Turn The Other Cheek

Well, thank you so much for, Pastor Leon, for letting me come and share the word with your congregation. I was getting fired up at the volunteer service, man. They were getting me fired up. So I can’t wait to do this. And I’m super fired up by this thing.

Have you guys noticed this? This thing is amazing. So, Pastor Leon, like, you have like a ten out of ten in my book just for that. It’s amazing. So thank you for doing that.

You know, I gotta start off with a question. You can just give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. How many of y’all have been offended in your life? Okay, everyone else is lying, by the way, who’s not putting their hand up, that’s fine. So all of us have been offended, right?

And we have to come to this question of, what do we do when we’re offended? How do we handle it? Punch them in the face. Come on. Somebody.

Anyone else? Hello. All right, I’m here. You got a wild congregation here, brother. No, I understand.

I understand. So let me ask. Let me do this. I want to do a thought experiment now. Thought experiments, they’re interesting.

Yeah, I was right. It’s funny. Einstein actually, he used thought experiments. That’s kind of how he came up with the concept of theory of relativity. E equals MC squared, all that, you know, this was through a lot of it, through a thought experiment.

That’s not the whole thing, but it’s amazing because our brains can actually. We can actually go to places where we’re not presently at physically. Right. There’s a great book called why Zebras don’t get Ulcers. Seriously, that’s the name of the book.

You should go check it out. And zebras don’t get ulcers because they’re not thinking about their retirement. Hello. They’re just hanging out, right? The only thing they got to worry about is when the lion jumps out of the bush and then they’re going to run, right?

They’re not thinking about tomorrow. They’re not worried about their relationship issues. They’re not wondering what’s going to happen with their kids. Right? Zebras don’t get ulcers.

But the whole point of that is that it’s amazing that the human brain is able to project ourselves into a different place and actually feel the things that we would start to feel. So thought experiments are good things to do. It’s a good thing to do when you’re looking at the scriptures, to try to imagine yourself, number one, in that place, in that context, and then try to think you can imagine yourself in other contexts, in your own life, and it can make a difference. It can start to do something in your brain. So we’re going to do that here for a moment and imagine that you’re having coffee with a friend, you’re hanging out, you guys are talking, and then they slip up and say something that they weren’t supposed to know.

Ooh. And you realize there’s another friend you had. And you told them that. And then you told them, don’t say this to anybody else. And all of a sudden now the other friend who wasn’t the one you told knows the information that you ask not to be revealed.

It’s offensive. And then what if even worse? Now you’re kind of getting the sense that you hear it around in other places. Oh, by the way, I didn’t know that this was pride information, but so and so. And they know it, too.

And you start to realize that someone has been spreading a rumor and actually you know who this person is. And you realize that, man, I’m pretty offended at this person. I’m angry that they have taken my information, my private information that I gave to them in trust, in confidence. And now they’ve taken that and they’ve spread that. Now, in that moment, as we’re realizing what’s going on, we have a few choices, don’t we?

What are some of those choices? Well, maybe on a scale, don’t yell them out. I’m a little afraid of what you guys might say. On a scale of one to 1010, being that you would be so angry and hurt that you want to strangle them to death. One being that you’re just like Jesus, lamb to the slaughter.

You’re just sacrificial in your life. Where are you guys at? Can you give me a show from you got any fives? We got a five. Okay.

I’m saying at least a five. At least a five. But maybe that’s just because, I mean, I don’t know, maybe there’s something wrong with me. That’s fine. I admit that.

At least a five. You’re hurt, you’re angry. I mean, one thing is you could go spread your own rumor. You know, some stuff about them. You could let that slip.

Maybe you could go and I send a prayer request on the gossip. I mean, prayer train, the prayer chain, text some friends. Hey, I don’t know if you heard about Sally. I don’t know if you heard about Joe. Maybe you could just let some things slip when you’re out to coffee again or in a text message or, you know, we know the ways you could get back at them.

Right? That’s one option. Another option is you could just fade away and do nothing. Grow in bitterness, grow in anger, cut off the relationship and just end it there. Now, don’t get me wrong, maybe the relationship needs to change, I totally get that.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about confronting it. I’m talking about moving away. And almost as if you’re giving them now the upper hand, the power, the position to do what? Be over you, control you, whatever it is.

And now you’re not going to do anything. But maybe there’s a third option. I want you to imagine in your mind scales of justice. And when someone offends you, maybe they said a rumor, but there’s a lot of other ways that people can offend you, aren’t there? They said something that was unfair.

They keep piling on the work and don’t help me and don’t get me the partners that I need, don’t get me on the team that I need to be on. And they don’t seem to care about what it’s doing to me, my heart, my life and my family. There’s scales of justice. What happens when those scales start to tip well again? We can start to take our own justice, take matters into our own hand.

