What should be the role of money and markets in our society? When I was a kid, Serene and Rob, maybe you had the same experience. If you went to an amusement park, part of the experience was waiting in long lines for the popular rides. No one liked waiting in the lines, but that was just what happened. Today, that's no longer true. In most amusement parks, if you don't like standing in long lines and if you have the money, you can buy a fast-track or VIP ticket, pay extra, and jump to the head of the line. This is a small aspect of social life, hardly the most grievous moral challenge we face. It also happens in another place in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill. When Congress holds hearings, they set aside a certain number of seats for the public on a first-come-first-served basis. There are many people who want to sit in on their congressional hearings, especially if it's a hot issue, but who don't want to stand in the long lines that sometimes form a day in advance, sometimes two or three days in advance. It's now possible, if you don't want to stand in the line to attend the congressional hearing, to go to a company, pay them a certain amount of money, and they will hire someone, a homeless person or someone else who needs the work, to stand in the line for you. You pay the company $50 an hour. If the line is two, three, four days long, it's quite an expensive seat.  One of the companies that specializes in providing this service is called linestanding.com. They will also get you a seat if you want to sit in on oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. So if you were keen to hear the oral arguments over Obamacare or over same-sex marriage, you could pay $50 an hour to linestanding.com, and they would hire someone who would wait as long as it took to assure that you got in. Take another very different kind of example. If you're a drug company and want to market a new drug to increase your market share, we take this for granted now. Most European countries don't allow it, but you can market it directly to consumers on television. You've probably seen those ads on the nightly news or on sporting events. In fact, if you've watched those ads, those incessant ads for prescription drugs, you could be forgiven for thinking that the greatest health crisis in the world is not malaria or sleeping sickness or river blindness but a rampant epidemic of erectile dysfunction. Marketing drugs directly to consumers. We didn't always do it. Congress made it permissible a couple of decades ago. Or take an even more fateful kind of example. The way we fight our wars. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there were more private military contractors on the ground. Then there were US military troops. Now this isn't because we ever had a public debate about whether we wanted to outsource war to private companies. But this is what has happened over the past three decades. Almost without realizing it, we've drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society. The difference is this. A market economy is a tool, a valuable and effective tool for organizing productive activity.  It's a way of life in which market values and market thinking begin to reach into almost every sphere of life. Family life, personal relations, health, education, civic life, politics. And so the question I would like to put to you for discussion this evening is, why should we worry? Should we worry about becoming a market society? I think there are at least two reasons to worry, but I want to get your thoughts about it. The first is that the more things money can buy, the more it hurts to be poor, the more it matters whether you're affluent or poor. If the only thing money governed access to were fancy vacations and BMWs, inequality wouldn't matter all that much. But against a background of rising inequality, putting a price on everything, the rampant commodification of social life makes things, makes it harder to be poor. If money governs access, as it does, to where you live, whether you live in a safe neighborhood or a crime-ridden one, whether you can send your kids to a good school or not very good school, what political voice you have, then inequality matters a lot more than it otherwise would. So one reason to worry is that if more and more of life is commodified, how much money you have looms much larger. But there's also a second reason to worry about becoming a market society. And that has to do with something subtler, the tendency of market thinking and market values, to crowd out or to erode non-market values worth caring about. Now, to explore this aspect of commodification or the marketization of social life, I'd like to see what you think about a certain story, an example. To do with the walrus hunt in the Arctic in the north of Canada, for centuries, the Inuits built their lives around subsistence walrus hunting. And then in the 19th century, more and more people came hunters to hunt the walrus. And the walrus is not very good at defending itself. They are very slow, unthreatening creatures. They were no match for hunters with guns. The population was decimated. And so the Canadian government banned walrus hunting, but carved out an exception, a small exception, a quota of walruses that the Inuit people could continue to hunt to preserve their way of life. Decades passed. And then recently, the Inuit people came to the Canadian government with a proposal, a proposal in the spirit of the age, I suppose you could say. They said, look, we could use some extra income.  We won't increase the number of walruses shot. We'll keep within our quota. But if we can sell the right to shoot the walruses, then we can make new income as guides. We'll take the hunters out. We'll show them where the walruses are. They will shoot them. We'll harvest them, skin them. We will use the skin and the meat and the blubber just as we always have done. But now we will have a new source of income. Now from the standpoint of standard economic reasoning, this seems like a pretty unobjectionable proposal. No more walruses are killed than would otherwise be the case. Everybody is better off. There are big game hunters now who have the chance to do what they couldn't do before.  The Inuit community will make more money. So from the standpoint of standard economic reasoning, it sounds like a pretty good deal. And yet some people object. Let's hear what people... I'd like to hear what people here have to say about this case. If you were the Canadian government, if you were making the policy, what would be your view? By a show of hands, how many would give them the right to sell their walrus hunting quotas? Raise your hand. And how many would not? So we have a pretty good division, which is a great point to begin a conversation. Pretty good division of the room. Let's first hear from someone who objects, someone who would not grant them the right to sell the quota. It's like a tradable permit. It's used in many areas of policy. What would be wrong with that? Someone who objects, who can articulate a reason? I'm afraid that this might lead to some sort of arms race kind of a situation where once they see this money stream, then others will offer more money to buy these licenses. And then the Canadian government, why don't you increase the number of walruses we can kill because we'll generate more income and we'll give you a cut as some sort of a tax to the Canadian government. And so they would see it win, win, win all the way except for the walruses. The walruses wouldn't win on that scenario, on the arms race scenario. It's a bit of the slippery slope. The slippery slope to killing more walruses because everyone will want a piece of the revenue. No, that's all right. But let me just ask you this. Does that mean that provided we could prevent the further demand to kill more walruses, it's okay. You mean as a practical matter, they will see a revenue raising opportunity here and it will prove the irresistible. Yes, it will prove the irresistible. All right. So now that's an objection that worries about how this thing will unfold and you're worried about the walruses losing out in the end. But it's different from the objection in principle that was raised that just finds it somehow morally objectionable to cater to these preferences, desires to shoot a walrus. That doesn't bother you. No, we don't apply it uniformly.  You're killing all kinds of animals and then we don't seem to be worried about that. So why are we worried about walruses? Okay, let's see if there's someone else. Let's see if there's someone else. Yes, in the blue shirt. I think I guess I go by a principle that cultures require some kind of principle, rules of some kind that are not up for sale. I mean, and while in this case you're asking the Canadian government to impose a particular rule or to reinforce a traditional rule of the Inuit, upon the Inuit when they decide that or at least some of their representatives are asking for relaxation of that rule, I would say, you know, in most cases I would not want to have a commodification of a particular valuable cultural property like that. But what actually is being commodified here? What value is being commodified do you think? The same number of walruses are dying. No more. Until the slippery slope kicks in. But just on the matter of principle, what value is being... You're changing the symbolic universe of the culture, which may have already been changed by other factors, but in any case you're institutionalizing... I don't know any culture well enough to know if walrus has some kind of, you know, role in it, but in any case by selling this right, you're changing the symbolic universe in a way that... All right, changing the symbolic universe somehow. All right, well I have to try to elaborate that a little bit. Let's see if there's someone who... All right, what would you say? Do you care about the way of life of