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Hey

Welcome To So Blessed Episode Eight

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friends, Mandy here. I'm back for episode eight of the So Blessed series. So glad that you're here joining me today. We're almost through this thing, and we are learning more and more about God's goodness, his blessing, his grace that we all need. We're understanding the gospel deeper, and we're gonna understand it even more today. But if you're new here, I want you to know that we are all about you gathering in your place, not just picking up some good content or coming and listening to a podcast, but actually seeing you gather the girls and the women in your life and grow closer to each other and grow closer to Jesus and go out and make disciples. We are all about transformation, not just giving out good information, but actually seeing the gospel transform our heart, our lives, and minds so that we can go out and share that good news and reflect the glory of God to others. And that doesn't happen without the power of the Holy Spirit. So

Opening Prayer For Understanding

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let's pray before we go a minute further. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your kindness and for your goodness, for your perfection and your love, for the words of Jesus spoken not only to the people who were there that day when he first spoke them, but spoken over and over and over and again and reaching us today. We want to understand these words. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to make them make sense to us, to minister to our hearts and to transform us in the places where we need transformation so that we might bring you glory through through all of our days. And so we ask you for that today. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.

Why Jesus Redefines The Good Life

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So we've been walking through Matthew chapter five, and we are looking at, again, the blessedness that's provided to us in Jesus, the good life. You know, the world has some ideas about what good life is and what blessing is, but Jesus has the best ideas because the ideas are his, the understanding and the truths are his. And they're transformative truths, as we learned at the beginning of this study, that give us joy regardless of circumstances. And so we want to understand this. We want this to sink down deep in our hearts. So we've looked at the blessed bees, we've looked at um this is the blessed life, this is the blessing of hungering and thirsting, this is the blessing of mercy, this is the blessing of peacemaking. And then we looked at identity. We looked at Jesus' identity. And then last week we started to see Jesus building a case for righteousness, and he raises the bar to this level that is unreachable without him. And today we're gonna look at a section of scripture in Matthew chapter five. We're in verses 38 through 42, and we're gonna be challenged. Jesus is gonna challenge us, but he's also going to minister to us again as he foreshadows what he did for us at the cross. So let's read this section of scripture today. I'm

Reading Matthew 5:38 To 42

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gonna read it to you. If you have a Bible, open it up to Matthew chapter 5, starting in verse 38. If you're driving in your car, running on the treadmill, just let these words sink in as I read them. You've heard that it is said, we've heard that before, right? That was that was in last week's scripture reading. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you. Those are those words where Jesus is taking this place where there was an understanding about truth, and he's allowing the listeners to think and expand their understanding or receive new understanding where old truths were burdening them and holding them down. And honestly, I think sometimes when we read some of this, we pick it up as a burden. And Jesus' message is, I've come to give you life, I've come to lighten the burden. And the only way that we can understand this as less of a burden is if we look at it through the lens of what Jesus is about to do on the cross. So keep that in mind as we read this. He says, But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. For if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him too. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You

Eye For Eye Explained As Fairness

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see, this law that Jesus is referencing is from Exodus 21, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It was referred to as the law of retaliation. It was not actually about revenge, it was about fairness, and it was about fulfilling proportional justice, meaning, if you took from me, I get to take the exact thing from you to make it even, right? And God is a God of justice. God is a God of making what's wrong right, taking the wrong in the world and redeeming it and making it good and right, taking our sin in the places where we fall short and bringing us up to the righteous standard. So you can see how this fits there. But Jesus is pointing to this thing that he's about to do, which is go to the cross and to take our sin upon him, to take the places where we fall short again and again and again and again. And he's about to fulfill it. He's about to fulfill proportional justice by making all of our wrongs right and even and putting us on a ground with him, on a righteous ground with him. It's it's a beautiful understanding of truth of what Jesus is actually

How The Cross Fulfills True Justice

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doing here. And the reason why he's framing it in the place of if they slap one side, slap the other, and that they ask for this, give them this too, is because he's going to give us things that we did not deserve. And in that, in the cross, we receive his spirit and we become able to offer and extend to others what they do not deserve. This doesn't mean ignoring sin. If you remember in the Blessed Bees, uh, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. That means blessed are those who hunger for things to be right and good. And we hunger and thirst for things to be right and good, not only in ourselves, but also in others. And in that, also, the extending of mercy. Blessed are those who are merciful. When our hearts are filled with the mercy of God because we've received the mercy, we get it. We go, Jesus, I get what you did for me. It's starting to make sense what you did for me. You gave me what I did not deserve. It gives us the heart of Jesus to want to extend that to others. And sometimes I want to be super clear here. And if you've made it to

