It's the last week of our Ctrl + Alt + Renewed series. I hope you've enjoyed this series. I know I have. Romans 12 is an amazing chapter in the Bible, and I wanted to review real quick some of the things we did. Remember week one.

The title was Ctrl + Alt + Renewed. And using our computer metaphor, that's the word I'm looking for. Sometimes you've got to patch the OS. You got to install a patch or a fix. Sometimes you get a whole new operating system, right? Your phone updates from iOS 12 to iOS 13 or whatever it is, right? What version is iOS on these days? Somebody said 16 and somebody else said 7. So somebody needs to upgrade. Whoever's on 7 needs to upgrade.

Week two was Reconnect, right? You have your Bluetooth, your WI fi. Sometimes they get disconnected and you have to reconnect. And sometimes in our lives, we have to reconnect to God or we have to reconnect to God's people. We've kind of drifted away, and it's important to connect and have that strong relationship.

Last week was Rewriting Your Relationships. On your computer you can open a file, you change the contents of the file and change what it says. And sometimes we need to change things in our lives, and we have the opportunity to rewrite and change things. And this week we're talking about a new response loaded. You've gotten an upgrade. Your favorite software, and the stupid software developers changed everything. And it doesn't work the way it used to work. Don't you hate that? Buttons in the wrong spot. I used to do this and it doesn't work anymore. I can't figure out how to make it do what I want it to do. It's frustrating, isn't it? But sometimes you get an upgrade that you really needed. This didn't work. It was broken. And so we get a new response. We need a new response. We're going to have a new operating system. If we're going to be connected, if we're going to rewrite the files, how we respond needs to be different, too.

All right, So I hope that you've had the opportunity to read Romans 12 on your own. If you haven't, please do that today. It's only 21 verses. But let's open our Bibles right now and let's look at this last section that we're going to talk about. Romans 12:17-21. Give me an amen when you get there.

It says, do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord.

On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

There's a lot in there. So, before we start unpacking that, how many of you remember the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents? Anybody? A couple of us. It's a little before my time, but I saw it in reruns, and one of the ones that I remember was a lady was assaulted by a traveling salesman during the day while her husband was at work. When the husband comes home, obviously the wife is distraught. She can hardly talk. But she manages out a few words that if she sees the guy, she'll know who he is. She can point him out, she'll recognize him.

So they decide to go to a motel, change the scenery for the night, just get out of the house, go away. As they're driving along, they pass a guy walking down the sidewalk, and she kind of perks up and she goes, that's him. So they follow him to the motel that he was staying at. The husband goes into the room after him, exacts his revenge and unalives him, Comes out, gets in the car, and he and his wife continue on their way to their hotel, where they see another guy walking, and the wife says, that's him. Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.

Alfred Hitchcock seems to have understood this basic principle of revenge. Mankind cannot be trusted with it. In fact, God is the only being that is capable of handling revenge. And that's why he says in verse 19, do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord.

Now, when he quotes that, that's Deuteronomy 32:35 that everybody talks about and we see quoted a lot in the movies. And we hear the King James version, right? You've heard this. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, right? We hear this in the movies just before the guys go out to what? Get revenge.

You just quoted a Bible text that says, vengeance is God's, and now you're out to go get vengeance. Either you're a really, really disobedient, or you think you're God. Both of those are no bueno, right?

So here's a couple texts we talked about. Deuteronomy 32:35. It is mine to avenge, I will repay.

Matthew 6:14 through 15. For if you forgive other people and they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, then your Father will not forgive your sins.

Turn with me to 1 Thessalonians 5:15.

This one says, make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always do what is good for each other and what for everyone else.

Let's not just do good for what's, you know, me and Victor, but what's good for me and Victor and everybody else.

