Suffering Love ~ Nonresistance

You may be seated. Thank you. Good morning everyone.

Good morning. I have a little story here to start off with. I actually heard this story the other day listening to another sermon.

But there was a Christian man, he was renting from a non-Christian man. And the house he was renting had a shop and the shop was not in great condition. And so out of his own funds he fixed the shop up and ran his business.

As far as I can tell from the story, he ran his business out of that shop. And his business didn't do very well. And he kind of came to the place where he needed to close down his business and move on to a new location.

So he called his landlord and he told him that he was going to need to shut down his business and move on. But he had an idea. He said, you know, I gave you a deposit for this house at the beginning of rent.

I put a deposit down. So if you'd want to try it, we could put that deposit towards this coming month. And I'd try one last time to get my business going.

This was the Christian man. But if it doesn't work, then it's just not going to work out. And so the landlord agreed to that.

And end of the month came and he realized that this wasn't going to work out. His business still was going down and under. And he finally came to the conclusion he needed to close his business and started to load his belongings up to leave.

And called up his landlord and told him that I'm having to move on. We've got to shut down the business. It's just not working.

I gave it all I had. And the landlord said, just wait, let me come down there. Got to the guy's house there and he said, you know, you're going to need to pay me another $800.

And he said, well, why? And he said, because this was the non-Christian. He said, well, there's an agreement that we had, a written agreement, that you have to give me written notice before you move a month ahead of time. You need to give me written notice.

And if you don't give me written notice, you get charged $800. And that man thought about it for a while and, you know, think about where he was with his business. So he went to his brothers at his church and he took counsel.

What should I do? And, you know, got a lot of advice. But it came down to, they sent a man there to give him the $800. And as they gave him the $800, they told this man as he stood there with his wife, this non-Christian, they said, oh, and here's another $200.

Here's another $200 for any maybe damages we've done or something we've missed. I missed, and I told you, I was going to ask you what would you do and make you think about it for a little bit. What would you do in that situation? You know, your landlord's not being reasonable.

He tells you you have to give him $800. You've put the money into the shop out of your own expenses. You've clearly had a phone agreement that, you know, you were going to put this last month deposit towards the rent and make it work.

And he comes back with this. What would you do? What would you do? I remember once I sold a rig actually right after we moved out of Belize. And I got a call from the man who I sold my Suburban to.

And he told me it was over WhatsApp. He said, your Suburban doesn't go into reverse anymore. We never had any problems with that ever.

And he said, no, your Suburban doesn't go into reverse anymore. And he said, he went on to say, you Christians and something about it because I think he knew we were Christians. You're all a bunch of scams and, you know, just belittled me.

And I had to pray about what to do. What do you do? I mean, I clearly sold it knowing it's a used car. I didn't know it was going to happen.

He told me this thing is going to take $1,000 to fix the transmission. What would you do? Let's turn to Matthew. You might know where I'm going.

The other night, Wednesday night, Caleb came to me and said, after Bible school, he said, Jeremy, you've got to preach a sermon on nonresistance. And it's funny because a while back I had been thinking about preaching a sermon on nonresistance. I'm always got these things.

I think Glenn has this going to all these things floating around. Maybe one of these days I'll preach on this. And you're always trying to, which one should it be this Sunday, right? And my parents were going to be coming into town.

My dad was going to be coming in Saturday night. And so he doesn't agree with me on my interpretation on nonresistance. And I didn't feel like I almost sent him a text and said, do you want me to preach on this subject or not? But I didn't feel that was from the Lord.

And so I was going to preach on a different subject. But I told the Lord, I said, if you want me to preach on the subject, something will happen. They won't make it on time.

You know, something will happen. And secretly, inwardly, I really wanted to preach on this nonresistance. Well, anyway, for whatever reason, they made it all the way to Spokane.

And then I got a call. Hey, daddy got sick over the night. And, you know, now he's got he's got a fever and we're heading back to Montana.

And they stopped by the V.A. on the way back through. And he has COVID. So, you know, that's a sad thing for me because I was looking forward to being with them for the week and spending some time.