the native people up there? And if so, that's something the government gave thought to. And if they're going to sell the hunting rights, that changes their way of life. So I don't know the answer to where that leads, but that does change things. And the other topic is, as the government, the Canadian government, do you just say, well, you know, X number are okay to kill. They can maintain the population. And if that's the way you want to go, then you say, okay, well then, whoever pays the most to kill each one, is that, as a government, what do you want to do? Oh, that's interesting. Why not auction off directly the rights? Right, then someone for a million dollars can go kill one, and the Canadian government would maximize income that way. And probably they don't want to do that, because probably if they think that hunting is a sport that people should all do the same, they just want to control the number killed, but not necessarily allow just the highest bidders to do it. And separately, do they want the native people to continue their way of life? Okay, that's interesting. Why not just let the Canadian government specify the number of walruses? And then have an outright auction. What do you suppose, by the way, the market, going market rate is for coming and shooting a walrus? I don't know. You don't know? No, but it's probably pretty high, and probably lots of people who like to hunt and afford it, and then you have the whole question, does a sport become something that's just to the higher bidder, or is it something that people as citizens should equally have access to a lottery or whatever to be able to kill? Right, okay. Let's hear if there are some, we've heard a number of people who are uneasy with this policy, but at least half the gathering here favored it. So let's hear now from someone who having heard the arguments against has rejoined her. I think the Inuits, they have the rights to get more welfare from the Canadian government to advance their well-being. Right. I think that's a legitimate cause for them to trade and sell this. And this legitimate cause will overwrite the animal protectionism, which is in favor of the rights for walrus. I think people will think... Wait, wait, wait. The animal protectionism, though. Remember, no more walruses are dying. What's the animal protectionism claim? Well, the animal protectionism is the argument of the professor, the slippery... Oh, I see. The worry that sooner or later more will be taken. Yeah. If we take out that possibility, then I think the Inuits definitely have a legitimate cause too. Walruses, it's not like hunting rhinoceros or a lion or something where there is the thrill of the chase, where it's risky, where it's challenging, where it is at least a kind of sport, or so I'm told. The walrus doesn't run away. The boat comes right up within 15 feet.  Now, I think that's behind the suggestion that there's something well unworthy or even maybe perverse in the desire to do this. Why do you want to do it? Actually, the reason they want to is not for the sport and the thrill. It's because hunting organizations have lists that hunters aspire to complete. The Arctic Five or the, I don't know, the Serengeti Five. And so the walrus is one of the ones on the list. So let's suppose that that's the reason. It can't be for the thrill of it. What do you say to the argument that social policy and economic reasoning even shouldn't count certain preferences if they're base and unworthy like this one? What would you say to that? I think we have a lot of unworthy desires in our daily lives. And those people, if they don't, instead of killing walrus, they'll probably end up killing people on the street. And I would say that that kind of activity is a recreational activity that helps people to release their desire. And people would pay for that because there's a demand for releasing that desire. And I think commodifying this activity is a good way for the society to release that kind of unworthy desire. And at the same time, generate some welfare that can benefit the individuals at the end of the day. I see. Okay, so you have a kind of moral economy of violence or a vice such that if it's not given expression here, it'll come out there, so why not let them shoot walruses? Is there someone else who would like to defend the policy against the objections that we've heard? Hearing the argument, I'm a walrus, and I'd be a lot happier with some sensible regulation that would help ensure that more walruses weren't killed absent that regulation. All right. It's a version of the slippery slope, but it's on the side of the possibility that it would go without regulation that's sensible to chain the kill. But now we're assuming that there is regulation in place and that it won't give way, which admittedly could be a challenge. Who else would like to reply in defense of this? I guess I would make an argument in terms of the Inuit's right and saying who are we or who is the Canadian government to have any say in the rights that they would have had if Canada doesn't exist in the first place, in which case they could do whatever they wanted with the walruses. So that would be my argument in response. So you agree there should be a limit to protect the walruses, but what they do at the airport is up to them? Yeah. Well, I think that one of the arguments against it sort of has a sense of protectionism of another culture that I think is hard to justify to say, well, we think that this is the way you've always done that, and I think it's a false belief that cultures need to remain stagnant over time when they don't, in fact. So those who would prevent them selling their quotas are imposing on the Inuit community a certain conception about what's for their own good. Yeah. All right. There's another example. This one from American History of a policy that enabled people to buy and sell a certain kind of quota, military service during the Civil War, the first draft law in the North, Abraham Lincoln's draft law had the provision that if you were, there was a lottery and there was conscription, community by community. And if you were drafted to fight in the Civil War and didn't want to go and had the money, you could hire a substitute to take your place. People ran ads in the classified ad sections of newspapers advertising, offering money for substitutes, $1,000 up to $1,500 typically, which was a lot of money in those days, to go take your place to fight in the Civil War. Now, both parties, you think about it from the standpoint of economic reasoning, both parties are better off. It was worth it for the person hiring the substitute, otherwise they wouldn't have offered the money. It was worth it for the person who agreed to serve in his place. Now, let's take a quick vote on that one. And here, let's ask whether people find this system objectionable or acceptable. How many find it objectionable? And how many find it acceptable? Okay, a handful. Most people here consider the Civil War system unfair. Let's see how many people think it's that in all volunteer army of the kind we currently have is unfair. And how many think it is fair? How many think that the all-volunteer army is a fair way of allocating military service? A lot of people are not voting. All right, what these examples suggest, and this really is the beginning, not the end of a discussion about how military service should be allocated and whether it should be by the labor market. One question we would need to ask is what value exactly is being violated? Why should military service not be allocated by the labor market, but most other jobs are? What is it about military service? We let people buy and sell their labor in other areas of life, including risky ones. What is different? Or is there something intrinsically different about military service in this respect? Someone who voted who thinks it doesn't like the volunteer army should probably answer. Go ahead. Because of patriotism and loyalty to one's country. And why do patriotism and loyalty to one's country mean that you shouldn't buy and sell military service? Because it seems that, you know, seeing the country is giving you so much, you should have a duty to your country and not sell that responsibility to someone else and try to get out of that duty. It's basically something you have to do because of what the country has done for you, so you can't just sell that responsibility. So if it's a civic duty, then there seems something wrong with hiring someone else to perform it. So if you're called to jury duty, you're not allowed to hire a substitute to take your place. Or for that matter, your vote. It's an interesting question from an economic standpoint. Why should there not be a free market in votes? Many people don't even use their vote in the election. So what's wrong with it? Well, if you're right about civic duty, we do hesitate to allow people to sell off or hire other people to fulfill their civic duties. What these two examples illustrate, the walrus hunting and the question of military service and civic duty is that we hesitate to allow buying and selling of social practices or duties if we think that some other value, some higher value is at stake, some higher norm, patriotism and loyalty, or the desire to accommodate the way of life of the Inuit people. But if this is true, then there are two, I think, two implications for the way we do economics that we need to consider. Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not touch or taint or change the goods they exchange. And this may be true enough if we're talking about material goods like flat screen televisions. If you sell me a flat screen television or give me one as a gift, it will work just the same either way. The value of the television won't vary depending on whether there was a market relationship. But the same may not be true when we're talking about health or education or the environment or the respect for the community and culture of peoples. Same may not be true when we're talking about civic duties. In cases like these, subjecting social practices to market valuation and exchange may change their meaning, may change the character of the goods, and it may do so by crowding out. The market values may crowd out values, norms, attitudes worth caring about. If that's true, then to decide where markets belong and where they don't. It's not enough to engage in economics as if it were a value-neutral science of choice. That's how economics has presented itself. Really, since early in the 20th century as a value-neutral science of choice. But if market reasoning and market practices crowd out values, norms, attitudes, non-market goods, then we have to ask in any given instance where we would use a market mechanism what are the goods at stake in the practice. Whether they are civic goods or communal goods or cultural goods or environmental ones and while marketizing the practice drive those out or diminish or erode them. But this carries a big implication for economics which is it has to reconnect with its origins in moral and political philosophy. Back when economics was invented the classical economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill they all understood their subject economics to be a subfield of moral and political philosophy. And as markets today reach into more and more spheres of social life that feature of economics is one that I think we need to reconnect with. Economics has to be re-understood as a branch of moral philosophy. There's a second consequence for if it's true that marketizing goods drives out certain attitudes and norms worth caring about. It's a consequence for our public discourse during the same period that we've drifted into having a market society. Our public discourse has become emptied of larger meaning. Politics has become narrowly kind of managerial and technocratic and then we have the shouting matches on cable television and talk radio and on the floor of Congress. And people wonder why. The reason we give is that too many people believe too deeply in their moral convictions. I think something closer to the opposite is true. I think the reason our public discourse is so impoverished is that it fails to engage with larger questions of meaning and moral purpose including questions about how to value goods how to value the social goods embodied in practices from health to education to the environment to civic life. Now we tend to shy away we tend to shy away from engaging directly with arguments about the meaning of goods in public life. And the reason we shy away is we realize these are controversial judgments. People disagree about them. And so we reach for a kind of public discourse that's empty of those big questions. And so I think the rise of market reasoning this is part of the appeal of market reasoning. It seems to offer a value neutral way of making social choice that seems to spare us the need to engage in debate about the character of goods. But it's a false promise. It's led to the hollowing out the emptiness of public discourse that we see all around us. It explains I think why citizens of democracies but around the world are frustrated with the terms the alternatives being offered by political parties and by politicians. And so I think a reason I think we have two reasons to reconnect with big questions in public discourse about economics. One is it's the only way we will be able to decide as a democratic society where markets serve the public good and where they don't belong. And second, it's the only way to elevate the terms of our public discourse to engage with big things nobody is inspired by technocratic managerial talk. I don't suggest that we will all agree if we have a morally more robust kind of public discourse. But I do think we will make this democracy better we'll cultivate habits of listening to and learning from one another even where the disagreements persist. And we also may develop a keener sense of the price we pay for drifting toward a society where everything is up for sale. Thanks. First of all, thank you. That's very inspiring and I would say taking the lid off the can of worms that we have to delve into. As I listen to your two examples about the Inuit and I have done a little bit of running around up in high latitudes myself. But not hunting. I'm sorry? Not hunting. You've been fishing up there not hunting. Sailing. Sailing, okay. But and also when you talked about the question of a voluntary army the thing that makes me uncomfortable is that when economists talk about episodes like that they talk about them as though they're devoid of context. A voluntary army will naturally push people who are closer to despair into risking their lives. And that's not a free choice. That's a coerced choice. In my experience in dealing with Eskimo culture they pay tribute to the animals they kill as part of their organic system and the feelings they have relative to the spirits and the gods. And when they start to let other guys come in for sport and shoot those animals to take money are they not deforming something that's dear to their traditions which they're doing as a choice out of despair to take care of people in a culture that's fighting for subsistence. So I experienced some abrasion in these examples that they're really not free choices they're coerced choices and we're just not acknowledging that we're pushing people up against the wall before they make the choice. It's an interesting observation and I think what it points to is there are really two and I think this helps force us to distinguish between two different questions we need to ask before we can decide whether to marketize a certain social practice. One of them is is the choice really free how voluntary is the exchange because part of the appeal of markets is that it involves the voluntary exchange among willing participants. So for example in the debate about whether there should be a free market in organs for transplantation kidneys let's say most countries don't permit it but one objection would be just along the lines that you mentioned Rob that if there were marketing kidneys and the sellers were desperately poor peasants in the developing world who were under great economic compulsion to feed their families to provide an education for their family it would be hard to call that choice free. We would say we might well say that the coercion is built into the necessity of their situation if it's a desperate deal so that's one issue how free is the choice and then the second issue is even if the choice is free it might still be degrading take the debate about prostitution some object of prostitution on the ground that typically prostitutes are coerced in effect by drug addiction or desperate need for money but then we could ask what about imagine a roughly equal society or imagine prostitutes who were not under great economic necessity who freely chose that work would that remove all possible objections well not necessarily because there would still be the further question about whether selling one's body for sex is consistent with human dignity or respect for the human person or whether it's degrading independent of the question of freedom versus coercion so there are really two issues we have to two questions we have to ask is it truly voluntary and secondly even if it is is this choice at odds with human dignity or respect for culture in question or in this case human sexuality and this takes us right to questions about the good and those are the questions that we hesitate to debate in public discourse and I think we've got to try to get over that habit we're afraid to have public discussions about deep values I think because there's a pervasive fear that somehow they will be more conflict ridden and violent and yet the truth of the matter is that the effects of the commodification of value are far more violent in its effects than those conversations that so it's a real sort of distortion has taken place in our understanding even of what violence is in our understanding of what the consequences are of conflict well there are certainly cases where commodifying a good especially under desperate where the sellers are under desperate economic circumstances if it's true that in those cases it's not a voluntary choice then it is can be a kind of violence so I think that that's an important point there's also a closely connected point that I think one of the reasons we hesitate to engage in public debate about the nature of the good life or the character of goods and virtues is even if we don't think it will lead to wars of religion and violence we are concerned about the fact that in a pluralist society we disagree about the good so there will be controversy there will be a clash and in a democracy we would wind up imposing the values of some people on others and that's a serious worry but it's not an answer to that worry to say alright let's let markets decide these questions for us for a reason parallel to the point that you just made it's not that markets will decide these questions in a way that is neutral toward the right way of valuing goods to consign these questions to markets is to presuppose that the proper way of valuing them is as commodities so if we don't decide debate and decide questions of the good in democratic public discourse markets will decide these questions for us it's not that there's some neutral alternative some of us economists after reading your book need a little bit of advice you talk a lot about love okay right in an earlier session here we had two one former Harvard professor and one current one Marcia Sen and Cornell West and where things really heat up that night was where no Marcia offered he said why don't we talk about love so in the Harvard tradition I look at the debate you've had with Larry Summers the writings of Dennis Robertson and also