Mercy Without Ignoring Wrongdoing

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the podcast, I'm really glad about that because we're limited to how many words that we can put down in our Bible reading plans on the Bible app. And I just feel like there's so much more here that we need to understand as we move forward. And that's why we're always encouraging you, go have some really good conversations with some more mature believers. You're not going to get everything that you need. And you're always going to get more when you're talking in groups with people or you're talking one-on-one with someone who's lived a little bit more life than you. But with this, Jesus is explaining to us that He's giving, He's giving to us, and that through that we can go and we can give to others. And in that, when we're correcting sin or when we're we're acknowledging a place where someone has done harm, there's love and there's an abundance of mercy that's overflowing in our hearts. Even if it's something that's happened and it's clear that there needs to be a consequence or there needs to be a boundary, or there needs to be a place where we say, hey, I love you, but the access and trust isn't there right now. And that's something that needs to be earned back. So please don't hear me wrong that thirsting and hungering for righteousness and being filled with God's mercy doesn't mean that we're ignoring the wrong. It means we're approaching it differently. And so we're able to communicate in a way that actually leads to transformation, the potential for transformation in another person. Because we're not coming from a place of like, hey, you did this and I got to get you back. We're coming from a place of, I see the sin that's existing in your heart that came against me. And I'm hungering and I'm thirsting for you to be made right with God and with me. Because God's glory shines through when that's the case. When you're right with God and we're right with one another, which happens when you make things right with God, He gives you what you need to make it right with others, then we're glorifying the Father. There's peace and we're experiencing the fullness of the blessing that He came to give us. Do you

Calling People Higher Not Getting Even

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see the difference there between I need to see this happen to you because I need to make sure that you get paid back, versus I want to see you be made right. And then we're able to actually call people higher. Instead of calling them out, we're actually able to call them into something that's better. We're able to call them into the blessing. And even when we look at ourselves, we're able to say, you know what? I blew that. I really messed that up. Jesus, I come to you and I hunger and thirst for you to make that right in me so that I'm not living that way anymore. I want to live right. I want to live right with you. I want to live right with others. Help me. Help me to extend mercy, help me to extend compassion, help me to extend to others what they do not deserve. Give me the heart capacity. And

When Mercy Feels Impossible

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I'm telling you right now, there are places and there are times where that's been really super hard for me, where someone's really done something that was really painful, really difficult. And I felt like, Lord, I just can't do it. And that's when we come to him and we confess that like, Jesus, without you, I can't do it. I need you to do it. And God is so patient, it's so important to remember that he's patient. He's gonna be patient with you, he's gonna be patient with others, and he's gonna work that out in you over time. If in your heart it's the hunger and thirst, he's gonna give you what you need over time. He's gonna patiently work that out in you, and that's what I've seen him do in me. And I've looked at a situation and I've been like, wow, I completely see that person different. I completely see the situation different. It doesn't mean that what they did didn't hurt, but the way that I process that and the way that I'm able to respond out of that changes because of what Jesus did in my heart.

Guided Prayer And Space To Pause

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And so our connect with God moment is to ask God for a deeper and richer understanding of his justice. If you're like, I don't get this justice and mercy thing, it's it's just not making complete sense to me, but that's okay. We get to go with God with that and ask him for it. So we're gonna do that now. I'm gonna give you a little bit of time here, but if you need more time, now's the time to pause the podcast and really sit with God in this. Heavenly Father, we need you. We can't figure this out on our own. We can't do this on our own in our own strength. This is something that feels impossibly hard without you. So we ask you to give us that deeper and richer understanding of your justice and your mercy and what it looks like for us to live it out, for us to receive it first, and us to live it out next. So we just put our hearts before you right now and we ask you to speak to us. Again, if you need more time, go ahead and pause the podcast and uh take that time with the Lord. If you can't do that now, do it later this evening. And

Dig Deeper Verses And Gathering Call

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the dig deeper for this section of scripture on our Bible reading plan and on our Bible study. If you print it off of our website, BravegirlsGather.com, or go onto the Bible app, look for Brave Girls Gather, you'll find the So Blessed Reading Plan there. And the dig deeper is to dig into scripture. So this is your quiet time for tonight or in the morning. We have some verses for you. It's Deuteronomy 32.4, Psalm 111.7, and 1 John 1.9. Get in those verses, read them multiple times, write them out, ask God to minister to you, to give you a deeper, richer understanding of his justice. And until we're back here for week nine, our hope and our prayer is that you're gonna go out, you're gonna gather with the girls in your life, you're gonna gather with the women in your life, you're gonna go closer to each other in Jesus, and you're gonna go and make disciples.