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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2023 10:58:02 GMT -5
Overcoming Evil
with Good, Part 1
by Jay Adams
Edited transcript of conference message
PDF Format | More Transcripts
I find among Christians today 11th-hour thinking, a kind of pessimism, a kind of hang in there by your toenails attitude, a kind of attitude that says, "If I just don't lose what I've got, I've won." There's very little of the spirit among Christians today that says, "Let's go for it. Let's get in there and win." There's very little of that. And Christians ought to be moving forward. They ought not to be moving backward or just standing their ground. Even if it is the 11th hour, we ought not to be moving backward or just standing ground. The Lord says, "Occupy [or be busy] until I come." And that's what we've got to get a hold of.
We have in Romans 12:21 a challenge that says, "Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good." You see, that steward among the three who buried the Lord's money, and at His return dug it up and said, "Look, I've got it all. It's all here, just what You gave me. I didn't lose any of it" had a very wrong attitude, because our Lord said to him in Matthew 25, "You lazy, wicked servant." He said, "I was afraid. I knew that you were a hard Master, one who picks up what He doesn't put down, one who reaps what He doesn't sow, and so I buried it." The Lord said, "You wicked, lazy slave." The ones He commended were the ones who went out and doubled that money, the ones who did do business until He came. And it's your job and mine to change the picture to the metaphor that Paul uses here--to conquer evil in our lives individually until He comes. He didn't say you could conquer it for the first years of the church, you could conquer it through the Reformation period, you could conquer it up until recently, but now you can let up. He expects us to go forward and to continue to go forward until the very last moment before He comes. "Occupy [do business, go forward, conquer evil] until I come."
Now the interesting thing here is that He's talking about a certain kind of evil. He's not talking about the kind of evil that you bring on yourself. Peter talks about that in his letter, and he says, "Let no Christian suffer because of his own evil doing, because of his own sin..." (1 Peter 4:13-16). This is not something we bring on yourselves. An awful lot of evil we do bring upon ourselves. We bring a lot of trouble into our own lives by our sin, by our failure to follow the Lord, by our own aggressiveness not following what God says in His Word and just launching out on our own, doing what we please. But that's not what He's talking about here. He's talking here about suffering and evil doing that is brought upon you because you're a Christian--suffering that is wrong; that you had nothing to do with bringing upon yourself and that you cannot in any way keep from coming upon you. But it's going to come your way because you live in a world of sin and especially because you're living for Christ in a world of sin.
Jesus faced an awful lot of that kind of suffering. He seemed to be like a magnet that drew evil to Himself. And the reason was because His life was so exemplary. He was perfect. He was the light of the world. He was the one whose light shown so brilliantly, so beautifully, so strikingly that it exposed the lives of others all around Him. And it showed so clearly by contrast what their lives were like. And when a person lives like Christ, he will bring upon himself what Christ brought upon Himself. When he lives like Christ, men will say as they did about Christ, "I don't like that person. His life stands out as a contrast to mine. And I don't like that contrast. It shows me up to be unfavorable." And that's why men tried to put out the light. That's why darkness tried to put out the light. But it could not, because light always is more powerful than darkness. So this is evil, then, that comes upon you in this world that you have nothing to do with. It's evil, problems, difficulty, attacks, slanders, persecution, and ostracism that come upon you because you're a Christian living as you ought in a sinful world. How do you handle that evil?
The first thing I want you to notice is that Paul speaks about the whole issue in terms of war. He says, "Don't be conquered" (Romans 12:21). That's what that word literally means. "Overcome" is in some of your translations have, but it's a war term. It comes right off the field of battle. It has all the smell of smoke and sweat and blood and toil and anguish attached to it that any term that has to do with battle does. And what it means is, in battle to conquer. So in battle don't be conquered by evil, but in battle conquer evil by good. It's the word that's used all through the book of Revelation where it speaks of the overcomers or the ones who in battle have won.
You may not think of yourself as in a war. An awful lot of thinking in our Christian world today has moved from the metaphor that so frequently occurs in the Bible of warfare to other kinds of thinking. We hear so much about how good and wonderful and sweet and lovely Christians are, and how they ought to love themselves and do good to themselves, and all about glorious self-images, and all this garbage that comes in from psychology from the outside and is not found in the Bible anywhere. And we hear very little today about the fact that we're in battle, that we're in rough, hard times, and we are soldiers who are expected by our Lord to obey our marching orders. And we're going to open up those marching orders a little bit tonight and as the week goes on and see what our great Commander in Chief has told us that we must do in this war.
But first of all, I need to convince you--because we don't talk that way anymore--that you are in war. The war has been declared, and you're a part of one side. And there's another side that's out to get you and conquer you destroy you. Back in Genesis 3:15, God declared war, and that war has never ended. In that passage, God said, "I will put enmity [or warfare] between your seed and the seed of the woman." He was speaking to Satan. And He said there would be Satan and his crowd, his seed, and there would be the woman and her group. And the two would be perpetually at war--the war between the seeds. And it was not very long after that war was declared by God that we began to see that it was a reality. The first fatality was a Christian, one who believed in the Messiah to come, as Cain slew Abel. The first man born upon the earth was a murderer and destroyed his brother, and the war was real. And ever since that war has been going on, the war between the seeds, between the host of the devil, the evil on, and the host of God. Those whom He redeems He takes captive out of the evil one's army and makes them His own, and makes them His solders as they desert the evil one and become the soldiers and children of God.
You are in a war. Now, you may not sense that war. There are a lot of people today who don't realize we're in a war with Russia. They don't sense that there's any war going on. Ever once in a while we read about the Cold War. And Satan has had his cold wars as well as his hot wars. There have been times when he has used one tactic and times when he has used another. One of Satan's tactics has been murder. But wherever he murders the church, wherever the seed of the serpent destroys physically the seed of the woman, the blood of the saints, as Tertullian said, becomes the seed of the church. And a stronger, purer church, though it may have to go underground for awhile, develops and grows up in the place of a weak and sickly church that was flabby with a lot of unbelief and compromise in it. And it may very well be that God, if we do not get on the stick where we are, will use Russia or some other nation to do something in this country to change the picture right here, because we have today a church that's fat and sloppy with a lot of excess baggage and a lot of people who don't mean business. God has always taken churches like that and purified them. And it seems that in His providence He has allowed the evil one to use murder, which is one of his tactics.
But the other tactic the evil one has used so successfully is mixture. And that's the one that has succeeded more than murder. Mixture, the weakening of the church: mixing ideas, mixing beliefs, mixing people. The mixed multitude that came out of Egypt has existed ever since among the people of God. And it has always weakened the people of God. And so in the cold wars that Satan has fought, it has been the insinuation of his ideas, his beliefs, his attitudes, the secularization of the church of which you may hear something now and then. That's part of the war, and you and I are being affected by it whether we recognize that fact or not. You may not want to be in war, but you have no choice. It's just as when a nation declares war on some other, or a nation attacks your nation. You may not personally have any particular desire to be in that battle, but if war is declared and the planes start moving and the bombs start falling and the guns start shooting, you're in it, and you'd better watch out. What's done behind the scene whether you personally declared war or not can sometimes destroy the effort much more effectively than what goes on out on the battlefield itself. There are battles to be fought at home, and the 5th columnist and the rest of it in the Second World War probably did as much damage as the soldiers out on the field. And so many of you who don't recognize that there is a war going on have got to be awakened to the fact that you are in a war and there is a battle.
In the book of Daniel--if you really want to become aware of this war--one of the things that God does in that book is from time to time pull the curtain aside and let you see some of the forces that are at war with one another in the invisible world, the effects of which take place in this world. You can see the host of Satan and the host of God encamped and fighting against one another and Michael the archangel of God who stands up for God's people to resist the evil one and his host. There is a war going on in the invisible world around you and right here in this world too, and you need to become aware of that fact. What God says to you if you are on His side, if you are one who has come to faith in Jesus Christ and put your trust in Him and believe that He shed His blood on the cross for your sin, and you have been rescued out of the army of the evil one and been placed into the army of God--what He says to you as one of His soldiers is, "I don't want you to be conquered in battle by evil." That's your battle order to begin with. You must not lose life's battle. Do not become overcome by evil.
Now, I find Christians everywhere sitting around licking their sores. I find them walking down the aisles on crutches with battle scars. I find them in very bad shape. I've been in this counseling business now for 17 years in some depth, and I have seen Christians defeated again and again and again by evil. In fact, you wonder how many Christians anywhere are winners; are going for the gold medal. Not many of them are even standing ground. Not many of them are even standing back where they once were. They reach a point and then they recede, and everything goes to pieces. Divorce in the church has gone crazy. Marriages are in shaky condition. The whole business is very shaky. There are lots of Christians, but there are very few today who are winning life's battles. And yet your individual orders are, do not become conquered in battle with evil.
There was a woman I knew who was a Christian, the wife of an unsaved husband. And whenever she met one of her Christian friends, they'd say, "How's it going Mary (or whatever her name was)." And she'd say, "You know, it's pretty hard being married to an unsaved man." "Yeah," they'd say, "we'll pray for you." And she'd go to prayer meeting, and whenever anybody asked what the requests might be, she'd say, "Please pray for me. You know, I'm married to an unsaved husband." And everybody would say, "Yeah, we understand." And they'd pray for her. And then one day her husband got saved, and she was furious. She couldn't handle victory. She had built her life around failure. She had built her life around taking it on the chin. She had built her life around the whole business of an unsaved husband. She was the wife of an unsaved husband. That was her reason for existence. And all the business about "Pray for him; ask the Lord to save him" was a lot of nonsense. She didn't mean it at all, because once it came, she didn't want it. She didn't know how to live. She didn't want to win. She didn't want victory.
There are a lot of Christians like that today. There are a lot of Christians who have built their lives around defeat, who have built their lives around losing, who, if you talk with them, will say, "Oh, it's tough in this world as Christians." And I'm not denying it's tough, but that's all you hear out of them. You never hear a note of victory. You never hear a challenge about going forward. You never hear about winning a battle. You never hear about going for it. You never hear about a gold medal. All you hear about are the suffering, the heartaches, the failures, the defeats, and the trials. That's not the way it's suppose to be. The Scriptures say, "[Christian soldier], don't be conquered by evil but conquer evil by good." You're not to be defeated. In life's battles, you're suppose to stand fast as we read elsewhere in the Scriptures. Stand fast. Do not let the evil one win. You're to resist. You're to dig in. You're to fight, and you are to win.
Remember Paul's attitude as he expressed his whole ministry in 2 Timothy as he looked back upon it: "I have fought the fight, I have kept the faith, I have run the race, I have won. And there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord will give to me and to all those who love His appearing." He didn't have an attitude of defeat. If ever a man could have had that attitude, it would have been the Apostle Paul. Sometime this week go back and look at 2 Corinthians 6 and 11, and look at the list of things that Paul had to face: floating around a night and a day in the deep, beaten with rods 5 times by the Jews, stoned at Lystra (and that doesn't mean any other way than by stones. You have to explain that these days), left in a pile of stones as though he were dead. The Apostle Paul, however, didn't complain about these things. What did he say? "I fought the fight, and I won by the grace of Jesus Christ." You're to be a winner. You're not to be a loser in this battle with evil. You're to win, and you can win.
You say, "This all sounds interesting, but you're talking like a Christian ought to be a pretty aggressive person." He ought to be the most violent person in all the world. He's a man of utter violence Biblically speaking. He's a person according to the Bible who is to tear down strongholds. He's to defeat the enemy. He's to take him captive. He's to have a weapon in one hand and a weapon in the other hand, not just one but one in every hand. That's the way he's described by Paul in Corinthians. He's a violent person. You say, "I thought the Bible teaches to turn the other cheek." It sure does, but turning the other cheek is the most violent, the most aggressive thing that you could ever do. It is not passive. There's too much thinking about Christianity as doormatism where you lie down like a doormat and say, "Okay, go rub your boots on my back." That's not the picture. That's not even what turning the other cheek means.
Here we're told, "Don't be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good." You are to overcome evil, not draw a truce with evil--some uneasy kind of truce like that steward who buried his money and said, "I got everything that I was given." You're suppose to double it. You're suppose to get more in return. You're suppose to win. Not even a truce with evil--some 39th parallel, some uneasy truce where the other guy isn't going to keep it, and you're really going to lose anyway. You're to go out and personally, individually where you are, where you live, in your particular battles with evil--you are to gain ground and win. This doesn't mean the church is going to overcome the world before Christ returns. It isn't going to. But it means you personally as an individual are suppose to be winning. And when you win, you've got to do it God's way. You are not to be conquered by evil, but you are to conquer evil by good.
When someone attacks you, you've got to use God's method of responding, which is the most violent, the most aggressive, the most powerful way of handling evil there ever could be. God's method is not to return evil in kind. That's why so many Christians are defeated. That's why so many Christians are failing. That's why so many Christians are going down under the attack of the evil one, because they are doing in response what is done to them. But that's not God's way. You don't return evil with evil. You don't conquer evil by doing more evil. How could you? If you do evil in return--if somebody spits at you and you spit back, if somebody curses you and you curse back, if somebody does harm to you and persecutes you and you try to get even with him, you're just spreading more of the same. You're not conquering evil at all. You've only joined the forces of evil. That doesn't conquer it. But evil, as powerful as it is, is not anything compared to the weapons that God has given to you. He has given to you weapons that are far more powerful than all the weapons of the evil one. He has given to you not the carnal weapons of man's warfare, but He has given to you good. You are to do good to those who persecute you. You are to do good to those who do evil to you. And you are to overcome the evil that they do by the good that you do in return. Only good is stronger than evil. Only light is more powerful than darkness. The darkness seems to pervade, but just let the sun rise and the darkness disappears. And no matter how hard it might try to retain itself, darkness cannot overcome light. Light is more poerful than darkness.
No wonder God's children are not winning battles, because they're using the methods of the evil one to fight back. And not only are those methods and weapons not as powerful as God's weapons, but God never trained you in the use of evil. And so you don't even know how to do it very well. You're going to lose every time. God says use good in response to evil.
If it weren't so tragic, it would look ludicrous to see Christians out there with little pop guns with a cork on the end of a string dangling down trying to fire away at the enemy when God has given them atomic bombs! That's the difference between the weapons of evil and the weapons of good. The weapons of God which are goodness in return for evil doing: turning the cheek when somebody hits you on it. These weapons of God are as different as an atomic bomb is from a pop gun. Why then are Christians out there with pop guns popping away at the enemy and hardly even injurying him?
Here's how it works just to give you one example. A Christian soldier who was in the army was having a hard time of it as a Christian. Every night he'd read his Bible in the bunk, and then he'd get down on his knees and pray. He was the only Christian in that place. And his fellow soldiers started to laugh at him and make fun of him. They'd get noisy when he started to read his Bible and when he began to pray. And because they weren't winning (as he kept on doing it), one night when he was down praying, a group of his fellow soldiers got together and beat him while he was praying with his eyes closed with their soldier boots. He couldn't see who they were because he was bowed in prayer. But the next morning those very boots that had been thrown and beat on him stood by the beds of those men who did it, shined by the man who had been praying. And that was the end of the persecution. Never again did they turn on that man. That man, instead of using evil to conquer evil, used good to conquer evil.
