Good morning, my name is Kimberly.
Today's scripture reading is from Matthew chapter five,
verses 21 through 26.
It is page 836 in the Bibles in the back of the pews.
You have heard it, sorry, you have heard that it was said
to our ancestors, do not murder, and whoever murders
will be subject to judgment.
But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother
or sister will be subject to judgment.
Whoever insults his brother or sister will be subject
to the court.
Whoever says you fool will be subject to hell fire.
So if you are offering your gift on the altar,
and there you remember that your brother or sister
has something against you, leave your gift there
in front of the altar.
First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister,
and then come and offer your gift.
Reach a settlement quickly with your adversary
while you're on the way with him to court,
or your adversary will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown
into prison.
Truly I tell you, you will never get out of there
until you have paid the last penny.
This is God's word.
All right, well we are, this morning we're actually hopping
back into our study through the gospel
according to Matthew.
So if you have been with us for a little while,
you'll know that we've hit, we've jumped into the study,
and then we jump out for a little while,
and we jump back in, and we're making our way
back to Matthew.
So I'm gonna give you a little bit of background information
as we get started this morning, and then we'll get
to the text that Kimberly read for us,
and we'll dive into that.
And hopefully this morning we'll kinda tear it apart,
we'll look at it from a few different ways,
and come away with something to take home,
some application as well as just glorying in who God is,
and what he's called us to.
So Matthew, if you guys remember, if you were here,
if you didn't, Matthew was a tax collector,
and at that time a tax collector was not a good occupation
to be in, especially if you were a Jew,
because to be a tax collector meant that you had allied
yourself with the enemy, with the Roman Empire,
the provincial emperors, and you were extorting
and collecting taxes from your fellow countrymen.
And this was not a good thing.
Most people hated tax collectors for this.
In fact, a lot of tax collectors, the way they made money
personally was what they added on top of the taxes
that they needed to collect.
That's how they made their income.
And so you can imagine if someone was a decent person,
they might only add a little bit just for their living
expenses, but most people added a whole lot more.
And Matthew, like any tax collector, was despised
by those around him, but he encountered someone
named Jesus, and when he encountered Jesus,
he left his life of tax collecting and began to follow him.
And then later, after Christ's death and his resurrection
and his ascension, about 35 to 45 years after all
of those events, Matthew sat down with his resources
and his collections of writings and his eyewitness
testimony himself as well as those that he was with
and wrote what we know as the gospel according to Matthew,
an eyewitness account of Jesus.
Now his audience was specifically those early Jewish
believers, and what he was trying to do was he was,
he was going to great lengths to make that connection
back to the Old Testament to show that Jesus was
the long-awaited Messiah, the promised Messiah
of the Old Testament, that Jesus was in the line of David.
He was like the Davidic King, the anointed one,
but he was that one that we were looking forward to
to come and save Israel and mankind.
And so he tries to help his readers understand
that Jesus is the fulfillment, and so he uses
that language a lot.
Jesus fulfilled what was written in the prophets.
Jesus, by doing this, fulfilled what was written
in this prophetic word or that prophetic word,
that he is the coming Messiah, he is the chosen one,
he is the anointed one, he is the Christ.
We began in chapter one and we've worked our way now
to chapter five.
We've covered events surrounding his birth.
We jumped forward about 30 years into his early ministry
when he was baptized by John the Baptist at the Jordan,
identifying with humanity, though he had no sin,
he was identifying with us in our uncleanliness,
in our need for cleansing.
He also went into the wilderness for temptation,
we studied that during our Lent season.
Chapter five then began with what has been called
the greatest sermon ever taught, the Sermon on the Mount.
And even in that, there's this picture of Jesus going up
to a mountain to begin to teach in the same way
that Moses went to receive the words of God.
Now Jesus goes up and begins to teach as if he's teaching
the very words of God.
And it's right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount
that we're picking up this text.
We've already covered the beatitudes, these marks
or these traits of what it means to be a citizen
of the kingdom.
We talked about what it means to be salt and light
in this world, that kingdom citizens shine,
that kingdom citizens affect the culture around them,
that kingdom citizens preserve the righteousness of God
in their life and in this world,
that we are to be salt and light.
And then right before the scripture that Kimberly read
this morning, comes this one passage out of Matthew
chapter five, verse 17, and I'll read that portion of it,
beginning in verse 17.
