Could we do the other 16 verses of that?
That was awesome.
Another dimension of the culture that you may not be familiar with is that
the society in which Jesus and Paul lived were basically reciprocity cult.
Yours.
You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
There is a modern term for this bakshish, or even payback.
Now, that whole idea of a quid pro quo
is exactly not what a grace filled culture should be like.
Grace and forgiveness are what breaks the
reciprocity spin cycle of infinite payback and reciprocity.
It can have a positive face.
Oh, you've done this nice thing for me.
Now I will do a very nice thing for you.
Unsuspectingly.
I had a Korean doctoral student who
grew up in Korea, and very good doctoral student, and at one point he went home,
and then he came back with this beautiful box with a seal with my initials carved on
it and waxed so that I could stamp all my books with my seal.
It was a very nice gift, but I didn't
realize that if I accepted this gift, then he was expecting something in return,
namely a really well passed doctoral thesis.
Christians can get caught up in a
reciprocity spin cycle, and Jesus doesn't like it.
He doesn't like an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.
He doesn't even like the positive side of that.
So when Peter in Matthew 18, feeling very magnanimous, comes to Jesus and says,
lord, how many times must I forgive my brother?
Seven times.
I mean, seven the number of perfection in Judaism.
He thought he was good.
Wesley, in going on to perfection seven, jesus says not seven times,
but seven times 70 times, by which he did not mean after 490.
You can BOP them.
You know what's interesting about that?
If you know your scripture, you will know there's only one other place in the Bible
where the number seven times 70 or textual variant 77 occurs.
It occurs in Genesis four in the brief story of Lamek.
You remember him?
He says, some take revenge seven times, but I take revenge seven times.
70 or 77 times, depending on which variant you go with.
Jesus is all about reversing the curse
by forgiveness and breaking the reciprocity spin cycle.
And so should we be.
I have a good friend in now retired Montgomery, Alabama.
John Ed Matheson,
famous American Methodist preacher, huge church, and he had a stalwart member,
whom we will call Susan, who was married for 35 years to the same man.
And then he decided to run off with a woman half his wife's age.
And after this shocking betrayal,
susan, who was a very stalwart member of
this church, a root of bitterness, grew up in her.
And instead of getting better and getting over it, she just got more and more bitter
and participated less and less in the vibrant life of this good church.
So finally, John Ed, having noticed this downward spiral that had gone on for two
or three years, finally he called her into his office and he said,
susan, I've noticed the devastation that's happened in your life since
the betrayal and then the divorce, and it needs to stop.
There is a root of bitterness that has grown up in your life that is just frankly
ruining the joy of your salvation and your life.
And then he said, shockingly, and you need to forgive John.
Even if he never realizes he needs forgiveness, and even if he would reject
it for the good of your own soul, you need to forgive him and let it go.
So he said, we're going to go through an
exercise, just you and me, nobody else, right here in this office.
I want you to imagine sitting next to me, says John Ed, your former husband, and I
want you to say to him, john, I forgive you.
She wrinkles up her brow and says, John, I forgive you.
John Ed says, well, it's a start.
Now let's try that again, only say it a little more like you actually mean it.
John, I forgive you.
No spitting this time.
He said, Now I want you to see John sitting here.
And then right next to him, Jesus sitting here.
And Jesus is saying from the cross
about his executioners, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Now, I want you to forgive John again.
And the tears just start coming down her face.
And in a voice that's only a still, small voice, she says, john,
I but not I, but the Lord in my life forgives you.
And then John Ed said, now let it go,
let it go, let it go.
And then they prayed.
And from that day forward, she began to be healed of her anger and her bitterness.
Because you know what?
That can just destroy your Christianity.
It really can just eat up your soul.
Forgiveness is at the heart of the Gospel, and it is the antithesis of violence
and anger and hatred and reprisals and reciprocity.
And Jesus is all about changing the discussion.
This is the interesting thing about Jesus.