A woman I was counseling whose husband was going away on weekends when he should have been with her decided that, since he went away these weekends in camping, she would do something good for him instead of being furious and wining and complaining as she had been. So she started doing good. She'd pack weekend lunches. She'd put little surprises in his back pack. She would do all kinds of good things to make his weekend more pleasant. And it just changed everything in that home.
Doing good instead of evil in return for evil, a more powerful weapon than evil could ever be! Think of the cross itself. There you have the epitome of it. When Satan thought he was gaining his victory, when he thought he had defeated good, when he thought that he was in ascendancy, the very act by which he thought he was winning was turned on his very head and meant the end of his kingdom. That was the picture way back in Genesis 3:15 where we read about the beginning of this war where God predicted that the heel of Christ would be bitten by the evil one. And by that heel, He crushed the head of the serpent. The very act itself in which it seemed that evil was winning was the act that defeated it.
My friend, if you're a Christian, you don't need to lose. You don't need to be defeated. And I want you to think about your life tonight. There are some of you who know that you have been defeated. You've been living a life of defeat. You've been living a life in which you have been down dragging week after week, month after month, and year after year. You've heard a lot of preaching. You've read a lot of upbeat books. You've heard songs and sung them. But inwardly you've said to yourself, "Maybe others can do it, but I can't. Maybe Paul can do it, but I'm not Paul." Maybe one of the reasons why you've been defeated is because you have failed to open your marching orders. This week as we look at Romans 12:21, we're going to open those orders; we're going to see precisely how God says to go about doing this. We're going to look at item after item after item in a concrete fashion. (Tonight's just background.) We're going to show you how you can turn that life of defeat into a life of victory, and how you can overcome evil wherever you are no matter how powerful it may seem to be.
In the fifth chapter of the book of Romans, here is what Paul says, "Where sin abounded [and we're not denying for a moment the abounding nature of sin. It's pervasive. It touches every life], nevertheless, grace far more abounded." We don't minimize sin and its deleterious effects in life, but we maximize a Savior who is greater than all our sins. That's why you can defeat evil, because your great General has already demonstrated how, and because He has defeated evil, and because He has defeated the evil one for you so that you might also be more than conquerors. My friend, take heart and determine this night, if you're down, if you're under, if you're defeated, if you're in some miserable situation, determine that this night you will go on top.
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2023 10:58:56 GMT -5
Overcoming Evil
with Good, Part 2
by Jay Adams
Edited transcript of conference message
PDF Format | More Transcripts
We're dealing with Romans 12:13-21. And we looked at verse 21, the climax, the point to where that whole passage is moving last night. That verse says, "Don't be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good." And we're trying to see just exactly what God means by that by moving the rest of the week from verse 14 through verse 20 to reach verse 21. Now as we looked at the verse last night, we saw first of all that you are in a war. Whether you like it or not, you're in a war. God declared the war against Satan, and the war has been going on ever since the garden of Eden. Not only are you in a war, but God says you are not to lose your battles: you're not to be overcome by evil. But on the contrary, you're to win your battles with evil--conquer evil, it says. Finally, the verse tells us how: not using the weapons of carnal warfare, fleshly warfare, the world's way of winning, but to win by doing good. Conquering evil by good is the only means that is stronger than evil. Evil is very strong, and the only thing stronger that evil is good. The only thing stronger than darkness is light. The only thing stronger than hatred is love. And so what he is saying to us, then, is we've got to win.
Alright, that's where we were yesterday. Now we go back to verse 14, and we begin to move slowly all the way up to verse 21 to see how we could reach that conclusion. And I see some of you are still determined to become winners because you came back. Now this says you're going to become a winner if you do good, that is, if you love. And you can love somebody else whether you feel like it or not because love is not first a matter of feeling. And so we get into that question in a very concrete way tonight in verse 14 in which we're told to "bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." Demonstrate love with your mouth towards those who persecute you.
Tonight Paul is directing you toward one of your biggest problems, the problem of your mouth. That's right. That's what James says. He says in his book that you can go down to Sea World, and you can find dolphins that are trained, and you can find killer whales that are trained (tamed by man so that you can ride on their backs). You can find even walruses and otters and seals that are trained. You can go to the wild animal park; James says there you will find birds flying free that are tamed by man. You'll find cats even--not only dogs but cats--that can be trained. I didn't know until I went there that you could train a cat to do anything except come for food. But they've got cats doing all kinds of things. You can find even elephants that can be trained. James says every manner of beast and bird and fish in the sea can be tamed and has been tamed by man. But the tongue is a member that man can't tame. Only God can tame the tongue. You and I can't do it. It's too tough for us. Your mouth is one of your biggest problems. It certainly is one of my biggest problems. And I'm sure every one of you, if you're honest, will agree.
Well, we're talking about the mouth tonight. "Bless those who persecute you; bless and don't curse." And the first thing you've got to see here is that you are going to be persecuted. You are going to be persecuted for Christ's sake. That's axiomatic in the Bible. It's not a matter of question. It's not a matter of if you are persecuted. He doesn't say anything like that. He says, "Bless those who persecute you." He presupposes you're going to be persecuted. It's a given. After all, the Bible says elsewhere that all who live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And Jesus in John 16:3 said, "In the world you shall have persecution." And here Paul says, "Bless those who persecute you." You are going to be persecuted if you haven't been already if you're a Christian. Now there's no reason for you to be persecuted if you're not a Christian. Obviously, there's no reason, if you are on the side of Jesus Christ, for those who are opposed to Him to persecute you. You are a part of the opposite army. But those who belong to Christ, who are a minority in this world and always shall be, are going to receive severe persecution at sometime or other in their lives. Now you may say, "I'm a Christian but I've never received persecution." Well, that means one of three things. It means a) that you are not really a Christian because Jesus said to His followers, "In the world you will have persecution," or b) you're not a very good Christian. You're Christianity is so minimal, it's so hard to detect that the world hasn't found you yet so that they can get at you, or c) look out for next Thursday because it's right around the corner; it's ready to pounce on you. Every Christian at some time or other is going to suffer persecution.
Thank the Lord, however, that He didn't just say that. In John 16:33, He said, "In the world you shall have persecution, but be of good cheer, I have conquered the world." The same word, the same idea, the same concept: "I have overcome, I have conquered evil in the world." And so too can you, even though you are suffering persecution.
Now Jesus suffered persecution. And the more we are like Him, the more we will suffer the same persecution that He felt and He experienced in this world. That's the way it goes. And so you're going to have persecution from neighbors who don't like the way that you live, who don't like your witness and testimony in the community. You're going to have persecution from friends who will ostracize you, who will say things about you, who will call you a religious fanatic or a kook. You'll have friends or so-called friends who will do such things, even family members who will persecute you, family members who will laugh at you and sneer at you and say, "He's not really a part of our family. He's the queer one in our family. He's the peculiar one. He's the strange one." because you're a Christian. Business associates will go the other way, and you'll be boycotted because of your Christianity. Whatever it may be and whatever aspect of life that you are making your mark as a Christian, you will find that somebody will be after you. Somebody will begin to persecute you.
Now much of the persecution that you suffer will be verbal. And we're talking about the mouth here tonight: how your mouth responds to somebody else's mouth when somebody else's mouth is running you down in one way or another. When the persecution that you receive is verbal, how do you verbalize a response?
In many places in the world, of course, persecution is physical. Behind the iron curtain or the bamboo curtain in various sectors, people have lost their lives for being Christians. They've certainly lost their employment. They've lost any kind of credibility in their society that they might otherwise have known. They are completely ostracized in a very physical way and sometimes beaten, sometimes tortured, sometimes put in jail, sometimes isolated from family for years and years. But here, largely the kind of persecution you're going to suffer is ostracism or verbal persecution, words spoken to you or about you. And it's that that we're thinking about here tonight when it says, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse."
You're going to have to learn how to handle verbal abuse God's way. Now that's just the problem. If you don't shrink back and you do want to resist the enemy; when the enemy comes and seeks to conquer you and seeks to win the battle and seeks to persecute you verbally, how do you respond? I want you to think about somebody who is either persecuting you right now verbally or somebody who is likely to or somebody who used to. Is there somebody that you can bring to mind? If you can't or never could, you may begin to question the kind of Christianity that you're living. But some of you tonight have somebody in mind. You have some particular person or group of persons in mind who have given you a really hard time for your faith. Now let me ask you also, how have you been handling that verbal abuse? What do you do when they spit out invectives or even perhaps curse you to your face? What do you do when they say nasty things to your friends or say nasty things to others so that you can hear or when they laugh at you or when they scorn your faith? How do you handle it? Do you handle it very well, or do you handle it rather poorly? Or you don't know how to handle it at all; you just kind of go to pieces when that sort of thing happens. Or do you shrink back and crawl into your shell and forget all about your Christianity after that, at least for a long period of time? Well, you've got to learn how to handle verbal abuse God's way.
The tendency that every last one of us has because we're born with it is to give back in kind what we receive. When we are spit at verbally, we want to spit back. When somebody curses us, we want to curse them. That's down inside of every human being when he's born. He's born with a sinful nature. He's born with a nature that wants to retaliate. He's born with a nature that says, "You won't do that to me. I'll do you one better, or at least I'll get even." And so what happens? Somebody says, "John, do you know what so and so said about you?" And what do you say in response? "Yeah, well let me tell you a thing or two about him." There it is, right smack back. The very thing that you got, now you're starting to give back in kind. Or "Really, Mary, don't you think that the purple table cloths are a bit too busy for the fellowship supper?" And Mary responds, "They're not half so busy as some people who poke their noses into other people's affairs but make no effort to help." You've found your mouth saying things like that, haven't you? You've found your mouth retaliating. You found your mouth, instead of blessing those who curse, cursing those who curse. These and a hundred responses like them are natural for sinners because that's the way that sinners act.
But now you've become a Christian. And you're a Christian who is still possessed by many of the old patterns and habits that you developed because of the sinful nature that was within you. You were born with a sinful nature, and therefore, it began to manifest itself. And patterns developed, responses developed, ways of handling situations with people and circumstances developed. And these patterns and these ways that you developed, you brought all along with you into your Christian life. And now Paul says in Ephesians 4:17 you can no longer walk as the pagans and Gentiles walk. And when he speaks about walking, he's talking about our patterns of our life, the way that we go, the things that we do regularly. And he's saying all those old patterns that were wrong have to go. You can't do that anymore. And here, in the patterns that we have developed for the use of our mouths, again, Paul says they've got to go--all the old ways that you learned when you were without Christ.
There's a lot more cursing that goes on among Christians than we would like to let out. I was talking to a Christian referee who has refereed literally thousands of games between Christian colleges and schools of various sorts, Christian Bible college teams. In the crunch, he told me, the curse comes out. When the pressure gets tough, when the game gets difficult, when somebody's upset over a call, out he hears that curse comes audibly from Christian teams and Christian players time and time and time again. And if you had a way of discovering it, you'd find it under the tongue quietly uttered far more often perhaps than it's ever spoken.
This tendency is born in us as children, and very early we develop it. One of my boys, before he had any vocabulary for cursing when he was just a little tiny tot, had the capacity for cursing but had no vocabulary. And I remember so vividly one time when he was really murderously upset with somebody else. And he said to that person, "You, you, you," and he couldn't think of any curse words because he didn't know any yet. And then he came out with this: "You truck with a wheel off." The thing he loved more than anything else was a dump truck. And I guess he actually said, "You dump truck with a wheel off." That was the worse thing he could think of. And though he didn't have the vocabulary, he had the will to curse. And that was a curse, a real honest to goodness curse just as much as if he had said, "Damn you." It was a curse. We're born with that capacity., and we will manifest it.
Now what is a curse? A curse, strictly speaking, is the invoking of God's wrath and judgment upon another person. It's saying, "God, send someone to damnation. Send him to hell forever." And often we say it in one way or another whether we utter those exact words or not. We say it in one way or another in the presence of the person in order to hurt him because we want to hurt him. That's why we spit out such things as that when we're interested in hurting that other person and jabbing him back after he said something to us that we don't like. So we say it for that reason.
But it's serious business when we curse a person whether we use those very words, "go to hell" or "damn you" or whatever words we use or whether we say, "You dump truck with a wheel off." Whatever way we say it, it is serious business to curse another person. Christians ought to know that because what's in our heart is a murderous desire to see that person forever damned in the flames of hell. And a Christian ought to think about hell, even though we don't hear much about it these days in our churches anymore--and that's a tragedy. We ought to hear a lot more preaching about hell; we ought to hear a lot more preaching about judgment; we ought to hear a lot more preaching about eternal punishment than we do. All we hear about today are candy-wrapped kind of platitudes that are basically not true about how good and how wonderful and how sweet and how lovely Christians are and how great we can have it, and how many cars we can have if we just go on in our Christian life and be faithful, and all the good things we're told about by some of the hucksters that go under the name "Christian" today. But we don't hear much about hell and about damnation, and so we have gotten to the place where we don't even realize what a curse means. It's a tragic and terrible thing to curse another because it's saying, "I would like to see you burn in the flames of hell for all eternity." A Christian ought to know that. And even if we don't say it in those words, that's what's in our hearts--that same spirit, that same attitude when we utter some kind of a negative, nasty, terrible, murderous statement toward another person or about him. Sometimes we utter it under our breath or behind his back because we haven't got the courage to say it to his face.
Christ on the cross, however, when people were crucifying Him, prayed for them that they might be forgiven. Ah, you say that's Christ. Alright, Stephen prayed the same prayer. A sinful human being redeemed can do so. And were those prayers ever answered? Have you ever asked the question? When Stephen was being stoned and he prayed for forgiveness for those who were stoning him, and when Jesus was being crucified and the nails were being driven through His hands for poor sinners, guilty sinners who deserved to have themselves crucified on that cross, did God answer Christ's prayer? Did God answer Stephen's prayer? O yes, He did. On the day of Pentecost and several of those days following, the Apostle Peter got up and he said such things as this: "You with wicked hands have slain the Lord of glory. You delivered Him over to Pontius Pilate. You are the people who had cried, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him. Give us Barabbas." They were that crowd out there. And now Peter was talking to them and he said, "You...." What do we read? Thousands came to Christ on Pentecost and through those sermons following. They were pricked in their hearts. They were cut through in their hearts as the Greek says. And they said, "What must we do?" Peter told them how to be saved. Ah yeah, that prayer was answered ("Father, forgive them") not apart from the means but through the means of the Gospel. No man was ever saved any other way than through that Gospel which Peter preached on that day and which was preached in prophetic ways before the cross and has been reached ever since the cross by true servants of God, that Jesus Christ came into the world to shed His blood in the place of guilty sinners, bearing the punishment and the wrath of God, that they deserved for their sins that all who believe in Him might have forgiveness of sins and the assurance of everlasting life. That's what Peter preached on that day, and that's what those people believed. That's how they were saved in answer to Christ's prayer. And how about Stephen's prayer? And the greatest missionary of all time, the greatest preacher of all time, the Apostle Paul, was saved, the one who was standing right there, about whom Stephen was praying, a man who was holding the coats of those who were throwing the stones. Yes, God answers those prayers. God blessed because blessings were asked for by those who were being persecuted in those situations.