But I guess the good thing is I get to preach on nonresistance. I'll look on the bright side. And I did talk to Brother Bob about, yeah, I don't know.

I don't want to rush through this. So if it gets going and I can't get through it all, we might just push it off to next week. And Brother Bob graciously accepted to go a week later.

So we'll see. It's hard. You know, you don't want to rush through this stuff.

Neither do I want to over, you know, capacitate our minds. So anyway, Matthew 5, I want to read these verses. Matthew 5, 38.

You have heard that it has been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that you resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him too. Give to him that asks of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.

You have heard that it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. For he maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what do you more than others? Do not even the publicans so.

Be therefore perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect. Have you ever heard the term familiarity breeds contempt? Familiarity breeds contempt. You haven't heard that? Okay, well what it means is, it's a term people say, and what it means is extensive knowledge of or a close relationship to someone or something leads to a loss of respect for them.

You ever notice that sometimes maybe the closest people in your life may not have so much respect for you as somebody else who doesn't know you as well. Or what I'm thinking about this morning is, many of us in this room were raised up with this idea of hearing, love your enemies, don't resist evil. You know, probably since the day you were born, probably some sermon was playing on the way home or something.

And you heard this. As you grew up, you heard this. And what I'm worried about is sometimes familiarity breeds contempt.

We just get used to it. We get used to the terminology. We get used to the doctrine.

And we don't, we're not awed by it anymore like it was. Look at, turn with me just a couple pages over at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Three chapters, Jesus' longest sermon here.

Probably the greatest sermon ever preached. If we could all learn to preach a sermon like him, he knows how to keep things short and concise but powerful. And it says here at the very end, verse 28, And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that people were astonished at his doctrine, at his teaching.

They were amazed at his teaching. I still remember when I was amazed at this teaching. You know, I was raised in a church setting that taught that this was not for us.

And so by default, if something is not for us, we don't read it. We don't talk about it. It's just something I cannot remember hardly ever hearing the term, love your enemies, don't resist evil.

All my growing up years, I just don't remember hearing about this. It wasn't until I was 30 years old that I heard and really had to wrestle with these things. And so in some ways, I wasn't familiar with it.

I was just as astonished at these words when I was 30 when I heard them because I'd never really heard them. So in some ways, I thank God for that because I didn't get used to it and it hit me like a ton of rocks that what is Jesus really meaning, what he's saying? And I had to wrestle through it for a year. What is Jesus meaning by these things? And it was a big wrestling through and it's a good thing for us to have to wrestle through things.

One of the fears I have is that we can get so used to this and that we can tend to check the box. We know about non-resistant, we're non-resistant and move on. And so that's what I want to try to do this morning is try to look at this and glean from it.

What was Jesus saying? Now here we are in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount toward the end of Chapter 5. Of course, the Sermon on the Mount started off with all of the Beatitudes. I didn't know what that meant. Does anybody know what Beatitude means? I always thought, I mean, I thought maybe it had something to do with attitude, good attitudes or something.

But it actually comes from a Latin word which means blessed and which makes sense because it's blessed are the blessed are the blessed are the blessed are the. So the Beatitudes are a term for the blessings on people that do have the right attitudes. And then from there, he goes into a section, he diverts a little bit and goes into our calling and the righteous calling that he's calling his people to in the Kingdom of God.

He says, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And then from there in verse 24, he starts into a new law. And now this was one thing I had to struggle with.

Is he, is he redefining something? Is he saying something different? But verse 24, he says, you have heard that it was said of them by old time that thou shall not kill, but I say unto you, and he goes on. Now, think about that for a little bit. As he goes through here, he's saying, but I say unto you.

What if you, if I was for the first time, if I come into this congregation, and I said something like, you've all heard that it's been said that you should love the Lord with all your heart, but I'm telling you that you don't need to do that. What, what would you think? Like, right, get him out of the pulpit now, right? And honestly, I wonder sometimes, if we're really honest, we're all raised Jewish, and we hear Jesus come on the scene, how many of us would say, oh, yeah, Jesus, you're the one, I'm following you 100%, versus how many of us would be like, get him off the pulpit. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if I'd be the same thing.