He relates to the Old Testament with sovereign freedom.
Have you noticed this?
Some of it he reaffirms, some of it he annuls, some of it he intensifies.
He doesn't take any one approach to the Old Testament.
He feels that he has the right,
as the wisdom of God incarnate to do all of those things.
He's not just offering a new, correct interpretation of Torah.
Less filling, tastes great.
No.
In fact, the ethic of Jesus is often more demanding.
We all know this.
Jesus says not only no acts of adultery, what else does he say?
No adulterous thoughts.
Thoughts count as adultery.
Yikes.
That's an intensification of the demand in regard to adultery.
And Jesus does speak about fulfilling the law in this very context,
may I just say that fulfilling the law is not the same as obeying it.
To say something must be fulfilled is to say that God must be faithful and true to
his word, to his promises and to his prophecies so that they will come to pass
as long as they are not conditional in nature.
Now, many of the promises of God are conditional in nature.
If my people who are called by my name will repent, then I will says Yahweh.
What if they don't repent? Well, guess what?
All bets are off.
Some of the promises of God, some of the prophecies of God, are conditional.
Not all of them, but some of them.
It is interesting that Jesus looks for
fulfillment, not abolition, of the whole Old Testament law.
And what that means is he is viewing both
the prophets and the law, prophetically and eschatologically.
He believes that he lives in the age of fulfillment.
Paul puts it this way and when the time
had fully come, god sent forth his Son, born of woman,
born under the law, to redeem those under the law out from under the law.
Now, this is not an antilaw text, despite Luther.
This is covenantal theology.
The Mosaic covenant is one thing, the New Covenant is another.
The reason many of the commandments of the Old Testament no longer apply to
Christians, like, oh, I don't know, the one about tattoos.
The reason it no longer applies to
Christians is we are not under the Mosaic covenant.
And only those portions of the Mosaic
Covenant that are renewed in the New Covenant are still binding on Christians.
Let me say that again.
Only those portions of the Old Covenant
that are renewed in Christ or by Christ or by Paul or by James or whoever
are binding on Christians, the rest of that law is not binding on us.
Indeed, as Paul says in two Corinthians three, it has been annulled.
Or as the author of Hebrew says, it is obsolete.
Now, how then do you preach stuff from an obsolete covenant?
Well, I have suggestion on that.
You ask three questions of, say, Leviticus.
What does it tell us about God?
What does it tell us about human nature?
And what does it tell us about the relationship between God and human nature?
These are theological questions you can ask about ethical text and find a proper
sermon out of material that is no longer binding on Christians.
Ethically, that's how that functions.
But Jesus is all about eschatology.
He believes the dominion of God.
I much prefer that word to the word
kingdom because dominion, at least in English, can be both a verb and a noun.
And that's the truth about Malkuta in
Aramaic, and that's the truth about Basalaya in Greek.
It is not just about a realm, it's about arraign.
It's about the divine saving activity as well as it is about a kingdom come.
Here's the interesting thing all of the
future kingdom sayings on the lips of Jesus and Paul are talking about a place.
He talks about entering,
obtaining or inheriting the kingdom of God, the dominion of God.
That's a place that comes when Jesus returns.
It comes on earth.
But already the divine saving activity is happening now, and all of the other
kingdom sayings should be translated reign or saving activity.
If I, by the finger of God cast out demons, you will know that the reign of
God, the divine saving activity of God, has come into your midst.
The sovereignty of God, the healing of
God, the power of God has broken into your midst and done its work.
It is both a reign and a realm.
Hence the word dominion, which can be
either a noun let's enter the King's dominion or a verb.
He has dominion over you, but the word kingdom doesn't have that power.
So I'm not happy with a noun that can't also be a verb in English.
Jesus believes in the fulfillment of both the law and the prophets.
He is not calling his disciples to
rededicate themselves, only with more intensity to keeping the Mosaic Law.
