Overcoming Evil with Good

SERMON: 2015-04-19--r1215a--overcoming-evil-with-good-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:42:26.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: All candidates form a continuous segment of prayer and benediction (pastoral application/theological exposition). Since there is no clear transition to non-sermon material after this point, the final candidate must be selected. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- So let me start with a question this morning. How many of us here would say, looking back over our lives, that there have been times when we feel that we have been treated unjustly? Give me a show of hands. Maybe it was in connection with your marriage, your spouse criticized you unfairly, cut you to the core. Maybe it was in connection with one of your children who threw your love back in your face and exhibited deep ingratitude. Maybe it was a business partner who defrauded you or an employee who ripped you off. Whatever the case, injustice is a reality in life. And if I were to turn the question around, how many of us in turn have probably treated others unfairly, I suspect we'd get a very similar show of hands, wouldn't you agree? At least if we're -- remember, you're in church, so you got to be honest about this, right? In a world that is alienated from God and populated by sinful human beings, it is inevitable that we're going to be stepping on each other's toes at some point or another, and we're going to give as well as receive injustice. It is simply a part of life, and the big question is not whether we're going to experience injustice sometimes at the hands of people closest to us, but the question is, what are we going to do about it? How do we try to resolve it? And from a biblical point of view, there are really only two possible ways of trying to resolve it. One is by taking matters into our own hands. The other is by the way of the cross, trusting God in Christ to look after our interests. And here in these closing verses of Romans chapter 12, the apostle Paul gives us, I believe, four very practical steps that God's people need to put into practice if we're going to break the cycle of tit for tat that is so characteristic of a fallen human race. So let's make a start at it. We'll see how far we can get this morning. The first thing Paul tells us here, the first step towards overcoming evil with good is to resist the temptation to get even. Verse 17, "Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. Do not repay evil for evil." I've decided to go low tech for a minute this morning just to throw you off a little bit. Let's take a moment and think about the term evil and define it because we live in a day and age where the term evil is constantly in the process of being redefined. Is that not true? What was considered evil in our society 20 or 30 years ago is now considered good. And what was considered good 20 or 30 years ago is now considered evil. It's a redefining of evil, particularly in the areas of sexuality. And I don't have to expand on that other than to point out that just this past week the nation of Sweden has added a new word to their dictionary, a gender neutral term that can be used to apply to boys or girls. In the Swedish language the term for he is han and the term for she is hon and now they have officially entered the word hen as part of their vocabulary to indicate that this is a gender neutral person. And there you have just a small glimmering of the battle that rages in our society over the definition of gender. I looked at that and I said, you know, for those of us who write books that's a great idea because whenever you're writing books and you're dealing with he or she, you never know whether to make it a he or a she. He said, she said when you're giving an illustration. And so to make it an it makes life much simpler because it avoids the complexity of trying to keep those two balanced. It used to be everybody used he. That got to be considered sexist. So now it's he, she, or some combination thereof. But evil has been redefined in our day and age. And the reason for that is that we have separated the vertical from the horizontal. The vertical is God in relationship with us. The horizontal is our relationship with each other. In scripture or in the dictionary, evil is defined as breaking the moral law. I found that very interesting because it indicates that there is an outside standard that decides what is good versus what is bad. And biblically, of course, that standard is defined by God. It is God who says certain things are right, certain things are wrong. And so why is adultery wrong, not just because it makes me hurt my spouse or take advantage of somebody else, but it's also wrong because God says it's wrong. Even if it didn't hurt each other, God still says it's wrong, right? Why is it wrong to steal or why is it wrong to covet or do any of the things of which scripture speaks negatively, it's because the law is defined by God. God says this is right, God says this is wrong, and therefore it has an impact on our human relationships. Now, the more we reject God, the more we get rid of this element of revelation, now right and wrong is determined by our horizontal relationships apart from the vertical. And the result of that, of course, is that right and wrong now changes all the time depending on what we get used to. This will astonish you, but did you know that in today's society, there are voices on the edges of today's society who are calling for the legalization of human cannibalism? Did you know that? Now you say that's nonsense, that's never going to happen. Well, there's a