Can we be like that? Can you be like that? Can you learn to bless a persecutor? Can you learn to bless and not curse. You say, "Bless? I'll look like a fool if I bless people who persecute me. What do you mean? You want me to look like a fool?" Let me tell you, you probably will look like a fool if you bless those who persecute you. Let's get it real clear. No doubt about it, people are going think you're an utter fool, you're an idiot, you're stupid, you're dumb, you're a first-class fool. But do you want to look like a fool or do you want to be one? That's the issue. It's one thing to be called a fool by people who are fools and don't know that they're really the fools. In 1 Corinthians 14:10, we read about being fools for Christ's sake. And everybody knows that passage, but nobody ever quotes the context. You know what it was that made Paul a fool for Christ's sake. Look at what he says in verse 10: "We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are smart in Christ. [That was ironical.] We are weak, but you are strong. You are famous; we are infamous. Right up to this moment we go hungry and thirsty. We're naked and slapped around and wonder about homeless. And we labor with our own hands. [Get this.] When we are insulted, we bless." Paul says this very thing makes us a fool for Christ's sake. When we are insulted, when others spit out insulting words about our Gospel and about our Lord and about us, we bless. Sure they're going to call you a fool if they called Paul a fool for Christ's sake. But Scripture says if we bless instead of cursing, that we'll really be following Proverbs 26:4 when it says, "Don't answer a fool according to his folly lest you become like him." And that's what really makes a person a fool when he responds in kind, when he gives back the very same kind of nasty talk that was given to him.
But what does it mean to bless another? What is he talking about when he says, "Bless." People even take that and destroy it and say, "Yeah, I'll bless him alright." They sarcastically use even these very words in that way, and you've heard it. What does it mean? Sometimes, of course, the blessing is spoken directly to the person like the curse is. Sometimes it's spoken only to God. But to bless literally means to speak well of a person and to say something good for or about him. And that's how it's used in these passages. Indeed, in the Gospels in Luke 6:28 and in Matthew 5:44, prayer is substituted or paralleled with bless. And so when we bless another, the most fundamental thing we can do for him is the opposite of cursing him. Cursing him means asking God to damn him, and blessing means asking God to save him and give him what he needs to be a different and better person. That's what blessing him really means--to pray for him the way the Lord Jesus did when they persecuted Him, to pray for him the way that Stephen did when they persecuted him. That's what we do. We pray for our persecutors.
In Matthew 5:44-48, we have an interesting discussion. It says,
"I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in the heavens. He makes His son shine on the evil and the good and pours out rain on the just and the unjust. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Isn't that something even the tax collectors do? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Isn't that something that even the Gentiles do? So then, you must become perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."
A lot of times we quote that verse out of context, becoming mature or perfect as our heavenly Father is and becoming sons of our Father, that is, becoming like Him. How do we become perfect as God is perfect or become sons like our Father when we do good to those who do evil to us? God sends good rain, and He sends His sun upon the fields of the unjust as well as upon the just. When it rains, you don't see the rain just come up to the edge of a Christian's farm and then stop, or see a cloud over top of the unbeliever's farm and no sun ever gets through. No, God sends it on all men. There's a common good and a goodness of God that He shares even with those who hate Him. And if we want to be like our heavenly Father and we want to grow into that kind of a person who reflects His love, we must do good even to those who persecute us. And so we pray for them; we say good things to God for them, and we say good things to them.
Words are probably the most powerful, the most potent force that we possess as human beings. If you ever read James again, think about the mouth. He speaks of the tongue. He says it's like a little rudder that guides a huge ship. He says it's like a bit in a horse's mouth that takes that horse with all his power and guides him in the direction. He says it's like a little spark that can set a whole forest afire. A little thing that has powerful effect is what he's saying. That's what our tongues are like. Our mouths have powerful effects upon people. And so our Lord says you've got to get control of your mouth. You've got to learn to manage your mouth. Now can you mange your mouth? Have you learned to manage your mouth? Have you learned to handle persecution that's verbal, abuse that's heaped on you? Have you learned to handle situations without cursing, without necessarily using the words, but maybe without those sharp statements or that innuendo that you spit out with a tongue dipped in acid? Have you learned how to control that tendency to systematically dice and cube people with your tongue? Well, you're going to have to. God says here that you're to bless and not curse. And if you're going to win this war, if you're going to overcome the enemy, if you're going to win in those battles you fight with evil day by day, the first thing you've got to learn to do is to bless those who persecute you. Bless and don't curse.
You say, "How do I stop cursing?" By learning to bless. Never does the Bible tell us to get rid of something period. It always says get rid of by replacing. And what you've got to learn to do if you want to get rid of the curses, if you want to get rid of the statements that are wrong, if you want to get rid of the response that is erroneous, you've got to learn to replace it by a Biblical response. And the Biblical response is to bless, to speak good to God and to speak good to the person. Now that's simple, straightforward, clear, plain language that Paul gives us: bless instead of cursing.
That's how it is all over the New Testament. It's a simple fact, but many Christians don't know it, that the way to change is to replace, not to quit the wrong thing. That's not enough. That's the world's way. The world says if you have a bad habit, break it. But that's not right. The Bible says if you have a bad habit, you have to replace it with a good one. You have to replace it with a Biblical way of going. The Bible speaks of it as a two-factor thing: put off and put on. It's always saying put off and on. Sanctification is from sin but to righteousness. It's always the positive side that must replace the negative thing that has to go. There's no vacuum, but you must bring in the Biblical way in place of the sinful way.
I want to get this clear to you. There's a little children's joke which all of you know, which I'm not going to tell for its humor value because it has no humor value. If anybody laughs, please escort them out of the room tonight because this has no humor value, okay. Now you're going to tell the joke with me because it's such a poor joke. And I'm telling it not for its value as a humorous thing but for its structure. We're going to use the structure for a different purpose. And all of you know the joke. When is a door not a door? Answer: when it is a jar. Alright, now let's just take that. When is a blank not a blank? Answer: when it is a blank. Now we can fill in the blanks with anything. When is a liar not a liar? When is a thief not a thief? When is a cursing person no longer a cursing person? You see, we can fill anything in there and get the answer, and we've got a framework for working at it.
Now, Paul deals with a liar, and he deals with a thief in Ephesians 4. A lot of people answer the question, "When is a liar not a liar?" by saying when he stops lying. But that's wrong. He's just a liar who isn't lying. Anybody can quit lying for a while. In fact, a liar doesn't lie most of the time. You tell him, "You want something to eat?" And probably does, and he says, "Sure." He tells you the truth. He only lies under certain circumstances. But he's still a liar who's programmed to lie under those circumstances until he has been reprogrammed at that point and has developed a Biblical way of handling that situation. So when is a liar not a liar? Paul says, not when he puts off lying (that's the first half only), but when he becomes a truth teller: "Be true each one to his neighbor." Alright, so when is a liar not a liar? Answer: when he becomes a truth teller, when he puts on the new pattern, not just when he stops temporarily the old one. When is a thief not a thief? Most people answer, "When he stops stealing." Wrong, he's just thief between jobs. When is a thief not a thief? Paul says that a man must stop stealing. Yeah, he has to quit. But instead, what does he do? Instead, he must labor with his own hands and give to those who are truly in need out of those earnings. So when is a thief not a thief? Answer: when he has become a hardworking person who ministers out of what he earns to those who are truly in need. Do you see the picture? How the positive side must be put on before the person changes.
Alright, well what about this matter of persecution and cursing? How do we change from people who spit back curses to those who curse us? The answer is, when we learn to bless. When is a cursing man or woman no longer a cursing man or woman? Answer: when he has learned to bless those who persecute him. You're going to have to learn to do that. It doesn't come naturally. It doesn't come easy. It doesn't come by sitting and hoping for it. It doesn't come simply by praying. Praying is essential because we must ask the Spirit to give us the power to do it. But then we must obey, and we must work at it. We must practice blessing instead of cursing.
Now I asked you to think of somebody who has been cursing you, somebody who has been speaking negatively of you, somebody who has been verbally persecuting you. And you thought of someone earlier tonight. Now I ask you also, how do you respond to that person? Many or most of you would have to say, "Very poorly." Let's think what you could do instead. First of all, if you curse back at anyone, you need to go to God and seek His forgiveness. And then you need to turn to that person, whoever that person may be, and as much as whether you like it or not, you need to go that person and say, "I sinned against you, and I've asked God's forgiveness, and I know He's forgiven me. But I'm asking you now, will you forgive me?" You've got to go to that person and straighten that matter out and say,
"That was sin. I was wrong; I shouldn't have done that. My Lord says I must bless those who persecute. Bless and not curse. But my whole attitude was one of cursing. Even though I may not have used curse words so called, I cursed you when I spoke nastily, or I responded in kind, or I said something under my breath or to others, or I slandered you, or whatever I did. And I want your forgiveness."
That's the first thing you may have to do. And then secondly, you're to think about his needs. You're to think about him, not yourself. One of the biggest problems in this whole picture is that the person who curses back is looking upon the way that he has been hurt rather than looking at the other person who did the cursing, toward him who said the wrong thing and saying, "That person is in trouble. That person needs help. That person needs the Lord. I've got to pray for his forgiveness. I've got to pray for his salvation. I've got to say good things to him. I've got to tell him Gospel. I've got to help him out. I've got to do something for this man. He's in trouble, or he wouldn't be talking like that about me or to me."
Our focus is on ourselves when we curse back. And in an unloving way, we say, "He can't do that to me. I'll get him; I'll get even." All the focus is on us and what has happened to us. Once you begin to get your eyes off of yourself and you begin to look at him, you say,
"That man's in trouble or he wouldn't have talked that way about me. He wouldn't have talked that way to others. He wouldn't have said that to me. He needs help. Lord, help him. Save him if he's not saved, or help him if he is. What can I do to help him, and what can I say that might really be good and useful in his life?
And thirdly, I would suggest that you start working on a practical project. You're going to start becoming a blessing person rather than a cursing person. Make a list. I urge you while you're here, make a list of the nasty statements that especially get to you, the ones that rouse your ire because you've developed that kind of a pattern. You've allowed yourself to get all upset and really angry and really nasty when you hear somebody say that either to your or about you. You write down all those little nasty statements that get to you, that you've allowed to get to you. And then you work on ways to prayer for those who might make those statements in the future, just what you're going to say when you hear those statements made in the future, how you're going to pray to God, as it says, "Pray for those who persecute you," and what you're going to say to that person in response when he says those things to you, what good thing you can say, what blessing you can speak, what words that would build him up rather than tear him down. How can you respond? If you don't start working on it ahead of time in the cool of a Bible conference situation; if you're having problems with your mouth, the chances are, you'll never work on it the way you should. I urge you, I challenge you tonight, if you don't know how to manage your mouth, to start on that project right here and now.
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2023 10:59:55 GMT -5
Overcoming Evil
with Good, Part 3
by Jay Adams
Edited transcript of conference message
PDF Format | More Transcripts
Tonight we are looking at Romans 12 once again, and we are looking at verse 17. Let me read it for you. "Never return evil for evil to anyone. Plan ahead to do what is right [or fine] in the eyes of everyone." So you're supposed to overcome evil with good. That's right. So you're supposed to show love, be more concerned about the other person than yourself. That's right. Well, now how do we go about doing that? We've looked a little bit at how to do it. We've looked at how to respond to those who curse us, and we read in verse 14: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and don't curse." And here, in more general terms, we have the same thing except with a different emphasis: don't return evil for evil to anyone. Now, the first thing I want you to see in this--and this is very important--is that we have an absolute. When it says never return evil for evil to anyone, that's an absolute.
We don't have too many absolutes in the Bible. We have one more in this place in verse 19: "Never avenge yourselves...." But an absolute is a very interesting thing. It's quite handy if you're willing to accept it. A lot of people don't like absolutes. They like something that is relative, something you can get around, something you can find a loophole for, something that has to do with only certain classes or certain groups, or something that has to do with a certain situation. And that's the way many things are, even in the Bible. When the word all is used, for instance, it rarely every means ever last human being who ever lived. It usually means all of a certain group. Well, here we have an absolute, and an absolute is very handy because it solves lots of problems in one fell swoop. When you have an absolute statement, it means you don't have to sit down and worry about when it applies, to whom it applies, where it applies, or any of the rest of it, because you know if it's an absolute statement, it always applies. It applies to everybody in all situations at all times. And that's what we've got here, an absolute. And when it says, "Never return evil for evil to anyone," that's what it's saying--never, never, never, ever.
Well, I hope you get that point because there are always people saying, "Yes, but...." And then they have some particular situation that they think is an exception to the rule. But there are no exceptions to the rules when we have absolutes. When it says, "Never," and it says, "Never return evil for evil to anyone," it's giving us an absolute statement that has no exceptions whatsoever--ever. But you say, "How about...." No, I don't even want to hear it. "But you don't know what I'm going to say." I don't care to know what you're going to say. "But why don't you want to hear it?" Because this is an absolute statement; there aren't any exceptions. "But you don't know my situation." I don't need to know your situation because when you have an absolute, it always, always applies. And so here is something you can write down. You can put it in words of fire and etch it right smack in the middle of your soul and say, "I can never return evil for evil to anyone--never!" You know, that ought to give you a lot of relief. You don't have to sit around thinking of excuses. You don't have to think of ways of getting around this. You don't have to sit and sweat about the exceptions because there aren't any exceptions.
Now, this is an absolute rule. But all of us have problems with that rule. A lot of us have the attitude at times, "I'll give him what he deserves." They think that's a winning attitude. And remember, we've been talking about how to be winners, how to be conquerors of evil, how to win out the battle over the evil one. That isn't the way to win. The way to win is not to try to get even. Getting even is at best a stalemate because you haven't done anything more than the other person has done. But we're not even supposed to come to some stalemate with evil. We're to conquer evil. And conquering evil means you've got to be better than evil. You've got to be stronger than evil. You've got to have something that's greater than evil, that really overcomes evil, that does conquer evil. Evil isn't going to conquer evil. And so we may never return evil for evil to anyone.
Early in the game, children begin to think in this wrong, unbiblical way. Defending themselves, they say such things as, "But she pulled my hair first, and I want my handful." That's the attitude a lot of people grow up with; they never change--never any different. O, maybe it's not hair pulling, but it's the same basic attitude. In this, there is a kind of a perverted sense of righteousness in which somebody is saying, "It's only fair. I want to even up the score." We're going to see when we get to verse 19 that it's not your business to even up the score. It's not your business to deal with the other person's wrong. It's your business to overcome evil wherever it attacks you by returning good instead of evil.