And he is very keen on the heart of the law.
Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.
Even that is an intensification.
Go back and look at what the Hebrew says.
One of those three things is not mentioned in the Hebrew, but it is mentioned by
Jesus heart, soul, mind and your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus is calling his disciple to a higher
standard of righteousness, and he's redefining what the word neighbor means.
Remember the Good Samaritan parable?
The reason the lawyer asks him who is my neighbor?
Is?
He wants to know what are the limits of neighborliness?
Jesus says, Let me tell you how to be a neighbor to anybody.
In other words, Jesus is not like Mr.
Rogers of old TV fame.
Won't you be my neighbor?
I knew you would.
Jesus is saying a Christian should be a neighbor to anyone.
Indeed, a Christian should even love his enemies.
Now, at the heart of the law, then, is this love command.
But let me be clear that love has a concrete shape in the ethic of Jesus.
It's not just the case that if you just
love everybody, you've made up for all your boo boos.
It's not just the case that if you love, that kind of trumps any kind of ethical
particularity about the other things Jesus says, like don't commit adultery.
It doesn't even mean that if you're just a
forgiving person, you will be fine no matter what your behavior is.
I was in intervarsity at Carolina back at
the dawn of time, when the earth was still cooling BC before computer.
And in an intervarsity meeting there was a
girl who said I find that it all works out very well.
I like committing sins.
God likes forgiving sins.
Woohoo.
If you think it is easy for God to forgive sin, look at the cross.
It cost him the very life of His Son.
No cheap grace.
Just because we emphasize love and forgiveness, no cheap grace.
At the heart of the first portion of the Sermon on the Mount are antithesis.
You have heard it said, but I say to you and one of the distinctive things about
Jesus's teaching is he speaks on his own authority.
He keeps saying, I say, and this is not how ancient rabbis talk.
So enough with the nonsense that Jesus would like the rabbis.
He was not.
Here's how a rabbi would talk.
I say, on the authority of Rabbi Hillel,
who says, on the authority of Rabbi Shamai, who says on the authority of Rabbi
Elie Azer, quote, a long trail of tradition.
Okay?
Jesus doesn't use footnotes.
He simply says, you've heard it say.
But I say he speaks on his own authority.
No early Jewish teacher other than Jesus really did that.
And here's an even weirder thing about the teaching of Jesus.
He committed himself to make clear that what
he was going to say is true by upfront in front of saying something going Amen.
Amen. I say to you.
Well, in the synoptics, it's one amen translated truly.
And in the Gospel of John, we double our
pleasure and double our fun, and we have two amens.
Amen. Amen.
I say to you.
Well, now, in Judaism, amen means so be it.
And you're supposed to give an amen after somebody else tells the truth, just like
in a good, vibrant worship service today, when the preacher actually makes a good
point in the middle of a 47 minutes sermon and somebody says Amen.
Well, Jesus amends his own sermon before he says it.
He avows that he's telling the truth before he tells it.
This is weird in seven languages.
This is not early Jewish practice.
He is vouching for the truthfulness of his own words.
You've heard it said.
But I say to you, that whole formula binds together Matthew 21 521 to 48.
It's found in verses two 1273-133-3843.
And it's clear enough that, yes, he's affirming some of the key central aspects
of the Old Testament law loving God, loving neighbor, various other things.
What is equally clear is that Jesus feels
free to offer new wisdom on top of that, that not merely goes beyond Mosaic Law,
but in fact, in some cases goes against it.
I mean, I'm sure that you have noticed
that over and over again, jesus heals on the Sabbath.
Now, here's the rule
anything that is not absolutely an emergency to do on the Sabbath can wait.
That's the rule.
Jesus deliberately, repeatedly healed on the Sabbath, and that for sure counted as
work over and over again from Mark one to the end of Mark.
He keeps doing this and it is causing the rabbis and the Pharisees apoplexy oyve.
It's happening again.
Healing on the Sabbath.
