An Upside-Down People: Live and Help Live

Introduction

Matthew 5:21–26 ESV

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Matthew 5:38–48 ESV

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 7:1–6 ESV

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

Scott Park is a huge college basketball fan. He grew up in Wilmington, NC. As a kid he attended UNC hall of fame coach Dean Smith’s basketball camp. He went to college at NC State, and was always in the student section during their basketball games cheering on the Wolfpack. So, every year in March you will find him deeply engaged in the thrill of March Madness. Eleven years ago, in March 2015, Scott was in his mid-fifties. He and his wife were watching the ACC Tournament. During the game a commercial came on inviting people to call in for the chance to be selected to take a half-court shot during the Tournament’s semi-final game. If the person selected hit that half-court shot, they would win $1 million. His wife, Ellen, said, “Let’s call!”

To their surprise, days later Scott received a call letting him know that he was the contestant selected to take the half-court shot during the semi-final game. He knew that it would take a miracle for him to hit that shot. He went to a local park near his home in Virginia Beach to start practicing. The day of the game came. Over 22,000 people were in attendance in Greensboro, NC to watch Duke play Notre Dame. They didn’t know who Scott Park was, and may not have even known that somebody would have a chance to win $1M at halftime.

Scott was so certain that he’d miss the shot that he considered declining the invitation. He said, “I thought, maybe I should tell them that I really shouldn’t do this. But,” he recalled, “that would be quitting. And Jimmy V said don’t give up. So I don’t think I’m gonna give up.” He gets the basketball, takes a short step, then one giant step, taking off with both feet into the air and with all his might launching the ball toward the basket with a two-handed shot. His two-legged, two-handed shot began to ark. But it arced slowly and lowly. The ball landed on the court just past the free throw line, only a little more than half the distance to the target. When asked about the experience, Scott replied, “Yeah, it wasn’t pretty, was it? What I heard was the ‘Awww.’ And I heard some boos in the background. That just kind of made me laugh.”

Ryan Fagan, a college basketball writer for the Sporting News was covering the game. He recorded the missed shot on his phone, posted the six-second clip to social media. In minutes the loop count on the video was in the thousands. By 5 p.m. that evening, the video clip of Scott’s really bad miss had been viewed on social media more than 4 million times.

Some of the comments were, “It sucks to suck.” “He must not’ve needed the money…smh.”

The ESPN article about Scott’s story said,

“That's the way of contemporary commentary. Daggers thrown from behind the shield of an avatar, too obsessed with one-upping the last line posted to worry about how those lines start piling up.”

What people didn’t know was that it was a miracle that Scott Park was at that game. Not because he was the winning contestant, but because he should’ve been dead. He has a condition called catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome, aka CAPS. This condition causes your organs to shut down by literally choking them to death. When he was diagnosed, the number of recorded cases of this condition was only in the hundreds. He was sent to Johns Hopkins and was put on a boatload of medicines and treatments. Those treatments saved his life, but destroyed his kidneys. Amazingly, a friend from church was a match, and happily agreed to give Scott a good kidney from his own body. His life was saved again. Even with the new kidney he and his wife had to drive from VA Beach to Johns Hopkins for treatment. He had to take 39 pills a day. So, his fight with CAPS left Scott with a broken and weak body that had absolutely no chance of enabling him to make a half-court shot. At the end of the article, the ESPN writer says,

He's a reminder of the importance of knowing the entire story of a person before carelessly trying to sum him or her up in a 6-second video or a tweet.

Let me ask you a question? What is murder? How do you define it? What does it mean to take life? Every one of us in here would agree that you shouldn’t commit murder. But according to the words of Jesus in our text, even though Scott Park is still alive, thousands and thousands of people are guilty of attempted murder against him. Can I tell you something? If we take what Jesus is saying seriously, folks are committing murder on social media all day every day.

