THE SERMON - Public Vs. Private Enemies： When To Stop Fighting Back
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Summary
In this episode, we continue our series on the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 5:38-48, where we find a seemingly paradox in the words of Jesus and what he says to his disciples. In fact, there is no contradiction in the Word of God. There is only one author in the divine sense of the Bible, the Holy Spirit. He wrote the Bible. He inspired every biblical text. He is the author of all the books in the Old Testament. And yet there is still a paradox.
Transcript
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Please join me in standing for the reading of God's word, our text for today, finishing
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now the fifth chapter of the gospel of matthew is matthew chapter 5 verses 38 through 48 matthew
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chapter 5 verses 38 through 48 i'll read our text in its entirety when i finish reading the text i'm
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going to say this is the word of the lord at which point i would appreciate very much if you would
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join me in saying thanks be to god one final time our text for today is matthew chapter 5 verses 38
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through 48 the bible says this you have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
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tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right
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cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have
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your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the
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one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it
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was said you shall love your neighbors and hate your enemy but I say to you love your enemies and
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pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven for he
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makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust
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for if you love those who love you what rewards you have do not even the tax collectors do the
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saying and if you greet only your brothers what more are you doing than others do not even the
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Gentiles do the same you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect this is the
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word of the Lord all right please be seated let's go ahead and dive in and our call to worship as
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we were looking through the Psalms we've been choosing selecting a particular passage in the
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book of psalms each lord's day to use as our prayer of ascent our call to worship in the
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beginning of our liturgy and because we've been working through the psalms as you've already
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heard me say many of the passages throughout the psalms deal with the reality of enemies
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and yet we have clearly in our text today matthew chapter 5 verses 38 through 48
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the memorable words of jesus and what he says to all his disciples and how they should regard
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their enemies. And so there are what we might call an apparent paradox or what is a seemingly
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a contradiction in the Word of God. Now, within the Word of God, we know that we have no real
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contradiction. We have no real paradox because the Bible has been written by 40 different human
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authors over the course of 1,500 years, a collection of 66 books. But at the 30,000-foot
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view, we can all agree that the Bible really has only one author in the divine sense, that God
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wrote the Bible. He wrote the Bible, the Holy Spirit inspiring men. And so the Bible, each of
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these books, contains different genres and different elements of the human characteristics
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and personalities of the men who wrote the Bible.
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in the divine sense who inspired every biblical text,
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So what do you do with text in the Old Testament,
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in the Psalms, where David says things like this,
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And David doesn't merely say that he hates evil
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not only ideology or pernicious false religions or certain sins, but actually hating those who
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perpetuate and commit those sins, especially anyone who attempt others to join them in sin.
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We see the scripture that talks about if anyone would lead a little child astray,
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that it would be better for him to tie a millstone around his neck
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not just towards impersonalized, abstract ideas and evil,
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but towards people, people who perpetuate evil,
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people who deceive others into joining them in evil.
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And we see this throughout the scripture time and time again, especially in the book of Psalms.
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But we also find our text today where Jesus tells us to love our enemies.
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He tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.
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And so as we seek as Christians to obey the words of Jesus and to have a whole biblical theology
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We want to have a whole biblical theology.
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I said last week we want to seek to not be biblicist, and one of the ways to not be biblicist in a negative sense is to have an all-encompassing biblical theology.
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There are many who have criticized systematic theology, saying, well, that's man imposing a man-made system on the Word of God.
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When the reality is that precisely the opposite is actually true.
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What we're seeking to do instead is you're actually seeking to look through the Word of God, and you're assuming that if the Bible actually does have one divine author, 40 human authors, but inspired by one divine author, and if this author is the Holy Spirit, who is God, and if the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever, behold, I changeth not,
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then we would we would be right to assume that God would have some sort of system without
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contradiction in understanding his word so systematic theology is not imposing on the word
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of God the systems of men but rather assuming that there that God himself has a system a way of
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thinking, as it were, that is consistent and not in contradiction with himself. And that if we read
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the Word of God in its entirety, and we do so carefully, that we should be able to draw out of
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the Word of God, not inputting, not eisegeting, but exegeting out of the Word of God, a systematic
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way of thinking, a systematic theology. And the reality is that the Bible is complex. It is not
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contradiction, but it is complex. On the one hand, we have David saying, do I not hate those who hate
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you? Remember, brothers and sisters, just as a quick example, God will not be punishing for
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eternity in hell sin, but he will be punishing for eternity in hell sinners. It is not the abstract
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spirit of lust that will suffer in hell for eternity. It is not murder that will be suffering
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in hell. It is murderers that will suffer in hell. It's people. It is people, not just sin, but sinners
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who God will punish in hell, those who refused the only salvation that can be found, the only grace
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to be found, which is in the Lord Jesus Christ through faith. And so David says, do I not hate
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those who hate you, not just the sins, but the sinners. And yet Jesus says, love your enemies
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and pray for those who persecute you. He also talks in our text today about turning the other
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cheek, that if you are asked for your tunic to give your cloak as well, and if you are asked
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to go one mile, to go a second mile in addition. So theologians, systematic theologians, and
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into two categories, private enemies and public enemies.
