So it's right after Neil Armstrong walks on the moon.
And I'm in high school, and me and my buddy Doug borrowed my father's 1955 Chevy
column shift, two tone more metal in that car than in the last seven I've owned.
It was a tank. It was bulletproof.
And we went to the Mountain, North
Carolina, to ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
It's a nice summer day, it's August,
and we're having a good time, and we're riding along.
And then all of a sudden, the clutch blew out.
And as the Bible says, my countenance fell.
Because if you've ever ridden on the Blue
Ridge Parkway, there are no gas stations, there are no mechanics, there's nothing.
So we had to get pushed by a car behind us down a ramp into a Texaco station.
And the guy had no clue what to do, nor did he have parts.
Anyway, so Doug and I decided, well, so much for this fun day on a Saturday.
And we forgot we had put a watermelon in the trunk of my father's car.
Keep that in mind, right?
Because we didn't come back for a week, and it was like 90 fahrenheit every day.
Okay?
So we hitchhiked back to High Point, which is in the middle of the state.
It's about two and a half hours away.
And we were picked up by a really elderly
couple, like the ancient of days elderly, right, in an old 1948 Plymouth.
And Doug, being loquacious, he's now a lawyer and prone to argue.
In North Carolina, even in high school, he was prone to argue.
He said to the driver to make conversation, well, what do you think
about Neil Armstrong walking on the moon and all those beautiful pictures of a
beautiful earth revolving and round and blue and white?
And driver said, I saw fake, never happened Hollywood stunt.
And Doug, not recognizing invincible
ignorance when he saw it, said, well, why in the world do you think that?
I mean, of course it actually happened.
No, sonny, it didn't happen because it
says in the Book of Revelations, beware of anybody who starts a sentence like that.
I mean, that's not even the name of that book, right?
It says in the Book of Revelations, the
angels will stand on the four corners of the earth.
It cannot be round if it's got four corners, now, can it?
I said shut up, Doug.
We need this ride now.
Bless his heart.
What was wrong with this guy?
It's not that he wanted to take the Bible seriously.
It's not even that he thought the Bible was referential.
The author, John of Patmos, believed that there would be a coming day when Christ
would return and the angels would gather the saints from the four corners of the
earth and the kingdom would commence on earth as it is in heaven.
Which is what we pray for, by the way, the Lord's Prayer.
You realize you're praying for the end of the world.
Every time you pray for that, pray that
prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.
You're praying for the end of the world.
Be careful what you pray for.
If you're not ready for Jesus to come back
and the end of the world, please don't pray that prayer, okay?
Because otherwise, eventually Jesus is
going to say, okay, they've been saying this a thousand times a day.
I'd better get down there, right?
The problem with his way of reading the
Book of Revelation is he mistook theology for cosmology.
He thought the Bible was teaching the shape of the earth.
Wrong.
There are only three subjects to the Bible theology, ethics, and history.
Are you with me now?
And we are focusing on the second of those ethics.
And in particular, we've been focusing on the ethics of Jesus.
What I was saying to you at the outset, and I want to say to you again, is that
Jesus frames ethics within the context of Jewish wisdom.
He even frames his discussion of Torah or law within the larger category of wisdom.
This is the wisdom by which he wants his disciples to live.
He's not interested in just telling them what is legal.
Thou shalt thou shalt not.
He's interested in telling them how to live wisely.
That's the point as a disciple, how to live wisely.
Now, we also emphasized, and I would say to you again, that this is an ethic for
disciples, and only disastrous things happen when you try to impose a
specifically Christian ethic on a group of disgruntled nonchristian people.
Nothing good can come of that because the ethic presupposes the theology.
If there isn't the allegiance to Jesus and
to be a disciple and to take up your cross and follow him in the first place, then
all bets are off on applying the Sermon on the Mount.
And if you want evidence that it can all go wrong when you try to do that and
impose it on a larger truculent society, just look at Oliver Cromwell and what
happened during his days under the instigation of the Puritans.
Lots of people got bumped off in the name of the nonviolent Sermon of Jesus.
This was not good.
In fact, it was bad in seven languages. Okay?
So when we are dealing with this ethic,
the other thing I said about this ethic is it is eschatological in character.
It assumes that the kingdom has already broken into human history.