Jesus says to his disciples,

Matthew 5:21–22 ESV

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

Last week, we heard Pastor Duke tell us that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus isn’t changing the standards for life in the kingdom of God. He isn’t changing the rules. No, he is applying and explaining God’s law in the way that it should’ve always been understood. People who say, “I desire to submit my life to the will and authority of God,” come to understand as we have heard multiple times already, that means living life as an upside-down people. The ways of God are not the ways of the world. And today, the through-line I want to explore from these verses is what it means to actually be a pro-life people. I’m calling this sermon “Live and Help Live,” because the pro-life demands of God’s law have to do with what makes for the flourishing, the well-being of our neighbors and ourselves.

A key question that these verses help us to answer is how to we bear witness to the life-giving power of God in a hostile world? The things that Jesus is addressing are necessary for him to address because the way of the world apart from God says that if we’re going to flourish violence has to be an option kept either in your front pocket to lead with, or your back pocket as a last resort. And Jesus says, No. “My people promote life through prioritizing repentance, reconciliation, sacrifice, humility, and love.”

I want to draw out three things from these passages that God invites us to see and lean into as we seek to live and help others live. First, we’re confronted with a conviction about ourselves. Secondly, we’re challenged to be clear on how we view other people. And third, he gives us the confidence to follow his way by faith - Conviction, Clarity, and Confidence.

Conviction

Each of these passages reveals something about how we are tempted to live our lives in relationship to other people. Let me just say this about what we find particularly here in ch. 5:21-48. In correcting their inadequate understanding of God’s law, Jesus focuses his attention on what we call the second table of God’s law. That is, commandments 5-10. The first four of the ten commandments have to do with our duty to God. Loving God with everything. Commandments 5-10 have to do with our duty towards our neighbors. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. He doesn’t explicitly expound on each of commandments 5-10, but six times in vv.21-48 Jesus says, “you heard that it was said,” or “it was said,” followed by a quotation from the Law. And each time he follows up with, “but I say to you,” and describes what is at the heart of the Law. We heard Jesus say last week in v. 20,

Matthew 5:20 ESV

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

As my friend Dan Doriani writes in his commentary, “If the scribes were lawyers, Jesus was a cardiologist.” Jesus is a heart doctor. In his book The Incomparable Christ, John Stott writes,

Christian righteousness is greater than Pharisaic righteousness because it is deeper. It is a righteousness of the heart, a righteousness not of words and deeds only, but especially of thoughts and motives (see Matt. 5:21-30). It is in this sense that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law. He took it to its logical conclusion. He looked beyond a superficial understanding of it to its radical demand for heart-righteousness.

This is why we are invited by these verses into an honest conviction about ourselves. And the conviction is this. Our default posture is to live like we are the standard bearers for righteousness. Our default posture is to live like you’ll find our picture in the dictionary under the definition for righteousness or right living. I know you’ll say, “I know I’m not perfect,” but let’s listen to Jesus’s words.

Matthew 5:21 ESV

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’

If Jesus didn’t continue to explain what that meant, none of us would add anger and contempt like Jesus does in v. 22. Those are heart conditions. Anger and insults, contemptuous engagement with other people, that comes from the inside. What’s more is that you and I might be willing to say to ourselves, “I’ve got something against him or her because of what they did or said. Should I go and try to make things right? Should I embrace a willingness to forgive?” But that’s not what Jesus says here. He says in v. 23, “If you’re offering your gift and remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift and go be reconciled.” So, not murdering isn’t only refraining from having negative thoughts or words that dehumanize other people, it’s also about helping others who have these kinds of thoughts towards you! Jesus is saying, my people are peacemakers. I want you to help calm the anger and the contempt that people have towards you! I might go along with this, Jesus, because you seem to be applying this to a brother or a sister in the faith. In other words, there’s a relationship there. But then Jesus says in v. 25,

Matthew 5:25 ESV

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.

If someone has something against me, the priority is reconciliation regardless of who’s right. I tell you that my natural posture is not the humility it takes to calm anger and contempt that others have towards me. And part of the conviction here is a willingness to be honest about my own guilt.