Luke 6:27-31. This is Jesus talking. He says, but to you who are listening, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other. Also, if someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you. And anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

We've heard these texts. We know this. And we could go on and on. There's a lot of text in the Bible like this. But there are times when some cold, hard revenge sure tastes good, doesn't it? We just want to get them back. They need to be getting back. They need to know they can't get away with that. They can't do that. And sometimes we love it when we see somebody who's maybe committed a crime, gets caught. They go through the legal system and they get their just punishment, right? Sent to prison or whatever it is. And we feel good about that. And there's people that say we shouldn't do that because the Bible says, don't get revenge.

But let's be very careful here. Romans 12:19 says, do not take revenge. What?

Do not take revenge. My dear friends, who is Paul talking to? Friends, people, individuals, governments have different responsibilities than individuals have. And in fact, if we were to go into Romans 13, we see that Paul talks about the kind of vengeance that governments are allowed to do. So our federal government is in charge of safety for the people, right? And sometimes we need to go to war. If somebody attacks us, we need to respond in kind to protect the people. That's not what this verse is talking about. When our state governments convict somebody of a crime and send them to jail. That's not what we're talking about here, okay? We're talking about individuals and the kind of vengeance that we get, okay?

And what we see from looking at all this is people are not to be trusted with revenge. Taking revenge is wrong because God says so. But let's talk about some of the reasons why.

And the first one we've already been talking about a little bit is we're not trustworthy, right? We're not trustworthy.

Now, suppose we could measure the amount of harm somebody does to you the way we count money. So somebody could do $10 of harm to you or $20 of harm to you or $100 of harm, right? So somebody does something kind of slight, does $10 of harm to you. What are you thinking? I got to get him back. I got to teach him. He can't treat me like that. I'm not a doormat. But I can't just give him $10 of harm back. He won't learn anything. I got to up it. So I want to give him back $20 of harm.

And what's the other guy say? Man, I can't believe he smacked me with $20 of harm. I got to teach him a lesson. I'm going to give him $50 of harm.

And what do you say? Right? You see what happens? For those of you who are old enough to remember the Cold War, this is what happens. Russia builds nuclears, we build nukes. They build nukes. We build nukes. On and on it goes.

We don't know how to pay back. We're not smart enough, and we don't know how to do it right. Maybe the other person didn't even mean to do any harm to us. Maybe it was accidental. They said something that they thought was funny, you thought was offensive and you feel harmed. They didn't mean to harm you. They didn't try to offend you. And then all of a sudden you're smacking them with thermonuclear war, right?

We don't do a very good job of it. And the reason we don't do a good job of it is because we are not the judge, right? You guys know what I'm going to say next? It's God's job to judge. It's the Holy Spirit's job to convict. It's Jesus job to save. It's my job to love, right? I'm going to keep saying that. So you guys all have that memorized.

So we don't do it because we're not trustworthy, because we're not a very good job, a very good judge. Sorry.

Next thing [I really got to change the batteries in this, Alex, help me out.]

Revenge is theft. See, vengeance is God's property. How much does God own? Everything.

Psalms 50, verses 10 through 12 says that. It says, for every animal in the forest is mine. The cattle on a thousand hills. I know. Every bird in the mountains. The insects in the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you. For the world is mine and all that is in it.

God owns the bugs in the field, okay? And he lets you live here, and he lets you use his stuff except for vengeance. He puts a fence around that and says, vengeance is mine. Now that's a very territorial statement. He's put up the fence. He's put up the no trespassing sign. And when you go out and try and enact vengeance, what are you doing? You are stealing from God. Because that is God's. He says it's his. He does not give us permission to use it.

And vengeance, revenge is theft from God.

Now, that makes it look a whole lot different, doesn't it?

Revenge is also weak.

Verse 19, Romans 12:19 says, Leave room for God's wrath. What does leave room mean? Somebody tells you to leave room. What does that mean? You're in the way. Get out of the way. Leave some room. Right? You guys are looking at me like nobody's ever told you, you were in the way. My dad used to have a saying when he was watching TV. And if we were in the way, because you make a better door than a window, even though you are a pain [pane]. Right?

Been in the way. And this tells us to leave room for God's wrath. Your wrath is in the way.