They could have waited.
Now.
Jesus's view of Shabbat.
The word shabbat means cease.
He thinks shabbat shalom.
Shalom is about well being and wholeness.
What more perfect day than the Sabbath to heal people and give them wholeness?
This is not Moses.
This is Jesus.
He has a very different view of what is appropriate on the Jewish Sabbath.
It's a radical view and it got him in hot water.
Sometimes I say to people, I am not surprised Jesus got crucified.
What I am surprised at is he lasted three years before it happened.
Listen to this.
Jesus says, no more concessions due to hardness of heart.
Moses allowed you to divorce due to the hardness of your heart.
Now that the kingdom is breaking in, no more, no more.
The clearest proof that Jesus is not just
reiterating Moses second verse, same as the first, is not only does Jesus
not prohibit what Moses allows, moses allows oaths, divorce and killing.
In some settings, Jesus prohibits those things, but Jesus
also allows what Moses prohibits work on the Sabbath.
And frankly, he is far more demanding than
Moses in his sexual ethic, as we shall see.
Now, here's just a basic question.
Why would we expect to do less under grace than God demanded under law?
Why would we expect to be less ethical under grace than God's?
People were required to be without the
Holy Spirit, and under law, Jesus handles all of this with sovereign freedom.
Now, there are six different,
but not unrelated topics that are addressed in Matthew 521 to 48.
Anger, lust, divorce, oaths, revenge and love.
What characterizes this wisdom teaching and distinguishes it from Proverbs?
What characterizes it with its exhortations and commands?
Is it's trying to get at the heart of the
matter, whether it involves desires, inclinations or behavior?
Jesus is not just interested in purity of
the heart, but he is absolutely serious as a heart attack about that.
He is interested in purity of heart, but he's also interested in purity of life.
So in the famous story, which probably wasn't an original passage in the Gospel
of John, but nonetheless, I think an authentic Johanna and tradition.
What Jesus says to the woman caught in
adultery is, neither do I condemn you, but go and sin no more.
Which might even mean go and give up your profession.
That story is just fraught with problems.
For one thing, where's the man caught in adultery, it takes two to tango.
This was an attempt to force Jesus into a
corner and say something against the Mosaic law.
And Jesus found a way around it.
Six different topics anger, lust, divorce, oath, revenge and love.
What characterizes this is getting at the heart which prompts these things.
I can't imagine a more innocuous thing
that has sometimes been said about Jesus than it's the thought that counts.
No, it's not.
It's not the thought that counts.
When you need a heart transplant, it's the actual actions that count.
It's not just purity of intention that Jesus is concerned about.
Yes, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.
Look at Mark, chapter seven, when Jesus says, it's not what enters you that makes
you unclean, but what comes out of your heart.
And what comes out of your heart?
Lust, war, anger, et cetera.
In Jewish ways of thinking, the heart is the control center of the personality.
Now, we know this is just a pump.
This is the control center of the human personality.
But it doesn't matter whether you think it's the heart or the mind.
The point is that the center of your
personality controls your thoughts, your will, your feelings, and your behavior,
all of those things, or at least your attempted behavior.
Sometimes we're very poor centers.
We don't accomplish what we intend.
Anger is a very interesting subject.
One of the things that we do as pastors
have to deal with all the time is with angry people.
Moses had ways of helping people come to grips with that.
The mosaic commandment prohibits murder.
Jesus cites Exodus 2013.
But Jesus says, I'm going to take this a step further.
Not only should you not murder anybody
killing by intention, you shouldn't even be angry with them.
Now, this has often been misunderstood,
because clearly there are times in Jesus's own life where he shows righteous anger.
For example, in his temple Tantrum.
Remember that one?
Okay, just seeing if you're awake.
So is Jesus prohibiting any and all kind of anger?
It has even been said that one of the prerequisites for ministry is the ability
to be righteously angry against wickedness.
If you don't have that gear, you might not ought to go into ministry.