some of the discussions in your book about giving gifts economists would have you give cash gifts because otherwise you're constraining what the person receives could you flesh this out and help us all with our love lives well and love is related to gift and the giving of gift I'd like to get to the topic of love and economists through a concrete example one of the most influential studies about the effect of commodification in recent times was a book nearly 1970s by the British sociologist Richard Titmuss some of you probably remember this book it was called the gift relationship and it was about blood donation and he's compared the US and the UK system of blood donation in the UK you couldn't buy and sell blood you could only donate it voluntarily without pay in the US you could donate blood at the local Red Cross or you could sell it there were blood banks that bought and sold it and his conclusion was on practical and economic grounds the British system works better a more reliable supply less tainted blood and so on but he also made an ethical argument against a market in blood saying that if you allow the buying and selling of blood you drive out and devalue the altruism of giving giving to a stranger even this generated a debate including among some economists who were paying attention because from an economic point of view if some people want to give stuff away and other people want to buy and sell that stuff both groups should be free to proceed as they choose just because blood is being sold by some people somewhere doesn't mean I can't still give it freely if I want to the economist would say in one economist who wrote a long critical review of the Titmuss book fastened on this point he's one of the most distinguished American economists of his time and he concluded his review of Titmuss by making this argument against using insisting on altruism as a basis for blood donation he said like many economists I do not want to rely too heavily on substituting ethics for self-interest I think it is best on the whole that the requirement of ethical behavior be confined confined to those circumstances where the price system breaks down why? he said because we do not wish to use up recklessly the scarce resources of altruistic motivation so the idea is that altruism love sympathy, generosity are scarce resources that are depleted with use now it's easy to see how this I would call it a kind of mystic conception of virtue if true provides good grounds for extending markets into every sphere of life because other people can still go on doing what they want if they want to be generous and so on so it's the idea that generosity and virtue are like fossil fuels the more you use the less you have I didn't realize when I read this that this draws this idea goes back among economists this economic view of virtue to a highly respected Cambridge UK economist who gave a speech at the bicentennial of Columbia University not far from here and the subject of his lecture was what does a question, what does the economist economize this was this was Sir Dennis Robertson this was in 1954 at Columbia and his answer was look he realizes economists deal with the aggressive impulses of human beings but they still have an important moral mission and that is to help to reduce the preacher's task to manageable dimensions and here's how the economist can help by promoting policies that rely whenever possible on self-interest rather than altruism or moral considerations and by doing this the economist saves society from squandering its scarce supply of virtue so here's where the idea first finds full articulation and he ended with this if we economists do our business well we can I believe contribute mightily to the economizing of that scarce resource love the most precious thing in the world now to those not steeped in economics this seems like a strange way of thinking I mean imagine imagine a loving couple would they really think to themselves that they should treat one another as a self-part when they can in calculating fashion so as to save their love for the moments when they really need it that's the idea of hoarding love and or would they or would it turn out that loving acts toward one another actually would increase this resource I heard echoes of this years later that I had actually taught a course which was a series of debates with my colleague Larry Summers a course on globalization and markets and when he was president of Harvard he was asked to give the morning prayer in Memorial Church at Harvard and his theme was what economics can contribute to thinking about moral questions and at the end of his prayer his commentary he replied to those who criticize markets for relying on selfishness and greed and this is what he said quote we all have only so much altruism in us economists like me and I'm quoting still a very valuable and rare good that needs conserving far better to conserve it by designing a system in which people's wants will be satisfied by individuals being selfish and saving that altruism for our families, our friends and the many social problems in this world that markets cannot solve so this is Robertson restated now the metaphor I think is misleading altruism generosity solidarity and civic spirit these are not like commodities that are depleted with use I think they're more like the better metaphor is to think of them as muscles that grow stronger with exercise and I think one of the defects of the market society we have come to inhabit is that it gives us fewer and fewer opportunities to exercise those muscles and develop those virtues


Okay, we're in chapter six here, verses 27 through 38. Let me read that to you and we'll get into our study. Luke chapter six, beginning at verse 27, reading to verse 38.  To him who strikes you on the one cheek, off to the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from him who takes away your goods, do not ask them back. Now this sounds like a father and his kids, but anyway.  But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good and lend, hoping for nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the highest. For he is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your father also is merciful. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will it be put into your bosom? For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. Now as we're reading this, does it discourage you at all? I mean, does it? I mean, as I was reading this, and just a moment ago I was just talking to my wife, Marie, I said, oh my, this is one of those messages that just cuts straight to the heart. I mean, all I have to do is read it, and I realize that I'm incapable of doing any of this. I mean, maybe one or two of those things I might succeed once every 10 years at doing, but the rest are very, very difficult. And so as I'm looking at this, I'm realizing that this is the picture of a true Christian. This is what a genuine believer is intended by God to be. And I realize, of course, that not a single one of us in this room, and nobody in history outside of Jesus Christ has ever been 100% able to say all of these things were done by that one person. And so it emphasizes to me the need for grace, grace from God. And so that's what the Lord is teaching us. He's teaching us what it means to be a Christian. And he's showing us what he can do in our life if we yield ourselves to him. Now, when he begins in verse 27 and says, I say to you who hear, you know, a lot of people can hear the words spoken, but not every person is receiving with understanding and with faith and a desire to put into practice. And so when you hear something, it's more than simply allowing the sound to enter into your consciousness. He's speaking about somebody who's listening with the intent to obey.  If there's anything that is intended to reveal faith in God, it's going to be love. If there's anything intended to reveal that we have a relationship with God, it will always be that we are loving people. Jesus said that love is the mark of the believer. And you commandment give I unto you that you love one another as I have loved you. He said, by this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love, one for another. So the mark of the believer has always been love. The Bible says, beloved, let us love one another for love is of God. And he who loves, knows God and is born of God. And he who loves, knows not God, for God is love. And so the mark of the believer has always been the fruit of the spirit, which is love. And so Jesus Christ is teaching us that if people are gonna see that we are truly his followers, if we're really Christians, then we're gonna be those who love. The interesting thing about that is this. This love that we have is not simply for those who already love us. The love of the Christian is a love for people in general. And that even includes those who hate us. Jesus is saying, love your enemies. And you say that's impossible, and I say amen to that. But Jesus did, Jesus loved those who killed him. He loved the world so much he laid his life down. And so love is not just a philosophical sentiment. When I was a young man into kind of the hippie philosophy and all, love was a philosophy. It was something we spoke about but didn't do very well. We like to talk about love, but we didn't love very effectively. We loved ourselves, but we didn't love other people very much. And so as I became a Christian I discovered that love is revealed by action. And love revealed by action has always been a standard test for its reality. If you take notes first to John chapter three verse 18, beloved, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and truth. Or in James chapter two verses 15 through 17, if a brother or sister is naked in destitute of daily food and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warmed and filled. But you do not give them the things which are needed for the body. What does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. So love is always revealed and has always been revealed by an action. And the reason that Jesus is speaking concerning love here in verse 27 and he says love your enemies and do good and all of that is because the standard of love has always been the kind of love that God has shown to the world. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Or God demonstrated his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And so love has always been the standard and you see that throughout scripture. And so Jesus is teaching here in these verses, verse 27, that were to love. And he says, not just those who love you, but love even your enemies. And notice what he says.  And so basically love is demonstrated in three basic ways here in this passage.  Well in Proverbs 25, verses 21 and 22, the writer said, if your enemy's hungry, give him food to eat.  Now when you read that and you will heap coals of fire on his head, then at first you might be thinking, well that's good, if I do a good deed for somebody, then God's gonna burn him up with fire. That's not what he's saying.  This represented pangs of conscience that burned their heart.  And so we're to love one another. That's why Romans 12 21 says, do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.   The word bless there means to speak well of. In other words, if somebody has hurt you, if somebody has cursed you and said things about you that are evil, resist retaliating through gossip. Resist it. So many people find it so easy to retaliate by saying evil things about the person who said something about them. Jesus is saying that's not the response of a Christian. The response of a Christian is to bless or speak well of. Romans 12 14 says it like this, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. And so when you speak well of the individual who's speaking evil of you, the person who's heard both, you speak well of that other person and that person speak evil of you is gonna be forced into a decision as to whether or not what he's hearing concerning you is true. But if somebody approaches you and says to you, you know, somebody was saying this and that about you and you say, well, I don't doubt it because there's such a pig, I can imagine they'd say that and you say bad things about them, then they basically will just say, well, yeah, maybe you are that way.    Jesus says, don't do that. I've discovered, and this is the truth, I have discovered that when somebody says something evil concerning me, if I don't say anything in retaliation to them, it usually dies out, it usually dies out. And there are people who actually love to tell you the bad things that others say about you, some of you know that. There are people who just can hardly wait. Once they hear something, they have to go and tell you what this person just said, and that's the way a lot of people are. But you know, and some people will do that, oh pastor, did you know that so-and-so was saying this about you? And what do they want me to do? They want me to say something bad about that person? So if I say, well, that's too bad, whatever, and I leave it alone, they don't take it any further. And so you don't want to gossip, and you don't wanna retaliate by using your words.  When Jesus was dying on the cross, Luke 23-34, he said, Father, kill them all, cause they're monsters. Now he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Forgive them, forgive them. We have in the book of Acts, the story of a man by the name of Stephen. And Stephen is the first Christian martyr. And Stephen has given a defense of the Christian faith before those who are intent on killing him. And so after he has shared concerning Jesus Christ and who Jesus Christ is, the Bible makes it very clear that the people who were hearing him speak were so enraged that they killed him. And according to Acts chapter seven, verses 59 and 60, it says, they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not charge them with this sin. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And that's what Jesus is speaking about. Rather than trying to retaliate, pray for them. Pray for them who use you, pray for them who persecute you. Why? Because this makes us genuine sons of the Father. You see, God shows impartial love and so should his children. God does a work on behalf of people because God in general loves people. Matthew 545 says, you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He makes his son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. I was reading something that I found interesting. It was in a book called Fox's Book of Martyrs. And there was something recorded about a Scottish reformer by the name of George Weishart who lived in 1513 and was martyred in 1546. And George Weishart was sentenced to die as a heretic. He was condemned to be burnt at the stake and the day that he was to be martyred, the captain of the castle in Edinburgh invited him to breakfast and gave him bags of gunpowder to put in his clothing. Because the executioner knew of Weishart's selfless ministering to hundreds of people who were dying of the plague, he hesitated carrying out the sentence. When Weishart saw the expression of remorse on the executioner's face, he went over and kissed him on the cheek, saying, sir, may that be a token that I forgive you.  But when he was there burning at the stake for being a man preaching the gospel, the executioner seeing the good works that he had done how he was caring for people who were dying of the plague didn't want to carry out the sentence, but Weishart looks at him and says, and kisses him and says, you know what, I forgive you. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ is talking about, guys.  Now notice in verse 29, he says, to him who strikes you on the one cheek offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Now it says when he strikes you on one cheek, he's speaking of being slapped and to a Jewish man, a slap on the face was a great insult to his personal dignity. That's the truth even to this day, there are some cultures that take that slap so intensely, intensely personally that it's a declaration of war to the death. And so when he's speaking about here is retribution and he's saying something concerning the desire for retaliation.  And his answer is do not seek to retaliate. Why not? Well, because when you do not seek to retaliate, it reveals a gentle and humble spirit. It reveals a spirit that's been touched by God. Jesus Christ once again, greatest example, Isaiah chapter 50 verse six, the Bible refers to Messiah in this way. I gave my back to the Smiders, my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I did not hide my face from shame and spitting. If they did that to Jesus, he's saying, then what's gonna be difficult with you turning the other cheek in a personal level when somebody attacks you in that way? And so if he strikes you, offer the other also. In other words, be slow to retaliate. Second, he goes from him who takes away your cloak, don't withhold your tunic either. A cloak is an outer garment. It's served as a blanket. A tunic is an under garment. It's similar to what we would call a t-shirt. And what he's saying is make every effort in the spirit of sincere love to conquer evil with good. And rather than being quick to retaliate, hold your temper and seek the Lord. Rather than saying I'm gonna get even with this person, you know, if it takes me the rest of my life, we have to have a spirit that is quick to forgive and has a resistance to retaliation. Now that's a very difficult thing, by the way. Especially when you're young and filled with energy and physical ability to retaliate and sometimes to do so, doing great damage to the person who has harmed you. I have a friend of mine who studied martial arts, three or four different forms, and was pretty good, pretty good at it. And I was speaking to him on one occasion and I said, you know, you've pretty much got some expertise in quite a number of forms of various martial arts. And I said, it must be very difficult for you if somebody attacks you to not just instantly just, you know, do away with them. It must be very difficult for you. And I said, now see, for me, it wouldn't be hard at all because I don't know any of that stuff. So you hit me in the head and I'll say, I'm sorry, but you, I said it's a little bit different, isn't it? He said it is different. He said the more you know and the more power and ability you have, he says quite obviously it's more difficult to restrain. Well, think about it for just a moment because the Lord Jesus Christ had all power. He had all ability, and yet he restrained himself. When they hit him, when they spoke of him, when they spit in his face, he restrained himself. And why did he do that? He did so because he loved them. And so what he's speaking about here is having a sincere spirit of love. Listen, when I was a young man, just saved 20 years old, I got drafted, went into the military, I can still remember being at a place called Fort Bragg in North Carolina. I can still remember.  