The divine saving reign of God has already
broken into history, but it has not yet been consummated.
So we're living between the already and not yet.
And yes, this is an interim ethic.
This is an ethic between the already of
the kingdom is here and the not yet of the kingdom is yet to come.
Okay?
And it assumes that already God's saving activity is in process.
And it also assumes please be patient with me, Christian under construction that is
the process is not finished with us either.
The process is not finished with the world and the process is not finished with us.
This is an ethic for a specific saved community.
Now, to me, one of the most revealing bits about this ethic is that Jesus makes no
concession to the honor and shame code of his society.
For example, in verse 39 we hear about
turning the other cheek in response to being struck on a particular cheek.
Now, what you need to know about this is that this is not primarily a discussion
about violence, it's a discussion about public shaming.
We're talking about slapping somebody with the back of your hand on the wrong cheek.
This is not trying to start a boxing match or an MMA bout.
What this is doing is publicly shaming somebody.
And what Jesus is saying is if in the service of the Gospel, you have honestly
and truly shared the good news and people think it's a shame and wish to dishonor
you and shame you, if they shame you once, then let them shame you again.
You need to take the shame for the sake of
the Gospel, because we are not going to get caught up in the reciprocity spin
cycle or in the honor and shame values of that culture because we don't affirm them,
we don't affirm the values of that larger culture.
So that gesture is not primarily about violence, it's about public shaming.
And Jesus doesn't want them to respond in kind.
It's a physical insult.
Verse 40 of chapter five deals with the reverse of this situation.
Suppose someone wants to take legal action against you, okay?
A situation where you could be taken to court.
The advice here amounts to saying if
someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give them your cloak as well.
It's just a material possession.
Now, this is the opposite of the advice in Exodus 22 and Deuteronomy 24.
In fact, Deuteronomy 20 412 and 13 says,
the outer cloak of a person belongs to the owner inalienably.
But you see, what Jesus is doing is
reinstituting the basic creation theology of property.
The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
You don't own anything.
You are stewards of God's property.
And after all, it's just stuff.
Let it go.
In a strongly materialistic culture, this theology of property, which I've dealt
with at length in my book called Jesus and Money, is a theology that is completely
countercultural to the basic values of a secular capitalist society.
But for that matter, it's also
countercultural for the values of a secular communist society as well, because
it assumes there is a God who owns everything and you didn't bring it with
you into this world when you came and you can't take it with you when you leave.
You are simply stewards of God's property.
And if property comes between you and your neighbor, best to let the property go.
It's not that important.
It's not that important and it's certainly
not worth compromising your faith in the Lord.
Not worth it at all.
Well, this radical theology of property
made sense to the earliest followers of Jesus.
Read acts 232 and following.
Read acts four.
They had all things in common and no one
was considering their property belonging exclusively to themselves,
so that they made sure that nobody went without food and clothing and shelter.
This is a radical theology of property.
The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
You are just stewards of God's property.
There was a famous interview on TV in
Greenville, South Carolina, some years ago of a person who had just reached their
100th birthday, and this was in the 80s, actually.
And this African American gentleman was the son of a former slave.
The son of a former slave.
The slave had lived a long time.
And then this gentleman had lived a long time.
And for whatever reason, I guess because of the scenery, they were interviewing
this African American gentleman who had lived a blue collar life and lived very
simply and was a Christian in front of the famous old plantation
house on the edge of Greenville, South Carolina.
Now, don't ask me why you would interview the son of a slave in front of a
plantation house, but anyway, that's what was happening, okay?
And they asked him
at the end of having already asked him, to what do you attribute your longevity?
And he said, well, it was the southern fried chicken and it was the fried okra.
It was the green beans my mama cooked with fatback.
It was the pecan pile with whipped cream on top.
He went on like that for about three or
four minutes and the reporter was going, really, dude?
Really? And this gentleman was not portly.
He was fit at 100 years of age, okay?
But when they got to the end, they asked him, well, how does that make you feel?
Pointing to the plantation house?
And the man said this until I see someone born with clothes on,
I ain't going to figure they're any more than me.
Each of us came into the world the same way.
And even if we're buried with our pink Cadillac, we can't take it with us.
This is not our property.
It's God's.
This is not our world, it's the Lord's.
And I just said hallelujah.
The gospel got preached on secular television by mistake.