But the Lord doesn’t stop there. He says in 38, “You’ve heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” That statement appears three times in the Law, Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, and Deuteronomy 19:21. That part of the Law of Moses isn’t woodenly literal. It is that the punishment for a crime must fit the crime itself. It forbids holding a vendetta against someone. When we’ve been hurt, we want others to pay. And we don’t want them to pay a little bit, we want them to pay a lot. Individuals and families will hold grudges for generations. And what Jesus says about non-retaliation here is an embrace of the truth that vengeance belongs to the Lord. The conviction is simply this. I want vengeance to belong to me!

And right after that he continues to drop the hammer. You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ Notice this with me please. The first part of the command, love your neighbor is a part of the Law, in Leviticus 19:18. But the second part, “You shall hate your enemy,” is not. That was added as a part of their tradition. If I love my neighbor, that must mean I get to hate my enemy. I want to have a violent or hostile posture toward my enemy. I want to hate them in my heart.

It’s no wonder, then, that when we get to the first few verses of chapter 7, Jesus directly confronts our desire to be the one standing in judgment over others. Matt7.1-2

Matthew 7:1–2 ESV

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

This is a hard-hitting, even overwhelming deluge of conviction when we consider Jesus’s standards. We would much rather minimize, compromise, compartmentalize, or just ignore what he says!

Clarity

But here’s the deal. Why do we need to accept the invitation into a conviction about our temptations, tendencies, and failings here? It’s in part because God wants you and I to have clarity about other people! Jesus isn’t looking to leave you and I down in the dumps and discouraged about our failings to love our neighbors. He’s lifting our eyes to, yes, see our need for him. But he’s also lifting our eyes to see the ultimate truth about other people.

I said earlier that the through-line we were exploring in these passages is what it means to actually be a pro-life people. And the reason this is crucial is because the most true thing about every human being is that we are image bearers of God! And that means every human life in every phase and station of life has immeasurable value. That includes the people who anger us so much that we hold them in contempt. That includes the people we’ve angered and don’t want to reconcile with. That includes the people who have harmed us and we want retribution against. That includes our enemies and those who persecute us. That includes those upon whom we want to pronounce God’s judgment.

If there is anything that you and I need to be clear about, it is as C.S. Lewis wrote decades ago, “you have never met a mere mortal.” We only encounter every day, in all of our interactions - be they pleasant or unpleasant, be they uplifting or demeaning - we only encounter image bearers of the living God.

Every aspect of these commands from Jesus flows from what it means for people to be made in the image of God. After the flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 the Lord directly addresses the issue of homicide. He says,

Genesis 9:6 ESV

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Why does Jesus use such hard language? Matthew 5:22 “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Why such an unreasonable response to an evil person? Matthew 5:39–41 “But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”

The reason is that you and I are always only interacting with image bearers. And when we forget that, what we are given to is the dehumanization of other people. We need clarity because we are constantly being tempted to diminish and devalue the lives of other people. When we see people doing heinous things, committing grievous evil, it is easy for us to diminish the value of their life in our hearts. But there’s a difference between condemning evil and injustice and diminishing human life.

Jesus says this is what it looks like to be pro-life even towards evil people. Love your enemies. Pray for people who persecute you. Because if you are a citizen of my kingdom, you are to reflect your heavenly Father. What does the Father do? He makes the sun rise. And the sun provides light, energy and life to the evil and the good. He sends rain to water the earth. The benefits and blessings brought about by the rain come to the just and the unjust.

I love how John Calvin, the Protestant Reformer, summarizes our pro-life duties that flow from the sixth commandment,

The purport of the commandment is, that since the Lord has bound the whole human race by a kind of unity, the the safety of all ought to be considered as entrusted to each. In general, therefore, all violence, injustice, and every kind of harm from which our neighbor suffers, is prohibited. Accordingly, we are required faithfully to do what in us lies to defend the life of our neighbor, to promote whatever tends to his tranquility, to be vigilant in warding off harm, and, when danger comes, to assist in removing it.

Confidence

The Lord invites us into an honest conviction about ourselves. He calls us to a clarity about other people. Third, he gives us something that we desperately need - the confidence to follow his way by faith. What do I mean? The Lord gives us confidence to know that the upside-down, life-promoting way is not in vain. It’s not a useless endeavor.