lot of things happening today that 20 or 30 years ago, I would have never thought we'd see in the light of day. It all depends on how it is put forward and how it is being inculcated into the population through the variety of channels that are present today to change our values. So evil is defined as falling short of a moral standard, and the easiest way to put it is that the Bible defines evil as anything that falls short of the great commandment that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and the second commandment like unto it, that you love your neighbor as you love yourself. So evil is anything that God disagrees with, and evil is anything that harms your neighbor. And we can think of all kinds of examples of what that would look like. Now here's the thing that I want us to understand, the natural human tendency of course is to say that you hurt me and I'm going to hurt you. That's perfectly natural. It's to return evil for evil. You hit me, I'm going to hit you back. You never need to teach your kids how to do that. You know, I love the little story. The mom was working away in the kitchen and her seven-year-old and 18-month-old child are playing in the living room, and all of a sudden there is this huge cry coming from the seven-year-old. So the mother goes running over there, and lo and behold, the 18-month or the two-year-old baby has got a hold of his hair and is pulling it like crazy. So mother comes into the rescue, untangles the kid's hand, and says to the seven-year-old, you know, let it go. She doesn't know what that feels like. So they go back to playing, she goes back to the kitchen, and pretty soon there's this wailing cry from the two-year-old. Mother goes running over there and she says, what's going on? Well the seven-year-old says, now she understands what it feels like to get your hair pulled. So that's what's natural. And we all do it to one degree or another depending on, you know, our temperament and how badly we've been hurt and all the situations that go along with that. The problem with tit-for-tat, of course, and you know this, is twofold. Number one, it inevitably starts a cycle of retribution. James puts it this way, James 3, 5, and 6, the tongue he says is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. And we've all experienced that, and a good biblical example of that cycle of destruction I always think is the story of Cain. We refer to it the other day. He kills his brother, he runs away from God, he goes into exile, builds a city, starts a family, and Cain's murderous spirit takes root in his family, and it grows as inevitably it does so that by the time you get to the seventh generation from Adam, which is Lamech, this is the kind of boasting that you hear from him. He says to his wives, Ada and Zilla, the first man now who goes into a plurality of marriage because this is a family line governed by the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and the lust of the flesh. He says to his wives, "Listen to me, wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me, and if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy times seven." And so you see here that spirit of revenge, that spirit of returning evil for evil continues to grow. And all you have to do is look at the conflicts around the world, the conflicts in the Middle East, the conflicts in the Ukraine, the conflicts anywhere in the world. And you see that almost inevitably it is I hit you, you hit me back, I now have to hit you back twice as hard, you now hit me back three times as hard, and before you know it, you get a whole cascade of violence that can carry on in some instances for generations. One of the books that I've been working on for a number of years now, on and off, is a book on James. Many years ago I did a study with you on the book of James, and I'm writing that up in what will hopefully be my next book project. But in there I tell the story, and some of you will recall this story, of the conflict between the Hatfields and the McCoys, remember that? It's the classic example of a family feud. Two families that lives in the Appalachians, across the border between Kentucky and West Virginia, and families that had a lot in common, they had 13 kids each, and they all worked in the lumbering industry, and they were violent kind of men of their time, and without going into a lot of detail, one stole, allegedly, the pig of another. And that went to court, and the court found the man not guilty. Well that led to the murder of the individual who had testified against them, had changed his testimony as a matter of fact, and this started a whole cycle of murder that ran for more than a decade, and ultimately cost many people's lives. Stuff gets out of hand. And once the fire gets going, it's not always easy to stop it, is it? That's one reason, tit for tat is not a good idea, but there's a second reason, and that is that it poisons you. It changes who you are. Hebrews puts it well, it says make every effort to live in peace with all men, if we can find that verse, make every effort to live in peace with all men, and to be holy without holiness no one will see the Lord, see to it that no one misses the grace of God, and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. Most of us will have heard the saying, carrying bitterness in your heart towards somebody else is like consuming poison and expecting the other person to die. The only one that it takes down in the long run is you, and the reason for that is very simple. Number one, because it causes you to miss out the grace of God, because the Holy Spirit is grieved. We read in Ephesians 