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and then I'll seek to explain a little bit more
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Matthew Henry, on our text today, he says this,
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That is, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.
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It's one of the things that's mentioned in our text today.
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In all which places it is appointed to be done by the magistrate,
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not personally, not as vigilantes, but by the civil magistrate,
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those who have been appointed to deal out justice in this life,
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But he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath.
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It was a direction to the judges of Israel what punishment to inflict in cases of maims, maiming,
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for terror to such as would do mischief on the one hand,
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and for restraint to such that would have mischief done to them on the other hand.
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that they may not insist on a greater punishment than is proper.
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one of the things that we find first before getting to the words of Jesus
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But what Jesus is saying, he's not going against the law of Moses.
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The law of God is immutable, meaning that it doesn't change. It's perfect. God doesn't say this is just in 1500 BC, but it's no longer just in 2024. God's sense of justice doesn't fluctuate.
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So Jesus is not saying, you have heard it said, tooth for tooth, eye for eye.
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And that's something that God did say, and it was good for a time, but it's no longer good today.
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What Jesus does all throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7,
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when he refers back to the law of God, you have heard it was said,
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and he's giving, he's not replacing the law of God
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as though it's flawed and needs to be improved.
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you have heard it was said, but I tell you, he's not saying God spoke through Moses in the Old
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Testament and God was wrong. But I tell you, no, he's also not saying God spoke through Moses and
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it was right for that time, but it's no longer applicable today. No, he's saying, here's the law,
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the law of God spoken through Moses. It's holy and perfect and right. It's immutable. That means
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unchanging. It is infallible. That means it does not err. But this law has been perverted by your
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religious rulers in your day. And their commentary on the law of God ultimately undoes the law of God.
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And so I'm going now to provide God's commentary on God's law. I, Jesus Christ, who am God,
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a.k.a. what I meant, I being not Joel, but Jesus.
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And one of the things, according to Matthew Henry
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is he was not saying eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
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Jesus is not saying that there should be no civil magistrate.
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jesus is not saying to give another example that there should be a civil magistrate
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but that the civil magistrate should be merciful no jesus is saying that private individual
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disciples of him of jesus christians as individuals that we should be merciful
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as individuals so this is the distinction between private and public enemies one of the distinctions
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the civil magistrate should not be known for mercy.
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The sentiment, the general sentiment there is true.
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If you're looking for forgiveness, you're looking for mercy, go to church.
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Unless, of course, you're looking for forgiveness when it comes to holding a different view of World War II.
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Then you need to be very, very particular which church you go and look for that forgiveness in.
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But in general, it's been said, and yes, that was a fair quip.
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So, that being said, it has been generally said of churches.
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Today, you have to be very particular which one you pick.
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But, in general, churches have been known for mercy.
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The one who God ordained to bear the sword to deal out justice.
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we have to think private and public, individual and groups, corporate, and also in terms of spheres,
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church versus state. The civil magistrate has not been ordained by God for a ministry of mercy.
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The civil magistrate, that's not its function. That's not its purpose. So when Jesus says,
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you have heard it was said, this is what he's contradicting. Because he says, on the one hand,
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you've heard it said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but I tell you, love your enemies and
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pray for those who persecute you. So is Jesus going against Moses, or is Jesus saying to Israel
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in terms of their civil magistrate that they shouldn't uphold justice, proportional justice
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for crimes anymore? That now people can commit crimes with impunity? You can go around maiming
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your neighbor, you can chop off his limb, or you can gouge out his eye, or you can knock out his
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tooth, and according to Jesus, a civil magistrate shouldn't do a darn thing about it? Of course
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that's not what Jesus is saying. No, what Jesus is saying, you have heard it said, eye for eye,
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tooth for tooth, but I tell you, what he's contradicting is not Moses. What is implied
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in the text here is that he is contradicting the explanation and exegesis and commentaries
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of the Jewish religious leaders of his day on Moses.
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As my disciples, you don't go and retrieve an eye for an eye
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But instead, you as Christians, you show mercy.
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And the first place you show mercy is privately behind closed doors
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in your prayer life by praying for those who persecute you.
