Please turn now in the Bible to the book of Romans, at chapter 12. Romans, chapter 12. I'm going to read from verse 9 to verse 21. Romans, chapter 12, reading from 9 to 21. Please give your attention to the Word of God. Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another. with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. bless, and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. to not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. In this Christian life, we are not only freed from the guilt of sin, we're freed from the power of sin. And therefore, we are not to present ourselves to sin, the old false master, the enemy, we're to present ourselves to God for service. I just gave you chapters 1 to 11 and chapter 12 verse 1. But how is it that we'll know what it is to present ourselves to God? What does He want? We will need to have a mind that's transformed by His Word. A mind that is renewed. And this is chapter 12 verse 2. And what is it that God wants? How would you summarize it? You could summarize it this way. Let love be genuine. That's chapter 12, verse 9. Now where do you live? You live in the world. A share of your life is lived with the church. And so he's described life within the church from verse 3 to verse 13. We are to live humbly together. We are to live using our gifts for the help of one another. We are not to be puffed up if we have this gift and another one that. But we also live a portion of our life in the world not with other believers, but with unbelievers. And what can we expect from those who do not share in the faith of Jesus Christ? Well, you can expect the full range of responses. God can make your enemies be at peace with you. You may be loved and respected by some. But you know, Jesus lived without sin and did not enjoy peace with the world. It was written of him, the reproaches of those who reproach God fall on Jesus. And so it is with us. The reproaches of those who reproach Jesus will fall on us if we are his people. And so among the range of responses that we can expect from unbelievers is hatred and persecution. When you live with hostility, which is difficult, then you need to keep it clear in your mind What is the real war? And what is a true victory? In the midst of hostility, keep it clear. What is the real war? And what is the true victory? He says, he will bless those who persecute you. Now, if you're wondering why this verse follows the previous one, in Greek, you see the word pursue twice. Pursue, of course, you can tell it has a certain range of sense to it. It's probably a wider range in the Greek. We are to pursue hospitality. That's the word seek there. Pursue hospitality. Don't just be like, if somebody bangs down your door, then OK, you can stay here. You ought to actually be going out and showing hospitality. Pursue it. And as for those who pursue you, bless them. This is the other sense of pursue, not a positive sense, but a negative sense. Pursue, that is the word for persecute. Pursuing you to hunt you down. When you are pursued in this negative sense, it says, respond not with a curse, not with a harsh word, but a soft one. Not just with a soft one, but with a soft one whose contents are positive. How positive? Well, we're not God. Our words don't achieve a whole lot of concrete results. God can speak things into existence. We can't. So when we say, bless you, what we're really saying is, may God bless you. Because when God blesses you, you're blessed. And so when it says here, bless those who persecute you. It speaks of a complete reversal of the normal human reaction. That instead of responding to hostility with hostility, we're not just to restrain ourselves from hostility. We're to say something positive. Not just something positive, but the most positive thing you can. To bless those who persecute you. To really want good for the other person. Because what better good would there be than for God to bless you? Now, this is not the normal human reaction. So even in the Old Testament, we only get this a couple of times, although we do get it. It says right in the Torah, a little bit after the Ten Commandments, you come to this. If you see your enemy's donkey wandering away, you shall laugh. No. You shall kick it to make it run faster. No. You shall sell it. No. You shall surely take it back to him. If you see your enemy's donkey lying prostrate under its load, you shall say he's a jerk who overloads his donkey. No! You shall surely help it up again. From the second one you might think it's just about animal protection measures, but the first one makes it clear it's not so much about animal protection. is about being a blessing to your enemy. And of course, then that thing that we see here at the end of the chapter in the quotes in verse 20, that's from Proverbs. