No Quid Pro Quo

Well, good morning, Summit. It is great to be with you all.

If you have your Bibles, please meet me in Matthew Chapter 5, beginning in verse 38. That is where we are going to be hanging out today. Let me just once again make an affirmation and really celebrate for all of you who have served or are serving in our United States Armed Forces. We greatly value and appreciate you at all times, but especially on weekends like this, set apart in our calendar to specifically and intentionally do so. Do we clap around here for stuff like that?

Let's clap once again for that. On that same note of just acknowledging people who step into conflicts and engage enemies to try to bring about peace, I figured I would continue that thematically with what we're going to be diving into from a teaching perspective. Pick me up again, Matthew Chapter 5, verse 38. This is Jesus talking, and Jesus says these words. 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, verse 43, 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 son 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? We'll end by unpacking this. You, therefore, Jesus concludes, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Let's pray. Father, I do pray that the seed of your word falls on good ground, that it takes roots, that it bears much fruit. I pray for clarity of mind, concision of thought and speech. I pray, Lord God, that what was said of Jesus would be said of me at this moment while laboring over your word to these, your people, that I am full of grace and truth. I pray that you would make this word portable.

As my grandmama used to say, that you would put shoe leather on this word. You would show us how to walk in it, that your spirit would be bringing faces to mind as we hear this truth. But above all that, Jesus, you be the hero. You be lifted up. Jesus, you said that if you be lifted up, you would draw all people to yourself.

Do that, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Several years ago, there was a phrase that was in the news cycle that was a bit kind of overused. In fact, this phrase was in the news cycle more than a Kardashian. It's the phrase no quid pro quo. Specifically, that phrase was used by some to accuse our then president of certain behavior. Essentially, and it's an oversimplification, quid pro quo fundamentally means I do something nice for you, you do something nice for me. And for sure, I'm not trying to get on who was right and who was wrong.

No matter where you may fall out on that issue as relates to our then president, I think we can all admit we were sick of that phrase. No quid pro quo. And yet I want to just labor before you in the opening moments of our time together around God's word, that that quid pro quo ethic is endemic in all of our hearts. It was CS Lewis, the great 20th century philosopher and writer who said that all friendships begin on a note of U2. That friendship is birthed out of this sense of affinity and commonality.

And before we know it, as this relationship begins to form, we find ourselves going down the quid pro quo ethic. Again, I do something nice for you, you do something nice for me. I call you, you call me back. I pursue you, you pursue me back. I keep your confidences, you keep mine. When you're grieving, you're experiencing some tragedy, maybe a loved one has died and you're really hurting, I'm there for you.

I'm at your house, I'm bringing a meal, I'm watching the kids. And when that happens to me, when tragedy knocks on my door, you're there for me. This is kind of a quid pro quo.

I do something nice for you, you do something nice for me. And it sounds wonderful and it sounds nice, except the reality is all human relationships is a joint venture in walking the road of life with a sinner, with a deeply flawed person. You didn't marry the fourth member of the Trinity.

Your roommate isn't some saint. That friend, that business partner has a sin nature. And so inevitably what happens is that friendships, relationships will disappoint us because they all break down and fail the quid pro quo ethic. There will be times when I keep your confidences and you'll betray mine. There will be times when you'll gossip about me. There will be times in which, you know, I honored our word, that handshake agreement as we entered into that business deal and you didn't honor yours. Now I'm speaking to a marriage in which you've kept your vows and he did not. What then? What are we to do when, no, we're not the perfect person, but we've acted as a friend while you've acted as an enemy.

What then? Jesus Christ is going to tell us that one of the biggest stages you and I have to illumine the brilliance and radiance of his glory and kingdom is what we do when we're betrayed. If you really want to make him known and famous, how do you take being stabbed in the back and turn it into a microphone for his glory? To be sure, I just want to kind of just say this on the outset. Our text is, it's not about Jesus giving tweetable advice on how to manage enemies.

No, no, no. We have to see this within a broader context and when we zoom out and just take a 35,000 foot perspective of our teaching in its broader context, we see it as part of this thing known as the gospel. Fundamentally, the gospel is about God engaging we enemies.

You and I have negotiated and navigated life on our own. Instead of running to him, we've turned away from him. We've, we've worshiped our idols. Every day we disappoint him and God could have just, you know, hung onto his rights, gotten rid of us, kind of banished us to hell.