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See, Jesus, what he's contradicting is not Moses.
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He's contradicting the Pharisees, the Sadducees,
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and the religious Jewish leaders of that day,
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to where even those who would want to come, they could not come.
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Jesus says that you go halfway around the world to make a proselyte, that is a convert.
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And when you do, you make him twice the son of hell that you are.
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And not only will you not enter in through the door,
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but you also hold all those hostage so that they can't enter either.
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and made it the lens for reading the entire Bible.
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if you wonder like how did we get transgenderism that mistake
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how did we get globalism in a full-blown invasion at our southern border
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that mistake the conflation of private enemies versus public enemies
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and all that rooted ultimately in the conflation of the notion the false notion
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They'll draw even larger theological perversions out of that.
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And they'll say that somehow the Son and the Father
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You know, you've got God the Father in the Old Testament,
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well he saves us from his dad now theologically there's a bit of a divine irony there because
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that's true jesus does save us from not just his dad but father son and holy spirit jesus saves us
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from god the godhead the triune god he saves us from god why do we need to be saved from god
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because God is just, and he must punish wickedness.
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But we needed to be saved from God, not because God was a bully
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No, we needed to be saved from God because we declared war on God
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is this idea that the Son is against the Father,
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that the New Testament is against the Old Testament.
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and we don't just do the Biblicist approach
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And he even says all the law of God passes away.
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Meaning that the law of Moses is just as good today as the day that it was written.
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God is not a man that he should change his mind.
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He is the same today as he was back then and as he always will be.
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justice the measure the standard for right and wrong for morality does not fluctuate based off
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of culture or time or place or popular opinion and yet many people think it does and many
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christians think it does many christians today i'll give you an example this one i don't talk
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about often because i don't want to be overly divisive and i i don't hold a strong you must
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do this. You guys know this about me if you've been a part of the church for any period of time
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at all, but it's a good example. Head coverings. Head coverings. You will hear pastors today
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that will say, well, head coverings might be biblical, but because it's 2024 in America,
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it's just not worth it. It's viewed as just too countercultural. It's visible. It's right there.
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It's in your face and visitors, you know, might think that we're Amish, you know, or whatever.
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And, you know, and it's just, it's just too much, you know, and we just can't do it.
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Some ministers of the gospel have even gone to the point of encouraging wives to disobey their husbands.
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It has been recently expressly said that if your husband has a conviction that 1 Corinthians 11 still applies to the church today and encourages his wife on that basis to wear head covering in Lord's Day worship, but the pastor of the church doesn't think that head coverings are a thing, then the wife should rebel against her husband and side with the pastor instead.
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That was just said about a week and a half ago.
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To encourage women to turn against their husbands.
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To choose their pastors over the husband who made vows.
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Again, we have to be able to think in categories.
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I've noticed, you know, there are also people who say, well, how come your standard when it comes to men in your church, how come you just don't lay down the law and say, here's a reading list of all the books that are banned at Covenant Bible Church.
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But aren't you the same guy who a couple of years ago said that you didn't want your wife to read a book?
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brothers and sisters. That was my point all the way back when I made the statement about Megan
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reading the book. What did I say? I said, a man in his home as a husband has far more authority
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than a man behind a pulpit in a church. That was the whole context that was convenient, of course,
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left out in that clip, as I always get clipped. But the point was, civil magistrate, there's one
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atmosphere, authority over lots of people. It's a mile wide, but really only an inch deep.
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Right? If Joe Biden comes and says, hey, we want this and we want that, you can say, hey,
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thanks so much. Take a hike. No. Get off my lawn. No. No. You don't have jurisdiction over these
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things. You have this much authority, an inch of authority, inch deep of authority, over a mile
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wide of citizens. A little bit of authority over a lot a bit of people. Now think of, that's the
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civil magistrate, that's, now think of the church. A pastor has a little bit more authority, but over
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a much smaller group of people. 330 million people in the United States, about 200 people in this
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church but then there's another group it's a very small even smaller than a church very small group
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of people only an inch wide but about a mile deep in terms of the degree of authority the scope how
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many people are under that authority only a few the degree of that authority a lot and that is
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the household, a husband and a father. Now, a husband and a father can still, even there,
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there is a jurisdiction. There are lines. There are limits. No human authority is an ultimate
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authority. And there is a way for a husband, even though he has much authority, he can even take,
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even there, go beyond and take more authority than even he has been given. He's been given by God,
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husband and father, a ton of authority in his home. But even then, he has not been given
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limitless authority, so he can go beyond it, and that would be an abuse. And in those cases,
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in those cases, a wife does have a right, and we could even argue a moral obligation
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to, in those cases, to supersede her husband's authority if it is real, serious, especially if
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it is physical, life-threatening abuse, she should go above his authority and appeal to
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That would be calling the pastor and calling the cops.