Let’s add some more on the scale, because we need these things to balance out. But the problem is, we don’t quite know exactly how to balance them out. And we start to do something, and then the scales tip the other way. And then they get angry and in retaliation, what ends up happening is there’s an escalation. Relationships are broken.

And then now everyone else is having to pay the price. It’s not just you and them now. It’s your kids, it’s your friends, it’s your friend group, it’s your church. Hello. It’s all of these things.

And these balances are just moving back and forth, and it’s just escalating until way more people are hurt in the end than what it actually began with. So you can do that. Like I tell my kids, you can make your choices, but you can’t choose the consequences of those choices. Maybe I’ll say that again because it’s so obvious, and yet we ignore it all the time. We can make the decisions that we want to make.

You are totally free to do that. Let me give you that freedom today. But you know what you cannot do? You cannot choose what happens once those words leave your mouth? You can’t choose what happens once you knock the domino down.

You can’t stop the other dominoes. You cannot choose the consequences of your actions, but you can try to understand them. You can try to imagine them, and you can try to make a choice in the present in light of the future. You can. And the question for all of us is, what do we do when we’ve been offended?

That’s the question I have for us today. And does the Bible, this ancient text that was written so long ago, let’s be honest. Sometimes it feels confusing. Does this have anything to say to us? I think it does.

And I think this guy Jesus, who we talk about here, who we praise, who we love, I think this guy Jesus, not just the guy, this king Jesus, this second person of the Trinity, Jesus, this person whose God made flesh come to walk among us, this Jesus actually has some advice. I think he didn’t give it to us. He gave it to us through his word. But he had an original audience that he spoke to. And he actually gives us some words about offense in one of his most famous sermons.

It’s called the Sermon on the mount. And I think to understand, though, this sermon, we gotta kind of understand some of the context. What I mean when I say context is everything that was surrounding Jesus when it happened, the people, the places, the environment, the culture. And we can’t get into all of it, but we can get a couple clues. One of them is the audience that Jesus had.

If we look in Matthew, chapter four, verses 24 and 25, talks about large crowds following Jesus. Here’s what it says. It says, news about him spread as far as Syria, and people soon began bringing to him all who were sick and whatever their sickness and disease, or if they were demon possessed or epileptic or paralyzed, he healed them all. And large crowds from Galilee, they followed him wherever he went. People from Galilee, the ten towns, Jerusalem, and all over Judea and from the east of the Jordan river, they followed him.

And let’s go back to that previous verse 24. You can throw it up there. Who were the people that were in this crowd? They were the sick. They were people that need healing.

They had diseases. They had demon possession. They had epilepsy. They were paralyzed in that culture, these were the people that were untouchable, uncleanhouse, the people that no one could really help. They were the ones that were on the margins, and then their families and then the people that worked with them, they brought them because they couldn’t get there to Jesus.

And they all just wanted to be around Jesus. So when he’s sitting there, he starts to preach this message. He’s preaching it to people who are struggling, and he says crazy things to them, like, blessed are you when you’re poor in spirit. Blessed are you when you’re desperate. They’re actually.

You’re blessed. Not that you will be blessed. That’s not what he says. He says you are blessed right now. And the reason that you’re blessed right now is that you’re actually in a place where you are positioned to receive from God in a way that the prideful in a way that the powerful in the way that the people that are the haves won’t.

And a quick aside, the best way that you cannot get what you need from God is to operate with pride, is to refuse to acknowledge what’s really going on, what is reality. And Jesus says all sorts of interesting things. He talks about things like, you’ve heard it said, he’ll say something like that. You’ve heard it said, don’t murder. And actually, what he’s saying, if you start to do a deeper study of the language there is, he’s saying that you’ve heard it preached in your synagogues, your churches.

That’s essentially what they were. You’ve heard it preached your whole life this way. You’ve heard all your favorite preachers and pastors tell you to do this, but I’m saying, try this other thing out. And he talks about a principle that’s being applied, and then he says, that’s not how God really wants it to apply it. I know, because I’m his son, and he’s given me a unique ministry here.

And he says, this is what really God really got at and what he was really trying to get at. And he’ll say things like, hey, you know what? You’ve heard it said, don’t murder. But the reality is murder. That’s the symptom of the disease, actually.

If you go back on the chain of cause and effect relationships, you’ll get to a place where you find at the end of that chain anger. And he’s saying, instead of staying with the symptom, let’s go to the root cause. Anger, bitterness, hatred. It starts in your heart. So if you want to figure out this end cause, this lag result, you need to figure out what’s really going on.