It said, don't think that I came to abolish the law
or the prophets.
I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth have passed
away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter
will pass away from the law until all things
are accomplished.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these
commands and teaches others to do the same will be called
least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whoever does and teaches these commands will be called
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that
of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into
the kingdom of heaven.
Now that was a shocking word.
I think when Jesus came on the scene, a lot of people
were wondering, is he gonna bring a new teaching?
Is he going to honor the Torah?
Is he gonna honor the teachings of the Old Testament?
Or is he one of those radicals who's gonna deviate?
And he comes and says, I'm not here to abolish it
but to fulfill it.
He's going to fulfill it.
Well, what is this idea of fulfill?
Well, you might say it's fill full.
It's filling full the laws and the prophets.
In a sense, the laws and the prophets had been delivered
and yet no one lived according to them, not even remotely.
And we even see in Jesus' times that Pharisees
and the scribes, they knew the law to the letter
and yet they had completely missed the spirit of the law
and the reason and purpose for the law.
And Jesus has now come on the scene and said,
I'm here to fulfill it or I'm here to fill full
the meaning of the law.
And this section that we get into, the first one
that we read earlier is actually six little sections
right here, six statements or examples.
And you might think of these six examples or statements
as Jesus expounding on or explaining what he just said
in verse 17, that he's not here to abolish the law
or the prophets but to fulfill it.
And so we're gonna take this first one, first of six,
and these are examples, these aren't exhaustive.
He doesn't cover every single law in the Torah
but he takes six of them as a teaching opportunity.
Six to explain, to expose it, to interpret
what does it mean that this law that was given
to the people of Israel, either formally
in the 10 commandments as today's was
or later on throughout the laws or even some of them
are kind of this paste together, some from the Bible
and some from their Jewish teachings.
And he takes those and he says,
what does it mean truly to do this?
How do I fill this full of meaning and purpose,
not just to surface understanding?
Scholars have in the past called these the antithesis
or the antithesis statements because you hear in him
in these statements, Jesus says, you have heard it said,
but then what does he say?
But I say or I tell you, and it can sound like he's saying,
oh, it was told to you in the 10 commandments,
do not murder, but I'm about to turn that upside down,
go murder all you want, murder doesn't matter, woo.
Right, that would be the antithesis.
Oh, murder doesn't matter, go murder, no,
he doesn't say that though, does he?
He actually takes the command and deepens it,
goes deeper into, actually it's a whole lot more
than you thought, it reaches much further.
In fact, a lot of you could probably say,
I've never murdered, check, and he says, hold, hold on.
Let's go a little deeper.
Verse 21, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors,
do not murder and whoever murders
will be subject to judgment.
Do not murder, that's out of Exodus chapter 20 verse 13,
the 10 commandments, the decalogue or the 10 utterances
or sayings that we're probably familiar with,
whether we've been in church or not,
those 10 commandments have been a part of our culture even
for quite a few years, and it truly does say,
do not murder, period, that's all it says
in that particular section, one of those 10 sayings.
And he says, you've heard it said to our ancestors,
so he's probably talking about that actual exchange,
that delivery of the law at Mount Sinai,
you've heard that it was said to them, do not murder.
Before we can go on into the scripture here,
we do need to talk a little bit about what does murder mean.
Do not murder, so if we're gonna expand on it,
we're gonna go deeper, what does murder mean?
Now, the basic meaning of it is the unjust taking
of a human life.
Murder is the unjust taking of a human life.
I think that's how we would even categorize it today
for the most part.
Does murder include animals?
No, you can't murder an animal.
You can kill an animal, but you can't murder it,
because an animal is not a human,
and murder is the unjust killing of a human.
What about capital punishment,
where we send folks to die by the electric chair
or lethal injection or however it has been over the years?
Is that murder, well, the unjust killing of a human being?
God actually has established laws and order
in which there is a justified killing of a human being
in relation to the law.
And the same goes with war.
Romans 13, chapter 13, verse 4 through 7,
talks about how he has given to the government
the power of the sword, and this is their authority
from God, that the government has the power of the sword
to execute judgment on wrongdoers.
And so murder would not include all of those things,
necessarily, it would be the unjust taking of a life.
And so that seems pretty straightforward.
It doesn't really need a whole lot of explaining.
It cuts right to it.
So why does Jesus even take the time
to talk about murder?
Why does he want to even take it deeper?
