could take your shirt at all.
So what is the actual saying Jesus throws out here?
What is his example?
So if someone who wants to sue you and take away your shirt, which they could not do,
Jesus says, let him have your coat as well.
Now use your imagination just a little bit.
What would that leave you?
Your diaper thing, right?
More or less in their culture, you'd be indecent, naked.
If they took your coat and they took your shirt, you would be naked.
But they couldn't take your shirt.
And so if they tried to, that meant they were wicked.
I mean, they didn't care if they tried to.
And so what is Jesus saying in this second one?
If someone has the evil heart to take your shirt in a lawsuit, then you out of your own
choice, give him your coat as well.
What's that going to do?
What's giving him your coat as well going to do?
Well, that's going to leave you publicly naked.
And that would be not good for you, right?
But in their culture, it would have been shameful for the person who was now holding all your
clothes.
They would have now been the spotlight.
They would have been the unjust one.
Their injustice would have been revealed and shown to everyone around you that what they
were doing was evil.
As you're standing there naked and they have all of your clothes, their wickedness would
be on display as you stand there naked and they stand there with all your clothes.
By doing this, it would shine a light on their injustice.
It might bring them even to a place of humility to see what they have done and how they have
treated you and how it is wrong.
You are responding in such a way, not in kind with their evil, but in a way that is designed
to shock their conscience and wake them up from their evil.
You see how it's not, I don't know how many of you guys have read this scripture before
and thought, man, if I do all these things, I'm going to be, I'm going to be naked and
I'm going to be poor.
And so how's a Christian supposed to do this?
But when you understand in a little bit of historical background and context to it, then
you can begin to see that this is so much bigger and more subversive and glorious.
Then just do whatever anyone says who's evil and hopefully God will make something happen.
He is making something happen.
His desire is that everyone would come to repentance and the evil doer would be shown
for what they're doing.
Shake their conscience, wake them up.
Verse 41 says, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him to just a little
bit of context on this one, a Roman occupying nation.
So Romans were the Imperial force that was occupying the state of Israel at this time.
And so they ruled and there were Roman soldiers everywhere and a Roman soldier could go to
any one of the people that were in the nation.
They could go to any of their Imperial subjects and they could force them to walk and carry
all their stuff.
It was one of the rights that a Roman soldier had, but even their right had a limitation
on it.
Guess what that limitation was?
They can only go a mile.
They can only force someone to carry their stuff for a mile.
And so Jesus says, if someone comes and asks you to carry their stuff for a mile, this
is clear talk about a Roman soldier, an occupier, then walk with them, go with him a second
or go with him to.
To be asked to carry a Roman soldier's stuff would have been very humiliating for the person
who was commandeered.
It would have been in a sense, a forced labor to help the occupier.
Because you walk past your neighbors and you're carrying the Roman soldier's stuff.
There would have been shame and it would have been humiliating.
They were oftentimes walking by fields where they were working and they were able to commandeer
someone who was right in the middle of working their livelihood and say, no, you're going
to walk now a mile with me.
Or maybe they were out with their family on a walk and the Roman soldier comes to the
dad and says, dad, right in front of the son, come with me, you're going to carry my stuff.
And the dad goes with his head hung low in humiliation, having to carry the Roman soldier's
things for a mile.
And Jesus says, you have to do that.
You don't have the power to resist that.
You don't have a free government where you can appeal to your congressmen or write some
letters.
You're an occupied territory.
But what you can do is you can gift him a second mile.
You can gift him a second mile and see what that does.
See what that does.
See how he responds to that.
They could force you a mile, give him another one.
And that would have been radical, subversive, unheard of.
Jesus is saying your generosity can redefine the relationship.
The Roman soldier didn't care about you, doesn't know your name.
He came over and forced you into labor to go that first mile.
And you can choose at the end of the first mile to either view him as an occupier who
humiliated you and you can go away cursing him under your breath or you can redefine
the relationship and give him another mile.
You know who we carry our bags for?
Not Roman occupiers, right?
For people we love.
Hey, let me get that for you.
I see you're struggling.
I want to come alongside you.
Jesus is saying you can redefine that relationship with your generosity.
Not because of threat.
Not because of dishonor.
Because you want to.
I'll give you another mile.
One thing that is important to say before we move to the last one really quickly.
These scriptures have been abused by people before.
These scriptures have been used against women telling them that they need to stay in an
abusive relationship to not resist an evildoer.
And I'll tell you, if you misunderstand it and you use it that way, that just multiplies
evil.
I'll tell you that based upon the scripture and based upon other passages that I'm more
than happy to go, you know, lead you to, if you raise your fist and you hit your wife,
I'm calling the police.
You're going to jail.
And I will visit you there.