We're not going to look at it this morning, but remember the story in Luke 14. It's the wedding feast, and one man comes in and sets himself at the most high position. And then later, the groom has to tell him, you need to move to a lower seat because that's somebody else's, right? And you've got to get out of that seat and leave room. You're in the way.

That's the same term that's used here. Get out of the way for God's wrath. I cannot enact revenge as well as God can. Right? I mean, I can't do anything as well as God can. But God's power makes him supremely able. God's wisdom makes his revenge impeccably just. His holiness prevents him from going too far from overstepping into injustice. And any revenge that I devise comparison is weak and doesn't compare My revenge is weak.

The last one's kind of heavily related to that.

Revenge is arrogant.

Imagine the following scenario. Your favorite NFL team has made the Super Bowl. You happy? Yes. Thrilled. My two big football fans, Linda and Gustavo, aren't here. And your team made the playoffs. Now, by the way, that would be a big deal because out of the league, 13 teams have not been to the Super Bowl in the 2000s. Last time they were here was way back in the 1900s.

Four teams have never been to the super bowl at all. So it's an honor to get to go to the Super Bowl. Your team makes the Super Bowl and you score tickets to go to the Super Bowl. And when you get to the Super Bowl, a team rep meets you and says, we've been watching you online. The comments that you make are on par. Your football knowledge is impeccable. And we've decided that today we're going to start you as starting quarterback. How many of you think that would be a good idea? One.

There's no way I can play better than the star quarterback that got him through the whole season. Right? And when we say to God, sit down. God, take care of it.

I've got this one. I'll take care of it. You can just relax. I'll get vengeance here. You don't need to bother yourself. That's exactly what we are doing. Right. What makes us think that we are better than God? It's arrogant. And when we tell God to stay on the bench, we are unwittingly and arrogantly saying, Lord, you sit this out. I got it now.

We seek revenge a lot of different ways. Some of them are big. You know, we respond, like I said, with thermonuclear war. Sometimes they're not. It's just a comment here. It's a snide remark there. It's a little dis here, a little something there. Right? It's the death of a thousand cuts. But it's still revenge. It's still revenge.

[talking to my tablet: No, I don't want to restart right now. I'm busy.]

So the question is, what should we do instead? What should our response be? Revenge is what the world tells us to do. Revenge is what our human nature tells us to do. Somehow, some the scales of injustice have become out of balance. We're going to set things right again. And I know what to do. But Paul tells us what to do. Let's look. Romans 12.

You still there?

Now, in case you need to turn back to Romans 12:20, 21, before we get there. I want to say there are some extreme cases, right? There are extreme cases where, you know, things have happened and you need to remove yourself from a situation, okay? Those, those things happen. Those things are real.

And I'm not making light of anybody that's experienced those things, but a lot of times we jump there too soon, right? Somebody says one mean word to us, so we're like, oh, it's the end of the world. Everything's happening, right? They hate me. It's all shattering down, right? You know, maybe the fact that he called you an idiot isn't the world's biggest crime, you know? So we got to be careful there. But there are cases out there where we need to take more drastic things. But we're going to leave those out for here. Let's look at verses 20 and 21.

It says, on the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, do what? Feed him. If he's thirsty, do what? Give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

No, I don't want to be nice to him. Why do I want to be nice to him? That guy's a booger. I don't want to be nice to him, right? Didn't you see how mean he was to me? Now we know we're supposed to be nice. We've heard that our whole lives in church. But doing it is a whole different thing. What I know and what's ingrained in how I act can be different, right? Can it be different? So how do you be nice to these people?

There's a thousand ways, right? And it depends on the situation. But maybe the next time you go buy donuts for the office, be sure to buy the kind that your enemy likes instead of making sure of leaving that kind out. Oh, oops, I forgot. You like the jelly filled ones. Sorry. Right? It's the little things.