Now, some people go to great lengths and tremendous effort and spend long hours thinking about how they can get even with others. It's amazing at how hard some people work at this. I read a few years back about a fellow who paid his alimony to his wife every month in nickels. First of all, he had to think about that. And that must have taken a lot of thought just to come up with that scheme. Then he had to go to the bank every month, maybe a dozen banks to get that much money, and he put it all in a wheelbarrow, and he would take it over to his former wife's house and dump it out. Now that took time, that took energy, that took thought, that took planning, that was hard work. I reckon it took him at least five hours a month to do that kind of thing. People will go to great lengths just to "get even" (pay back evil for evil). Well, we're not allowed to retaliate.
God talks about this when He talks about love. In the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, we read in the last part of verse 5 that love doesn't act in an ugly way, isn't self-seeking, isn't easily irritated, and doesn't keep record of wrong. These are the kind of people that keep record of wrong, the kind of people who store up those things in their mind, and they say, "Now I've got this person. I know how much he did wrong to me: item 1, item 2, item 3, item 4, item 5, item 6. Now, let's see, item 1 in response to 1, 2 in response to 2, 3 in response to 3, 4 in response to 4, 5 in response to 5, and 6 in response to 6." They're going to get even on every score, every count. But you're not even supposed to remember the wrongs, let alone list them, or supposed to find out how you can respond to every one of them. But there are people just like that. I've seen people at the fellowship supper who take an ice cream scoop and scoop the potatoes out and put them on a scale and weigh them just to make sure that the scoop wasn't a little fuller than the last one. There it is on a scale weighed out so that nobody can complain. They've got to have everything exact. And there are people just like that when it comes to getting even, as they call it, with somebody else. It's got to be settled exactly, evenly with that person. God told you you may not pay back evil for evil to anyone. You are not to get even. Proverbs 26:4 says, "Answer not a fool according to his folly." That means if you do the same thing to him or equally as bad a thing as he did, you'll be like him, and you'll be a fool just as much as he is. But then is says in the next verse, 26:5, "Answer a fool according to his folly." Now, is that a contradiction? No, what it means is, answer him Biblically. Meet his curse with blessing; meet his evil with good so he won't boast and go on in his foolish ways. You're to meet his evil act with a good act.
"Okay," you say, "that's fine, but how?" Alright, now we get down to one of the most practical things of the week. And this is the part that I'm looking forward to. Look at the second part of the verse: "Plan ahead to do what is fine in the eyes of everyone." Now, most of your translations don't have "plan ahead" in it. In fact, probably none of your translations have that. And that's a shame because that's exactly what the Greek word means. The Greek word is "to think about ahead of time," and that means to plan out something beforehand. What have you got, some of you? Let's hear what you have. "Be careful." What a terrible translation. Read another one. "Respect." That has nothing to do with it. "Take thought of." That's getting a little bit in the direction. "Provide." Provide in the old English sense of the word is "to see beforehand." Vide comes from the same root as visor (what you see out of), and pro is beforehand. So that had the meaning once, but it no longer has the meaning of planning ahead. What else have you got? "Have regard." Not too good either. It's "Plan ahead." It's just exactly what we mean by plan ahead (to think about ahead of time so as to plan what you're going to do). And to lose that in the passage is to loose the key to how you can implement this very important absolute command of God.
You are not to try to respond to evil on the spot. That's why most people fail. Most people fail because, in the heat of the battle, they try to come up with some response, and that's the last time to try to think about a response to evil, a good response, because you're all upset, and you're angry, and perhaps your toes have been smashed, and you may be tired, and you may be weary. Who knows what's going on. But the last time to think about responding to evil in the right way is when you're in the battle itself. It's just like the last and worse time to think about punishment for a child is when you're in the battle with a child. You've got to think of the punishments long beforehand and not try to think of them when the problem is right at hand because it's always going to be a bad punishment. And you'll probably back down on it later on, and if you do, then you've taught the kid you don't mean what you say.
Now, this says, "Plan ahead to do what is fine in the eyes of everyone." We have a God who planned ahead. We have a God who planned the way of salvation beforehand. "Before the foundation of the world," we read that Jesus Christ was the one who was slain in the sight of God. It was planned. His death was planned, redemption was planned, whom He would save was planned, eternal life was planned. Everything was planned ahead of time. And that's why God's program never fails, because He plans what He's going to do, and He plans His work, and then He works His plan. Some of us who are created in the image of God think that we can go without planning when God doesn't even go without planning. What a foolish thought on our part. You have to learn to plan if you're going to respond well to evil doing instead of poorly to evil doing. That means you have to take time out when you're feeling sharp, when you're keen, when you not down underneath it, when you're not angry, when you're not upset, when you're not tired. Take some good quality time and sit down and pray and think about Biblical principles and think about the problems that you're facing and the difficulties out there with people and the evil that's coming your way from them and plan. According to Biblical principles, plan how you will respond to that evil with good.
If somebody has wronged you, what will you do in response? You can't just sit there. You can't moan, you can't whine, you can't gripe, you can't get nasty, you can't get mean. You've got to return good for evil. Now, what good are you going to return? That's what you need to know. In the clutch, you'll never come up with good response, so plan ahead. You need to put as much thought and effort into planning how to respond to evil with good as that man did who thought about how he was going to get even with his wife and thought about those nickels that he would pour out on her doorstep every month. Planning means hard work, planning means creativity, planning means time, planning means effort, planning means putting all you've got into it until you come up with good answers and good solutions. And a lot of people aren't willing to do that kind of work. They'd rather get by with a shoddy piece of work. They'd rather just get by. They'd rather just do any old thing. But God isn't satisfied with that. He says, "You plan ahead. I want you working at that so that it comes out well."
Look at what Paul says in another place. In 1 Thessalonians 5:15, here's what we read: "See to it that no one returns evil for evil, but rather, always seek ways of doing good to one another and to all people." He's talking about the same thing. And he repeats what he says over here in slightly different words but making the very same point. And it's interesting when he says "seek ways of doing good one to another," that word seek is a very powerful word in the original. It's a word that means to pursue as a hunter pursues his prey. It is a word that's used of a hunter. And what does a hunter do? Does he go out into the woods if he's after a deer and go out and shoot a couple of rounds of ammunition and say, "Well, I got my ammunition discharged and didn't hit anything. I guess I'll go home."? Not on your life, he builds a blind; he thinks about where they're going to be. People drive the deer in his direction. He plans everything out ahead of time. He knows exactly what he's going to do if he sees one. And he goes after him and he seeks him and he hunts for him. And he works at it and he keeps at it until he finds one. A hunter pursues his prey, and that's what this word means. Pursue those ways of responding to evil with good. You are to work at it.
Christians don't like to work anymore. They don't like to do anything hard. We'd all like to have instant holiness, and we'd like to have it on Thursday morning at 2:00 am so we didn't feel the transition from the previous situation. We'd like to have it while we're asleep and wake up with it. It doesn't happen that way. Discipline yourselves for Godliness is what the Scriptures say. And the Scriptures are telling you tonight in 1 Thessalonians and here in Romans that you've got to work hard at finding ways, seeking ways, pursuing ways, planning ahead for ways to respond to evil by doing good. That may even involve in certain cases to learning how to do it--sitting down with another Christian and role-playing a circumstance, saying, "Look, I'll be the boss; you be me. Now here's how the boss thinks.... How would you respond to him?" The other person says, "Na, that wouldn't work too well. Let's on work on something else." And you work and you work and you work until you come up with something, and you say, "Ah, that's good! We've got it." You've really got to work. And I think a lot of our problems in our Christian lives are that we're lazy. We want everything easily. We want everything just like that. But you've got to pursue--hunt down those ways. You've got to plan ahead to do good.
Now I want you to notice something else. In this verse, it says "Plan ahead to do what is"--do all your versions say "good"? Well, they should say "fine" because there are two different words for "good" in the Bible. The one word is in verse 21, which we already looked at. That means good over against bad, good over against evil. But this is a different word. This is a word that goes beyond that and means do something well with finesse, do it finely, so people say, "Boy, that was a fine party. That was a fine experience. That was a great time we had." That's another problem with Christians. We're willing to do something just to get it done, but we never put a spin on the ball. We never give it that extra touch. We do it so tastelessly so often. Let me tell you right now, if you've ever been to a beautiful wedding, I mean a beautiful one; if you've ever been to a fine party or a lovely banquet, none of those things ever happen without prior planning and effort and thought and time expended by somebody. Somebody planned for weeks and weeks or months ahead of time for that wedding so that every touch of color was just right. You don't put together a beautiful or fine experience of any sort by just doing it all at the last moment and shoveling everything in quickly just to get by. There are some books out now on foreign languages that are entitled, Getting by in German, Getting by in French, Getting by in Chinese. And that's okay because most of us will never learn how to use those languages with finesse. But there's no getting by in this thing as far as God is concerned. He says, "Look, don't return evil for evil to anyone." Never do it. That's an absolute.
Plan ahead to do what's fine in the eyes of everyone. Do it with finesse. Do it in such a way that even the world has to look at it and say, "Man, those Christians are doing it right. When they do something, they do it right." And you know what so often is true about Christians when we do anything, we do it in such a sloppy way. We've got so much sloppy agape, I don't know what we're going to do about it all. This says do good in such a way that it's fine, fine in the eyes of everybody, not only do believers look at the way you handle evil and say, "He's really got it together," but the unbeliever looks aghast and says, "Man, those Christians, you can't keep up with them." Usually Christians are there with too little, too late, and it's sloppy. Instead, we ought to be out front pointing the way, doing it so well that the world comes over to see how we're doing it and says, "We want to learn." Take Christian schools, they ought to be so far superior to anything in the world that they ought to have teachers come up all the time to learn how to do it. We ought to do it with finesse. Everything we do ought to be done that way. This word kelos (fine) is more than just good. It means to do it with finesse. So when you plan ahead to respond to evil with good, it's not just good put out there on the plate--raw bloody meat thrown down as if you were feeding tigers. But the good that you give to other person in well-seasoned, cooked to a turn, garnished all about, served by candle lights. It's done with finesse. And when the world sees the way you respond, it knows that you have a real incentive to do things well. And what is your incentive? Not only the winning of that other person, but far more than that, the pleasing of your Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one whom you please when you do things well.
And it says do what is fine in the eyes of everyone. Do people become our standard then? No, that's not what it's saying. The Bible's your standard. What the Bible tells you, do it in such a fine way that even unbelievers are amazed, and they have to say it was done well. Unbelievers are not our standard, but they are our concern. And we ought to be so concerned about the way we represent our Lord before unbelievers that whatever we do, and especially when we're returning good for evil is done in such a way that the He is honored, even in the eyes of unbelievers who can't find anything to pick apart about what we've done. Has someone been cheating you in business? You need to take some time to plan some really fine responses to that. Has somebody been gossiping about you? All that energy that you would normally as a sinful response put into tearing that other person down in eyes of other--let all that energy and time and effort be put into how you will do good to that person who has been gossiping about you, and how you will do it with finesse. Are there any rooms for any exceptions on any of this? No, remember, this is an absolute. Never, it says, never return evil for evil to anyone. There isn't a single exception to that rule.
So, my friend, do you want to be a winner? Do you want to win the battle over evil? It's going to take effort, it's going to take commitment, it's going to take time. By the way, the word commitment is a word that's never spelled out. Everybody talks about it; nobody knows what he's talking about. Let me tell you at least four things that I think belong to the word commitment. Maybe there are more, but at least four. You understand what it is that you are giving yourself to. You can't commit yourself very intelligently to something you don't understand thoroughly. So you have to have an understanding of whatever it is you're committing yourself to. Not only do you have to have an understanding, you have to have a desire to do it to have a real commitment. And that desire does not mean you have to like it. It means you have to desire to do it because you know your Lord wants you to do it. And you desire to please Him, so you're going to do it whether it seems pleasant to you or not. You may not like to spend the time and effort and exert the creative thought that is necessary to do a fine piece of work in responding to evil as this says. You may not like to plan ahead the way this says. You may not like to hunt down those answers as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:15. But you desire to please your Lord, and He says do it, so you're going to do it because you want to please Him. Now, the third thing that commitment involves is ability to do it. A lot of people really understand what they need to do; they desire to do it, but they really don't know how to do it. We've been talking about that here tonight. You know what to do. And the last thing is you have to be willing to put the time and effort into it to get it done. That means you have to actually take your schedule at times and block out time to do it. Not just to have good intentions, but to actually write it down, put it on the schedule, and then follow that schedule. And I'm sure there are some of you here tonight who know that you need to give time for this thing, you know there are some people you need to respond to, you know you couldn't do it with finesse unless you took the time, just as you would have to take the time to do a really fine job for wedding or a party or a dinner or a conference or anything else. This conference didn't get put together without somebody spending a lot of time ahead of time thinking about it. And you know you've got to do that, but you'll never do it unless you find time for it on your schedule. That's why I'm saying to you right now take out a pencil, and you take out a paper before you leave this room and write down either the time or the fact that you need to find that time as soon as you get your schedule. If you don't do that, you're never going to obey this commandment. Commitment involves those four things. Understanding it, desiring to please the Lord in following His Word, ability or know how and willingness to give the time and effort required to get it done. That's what I mean when I talk about commitment. It may involve more, but it certainly involves at least those four things.
You've got to be committed to the Word of God in anything God commands you to do, and here is one that's going to take commitment. Aren't you glad that Jesus Christ didn't even the score with Satan, that He didn't try to get even with Satan. Remember at the beginning of this message, we were talking about getting even with other people and how this forbids it. No, He didn't get even with Satan. He triumphed over Him! If I have three kings in checkers and you have two, and you get one more, we're even. That isn't what Jesus did, and that isn't what He wants you to do. He wants you to triumph over evil, conquer evil, win over evil, defeat evil wherever it attacks you. And you'll never do it until you're committed in the full sense of that word to planning ahead about how you will respond in a fine way with finesse to evil. Thank God that Jesus Christ did far more than get even.
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2023 11:00:50 GMT -5
Overcoming Evil
with Good, Part 4
by Jay Adams
Edited transcript of conference message
PDF Format | More Transcripts
We've been looking at Romans 12, verses 14 to 21. And the first night we looked at the last verse: "Don't be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good." And we said that God wants His children to win the battles with evil that they fight in they're lives individually. Paul said, first of all, you're going to fight. You're in a war. You didn't declare it; you didn't ask for it. God declared that war, and He put you in that war. And whether you like it or not, somebody's going to be shooting at you. So you had better get ready for the battle. And He said when you do, first of all, you must not let evil win. Do not be conquered by evil. But on the other hand, you must win. You must conquer evil. And in doing so, you must use God's method: conquer evil by doing good; don't return in kind.
Then last night we went back to the beginning of this section and started with verse 14, and started talking about what you had to do to win those battles because each of these verses moves on toward that conclusion that we find in verse 21. And we saw there that God was saying you better learn how to manage your mouth. We all have problems with that mouth of ours. And He said one of the things you're going to find in this battle with evil that you must do is to learn how to bless those who persecute you. "Bless and don't curse." It's so easy to spit back what was spit at you. It's so easy to say that sharp word to those who said the sharp word first. But a soft answer turns away wrath, and a blessing is what God requires instead of a curse. We talked about what a blessing means and what a curse means last night.