What kind of anger is he talking about?
He's talking about an anger that boils over into epithets like rakha, which means
you idiot, and condemns somebody to hellfire.
In other words, he's talking about a kind
of anger that pejoratively condemns another person whom you are not
omniscient about and even condemns into hell.
He's not talking about just any kind of anger.
He's talking about an anger that is
maliciously directed against other human beings and wishes them ill.
That's what he's talking about.
He's not saying, don't be angry ever for any reason.
Presumably, then, Jesus has a place for righteous indignation.
Let's call it indignation.
He has a place for that.
He expresses it on various occasions.
Verse 23 through 26 of chapter five, give us a practical wisdom of what to do.
In the first instance, if a fellow
believer has something against you, and did you notice this?
Jesus doesn't say, when you have something against your brother, go to him.
He says, when your brother has something
against you, go to him before you offer your offering at the altar.
That's very different.
If your brother has a legitimate reason to
be upset with you, you go to him and make it good
and try to be reconciled with your brother before presenting the gift on the altar.
One of the applications of this by Paul is in one corinthians where he says, settle
with your brother out of court before it goes to trial because Christians should
never settle their differences in secular courts.
Hello? Are we listening?
Christians should never settle their
differences outside the context of a Christian community.
That's Paul.
Now, what is especially intriguing to me
is how Jesus wants us to approach these kind of issues.
He wants to get at the motivations for
sin, but he also wants to prohibit the activities that are a form of sin.
So I want to deal with the issue of
moikaya, which is the subject of verses 27 to 32.
There is a fourfold repetition of this word or its variant, and it is very clear
that the verb, the noun moikaya refers to adultery.
On occasion, it can refer more broadly to various sorts of sexual misbehavior, but
it's all about misbehavior, not just feelings.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
By the way, this word is not pornaya.
The word pornaya shows up in Matthew 531 32 and Matthew 19 nine.
That is a different word.
That word pornaya does not mean adultery.
It does not mean marital unfaithfulness.
We'll get to that in a minute.
What are those exception clauses in Matthew 531 32?
No. Jesus says no adultery.
Now, in an honor and shame culture and a patriarchal culture, the way this worked
is a man commits adultery with somebody else's wife, not just with anybody, but
with somebody else's wife, and a woman commits adultery against her own marriage.
I'll say that one more time in that society, a man commits adultery
with somebody else's wife and so against somebody else's marriage primarily.
But a woman commits adultery against her own marriage because it is her job to
protect the sanctity and the hallowedness of the inner life of the marriage.
In that patriarchal culture, thou shalt not commit adultery.
Jesus is prepared to say that if a person
commits adultery and then even divorces somebody, that's not the end of the story.
He's going to say in Matthew 19, if he
does that and then marries another person, he's still committing adultery.
Talk about a high standard.
Jesus and Paul later had quite a standard in regard to adultery.
But I want you to hear the Greek in the
original about what he says about lust in the heart.
Here is what the Greek actually says.
It says, if a man so looks at a woman that
she is led astray into adultery, who is the tempter here?
Not the woman, but male sexual aggression.
If the man so looks at the woman that she is led astray into adultery, it is as if
he has already committed adultery with her.
In his heart, he is placing the blame for
the adultery in the heart of the male aggressor.
He is not treating the woman in this situation as a temptress.
He is treating the woman as a victim of male sexual aggression.
That's very different from what you find
elsewhere in the ancient Near Eastern literature.
It's a different approach altogether.
Jesus is not interested in reaffirming the
ancient patriarchal culture which started with the curse in Genesis.
What was the curse on Eve?
Beside labor pains
your desire will be for your husband and he will lord it over you.
This is not the original blessing, this is the original curse.
And Jesus came to reverse the curse as far
as the curse is found including through the fallen institution of patriarchy.
So let's deal with pornaya.
If moikaya means adultery what in the word does pornah mean?
