Romans 12:18 says, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. This is an obvious outflow of what Jesus is talking about here in Matthew chapter 5, as he's explaining the expectation in the kingdom, the value in the kingdom of reconciliation. Yesterday we spent a bunch of time talking about the first half of this, which envisions a scene where a person who is a good person, a well-behaved religious person is on their way to church to go and do church things or to give an offering, and then something crosses his mind and he's like, What? There's somebody who doesn't like me. I should go try to reconcile that. Or there's somebody who is my enemy. I am going to try to make things right with my enemy before I bother with these religious custom things. Therefore, if you're offering your gifts at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. But now Jesus is going to shift gears a little bit and flesh out why this is actually very logical. There's a thing about Jesus' teaching that I like, and I've actually kind of tried to rip off a little bit. I think he's big enough to handle that, which is where he kind of implicitly says, Hey, you know how this thing is in life that everybody knows, and you know how you really, really, really understand it? Okay. Well, if that is something you understand so well that it's intuitive, you should have no trouble understanding this other thing. You already have the tools to get this principle. The best teachers I ever encountered did that with me, and I guess I'm also trying to rip off what they do to uh to talk about Bible and make it make sense. But here's how it goes: Settle matters quickly with your adversary who's taking you to court. Do it while you're still on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you won't get out until you've paid the last penny. Okay, so there's a little bit of pivot in thought here. Now Jesus is talking about something that you might be on the hook for, even if it's not actually your fault, or maybe something that you are actually kind of on the hook for because maybe it actually kind of was your fault. It would appear that either way the conclusion is the same. Get after it. Go try and fix that stuff. The value of the kingdom, the fulfilled value of the law, do not murder, to which we all assent and agree. The logical conclusion of do not murder is do not hate. And the logical conclusion of do not hate is love. And the logical conclusion of love is proactively love. And the logical conclusion of proactively love is where there is not love, seek it and pursue that reconciliation. That sounded very Yoda-like. So let's get after it right now. Jesus is saying, drop your stupid stuff. I know that your reverence and everything is very important to some expressions of Judaism, of Christianity, of religion, whatever. That's great. But if you really want to get it right, position that in priority two and position in priority one, pursuing reconciliation, which imitates the values of the kingdom and imitates the proactive love of Jesus. Chase them down. And if they're on their way to stomp into court and get you in trouble, whether it's your fault or not, the idea here would be catch them on the way. It is a lot easier to settle matters out of court than it is to settle it with a judge. Who knows what the judge is going to do? Who knows what the judge might see that neither of you saw in the first place? That's the nuclear option. And if you go the nuclear option, metaphorically at least, there's going to be some blood that gets shed. It is far better for everyone involved for somebody to swallow their pride and rush up to the other person who's offended and try to negotiate the thing and work it out and square accounts and reconcile. And the idea is that even to initiate such a thing is a gesture of grace, is a gesture of love, of not hate, of not murder. And by initiating this, you're doing the right thing. As much as is up to you, you try to live at peace with everyone. And as possible, that person is still going to metaphorically storm into court, the whole matter will be adjudicated, it's ugly, nobody comes out looking good, and heck, maybe whether it's just or not, you might even be found guilty or holding the bag on that particular incident, in which case Jesus indicates it might be a tough penalty to pay. Now, bigger picture we can extrapolate this teaching out into something that Jesus hits on all throughout the Gospel of Matthew and all the Gospels, really in general. And that is this principle of whatever you have been given by God, you're supposed to give away. That's a kingdom value. So a kingdom value is that if you've received kingdom stuff, you have to give kingdom stuff away. And that means that the very act of coming to the altar to offer a sacrifice or an offering to God is one of saying, I desire your forgiveness and grace. I desire reconciliation with God. The hypocrisy that starts to take shape before the hypothetical person at the altar realizes they were wrong is that I want this grace from God. I want this account reconciled. But you're not reconciling accounts with others with whom it would be far easier to reconcile. So how much do you really like reconciliation? Well, not that much. You don't really like the kingdom value that much. What you like is not paying the penalty for stuff you got wrong. Oh, well, that exposes the heart, doesn't