©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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6/6/99
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Vengeance Is Mine!
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Rom. 12:17-21
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6/6/99 Vengeance Is Mine!
Phil. 4:8 ¶ Finally, brethren, whatever is
true, whatever is honorable, whatever is
right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is of good repute, if there is any
excellence and if anything worthy of praise,
let your mind dwell on these things.
We spent our time together last week
with Paul's words in Phil. 4:8
and I want us to spend
at least one more week
with this remarkable statement.
We spent quite a bit of our time last week
looking at what happens
when we choose not to follow Paul's
instructions in this verse.
We talked about our natural responses
to those times when evil touches us...
or crushes us,
about how, when we attempt to fight against the evil
if we are not careful in the way we approach that
battle
we can end up actually giving
more and more power
to the one we are seeking to destroy.
We give them our minds.
We give them our emotions.
We give them huge quantities of our time.
We also talked about
the hideous power of bitterness in our lives,
about the way it can consume us,
the way it can become
the driving force of our lives,
poisoning our lives
and the lives of everyone else we touch.
And we are especially susceptible
to the power of bitterness
when we are under attack from others.
When our children are just beginning
to move into the adolescent years
a wise parent will talk with them
about some of the unique temptations
and traps
and problems
that always accompany the adolescent years,
helping them to prepare mentally
for the storm they're sailing into.
That's what Paul has been doing for us
throughout this letter.
He has been preparing us
for the type of attacks
that always accompany those times
when evil intrudes into our lives,
those times when we feel like
we have lost control,
those times when
we feel like the victim
of someone else's sin.
The susceptibility to bitterness
is high on that list,
and Paul wants us prepared for it.
I'm not going to reteach
what we looked at last week,
but before we move on
I would like to bring in one additional
statement that Paul makes
in his letter to the Roman Christians.
It is the last verse of Romans chapter 12.
In that verse Paul says,
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome
evil with good.
And since I'm doing this
I might as well do it right
and give us the whole context of the passage
because it is dealing with this same
issue.
He is talking once again
about how to respond
to those who bring evil into our lives.
He wants us to know
how we can handle those situations
in a way that frees us
from the power of that evil over us.
And here again I need to warn you
that a superficial reading
of the words we'll look at
will seem to suggest that Paul is not in
touch with reality.
In fact, even that one phrase - Do not be
overcome by evil, but overcome evil with
good - may have caused some of you
to shift into your "Bible-Words mind-set".
You know what that is, don't you?
That's that special listening mode we have
when someone is quoting something
we know we are suppose to respect
but also know we don't really
believe.
Outwardly we nod in quiet, solemn
agreement and acknowledgment,
while inwardly we thinking,
"There is no way that works in the real
world!"
Well, if it helps let me just assure us once again
that God loves us far too much,
and He knows the battles we fight
are far too crucial to our survival
for Him ever to give us anything
other than living,
vital,
powerful reality.
And it might also help to ask ourselves
whether our alternatives
have brought about the quality of life we long
for.
If we are seeking to destroy the one
who is bringing the evil into our lives
we may be winning the battle,
but at what cost to ourselves?
Does the victory bring
deep, abiding inner peace?
Does it fill our lives
with a rich, fulfilling exuberance for life?
Or does it leave us feeling like
a tacky little wretch
who, when the battle was all over,
ended up groveling on the same level
as the one we were seeking to destroy?
It is a basic principle of life:
we become like the ones we fight against.
So what - do we just ignore the evil?
Or let it crush us?
I thought God was suppose to win!
I thought we were the victorious ones!
Well, as a matter of fact, we are.
But often times victory comes
from approaching the battle
with a radically different strategy.
So let me read those last few verses
of Romans 12 for us
because they say it better
than any other passage I know of.
The section begins with Romans 12:17
Now keep in mind
that this passage is progressive -
by that I mean that each phrase
builds on the one before it.
It leads us through a progressive
game-plan for dealing with the evil in our lives.
OK, it begins with a single phrase:
Rom. 12:17 Never pay back evil for evil to
anyone.
Now obviously Paul is starting where we live.
He is assuming there will be times
when real, true, hideous evil
will blast into our lives.
And the first thing he wants us to know
is that our initial flesh reflex
is not going to bring about
the results we long for.