That seems pretty straightforward.
It's the unjust killing.
Most of us in this room have not unjustly killed anyone.
Maybe, maybe you have, maybe you haven't,
but most of us haven't, and so most of us go,
yeah, not a murderer, not at all.
But Jesus begins to show that murder
doesn't begin with the act.
The act is where we tend to land murder.
It's once you've taken the life unjustly.
Jesus says, actually, it begins before the act.
Murder begins with a certain disposition of your heart
towards other humans, toward other image bearers.
And when your heart is off, when it's wrong,
when it shows contempt for other image bearers,
you might be walking down the path
that leads to the act of murder,
but either way, you're on the path,
and therefore, you might be guilty.
Genesis chapter nine, verse four, reads this.
However, you must not eat meat with its lifeblood in it.
This is talking to Noah, God's covenant with Noah
after the flood.
And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood.
I will require it from any animal and from any human.
If anyone or someone murders a fellow human,
I will require that person's life.
Whoever sheds human blood, by humans,
his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.
And so he lays out a just killing.
If someone unjustly murders or kills,
God has said the value of the life is such
that it demands of you your own life.
Murder doesn't begin, though, with simply the act.
Let's read verse 22 here and go a little bit further.
But I tell you, everyone who is angry
with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment.
Whoever insults his brother or sister
will be subject to judgment.
Whoever insults his brother or sister
will be subject to the courts.
Whoever says, you fool, will be subject to hell fire.
And so he begins by saying, you've heard it said
that whoever murders, right, will be subject to judgment.
But I tell you, I deepen, I fill this law out
as it is always meant, that if anyone is angry
with his brother or sister, they will be subject to judgment.
And whoever insults his brother or sister
will be subject to the courts.
And whoever says, you fool, will be subject to hell's fire.
So you actually, he lays out three experiences here.
One is this idea of anger.
And this particular anger is framed in the context
around this idea of this murderous anger or rage.
This murderous anger or rage that you might feel
toward another human being.
Have any of you ever felt what you knew to be
this murderous anger or rage and did not act on it,
but you felt it in your heart toward another person, anyone?
Confession time.
I'll confess a time that happened when I was much younger.
My kids actually said, you've got to tell this story.
So I told a story a little while back
about an experience that I had, multiple experiences,
where my brother attempted to take my life in various ways.
He wasn't trying to take my life,
but he was putting me in situations and positions
where he wasn't guarding me or keeping me safe.
And the last one was related to electricity
when he handed me basically a highly charged powered line
and had me hold it as a four or five year old.
Well, me and my brother, I love my brother,
but we had this kind of weird relationship.
He was older than me, I was trying to keep up with him.
He'd get annoyed at me and I had anger issues as a child.
My mom will tell you straight out,
and my dad will tell you, this kid had anger issues.
I would go into fits and rage as a young child.
One time we were in our room
and my brother was messing with me.
We had bunk beds, so we shared a room.
If any of you have shared a room,
that alone can set a lot of people off with your brother.
But in our room, we were on our bunk beds
and he kept stealing, we had a flashlight.
This is gonna sound so trivial, it's almost embarrassing.
We had a flashlight and he kept taking my flashlight
and then I'd tell him, give it back to me.
And he would take it apart,
and I didn't know how to do this at the time,
he would take it apart, all the pieces,
and then hand me back a flashlight that didn't work.
And my brother was a very adventurous person,
so he would go into the house and get all kinds of things.
He reminds me a whole lot of my second born.
Who collects things from all over,
and you're like, where did you get that?
Or where did you find that?
And how did it get in here, right?
Well my brother had found a small school dissecting knife.
You know those little razor blades, right,
with the little end?
And he had brought it into our room
and he had been messing with it and playing with it.
And he set it on the desk and it was just sitting there.
Well I went into this rage, this moment of anger,
as he was messing with me, and I was smaller,
and I was on the bottom bunk and I couldn't do anything.
And so this rage started to well up within me,
and I walked over to the desk, I grabbed the knife,
I walked back to my brother,
and I stuck it right in his shoulder.
Now a dissecting knife is pretty clean cut.
So it was a nice surgical incision there.
And it was just sticking out of his arm,
and he looks at me.
He looks at it.
It looks, and it was just like, it felt like forever,
him just looking, stunned.
And then he just started, mom, mom, and ran down the hall.