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. Now where else do we get this in the Old Testament? You can see a little of it in Joseph. Joseph was sold as a slave. So Joseph had a master. He served the master well enough. The master made him the head slave. He was still a slave. The mistress wanted to go to bed with him. In his answer, as he refused her, he not only said, that's wrong. He said, how could I betray my master this way? Now, that's striking. It's the master of a slave. He might have said, Here's a way to get back at the slave master. But he did not. He said, how could I do this to him? And David, being himself anointed by the prophet to be the next king of Israel, was being persecuted by the current king of Israel, to whom he'd done nothing wrong, only done well. And he's hiding in a cave with his men when that king of Israel comes into the cave to go to the bathroom. And his men say to him, David, let us read the signs of God's providence. Why did the king of Israel, who is unjustly persecuting you and chasing us around with you, with his army, why did he come into this cave to go to the bathroom? Surely he came into this cave so that we would kill him and put an end to this. I think it's before Stahl is then taking action that David does go towards the king, with his sword out, to cut off a corner of his rope. And to then make the point, when the king is thrown away, to say, see, I'm not here to kill you, because I just could have. In this way, he does not return evil for evil. It's blessed those who persecute you. It's contrary to the sinful nature. It requires the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus taught it very firmly. It's the whole back half of chapter 5 in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, if you bless those who bless you, congratulations, you're as good as a heathen. He says, you are called higher than that. God makes it rain on the unjust and on the just, and you also. I can bless those, not just who bless you, like a heathen, but also those who don't. Jesus taught it very firmly, and then he practiced it. As the nails were driven through his ankles, he said, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. And as Stephen was battered to death with stones, he also said, do not hold this sin against them. Here we have a very distinctive and striking and difficult Christian teaching. All the world is caught in cycles of revenge, and we all know why. You did this to me, so I will do this to you. At which point, you will do this to me, and I will do this to you. At which point, my son will get you back, and it goes on forever. All the world is caught in cycles of revenge, and we are to bless. Now, how do we find the strength for this? How do we not hate when hated? Is the secret to hold ourselves aloof from the world and not feel its injuries? Are we to become rocks and unmoved by these things of the world? That would seem to be the only way this is possible, right? Just try to wall yourself off emotionally and feel nothing, and then, well, what does he go on to say? After saying, bless and do not curse them, he says, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Also much for that approach. We're not to find our strength in shutting down emotional sympathy. On the contrary, we're to rejoice with the rejoicers and weep with the weepers. And while he may be thinking back again a little bit towards fellow believers, because the next verse speaks of one another, it's not limited to that. We're to rejoice with friends and neighbors who have something to rejoice about. Rejoice with the one who gets the promotion, the one who scores the winning goal, even if it's the obnoxious teammate. You can still rejoice with that one. And now it's more than the morning. And not just the one within the church, but the one outside. That we should find easier. If we know what it is like to weep, how much more are those who weep without a true basis for hope? We should not find it difficult to mourn with those who mourn. And he goes on then to say, live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Now, you never see the word think there, but actually, the Greek word think, with different variations on it, roots and so on, appears three times. It says, think the same way. And he doesn't mean all have the same opinions. Look at the chapter 14, where he says, actually, you can disagree on some pretty significant issues. So he doesn't mean all think the same and hold the same viewpoint on everything, but he says, think together. Think in harmony. I think the translation here is really quite good for giving you the sense. The sense is, be like-minded. Be on the same page and resonate with each other. Care about each other so that you love and you rejoice with the rejoicers and weep with the weepers. But that requires emotional ties, which requires time. It requires real conversation. It requires actually caring. It requires not putting on your pious mask when you're at church. And it requires an emotional willingness to, you know, be affected by someone else's having a bad day. We're not to hold ourselves aloof. Because when you hold yourselves aloof from others, it's either because, or it soon will be because, you're holding yourself above others. I defy you to hold yourself aloof from a group, and I have not pride coming in pretty soon." And so he attacks pride again. Notice how pride is attacked over and over again. Way back in verse 3. He said, by the grace given to me, I say to everyone, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to. But he wasn't content with that. He came back in verse 10. Outdo one another in showing honor to the other person, yourself. And he's not content with that. He has to come back in verse 16. He says, don't be haughty. But he's not content with that. He says, but associate with the lowly. He's still not done. He says, never be conceited. Well, you already said that about four times. He said, yeah, but you need it the fifth time. So prone are we to be, perhaps, of one thing or another, however we express it. Yes, he says, associate with the lowly. It's not clear if he means lowly people or lowly jobs. But you don't have to decide. There are lowly jobs that need to be done. There's a piece of paper that will have to be cleaned up. And there's all kinds of lowly jobs all around us. And if we do lowly jobs, who will we be