Tonight we move on to verses 15 and 16. If we had one more day in the week, we'd take each one separately. But in order to come out evenly, we'll put the two together tonight and look at them as one. In verses 15 and 16, Paul says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Think in harmony with one another, not being haughty, but associating with the lowly. Don't become conceited." Now, you may ask yourself the question as you hear those words, what do those verses have to do with this business of overcoming evil? What do they have to do with battles in this life with evil, with how you fight those battles? And at first, as I began to look at them myself, I wondered about that. And then it became very clear, no man is an army. You know that book No Man Is an Island. But we're thinking tonight, no man is an army. You are not an army. You can't go it alone. If you're going to fight the Lord's battles, and you're going to fight them successfully, you're going to have to do it as part of a team, an army that works together. And so before he tells us a lot of things we must do, he makes it clear that we're going to do what we do individually as part of an overall plan and an overall battle that's going on and an overall structure for opposing and conquering evil. God put you in the army. And these verses say you are in the army now, and you must learn to cooperate and operate and do all that you do in conjunction with others who are in that army. You cannot be a lone wolf. And so this tells us a little bit about how to work with others, how to work with other believers in this task of overcoming evil.
As we begin, Paul says these interesting words: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." The first thing he makes clear about this army is that you are to be a concerned member of that army. You must be interested, deeply interested in the other soldiers who are fighting with you. You've got to care about them. You've got to be concerned about them. You've got to think beyond yourself and your nap sack and your helmet and your gun to the man next to you and the one beyond him and those on this side. You have an obligation of concern and care for others who are fighting with you. What kind of an army is it where there is no such concern, no such comradery, no such concern for the man who is out there stuck in a place where he can't get out of it and where somebody has to go out there and drag him back to a place of safety? What kind of an army is it where every man is out for himself, and out for himself alone? I'll tell you what kind of an army it is. It's an army that's going to lose. It's an army that's going to be defeated because the only kind of army that really makes it is an army that functions together where there's concern one for another. I'm not going to go into all the World War 2 and other kinds of wars. I'm not going to go into stories about people who did things for one another. You've heard enough of them. But you know as well as I do that what makes an army effective is where people are in it together. They're really together in that army, fighting side by side, caring about other. That's what creates morale. And morale is absolutely critical in an army. When you've got low morale, you've got people bickering and fighting with each other. When you've got deception, when you've got gripes and complaints, when you've got people who are upset all the time, you have an army that's going to be defeated. And when the thing that brings morale to an army more than anything except the food is when men really care for each other.
This is a very interesting statement: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." When I first began to look into counseling, which is something I've had a little interest in over the years, I discovered that Freud and a number of others thought that you should not get involved emotionally with your counselee; that you should take a white-coated approach (a professional approach), take people in a clinical way and handle them as though they were objects rather than persons with whom you become involved. That always seemed wrong. Then one day I looked at this verse and I said I know it's wrong. It's got to be wrong because this says rejoice with people who rejoice and weep with people who weep. And it wasn't long before in our counseling sessions when somebody sitting in the next counseling room next door might hear us shout and yell, "Wonderful!" or "O, don't tell me!" or something like that because we really decided to care about people rather than just approach them as bodies.
There's a great difference between talking about people and actually caring about them. And sometimes the approach we use at counseling is misunderstood drastically. People who talk a lot about getting fury with others and rubbing up against them, and all that kind of thing in developing relationships, and who work at this, rarely do get close to others when they work at it that way. It's kind of like this: here's a fellow down underneath his automobile, and one of these fury types (these people who work hard at being empathetic and who work hard at building relationships) comes along and sees this fellow under the automobile and he says, "What's going on?" The guy says, "I'm pulling on this wrench and I can't get this nut loose." The guy on top who talks a lot about getting close to people and who says a lot of things that he thinks will develop relationships between him and others says, "I feel what you feel; I lie where you lie. I understand what you're going through." And the guy underneath says pretty soon, "Hey, look, I've got enough trouble with this nut." Now, one of our types comes along and says, "Hey, what's going on?" And the guy says, "I can't get this nut loose." Our guy says, "Just a minute." And he takes his coat off and he gets underneath the car and he pulls on the wrench with the guy. Now, it's not the one who talks about empathy; it's the one who shows it who is really empathetic. We don't talk much about it. We just get in there and we sweat in our counseling sessions. We work hard at getting to the roots of the problems and finding what God says about that problem and bringing God's solution to it as quickly as possible.
Early in the game, I wrote a book called Competent to Counsel, and in there, incidentally without realizing it, I mentioned something about a desk once. And there are types who will look at every little aspect of what you say, and so questions began to come back to me in Q & A periods in which people started to say things like, "I see you use a desk. What does that desk symbolize?" I had never thought about what a desk symbolized before until people started asking questions like that. But I went back and said, "What does it symbolize?" And I realized it symbolized work. We work hard in counseling. We really work at it. We have a telephone there, and we use it. If we don't have data we need, we get on the phone, punch up a few numbers, and get the data. Or if somebody needs to make a commitment, we punch up the number and let them go make a commitment. "Here, talk with that person; make a commitment with him. Confess that sin to him or whatever you need to do." We get right on the horn and we use that telephone. And we take notes and give books and pamphlets. And we use our Bibles and we open them up. Man, I'll you, we need a desk because we work hard in our counseling sessions. I've always wondered about these guys who don't have a desk. I wonder what they do. They must work hard. I wouldn't want to think they didn't work hard. But they must all be acrobats because their able to put a phone on one knee with a scratch pad underneath, where you're taking notes....
In counseling, you listen and talk and try to be empathetic, not really knowing that empathy is something you show, not something you talk about. Now, an army, where people really rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, is not just an army in which people talk about that or in which they try in some way to get their emotions in gear. But their emotions of weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice are only natural to the situation because they have so entered into the other person's problems that they can't help but rejoice; they can't help but weep; they can't help but get emotional because they're involved with other people. That's the point. This isn't something you do as a technique. This something you do because you can't help it. It's something you do because you're so deeply involved in that person's problem, you so deeply care about that person that you feel the tears welling up within, and you can't stop them. This is something where you laugh and you are thrilled to the bottom of your soul because you can't help but be so. Because you've been so deeply involved with that person that when the good thing happened, it's just as so it happened to you. Now that's what Paul's talking about. If you want to fight a battle and you really want to serve the Lord Jesus Christ as you should, you need to get involved in the lives of other people. There's no white professionalism in the Christian church. Tear that white coat off and throw it away. A lot of people don't want to get involved in other people's lives, however. If you're one of those tonight, and you want to go it alone, and you want to be an individual on your own who never gets next to anybody else and never deeply penetrates into another person's life or allow that other person to penetrate into his and have interpersonal relations on any level of depth, you are a hindrance to the work of the Lord and the battles that need to be fought. You're going to have to be involved with other believers around you who are struggling and fighting in the same battle, in the same war that God has called you to fight in.
Empathy is misunderstood today. A lot of people think that empathy is sympathetic agreement. Nothing could be further from truth than that. The woman who allows another woman to call her up on the phone and hangs on that phone for an hour and a half to two hours everyday with that woman, allowing the woman to pour all kinds of garbage into her ear about how bad her husband is and how awful he treated her and how everything is wrong is not really being empathetic at all. That person is not only hurting the other individual, but hurting herself because she's becoming a garbage can into which all that garbage is being poured. And secondly, she's not helping that woman over there, even though the other woman every time says, "O, I feel so much better after talking to you everyday. Thank you for letting me talk." Sure she feels better because she got the pressure out of her system, she got it off her chest. But it's obvious that it didn't help her because she's back on the phone again tomorrow. It's just like that priest who stood daily offering the same sacrifice that could never take away sin. She never hangs up and says, "It's over." Everyday she stands daily on the telephone offering the same old stuff that never gets settled.
Let me tell you how to really be empathetic. To be empathetic is not to be in agreement. You see, that's the problem. A lot of people think that empathy means to be in agreement. And they talk about seeing the problem the way the other person sees it. That's exactly wrong. Carl Rogers says you've got to so see the problem the way other people see it that you enter into his frame of reference. Forget your own values, forget your own beliefs, forget your own ideas. Forget everything and see everything the way the other person does, and be so empathetic, as he sees empathy, so accepting, so non-judgmental of the other person that you are willing to see whatever he says is absolutely correct from his point of view. You've got to accept his frame of reference. That's wrong, all wrong--nothing right about it! You must never let go of the values that God has given to you. You must never say that another person is going to set your values for you. Your values must be from the Word of the Living God, from the Scriptures and from nowhere else. And when you enter into another person's problem, you must see that problem as he is not succeeding and solving that problem on his own. You must see that problem and enter into it even more deeply than he has so that you see the problem in a way that he does not. You must see that problem the way God sees that problem. You must see that problem through the eyes of the Biblical writers and through the words of Scripture, not out of the frame of reference of the person who is not solving his problem, but out of the frame of reference of God's Word. That's the way you've got to enter into that problem. And if he were seeing the problem God's way, he would know the way out. But since he doesn't know the way out and since he has asked you for help or since he needs help whether he's asked or not, obviously, he does not see that problem as God sees it. And so real empathy, true, Biblical empathy is empathic disagreement, not empathetic agreement. You cannot help another person until you're willing to say, "Yes, I see what you are involved in, but...." That word but becomes the helping point where you can begin to get traction with the another person and begin to move somewhere, where you begin to do something to help him. Until you can come with an alternative, until you can come with a "but", until you can come with God's alternative, God's way that he is missing, you have nothing to say to that person. And that's why that woman is continually on that phone because all you're doing is saying, "O, yes, mine too." You're not helping her a bit. You want to know how to get two free hours every afternoon? You start telling her,
"Okay, now, I've been doing the wrong thing listening to you. I want you're forgiveness for it because I've been sinning against you and your husband and against God letting you day after day tell me all the wrong things your husband has been doing. That's obnoxious, and I've been a part of it, and I've been wrong. I hope you'll forgive me for sinning that way against you and your husband and against God. But also, I want to do something else. I want to stop talking about men's problems; I want to start talking about God's solutions."
You start focusing on the Biblical solution to the problem rather than focusing on the problem. You don't need any more data on the problem. If you needed to gather data, that would be the first thing you'd do, but you've been taking data for 16 weeks. It's about time you started working on the problem in terms of solutions, not in terms of what he did last. And either that woman will take God's solution and use it and solve her problem in which case she won't have to hang on the phone two hours everyday. Or if she's not interested in solutions and only interested in talking about problems, and you keep insisting on solutions every time she calls, she'll start calling somebody else. What you need to do is focus on God's solution to the problem. Real empathy is empathetic disagreement. Until you can bring a deeper solution to the problem and a deeper understanding of it, a Biblical understanding of it, God's understanding of it into the circumstance, you have not come to a place to be helpful to another person. And so when you rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, it's because you have really entered into the problem; you've really sweat over the Scriptures trying to find out what God says about it until you have reached a Biblical solution to offer to the person in need.
You can probably gather a prayer meeting easily if somebody is in trouble. We don't have too much trouble getting people to pray for those who weep. But it's pretty hard to gather a prayer meeting to give thanks and rejoice with those who rejoice. It's easy enough when Joe loses his job, for everybody to get together and pray that Joe will find another job. You weep with those who weep. But what about when Joe gets a fantastic raise and you didn't? That's not so easy. That's hard to rejoice over. And yet the Lord's work is going to prosper because Joe's a tither and more. Joe's going to prosper; his family has desperately needed it. When Joe gets a raise and you didn't and you can rejoice, you know that you really care. If you get envious or bitter or resentful or say, "Why didn't I get one? I deserve it equally as well or even more than Joe," there's something wrong with your so-called empathy.
"Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." It's right to weep. It's right to really cry. A lot of Christians don't think that anymore. It's a strange breed of cats that's grown up in the Christian world these days. Have you met any of those cats around? They go around with a big Cheshire cat smile saying, "Praise the Lord anyway. My daughter just was raped yesterday. Praise the Lord." That nauseates me; that makes me sick--I mean that. That's awful. That's some kind of unnatural stoicism. That's not Christianity; that's Christian science. Christianity knows that Jesus Christ wept at the grave of Lazarus. He was deeply involved in His friend's tragedy over that loss. It's not wrong to weep. We ought to thank God even for the tragedies of life because somehow or other He is working in them to bring good out of every tragedy. And we know that we can give thanks even in problems as Philippians 4 tells us. But that is not a thanksgiving that ignores the tragedy and the awful consequences of sin. Sin has wretched consequences. Sin brings misery. We don't act like some kind of weirdoes running around with a sneer on our face that supposed to look like a smile saying, "Praise the Lord anyway." That's horrendous and totally unchristian. It's through tears that we say,
"O Lord, it hurts badly. O Lord, I don't understand how You're going to work good out of this. I don't what Your purposes are in bring this, but I believe You're a sovereign God. You're in control of all things, and You have promised that all things work together for good to those who love God who are called according to His purpose. And I'm one of Your children, and You have brought me into the family, and my nose is too close to the problem now and it hurts too bad right now, and the tears are welling up in my eyes and in my heart too much now to understand or appreciate how You are doing it, but I believe You. I believe You're working it all together for good, and so, Lord, I know that goods going to come and Your name's going to honored and Your Son's going to be blessed, but I don't see it and I don't feel it right now, but I believe it. So, Lord, I thank you even in the midst of this heartache and this trial and this suffering and this grief and this sorrow for what You're going to do. There's a lot different attitude when the eye of faith looks beyond the problem and the heartache and the sorrow. It also experiences the heartache and the sorrow from the one who pretends that there's no heartache anywhere, anyway, and that sin really has no bitter consequences upon the one who commits it or upon others around them who had nothing to do with it but must suffer because of it. Sin does have bitter, bitter consequences, and we dare not deny that pain.
You're a part of a whole, so verse 16 says, "Think in harmony with one another, not being haughty, but associating with the lowly. Don't become conceited [or don't become wise in your own mind]." You're a part of a whole; you're a part of an army. You need the other member; you need the other parts of the body. Just like Paul said the eye needs the ear, and the hand needs to toe, and toe needs the foot, and the foot needs the ankle and so on; they need you. No man can fight a war alone. Your efforts are a part of an overall battle plan and battle strategy and battle formation that is going on across a wide front. What you're doing is not just what you're doing. What you're doing is part of what a whole army is involved in doing. And whenever you lose sight of the rest of the army and the whole picture and become only interested in the one little tree or the twig on the tree and forget the forest, you're in trouble, and you're a problem. And the army is in trouble because of you because you need to be coordinated in whatever you do with other Christians. It says that you need to have the same mind or think in harmony with other Christians.
You've got to get a battle program and a battle plan and a strategy that's understood by all, where everybody understands and everybody's in agreement and everybody's working together on it. Now, the Bible provides the plan, the order, the strategies, the methods, and all the rest. That's the only thing that can pull us together. That's the only thing that can bring unity in thought and practice. That's the only thing that can bring the army to a place where it functions as a whole--the Bible. And to the extent that we agree on anything, we function together. To the extent that we disagree on what the Bible says, we have problems among one another. That's why we must continually be in this Book until more and more we share I own ideas and we shed the ideas of the world, and we shed all these eclectic views and get down to the place where we agree more and more because we are spending more and more time in the Word. Only the Word will bring people together.