I jumped into bed, put the covers over my head,
and just curled up in a ball immediately full of regret,
immediately realized what I had done,
and full of fear of punishment,
that was certainly going to come.
But I can't identify it, I can't dissect all that went on
inside of me at that moment as a young child.
It was quite a while ago.
But 20, 30, 40 years, whatever it is,
probably 40 years now, yeah.
40 years ago when I grabbed that knife
and I did that thing, but it stuck in my mind for sure,
as a moment where something, I lost control.
I gave into a content that I didn't care
about the results or the outcome.
I just hated my brother in that moment.
I hated my brother, and I wanted him
to feel that hate in some way.
It could have gone a lot worse.
The shoulder healed is probably not even a scar there now.
But it could have gone a lot worse.
But I had a moment where I experienced this first level,
and he says here in this, it's interesting,
he gives these three levels of experience,
this murderous rage and anger.
And most scholars connect to this idea
of this murderous rage or anger back to the story
of Cain and Abel, and you remember,
Cain came to offer his sacrifice,
and when it wasn't acceptable, he,
it says he became furious.
He became, he had a murderous rage,
and what did he do with that murderous rage?
Well, he murdered his brother, and Jesus is saying,
well, yeah, I tell you that you may not actually
commit to the crime, but when that rage is present,
when that anger is present in your heart,
you're on the pathway to the act,
which is as good as doing the act.
Sure, it doesn't have the same physical consequences,
but it means something in our heart.
And so he says anger is one,
but then he goes to the next one, and he says insults.
If anyone insults his brother or sister,
and this insult is this Aramaic word, raka,
which basically means you empty head.
It's not really insulting nowadays, but you empty head,
and it's a way of saying you're worthless.
It's a way of showing contempt for someone,
and saying you're worthless, you have nothing in there.
We might call people airheads, right?
You got nothing in there of any worth.
It's a failure to see worth in someone else,
and particularly the statement of raka would be
like a public curse you would do to someone.
So publicly cursing or insulting someone
in order to vent your displeasure with them or your anger.
And so he begins with this anger,
which is this internal murderous rage,
and then he says this external raka,
this contempt for your brother,
this failure to see their worth,
and to call them this insult.
And then he says, you fool, right?
If you say to your brother or sister, you fool.
And so he shows these three,
and they're kind of in this descending order
of external intensity.
First you began with this angerous, murderous rage
that if taken to its end,
it results in taking the life of someone else.
But then you step back, and then it's just an insult.
It's calling someone empty or empty headed.
It's calling someone worthless.
And then he says, oh, but you think
that's where the line is for murder?
No, no, let's take another step back.
You fool, which was kind of like the base level
on the streets as low as you can get
the base level insult for someone.
You fool, you fool.
I wanna ask if you ever called someone a fool,
especially around the presidential election season.
But we probably all have, you fool.
You fool.
It's from this Greek root word called more,
which we get our word moron.
So if you ever called someone moron, it's the same word.
See, this base level, on the ground,
kind of personal insult you might throw at someone
face to face or think in your head.
You moron, you fool.
And Jesus says, we began with murder.
You said, do not murder.
But I tell you, if you have that rage within you,
that anger toward your brother or sister,
it's the same thing.
I tell you, if you insult your brother or sister
in a public way and call them worthless
and don't see the value that God has placed on them,
same thing.
Actually, I'll tell you, even if you just say
someone's a fool, someone's a moron,
someone's an idiot, same thing.
Same thing as if you murdered.
And so he has this kind of descending order
of intensity, and he says the act of murder
is the ultimate expression of the heart of contempt.
But there are far less obvious expressions
that mark the same pathway to murder.
Jesus is saying that the fullness of this command
to not murder is anytime we walk down that path.
And if you wanna know what that path is,
walk the path backwards.
What led you to that act?
How did you view humanity?
How do you view your brother or sister?
All the way back to the heart.
Because at the heart is actually the place
that it must be addressed, not in the action, at the heart.
And so with these three experiences,
he then lists out with each of them three judgments.
And he says with the first one, and this is interesting
because the first level of judgment,
the first level of judgment, which is for murderous rage,
he says, what?
Oh, he'll be subject to judgment.
Subject to judgment.
And then he says, whoever insults his brother or sister
will be subject to the court.
And then he says, whoever says you fool
will be subject to hell fire.
Do you see what he's doing?