it? So this really is striking down to the level of the essence of the listener to say to just go through the obligatory religious paces is not enough. You have to do what those obligatory religious paces symbolize, emblemize. And that means you go chase people down, you got to do things that are strange and way above and beyond what might be expected to nurture peace, to nurture reconciliation, to give away the reconciliation that you've been given. So we've looked at kind of two of these. You've heard it said that, but I tell you kind of things. Or maybe you can combine the whole murder thing and reconciliation thing into one. Either way, I think we need to step back for a second and look at just big picture what are we seeing about the situation. I think one, we can say that pretty clearly the stuff Jesus is saying to do and not do is not just arbitrary. It's not just, I'm God, I'm important. I have dreamy eyes and long brown hair, and everybody's listening to me, so here's a bunch of new rules. Because, no, his but I tell you authoritative statement is flowing out of theology. Frankly, it's flowing out of agreed-upon theology that everybody on the hillside had already signed off on. Jesus is fulfilling that truncated or arrested theology by taking it out to its full development and its full logical growth, and that might be startling for some, but that's what he's doing. This is very, very important to understand. When we read through the Bible and especially the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, what we see is not dumb arbitrary stuff. We see stuff that flows out of theology, and theology is the character of the God who's described in this text. In which case, doing the right thing or thinking the right thing or prioritizing the right way in terms of kingdom values isn't just I signed up for this club, these are the rules of this club, this is what we do at this swimming pool. We don't pee in the pool. Hopefully you don't pee in any of the pools. We don't run. Hopefully you don't run a swimming pool. This is a terrible example. I'm moving on from it. Instead, of this being an arbitrary thing, it is this kingdom is the king. Everything about it flows from who he is and what he's like and what he values. And therefore, everything we do is in keeping with those values. The ideals of the kingdom all flow out of God, not arbitrary authoritarian structure. Another big picture thing I see with these two little passages we've looked at is that kingdom people, people who would say they're sons, daughters, heirs, agents of the kingdom of God, uh, you just don't get to do the hate thing. And it's a bummer that we might want to exempt ourselves from that. I certainly have exempted myself from that at times. But this is pretty much unequivocal, right? Like if you want to be a part of this thing and participate in this kingdom, hate just isn't in the bag of tricks anymore. I suppose disagreeing is in the bag of tricks. I suppose doing everything you could to make things right and then acknowledging that's just broken and I can't fix that thing, I guess that might happen. But hate isn't in the equation, which leads me to a third thing I see about this, which is that God wants your heart. And if anybody thought this kingdom thing was gonna be easy, like you just do these external things or you go through these certain behavioral religious paces, I'm sorry, that is not gonna be the case. It's gonna have to be the hard way. Anybody cannot do naughty things, it's much more difficult to live out creatively and proactively redemptive things. So, what we're seeing here is a 14-point swing, football term, if you don't understand, it's fine. A 14-point swing from don't just not murder and not hate to proactively make it right wherever possible. Don't just not seed murderous, hateful discord, and in doing so make yourself a net neutral. You have to become a net positive if you want to be a participant or if you want to live out the values of this kingdom. Or to put it another way, it looks like kingdom people not only don't play the hatred game, they actually proactively play the healing game. Obviously, this has gone better at some times than others in the history of my life and in the history of the church. But I gotta give credit even to the expressions of Christianity I'm not a part of, when they do this sow peace, bring about reconciliation, bring about healing, reject the temptation to hate, reject the temptation to engage in murderous behavior, murderous language, and instead do all of this king-to-me stuff. It is powerful to see. It makes me missed up, much like just about every movie and every movie trailer I've ever seen. Maybe that's a terrible example because if I cry over everything, then things that make me missed up don't matter very much. I guess I just devalued my tears tremendously, which I think is a great place to end this thing. We're gonna get on to the next one, the one that's gonna be weird and awkward about adultery and stuff. And don't worry, I'm not gonna lecture you about sex things. That is going to be yours to think through, but we'll just cover what the actual text says and consider whether it is saying to cut off certain body parts that could lead you into temptation and whether that should be taken literally. Hint? I really hope it's not. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. More tomorrow.