One of the interesting things about the counseling we've been doing is to see the wide swath of background of people who are interested in it. And the reason why I think we see so many people is because it's Biblical. I'm that there's a wide background of people who follow and who support and who are encouraged to support Family Radio. And the reason why is because it focuses on the Scriptures. And unless the focus is on the Scriptures, there will be dissension, there will be disorder, there will be disharmony, there will be disunity in the ranks. And to the extent that the Scriptures are not the focus, that exists. And of course, we know so much disunity among the members of the army. But every time you trace it back, if you want to, you'll see that it's because somebody's doing something that you can't really support in the Scriptures. How we've seen that in the whole area of eclecticism in the church, not just in counseling but in everything. The world's ideas are brought in and mixed together with the Bible. That's as foolish as taking the strategies and the plans and all the rest of your enemy and mixing them into your strategies and plans. Why you only play into his hands if you do what he wants you and expects you to do. That's just so foolish. It's like a farmer who thinks he spraying some kind of herbicide, and really he's spraying nutrients. What's he going to get? More weeds, greater weeds, bigger weeds, glorious weeds! I don't know any farmer who would do that. That's stupid, and yet we find Christians doing it everywhere, taking the world's ideas and the world's ways and the world's beliefs and the world's whatever it may be and mixing it up with the Bible. To the extent that the world's ways are mixed with God's ways, God's ways are weakened. It's like taking pure water and mixing ink or poison. The more you put into it, the less pure it is. So we need to take the time to study the Word ourselves so that we know what we're talking about. We need to take the time and make the effort to speak with others who may not know and discuss with them what God has to say in His Word and help to persuade them to become more Biblical. And we don't have all the answers, so we need to hear what others have to say to learn from them, to gain knowledge that God has given to them in their Biblical studies and share it. We need each other as we focus on the Scriptures.
How wonderful it is when you disagree with someone who believes the Bible as long as your attitudes are right. You can a great time digging in to see what really is right. My problem is not with people like that. My problem in the field I've been dealing in counseling has been with people who have an entirely different game plan, who have an entirely different set of battle orders. They believe that you don't use the Bible only. They believe that the Bible will go just so far, and then you've got to add all of man's ideas. Well, I can't even play the game with them. I can't even get together with them. Our rules aren't the same. It's not a matter whether we're in the same league or not; it's just not even the same game. What would happen if people down in Los Angeles all came together from all parts of the world and they had different rules and different games and different objectives? One was hitting is this direction, the other was hitting in that direction to do the same thing. You can't get there that way. You've got to at least agree on the basis. That's what we're talking about here. The basis for harmony and unity and thinking together is the Scriptures. There is no other basis; there can be no other basis, for God has given us no other basis. And people will not work together and will not be coordinated until they become more Biblical. The more Biblical they become, the closer they come to each other. Now, this doesn't mean some kind of cookie-cutter conformity. The Bible has range in it. The Bible is a book that understands and supports the idea of variety and difference within the basic principles. Everybody in the army doesn't have the same rank, and everybody doesn't have the same task. But everybody has to function together, and they have to have the same objectives and goals and methods and same strategy and plan. That's what we're talking about, the Bible basics, even though there may be multitude of ways that people function within those basics, and all sorts of differing gifts that God has given to people. Of course, God's the God of variety. He's the One who made this world with all of it's variety. All the snowflakes are different, yet they all fall down. None of them go upward. And all the snowflakes are cold until they melt; then they become water. They all function the same way in the basics, though they're different, and at those basics upon which we must agree. And you're going to have to learn how to associate with all kinds of people, therefore, since they are all different.
This says, "Don't become haughty; associate with [to go along with, fall in with, learn how to walk along with] the lowly." When everybody is standing in line there in his shorts ready to get vaccinated, get all of his shots, you can't tell who it is at home who has in his closet the marks Shaffer & Hart Suits because everybody is going to get the same kind of uniform there in the army. The army levels people, and God's army does the same thing. It's not leveled in the sense that everybody doesn't have his own gifts and his own abilities and his own rank and all the rest of that. But it levels them in the sense that they're going to have to learn how to love and care and get along with all different kinds--you can't have clicks. A click in a church is a horrendous thing. People have to learn how to get along with one another. Whether one is high or low in other areas of life, you're all the same in this area of life. Before God, there aren't any high people; there aren't any low people. That's what James tells us. He says to us we're all the same. And if a man with rich, shining clothes comes in, you don't give him the best seat; you don't respect persons. That's sin, he says. And so it's pretty important, then, that we learn how to associate with all kinds of people. Some people are more likeable than others. I know that, but that's not your business just to associate with the likeable ones. You're to associate even with the not-so-likeable ones. Maybe, if you being so likeable yourself were to associate with them for a while, they might catch a little of that likeableness that you have. And not everybody is so interesting either. Some people are just plain dull--they really are. They are as dull as they can be. But if you with all of your interest were to get together with them, you might just brighten their lives a little bit. And who knows, they might have some subject after all about which they're not so dull that you might find interesting if you ever got past all your prejudices about them.
Well, we better get off here because it's getting fairly late. Finally, he says, "Don't become conceited [don't be wise in your own mind, literally]." This is that spirit of lone wolfism that we talked about at the beginning. "I've got all the answers; I don't need any help from anyone else. I know what to do, and I know which way to go. And those other people can make it on their own." That is Protestant monkism. That is somebody going off into a cave somewhere as an aesthetic and leaving the world. The aesthetic leaves the world behind because he wants to get into this great relationship with God and forgets that there are two great commandments, not just one. The first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, body, soul, and strength. And so he says, "Man, I'm going to get out of this world; I'm going to run into that cave, and God and I are going to spend a lot of time together until I really love Him the way I should." And he forgets that there's a second great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. And he has violated that second great commandment by putting his own life in such a place of priority that he must have this special relationship with God and let all the world hang. O no, 1 John tells us, if you can't even love your brother whom you can see, you certainly can't love God whom you can't see. If you don't keep the second great commandment, you certainly can't keep the first one. These two hang together. And so it is here before us that we are told that we must not become wise in our own mind.
How many marriages are on the rocks today because some husband or some wife says, "We don't need any help from any other Christians? I'm not going to them. They can't do anything for us," when that's exactly what they need--a third party, somebody else who could really help them. Galatians 6:1 tells us that when there is a Christian who is entangled in sin that he cannot get out of, then the one who knows that Lord, who has the Spirit within him, who is a spiritual person must come and help him out of his mess. We are there to help each other. Now, he's to come in the spirit of meekness, not haughtiness in which he says, "Uh huh, there you are down in the gutter again--might know." No, his attitude has to be, "Hey Bill, I'm here, not because I'm any better than you are, but I'm here because I care about you and because God sent me. And I may need your help months from now--who knows? But I'm here today because you need me. Whether you want me or not, I'm here." That's the spirit of meekness, and that's the way in which we have to go.
There are so many Christians today who are ashamed to go seek help. You may be even having trouble tonight. You may be here tonight with all kinds of problems that you've never gotten resolved, all kinds of questions and difficulties, all kinds of personal issues. I don't know you--you know your heart before God. Maybe your marriage is in trouble. Maybe you're having problems with your kids. Maybe you're having problems with your parents. Maybe you're having problems with your in-laws. Maybe you never even referred to them that way; you used the word out instead of in. Well, that's not right. And if you can't get out of those problems and you can't deal with those problems, you're part of an army. And those are the battles you're fighting, and God has to strategy for it all. And He's put people in the army to help you. And you're sinning against the overall warfare. The war effort is being bogged down because you're sitting around behind the lines licking your sores when you ought to be up there on the frontlines fighting the battle. And the reason you're not fighting the battle is because you're too proud to go to another Christian and seek his help. That's wrong, and there are people here tonight who can help.
Maybe some of you wouldn't help because you'd be too afraid to approach another person. Maybe you're too scared of what his response might be, but you know full well that there are other people who need you. And you know full well that Galatians 6 says you're involved and you've got to restore him if he's in trouble, and you can't just sit on the sidelines and watch him deteriorate and watch him go down and down and down and finally out of the army altogether. You can't allow that to happen, but you are allowing that to happen because you're afraid of what he might say in response if you offered help. Neither one of those approaches is right. If you need help, go get it. If you can offer help and you see somebody who needs it, offer it. Don't worry about the consequences; obey the Word. Do it meekly, do it kindly, do it watching out that you don't get yourself entangled in the problem, but go. We need each other. Who needs you tonight? Think of somebody who needs you. Think of somebody in your church, somebody here really in trouble, and you haven't approached that person, haven't done a thing to help. And the war effort is in trouble because of you. You need to talk to God about that in our closing prayer. Aren't you glad that the Lord Jesus didn't just look at us in our need and say to us, "Well, you can go it on your own, and I'll go it on My own." The Lord Jesus got involved, deeply involved. He wept with those wept; He rejoiced with those who rejoiced. And He got so deeply involved that He became one of us. And He gave His very life for His people that they might have forgiveness of sin and the assurance of eternity with Him. He wants you to become involved too.
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2023 11:02:11 GMT -5
Overcoming Evil
with Good, Part 5
by Jay Adams
Edited transcript of conference message
PDF Format | More Transcripts
Romans 12:18: "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with everybody." You're in a war, and God put you in that war. And He told you not to lose, and He told you to win. And He told you how to win by overcoming evil with good. However, if that's all you do, then you've lost one of the major purposes of this war because one of the major purposes beyond the victory in the battle and in the war is to win the peace that's on the other side, to take men and women captive for Jesus Christ so that they really find peace with God and live for Him, and peace with God's people and become a part of them. And so Paul is talking tonight about peace, becoming a peacemaker. Now, what I like about this verse is the stark realism in it. Last night we had an absolute: never return evil to evil to anyone. Tonight we have a condition. We have an if kind of thing. "If possible"--that's Biblical realism in a world of sin. Paul knows that it's not always possible. And so he begins to say what he has to say by saying "if possible". He's talking about you in relationship to unbelievers. And he's telling you that if it's possible, you are to be at peace with everybody, not just your brothers and sisters, but even with unbelievers. You're to reach that point where the war is over and the two of you have come to terms, God's terms of peace.
But he knows that is not always possible. He knows that many situations will exist where the unbeliever simply will not have peace. Even though you may win a battle here and there, he's going to fight. He's going to dig in, he's going to entrench himself, he's going to go into hills, he's going to start gorilla warfare. Something's going to happen, but the unbeliever will not have peace. So tonight we're dealing with that situation where the unbeliever may or may not come to terms with God and with God's people.
And the interesting thing is, that even when you can't get the unbeliever to be at peace with you, there is a battle which you can win even in that situation. It's the battle with yourself. That's where the battle really rages when you're dealing with an unbeliever because the middle phrase in this sentence is, "so far as it depends on you". And that's the battle you're going to have to fight and win when the unbeliever refuses to come to terms and refuses to find peace with God and with God's people. You've got to bring peace in your own heart. You've got to win the battle with yourself that says, "I will do everything God requires no matter how hard or difficult it may be to bring about peace so far as that depends upon me. From my side of the relationship, it will all be done." And that means a battle inside of you.
Love always pursues peace. God wants you to be a peacemaker. "Blessed are the peacemakers because they are going to be called the sons of God [that is, they are going to be like God]." God is out to bring peace. And when we're called sons of God, it means we're like God in some respects. God wants us to be like Him in that respect--to be seeking peace. Now, you'll notice that Paul speaks so realistically that he divides responsibility. And that's one of the hardest things we can ever get people to do in this world. In counseling, constantly we see people confusing responsibility. The husband and the wife come in, and the husband says, "I want you to know that if my wife were to do so and so, then I would do so and so." And she says, "O yeah, well, if he were to do so and so, then I would do what he wants me to do." But the situation is that each one is saying, "I am not responsible for what I do; I am dependant on what the other person does." But that's not true. That started back in the Garden of Eden, where when the sin occurred, God came to Adam, and He said, "What's going on here?" And Adam said, "Now, look, Lord, the woman that You gave me, she did it. Don't blame me." He didn't point any finger at himself, but he said, "You gave me something like that, so it's Your fault, and it's her fault, but it's not my fault." And then God moved over to the woman and said, "How about it, Eve?" She said, "Now, look, the serpent, he...." So everybody starts passing the buck, and the responsibility is shifted--not really but the attempt to shift it occurred. Well, that's what Paul is saying here. He says if the unbeliever will not have peace (and you can't say, "It doesn't matter what I do then."), you have a side in this relationship. And your side is, so far as it depends upon you (so far as peace depends upon your bringing it about), you must do everything that you are responsible to do to see that peace occurs. You can't be responsible for the unbeliever, but you are responsible for yourself. And if there's no peace between you and the unbeliever, you had better be sure, 100 percent sure that that isn't your fault at all. If peace does not occur between you and that unbeliever, it has to be because he won't have it, not because you're doing something wrong.
When that husband and wife come, or whoever it may be, they all want to blame somebody else for the way they're acting. And one of the first things you do in counseling is to sort out the responsibilities and say,
"Woe [the greatest word in counseling is woe], hold everything. You tell me you can't do so and so until your wife does so and so. And you tell me you can do so and so until your husband does so and so. You're all wrong. You are to do what you're supposed to do regardless of what your husband does or doesn't do. You're supposed to do what you're supposed to do, mam, because God tells you to do it, not because you get certain results or don't get certain results from your husband. And on the other hand, sir, you're to do what God requires of you regardless of how your wife responds, regardless of what she does or doesn't do. You're to do it not because you get certain results, but because God says do it. That's the only basis for doing it. Now, it's nice if she does so and so. That encourages you and helps you. And it's nice if he does so and so. It encourages you and helps you, but it's not necessary."
And it's nice if the unbeliever wants peace, and he encourages peace and all that sort of thing. That's really fine; that's helpful, but it's not necessary. You are to do what you're suppose to do because God tells you to do it regardless of what anybody else ever does or doesn't do. That's the clear cut message of this passage. "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with everybody." Now, you can't make the other person be at peace with you. And that's not your responsibility. It's your responsibility to do everything you can to invite peace short of compromising the truth, of course. It's your responsibility to do everything on your side of the relationship with that person to be sure that peace will occur if he is willing to have it. In other words, if there's no peace between you and him, it better be 100 percent his fault, not yours. That's what Paul says. So that's your responsibility.
Now, we have some very interesting statements about peace in the Bible. There's a generalization given, for example, in Proverbs 16:7 that makes it clear that peace and even what your enemy does to some extent is dependant upon you. "When a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him." I think that's a general rule. I don't think it's an absolute rule because of what Peter says when he qualifies that very kind of thing in his letter. In 1 Peter 3:13, he says, "Who will harm you if you become enthusiasts for good." Now, I think that rule holds just about 95 percent of the time--that if you are right with God and you are an enthusiast (a zealot is what the Greek says there) for what is good, there are going to be very, very few people who won't be appeased and very, very few people who will harm you. And yet in the very next verse, Peter says this (he does allow for a possibility): "Yet even if you should suffer because of righteousness, you must be happy. In fact, you must not even fear their threat nor be upset." So in most of the cases when you're doing what you want to do, you're going to get the good results. But there are cases where you won't. And that's exactly what Paul is saying here too when he says, "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with everybody." And he realizes in stark realism, Biblical realism, that it's not always possible.