But he says here by saying, but I say unto you, he's not only establishing a new law, you've heard it was said, but I say, but he's establishing himself as an authority. And he goes on through these next several areas, and I don't want to get into each one, but the first one in verse 21 is he talks about anger. And he says, you've heard all this stuff about anger, and you shouldn't do these things, you shouldn't kill people.

But I'm telling you this, if you have anger in your heart, even to the point that if you say you fool, you moron, that's the Greek word, moros, which we get our word moron. How many of you said moron? No, don't raise your hand. But you're in danger of hellfire, he says, when we say moron.

This is how deep of a work he wants in this new law for the kingdom of God. He goes on to say, you've heard that said that if you commit adultery, this is wrong, but if you look at a woman just in lust, if you desire her in your heart, in lust, you commit adultery in your heart. And by the way, he says that's deserving of hellfire.

And so is the saying fool, saying moros, moron, is deserving of hell. Verse 31, he then goes into divorce, and he talks about how you've heard that Moses made this law, you could divorce your wives, you could put away for anything, but I'm telling you, don't do that. If you do that, he says, you cause her to commit adultery when you put her away, saving for the cause of fornication.

Then he goes on and says, oh, and you've heard all these ideas about making promises, solemn vows, oaths, but I'm telling you, don't do that at all. Don't swear at all. And then he talks in verse 38 about revenge, something that we probably deal with more than we realize.

Now, so many of us, there's a deception that we could have in this idea. I have an illustration here. So we all agree that we can't use violence, right? We can't go to war, we can't use self-defense.

But what I'm afraid of is, I've got this little, how many people like coffee here? A lot of people. What I'm afraid of is, this is our doctrine of nonresistance. We've got it all figured out.

And this gets us into the coffee drinking club, right? How many of you would like to drink this much coffee every day? No hands. By the way, if somebody's listening, it's just a little tiny cup. Yeah, good attitude.

Better than nothing. But sometimes I feel like this is about what our doctrine of nonresistance is. You know, we've got the doctrine.

We've got it figured out. It works, it's doable, you know? But really, what Jesus wants for us to get, and this is what I'm hoping we'll get this morning, is this is really the doctrine of nonresistance. This is a huge cup with a plant coming out of it.

This is really what Jesus wants us to get from nonresistance. And I don't think we're grasping it sometimes. Sometimes I think we settle that, yeah, we're nonresistant, but we're missing what it really is, the lifestyle of nonresistance.

What the purpose of nonresistance is for. So that's my goal this morning. I know Caleb said, you know, I'd love to hear some practical nonresistance.

You know, is pepper spray all right? You know, what do you do? Is it all right for a girl to have pepper spray in her purse? Some people are shaking their heads. Some people are whispering. They're trying to decide right now.

I knew people that were Anabaptists, not just Anabaptists, strict, very strict Anabaptists, and they had pepper spray in their purse. Is that Jesus' purpose? And, you know, I'm not the Holy Spirit here this morning, but I'm hoping that looking at some of these principles, we can go to the Holy Spirit and ask and not check off the box, you know. So I'm going to set this down here.

I might bring it back up. So in verse 38 here, he talks about a concept. You've heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Now, this here is talking about the law of retribution, the law of vengeance, the idea that you hurt me, I get to hurt you back, even to the point of in the government. There's three passages in the Old Testament that talk about this. One is in Exodus, one is in Leviticus, and one is in Deuteronomy.

I want everybody to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 19. We're just going to look at that one briefly because they all kind of repeat the same mentality. So this is talking about neighbors having a dispute with each other and false witnesses.

And then it says here in verse 19, well, we'll go 18. Then the judges shall make diligent inquisition. And behold, if the witness be a false witness and hath testified falsely against his brother, then shall you do unto him as he hath thought to have done unto his brother.

So shall thou put the evil away from among you. And those who remain, which remain, shall fear, hear and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you. And I shall not pity, you shall have no mercy, but life shall go for life.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. And on all of these passages in the Old Testament, it's God speaking. He's saying, he's telling them to put the evil away from you.