associating with? The lowly people who have to do lowly jobs. We don't have to hold ourselves above any of that. So we're not defined as strength to bless persecutors because we're emotionally dead. You've got to be emotionally alive. Jesus was. David was. You also have to be emotionally alive. But you know, it's one thing to resonate with rejoicers and weepers. It's a second thing to associate with the lowly. And it's a third thing to deal with the hostile. So how, then, do you deal with the hostile? We're back to the hostile when we get to verse 17. And he says, repay no one. Evil for evil. In the Old Testament, when it says, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, that was to be the rule for courts giving out sentences. The courts of ancient Israel were not to be chopping off hands if somebody stole bread, nor were they to be locking someone up for life upon a third felony. Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, is to limit the vengeance of the judicial system. And as much as progressives wanted to decry Old Testament justice as something harsh and cruel, California would have been a whole lot more progressive if they'd gone with this rule, instead of three strikes and you spend life in jail. That is far harsher than what you have in the Old Testament. But as much as it limits vengeance, that's still not the standard for personal relationships. That's what the court has to say, a proportionate punishment to fit the crime. In our personal relationships, it is to be this, repay no one evil for evil. Because who does evil? The devil does evil. Those who serve the devil, those who turn from God, those are the ones doing evil. If we do evil, what does that say about us? You have heard it said, two wrongs don't make a right. You might be inclined to challenge that. Where in the Bible does it say two wrongs don't make a right? Answer. Well, it says it right there in verse 17. Repay no one evil for evil. That's two wrongs don't make a right. That's the same thing there. You know, if you repay evil with evil, you are first of all wrong on the substance, because he tells you not to do this thing. And you are secondly wrong on perception. Who does the referee sees? The one who first fouls, or the one who gets angry and takes a swing? Oh, he sees the one who retaliates. Who does the teacher see? Does the teacher see the one who digs the elbow into the guy's ribs in the line, or the one who sees the second one? It is the retaliator who always gets caught. It's the retaliator who's thought to be the angry, vengeful, evil person. And so you fall for the devil's trick, and you end up bringing shame on the name of Christ if you retaliate. You are, first of all, wrong before God in the substance. He told you not to repay evil for evil. You are, secondly, dishonoring Christ, as by perception you're below the other person, since your angered response is what is seen. And we are to care, not be controlled by, but we are to care about people's perceptions. Notice it goes on to say, give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. We're not controlled by the world's standards. We answer to God. We don't have to be controlled by one another's opinions here. And yet we're supposed to be mindful of other people's opinions. We're not to make our brothers stumble. And here it says, be mindful of the world's opinions, not as your law, but as something to bear in mind so that you cannot put a barrier before someone to stop them from coming to Christ. Give thought as to what is honorable in the sight of all. Now, what's an example? Now, suppose you work in an office and you go out for lunch every day. May you go out for lunch with a co-worker of the office of sex? I think you may. I don't think you have to follow the Billy Graham rule every time. You can go out. If you go out for lunch with that co-worker every day, what will it look like? At that point, you are not giving talk to what is honorable in the sight of all. You also, for that matter, are tempting God. Tempting as things might get out of hand. So, go to lunch with who you want, but be mindful to do what is honorable in the sight of all. Take heed not to do too much of what can be thought to be evil. You say, but I'm not doing evil. Yes, but is there any reason to do this thing? There's no good reason for doing it. Be mindful to do what is honorable in the thought, in the sight of all. So before a hostile world, we're not to repay evil with evil. And he goes on to say, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Now here we have the unusually double-hedged commandment. It is not the manner of God, usually, when giving commandments, to give a double hedge to it. Normally, he says, you shall not kill. And if there's fine print on that, it comes elsewhere. But here, he doubly hedges it. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Now, why is it doubly hedged? Well, for two reasons. First of all, we are called to follow Christ. Christ did no wrong, and yet he did not have peace. He could only have had peace with the world if he had betrayed God. So he followed God and did not have peace. And we similarly are not to betray God, not to betray Christ, not to betray a fellow believer, not to betray the truth or conscience for the sake of peace. We're to consider that not possible. It is not possible that for the sake of peace I betray Jesus Christ. That's the first reason it is hedged. Because as much as we are to pursue peace, It is not peace at all costs. A higher commitment may make this peace impossible. The second reason that it is doubly hedged here is that sometimes people just hate Christians. And you can bless, and you can do good, and you can pray, and they still hate you. And so it's not peace. And you're not to, say, convert to Islam, so as to have peace with your Muslim neighbors. There are things not to do. But the cause of the warfare is not to come from you. If it comes from Christ, then so be it. But it's not to come from you. And so it says, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. The goal is peace. That's not the highest goal. The highest goal is to serve God. Within that call, we seek for peace. We seek to make peace. Blessed are the peacemakers. They will be called sons of God. And so when it's not peace, we are to ask ourselves, am I the reason? Or, more plausibly, more often, am I a reason? Is it partially my fault? And we're to repent of whatever we have done wrong. We're to pursue peace. But if we cannot have peace, And we have to steal ourselves to endure hostility without sinning, because now we come to the real war and the real victory. He says, beloved, never avenge yourselves. Why does he throw in beloved right here? Paul, loving you, does you no good. He's been dead since about 66 AD. Nor did he really write because he knew that many of them. He knew some of them. He didn't know all of them. He'd never been there yet. So why does he throw in the word beloved here? He throws it in to remind us that God has loved us. And when has God begun to love us, but while we were yet rebels and sinners against God? It is when we were, you could say, deserving of judgment that God loved us. when we were deserving of His vengeance, that He had mercy upon us. And so for that reason at this point it says, Beloved, you who have been loved well in a state of enmity to God, never avenge yourselves. You see how it fits here. Not only because it is so difficult that we need to remember that we are beloved, but because it is fitting at this point. Understand it is the love of God that calls us to do these difficult things. As we have been saved by God's grace from the greatest danger, so we are never to avenge ourselves. What is the sound of someone who wants to avenge himself? I remember my 8th grade algebra teacher saying, I don't get mad. I get even. Now, from a classroom control perspective, that's not bad as per classroom control. It's a nice threat to the little eighth graders. But as a principle for life, that may sound macho, may sound tough, may sound wise. It is not the sound of crush. You are not to live by, I don't get mad, I get even. You live by, I neither get mad, nor get even. I follow Jesus. You may appeal to the authority. Kids, you may appeal, you should be able to appeal to your parents. You may appeal to the teacher, to the judge, to the king, should you have one. But revenge is not yours. Now, vengeance is the government. That's the next paragraph. I think we get too blown away by paragraph divisions, and we put things in different boxes. The discussion flows right into government as the servant of God to carry out God's vengeance on the offender. So that's where he's going here with this discussion of vengeance. He's going to government. This isn't just pie in the sky, somehow God will zap your enemies. He's saying, no, God has also put things on the earth to deal with problems. But for us in our personal relationships, it says, never avenge yourself. Now, why not take vengeance? It's because God claims it. God claims the right to judge. God claims the right to be the jury. God claims the right to execute. And if you want to know why, where, that's why we read Deuteronomy 32. I never noticed quite how strong the end of that song was. He kept going back to vengeance in those last ten verses. Over and over again. Vengeance is the Lord's. That's no throwaway line in that song, Vengeance is Mine, says the Lord. That's a summary of the whole ending of it. God is saying, I will have vengeance on my enemies. And before you say, well that's Old Testament, it's being quoted in the New. It's put right in the New Testament, right there. There you go. It's New Testament. Jesus in Matthew 25 says, the Lord will separate the sheep from the goats and send the goats away with the devil. You've got the book of Revelation, and you have all the vengeance you could ever want. Notice how these words are, again, doubly attributed to God. It says, it is written. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. You don't have to say, says the Lord, if you say that it's written. He doubles it up, again, to impress upon us that vengeance belongs to God. And therefore, it does not belong to me. And therefore, my goal should be to stay away from the vengeance, and to give place to the wrath of God, and not to be so close to it that I get caught up in it. And sometimes people can be so upset, they want to tell the judge or the teacher or the parent, this is what you've got to do. This is what you've got to do. And pretty soon, the parent or the teacher is mad at the other person as well. Leave me alone. I'll take care of it. We need to hone the ability to walk away, not insult in return, not engage in sneaky vandalism or theft or slander either. Now, what are we to do? If it just said to avoid evil, perhaps we would do that in our own strength. But as always, it calls us higher than that. He quotes the Old Testament again. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. I asked my father sometime about a funny story about that. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. And if he's thirsty, give him a drink. We here extend the principle about the enemy's donkey to the enemy himself. Take care not just of the enemy's things, take care of the enemy himself. For by so doing, it says, you will heap burning coals on his head. Now there is a difficult part. Comes in the Proverbs again, Proverbs 25, verses 21 and 22. But OK, what does it mean there? There seems to have been an Egyptian custom to show that you are a penitent. to walk with a tray of burning coals on your head. And so that's just a weird enough thing to say. There's probably some connection back to this practice in a neighboring country. It's still a little strange and hard to get your hands around. I think the sense is something in this direction. No one can endure burning coals on their head. If you have burning coals on your head, you will need to change something to get them off your head. And so, when you do good to your enemy, your enemy will make a number of changes. One of a number. Perhaps the enemy will repent. This is not impossible, if you so upend their expectations by returning good for evil. And that is the best case scenario. Or perhaps your enemy will simply stop it and go away, perhaps go pick on someone from whom he can get a more pleasant reaction, a less odd reaction. Again, you've heaped burning coals on their heads. You have shamed them, that they would do harm to one who returns them good, and they've gone away. It's also possible that they may hate you all the more and redouble their efforts to drive you to evil. Well, in that case, vengeance is the Lord's. and He will repay. And we can rest in that vengeance as we, as ourselves, seek to escape the hostility. In any case, if we return good for evil, we have not exposed ourselves to God's vengeance. We have not retaliated. We have not put ourselves in the way. God's fire that comes down on the evildoers will not include us. And in that way, we gain a real victory in the real war. The same author says, you know, our war is not against flesh and blood. Now, when this apostle was arrested, it was, of course, people of flesh and blood who laid hands on him. When he was executed, it was obviously flesh and blood that wielded the axe or whatever it was. When we are persecuted, it is obviously done by people who are made of flesh and blood. So how is it that our warfare is not with flesh and blood? Well, we have to realize that there's a double level to the warfare. I'm currently reading my older two children, The Lord of the Rings. We haven't finished it. No spoiling the ending, please. it becomes apparent that Frodo has to fight a two-front war. The obvious war is with all the orcs and ringwraiths and black riders and trolls and various monsters that I won't tip off at this point, but that are after him. But the other front is that he's carrying the ring of power, the ring that corrupts your soul. The ring that gets you obsessed with it and what it can do for you. The ring that wraps itself around your mind so that you call it your precious and you will murder for it. And his job is to destroy it. But how can he destroy that which wraps itself around the soul? That's the two-front war. You get a shadow of it with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Darth Vader's always like, yeah, go on, strike me down, release your anger, use the dark side of the force. It's the same idea there, actually. There's a two-front war. There's the enemy you see, and then there's the evil within, or the temptation of evil within. And so our war is not to be dragged into the devil's game, to use the devil's tool to achieve our ends. We're not to embrace evil that good may come. We're not to embrace sin in response to sin. That is the real war. Will you embrace sin as you respond to sin? It's relatively easy not to sin when you're not being sinned against. But will you refrain from sin while being sinned against? It says, do not be overcome by evil. That word overcome could be translated victory. The victory root is in there, Nike. Yes, that's where Nike gets its name from, from the Greek goddess of victory, Nike. I like the word. My wife's name is based on the same root. Yes. In Revelation, he said, get the same word. To those who overcome, I will grant to eat of the tree of life. To those who overcome, I will grant to sit on my throne. And who overcomes in the book of Revelation? It's not those who burn down the pagan temple. It's those who are not compelled to worship at the pagan temple, even if they die when they refuse. It's going to fight the Lord's way. He fought by not reviling when he was reviled. As a lamb is silent for its shearers, so Jesus opened not his mouth. And all this requires one thing. What does this require, above all? It requires faith in the God who promises that He is our loving Heavenly Father and that vengeance is His. We're saved by faith alone, and so we are to live by faith and demonstrate it in these difficult circumstances. And so transformed by God's love and walking in faith, we are never to repay evil for evil. and we're to overcome evil with good. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You call us away from our sinful natures. But Father, we confess that this one we find very difficult. So Heavenly Father, so work in our hearts that we may not seek getting even, but we may instead turn to a different path and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, to return a blessing for a curse, to repay no one evil for evil. Help us to remember the true war and the true enemy, so that we may gain with you and by your help and with your forgiveness the true victory. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.