And I can remember walking down this pathway as I was going to a dirt road so I could begin my run. And I remember praying often. As I was walking through this place, going to the road, I can remember praying often, the same prayer that I've been praying now for many years. And it was this, God teach me to love. God teach me to love. You know, God teach me to love because that's something I don't do very well. That's something I'm not very good at. And I remember praying like that and I still pray like that. God teach me to love. I wanna learn how to be gentle. I wanna learn to have a spirit that doesn't seek to retaliate instantly. That I'm not so thin-skinned that when somebody says something that's hurtful to me, that the first thing I wanna do is retaliate, get even and say something even worse than what you said to me, pile it on if necessary. God help me. See, one of the things about being a minister that you may not know is, and as I say it, you'll say, oh yeah, that makes sense to me, is that ministers have a tool, an instrument that we have. It's called our voice and our vocabulary. And because what I do all day long, every day basically, is I study and write and read every day, I have developed over the 34 years of teaching an ability to pretty much put my thoughts in perspective quickly and to disarm people in combat verbally fairly easily, quickly, because that's what I do, that's what I'm trained to do. And so when I get into an argument, if I get into an argument with my wife, that's what I do for a living, and so I can be unkind. And I can go to the point and I can say these three things and this is why, I can do that. Take an offering afterwards, she usually doesn't wanna give me an offering after we've had a fight, but I can do that. And what happens is the Lord has tried to teach me a gentleness of spirit, because when you do that, when that's what you do, you can get pretty good at it. And you can become even proud of your ability to see through things and get to the point and make strong statements you see. And when somebody is saying something to you and they're unkind, it really isn't difficult to just cut right through that, go to the heart of the matter and sometimes to hurt them. And you can do that. Jesus is saying, listen, the mark of a believer, it goes all the way back to verse 27, and you can start with the one word, love, that's the mark of a believer.  You can love your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your best friends. You can love those who love you. But Jesus isn't talking about that.  This person has been working overtime to try and get me fired. Lord, this person, and you know it, has been gossiping behind my back constantly and turned people against me because I'm a believer. This person has been working hard to get close to the boss so they can get a promotion even though I've been here longer than them and do a better job than them, but I know that because they're taking them out and they're buying them drinks after work and oh, I'm not gonna get the promotion because this person is cozied up to them. How do you react to those kinds of things? And Jesus says, what you do is you pray for them. What you do is you love them and you say, I can't do that and so I say along with you, that's right. That's why I need the grace of God. That's why I need to die to myself. That's why I need what Jesus has to offer and as I read this, I realize I can't do anything without his help. I can't because my propensity, my natural desire is to get even. If somebody is saying evil about me, I don't wanna do good to them. I wanna get back at them. I wanna find a way for them to hurt as bad as I'm hurting or maybe even worse if possible. That's my natural reaction and yet Jesus is saying that's not the way of a believer. Look what he says in verse 30. Give to everyone who asks of you and from him who takes away your goods, do not ask them back. Our personal attitude should be free of a desire for revenge and sometimes it is simply wiser to release what the person desires. Now incidentally, what he's referring to here would be when somebody's stealing from you something. Sometimes it's wiser to give the thief what they desire. Sometimes it's wiser to forgo your rights in order to save your life. And sometimes when people are fighting so hard for the purse of their car and they're willing to die for it, it doesn't make much sense at all. He says, release these things, let go of those things.  That's called the golden rule. God's love is revealed in his children when they treat others as they themselves would be treated. Because love seeks the other's well-being and when you're seeking somebody else's well-being, you're actually demonstrating the kind of love that God has, the golden rule, loving others, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that gives to us some insight, by the way, that love is actually something that is an activity. It's something that occurs. It's not something that is passive.  You don't wait to do good. You don't do good to those who've already done good to you.  Why, because that's what love intends to do. That's what God did for us. Before we loved him, he loved us. And the way he demonstrated that was when he gave his son Jesus Christ. So love is proactive. He goes on in verse 32, but if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? For even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. You see, you look down on people that are called sinners, he's saying, but you're not any better than they are because they love those who love them. They do good to only those who do good to them. And they only make safe loans expecting their money back and sometimes with interest. And because of this, you're no better than any person you consider to be a sinner. Sinners love those that love them. I was watching years ago now one of those history channel or discovery channel specials on a particular gang that used to exist on the East Coast. It was an Irish gang. And it was a vicious Irish gang, similar to what we have seen revealed concerning some of the organized crime gangs. And this particular gang happened to be made up of Irishmen. And they were speaking about this one guy, this Irish gangster. And how that he was at his dinner table and he was enjoying a meal with his kids and his wife.  And then this gangster gets up during the meal and goes into the bathroom, opens the door to check on the guy that he had hanging in his shower that he had slit his throat and was letting him bleed to death in the bathtub. And he checks on him to see if the blood's fully left his body, it hasn't yet closed as a door, goes back to dinner. Once again, being just a nice dad, loving husband. And the guy is saying, that's how these people can be. On the one hand, he's got a dead man in his bathtub and he's waiting to bleed him so he can go and dump his body. And yet there he is with his kids, ruffling their hair, telling him he loves them. Jesus says that. He says even sinners love those who love them. So what good is that?  That's Christianity and that's the way it works. And that's how it works best. Love, love your enemies, do good, land, he says. Notice that in verse 35, hoping for nothing in return.  When he says love your enemies or do good and land, et cetera, that speaks of a habit. Be in the habit of loving, be in the habit of doing good and be in the habit of lending with a pure heart. So what happens if they hate us and they're still in need? Do we lend to them under normal circumstances? Jesus would say yes. Now, not always. Because if one of my neighbors came over and said, excuse me, do you have a gun that I can borrow so I can kill you? I'm not supposed to lend under those circumstances, you know. There are incidentally, probably should deal with this as I'm thinking. As Jesus is speaking here and giving to us these things here, these are under general social circumstances. We're speaking of living in a neighborhood, being in a town, we're talking about being in regular society. If there's a terrorist who wants to take my wife captive, if there's somebody who tries to injure my grandson, if there's somebody who's gonna harm one of my children, Jesus is not teaching pacifism here. There is a time for peace and there's a time for war. There's a time when you respond with equal measure and equal force because the situation demands that. There is a place for just retaliation. There is a place that if I'm standing here and somebody is injuring somebody next to me, that I have a moral responsibility to get involved somehow. And if I have the capacity to save a life, then that's what I'm to do. You see, I'm saying this because as I read this, I was thinking, now how does that really apply? And that's what I'm trying to give to you. You see, I heard a debate between a pacifist who is a Christian and another Christian who is not a pacifist. And in part of the debate, a question was asked to the pacifist, if a man was raping your wife and you entered into the room and discovered that, would you use violence to save your wife? And the pacifist's answer was no, I would pray for the man raping her. I would too at his funeral as I buried him. I don't see anywhere in scripture that teaches pacifism. There is a time to respond. What Jesus is speaking about is normal circumstances.  How do you deal with them?  You know they've been gossiping about you all through the neighborhood.  Do you talk about them to your neighbors just to defend yourself?  