He's actually inverted it now.
So we would say hell, there's a special place in heaven
and a special place in hell reserved for murderers
who do the act, who commit the act.
And Jesus flips it around and says, for murder,
for the act, for that anger and rage
that ultimately comes out, expresses itself in the act,
yeah, you'll be subject to judgment.
And that judgment could be interpreted as the local courts.
Wherever you lived, you had a local court
who adjudicated cases.
And yeah, you'll be subject to justice there.
But if you insult someone, you say empty head,
you say, hey, you're of no worth or value to me.
Well, then you're gonna be subject to the Sanhedrin.
He says the court, but the word behind it is Sanhedrin.
And this is like the Supreme Court.
Now we would think murderers should be subject
to the highest court.
No, he flips the script.
And this is where his audience would have gone,
like, what's going on here?
What's Jesus doing?
He said, murder is subject to judgment
at maybe the local level, the local court.
Insult is subject to the Supreme Court judgment.
And then he says, do you fool?
The least, the lowest level, the insult,
the you idiot, you moron, subject to hellfire.
And he's doing that on purpose.
This is his way of saying, you think it's all about the act.
But I'm telling you, the smallest act of insult
that dehumanizes or takes away the imago de,
the image of God in another person,
when you stand in judgment,
when you stand in contempt of your brother or sister,
it's as bad.
He's not saying that murder, the act, or the rage,
doesn't deserve judgment.
He's simply trying to get his audience to see.
You emphasize one to the neglect of the other.
He wants to show them the fullness of what it means.
He says, hellfires in the actual Greek,
it's the Gehenna of fire.
For the slightest jab, you fool.
And it puts you before.
Gehenna of fire is a place of judgment.
Gehenna of fire was a valley
that was right outside of Jerusalem.
And in this valley, all kinds of detestable things happened
when the kings were around.
When the kings were around and they began to lose sight
and they did evil in the sight of God, Ahaz and Manasseh,
they went to this valley that was right outside of Jerusalem
and they worshiped not only Yahweh,
but they also worshiped other gods and deities.
They set up places for incense and they did idol worship.
And they did something far worse.
It says that they burned their children
in the fire in Gehenna.
They burned their children in the fire in Gehenna,
in the valley of Gehenna.
And there, they burned them and this is what Jeremiah,
if you have your Bibles, go to the book of Jeremiah,
chapter seven, because this is the judgment
that ultimately comes from God
as a result of their actions.
Jeremiah chapter seven,
beginning in verse 30.
For the Judeans have done what is evil in my sight.
This is the Lord's declaration.
They have set up their abhorrent things in the house
that bears my name in order to defile it.
They have built the high places on Tofeth
in Ben-Hanan Valley in order to burn their sons
and daughters in the fire, a thing I did not command,
I never entertain.
I did not command, I never entertained the thought.
It says that they built their high places of Tofeth.
This was like the fireplace or the place of offering.
It was kind of like the bed you would lay the dead people on
in order to burn their bodies up
as a way of kind of their funeral, right?
Except he's saying you built up these Tofeths
up on the high place or in the valley of Gehenna,
and you put your sons and daughters alive on them.
You burn them to idols.
And so when Jesus says, the one who says you fool
is subject to the fires of Gehenna,
what he is saying is that the fires of Gehenna
is a way for him to kind of turn around
the activity of the Israelites back in the Kings
and the Chronicles era when they used to do
this detestable practice, and everyone knew
at Jesus' time that this detestable practice took place
in that valley that was just outside of Jerusalem.
They knew it, it was a part of their history.
It was written down.
And so when he says the fires of Gehenna,
the first thing that would come into their mind
is the idea of these fires that were lit in Gehenna
with children sacrificed to false gods on them.
And he said, well, we're gonna be subject
to the fire of Gehenna?
Yeah, because Jeremiah flips the script
and says ultimately that they will pay
for what they have done.
Verse 32 of Jeremiah seven.
Therefore, look, the days are coming, the Lord declares,
when this place will no longer be called Topheth
and Ben Hanan Valley, but Slaughter Valley.
Topheth will become a cemetery
because there will be no other burial place
for the corpses of these people will become food
for the birds of the air and the wild animals of the land
with no one to scare them away.
I will remove the cities of Judah
and the streets of Jerusalem,
the sound of joy and gladness
and the voices of the groom and the bride
for the land will become a desolate wasteland.