That was awesome.
Well, that's part of what Jesus is saying here.
He's trying to give you a reevaluation of
your values, including how you view property right in verse 41 and 42.
He's going to take this radical ethic a step further.
He's going to say that if somebody tries to impress you, that is, force you to help
them by going a mile with them, doing something, okay?
He says, go to with them if necessary.
And we have an example of impressment, which was a Roman procedure.
Simon of Cyrene was impressed to take up the cross of Jesus and carry it for him.
According to the gospel story, that is the practice of impressment, of forced labor.
If you want another term for it, forced
labor, jesus says do it, and do it even beyond what they expect.
This is a radical ethic, and here's the basis of it.
Most ethics, including Moses's eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and a hand for
a hand, and a foot for a foot, and a life for a life, are quid pro quo ethics.
Indeed the basis of justice or fairness is the punishment should what fit the crime.
Jesus is saying we are going beyond
justice to mercy, and we are going beyond mercy to grace.
The ethic I am instituting is not about quid pro quo.
It's not even just about mercy, though it
involves mercy, it's going all the way to grace.
And so he says, self sacrifice should
replace self protective behavior, which is natural.
Self sacrificial behavior should replace self protective behavior.
Now this is completely countercultural
even today, especially in a self centered, narcissistic, individualistic culture.
This is a counterculture value.
When Paul is talking about this very
thing, he says, have this mind in yourself that was also in Christ Jesus, and then
gives the example of Christ as totally self sacrificial.
He even gave his life, he was obedient even unto death on the cross, says Paul.
But right before that, in Philippians two four, look what he says.
And if you've got a translation that says
looking not only to your own concerns, but also to the concerns of others, burn it.
The word monon only is in no Greek manuscript.
Paul is not talking about enlightened self interest plus helping others.
He says, look not to your own concerns, but rather to the concerns of others.
That's what the Greek says in all of the Greek manuscripts.
He's calling for total self sacrifice, like Jesus.
He's not talking about enlightened self
interest, he's talking about self sacrificial behavior.
We're the whole realm of nature mine that we're an offering far too small
love so amazing, so divine divine deserves myself, my life and my all.
Thank you. Isaac Watts.
Little secret about John Wesley.
On his deathbed, he was singing.
Isaac Watts, not Charles Wesley.
He was singing, singing I'll praise my
Maker while I have breath that ain't in Charles Wesley's lexicon.
That's an Isaac Watts hymn.
The material in Matthew 543 to 48 sums up
and concludes the whole antithesis part of this discourse.
And verse 43 begins with a partial quote of Leviticus 1918.
Now, Leviticus 1918 is one of the verses
most often quoted, paraphrased alluded to or echoed in the New Testament, and you
all know it by heart love your neighbor as yourself.
Did you notice that verse 43 leaves out as yourself?
It doesn't say love your neighbor as yourself.
It leaves out as yourself.
And it is followed by a statement that is not in the Old Testament.
You've heard it said, love your neighbor, but hate your enemies.
Now, nowhere in the Torah or in the Old
Testament in general are Hebrew people exhorted to hate their enemies.
It is not a command of God.
It is true, however, in Jesus's day that there was a community that talked
specifically about that love the pious and hate your enemies.
That was the Kumaran, or Dead Sea community.
They did have a saying like that, and that may be what Jesus is talking about.
You've heard it said, love your neighbor, but hate your enemies.
Well, where would they have heard that before?
Well, presumably from some, ascene you can
find that in one QS three and four, nine and ten, or even one QS 19.
It's right there in the Kumaran literature.
Love the sons of light, but hate the sons of darkness, says the Kumaran scroll.
Jesus is not merely asking his disciple to love their enemies.
He even goes further and says, pray for them.
Pray for those Islamic terrorists, for one thing.
Pray for their conversion.
That would shock a few people.
Love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Jesus is encouraging behavior.
Now hear this not conditioned or determined by kinship circles.
I'm going to love those within my holy
huddle, my neighbors, my friends, my fellow believers.
I'm going to love them. Right?
He is encouraging behavior not conditioned or determined by kinship circles or normal
cultural conventions or even reciprocity conventions.
He is urging unconditional love, like the
unconditional love of the Father for everyone.
And see, this is a positive command.
It is not reactive.
It's proactive.