4.30, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." The Holy Spirit is a gentleman, and if you and I cultivate anger and bitterness within our hearts, God pulls back, cannot tell you how many people have come to me over the years telling me, "Church doesn't mean a thing to me anymore. I don't get anything out of worship, I don't get anything out of singing, I don't get anything out of preaching," and there may be many reasons for that. Sometimes the singing is not very good, sometimes the preaching is not very good, but you know, sometimes it's you, because if your heart is bitter, the Holy Spirit pulls back, and you grieve Him, and when the Holy Spirit pulls back, guess who draws close? The evil spirit, and let's see if we can get this verse up, "Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let sin go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil." That's Ephesians 4, 26 and 27, some translations say, "Give no foothold to the devil." Give no foothold to the devil. What happens when the devil gets a foothold? He begins to poison you from the inside out. You not only begin to lose the revelation of God's truth, but your eyes get closed to reality, and you begin to normalize your own position, and before you know it, you've dug in your heels, you think you are right when in fact you are wrong. That's where Cain found himself in Genesis chapter 4, when God says, "Sin is couching at the door. It's your job to resist Him, but if you don't, it's going to consume you," which of course indeed is what it did. Scripture says the first step is, "Do not repay anyone evil for evil." Somebody says, "But what do I do with my feelings of unfairness, my feelings of injustice?" The pain that I'm experiencing of the answer is you follow the biblical steps towards resolution. That is to say you find somebody safe that you can confide in, not your friend who's going to tell his ten friends about how you feel on the inside. You know, somebody who's big enough to help you process the hurt, the anger, and the desire to retaliate, and then you begin to follow biblical steps or you begin to undertake biblical steps towards reconciliation, which is you try to talk it out, you try to process it, so that at the end you come to a resolution. You know, I've been in this business a long, long time, and I've been mad at people, and I've had people mad at me, Lord knows enough of them over the years, but I'll tell you one thing, 90% of conflicts between people that I have experienced or watched has been misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Did you know that? And the devil loves to come along, find those places and stir them up so that he can bring about alienation because God's Spirit dwells where people are in unity by faith in Jesus Christ. I could use an amen. Kevin is my best amen man up here. All right, that's the first step that Paul gives us in Romans 12 in terms of overcoming evil with good. The second step that he comes up with, are we having trouble up there moving, is to realize your relational limitations. Realize your relational limitations, verse 18, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Now we're all smart enough to know that God's ideal biblically is that in relationship with God where we receive grace to be humble and grace to acknowledge your own sin and grace to want to get along with other people, out of that flows the ability to love our neighbor. That's why Jesus links those two commandments, love God and love your neighbor. And in an ideal world, we should be able to get along with everybody. Reality is we can't and we don't. And the answer to that is, again, very simple because relationships always involve not only myself but another person. And sometimes it's not just myself but all of my friends and all of your friends. The fact of the matter is that hard as I might want to try to like you or get along with you or be your friend, sometimes you don't want to get along with me or want to be my friend or vice versa. And so the net result is that I can work on the relationship but if you aren't equally prepared to work on the relationship, then we're not going to be able to get along. And that's why the text really emphasizes, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. You're not responsible for other people's lives. You're not responsible for what other people do say or don't. But you are very much responsible to walk before God in repentance and faith and in humility. Now, I find it very helpful to understand, and this is a teaching that I learned some time ago from Dr. Henry Cloud, who is a Christian psychologist, a business consultant and a best-selling author, but one of the sanest shrinks that I have the privilege of knowing long distance via his books and his presentations, that there are three kinds of people in the world, each one of which needs to be handled differently, relationally. And in the time that's left to us this morning, let me try to walk you through that. It comes from the book of Proverbs, and if you read through the book of Proverbs, you will discover there are three kinds of people that are outlined in Proverbs. Some of these you will recognize immediately. One is the wise person, the second one is the fool, and the third one is the evil person. Let me walk you through each of these just very quickly so that we can examine the outstanding characteristics. First of all, the wise person, for our purposes, we can say that the wise person biblically has two characteristics that are very important to understand. The first is he is submitted to God, and the second one is that he is humble and teachable. Let me give you two verses to go along with