But God does the unthinkable. Here we were acting as his enemies in Ephesians 2, Paul says, and we were by nature children of wrath. If I was preaching this in a different context and a different time, I would say we were naughty by nature. Some of y'all got that.

Okay. We, we, we were the ones acting as his enemies. What does God do in an insane act? He sends his only son, Jesus Christ, who gives his only life that we would be transformed from enemies to friends, sons and daughters that we would be reconciled. This passage, it's more than just sage advice on how to handle those who hurt you. It's an opportunity for us to mimic what God through Christ has done for us.

It's an opportunity to live out the gospel. It's about reconciliation. I recently read John Meacham's profound book on, on John Lewis and in that book, John Lewis, in my estimation the most courageous person in the civil rights movement, John Lewis says, listen, we weren't just out sitting in Woolworth's in Greensboro and doing the sit-ins and marching in the streets.

We weren't just doing that to change laws. John Lewis said, we wanted to redeem the soul of America. About a year ago, I was preaching at a friend of mine's church in Portland and I was doing a symposium on race and I'm sitting there on this panel and there's this elderly African American man in his 80s had marched during the civil rights movement with Dr. King and he said, what people don't understand about Dr. King is he wasn't just interested in changing laws, that was necessary, but too low of a vision.

He wanted relationships with even the ones who had mistreated him. In fact, he would point to these words of Dr. King. Will you hear them with me?

I mean, these words have to be anchored in our text. Dr. King says, we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We will meet your physical force with soul force. You may bomb, you may bomb our homes and spit on our children and we will still love you. Don't you see the moral underpinnings of the movement was anchored in the words of Jesus. It's reconciliation. It's turning enemies into friends. So what's going on in your heart right now?

What images are popping up? That annoying roommate who drinks all the stuff that you bought? That spouse who just cheated on you? That business partner who just betrayed their word? That person who stole from you? That kid who curses at you and dishonors you?

What faces are you seeing? Oh, you may not have had someone betray you yet, but I got good news for you. As my grandma used to say, keep on living and betrayal will come knocking. What then?

What then? If you're new to the scriptures, if you're a new Christian, I would highly recommend starting out in your Bible just by reading Matthew chapters five, six and seven. It's the blinkest version of the Christian life. Here is Jesus, it's labeled the Sermon on the Mount, just laying out before us.

Here's what life in the kingdom looks like. Here is Jesus just kind of walking us through and he says some very shocking things. Now he says probably some of the most shocking things in our text. He says, for example, back again in verse 39, but I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, this is interesting.

Jesus' detail is telling. Just like today, back then, most people were right handed. So for a right handed person to slap you on the right cheek means that they're giving you a backhanded slap.

Now, it's one thing to slap me, but Lord have mercy, don't back slap me. Jesus says turn the other cheek. He says if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let them have your cloak as well. Now back then, the average person had multiple tunics, but only one cloak. In fact, the cloak was seen as being so essential that in courts of law, it was illegal to sue someone for their cloak. Jesus says if they take your tunic, even though you've got several of them, don't just stop there, give them your cloak as well.

Lay down your rights. And then he says if anyone would force you to go one mile, go them two miles. Here's Jesus talking the region of Palestine and Palestine is teeming with Roman soldiers. You couldn't walk a block without seeing Roman soldiers. And according to Roman law, at any given moment, they could take the tip of their spear and tap you on your shoulder.

You were obligated under law to carry their pack. Now I just got to stop right here and say this. There's no such thing as any individual coming to the scriptures completely objective. We all bring our biases to the text. Now I see this text. I see this line as a black man. And to me, it's the most offensive so far.

Here's why. Jesus comes to earth as an incarnated minority, a Jew. He's now talking to a primarily minority audience who is under Roman tyranny and Roman authority. And what does he say to these minorities under Roman rule? If a Roman soldier forces you to go with him one mile, don't rage against the machine, go with him two. If Jesus were a black man talking to black people like that, we would think Uncle Tom. Jesus says lay down your rights. He ends by saying give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who borrows from you. I know it's your money. I know you worked hard for it. But lay down your rights.

D.A. Carson, in my estimation, the world's foremost New Testament scholar and theologian, he says these words when you look at it with me. What Jesus is saying in these verses more than anything else is that his followers have no rights. They do not have the right to retaliate and reap their vengeance. They do not have the right to their possessions nor to their time and money.