Have you ever noticed just the little things in life that matter? I bought a new can opener. Now you talk about little things. It's a can opener. It's not even electric. But you know, you have the old, some of us have the ones, you know, the two pieces and you clip it on and then you got a twist, right? And you go around the can and after a while, you know, you've got to have the grip of Goliath to get that thing around. You know, I spent enough years sitting on computers that there's days my wrist hurts and this [twist a can opener] is unbelievably painful. Okay, so you feel like a wimp, right? But you can't open a can. I bought a new can opener and it's got a little handle on it and you crank. Ah, See, you put that on you, then the cans open. It's every time I open a can in the kitchen, it brings joy to my heart.

It's the little things that matter, right? If you want to be nice to somebody, the little things matter. Start with the little things. Say hi. Instead of ignoring them, ask them how their weekend was. Hey, isn't your kid graduating from high school this year? Whatever it is. And it's going to take a while because if you've been battling, that doesn't just end in one day usually, right? That only happens on a Hallmark channel. Everywhere else that doesn't happen.

Okay?

So you've got to be in it for the long haul a little bit. And there may be times when it isn't going to work. And that's why the text says, as much as it depends on you, do your best. Some people are never going to respond.

Keep doing your best. The fact that the other person is still being an ogre doesn't relieve you of the responsibility. Amen.

How many of you seen the movie the Princess Bride? Oh, my goodness. The rest of you have homework. You must go home and watch the Princess Bride. This is a classic movie. Great, great movie. Spoiler alert. For those of you who haven't seen it, which is most of us, man, I'm surprised. But in the movie, there's a character who was harmed by a six fingered man. He killed his father. And he grows up swearing to get revenge on the six fingered man and even has a little line prepared. Hello, my name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepared to die. And he's been plotting his revenge his whole life. And he finally gets a chance to get his revenge. And afterwards, this is what he says. I have been in the revenge business for so long now that it's over, I do not know what to do with the rest of my life. Ouch. You do not want to be in that position. You don't want to look back at your life and say, I spent half my life trying to get revenge on Israel for that thing. He said to me, I can remember that time that Alberto was, man, I'm going to get him if it's the last thing I do. You don't want to look back at your life and have those things happening to you. Right.

It's been my experience, and probably your experience as well, that hurting people hurt people. Amen hurting people hurt people. So the way to begin to fix it is to figure out why they're hurting, understand why they're hurting.

What can you do about it? Maybe nothing. But maybe you can understand. Maybe. Can there be a little bit of understanding? A little bit of walk a mile in my shoes, a little bit of understanding?

Our reflection today. Are you willing to take the first step? Begin the hard work of changing your response? Everything we've said today. You know, I didn't say anything. You haven't heard before if you've been to church at all.

But some of us still have a lot of work. There's times in my life. Ah, good grief. I can't believe I did that again. Right? It's hard work.

So here's the challenge. Identify two relationships where you'd like some revenge. Ideally, one might be a family member and one's not. So you can work inside and outside the family dynamic. Whatever. Start by being kind, showing love and compassion.

Try to understand their background or where they're coming from. Is the reason that you guys disagree so violently on politics because of how they grew up versus how you grew up? Does how you feel about a given topic because they've experienced it and you haven't, or vice versa?

Start working on those things. It'll be a challenge. This. This is hard. This is.

This is one of the toughest things that I've asked you to do. Because everything, and I mean everything in the world tells you not to do this and to just go get revenge. It's what the movies tell you, it's what the books tell you. It's everything. But it's not what God tells us to do. And that's the kicker. That's the kicker. So are you willing to take on the challenge? Give me an amen.

Some of us. Okay, good. Good. The rest of you, consider it. Let it marinate a little bit.

Let's bow our heads for prayer. Heavenly Father, help us to begin the tough work of changing our response, to loading a new response. And instead of responding with revenge and hate and evil, to respond with kindness and love and compassion, even when that's not what we're going to get back, Lord. Because these relationships are not about what we can get out of them, but how we can show that you have changed our lives. Help us to understand that, Lord. Help us to understand our fellow humans just a little bit better. We can see where they're coming from so we can make the changes that we need to make and load a new response. Be with us now. In Jesus name, amen.