You need to have some law and some justice. Who likes law and justice? I mean, who is going to be honest with themselves? When you see that police officer come by, you know, he's in his big, you know, suit. And, you know, there's just something that rises up in your heart.

Law and justice. And when you see the rioter down there on the street painting stuff, you just, where's the police officer, right? There's something in our hearts that appreciate law and justice. And God, even in his nation here, a physical nation on earth, the kingdom of Israel, told them to keep the evil away from you.

You need to have this law. And that is eye for eye, tooth for tooth, not just those things too. Burn for burn, it says in one of the other books.

Burn for burn, foot for foot, life for life. The law of retribution. And in this kingdom, in the kingdom of Israel, that's how God did it.

He wanted his people to keep the evil away from them. And even to the point that you would be fearful to be a false witness. Because if you did falsely testify, whatever punishment was going to happen is going to fall on you now.

Let's go back to Matthew chapter 5. So keep this in mind. The Jews are hearing this. They're thinking of a God who gave them this law to keep the evil out of their land.

And he says, you have heard that it said, eye for eye and tooth for tooth. A law that they looked at as holy and righteous and good. Think about the times when God had told them, go into this country.

Destroy everyone, man, woman, and child. Don't leave any alive. And you remember the time that Saul didn't? Remember how Samuel came up and hacked him into pieces? That king? Remember how God required them to fully bring out his commands and obedience? And they were not non-resistant.

God told them to kill him. Women, children. And if he didn't do it, hack him up.

Now you're a Jew sitting there and you hear this man saying, oh, you've heard about this law that your God gave you? He said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. But I'm telling you something different. I'm telling you.

What does he say? Don't resist evil. Now, I know it's hard for us because we've heard this so many times, right? The doctrine of non-resistance. That we immediately just kind of push it off.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But have we stopped to think about what he is calling us to do? Imagine coming home and finding your wife murdered on the ground. Benjamin, Timothy.

You both just got remarried. I mean, not remarried. Newly married.

Sometimes I say that craziest stuff. Can you imagine that? I mean, just think of the feelings that would go through you. You walk in the door.

There she is laying dead on the ground. What would be going through your mind? Think about that. I mean, what would be going through your mind? Okay, now imagine this.

I come home and I find Stephanie's got a black eye. And she tells me some guy was driving by and he pulled in the yard and he came in and started talking to her and just slugged her. What would you be going through your mind? One of your children.

What would you think immediately? What would you struggle with? Anybody? Just open it up. Wanting to go on a manhunt. Somebody else? Anger.

Who did it, right? Law and justice. Where's the police officer, right? Get that guy at the bare minimum. If I can't do it, get him to do it.

Turn to Mark chapter 8. Yeah, we're not going to get this done in one setting. I don't want to rush through this because it's too important. I mean, this is like what we're defined as.

So we need to understand this, right? This is one of our ways that we believe in following Jesus that's so important. Mark chapter 8 and verse 34 through 35. This is actually what I was going to preach on.

And maybe someday I'll preach on it again. Taking up your cross. What does it really mean? Verse 34.

And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples, he said to them, Whoever will come after me. Any one of you are open to this. Whoever will come after me.

Let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever will save his life shall lose it. But whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel shall save it.

A cross is an instrument of death. Think about what a cross did. When Jesus was carrying his cross, what... First of all, it was taking away all his rights, right? He had no rights.

He was now under the government who is putting him on this, putting this cross on him. And he couldn't just go get a latte. You know, he couldn't do what he wanted to do.

Go take a nap. He had to carry the cross against his will. It was opposite to him.

It opposed his will. Two, the cross was an instrument of shamefulness. Would you like to be walking down with all the crowds watching you carrying this thing half naked, beaten, carrying this instrument of death on your back? Three, it was an instrument of suffering.

He didn't get the comfort that he wanted. And four, it was an instrument of death. That's what the cross signifies.

There's two people in you. There's your new self and your old self. Your old self doesn't want those four things.

It doesn't want to be told what to do. It doesn't want to be shamed. It wants honor.

It doesn't want suffering. It wants comfort. And it surely doesn't want to die.