And you know how the flesh responds -
"They hit me! Alright, I'll hit back
and I'll hit harder!"
And Paul wants us to know
that that approach will not give us
what we really want.
Even if we can hit back harder,
even if we end up destroying the one
who attempted to destroy us,
when the glow of victory has faded,
we will be faced with the ugly reality
that in the name of fighting evil
we became the source of evil ourselves.
And for the sake of winning
we ended up denying the truth
about our own identity.
Paul's next statement
makes this clear.
He says,
Respect what is right in the sight of all
men.
If I were to rephrase that statement,
I would say that
Paul is telling us
we are to never sacrifice who we are
for the sake of what we want to
accomplish.
And in context
the "all men" before whom
we are called to respect what is right
are clearly those same men,
those same people
who are doing evil to us.
And right here
is the first great weapon of warfare
given to us in this passage
for our battle against
those who bring evil into our lives.
It will take me a minute or two to explain this,
but I hope I can say it
in a way that makes it clear.
Every one of us have been created
in the image of God
with the image of true morality
deeply imbedded within.
If it helps to think in terms of our conscience, that's
fine,
so long as we understand
that the conscience in its purest form
is not a social awareness
imposed on us from the outside,
but rather it is the heart of our true moral design
welling up from deep within our spirit.
Now, when we enter this world
we enter with a heart rebellion against God
and that rebellion
causes us to fight against that moral
awareness,
that moral image of our Creator within
us.
But no matter how much we fight against it, we can
never escape it.
But a fascinating thing happens
whenever another person
violates that moral image of God.
EX.
I want you to picture a classroom of seventh
graders.
It's a math class.
The teacher is in the front of the room at her desk,
the class has been given an assignment
and they are all working in silence
at their desks.
Then a messenger comes into the class
and hands a note to the teacher.
She reads it,
then stands and says,
"I need to leave for a few minutes.
Just continue working on your assignment until
I return."
Then she leaves.
For a few minutes silence reigns
as students continue to work on the assignment.
Then suddenly from the back of the room
a spit wad comes flying up to the front row
and nails a boy in the front row
in the back of the head
with a WHAP! loud enough
to be heard throughout the
whole classroom.
Now, I'll give you two possible scenarios
of what happens next.
#1. The boy who has been hit
quietly picks up the wad of paper
laying on the floor next to him,
takes it up and drops it in the
wastepaper basket
and then sits down and resumes
working on his assignment.
or #2. Every boy in that room
suddenly starts digging in his desk
for rubber bands and ammunition
and within two minutes
the room is transformed into a mini
world war III.
It's exactly the same in the adult world.
As soon as someone
in any given situation
drops the standard of morality
it's like everyone else
has instantly been given
permission to do the same,
and not only to do the same,
but to see if they can drop it even farther.
Just look at what's happening on the internet.
The internet is the classroom without the teacher.
CBS news did a segment on commerce on the
internet a month or so ago.
I forget the exact numbers,
but they said that of all the financially
successful internet ventures to date,
of the ones that are showing strong profits,
something like 90% of them
are trafficing in hard core pornography.
No teacher.
No accountability.
No limits.
I'm getting way off track,
but my point is that in the natural flow of things
it is the nature of evil
to beget evil.
And when someone does evil to you
what they expect
and what they want
is for your to respond in kind
because when you do
you validate their immorality.
And that is why when Paul addresses
this issue of someone doing evil to us
the first thing he says is:
Rom. 12:17 Never pay back evil for evil to
anyone. Respect what is right in the sight
of all men.
Because when we do that,
when we with our response
and our attitude
and our actions
stoop down and pick up the high bar of morality
and put it back in place
rather than validating the other person's evil
it forces them to recognize once again
that there is accountability
and there is morality
and there is right and wrong.
So, when we respond with integrity
and compassion
to those who have just shown us evil,
when we...respect what is right in the sight of all
men,
we instantly accomplish two things.
1. We reawaken the moral conscience in the other
person.
And
2. We reaffirm the true nature
of our own identity in Christ -
we are His Holy Ones,
not simply righteous by convenience,
but righteous in spirit, at the deepest level.
The next thing Paul does
is to give us the reasonable goal:
Rom. 12:18 If possible, so far as it
depends on you, be at peace with all men.