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If her husband is holding one of the children, and I won't give deep, but, and it's, this
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is a threat, and he's about to do something terrible.
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You call the police, you call your pastor, you go above his authority and appeal to another authority.
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And the ultimate authority that we're appealing to always is God's authority.
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But if your husband tells you to put a thin piece of cloth on your head, you will not die.
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He said, look, 1 Corinthians 11 is a little wonky
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because it's talking about for the angel's sake,
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if you're a woman on the Lord's day in worship.
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But there might be a text in scripture that says you should.
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her whole life, still to this day, she's still alive,
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there's all these different appeals to authority.
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is it says they marveled at Jesus when he taught
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because he spoke as one who spoke with authority.
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They're not just saying that he had incredible rhetoric.
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or you know listening to Charles Spurgeon and saying we marveled at man the prince of preachers
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Charles Spurgeon we marveled at his preaching because he spoke as one with authority that's not
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it that's not what's being said about Jesus when Jesus preached they're not saying the people are
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not saying we marveled at Jesus preaching because he spoke as one who spoke with authority saying
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he's such a good preacher he has such good rhetoric or such good oration or the way that
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You know, it's the passions and the pathos of the preacher
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They're saying something very objective and specific
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when they say Jesus spoke as one with authority.
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What they mean is Jesus doesn't cite the rabbis.
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They say that when it comes to the Fourth Commandment,
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And the sixth commandment would be obliterated.
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And the eighth commandment would be obliterated
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to where the law of God was left nowhere to be found at all.
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what they mean is he did not appeal to other men
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He would go directly to the law word of God itself,
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and that would be the only thing he referenced.
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There's all these Jewish commentaries on Moses.
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And my commentary on Moses does not contradict Moses.
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My commentary on Moses contradicts all your religious rulers
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And one of the ways, back to our text, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
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who really did say eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
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is that the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious rulers of that day
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especially as my followers, disciples, and Christians,
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we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
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Jesus is not saying, in a public corporate sense,
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especially with a divinely instituted civil magistrate
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It's like nobody does that in our culture.
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You ripped off somebody's limb, well, you're, you know, just a light fine will do.
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And certainly not for the mother who made that decision, just for the person who was using the forceps.
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He is not saying that just retribution is a bad idea.
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the whole point of the gospel brothers and sisters the whole point of calvary the whole point of the
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cross is it was god's magnificent divine way of somehow being able to administer to you and i
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mercy without contradicting justice the cross is where justice is not um bypassed but rather
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satisfied that's the whole point of the gospel that's the whole christian faith god didn't break
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the law for love. No, God kept the law at the cost of his own son so that you and I might be welcomed
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in and experience a love that we don't deserve. God doesn't contradict justice. He upholds it,
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and he upholds it at the cost of his own son's blood so that you and I might receive mercy
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We've missed the entirety of the Christian faith.
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Old Testament, bad. New Testament, good. Law, bad. Gospel, good. Justice, bad. Grace, good. No.
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Jesus burst on the scene to say, Jewish religious leaders, bad. True Christian tradition,
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hiding underneath the pile of garbage, good. And let's get back to it.
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and under this tradition you still all stand condemned in fact even more condemned because
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god's law is perfect and holy and right and it is not manageable by anyone but i will die
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and take that punishment that you deserve upon myself so that you might be reconciled to god
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that's what's going on in the new testament that's what's going on in the gospel narratives that's
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what's going on in the Sermon on the Mount. You have heard it was said, eye for eye, tooth for
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tooth. But I tell you, it's time now to be nice. No. He's saying, you have heard it was said, eye
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for eye, tooth for tooth. And you know that your own religious rulers have taken that. And the
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application that they have presented you with is that as private citizens, you can go around
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There's a dynamic difference between hurt and harm.
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when we're trying to explain to them spanking.
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Because some children have stronger wills than others
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and they'll appeal to their own warped, sinful sense of justice.
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but there is a child who has said that when spankings occur that it must be that his parents
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don't love him and when the parents say but god no we do love you and god's word tells us to do
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then the child said well then god must not love me you know god must be terrible um no no one of
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the verses in the bible that talks about discipline and particularly corporal punishment in the home
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That's why, to give a little bit of practical advice here,
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when parents ask me about discipline with young children,
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an eye being gouged out is not just hurt it's harm now but what category is a cheek being slapped
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put into see that's hurt but not harm when jesus says turn the other cheek he's not saying that
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retribution in the in the category of justice carried out by the proper authorities aka the
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civil magistrate is now off the table because i'm jesus and i'm nice and i've gotten rid of
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justice and the law of Moses. No, he's talking about private enemies giving something that hurts
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but not harm. He's talking about private grievances and offenses and conflicts that
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cause embarrassment. So when you have a private enemy who comes and slaps you on the cheek,
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and this can be metaphorical or literal, but it's a grievance. It's an insult. He's embarrassed you.