Now, there are some people who, instead of being peacemakers, are troublemakers. They provoke trouble. And that's so different from what God requires of Christians. He tells us in 2 Thessalonians 3:12 to live our lives and do our work in a quiet fashion. Some people are always trying to stir up something. They're troublemakers instead of peacemakers. They're always out to provoke some kind of a fight, to provoke some kind of a battle. Some people enjoy a fight. Now, that's not Christian. So far as it depends upon you, you ought to be at peace with everybody, it says. And then there others who never start the trouble. O no, they could never be accused of starting trouble. "Of course not, I wouldn't start anything," they say. But they protract trouble wherever it does occur. They extend it, they widen it, they deepen it. Somebody else has a little spark going, and they see that spark, and as soon as they see that spark, they bring out a fan and they start fanning the spark. They keep it going, and they're going to get it going as far and as wide and as bright as they can make it burn. They enjoy that. They enjoy causing trouble. But the Bible says, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."
We really ought to be giving the soft answer in order to keep from widening the wrath of another. You know the old stage skit that used to come on in the old minstrel shows, where one fellow comes on and he starts saying, "Hey Joe, I want to tell you something." Joe says, "What is it Bill?" He says, "Well, such and such a thing happened yesterday." Joe says, "O, it did?" They go on that way for a while, and one of them says to other, "Why are we whispering?" The other says, "I don't know why you're whispering, but I've got laryngitis." Well, one fellow starts whispering, the other one starts whispering. And a soft answer usually elicits a soft answer. It's kind of like ping pong. You get somebody to play, and he's playing pretty mean ping pong. And he gets way back and he starts smashing. He whams that ball over that net, and it goes way back into the back of the room, and you've got to back off for it. But when he's got you way back here and he's smashing them at you, and the two of you are widening the gap between you, if you just hold your ping pong paddle out there and let the ball hit it the right way, it goes just over the net right down there. And what happens? That pulls him in. A soft answer pulls him in to you, brings him together. But if you smash it back, he goes way back and gets farther away from you. And the same thing is true in verbal ping pong. How you respond makes a difference.
And then there are some who like to prolong trouble. They hold it down inside; they get bitter and resentful over it. And they start spreading something around about it instead of dealing with an issue and getting over with it--Love covering a multitude of sins. Or if it gets between you an another, then dealing with it quickly and being reconciled, not letting the sun go down on your anger. This says, "So far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men." That includes unbelievers in particular. Now, when it says "all men", it certainly does include believers. And there's a quick way of getting things settled if they can't be settled any other way. If they're not covered in love and reconciliation doesn't occur, then church discipline is there. And you can always get a matter settled with another believer through church discipline if through nothing else. But the problem occurs (and I think it's got the unbeliever in focus when it talks about all men or with everybody) when you've got an unbeliever who is not subject to church discipline. He's outside the church; he's not under the care, not under discipline of the church. And so you can't be sure that you can bring the two together in the way that Matthew 18:15 and following requires and enables believers to get their problems solved one with another.
And when it talks about being at peace with all men, it means even with all women. And it means even with all relatives. And it means even with all classes of people. It means that you as a believer ought to work toward peace, not at any price, never at the price of truth, never at the price of God's Word, never at the wrong price. That's too costly a price; God never requires that. Paul was constantly in trouble. He was thrown into jail, he was beaten, he was stoned, he was dragged from one place to another. He didn't have much peace. He's the man who wrote these words, though, reflecting the words of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. But Paul never provoked any of those arguments. He never protracted any of them; he never prolonged any of them. He just went and preached the Gospel, and somebody else always created the problem. It was not Paul's job to go around stirring up trouble. He had enough of it without stirring it up. And you're going to have enough of it without stirring it up on your own. It's your job to put it to rest wherever you can. And Paul knew that he could put trouble to rest, but he could never put it to rest when it had to do with the Gospel and the Word of God. He knew that there was absolutely no way that he could compromise the truth of God in order to put trouble to rest, so he's not talking about that. But he is talking about personal problems with one another. And personal problems can be put to rest if we will only be peacemakers rather than troublemakers.
There are lots of excuses people give. "Our temperaments clash. Our temperaments just aren't the same." Well, so what. This says be at peace with everybody. That means people who have likeable temperaments, people who have less likeable temperaments, and people who have horrendous temperaments. It doesn't matter. "All" is what it says, so that excuse won't work. And then there are people who say, "But I tried to be at peace with him or with her a number of times, and it always fails. I've given up on him. There's no hope there." You can't do that because God is in the business of changing people. "Yeah, I know all that, but listen, I've tried 1000 times and I've never gotten any results. So there's no sense trying anymore." O, is that right? Are you a prophet? Did God make you a prophet? "Well, no, not exactly, but I know that person." What do you mean you know that person? You know how that person was up till this moment, but suppose you pray about that person; suppose you go on an attitude of hope rather than an attitude of despair, and suppose you ask God to really make a difference this time. Don't you believe God is in the business of changing people? Suppose it's been 2000 times that you've tried. Maybe the 2001th time will make the difference. God can change people who have done something 3000 times so that the 3001th time can be different. That's no excuse. Well, this says "all men", even the people who have failed so often. You are to make the effort, and you're to do everything you can to bring peace.
There are many people who love the battle but who don't like that peace that follows. They're good at the battle, but they're not so good at the peace that follows the war. During the Civil War, there were a lot of men who fought very courageously and very vigorously. But after that Civil War was over, one of the terrible things that happened in this country was that some of those men who were so great in the armies wanted to go on fighting. They had gotten such a taste of it they didn't want to quit. They weren't interested in fighting for the peace that followed. They were interested in the fighting. And so a lot of them banded together and became outlaw bands all over this country because they wanted to go on fighting. They were good at fighting; they loved the battle, but they were really pretty poor at peace. There are some Christians like that. You give the a good fight and they're in there in the thick of it, and they can really cross swords with anybody. But when it comes to the peace, they're not so good. They really don't like peace. They like a good fight. And there's a spirit of that in everybody, I guess, to some extent. Some show it more outwardly. But a lot of people have it inwardly, and they go around knifing others behind their backs in dark alleys, verbally at least. The question is, are you a peacemaker, or are you a troublemaker?
There are some people right now with whom you don't have peace. They're are some people back there at work with whom you don't have peace. They're some people back there in the family with whom you don't have peace. Maybe there are some children, parents, brothers, sisters, in-laws with whom there is nothing but war. It may be a cold war, but war--no peace. Maybe some of those are unbelievers. There are people with who you do not have peace.
The question tonight is only one. The question is, are you really interested in battling that gets into the battle as thickly as you can with yourself? Get into a war with that troublemaking attitude that you may have that may be the cause of that lack of peace between you and somebody else. You fight that battle inside of yourself until that ones won, and you know that you can say before God and before any other human being alive that if there isn't peace between me and that person, it's not my fault. That's where Paul says you ought to be. And you ought to be able to say that honestly under the strictest kind of criticism that you can bring to your own life and your own motive. Nobody else can look at those motives; nobody else can judge you. Only God and you can look at them. "Like a city that is broken", says Proverbs, "and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit." And then another Proverb says, "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty [the warrior], and he who rules his spirit than he who captures a city." The toughest battle, where you need to be the most ferocious warrior is the one inside. To rule your own spirit, to capture and lick all the enemies down inside--our Lord gives you the grace to do that. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only One who can. You don't have that power in your own strength; you don't have the wisdom in your own mind. That's why He gave you the Word and His Spirit. And with the Word telling you what God requires of you and with the Spirit in answer to genuine prayer, giving you the strength to obey that Word, there isn't a single one of you down here tonight who knows Jesus Christ as your Savior, who has been regenerated by the Spirit of God and enabled to believe in Him and who has put his trust upon Jesus Christ, not a single one of you down here tonight who cannot rule your spirit. You can be a peacemaker no matter what your attitude has been like, no matter whether you're a fiery Irishman, as people tell me they are, and they can't control themselves, or whatever you may be, it doesn't matter. The Spirit of God knows about Irishman. And I want to tell you, you can obey this commandment by God's grace if only you will and if only you love our Lord enough that you're concerned about His name before others. Be at peace with all men if it's possible. And if it's not possible, be sure you're not the one who is making it impossible. So far as it depends upon you, you make sure you have done and are doing everything that the Word of God allows and requires to be at peace with all men.
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Post by Admin on Oct 25, 2023 11:03:06 GMT -5
Overcoming Evil
with Good, Part 6
by Jay Adams
Edited transcript of conference message
PDF Format | More Transcripts
We come to the last two verses tonight, verses 19 and 20:
"Never avenge yourselves, dear friend, but rather make room for wrath, since it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink, since by doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."
Until now, I've spoken largely about you attitude and your action in relationship to others in the battle with evil. We focused on the other person rather than on yourself. We talked about your need for blessing those who curse you rather than returning the curse in response to the curse. We talked about planning ahead as to how we will respond to evil so that when we do respond, we can respond not in some slipshod half-baked manner, but with finesse. And we talked about doing all you can do, all God expects you to do to achieve peace with others--responding with soft answers, pursuing reconciliation and so on, so far as it depends upon you.
Now, there is one other side to this whole issue, and that's the matter of authority and ability. The question still is in some minds, "Why can't I right wrongs? I could do it so easily," says the business man who has a certain person in his employ. He says, "I could fix him good tomorrow just like that. I could right all the wrongs so easily." Well, the first thing I want you to see this evening--and it is most important to understand--is that God hasn't given you any authority to take revenge. He says, "Never avenge yourselves, dear friend." You must not do it. That's not your business as a private individual to avenge yourselves or take your own revenge. He won't let you do it.
Revenge or vengeance is more than snapping back. Revenge or vengeance is a cold, calculated thing. It's a planned, deliberate effort growing out of bitterness or resentment when it stems from a human being. For example, in Mark 6:19, we read that Herodias (literally in the Greek) had it in for John the Baptist. The Greeks used exactly the same expression we use when they talk about having it in for somebody. And in a deliberate, cold, calculated manner, she got him. She got her revenge on John the Baptist. But that's what you may never do, God says. You never, as a private person, as an individual citizen, as a Christian individual, have been given the rightful authority by God to ever do any such thing.
When God speaks of vengeance in a right way in the Bible, He talks about it as a judicial effort. The original word actually carries some notion of a judicial decision that is made. And the next chapter, chapter 13, shows us something very interesting in relationship to chapter 12. Here we're told, "Don't ever avenge yourselves, dear friend." But now as we move down to the next chapter, we read about the governing authority.
"Every individual must subject himself to governing authority, since there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been ordered by God. So then, whoever opposes the authority opposes what God has ordered, and whoever does so will receive judgment. Rulers aren't a cause for fear to those who do good, but to those who do evil. Do you want to have no fear of the one in authority? Then do good, and you will have his approval."
Now, get this next verse: "He is God's servant to you for good. But if you do evil, fear, since he doesn't bear the sword in vain. He is God's servant, an avenger who brings his wrath upon those who practice evil." The very same word here is applied to the ruler, to the head of state, to the one who has the authority of the state in his power. And it says that he is God's avenger, and he does bring God's wrath upon people. The very two words that speak about what you cannot do here speak about what he is supposed to do. Now, it's very important to keep things clear when you come to the Scriptures. Sometimes people take chapter 12 and they apply it to the government. But it isn't talking about the government; it's talking about individual ethics; it's talking about the individual person. "You are not to avenge yourselves, dear friend." And then some people would like to come down to 13 and apply it to the individual. But that's not talking about the individual; that's talking about the state. And so God has given to the state an authority that He has not given to the individual. And it is most important when you're dealing with Scripture to notice to whom God is speaking and about whom God is speaking.
One of the problems we have in our modern society is that the authority far too often does all sorts of things that God has not given the ruling authority any power or right to do in His Word. And then when it comes to the task that God has given to him to keep law and order and avenge evil, he won't do the job God did give him. And we always run into those kinds of problems. But here, God, in chapter 12, is speaking about the individual--you. He's not speaking about you if you were a ruler, if you were a policeman or a police chief or a ruler of the state, declaring war on another state. But He's speaking about you as an individual citizen, an individual person. He says you must never avenge yourself. So that's the first thing we need to get clear--that God has given no authority to the individual to take vengeance on anyone else or to exercise wrath on anyone else. Wrath is not a prerogative of an individual. Vengeance is not a prerogative of an individual. You are not now a judge. James 4:11-12 makes it clear to every Christian that you are not a judge now. The day is coming, according to chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians, when you shall even judge angels. And of course, in the church, the church officers have a task of judging. But they have authority to judge just as a ruler has authority to judge. And they make judgments about excommunication and about various other matters in the church of Jesus Christ. But no individual has the right to exercise punishment, vengeance, or wrath as an individual upon another brother or sister in Christ. We are not to take judgment. This is personal ethics. When Christ went in the temple and cleansed it and drove out the money changers, He was not in some way incensed over what people were doing to Him as a private individual. He said, "The zeal for My Father's house has eaten Me up." It was because He had come in the official character of the Messiah who was prophet, priest, and king of God and whose temple it was that He came and exercised in the name of His Father that authority to take vengeance on those who were wrongly using that temple.
So what we're saying here is that God will have no Christian vigilantes. Some of you have been Christian vigilantes at times. You've taken vengeance on others. You've taken it upon yourselves to exercise some kind of wrath on others, or you are planning to. "I'll fix him," you've said. God says, "As you bow your knee, you unbuckle that button buckle on those belts and drop those guns because you've been going out like a hunter for bounty." No vigilantism in His kingdom. You will operate according to the authority that God has given, where He has given it, under the various places that He has placed it. And you will not go out on your own and arrogate to yourself an authority that God never gave to you as an individual. That's what a vigilante is--he's somebody who is dissatisfied with what the government is doing, so he takes the law into his own hands. And you may be dissatisfied with what the church of Jesus Christ is doing, and there's usually a good reason to be. And you may be dissatisfied with what the state is doing, and there's probably even more reason to be. But you have no right to try to right wrongs by doing a wrong. You have no right to become a vigilante and go out and hang people on your own--take vengeance into your own hands, take God's law into your hands. "You dare not do that," says God. "Never avenge yourselves, dear friend."
Now, you don't have to. Do you realize that? In the final analysis it doesn't depend upon church officers; it doesn't depend upon the government. In the final analysis, God says, "Make room for wrath, since it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord." The government may fail as God's servants; officers in the church may fail as God's servants, but God isn't going to fail. And vengeance, in the final analysis, when it's all said and done, falls back into the hands of the only One who really ever can exercises it fully. Even when the state exercises vengeance, it only exercises it to a certain extent. It can only go to the outward actions and words of men. It cannot really look into the heart of man. When the church officer exercises judgment in the church of Christ, it is only authorized by God to deal with the words and the actions of men. And we dare not judge the hearts of men because God says in 1 Samuel 16, "Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart." And in the book of Acts, He is called the heart-knower. Only God knows the heart. And so only God can ultimately judge a man completely and entirely and thoroughly. All other judgment that He has committed to the state or to the church is only partial judgment, even when it is properly exercised. And so often it is not properly exercised. But that which it is not properly exercised and that which goes beyond the partial judgment, even when it is properly exercised, falls ultimately into the hands of God Himself. And some of it He brings about in this life, and some of it He waits for until the day of judgment and wrath.