You're going to love them not because of, but perhaps even in spite of.
This is proactive.
It is not reactive.
It is telling.
To compare this exhortation to Proverbs 25 21, which says this give food and drink to
one's enemy if they are hungry or thirsty, as a matter of hospitality.
But showing hospitality is one thing.
Loving them and praying for them is another.
Jesus is offering wisdom, literature, wisdom, teaching, but going beyond what
Proverbs suggests, beyond mere hospitality.
Then verse 45 b gives us two examples of God's indiscriminate love.
God makes the sun and the rain to benefit everyone.
And Jesus uses this as an illustration to say, we should do what?
We should likewise be a blessing to everyone.
He's urging go beyond in group love.
And he practices this by having dinner
with tax collectors and notorious sinners
like Zacchaeus and even Gentiles.
Jesus asks this rhetorical question do not even Gentiles and tax collectors,
the people despised by pious Jews, love their own kind and their own kin.
What credit to you is it if you love your family?
This is what you're supposed to do.
It's an obligation.
It's natural.
It's what you should do.
But if that's the only kind of loving you are doing.
You are not hearing the gospel.
Love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you.
The love has to go beyond the holy huddle, even into the camp of the enemy.
Now, I don't know if you've had a chance to see this movie.
If not, watch it on Netflix.
You should watch the movie Hacksaw Ridge.
It's the testimony of a Christian who was a 7th day Adventist named Desmond Daws.
True story. Absolutely true story.
Who was on Iwo Jima.
He's the only person who has a Congressional Medal of Honor in the United
States who never handled, lifted, or shot a gun.
Okay?
He was an absolute pacifist, but he loved his country, and he wanted to serve.
And finally, despite a lot of abuse, he
was allowed to serve as a medic and a chaplain in this movie.
This man was single handedly responsible, without a weapon, for crawling across the
battlefield at Iwo Jima and rescuing 70 persons.
And the people he rescued were not just American soldiers.
He also rescued some wounded Japanese and brought them to the clinic as well.
And he kept praying as he was doing it, lord, let me get one more.
Under the COVID of darkness in the middle
of the night, he was lowering people down Hacksaw Ridge to safety, to help.
And to help
the next day, the day before the last battle at Iwajima was his Sabbath friday
night to Saturday night, and he was not going.
The whole unit, before they went up
Hacksaw Ridge, said to their sergeant, if he's not going, we're not going.
The sergeant says, Why is he standing over there facing a wall with his eyes closed?
The corporal said he's praying.
He's praying to ask God's forgiveness for doing something on the Sabbath.
But we're not going without that image of Jesus.
We're not going.
It's a powerful film.
Bring your kleenexes.
It's true story.
He lived through the war and has a great Christian testimony.
That's the kind of radical ethic jesus is
calling his first disciples to in an uber violent world.
Now, I want to get to verse 48, because
all Good Wesleyans need to know what it means to go on to perfection, right?
So let's talk about this word.
Tell us, tell AI oi, et cetera.
It has three meanings complete, mature, or even perfect.
Okay?
Now, what comes right before this is examples of God's self sacrificial love.
Okay? The context is this god's loving and
blessing and giving rain and sun to everybody indiscriminately, right?
And then Jesus says in the King James, be
ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
What he is talking about is not an experience of entire sanctification
subsequent to conversion, a subject matter that would have made
no sense at all to his disciples when he was giving the Sermon on the Mount.
What he's talking about is being self
sacrificially loving as the Heavenly Father is self sacrificially loving.
That is what he is talking about.
He is not talking about the later idea of
entire sanctification or going on to perfection.
So this text is not about that.
But by golly, what he is saying is that in
an approximate way, in an analogous way, you can love self sacrificially just as
the Father loves self sacrificially by the grace of God.
Yes, you can.
And that's what you are called to do.
Love self sacrificially.
That's what that's all about.
We are to emulate the perfect behavior of God.
Now, maybe there's an Old Testament background to this.
You could look at Deuteronomy 1813, which
speaks of being complete or whole or blameless before the Lord.
Or maybe Leviticus 19 two, which says, be ye holy just as God is holy.
Okay, yes, we are really called to holiness, but we realize that our
holiness, our self sacrificial love is but a mere shadow of the substance of God's.
Or it's an example.