Even their legal rights may sometimes be abandoned. Personal self-sacrifice displaces personal retaliation. For this is the way the Savior himself went, the way of the cross. And the way of the cross, not notions of right and wrong, Carson concludes, is the Christian's principle of conduct. What Carson is pointing to, what Jesus is laying down, what I am trying to explicate is this principle, we win our enemies by losing our rights. Now, I heard one amen.

One preach on that, thank you very much. The majority ain't feeling me on this. Here's why you're not feeling me on this is because the bulk of us in this room are Americans. We are in the land of individual rights. It is woven into the very fabric of our Constitution and nation. We have certain inalienable rights. The American Revolution was fought over our right for freedom. The Civil War, some historians would say, was all about states' rights. There's African-American rights, 13th Amendment. There's a woman's right to vote, 19th Amendment. There's LGBTQ plus rights. And I'm not moralizing any of these rights, but everywhere you turn, rights, rights, rights, rights, rights, rights, rights.

And in the middle of all that is a little island called the Kingdom of Heaven, which says, lose your rights. It's countercultural. That's why we bristle at this.

We don't like it. We bring this thing to church. I got preferences, I've got rights.

Listen, if you're coming to church and you've got this expectation that all your preferences and rights be fulfilled, you ain't worshiping God, you're worshiping self. If you have any questions, please email me at pastorjd at summitchurch.com. So I really want to unpack this for you. Let me give you two analogies because I want to get this into you and then one much needed disclaimer. So when our kids turn 12, I have three boys, 2018 and 16, but when they all turn 12, I made them read the autobiography of Malcolm X and then they had to write me a five page paper contrasting his ideology with the gospel. They love that assignment.

I did not want to drop them off at university and for them to be hit with this stuff. A part of their spiritual formation, I needed to introduce them and supplement the history they weren't getting in school, but I needed to do it in such a way that did honor to Jesus and made them think Christianly. So they read Malcolm X and we would talk and inevitably we would talk about Malcolm X being the poster child for holding onto rights. There's the iconic image of him, house just bombed in Queens with the AK-47 assault rifle and there he is saying by any means necessary. We would talk about how Malcolm would scoff at Martin Luther King Jr. and the leaders of the civil rights movement being sell out and soft for being willing to lay down their rights.

Malcolm was all about holding onto rights and contradiction to him was King and Lewis and the leaders of the civil rights movement, they did sit in and had hot coffee poured on them and they were beaten and German shepherds unleashed on them and thunderous streams of water from fire hydrants turned on their kids in Birmingham in the spring of 1963, but not once did they seek to retaliate and then I would ask my kids whose way proved most redemptive? Holding onto rights or losing them? Let me come to your house, put my feet up on your coffee table. She cheated on you. Now you have the right to divorce. That's earlier in Matthew 5. You have heard that it was said to those of old, Jesus says whoever divorces his wife must first give her a certificate of divorce, but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except for the grounds of sexual immorality commits adultery. He gives us a loophole. You have a loophole, you have the right if there's sexual immorality to divorce your wife to divorce your husband.

You're right. Matthew 19, he reiterates this. Now what's more of a profound witness?

Hey, you cheated on me, I'm out. Or hey man, I've been reading Ephesians 5 and I'm leaning into it in my small group and I'm starting to learn that Ephesians 5 verse 22 when Paul says husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church, he tethers marriage to the gospel so that marriage is an illustration of the gospel. I understand the gospel is not a contract, it's a covenant and daily I cheat on God in my own kind of spiritually adulterous ways, worshipping my own idols and not once does God kind of hold onto his rights and lets go of me, so I'm going to try something because I can't do it in my own strength. I'm going to try something, I'm going to lean into the gospel and the power of the Spirit and do something counterintuitive. I'm going to lay down my rights.

Which one is the more profound witness to the culture? And I know this is offensive, why? Because we can't do it. But I know a risen Savior who's in the world today, who's given us his Spirit, losing our rights is the way of Jesus. Disclaimer, don't you dare use this text to rubber stamp abuse. Please notice in each analogy Jesus gives, there's limits. You only got two cheeks. You only got one cloak. You're only told to go one extra mile and you don't have infinite amount of money to give to those who beg from you or seek to borrow from you.

In other words, Jesus' analogies leave no room for unrepentant behavior. I need you to get that. Some of you are in abusive relationships and I would say you need to at the very least get out of there.

