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Personal Injury

Personal Injury

Sep 14, 2014

Series: The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached

Category: Sunday Sermons

Detail:

The Sermon on the Mount - Matt. 5-7

“The Greatest Sermon ever Preached.”

Jesus has been teaching us what the kingdom heart looks like in practical, everyday situations.

Matthew 5:38-42
Personal Injury at the hand of others.

We know this is specifically about Personal Injury not Institutional or Social evil because of the O.T. text cited:

Lev. 24:17-21 Deut. 19:14-21 Both have some variation of “Your eye shall not pity, life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Deut. 19:21)

Lex Talionis - Law of retaliation.
Reciprocity achieved by equalization.

The Old Righteousness taught that injurers should be injured in exactly the same way - and no more!

This was a Great Advancement in Civilization.

The Kingdom among us offered a better way!

  • Anger, Contempt and Evil words.
  • Fantasized lust and desire.
  • Kingdom relationships in marriage.
  • Manipulation and Control.

That being the case - when we are injured our world doesn’t become our injury! We don’t magnify it! Focus on it!

We have a larger view of God and ourselves in his hand - under his Control - under his Rule.

This Kingdom reality in us allows us to view people in their humanity and need because we are in touch with our real need.

This enables us to pray, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus is our model.

Jesus gives us four examples (illustrations) of how one fully alive to the Kingdom might resolve personal injury or imposition.

RECIPROCITY vrs. NONRESISTANCE

Turn the other cheek. Vrs. 39

Let him have your shirt also. Vrs. 40

Go with him two miles. Vrs. 41

Give of him who asks of you. Vrs. 42

Jesus is not giving new laws. He is illustrating what the Heart controlled by the Kingdom among us looks like!

Our tormentors count on our resistance and anger to support their continuation of evil.

If we respond as Jesus indicates, the force of their actions pulls them off balance and causes them to question what kind of people they are!

Anger feeds on anger. But, patient goodness normally deflates it.

Our response allows the kingdom of God, with all its resources, to begin to work.

This is not weakness!
This is not passivity!
This is not being a doormat!

Our tormentors are never in control.

We can always act with clear-eyed, resolute love - because the King of Love lives in us!

Once God has broken the power of anger and fantasized desire in us:

Then, we know that the way of Christ in response to personal injury and imposition is always the easier way.

It is the only way to move serenely in the midst of harm and beyond it!

Holy Spirit must give us revelation! Information along is insufficient!

Within the human order: Presumption is one returns harm for harm. Resist evil.

That you give only to those with prior claim. (Family etc)That you only do what legal claim requires of you.

Within the Kingdom the presumption is that I will return good for evil and “resist” only for compelling reasons. That I will do more than I strictly must...

Because that is what God does for us!

The Kingdom really is about The King ruling in each of our lives.

God is about the business of conforming each of us the the IMAGE OF JESUS.

God is making us to look like Jesus!

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