It's a foretaste of glory divine, but it in the whole shebang.
Okay? That's kind of what's being said here.
So let's press on and look at a few other things.
Jesus repeatedly says, repent for the dominion of God is at hand.
It's right here.
And you know, when I was growing up in
Sunday school, my Sunday school teacher would say things like, be like Jesus.
Be like Jesus.
And there was a little impish voice in the back of my head that said, yeah, right.
He had a god button.
I don't even have an easy button.
I mean, come on, how can I be like Jesus, right?
And I made the assumption
that and the wrong assumption that many people make, jesus is God in the flesh.
True.
Well, I couldn't even begin to approximate who he is and what he did.
I can't get there from here, right?
It's like to dream the impossible dream.
It's that kind of thing, right.
Or it's like reading Thomas Moore's Utopia so not happening, right?
Not here on planet Earth.
But I was wrong.
I was wrong.
Look at the temptation scenes in Luke four and Matthew four.
Did you ever notice this?
The devil says to Jesus,
if you are the divine Son of God, turn these stones into bread.
Now, I don't know about you.
I mean, I have met people who could turn bread into stones,
but I have never met a sane person who was tempted to turn stones into bread.
This is a temptation that only a divine person would have, like Jesus.
And you know how Jesus responds?
He doesn't say God can't be tempted. I'm God.
Er go away.
This is not how he responds.
How does he respond?
He responds by quoting Deuteronomy to the devil.
Thrice three times he quotes Deuteronomy to the devil.
They have a scripture off.
The devil quotes the Psalms back to them.
They're having a scripture off.
It's kind of like Jeopardy.
Here we go. Right?
But here's the thing about this.
Jesus is using the same resources we have to deal with temptation.
He's using the word of God and the Spirit of God.
Jesus lived his life, his earthly life, on
the basis of the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
Hold on to your hats.
Paul says that Christ, in order to be fully human, emptied himself.
Well, what does that mean?
It means, among other things, he put the omnis on hold, right?
Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, et cetera.
He had a god button.
He could have pushed it.
But if he pushed it, he would have obliterated his humanity.
Here's the problem for evangelicals.
We want a Jesus that's sort of 90% God and 10% human, right?
Wrong.
The creed is very clear.
He's 100% human and 100% God.
Now, how do you get that corporate merger together?
How does that work?
How could that possibly happen?
By divine self limitation, he limited himself.
He did not act as a deity when he was incarnate in the flesh.
He acted as a human being.
He accepted the normal limitations of being human, and those are these
limitations of time, space, knowledge, power, and mortality.
The big five.
He accepted the five normal limitations of being human.
Limitations of time, space, knowledge, power and mortality.
The one limitation that we have that he did not have is that we are sinners.
According to the Book of Hebrews, he was
tempted, like us, in every respect, save without sin.
Okay, so here's the good news.
Sin is not a natural limitation of being truly human.
But we got plenty of people out there that
think in order to demonstrate I am truly human, I need to sin.
Let me do some sinful things, then I'll really show you my humanity.
Wrong, says Jesus, wrong.
But being truly human means limitations of
time and space and knowledge and power and mortality.
So let's start from the end of the train.
Jesus really died.
Unlike what the Muslims want to say, he
didn't just appear to die, he died on the cross.
That was the end of his human life right there.
He died in his human nature.
Okay, so let's back up the truck.
And Jesus is going to the house of Gyrus, and a woman comes to him and touches the
hymn of his garment and is healed instantly.
And he says, who touched me?
And what he meant by that was who touched me?
He did not mean I know. This is Susan.
She has blue eyes and blonde hair.
She's been suffering from all of the
Canadian doctors she's been going to, and it just so is not working for her.
And so in a lax act of desperation, she thinks that the fringes on my garment are
holy things and they will convey healing to her.
No, when Jesus says, who touched me, he means who touched me?
He accepted limitations of knowledge.
This is why also by the way, in Luke 241
to 52, we are told that Jesus as a twelve year old grew in wisdom and in stature.
You don't grow in wisdom if you're already omniscient.
Okay? Right.
Or take Mark 1332 about his own second coming.
Jesus says a day or hour, no one knows,
not even the angels, not even the Son knows, only the Father knows.
And what he means by that is, wait for it.
I don't know.
You know, if it's good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for us.