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In those cases, don't exact justice or retribution.
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In those cases, do your best, if you can, to overlook the offense.
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In fact, you could even turn the other cheek and allow them to commit the offense again.
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But in public, with public enemies and public harm, not just hurt, my pride was hurt, my ego was hurt,
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But no, this is actual harm, bodily harm, like missing a limb, or harm to your livelihood.
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Like, this current attack is from a collective group in a public sphere in such a way that it doesn't just hurt my pride.
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But if this is successful, I will not be able to provide for my family, my livelihood.
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Someone has lied about your business, for instance.
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Jesus, brothers and sisters, you have to know this.
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Jesus is not saying that your family must starve.
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and allow your personal livelihood, your business, to be sued out of existence.
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That is not what Jesus means when he says, turn the other cheek.
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Jesus is not saying that Christians, in a corporate sense,
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insofar as they belong to certain vocations or institutions or the civil magistrate,
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that Christians, in terms of public enemies, can never levy or offer any kind of defense.
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Jesus in our text today is not prescribing suicide.
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by the Christian West over the last 80, 90 years.
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No, the West has fallen and is falling because we shot ourselves in the foot.
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Not because we're great, but because God was so kind and so gracious towards the West
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that over centuries, a millennium from King Alfred all the way up until now,
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God established the Christian West so strongly in the world
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that no one could take it out except the Christian West.
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And one of the tactics of perversion and a twisting of Scripture
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that convinced, created a vulnerability in the Christian West
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and convinced Christians in the West to commit suicide
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was the twisting of our text today, turn the other cheek.
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to where you'll struggle to feed your own children.
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Jesus does not advocate for turning the other cheek.
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You can still pray for your enemies when they do things like this and love those who persecute you, even in these instances.
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And instead, you can present a defense and exonerate yourself so that you can protect yourself and those that you're responsible for protecting and providing for.
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from Matthew Henry. He says this, we must not be revengeful. I say unto you that ye resist not
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evil. That's the words of Jesus. The evil person that is injurious to you. And yet this does not
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repeal the law of self-preservation or self-defense and the care that we are to take of our families.
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We may avoid evil and may resist it so far as it is necessary to our own security.
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The law of retaliation must be made consistent.
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The law of retaliation must be made consistent with the law of love.
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So what Matthew Henry is saying and commentating on these words is he's saying when Jesus tells you to turn the other cheek or to go the extra mile or to give your cloak as well as your tunic,
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Jesus is not telling you that you can't defend your family.
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and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
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And then you would look your children in the eyes
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Evangelicalism has to be able to do better than this, guys.
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Tell me that that is not the state of the church, that that's not the state of the pulpits, that's not the state of our seminaries, our theological professors, our pastors.
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And when Jesus says, don't refuse the one who asked from you, that all of a sudden that means that if somebody pulls a gun as I'm going on a walk with my wife and says, give me your watch and give me her purse, that I can't do anything about it.
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pietistic shallow interpretations of the word of god by ministers then cruddled to politicians
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and the lines and categories blurred to where there's now one application and one interpretation
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for everything in the bible eisegesis reading into text things that aren't there and then
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taking them like fortune cookies stripping them out of the larger context and a whole biblical
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theology, and now the West has fallen. And by God's grace, maybe it could eventually be rebuilt.
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But not until we learn a thing or two. Not until we learn a thing or two. So if you have a
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relationship, a friendship, the words of Jesus, they mean something. So we can't just say it means
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nothing. It does mean something. You have a relationship. You have a friendship. You have
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a co-worker. You have this. You have that. And they personally insult you. Don't try to get
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justice. Turn the other cheek. Let your ego be bruised. Get over it. If you can, overlook an
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offense. It is the glory of a man to overlook an offense. Let it go. If you can, let love cover
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a multitude of sins. And that's how we deal with personal private enemies and love them and pray
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for them. That's what Jesus is talking about. But if it's a public enemy, it's an entity,
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it's a group, they're trying to ruin your livelihood, not just bruise your ego, but
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if their accusations are true, everyone will abandon you. You'll lose your job. Your business
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when it has to do with my own ego being offended.
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This doesn't just go with my personal situation.