Well, the root word means prostitute.
A porna from which we get the word pornography of course is a prostitute.
So properly speaking, at its root pornia
is prostitution or frequenting prostitutes.
But it came to have other meanings.
Another meaning that it had when it focused on a particular sin was incest.
And I would suggest to you that it's probable, not certain, but probable that
in Matthew 531 and 32 when we have those exception clauses and also in Matthew 19
nine, the exception is this except on grounds of incest, not adultery.
Not doesn't use the word for adultery.
When pornaya means sexual sin in a general
way it refers to a whole garden variety of sexual sins.
And this is probably not what Jesus meant
because look at the reaction of the disciples in Matthew 19.
They say if that's the way it is between a man and woman, better not to marry.
Now it's very clear from their reaction that Jesus is not offering a more lenient
definition of the exception clause than Moses does.
He's offering a stricter definition of grounds for divorce than Moses was.
This is really, really clear.
And that's why Paul also says no divorce.
That was Jesus's essential teaching.
Why would Jesus speak about incest?
Well why did John the Baptist and what
happened to him when he talked about the incestuous marriage between Herodius and
Herod antipas marriage to Herod Antipas's brother's wife?
Well, that was the cause celeb bad marriage in all of Galilee.
It got John the Baptist beheaded.
And there's every reason to believe that
Jesus like his cousin, would have commented on it.
And what he is saying is that an
incestuous relationship is not a marriage in God's eyes to start with.
Therefore it needs to be annulled as a non marriage.
No divorce except in the case of a non
marriage, like an incestuous situation in which case that should stop.
That would be what Jesus is saying.
Then he offers an alternative opportunity.
Number one heterosexual monogamy
opportunity number two for disciples being a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom,
something that Origin took literally and knackered himself.
Jesus probably was not talking about that.
He was talking about remaining celibate for the sake of the kingdom like he was
like many early Christians turned out to be.
But here's the thing, friends.
In a patriarchal society when women were given in marriage and didn't really have a
choice, they were betrothed when they were eleven or twelve by their parents.
To men who were 15 or 16 years of age.
It was an arranged marriage situation.
It was nothing like modern marriage at all.
In that kind of situation.
When Jesus says if you marry, no divorce
or remain single for the sake of the kingdom, what he's doing is he's taking
away the male privilege of deciding about marriage and deciding about divorce.
That's what he's doing.
Especially taking away the male privilege of divorce.
Women did not have the right in early Judaism to divorce.
They could cause a divorce by leaving.
But only a man could write the rid of divorce and divorce his wife.
Jesus is taking away that privilege.
And who got more security and benefit for that?
Women.
More security in their marriage.
If Jesus's teaching was lived out and a second option,
finally they don't have to get married and fulfill domestic roles.
They could remain single just as men could, for the sake of the kingdom.
And that's exactly what you see in Luke eight one through three,
single and also formerly married women traveling disciples with Jesus.
Imagine this.
First of all, no rabbi before Jesus had
female disciples and you were not supposed to travel with women you're not related to
and not really, you're not even supposed to really talk to them.
So picture Luke eight one through three.
Here are the twelve, or as I like to call them, the Dirty Dozen.
And here are Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
Susannah and other women on the road again together.
Right?
You can see the Galilean Gazette now on the road again.
Radical rabbi with both male and female
disciples off again into the wilderness of Galilee.
News at eleven.
This was a scandal.
And yet Jesus was very happy to have both
male and female disciples because he believed both women and men could be
single for the sake of the kingdom and serve God.
Because he believed both men and women could be married in the Lord and be
faithful to each other throughout a life by the grace of God.
This is Jesus's teaching on marriage and divorce.
And actually Paul doesn't say anything different.
What about oaths?
Jesus doesn't like them.
Moses permits them.
And when we're talking about oaths we are not just talking about swear words, okay?
Four lettered words. We're not talking about that.
We're talking about using God's name in vain.