Basically, God is saying because you did these things,
because you defiled in such a way,
I'm going to bring judgment on you.
And what's that kind of judgment?
Well, he kind of re-states it there in Matthew.
He's basically saying the fires that you lit
to burn your children will turn back on you.
The fires that you used to sacrifice to these other gods
and these idols with your very precious children
that you put on there and you did not honor them,
those fires will come back on you in judgment from God.
So when he says the hell fire or the fire of Gehenna
is the judgment for you fool,
he's saying it's the same idea
as if you took your children and put them on there
and that fire was turned back on you in judgment.
Turned back on because you did not honor what God honored.
You did not honor the image of God
that is in the human beings that he has created.
God gave them value, not you.
And so then verse 23 through 26 in Matthew,
we get to some application.
What are we to do with this Jesus?
What are we supposed to do with your teaching?
He says,
so if you're offering your gift on the altar
and there you remember that your brother or sister
has something against you,
leave your gift there in front of the altar,
first go and be reconciled with your brother or sister
and then come offer your gift.
Now we all probably have heard that scripture before
and people will pull it out like,
hey if you've got something against your brother
or your brother's got something against you
for something out here or maybe they're just mad at you
but it was a misunderstanding.
Look in the context of the scripture here.
What is it saying?
It says if your brother has something against you,
this isn't you hurt their feelings
or they have hurt feelings
because they misunderstood something that you did.
This is because you did something in the context of this.
This is you either called them fool, you insulted them
or you had murderous rage or anger toward them.
They have a justified reason to have something against you.
They have something against you
and if you remember you come to offer,
maybe it's your once yearly,
he's speaking in kind of the area of Galilee right now,
so maybe it's your once yearly trip to Jerusalem
to offer your sacrifice
and you've traveled the long distance with the pilgrims
to go up to the house of God and to offer your sacrifice
and if you get all the way there
and you're standing in front of the altar
with your sacrifice and you're about to give it,
Jesus says, don't bother.
God wants you to leave it there.
Go all the way home and reconcile with your brother or sister
that you've offended.
Reconcile with your brother or sister that you called a fool
or your brother or sister that you said
is an empty headed idiot, moron, whatever it is
or that you had rage or anger for.
Leave it there and once that's reconciled,
then go back and offer your gift.
Then go back.
It's that important.
It's that important to not leave it and just go,
you know what, I'll do this really quick to God
and then I'll take care of it when I get home.
That's it, I don't want it, I don't need it.
Go reconcile with your brother or sister first.
That's far more important.
That's far more, that's how significant
Jesus is making this teaching.
He says go and be reconciled.
God takes this so seriously.
He says don't even bother offering your gift
until this is fixed.
And then verse 25 through 26,
he says, reach a settlement quickly with your adversary
while you're on the way with him to court
or your adversary will hand you over to the judge
and the judge to the officer
and you will be thrown into prison
tell, truly I tell you, you will never get out
until you have paid the last penny.
In a sense he kind of switches the illustration
a little bit here.
He went from brother or sister
that you have something against
or they have something against you
because you've done something.
And now he says adversary or enemy.
You're adversary or enemy and you're going to court
and he says you better raise up and fix this thing
before it gets to court because once it gets to court
and you might think in your mind
he's giving practical legal advice here.
No, they know what he's talking about and we should too.
This is about interpersonal relationship
with believers and human beings.
The first part being brothers and sisters,
those who are, you know, you can think
if this is 35 or 45 years later written,
Matthew is also now in the context of the early church.
So he's thinking, he's writing to people
who are gathered together like we are.
And he's thinking how do you guys,
what should be your disposition towards this?
You need to go reconcile
with your brother, it's that important.
But he also says you have adversaries and enemies
and you've done wrong to some people
and they have things against you.
And if you don't reconcile with them,
you might find yourself all the way in front of the court.
And with Jesus, his teaching was both practical
for every day but it was also in a sense eschatological
in that he was bringing in a new way of thinking,
a new kingdom of God.
And so this court isn't just about human courts
that you might end up with with your adversary,
it's about ending up in the courtroom of God
with an offense that you did not reconcile.
And what happens if that judge,
when you stand before him, says you owe,
you are under judgment
because you did not reconcile with that one that you hurt,
you did not reconcile with that one that you hurt.