Now, there's a solemn warning here. God says, "Vengeance is Mine." That's the reason why you have no right to take vengeance or avenge yourself--because it doesn't belong to you. He didn't give you that right; He didn't give you that authority. He kept it for Himself. "It's Mine," He said. And when you go out to exercise judgment on your own, what you're doing, in effect, is saying, "God, I don't want You to keep for Yourself what You have said is Yours. I want it for myself." And so you try to steal from God what belongs to Him. But He says avenging and judgment and wrath are Mine. And you're a thief or an attempted thief every time you go out to exercise vengeance on your own. You're attempting to steal from God what He has reserved for Himself. So that's pretty serious business trying to stead from God what He has reserved for Himself. Sometime look up all the things that God says are His. We steal a lot of things or attempt to steal a lot of things from God--we never really get them, but we try.
Remember Deuteronomy 29:29, it says, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever." There God says, "What I've given to you in Scripture is yours. But what I haven't talked about in Scripture, that's Mine. And don't you dare try to find it out. It belongs to Me." And we try to find out all kinds of things the Scripture doesn't tell us about, and speculate and come up with crazy ideas and all that sort of thing. We're really stealing from God what is His. He said, "The secret things belong to Me; the revealed things belong to you and your children forever."
It's funny, when you read the commentaries on the book of Revelation, for example, where it comes to the voice of the seven thunders and what they uttered, and it says it isn't lawful for any man to know, all the commentaries have an idea of what it is. They're going to tell you what they think it is. But it's unlawful for man to know. You can't know what it was because God said, "It isn't yours; it's Mine. It's one of the secret things." So we have here again God declaring, "This is My right and My prerogative; you have no part of it as a private individual." Now, He may exercise some of His judging, avenging power through the state; He may exercise some of if through the church and it's officers. And you may be involved as a civil servant or as an officer in the church in exercising that partial judgment, but that's His. And He chooses how much and how far that will go, but only where He has given that authority. And to private individuals, He has given no such authority.
Sometimes God judges now, sometimes He judges directly, sometimes He judges later, sometimes He judges indirectly. And we read about various kinds of judgments of God. Sometimes He brings sickness; sometimes He brings death. "Some men's sins don't appear now, but only appear later," Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:24--long after they're gone. In various ways, God is working His judgments. But in the final analysis, when it's all said and done, God will make a perfect judgment of every person. And He will bring all the wrath that ought to be brought and take all the vengeance that ought to be taken in His time and in His way and as He sees fit. The reason that vigilante Christians get going is because they're not willing to operate according to God's timetable. And it's time we said, "Lord, that's in Your hands. Though I'd like to see it sooner, I'll be like those souls under the alter to whom it was said when they cried for vengeance, 'Yet a little longer, and the day will come.' And it did."
Now, notice what else what Paul said, "Never avenge yourselves, dear friend, but rather make room for wrath." God wants you to step aside, get out of the way. Do you realize that maybe one of the reasons why vengeance is not being taken sooner in certain instances is because you're standing in the way? He says, "Make room for My wrath." If you work at a company where the boss parks his car, and you park your car on the same parking lot, and the president, who is your boss, has a certain spot that says "Reserved for the President", you better not park your car there, or you're going to be in trouble. Now, God says, "Don't park yourself here. I've reserved this space for Myself. Vengeance is Mine; I will repay. It's My business. It's My parking space." And He says, "You make room for Me. You make room for My wrath--don't get in My way." Now, the time will come, according to God's timetable, when God will park His car. And if you're in the way, He'll park right though you. You just better stay out of His way. He says, "Make room for wrath. I'm coming through with My wrath. Get out of My way." It's like a couple of kids fighting. There's a big bully and a little kid, and he's beating up on the little kid. And the little kid is trying to defend himself. And the father comes along and says, "Get out of my way, son, I'll handle it." That's what God's saying--"Get out of my way; make room for Me to bring wrath." "I will repay," He says. Step aside, let God handle it. There was an old saying on the ad for the Greyhound bus a number of years ago that really said it well: "And leave the driving to us." (Some of you are old enough to remember.) And God says, "And leave the wrath, leave the vengeance to Me." Why doesn't God do something sooner. Well, that's His business and not ours. He'll do it, and He'll do it when He pleases and in the right way. He's a sovereign God who is in no way dependant upon our timetable.
There's one other thing about this. God hasn't given you the authority to take vengeance, but He also hasn't given you the ability to exercise vengeance on others. "It's Mine," He says, "not yours." And you ought to be glad about that. You ought to be so glad that He didn't give you the job of taking vengeance on others because you haven't got that ability. You don't know men's hearts; you don't know how to judge people. You may be judging their outward actions in one way, and they may have entirely different motives behind those actions that you could never suspect. So you may judging them far too seriously. Or you may be judging them far too easily. You may not know the evil that lurks in the human heart. Only God can really judge and give proper vengeance--only He can really repay. You don't know what is going on in any other human being's life fully enough to bring vengeance. You hardly know what's going on in your own life. Your own inner life is often so confused; you're often so deceived by your own sin and prejudices and so on that you can't even know your own self. How on earth, then, could you possibly know someone else adequately enough to judge him in a proper and a correct fashion? You can't do it. You can only judge those things that you see and judge those things that you hear. But you can go any farther than that, and that's far enough. So God hasn't given you either the authority or the ability.
But now we move to the next verse, which is a very interesting verse a lot of people have questions about or wonder about because it seems so contradictory. "If your enemy is hungry, fed him; if he's thirsty, give him a drink. By doing this you will heap burning coals on his head." People say that sounds contradictory. But that's only seemingly so, apparently so. There's no contradiction here whatsoever--none at all. It all fits so beautifully with verse 19. And the two parts of verse 20 fit so beautifully together. You say, "What's all this business of dumping coals on his head?" We'll get there. I'll hold that to the very end. First of all, I want you to notice that we're even dealing with the most extreme case of all, an enemy in this passage. Paul says, "If your enemy is hungry.... If your enemy is thirsty.... You will heap burning coals on your enemy's head." He's talking about an enemy. In Romans 5, where he talks about people for whom Christ died, he talks about those who are helpless. Then he talks about those who are sinners; then he talks about those who are enemies. And he shows the great extent to which Christ went to die for His own. He died not for just helpless people who couldn't do anything on their own. Of course, we were helpless, utterly helpless, absolutely unable to saves ourselves--"dead in trespasses and sins." A dead man can't do anything toward saving himself. If you've got somebody lying here in a coffin, you can bring the most beautiful music up here, and he doesn't even stir no matter what he hears. You can bring the most delicious meal and no response. You can bring anything you want up here and try to stir him up, but he's not going to respond to anything because he can't respond--he's dead. It's only as that body is given life that it can respond. And that's what regeneration is--when God puts life in a person to enable him to believe the Gospel. But he can't believe until God gives him life in order to believe. It's not believe and get life as some people today teach. It's get life so you can believe.
Well, helpless, that's part of it. But it's not just helpless people Christ died for. He died for sinners--people who were violating God's law, going their own way, moving away from all the things God told them to do and not to do, going into all sorts of wretched things. Yet Christ died for people like that. But to take it to the greatest extreme of all, Paul says Christ died for enemies. An enemy is more than just somebody who doesn't like you. An enemy is something more than somebody who ignores you. An enemy is something more than just somebody who is helpless. And enemy is somebody who makes it his business to get you. And so Paul is telling you here that this business of overcoming evil with good extends to the very greatest extreme just as Christ's death did when He died for enemies, people who hated God. They were out to get God and His people. Now, an enemy in the Bible as you look at it in the Psalms, for example, where David talks about his enemies, and just kind of flip through, you read about enemies rising against him, lying in wait for him, assaulting him, speaking evil against him, whispering against him, plotting against him, chasing and seizing him, seeking his hurt, laying traps for him. Under a hot Palestinian sun, the enemies are out there digging deep ditches so David would come along and fall into them. And an enemy is standing there all day long with his bow an arrow with his arm cocked ready to get David when he comes down the path. So he gets an ache and pain in his muscle. An enemy is somebody who works hard at getting somebody else. So it's not just somebody you don't like he's talking about here. It's somebody who is out to get you, who has made it his fulltime business to do you in. That's an enemy in the Bible.
Using that extreme situation, Paul says, "If your enemy [if somebody like that] is hungry, feed him." If [somebody like that] is thirsty, give him a drink." This is the same as saying elsewhere you must love your enemies. Love is giving. It's not a feeling first. Love is only a feeling only secondarily. But first and foremost, love is giving. "God so loved the world [that He got all emotional over it]." No,
"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."
"He loved me and gave Himself for me."
"Husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her."
"If your enemy hungers, give him something to eat. If your enemy thirsts, give him something to drink."
Love begins with giving. And whether you feel like it or not, you can always give. A lot of times you won't feel like it. You'll desire to please your Lord, so you'll obey Him. But you may not feel like doing this to your enemy after you've pulled yourself up out of the last pit he dug for you. You don't have to feel like it because love isn't first a feeling. Love is first giving. Love is commanded in the Bible, and you can obey a command. And feelings are not commanded. Feelings flow and change when you begin to obey the commands, even when you don't feel like it.
And so Paul says, "If your enemy is hungry, you feed him." Now, what's he saying? He's saying that love is concrete. And we've been talking all week about doing good for those who do evil to you. Now, I want to add one very essential element to all of that that comes out of this. Here's how you do it: you research your enemy. Remember, we're talking about war here. All through here we're talking about war. And what do you do in war? You do recognizance. You try to know what the enemy is doing; you try to know where his weaknesses are, where his strengths are. You research everything you can about the enemy. Different words are used, but it's a research project. You discover everything you can. And what you're going to be researching for in that person we've been talking about all week long--that you're going to have to go deal with, you're going to have to do good toward, that person who is out to get you, that person who has done you wrong, that person who has cursed you, that person who has spit at you, that person who has persecuted you--what you're going to have to do is research him. And what are you looking for? You're looking for his needs. If an enemy is hungry, if he's thirsty--that's a need. And I don't think it means just hunger and thirst. I think those are good examples of needs. Whatever his need may be, you find out what that need is. What's your enemy's need? And when you have researched him thoroughly enough and you know his need, then the second thing you do is start going through your own resources, and you say, "What have I got to meet that need?" If you've got a cup of cold water to meet the thirst, then that's great. If you've got some food to meet the need for hunger, great. If you've got the money to meet the need when a guy is broke, then that's another one. If you've got some direction when a person is puzzled, then that's another way to meet his need. But whatever his need is, you look at your resources and say, "What are my resources so that I can meet his need. I know what his need is, now, what have I got to meet it? And the third thing you do is look for or create an opportunity to bring your resources to his need so that you give to that enemy whatever it is he needs. If he needs something to eat, you give him something to eat. If he needs something to drink, you give him something to drink. You create that opportunity if it doesn't just naturally arise. So what you're interested in doing, then, is not simply any old good in response to evil. But you want to do something that is significant to him to meet his real need.
Now, there's one last thing. "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink, since by doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." The word is not just coals. As you think of coals, it probably is not what you're thinking of. You're thinking of some anthrocide or something like that. This is charcoal in the original, a smokeless fuel, one where, as you know in your charcoal burners, after you get the thing going for a while and you've got it blown to the place where it's white heat, and all the flame is gone out on all those coals, and the flames have become white or orange or yellow, you don't see any smoke. Charcoal fuel does not produce smoke. And that's word used here in the original. Burning coals of charcoal is what it's talking about. What are we talking about here? We're talking about this: we're still talking about an enemy whom you are to defeat with good. And you defeat him by doing good to him, and you defeat him by meeting his needs. And in that way you heap burning coals on his head.
Now, what does all that mean? It means that in those days when they had no flamethrowers and they had no napalm, they nevertheless knew the value of fire as a weapon. Picture your army, if you will, holding a pipe over a pan. Here's a narrow path through which the enemy must move, and your army is up on the heights overlooking that path. And the enemy doesn't know you're up there. And you're waiting for him. And all along that path, you have charcoal, that white, red, orange, whatever color you like, hot heat. You've been fanning it, and there's no smoke, so the enemy can't see it. But it's all up there, and all these hot coals are ready. You've got men everywhere along the line with shovels. And here comes the enemy through the path. And when he's contained in the path, underneath all of your charcoal that's lined up all down the path, the signal is given: "Now!" And everybody shovels his coal and heaps it on his head. What an effective way of putting an enemy out of business. Now, that's what Paul is talking about. He says if you meet the enemy's need by heaping upon him good (don't just do some little token of good to him--heap it on him; overkill if necessary), you will effectively put him out of business as an enemy. Paul's not saying he'll become a Christian--he may--but he is saying you'll put him out of business as an enemy with good. You see, there's no contradiction here. Paul is saying you've used your most powerful weapon possible. You have put this man out of business by heaping good on him to meet his need. And he has nothing to do in response. He cannot respond to that. You get enough red hot charcoal on the head of an enemy and he's out of business. And that's what God says. He's to be subdued by love.
That's what our Lord did. He saw our greatest need, and He died to meet it. There's not a single person here tonight who knows Him as Savior who would ever be saved if He hadn't looked at you as an enemy who needed to be put out of business as an enemy and who needed to be turned into a friend. And He determined He was going to do that. And He used the most powerful thing He could use. He heaped coals of fire to put you out of business as an enemy. The coals of fire that He heaped on you on that cross did the job. There are a lot of people who think that Christ's death really didn't do the job. They say Christ died for every last man, woman, child that was to be born on the face of this earth. That's nonsense. The Bible doesn't teach that. If that's so, then all those people are going to hell whose sins were not really dealt with, and God was not satisfied by what Christ did. He did not do the job. No, Jesus Christ died for certain individuals, certain people whom He loved and whom He was going to save. And every last one of those for whom He died has effectively been put out of business as an enemy and has been won to His cause and has become one of His children and one of His soldiers in His army, or will be. I'm glad that we have a personal Savior, not an abstract Savior. Jesus didn't die for mankind in general; He died for particular people whom He loved. That's a warm, wonderful truth. Everybody limits Christ's atonement, but you either limit its effectiveness, or you limit its design. And this says not one of those for whom He died will ever perish. That's what the Scripture teaches all through the book of John as well as elsewhere.
So my friend, He put you out of business as an enemy, and He won you to Himself. And He loved you with that personal love, and He wants you to do the same. Not all of those to whom you show such love are going to come because your work is not necessarily going to be efficacious as His was. But some will, and that's one of the ways He's going to win some of those for who He died to Himself through you and your love and your goodness and your care.
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