You need to get help. One thing I love about our church, there's systems in place to give you help. We want to help. Romans 12 18, I love it. As best as you can be at peace with all people. There's sometimes you do your best and it just doesn't work out.

But what Jesus is saying is have you even tried. So who do you need to turn the other cheek with? Who do you know?

You know what? Here's my tunic. Here's my cloak. I'm going to go the extra mile.

Who do you need to do that with? The gospel is about turning enemies into friends, enemies into sons and daughters. We do that horizontally when we lose our rights. But secondly, we do that horizontally when we love our enemy. Look again with me at verse 43. Jesus says you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you love your enemies, love your enemies and pray for them who persecute you. So if I ended the message after the first point, I could give you the impression that this thing is very passive. Just lose. Just lay it down. Just lose.

That's all you have to do. But now Jesus turns a corner and says engaging our enemies isn't just passively laying down our rights. It is also actively engaging them in love.

It is going after them. One scholar says that the word love means unconquerable benevolence and invincible goodwill. Love is the supreme Christian New Testament ethic. But Paul in describing life in the spirit, he says now the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

The lead-off batter to the list is love. 1 Corinthians 13, power by the faith, hope and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love. John 13, sequestered there in a little upper room. He says by this will all men know that you're my disciples, not by the arguments you have on Facebook, but by the love that you have for one another. Love. An unloving Christian is an oxymoron. And love is most profoundly seen not when it's displayed in a quid pro quo way, but when it's given to people who have wronged you.

That's how you know how you and Jesus are doing. So I remember some years ago I had a man who just knifed me. Just knifed me in my back.

Just wronged me. At the time we were staying at a, we had an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, 78th and Amsterdam. I would go on these prayer walks and I'd cut across 78th Street and make my way, I think it's 79th Street that actually would dead end you into Central Park. And I'd go on these prayer walks from Upper West Side through Central Park to the Upper East Side and then back again and take me about an hour or so. And I just remember going on one of these prayer walks, man, and I'm just kind of stewing.

I'm in my feelings, as the young folks say, I'm in my feelings. I don't know who this is for, by the way, it's the only service I've said this to. Get counseling, get therapy, yes, yes, yes, yes, and amen.

But be very careful that you don't use therapy as a coping mechanism not to love your enemy. I just remember the Holy Spirit just saying, I want you to pray prayers of blessing over this person who's wronged you. I'm like, no, that ain't Jesus.

That ain't Jesus. And I just remember starting to pray number 624 to 26 over this individual who had wronged me. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. I just remember praying, and I just pray that day, Lord, bless his business.

Lord, bless his finances. Lord, bless his, I'm just kind of laying this thing out. And at first, it just feels weird. It feels inauthentic.

It feels like I'm being the biggest fake in the world. But you start doing that enough. And I woke up one day, and it's like months later, I'm genuinely in my soul rooting for this person. And what had opened up the levies of bitterness was me just praying blessings over my enemy. I'm telling you, you cannot compartmentalize bitterness.

You just can't do it. You can't go bitterness sit right here. No, it's going to seep into your mental health. It's going to seep into your physical health. It's going to seep into your marriage. It's just going to seep into every area of your life. Why?

Because of a decision, Brian, you've made not to pray blessings over this person. Because see, what happens to us is you wrong me. And some of us were like, oh, you get me, I'm getting you back.

And it's active. My wife and I have a friend, Southern California, she's telling the story. She's trying to merge onto, I believe it's the 405. And the person next to her wouldn't let her over. Almost ran her off the road.

So our friend gets ticked. She ain't going to let that thing go. She gets on the 405.

She speeds up next to this person. And she tells this person, you know, motions roll down. Why that's still the sign to roll down your window? Why isn't it that?

This person rolls their window down, and our friend takes a huge chunk of quarters going down the freeway and just chucks it at them. Now, most of us, we're too cool for that, right? We ain't going to be. But we'll be more passive.

You wrong me, praise God for caller ID. I start to emotionally moonwalk from you. I get busy all of a sudden.

I put up a wall. In both instances, we have dehumanized a person made in the image of God. We don't get to ignore God's kids. That's why I've always been intrigued with Bishop Desmond Tutu. He says in the aftermath of apartheid, he says, same thing Dr. King said, we want a relationship.

After decades of being wrong, we just don't want to change laws and different powers. No, no, no, we want brotherhood. We want this mutuality. We want reconciliation.