This should have put the end to all
theological weather forecasting about the second coming, but it hasn't.
And you know what theological weather
forecasting about the second coming is all about?
It's about us trying to get hold of the timetable so we're in control.
Prognostications and calculations of that
kind of specific sort are all about us trying to control our own future.
And God ain't going to let that happen.
Now, Jesus is coming like a thief in the night to a theater near you, but you are
not going to know when it's going to happen.
That's why it's called a thief of the night.
He comes at a surprising, unexpected time.
I like to put it this way.
Jesus and the New Testament reveals enough about the future to give us hope, but not
so much that we don't have to live by faith every single day.
Even Jesus had to live by trust in God and
hope about the future during his earthly life.
It was a genuine earthly life.
It was not a charade.
When he said I don't know, he means I
don't know when it says he could do no more great
mighty works in his hometown due to lack of faith.
It means he couldn't.
Are you getting the picture?
When he was over the river across Jordan
and his best friend Lazarus died, he was not also in Bethany, and so Lazarus died.
He had limitations of time and space and knowledge.
And by the way, he did his miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit.
He says, so if I by the Spirit of God cast
out demons, then you'll know the kingdom has come amongst your midst.
This is why the disciples can go out and do the same miracles Jesus was doing.
It doesn't mean they're God, it means their spirit empowered.
That's what it meant with Jesus.
That's what it means with them.
Okay, if it proves Jesus is divine, that
it proved Peter was divine, and I am so not believing that.
Okay?
So when we look at the actual example of
Jesus and we say in our heart of hearts, I could never be like him.
Oh, really?
Isn't the Holy Spirit the same Spirit that was in Jesus who did these things?
Don't miracles still happen today?
From time to time, and we're always surprised when they happen.
Have you noticed that? Wow.
Didn't expect that.
Okay.
Why not?
Right?
O ye of little faith.
The truth of the matter is that the Holy Spirit is the same today, yesterday and
forever, and is still doing great things for God.
That's the truth.
And we actually have more Bible than Jesus had.
I mean, when he was having his scripture off with the devil,
he had the Old Testament plus nothing, and he stuck to the pentate quoting
Deuteronomy three times against the devil, right?
We've got the whole freaking New Testament.
What's our excuse?
We got more Bible than Jesus had.
We have the word of God and we have the Spirit of God.
We have the same resources Jesus had, okay?
We have limitations of time, space, knowledge, power and mortality.
So did Jesus.
We are supposed to live without excuses.
No temptation has overcome you.
That is not common to humanity, says Paul,
such that with the temptation, god can provide the adequate means of escape.
Do you believe that?
Don't you understand that Jesus didn't call us to an excuse making life?
Poor little wasn't me.
I got five loaves and two fish, and the
loaves are stale and the fish are rotting, and I can't make a miracle.
You know, frankly, you should expect great things of God
and believe great things about God and then watch him go to work.
It is possible to emulate the character and the activity of Jesus such that when
people look at you, they see Jesus, and they desperately need to see Jesus.
Dr.
Fred Douglas Shepherd went to a part of Turkey I spent a lot of time in.
It was an eintab in the eastern part of Turkey.
He is a medical missionary and a devout Christian, and a little Muslim man at the
point of death was brought to his clinic one day and he was dying.
And Dr.
Shepherd nursed him back to physical health.
And while he nursed him back to physical
health, he shared the good news about Jesus, which this man was a devout Muslim.
He already believed Jesus was a great man and a great prophet and a great teacher
and all of that, but he nurtured him beyond that kind of belief into a belief
that Jesus was also the crucified and risen Lord.
And like many new converts, he went back
to eintab and he just wouldn't shut up about Jesus.
And finally the mullah got tired of it, right?
He said, jesus this, Jesus that, Jesus the other.
And yet Jesus died 2000 years ago, and you've never seen Jesus.
And the little man stood up straight and
said, I have not seen Jesus in the flesh, but I have seen Dr.
Fred Douglas Shepherd, and Jesus lives in him.
When people look at you, do they say that about you?
Or do they find a tired and weary and
cynical and sarcastic person who has settled for a belief
that it's not possible for God to do great things through you by means of the Holy
Spirit and by the word of God, the heart of Jesus's.