Or do you pull over and say, son, can I give you a ride? And put him in the car and bring him home safely. How do you do? Well see, it's just very basic things, isn't it? You treat them kindly. If the neighbor's getting all worked at you and yelling at you, you know, I had some guy come up to me one time years ago, a brother and our fellowship and with his wife and they said, we don't know what to do about our neighbors. Well, what's happening? Well, they're picking up their dog's mess from the backyard and throwing them into our backyard is getting kind of old, you know. How do you deal with that? Well, I don't wanna tell you how to deal with that, but what's your natural inclination? And what do you do? That's what Jesus is talking about. Got somebody on the job who doesn't like you? They might even take it out on you. They might even push you and try and start something with you. How do you handle that? How do you handle it when they insult you? How do you handle it when these things are going down? And Jesus says, the way you handle it is praying for love that you might love them because that's what God would require of you. Now that I understand, that I do understand and that I have done for a long, long time. God, help me to not wanna retell you. Help me to not want to repay evil for evil. Help me to learn to bless those who are cursing me. Help me not to take it out on them. And you don't wanna know something? God does change your heart. God does change your heart. You see, under ordinary circumstances, we lend without the expectation of receiving in return. And that's especially true in cases of lending to those who are poor. In the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 15, verses seven and eight, in the Old Testament, it says, if there is anyone, if there is among you a poor man of your brethren within any of the gates in your land which the Lord your God has given you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother. But you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need whatever he needs. Well, why is that important? Well, Proverbs 19, 17, he who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord and he will pay back what he has given. That's what Jesus is speaking about in verse 35 when he says, your reward will be great and you will be sons of the highest. Your reward is great. God's grace upon you will abound. So the reward is from God for performing a good deed and caring for other people. When you minister to somebody in need, God takes note of what you've done. Now obviously Christianity is based on us being saved by the grace of God. You are saved by grace and not by works. You are saved by grace. And still it's the grace that saves that also enables us to work. It's interesting, if you look at Ephesians chapter two and you were to look at verses eight and nine which everybody quotes and we pretty much in this congregation know this scripture for by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast. We know that God's grace and faith in all is what has enabled us to have a relationship with God. So our Christian life begins with grace. Now I want to make a real quick point here. Our Christian life begins with the grace of God. That's where it begins. It's not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us. So it's not by works of righteousness for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God and not by works lest any man should boast. We know that scripture. But he goes on in verse 10 and he says we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. The grace that saves you is the grace that enables you to live a life of good works.   He causes his son to shine on the just and the unjust alike. He causes his reign to fall on the just and the unjust alike. Meaning that you're a Christian and you have a farm and you're growing a certain crop and God's reign comes in the proper season and it reigns on your field and it also reigns on your next door neighbor who is an ungodly person. There's not just this all of a sudden just this barrier and there's only reign in your field and the next door is just going to seed. No, it's a picture of the common grace of God how that God does good to all men, to all people and therefore if God does good to all, we do too. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is saying listen the works that you do, there's a reward for them is a proper reward for them. You're not a mercenary for doing something and receiving a reward. There's a reward that is proper because God has established you that you might do good works in order that you might truly be his children, reflecting how good he is to a world and ultimately what he does is though he gave you his grace and he rewards you for your works. One day we all stand before the throne of God to receive. Second Corinthians chapter five verse 10 says it we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. And so we stand before the Lord to receive from him our rewards. So he says in verse 36, therefore be merciful just as your father also is merciful. To be merciful is to be compassionate. To be compassionate means to be filled with sympathy and the sympathy is revealed by your life. So he says imitate God. God is merciful. God is compassionate to those who are in need and therefore you should be too. Psalm 145-8, the Lord is gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, great in mercy. Judge not, verse 37, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, you will be forgiven. Now before we look at what he is saying we have to consider what he's not saying. He's not saying never evaluate or discern make a judgment about anything. I think that that mentality of just, well I don't want to judge that person has become a convenient excuse to avoid confrontation and having to deal with issues. There are a lot of Christians who will see other Christians do something wrong and won't say anything about it.  They just let them continue because they said I don't want to judge them. Didn't Jesus say judge not? Well I don't want to judge them. I don't want to bring condemnation to them. That's not what he's saying here. I think what we have today in the church is what we would call a superficial unity. It's glossed over with a sentimental tolerance. That's an evidence that there's a lack of strong convictions about things that are right or wrong. And normally a person who isn't willing to encourage someone to do right is a person who doesn't read the Bible and they simply don't care about other people. Every message you hear, every time the Bible is taught, you need to judge it. You need to make a discerning judgment for soundness of doctrine. You have to ask yourself a question, does this line up with the common testimony of Scripture? Is this something that I can find in the Bible? You see in second John in chapter, second John verses 10 and 11, it says if anyone comes to you and doesn't bring this teaching, you do not take him into your house or welcome him, anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work. There needs to be a discernment. You need to listen to what's being said and you need to ask yourself, does that line up with what God says? And so when Jesus is speaking about not judging, he is not saying for us to suspend discernment. There are too many Scriptures that say we need to be discerning about things that are being taught and also discerning concerning the way people live in order that we might know who is a sheep and who is a wolf, who is a sheep and who is pretending to be one. And there's a requirement of discernment. You need to have that. All of us should have a discernment. What Jesus is speaking about is habitual fault finding. What he's speaking about here is an unmerciful condemnation of other people and that makes them a judgmental person and so practicing that kind of judgmentalism, what happens is you replace God as the final judge because you become the judge yourself. And so that's what he's talking about. In Romans chapter 14 verse four, there's a great question, who are you to judge another man's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand for God is able to make him to stand. There's another Scripture, James four verse 12 that says there's one lawgiver who is able to save and destroy. Who are you to judge another? And so we don't know another person's heart. And that is a very important thing. Now listen very carefully. Hopefully this will make some sense to you. There have been times in my early walk with the Lord within the first three years of me getting saved and without trying to make an excuse just by way of explanation, I got saved in December, went into the military in March. So I had approximately three months in my early Christian life to prepare to go into the military. And I know that we have military veterans in this church and perhaps I might have some here tonight. And if you're a military vet then you might wanna look back at your experience and try and remember basic training and try and remember what it was like to be permanent party and to be placed in a particular location where you had no friends and you had nothing else to do and there aren't a lot of churches to go to and you don't have Christian fellowship and begin to think about that with me for a minute. And you'll understand how my life did not grow that much when I was in the military. Though I did seek out fellowship and I did start fellowshiping with a group of people called the navigators and all. It still didn't meet the need that constant fellowship in the word of God and prayer and a church that I could have been or taken in being taught in and serving in didn't have any of that. And so for the first two years of my walk with Jesus Christ I was basically stunted in my growth, stunted in my growth and temptation was everywhere. I mean, I came out of an alcoholic background and so when you're in a barracks and you've got a beer machine the way other places have Coke machines and you can buy a beer anytime you want you begin to stumble and it's easy to do that and I struggled off and on when I was in the military and I got out of the service, I still was struggling and I would do right and I'd go to church and then I'd do badly and I didn't really straighten out until September of 1973 when I started teaching the Bible and God started saying, look at, I'm gonna teach you some things that you're not practicing right now and just the discipline of studying and then learning to be an example began to change my life. And that's how my life began to change but I have to be honest with you two and a half years of it it was up and down, up and down constantly. So if you encountered me, there would have been times that you as a believer might have encountered me as a young believer and you would have been absolutely sure that I wasn't saved because I had no outer appearance of being saved. There was no fruit. I went to my cousin's wedding, Leanne, when Leanne got married, her father, I don't know that he was a Christian at that time so he brought out some champagne and I was 23 years old, 22 years old and they brought