It wants life. And so putting that self to death has to happen. Let's go back to Matthew.

So this idea of loving or not resisting evil is not our natural way. But that self in us, there's a self in us that says, I don't want suffering. I don't want shame.

I don't want my rights to be taken away. It has to be put to death. And this is what Jesus calls his followers.

We read it in this morning's thing. Let's be honest. Let's just take the name C off if we don't want to follow.

Honestly. I mean, really. Let's be serious about this.

If we don't want to truly follow Jesus and his teaching, then let's just take the C off. Jesus is saying here that we should not resist evil. Now, before we move on, I want to just quickly explain resist.

Do you know the verse that talks about putting all the armor of God on? Talks about putting the helmet and the belt and all that. And it says, and having all to stand, stand. You know that word stand? And having all to withstand, stand.

That is the same root word as this word here. So when it says resist, when Paul tells us in Ephesians to put all this armor on, to stand against the devil, that's the idea of resisting. All of this armor to fight.

And Jesus is saying, don't do this. Don't stand against evil men. Not against the devil.

Obviously, the other apostles told us to resist the devil. Same Greek word. So we don't need to worry about that.

But we're not supposed to stand in that forceful posture against an evil person. That is the calling of Jesus, as what Christianity says. He says, resist not evil.

Now, I want to point out one last thing before we look at the next couple of verses. He says here, do not resist an evil person. I'm just going to add that in.

Most translations do, because that's what's implied. But then he says, but whoever shall smite thee. Now, I remember when I first started seeing this, I was wrestling with this.

And there is a temptation to dumb down the teachings of Jesus. A strong temptation out there. And I struggled.

Should I even bring this up? Because I don't want to waste time. But I would hate to fill all you with this great thing, and then one day somebody tells you this, and you say, oh. Well, then it's all been built on house of cards.

And that is, somebody will come and say, to smite you on the right cheek. Okay, now let's think about this. Where's my right cheek? To hit Caleb's right cheek.

Where's your right cheek? It's over here, right? I can't punch Caleb on the right cheek, right? I have to sit him like this. Hit him. So they say that the smiting of the right cheek means it's an insult.

It's not a violent move. It's an insult. And that could be a possible interpretation.

But remember, what is Jesus, what is the law that Jesus is coming against? Eye for eye, that's a whole lot more than your right cheek. Tooth for tooth, burn for burn, life for life. If we take these three scenarios he gave and boil it down to just those three little circumstances, we could deceive ourselves into thinking we're resisting evil and he meant it so much more.

Kind of like this. If I told my children, don't ever take candy from a stranger. Have you ever heard that? Parents are supposed to tell their children, don't ever take candy from a stranger.

Well, some guy pulls in the yard one day and he opens the door and has a big cake frosting all over it. Hey, I got some cake. And the kid thinks, well, it's not candy, so I can get in.

Eat the cake, right? Or here's $100. See, it's the principle. The principle is, don't take anything from a stranger.

They like to use candy, but don't take anything from a stranger. The principle here isn't, okay, only when they insult you can you don't resist. The principle is, don't resist evil.

This is a calling for my followers. Don't use violence. The smallest little circumstance explains all the circumstances.

In other words, I could tell you, hey, in the smallest little thing like he's already doing in all the other ones, he said, hey, even saying the word moron puts you in danger of hellfire. Even a small insult, a slap on the face puts you in danger of resisting evil. And everything else, also using guns, using swords, using any kind of violence is possible.

And that's what I had to struggle through. What is he talking about? Is Jesus saying just this? Now, he says, turn to him the other cheek also. Put yourself in that situation.

Some guy comes up and just slugs you in the face. What is your immediate reaction? If some guy in the street walked up and spit in you right in the face, what would you want to do? Get cleaned up. Spit back.

Or punch or something worse. Like, what in the world? I heard a funny, I was listening to a sermon by Zac Poon, and he said he was at a play. And this guy was playing out like he was Jesus.

And so he was up on the cross, all dying and everything. And some people came by, and they were acting like they were spitting. And one guy really spit on him.