And that’s the root of anger, bitterness and frustration that’s in your heart. Deal with that. We have to have a law that deals with this. But if you want to fix that, don’t fix the symptom, fix the disease. He says other crazy things about adultery.

He says adultery, when someone chooses to get into that place of breaking this relationship, breaking this covenant, that’s already because of a lot of different decisions that have already happened. That is not the root cause. That is the symptom of the root cause. And what is the root cause? Lust.

What does the root cause? Selfishness. If we can do that, then, you know what? If we can deal with the selfishness, then we don’t have to worry about the symptom of adultery. And guess what?

All the other symptoms that come out of selfishness. And so when Jesus starts to talk about this idea of scales, if we can imagine scales, he doesn’t say that, but there’s this idea of this justice, this legal principle, right? What does he say that has to do with offense? Here’s what he says. It’s in Matthew five, rather, 38 42.

He says, you’ve heard it said, you’ve heard it preached. You’ve heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say, do not resist an evil person. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.

What? Let’s be honest. What? I’m going to run out of cheeks here soon. Come on, somebody.

I don’t want to do that. Then he says, if you’re sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. What if a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile? Carry it 2 miles. Seriously.

Give to those who ask and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow. He takes three separate scenarios. A scenario in which a superior, if you were backhanding someone culturally, that meant you were hitting them on the right cheek. And to backhand someone was a sign that you were a superior and they were an inferior. This was an insult and an assault upon their life and their character and their identity.

The rich were normally the ones that could bring suits. That’s kind of still the case. And they were the ones that were coming and suing and taking advantage of the poor and taking advantage of people, soldiers. These were Romans. These were the people in power.

And they actually had a law called Angara, where they could take, make anyone take their stuff, their armor and their food and their pack and actually walk for a mile. Now, Caesar didn’t give them that law because Caesar cared about the soldier’s well being. He didn’t give that law because, oh, man, my soldiers are going to get tired. I want to give him a break. No, he gave that law so that anyone at any time could understand.

Once a roman soldier’s there, they’re the ones that are in charge. They were outnumbered probably ten to one, locals versus the Romans. So what do they do? They use psychological warfare to make sure that people knew who was in charge. And then when you’re a kid and you see daddy, the guy with all the authority in your life, and some roman soldier comes and he makes him carry his stuff, guess who’s in charge?

It’s not dad. What do we do with this? Is it that Jesus is trying to tell us, that we’re just to be doormats? Well, actually, I don’t think so. I think that Jesus is saying when the scales are tipped, there’s another way that you can deal with it instead of rising up and fighting and getting vengeance.

Let’s be honest, that’s never going to go the way we think it will. That’s never going to really solve the problem. It’s actually going to just escalate things. It’s going to make things worse. It’s going to hurt more people.

It’s going to destroy more relationships. And so I can’t just add on the other side, because really, I think I’m balancing the scales, but I’m not. I’m just actually escalating the whole problem. And so Jesus says, no, you don’t have to cower away and you don’t have to retaliate. There’s a third option.

You can actually take the weight off the other side. You can come in, you can stand up, you can have dignity. You can take those weight off the other sides of the scales. They can become balanced. And you can come to say, someone, yeah, you might see, slap me and think that I’m your inferior, but I’m gonna stand up and I’m gonna offer you the other cheek to say, I am your equal.

I’m not gonna fight you. I’m not gonna take vengeance, but I’m also not gonna cower away and pretend like there isn’t an issue. I’m gonna stand up because I know that I trust my, my God, and my God is sovereign. And so I can take you off the hook, my hook, and I can put you on God’s hook, and I can allow him to do what he needs to do because he knows how to balance the scales. We don’t.

We’re not very good at it. We don’t see everything we don’t understand that the person that hurt us, they’ve been hurt. And that maybe the actual way to bring healing and the actual way to create peace and the actual way to make it so that there is more healing and more forgiveness and more care and more grace and more love is that I have to take the step. And when that person sees that I’m not cowering away, but I’m also doing what’s right. I’m going to do the extra work because I’m capable and I have dignity.

I’m going to stand up against the offense and say, you might be able to say that, but I’m not going anywhere because I love you and I care about you, and I know my God can balance the scales. And so I’m going to stay right where I am. That maybe when that happens, that person can remember. Something happens in their mind and it goes back to the time where they were hurt or someone stood up over them or someone backhanded them. They treated them like an inferior and they remembered what it felt.

And then that conviction comes over their heart and they wonder, what’s up with this person? Why are they so different? Everyone else cut off the relationship. Everyone else just gossiped about me, or everyone else tried to hurt me back. They’re not doing that and they’re not going anywhere.