that. Proverbs 9, 10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." In biblical thinking, the wise person is a person who recognizes that God exists, that God defines what reality is, and therefore he is in submission to God's authority. Scripture matters, the revelation of God matters. He knows that God has the right to say, "This is right, and this is wrong," and so he is not only or she submissive to God's authority—see, that's why you need a neutral pronoun, so you don't have to go back and forth between he and she—submissive to God and humble. Once I have submitted to God's authority, I become teachable, I am willing to learn, and I can grow. Instruct a wise man, and he will be wiser still. Teach a righteous man, and he will add to his learning. So a wise person, to use Henry Cloud's analogy, is a person who, when the light comes to him, adjusts his life to the light. In other words, he loves truth, he humbles himself before truth, and he adjusts his life to match the truth. That is a wise person. We'll see in a few moments how that lines up when it comes to conversations together. And then there is the foolish person, and the foolish person is not only not submitted to God, but the foolish person is not open to correction. Verse 2 of chapter 18, a fool finds no pleasure in understanding, but he delights in erring his own opinion. A fool is a person who doesn't submit to authority, always thinks he knows the best, and when you try to engage him in conversation, it goes around in circles because it keeps on changing. He cannot receive, or she cannot receive, correction. And so to go back to the light illustration, when a foolish person is confronted by the light, what do you think the fool does? He adjusts the light, makes it shine in a different place. The fool is the person who says it's never my fault, it's always somebody else's fault. The fool is the person who says you cannot correct me because I happen to know better than anybody else. Look at my success. So there's a wise person, there's the foolish person, and then there is the evil person. And the evil person, of course, is also not submitted to God. In fact, the evil person isn't just, the foolish person can be relatively neutral to God, but the evil person is downright antagonistic. He's crossed over the line, and he is in conflict with God, and he says, "I don't care who God is, I'm not going to do what he wants me to do or believe in him." The Bible says in the book of Psalms, in a number of places, the fool says in his heart, "There is no God." Why is he a fool? Because thinking that there is no God doesn't change the reality that God is. Just for the record, God's really not so insecure that it bothers him whether you believe in him yes or no. He knows that he's there. And he says, "If you're smart, you'll acknowledge that and you'll bow before me and face my authority." But the evil person says, "I don't want to obey you, I don't want to serve you, I don't want to do your will," and so the evil person also is in league with the devil. He has sold out, he has crossed the line, and he has joined Satan in his opposition to God. An evil person simply does not want to see God's will done on earth as it is in heaven, and an evil person will go to the grave fighting God and fighting what God stands for. Listen to how Jesus puts it in John 8, 44. And here he is talking, and this is a fascinating passage. He's talking to people who have believed in him. That's what blows my mind when I read this passage. But listen to these words. He says, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." There's wise, there's fools, and there's evil. And a lot of people have trouble believing there are evil people in the world. But in this day and age, I suggest you look at ISIS, if you want an example of what evil looks like in the flesh, or previous generation, Nazi Germany, or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the slaughter of Ukrainians under Stalin back in the '30s. Millions and millions of people sacrifice on the altar of some kind of perverted political or social agenda. There really is evil, and sometimes people are evil. Now here's what we need to understand about the wise, the foolish, and the evil. When it comes to getting along with them, or engaging them in conversation, you need to adjust to whether they are wise, fools, or evil. Remember the text says, "Inasmuch as it depends on you." Make your best, do your best to get along. So if you're dealing with a person who is wise, here's what you will discover. When you engage a wise person in conversation, the chances are the conversation will go somewhere. You come to a wise person and you say, "Well, you know, what you did there just really bothered me or really hurt me." The wise person doesn't just automatically deflect or criticize or attack the messenger. The wise person says, "Tell me more, help me understand." And the wise person will be humble, and the wise person will say, "You know, that's not what I meant. I'm sorry that happened. How can we?" When the conversation goes someplace, you walk away from it, and you feel that the relationship has been restored. How many of you here have ever found yourself in a situation where talking with a wise person, you knew it got someplace? Let me see your hands. See? There's lots of wise people in the world. Wise people make you feel like relationships matter and can be restored. Now with a fool, it's an entirely different picture. Because remember, a fool doesn't accept correction. And so you get into conversation with a person who is foolish, fundamentally unyielded to God and fundamentally not teachable. You get into these