And he goes, if I get off this cross, I'm going to beat you. You know, that's about what it is for us sometimes to take up the cross. Okay, why? Why would Jesus tell us to turn the other cheek? Let's just think about that for a little bit.

Why would he say, turn the other cheek? Why do you think? Why would he say, do not resist evil, but if somebody hits you on one cheek, turn the other? Okay, why? But why is it the most powerful thing you can do? They don't expect it. Okay, right. They're used to this escalation.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right. How could Jesus hang on a cross after they beat him, they spit on him, they tore out his beard, and still say, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do? How could he do that? Because of love.

You know, I was thinking about it this morning. If Roger, everybody loves Dennis. Dennis was raised up in this church.

Sorry to pick on you, but you came to my mind this morning. And if Dennis just went off the deep end and started going around beating people up and robbing from people, we as a church, even if he robbed from us, we would still look at him differently because he's Roger's son. You know what I mean? We would have this, like, prayer for Dennis.

We would have this, when we saw Dennis, we would talk to him and try to reason with him. And even if he took things from us, we would probably have a whole lot more compassion and even mercy on him because he's Roger's son. You ever, as a parent, try to deal with two children that are fighting back and forth? They're fighting, and this happens at my home.

And you're, like, trying to convince both of them that you love both of them, and they just don't seem to think that that's a possibility, you know? And they're, like, tearing into each other. And you're just, like, can you please let me deal with this one? Just please wait. I'm going to deal with it, but this one's just tearing into that one, and it's going back and forth.

If you haven't experienced that, you younger ones, you will soon. Once you get married, just remark my words. But it happens.

And I wonder sometimes, that's kind of like God and us. We're all his children, and he wants us to leave it to him to deal with this person in the right time. And yet, we're not willing to do that.

You know, we want it now. We want vengeance now. We want retribution now.

And we're only thinking in the very short amount of time. But Jesus sat there on the cross and somehow mustered up enough strength to say, Father, forgive them. And I don't think it was fake.

I think it was from his heart. You know that verse that says that in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Think about that.

That's God's love. While we were still defiant at him, he still died for us and loved us. So this goes to some root, some far deeper level root of nonresistance.

It goes on. If any man will sue you and take away your coat. I brought my coat this morning.

Now, this is a special coat. Actually, he's suing him for my shirt. But my wife gave me this coat for, I think, our anniversary last year.

It's down, and it's very nice. It's super light, and it's warm. I was trying to imagine, you know, what would it be like? I mean, we live in such a society that if somebody steals this from me, I can just go get another one, right? We don't really care.

We probably have five coats at home or maybe even ten, which is kind of, we don't understand what they went through when they gave up a coat. But he said this, if anyone comes and takes away this, wants to take this from you, not only unbutton it and hand it to him, but turn around and hand this to him. What is this? What is he trying to tell us to do? Not only do we turn our cheek and say, Here, I could take a little more suffering.

We say, Oh, by the way, you wanted my shirt, but let me give you my coat also. Do you think that's supposed to be done in some sarcastic, like, Lord bless you? Or do you think this is some route? Do you think it's possible, like Darren said, it's unlocking some kind of power that Jesus is in our life, and this may be what we've accepted for the doctrine of nonresistance? Let's keep going. If whoever would compel you, force you to go one mile, go with him too.

You're out on the road. Now imagine you are out here. Russia has invaded.

They've taken over our country. Is that even possible? Well, it happened. And you meet a soldier on the road, and he walks up, you dirty American scum, and he hands you his bags and all of his, you know, his military ammo and all of the stuff, and he says, Carry it a mile.

And you say, Okay. You carry the whole mile. You get to the end.

You say, Can I carry it another mile for you? That's the kind of stuff that Jesus is calling us to do. That's, you know, there was a law I heard in Israel that if you were to, any Jew came into contact with a Roman, when he was allowed to tell that Jew, Walk a mile and carry my stuff. It was just permissible by law.

And Jesus tells them, When they ask you to go a mile, go two. These are what my followers do. What is the principle behind all of this? What do you think? Did he do these things? Could we look at his life and see him acting in these ways? Or is he asking us to do something different? I would like to start off with principle number one being suffering love.