Maybe there’s something different about them. Maybe I need what they have because I’m miserable and I like using my power because I’m insecure. I don’t know. Maybe Jesus is onto something here. You know, this ancient law of making things right is ancient, and that’s good.

The punishment should meet the crime. Jesus isn’t talking about a legal system here. He’s talking about how we, we being people who say we follow Jesus, we love Jesus. We’ve had an experience with Jesus. If you haven’t, man, I hope that you will, and I hope that you’ll do it here in this church, and I hope you’ll get connected, and I hope you’ll get around other people that are not perfect, but they’ve had an experience with Jesus, too, and something’s changed them and they’re living a different life.

And if you’re not living a different life, man, I hope that you can realize that and say, man, I’m supposed to be different, but I’m not. I wonder what’s going on that’s making me not different. I wonder how I can do that. Maybe I can start to think about thinking about thinking about getting better. Maybe I can realize I’m miserable and I need a change.

I’ve made my decisions and I haven’t liked the consequences. I have a trail of broken relationships, angry people, bitterness. My kids are mad. Guess what? There’s never a better day than today to start to change.

I mean, seriously. I mean, think about that. Thank you. But isn’t that true, though? Because use that beautiful brain that God gave you, you can look into the future and you can see, hey, you might not be able to control it, but certainly there’s a much greater chance that things are going to change when you start today making that different choice.

And Jesus presents us with a third option. We can have dignity. We can have dignity. We can walk in obedience. We can choose to start thinking about the path of forgiveness.

We can actually confront that person and say, when you did that, you made me feel small, and I didn’t like feeling small. We can actually go to that person and say, when this happened, it hurt. And I’m angry, but I’m going to choose to forgive you, not because I’m all that great, but because I serve Jesus. And Jesus somehow figured out how to forgive the people that crucified him. So if he can do that, then I think I can start to figure out how to forgive you.

And it may take a while, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be here. And guess what? If they won’t change, hey, set your boundaries. I’m all about that.

God is not calling us to be a doormat, but he is also not calling us to escalate the offense, because when we do that, we always end up hurting other people. It never stays with the two people. I have never seen a situation in which just the two people were the only ones affected by what’s happening. At a minimum, if there are kids involved, you know they’re getting hurt, you know they’re getting backhanded. I pray and hope not physically, but that emotion, they’re getting hurt.

Guys, the longer we live, right? We have seen it time and time again, and everyone’s trying to one up the other person. I’ve seen the ugliest kinds of things come out in people in situations that are high tension. And I get that and high hurt. And I’m not saying forgiveness is easy.

I mean, my God, I know it’s not. Nothing worthwhile is easy. But the longer that we stay in the offense is the longer that we suffer. It’s the longer that we have issues. It’s the longer that we are in pain.

It’s the longer that we cause the pain and the people around us because we refuse to get the help. And then we end up. Then we realize, hey, not only have I been the person that’s backhanded, but I’ve actually backhanded my share of people I’ve offended. My share. So maybe what was going on in me is going on in them.

I can think through this. I can start to think through the steps. I can get counsel. I can talk to people that I trust, that serve Jesus right here at this church, and I can start to make some steps forward, because I know that instead of retaliation, excuse me, retaliation and revenge, I can choose generosity and dignity. And so I would love it if there are just to take a couple moments here, if there we have people who had prayed during the service to come up.

And again, we’ll just take a moment. I’m going to pray, and we’re going to have people available to pray with those who need it. Maybe we can just play the guitar just for, like, you know, five minutes here, you know, but I’m going to pray. But I want to encourage you guys, if you’re dealing with an offense that you can’t get over, maybe the first step is getting some prayer. Maybe the first step is getting your phone out and writing, yeah, I’ve got something I’m dealing with right now, and I don’t know, but I just need to put it out because I’ve never actually written it out before.

I’ve never actually said anything, or the same thing keeps coming back, and it’s like I’m reliving this offense and I’m still dealing stuff because, guys, it doesn’t go away. Time kind of makes things better, but also it can kind of be like mold and just get worse over time. So maybe that’s the first step. So let me pray. We can pray.

And, Pastor Leanna, if you close us out, that would be when you feel appropriate. That’s great, father, thank you for this time. And I just ask that anyone who’s dealing with an offense right now, something in their heart, whatever it is, God, that you would help us take the next step. If it’s to come get prayer, that’s great. If it’s to make that text, whatever it is, write that letter, write it down, just get into counseling, whatever it is, we got to do, God, we don’t want to sit here stuck.

We want to remove the weight, and we just can struggle to know how to do that. But you give us in your word we can have dignity, we can confront this problem, but it’s going to take some intentionality and some choice. So, God, I ask that you would help us and that you would work and that you would do that and help in Jesus name.