Ethic is, of course, love of God, love of
neighbor, love of enemy and practice that has to do with that kind of love.
But what I want to do now is I want to turn to a passage in Romans, and if you've
got your Bibles, you might want to turn with me.
Sometimes it's been said, even by scholars, bless their hearts,
that the ethic of Jesus is one thing, but the ethic of Paul is another, or the ethic
of Jesus is one thing and the ethics of James is another.
And this is not quite fair to Jesus or Paul or the others.
So I want to read to you from Romans
twelve, not the beginning bit about present yourself as a living sacrifice.
I mean, you know the problem with living sacrifices.
They keep crawling off the altar, right?
That's us.
We keep backing down, right?
But I want to read to you from verse nine.
This is Paul.
Love must be sincere, hate what is evil, cling to what is good.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.
Honor one another above yourselves.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Share with God's people who are in need.
Practice hospitality.
Now listen to this bless those who persecute you.
Bless and do not curse.
Rejoice with those who rejoice.
Mourn with those who mourn.
This is straight out of the Sermon on the Mount.
Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.
Do not be conceited, never how many times.
Never repay evil for evil.
Never repay anyone evil for evil.
Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of all, if it is possible, as far as it
depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Never take revenge, my friends, but leave
room for God's wrath, for it is written, it's mine to avenge.
I will repay, says the Lord.
On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
This is Paul's Exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount.
There's just no question about it.
We could do a word study and you would
discover that just in those verses there are like 25 exactly the same words as from
the portion of Matthew five I've read for you.
Let's go to the second half of chapter 13.
It says this
let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another.
For he who loves his fellow human being has fulfilled the law.
And here are the commandments no adultery,
no murder, no stealing, no coveting, and whatever other commandment there may be is
summed up in this one love your neighbor as yourself.
Love does no harm to its neighbor.
Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.
And do this understanding the present hour.
For the hour has come for you to wake up
from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believe.
The night is nearly over, the day is coming.
Put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light, and let us behave
decently as in the daytime, and not in all of these other ways.
Instead of that behavior, clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ
and don't even think about how to gratify the desires of your flesh.
Clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ
and don't even think about those other things.
Well, if there was world enough in time, I would read to you from James One, Two and
Three, where there are no less than 25 allusions or partial quotations of the
Sermon on the Mount by Jesus's brother James.
The ethic of Jesus was not a utopian ethic
quickly abandoned by the disciples of Jesus.
If you look in Acts Two and Acts Four, they were practicing it.
If you look in Romans Twelve and 13 and 14, they were implementing it.
If you look in James One and Two and Three, they were living it out.
Whether they were Jewish, Christian, or a predominantly gentile Christian audience,
this was not an ethic just for the ministry of Jesus.
It was not an ethic just for Jesus himself.
It was an ethic for the disciples of Jesus
who were expected to live into it and out of it by the grace of God, by the love of
God, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, through the guidance of God's word.
This is the truth of the gospel.
We are called to live it out. Thanks.
Speak to God.
Thank you.
We have a few minutes for questions. Yeah.
And I want to start off when I heard you,
you're talking about money, and John Lester wrote a lot.
He sure did.
On the use of money.
Should have been memorized by every Wesleyan preacher.
It's a great sermon.
Make all you can by honest means, save all you can.
Point number three.
Give all you can.
He says if you do the first two and not
the third one, you may be a living person, but you're a dead Christian.
That give all you can thing, that's where the rubber meets the road.
See how Wesley's ethic is on point?
Wesley's ethic is radical in the same way that Jesus was in his own day.
And, you know, I mean,
England in the 18th century was in a mel of a Hess, kind of like where we are now.
And the truth of the matter is that John
Wesley realized that it would be not enough to preach theology.
He had to actually practice the gospel so he found orphanages.
He finds ways to feed the poor.
He made a regular practice of visiting
people in prison and urged his leaders to all visit people in prison and so on.
He took seriously as a heart attack the
Sermon on the Mount and tried his best to live it out.
And he said his own goal in regard to
money was this I don't want to have any money in my hands at the end of my life.
He tried to give away as much as he possibly could before he died.
He didn't succeed because his books kept
making lots of money and the royalties just kept coming in.
And then the whole Methodist group had to decide what to do with the largest.
But he did know that he was called to live
self sacrificially, and that's how he tried to live.