out some champagne and I drank one after another before you know what, I'd had a few and I was in the front room there and I was starting to get a little lightheaded and all and here come two Christians, my cousin Leanne's a Christian, here come some friends she invited to her wedding who were Christians, one sits on my left hand, the other sits on my right and I'm sitting there and my eyes are kind of like glazed because I've been drinking a lot of champagne to be honest with you and they start witnessing to me. And they're sure I'm not a Christian and I'm just sitting there looking at them trying to focus and I'm talking with slurred speech and I don't remember of course what I was saying but I do remember them saying something about, you know Jesus died on the cross for your sins, I do remember that and I remember looking at him with that champagne buzz and smiling at them and I said I'm already Christian, like that, I'm already Christian. And they said sure of course and anyway you know sin, you know and I'm just, yeah I know. I was a Christian but you would not know it and I still remember what I said when they got up, I mean they thought man this foolish to talk to this guy, he can't even understand the word we're saying and they get up and they say you know what, okay brother we'll talk to you again sometime, maybe we'll see you and I go yeah, here or there or in the air because I had heard that somewhere and it sounded pretty Christian to me. There were times that you would have seen me not every day, not every week, not every month, not even every year but there were times when I was not doing well with Jesus Christ and you would have been 100% sure I could not possibly be a Christian but the one thing you couldn't read is my heart and you didn't know that people like me would go home and weep and say God I'm tired of this. It's always up and down. I prayed like that and I would fall and I would go home and I'd weep and that's the truth before Jesus Christ and I say God help me. Look at what I am, there are no changes taking place in me Lord. You see what you see now is a result of the Lord working for 36, almost 37 years and I began to learn those lessons. You can't put yourself in a position of being tempted. You can't for me, you can't drink that one glass of champagne because you'll drink the whole bottle if you get an opportunity. I had to learn that, I had to learn that and so the self discipline, the dying to self but you can't make that judgment.  I remember I was in a, I led a guide to Christ. He used to live right up the street. His name was Steve and Steve was an alcoholic, confirmed alcoholic in his early 20s. He used to bring home a case of beer and down that case by himself very quickly and but I lived in this house and he was a roommate there. We started having a Bible study. Steve started coming to the Bible study after work and before you know it, Steve's bowing his head at a Tuesday night Bible study that we used to have just down the street from here asking Christ to come into his life and then now that he's come to Christ, one day he comes walking up to me and he says, David, I have to talk to you. It's been weeks since he's saved and I said, sure, Steve, what's up? He goes, I wanna tell you something. He says, I can tell that every time you're looking at me that you're trying to figure out whether I've been drinking or not, I can tell that you're doing that. And I said, Steve, he goes, David, you are. He says, and I know that you're judging me. He says, I know that you get close to me to see if you can smell alcohol on my breath. I know you're doing that. And this is what he said that really, really pierced my heart. He said, you loved me more before I became a Christian than you do now that I am one. And the Holy Spirit pierced me because that was right. As long as he was in his alcoholism and as he was down, I loved him because I wanted him saved, but I stopped really loving him when he got saved because now I'm afraid he's going to backslide and I stopped accepting him. I started judging him. I didn't judge him as an alcoholic. I started judging him as a Christian. And I've learned some hard lessons over the years about loving people. And that's what Jesus is saying, judge not, condemn not, let God be the judge. Somebody here probably has somebody you know that you're worried about. Lift him to the Lord and love him for Jesus' sake and trust God and see what the Lord will do in that person.  And then finally, he says, give and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. This is an interesting picture.  Anybody here knows that you take that grain and you fill it up. If you start shaking it, it starts to settle. When it starts to settle, you can start pressing it down. When you press it down, you can fill it with more grain and press it down. And you keep filling it with more grain until basically it overflows. That's what Jesus is talking about. He's saying, and I want you to see it, give it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. I will bless you if you're generous. I'll take Marie to a place called the, what's it called, Mongolian barbecue? You guys know where that is? The Mongolian barbecue? Tell me, I want to know. You guys know where Mongolian barbecue is good. But you go there and you order and they'll give you a list of meats and you can have four different kinds of meats and all that. Once in a while, Marie and I'll go. The first time she came with me, I had already been before. The first time she came with me, they bring the meat and it's all kind of piled up on that plate. And she saw me take my fist and start pressing it down. And she says, what are you doing?  Well, what are you doing? I said, you gotta press it down. Why?  And by the way, when it's cooked, it all shrinks anyway.  And there are some people who are black belts at this and you'll see them and they'll have a plate like two feet high, you know? You've seen it, maybe you're one of them that I've admired from afar. That guy knows how to pile it on. And that's basically what he's talking about. He's saying, given, it will be given to you. He says, generosity is always repaid with blessing when you have a generous heart. In 2 Corinthians chapter nine, verses six through eight, Paul said, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. He who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity. God loves a cheerful giver. God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you always having all sufficiency and all things may have an abundance for every good work. You see, there is one who scatters yet increases more. There's one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty. Generosity is the mark of the believer. My son David's going to college and he's taking a class and the teacher said to the class a couple of weeks ago, I hope I don't offend any of you. It's a secular school. I hope I don't offend any of you, but the greediest people in the world are Christians.  And he comes and says, you know what? My professor said today, Dad, I said, what's that son? The greediest people in the world are Christians. I said, is that right? Are we? I guess everybody in Enron were born again. I guess Exxon must be filled with evangelical Christians.  I said, son, I said, your church, do you know how generous your church is? One church. I said, you know that tsunami that took place in Indonesia and Thailand and all? I said, did you know that your church without us ever taking or asking for an offering? And some of you don't even know this. Do you know that the church without an offering was able to donate a hundred, I think it was $110,000 to take care of them? Did you know that? Did you know that when Katrina hit that you, your church, you guys gave close to $100,000 in relief without an offering being taken? I said, your professor is saying we're greedy. One church gave almost, well over $200,000 without even being asked. I said, we are not greedy at all. We are givers, because that's what believers are. Believers are generous. I said, by the way, when Indonesia was wiped out by that tsunami, how much did Saudi Arabia give? Another Muslim country, they didn't give anything. They gave hardly anything. I said, this greedy nation was very generous to help the world, which Americans have always been. I said, but the church has been exceptionally greedy, not greedy, generous. He thinks we're greedy. And I said, I cannot believe that. We'll have to strike that from our tape. See, see, he admitted it. We have been very generous.  I have discovered that people who've been touched by the Lord are generous people. That's why we don't have to beg. We just let you know. That's why. Oh, you know, but the picture is always those greedy Christians, you know. Jesus said, listen. There is one who scatters, yet he increases more. That generous person will always be watered. That generous person will always be taking care of. God always makes sure that things are bound to you. Now, I did hear about a guy who heard a message where the pastor had said, if you tithe, the Lord is gonna bless you. And so what he did is he gave 10% for a year, didn't see an increase. This is a true story. And sued the church for false promises. And actually took it to court. Took the church to court several years ago now. Cause he said, see, I gave 10% and I never got anything back. Duh. What kind of heart is that?  And what is wrong with that kind of thinking? But I have discovered that when you're generous, God's word, it doesn't come back void. God's word is true. He says, if you give, if you give, he says the Lord will bless you to the point that it overflows in your life. And that is absolutely true. The Lord will always bless. Why? Because you can never out give God. Generosity is repaid with blessings.


leaving us with this insolvable equation. And sun, and sun, and sun! 14 on a row. Get back to work. I serve! Yay!