And so Tutu in his book No Future Without Forgiveness, he says, what drove us towards that is the South African concept of Ubuntu. And Ubuntu simply means that my humanity is inextricably tied with yours. I need you. You need me.

The one who violated me needs to violate it. The one who's cheated needs the one who's been cheated on. We need each other. And we do that through forgiveness. All right, Brian, let's go home on this.

Why are we talking about this? Jesus tells us, middle of verse 45. He says, for he makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. You know, we call this common grace.

Here's what happens. I don't know if this is the case with you, but with me, when you've wronged me, something in me goes, good guy, bad guy. Something in me goes, I'm on the varsity side of the kingdom. And if you're in the kingdom, you're on the JV side. And here's what Jesus, no, no, no, there's no good guy, bad guy. You all get common grace. Because none of you are deserving. It's self-righteousness, Brian, to look down your nose at someone who's wronged you as if you're better.

Now, if you want to keep score, we can keep score. It's arrogance. And this is my issue with James Cone. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, late 60s, early 70s, he starts writing these books. And as a black man, part of me goes, oh, man, I get it. So when he starts arguing, he literally says, God is only the God of the oppressed. But then I take those words and put it under the lens of the gospel.

And here is an unsettling truth. Cone, you're wrong, because the Bible says that God so loved not just the oppressed, he loves the world. Which means if I really understand the gospel, Jesus died for the lynched and the lynched mob. He died for Black Lives Matter and Proud Boys. He died for the cheated on and the cheater.

That's the gospel. Notice how he ends. He ends by saying, hey, I need you to be perfect as your Heavenly Father. What does this mean? The Greek word for perfect does not mean moral purity. It means end result, purpose, design, end context.

Here's what he's saying. Brian, when you lean into the gospel, when wronged by your enemy and show common grace to everyone and look like your father and lay down rights and love your enemies by praying for them, it is as if God peers over the balcony of heaven and slaps high five with the Holy Spirit and goes, that's exactly why I created them. You're living into your purpose.

You're living into your telos. So it's 1961. John Lewis, 21 years of age, gets off the bus. I always get these places confused. Fort Mill, South Carolina, Rock Hill, South Carolina.

You have to be right on these things because in the age of the internet and smartphones, you can fact check me right now. And wherever it was, 1961, John Lewis is 21 years of age. He's a freedom rider trying to integrate bus terminals throughout the South. Lewis writes, I step off the bus and immediately I'm met with this. One of the individuals hitting him is a man named Elwin Wilson. Wilson is nonstop on John Lewis. And John Lewis says, I remember before blacking out thinking, it's not good enough not to fight back.

It's not good enough not to hate. What's required of me now, this is what he's thinking as he's getting beaten. What's required of me is I need to actively love him in the middle of this. So that's what he does. The next several years, Elwin Wilson cannot get this image out of his mind. He's wronged this person. This person hasn't gone quid pro quo. He hasn't gone tit for tat. He's loved him, shown him grace. And Elwin Wilson ends up becoming a follower of Jesus Christ. 48 years later, 2009, Elwin Wilson, still haunted by that image, reaches out to John Lewis and says, man, you may not remember me in 1961. This is what I did to you. I'm a follower of Jesus now. Will you forgive me? John Lewis says, absolutely.

Put the image up on the screen and here's what they start doing. There's two of them. For the next several years, they start going on speaking tours together, talking about the power of the gospel for reconciliation. This is what Jesus does. Oh, friends, millennia before then, there was a greater John Lewis. His name was Jesus. Took on flesh and dwelt among us, lived the life we could never have lived, died the death we should have died. Along the way, they beat him with a cat of nine tails. They they spit on him.

They they they plucked his beard out. They they crushed on his head a crown of thorns. And on the cross, he had at his disposal a legion of angels.

But he refused to exercise his rights. You and I are saved because Christ laid down his rights. To be a follower of Jesus means that we lean into that.

By the power of the Spirit of God, we mimic that. So Father, show us, show us what this looks like. Show us what that looks like in that relationship and that friendship. Show us what that looks like.

That person who's gossiped and slandered. Show us what that looks like with that boss who is mistreating me. Show us what that looks like with that ex-employee who is going about town and just being vicious and cruel.

Just show us, just show us what that looks like. We want to look like you, Jesus. It's in his name we pray. Amen. And Amen.