Bearing Suffering, Yielding Rights

This sermon was delivered on Sunday, January 22, 2011, based on Matthew 5:38-42 from the Sermon on the Mount. The pastor revisited the previous week's message on not taking personal revenge, then advanced to a deeper and more challenging theme: not only enduring suffering but 'yielding rights' — voluntarily surrendering one's legitimate personal rights for the sake of Christ and the advancement of His work.

Jesus identifies five representative rights that His followers must be willing to surrender: the right to retaliate (Romans 12:17-19), the right to protect one's honor (modeled by Christ's own silence under insult, 1 Peter 2:23), the right to accumulate and use property as one chooses (Exodus 22:26-27; 1 John 3:17-18), the right to use one's time and energy as one pleases, and the right to use one's money as one sees fit. Each right is illustrated with imagery from Jesus's cultural context and with contemporary real-life stories, demonstrating that yielding rights is far harder than enduring suffering.

The vivid example of missionary Hudson Taylor — knocked into the mud but still inviting the offender to share his boat in order to share the Gospel — illustrates that yielding rights springs from love for God and the desire to spread the Good News, not from weakness or lack of self-respect. This attitude stands in stark contrast to the natural human instinct to retaliate against those who cause harm.

The Apostle Paul serves as a model of the principle of yielding in 1 Corinthians 9. He had every right to bring a wife along in ministry, to receive financial support from the church, and to be treated with the honor befitting an apostle — yet he voluntarily relinquished all of it so that the Gospel would face no obstacle. The sermon describes this as the thinking of a truly mature believer who genuinely loves God and earnestly desires to see His work flourish.

The sermon concludes with the supreme example of yielding rights: Jesus Christ Himself — going from Creator of the universe to the son of a carpenter, betrayed, beaten, spat upon, and crucified — emptied Himself to save sinners. Quoting Philippians 2:5-8, the sermon calls every believer to 'have the same attitude as Christ Jesus,' not looking to their own interests but to the interests of others, willing to yield their rights out of love for God and commitment to the mission of the Gospel.