I swear by God X, which of course in my culture presents a serious problem.
They ask you to put your hand on the Bible
and swear before God that you will tell the truth.
The whole.
Truth and nothing but the truth on a book where Jesus says don't do that.
This is a problem for those of us who take
the Bible seriously, especially the Sermon on the Mount.
Now what's the point?
The point is that you should never invoke God's name, especially not in a negative
way where you are asking God to damn someone, okay?
You should never ever do that.
As a follower of Jesus,
the most horrific example of this is brother Peter the third denial.
He swears an oath to God that he doesn't know God's son.
Go back and look at Mark's gospel.
He swears an oath to Abba that he doesn't know abba's son.
It is a terrible thing to tell God after following his son for three years.
I do not know him.
So swear I to God.
Wow, no wonder there had to be a scene
of restoration of Peter in John 21.
And that scene is full of poignancy.
But you never get it unless you compare it
to the three denials and then the three restorations.
Did you notice in the Gospel of John that
there is only two places that we hear about a charcoal fire?
One where Peter warms his hands in the courtyard of Caiaphas's house and the
other by the Sea of Galilee where Jesus restores him three times.
Simon, do you love me more than these?
Yes, Lord.
You know I love you.
Well, here's where Greek comes in handy.
Jesus says Simon, do you agape me?
Peter replies you know I felt o you, I love you like a brother.
That's not what Jesus asked Simon, son of John, do you agape me?
Lord, you know all things.
You know I fileto you, I love you like a brother.
Jesus asks one last time Simon, do you at least fileto me?
Do you at least love me like a brother?
And at that Simon just loses it.
Lord, you know everything.
You know I love you.
Feed my lambs.
A threefold betrayal leads to a threefold restoration.
The heart of the gospel is forgiveness and compassion, no matter how hard that is.
I was privileged to spend some time with Corey Tinb in the 70s.
She came to Gordon Conwell and Gordon College and I really wanted to meet her.
It was at the time that the movie The
Hiding Place had come out and she was amazing.
And she told the story of how her sister died.
They were in robbinsbrook concentration
camp and a death camp guard beat Betsy within an inch of her life.
And then she died shortly thereafter lying on a slab in the morgue in the death camp.
And as she was dying, Betsy looked her
sister Corey in the eye and said no hate Corey, only love, or else he wins.
No hate, Corey.
Only love.
Now that is not natural.
That is supernatural.
Revenge is the natural response of a wounded person.
Forgiveness is not.
Many years later, after corey was released due to a clerical era from Robinsbrook.
She was evangelizing in Deutschland in
Germany and a man, now Gray came up to her it was probably two decades later so in
the early sixty s and said miss Tomb Boom, you will not
recognize me but I was in Robinsbrook with you.
Since then I have given my life to the Lord and I believe he forgives me.
But he wants me to ask you will you forgive me?
Because I was the one who beat your sister to death.
And Corey's tears just welled up in her
eyes and she said aye, aye, I have to pray about this.
She's just crying.
She wept and prayed through the night.
The next morning, having gotten the man's phone number she called him up and said i,
but not I, but the Christ who lives in me forgives you.
Go in peace.
Serve the Lord.
You are forgiven.
The heart of the gospel, friends is an unnatural act called forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not about what a person deserves.
I'll leave you with these three categories our world cries for justice.
Justice is when you get what you deserve.
And trust me, if you really know yourself none of us want that.
Justice is when you get what you deserve.
Mercy is when you don't get that negative thing you deserve.
Grace is when you get some positive thing
that you have neither merited nor deserved.
But God wants to give it to you anyway and it's called forgiveness.
Now, I would be remiss if I didn't conclude by saying to you that forgiveness
is one thing and reconciliation is another.
Sometimes there can be forgiveness and no reconciliation.
That does have in human relationships.
But all God's chillings needs to forgive and to be forgiven.
And to that I hope you will all say Amen. Thank you.