I have another principle, and we have ten minutes, so I'll have to do it later. But the first principle is suffering love. And it is because his followers have an eternal perspective.

For Jesus to die on the cross and to say, Father, forgive them, he had to have a perspective that said, And he said this, They know not what they do. Can you imagine he's hanging there in all the shame, all the suffering, all the violence that's been done to him, and he says, This creation of mine doesn't realize who I am. They don't realize who they're actually killing.

And so God forgive them since they don't understand that. What kind of heart is that? And he wants us to have the same heart. Suffering love.

And I've been somewhat guilty of this. What I was convicted about is how often do we just, when something evil comes against us, we just take it. We just take it and bear it.

But did you notice all three situations? It wasn't just take it and bear it. It was something over and above. It was the first one.

What was the first one? One of you. What was the first one that he said to give more of? Jesus said, If anyone smites you on your cheek, just say it. Turn the other cheek.

Okay, so you're giving more of yourself for suffering. What's the second thing? Somebody else. I can't hear you.

Oh, do more. So the second one was to give them your cloak, right? Your belongings. And then the last one was going two miles.

Your rights. In all three situations, Jesus not only called you to take it, but he called you to do more. He told you to suffer in the first one more.

He told you to give up more your things and your possessions. And he told you to give up the strength of your life. Give up your strength.

To go another mile takes away your strength. Takes from your life. Takes from who you are.

We don't like this teaching. We like our comforts. We like our stuff.

And we like our life. Right? Turn to Hebrews, please. Chapter 10.

Verse 32. But call to remember or remember the former days. Remember the days when you first became a Christian, in which after you were illuminated, you endured a great fight of affliction.

You were made a gazing stock both by reproaching and afflictions, and you became companions of them that were so used. You had compassions of me and my bonds. And listen to this.

You took joyfully the spoiling of your goods. Another translation reads it like this. Remember the days that you endured hard sufferings and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property.

Can you imagine joyfully accepting the plundering of your property? What's your most beloved thing? I mean, maybe a gun. Maybe, I don't know. Somebody give me something that's beloved that you would not be too happy about if somebody just came and took it from you.

A car? What's that? Yeah. I mean, that's a real thing for her. Think about it.

If somebody came and took that cat, I'm sure she would struggle. She'd want her dad to go have vengeance. But here it says, we're to joyfully accept the plundering of our goods.

And then what does it say? Since you know that you yourselves have a better possession and an abiding one. Since you know where your relationship is with God, that person doesn't. I'm just going to write it here.

Principle number one. Suffering, love that blesses and does good and that prays. And there's something more to non-resistance.

There's something more to loving our enemies. And I think it is like this. I think we sometimes, there's that verse.

I think it's in Titus. It says, having a form of godliness, but denying the power. Sometimes I think we have the form.

We say we believe in non-resistance, but the question is, in our everyday life, as we walk and people take advantage of us, people mock us, people take our things, people abuse us, they spitefully use us. That means they're pretty purposeful about it. Jesus wants us to somehow find this.

Somehow find something higher and way above. And I believe this is going back to what the Garden of Eden was all about at the beginning. The Garden of Eden, there wasn't violence.

There wasn't divorce. There wasn't lust. You didn't have to take oaths.

That's why Moses told them, he said, you know, from the beginning of time it wasn't so, but Moses, because of the hardness of your heart, he allowed you to have divorce. But this is not what I want to do in my kingdom. Jesus wants to return to a kingdom where the lion lays with the lamb.

And we have to do our part, because we still live in a fallen world. But our part, that he calls us to, is to give more. When people take advantage of us, do something more.

Love them more. Allow them to take advantage of us more. So back to that story, when he took the $800 over there and gave it to the landlord, and then he said, here's another $200.

Is that the Spirit of Christ? I know sometimes in our hearts we rise up, that's not just, it's not right. But is it what Christ calls us to? Giving the other cheek, giving him the coat, and even going the extra mile. Think about that.

Pray about it. Ask the Lord to reveal in your heart where maybe we have turned it into a doctrine and not a life. Thank you.