conversations that after a while you wonder who's crazy. Do you ever hear these conversations where you walk away from something and you wonder who's crazy? Anybody? It goes around and around and around and around, and somehow it always ends up being your fault even though you know it isn't. And it goes around and then some more. Well, that's one of the symptoms that the person you're talking with is unable to receive correction, is unable to see the truth. And you know what Christians do? We keep talking. We keep hoping that now it is the 100th time that we have gone over this same topic and maybe this time you will really change. And cloud makes a big point out of the fact that that's extremely foolish because it isn't going to work. If it hasn't worked 99 times, it's not going to work the 100th time. And there's lots of us that have been in a relationship with people. We've gone around and around and around and you're always back to the circle. Cloud says the conversation needs to change from why aren't you hearing what I am saying to what is it that needs to happen or let me back up. Cloud's observation is instead of trying to get that person to do what it is that you're wanting him to do or to receive, the conversation needs to change to the point why is it that you are not hearing me? Why are you not listening? Why do you deflect every time I step into this situation? Because that will help you get at why the fool is a fool. And if words don't work, you know what works sometimes? It has to be pain. There are a lot of people who will not change their lives unless the pain of being who they are exceeds the pleasure of staying where they are. Proverb 1710 sums this up really well, if we can have that verse up please. "Avoid, a rebuke impresses a man of discernment more than a hundred lashes of fume." How many people do you know who pride themselves in having to learn everything the hard way? Anybody like that? Learning things the hard way is not a sign of intelligence because only a fool learns it the hard way. We can avoid a lot of grief in our lives and we submit it to biblical and godly authority instead of demanding and insisting that we learn it the hard way. Some fools come back. The discipline of the Lord can turn a foolish person into a wise person. But not all fools do because some will go to the grave insisting that they're right when in fact they're wrong. While we're going to wind this up very quickly, there still remains the evil person. And the evil person is a dangerous person. And the evil person, and I love the way Cloud puts it, remember he's a consultant, he deals with a lot of Christian communities, he deals with a lot of Fortune 500 companies where this issue comes to the foreground all the time. He says sometimes your best performing people are the most messed up character wise and they change the culture of an organization and they need to be addressed. He says wise people listen. A fool you have to put pressure on and discipline and maybe they will change. He says an evil person will not change. And he says what you need to do is you need to lawyer up, you need to get out your gun, and you need to get your bank account in order. Because particularly in the business world, that's the guy that you're going to be fighting in multiple settings because an evil person has his heart set on destruction. Do you understand that? You can be in conflict with somebody and you can be angry with each other and still not want the destruction of another person. But when Satan grabs hold of you and you let that go, it turns into anger and anger will eventually turn into murder and you want destruction. And so the scriptural admonition for that, you find in Titus chapter 3 verses 9 and 10, avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive person once and then warn him a second time after that have nothing to do with him. Why? Because you're throwing pearl before swine and you know what happens when you throw pearl before swine? Number one, the swine doesn't appreciate the pearl. And because he doesn't appreciate the pearl, he's going to turn around and take a bite out of your hide. And a smart person learns to stay away. Proverbs 9, 8 and with this we'll conclude in a moment, do not rebuke a mocker, the broad category, one who is rebellious against God's authority or he will hate you. Rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Now here's what you've got to remember. It's easy to point fingers and some of us are thinking I'm pretty wise, you're pretty foolish and you're downright evil, right? We love to slot people into categories and of course categories are never that clear cut or that fixed. The reality is there are many parts to all of our lives and sometimes we're very wise in some areas. Sometimes we're very foolish in some other areas and sometimes if the devil gets hold of us in a certain place, we can all be downright nasty and evil. And here's the point. The point is not to point fingers at other people. The point is to begin with ourselves and to say Lord Jesus help me first of all to be wise. Expose my foolishness and expose me where I'm evil and help me to come to the cross because the cross of Jesus is a validation of the way of the cross. Teach me to lay down my idols of significance, my idols of control, my idols of power, my idols of comfort. Let me lay them down and let you be Lord of all because I know that in you there is life [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:42:21.060; remove through 00:42:26.000] and health and strength forevermore. [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:42:26.000; resume after this marked segment]