And the wording in that statement is critical.
The goal is to reestablish peace
between ourselves
and the one who is seeking to do us evil.
But there is an essential qualifying statement in
there.
Paul say, "so far as it depends on you..."
He knows that there are times
when there is nothing we can do
to restore peace
because the other person will not accept it.
There are some relationships
we cannot fix
because the other person refuses to accept
the healing.
And for those of you
who survive emotionally by being people
pleasers
that will be the most terrifying statement in
this whole text.
The next thing Paul does, then,
is to explain the godly game-plan
for pursuing the goal
God has given us.
And the game plan has two parts to it.
It begins with what not to do:
Rom. 12:19 Never take your own revenge,
beloved, but leave room for the wrath of
God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine,
I will repay," says the Lord.
And the one thing I want to emphasis here
is that in those situations
in which someone else has done evil to us
God is calling us to an active faith in
and partnership with Himself.
There is nothing passive about this.
God is certainly not suggesting
we try to pretend nothing has happened.
But He is telling us
we have a choice.
We can attempt to get even ourselves.
But if we do
we will sacrifice our own self-respect
and our own integrity in the process,
and we will deprive God of the privilege
of fighting for us.
You see, God is telling us
that He is a whole lot better at balancing the
moral scales of the universe
than we ever will be.
And when the game is all over,
REALLY over,
and the scores are all in
the good guys always win.
EX I have a great little personal reminder of this
every time I drive to Anchorage.
The next time you drive to Anchorage,
just after you pass Portage on Turnagain Arm,
I want you to look over on the left side of the
road.
You will see a collection of old,
abandoned,
collapsing buildings.
I did that.
Well, actually God did that for me.
In the Spring of 1977
there was a Service station there,
owned by a man who had a tow truck.
One dark early spring evening
when the snow was coming down
in huge wet flakes
the slush on the road just a few miles past
Turnagain Pass got so thick
it literally shoved us off the road,
over a little embankment,
and down into a gully.
Sandee, my nephew, Jeremy, a friend of mine from
Seattle,
and myself were in the car.
I left the other three in the car,
flagged down a truck,
and hitched a ride down to that station in
Portage.
I told the owner what had happened,
and told him that I didn't have a credit card,
didn't have the $150.00 cash he wanted,
but that I would write him a check.
He said, "No way! Cash or credit card or I'm not
going."
I wanted to yell and scream at him.
I wanted to tell him he was and idiot.
I wanted to tell him my wife was sitting in
the dark on the pass I wanted his help.
Instead I turned around and walked out.
As I left he said, "What are you going to do?"
I said I was going back up to my wife
and we'd spend the night in the car.
The second car that passed me heading back up to
the pass
stopped to give me a ride.
Once I got in I discovered that inside
was a Christian
who was good friends with another
Christian
who drove the road grader along that
section of the highway.
Within an hour we had found that road grader
who then hooked onto our car,
pulled us out,
and sent us on our way home.
And nearly every time I pass
those crumbling buildings in Portage
I think to myself,
"Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the
Lord.
And I love it.
Now obviously I'm not really saying
that the wrath of God
came pouring down on that man in Portage,
causing his business to fail
and his buildings to collapse
simply because he refused to help me
in my time of need.
But at the same time
I have to tell you that
every time I see those buildings
it reminds me once again
that God has His ways
of taking care of His people,
and that we so often miss
so much of what He wants to do for us
because we are frantically trying
to do it for ourselves.
And one thing I do know with certainty -
if I would have stood in that station
for two minutes longer,
trying to fight with that man
who was fighting against me
I would have missed that car,
and that Christian,
and one of the greatest little blessings of my life.
And then Paul gives us
the second part of the strategy:
Rom. 12:20 " But if your enemy is hungry,
feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a
drink; for in so doing you will heap
burning coals upon his head."
I really don't know
exactly what the burning coals thing means,
but the intention of the verse is obvious:
God wants me to use my energy,
my effort,
my imagination in figuring out how
I can do good to the one
who is doing evil to me.
And then he sums up the whole passage
in a single statement.
Rom. 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good.
Now I know it doesn't makes sense
to our way of thinking.
But I know, too, that our way of thinking
never brings the true inner freedom of spirit
and the peace we long for.
God's way does.