And we can do Bible study together.
Because you ain't doing anything else but sitting there.
But you're not getting out.
You're not going to use the scripture to weasel out and continue to multiply evil.
Because this scripture is not about that.
First off, it's not about violent encounters at all.
This isn't a scripture that some folks have used the scripture to say pacifism to that,
hey, in the face of evil, even on a worldless scale or nation to nation, that we should
sit back and do nothing.
This scripture does not say that.
The scripture says to stand, but stand in a different way.
And this is about personal offense, personal offense against you and against me, not national
defense or choices that are made at a national level.
The Bible says that God has given the government the power of the sword to execute judgment.
That's been given to them.
They're God's ministers, it actually says.
It uses the word minister.
They're God's ministers.
They have a ministry, the government, to execute justice in this world, to do good.
They don't always do that.
They oftentimes abuse their ministry, but this scripture will not allow you to support
a pacifist view or to encourage someone in an abusive relationship to continue on in
that.
There's this super funny story, especially some of you older folks.
I think everyone, who doesn't know who Billy Graham is?
Okay, good.
You don't know who Billy Graham is, well, you know who Billy Graham is.
She's got a smile on her face.
Okay, so Franklin Graham is Billy Graham's son, and he tells a story about when he was
a teenager.
Billy Graham was blowing up on the scene, man.
He was everywhere.
He was kind of like the pastor for our nation and to the world in a sense.
He was being invited to places to speak and to pray with different world leaders and dignitaries,
and he was well known.
So you can imagine the kids growing up in that environment, right?
Well, a lot of times, fame like that attracts also people who don't like you, and they began
to get threats from a certain individual, threatening the family, threatening the kids
in the family, threatening them with bodily harm, even death.
One day, Franklin Graham says, this person who was issuing these threats against the
family actually came to their house, and he walked to the front door, and he knocked on
the front door, and they opened it, and it's this person who had been sending letters
and all kinds of threats against them.
And he says, his dad, six foot three, with his booming voice, comes to the door, sees
the man, balls up his fist, and punches him in the face.
And as the guy falls back, he says, God loves you, Jesus loves you, and he has a wonderful
plan for your life.
But if you ever threaten my family again, I'll kill you.
Billy Graham, world evangelist, and he understood that this is about personal offense, what
you do to me.
You come after my kid, it's a whole other story.
I'll defend him.
He ought to hear this scripture and choose a posture that's appropriate as well.
But me, I'm going to defend, because that's part of love.
You can see how this isn't teaching some level of pacifism here, or some level of just take
it.
Turn the other cheek, as I heard it a lot growing up, was if someone hurts you, allow
them to keep hurting you, or at least run away.
And I think what Jesus was getting at was something so much deeper.
Actually, don't let an evildoer who can continue in his evil, that's not righteous.
That's not making the world new.
An evildoer whose evil is turned back on them, not in the sense of doing evil to them, but
it's shown back or displayed to them in your humbling or your humiliation and your giving
and your generosity to them.
Well, there's another scripture that talks about keeping burning coals on someone's head,
right?
The way that you love them and the way that you treat them.
And I think that's what later believers picked up on in Jesus' teaching here, is there's
a way you can live that causes people to fall under conviction that their consciences might
be shook in such a way that it wakes them up.
Give to the one who asks you, and don't turn away from the one who wants to borrow from
you.
This last one really quickly, Judaism recognized that there was a moral obligation to give
to beggars.
And at their time, beggars had no other alternative to make income.
Most of them were either infirmed, they were missing limbs, accidents, they really had
no other way in a kind of agriculturally based society to make income.
And so they truly needed the subsidy of people, of the moral obligation that the Jews had
to give to them.
But some of Jesus' contemporaries, the rabbis of his day, were actually teaching how you
could apply the teachings on giving from the Torah and meet your obligations, but not go
too far.
And they were creating all these special limits on when you had to give and what situation
you had to give.
And they were trying to give people ways out.
And Jesus comes and using hyperbole says, hey, give to everyone who asks and don't turn
away from anyone who wants to borrow from you.
And he's pushing against this teaching that was trying to make people stingy and say,
hey, guard what is yours.
And in the end, all of this teaching is about generosity.
And Jesus is inviting you and I to grapple with his point of radical generosity.
When someone wants to take, you can flip it on them by what you choose to give.
That through his kingdom citizens, he is exposing the evil in the hearts of man.
And this is a kindness that he's showing to humanity.
This is an elevation of truth over the lies that we live.
This is to say that God is in control and God defines what is and what is not.
And that we have an opportunity to live into that as kingdom citizens in the way that we
respond when people come against us in personal ways.
You have a choice always.
Will you mirror back evil to evil or will you flip it and bring generosity and truth
to it?