Listen again to the commands, the imperatives that Jesus lays before us:

Be reconciled, v.24. Do not resist the one who is evil. Turn the other cheek, v. 39. Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, v. 44. Don’t judge, chapter 7:1.

Well, what is the confidence we have when we live this way? Our confidence is that the Lord will work through our Spirit-empowered, humility-embracing, repentance practicing, reconciliation seeking, sacrificial love prioritizing, to bring life and light to people who know his love. Remember, Jesus said, “you are the light of the world.” Our confidence is that the light of Jesus Christ shines most brightly through us when our lives look the way he is commanding us to live.

We believe that Jesus will work through our repentance for the purpose of reconciliation. We believe that when we honest about our own faults, when we refuse to minimize our faults while maximizing the faults of others, God will use that to make us agents of restoration and renewal in the lives of others.

Stanley Hauerwas helps us see the bottom line when he writes,

“To [live like this] requires the patience that has been made possible by God refusing to let our sin prevent him from becoming one of us, from joining our time, through the coming of Jesus…To be a disciple of Jesus, to be ready to be reconciled with those with whom we are angry…to take the time required to tell the truth—all are habits that create the time and space to be capable of loving our enemies.”

Here it is. Jesus’ expounding on the Law in chapter 5:21-47 is bracketed by two statements. Verse 20, “Unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And verse 48, “You must therefore be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Everything in between explains what he means. Having the righteousness and perfection that Jesus is talking about does not mean that we are error free. It means that, by the grace of God, from our hearts, we learn a Spirit empowered obedience. We become confident that God will enable us to love like he loves. We have the confidence to forgive like God forgives. We have the confidence to be peacemakers the way God makes peace with us. We learn to be a people who relate to others the God relates to us.

Let me leave you with a three practical things to consider.

First, is the weight of Jesus’s commands pressing heavily upon you? Are you experiencing the weight of conviction in your heart as you realize that you are falling short, or even actively resisting obedience. Don’t try to run away from that conviction. Be honest if you’re struggling to even desire reconciliation. Lean into it and let the Spirit of God minister to your heart and soul. Be honest about where you are harboring unforgiveness and unrighteous anger. Be honest about those you are murdering in your heart. Just because we’ve already done the confession of sin and assurance of pardon in the service doesn’t mean that the opportunity has passed you by. If there are people you need to be reconciled to, if there are people over whom you are standing in judgment like you are their god, now is the time to confess, now is the time to repent, even while I am talking. Hear the good news from 1 John 3:20 “for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”

Secondly, understand this, we live in a culture that specializes in rage baiting. We live in a culture that wants to keep you and I mired in anger. Our anger is profitable. There’s a reason why the banner image on most YouTube videos in my feed says something like, “Disaster Strikes,” “All Hell Breaks Loose,” “So and So Crashes and Burns.” Media platforms cultivate outrage for clicks and views. This is not a cynical take. What I’m saying to you is that the information and the outlets we are exposed to every day encourage us away from love and towards murder. There are indeed legitimate issues and things to be angry about. But don’t take the rage bait! Guard your heart. Seek the Lord’s help to guard against contempt.

James 1:19–20 ESV

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Be clear-eyed this week on the ways that the world, your own flesh, and the devil are tempting you to view image-bearers with contempt.

Third, cultivate a heart of love by watching your tongue.

Ephesians 4:29 ESV

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

James 1:26 ESV

If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.

Or let me put it the way my mother used to when I was getting a bit of an attitude, “You better watch your mouth.” Don’t diminish how much our speech reveals what is going on in our hearts. When you’re tempted this week to give someone a piece of your mind, watch your heart and watch your mouth. Recognize that you’re trying to take vengeance and retribution out of God’s hands and grab it for yourself. You’re not the eternal judge! Leave it to the lord! Make that a part of your prayer this week. Lord, help me bridle my tongue.

May God give us the grace to view every image-bearer the way that he does. And may he give us the strength to live in such way that blesses others for their flourishing and well-being