You did not reconcile with that one that you hurt,
you did not reconcile with the one
with which you were angry, murderous rage,
or that you call the fool or empty-headed.
Don't get all the way to there
and find out that you're gonna be thrown in prison
and it's gonna require everything.
I mean, the saying to the last penny
is just a way to emphasize it.
He was talking about the quadrants,
which was this Roman penny.
It's 1.64 of a day's wages.
So down to the last little tiniest bit that you have
will be required of you.
Full judgment.
The act of murder may land you in a human court
and it may land you under judgment,
but there is another court
and that court is always in session.
And that court is weighing each and every one
of your thoughts and actions
against God's will and coming kingdom.
God has established the worth and value of other humans
and that is not ours for the taking.
We don't have that prerogative.
We haven't been given that license
to establish the worth or value of other humans.
We don't get to say you're more valuable than him or her.
That's God's prerogative.
What is ours is as kingdom citizens
is to think thoughts at the deepest level
that are generous and gracious
towards our brothers and sisters and even our adversaries.
We'll see that love your enemies
is the final one he uses, the illustration he uses.
We are to mirror or image God's standard here on earth
and he upholds the worth of every human.
But I believe that only when you feel
the weight of your own guilt
do you recognize the need for a savior, right?
Jesus is gonna take six examples
and every one of them you and I are gonna be guilty of
in some way.
And that's gonna leave us under guilt
if you just sit in it.
I hazard to guess
that Jesus is gonna leave us under guilt
and I hazard to guess
that if we opened up your life, every one of you,
and we had access to every moment of it,
we are all under judgment of murder
in the sense that Jesus laid it out.
We have all shown contempt for a brother or sister
or enemy or fellow human being.
We have written off people.
We might say it in very pleasant ways.
We might say it as, I don't care about them.
I have no need for them.
No, they can do whatever they want.
I don't care.
But then our heart be like, no, to me they're dead.
To me they don't exist.
To me they're not worth a thought.
We might show contempt for others.
One of the major signs that a marriage is going downhill
is when one party shows contempt for the other one.
It's the inescapable vortex that pulls you in.
When they begin to dismiss them as if,
like, I don't even care about you.
That's a hazard sign.
It's also, and part of Jesus' teaching here,
it's the same as if you took a rock
and hit them over the head.
Have you harbored anger or rage in your heart
towards someone?
And this might be even someone who has actually hurt you.
This might be someone who has actually done
terrible things to you.
Maybe they hurt you in a real way.
And yet, we are called nonetheless by God
to face humanity and take it on his terms
that we were made in his image and likeness,
that we have dignity and value.
And God's kingdom citizens will live in this way
as we enter in to his kingdom.
It's not easy to do this, is it?
It's not easy to obey because you can already
probably think of areas where you might go,
I don't know about that.
I don't know if I'm ready to give that one up
or I kinda like holding onto that rage right over here
on this person because of what they did
and I wanna make them pay.
I think in the end, we'll all find that we don't have
the strengthening of ourselves and that is the beauty
of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The gospel, the good news, is that Christ has fulfilled
all of the righteous requirements of the law for us.
The gospel that lifts our heads in our weight
and our guilt is that through faith
that is marked by repentance,
we can change, his heart can be planted
and we can get a new heart that changes our disposition,
that over time, he can renew us in our minds
and prepare us for the future.
That if you do have that murderous rage in your heart,
even now, or that contempt for your fellow human being,
you can say, I don't want it.
Take it Lord, I don't want it anymore.
I don't wanna sit under the judgment of it anymore.
I wanna offload this, I can't carry this.
And he can come and he can begin to work in your heart
to remove that contempt, to clean you from the inside out
because it's at the heart that all of this begins
and that's where Jesus traced this thread
all the way back to the heart and it's only then,
only in the place where we have received forgiveness
from Christ, where we have confessed
and we lay it before him and his righteousness is ours,
only when we have experienced that kind of love
and that love has changed our hearts,
can we begin to even hope to love others in that way.
The gospel is not the doorway though.
It's not the thing you did when you first accepted Christ
and now you gotta move beyond the gospel.
The gospel is for each and every person here today.
Sure, we're not gonna have an altar call where you,
give your life to Christ, but you can give your heart
to Christ today, over and over again,
give your sin to Christ as Nick led us
through our confession time.
He's saying, I don't even need your gift,
bring your gift of sin.
Lay it on my feet, confess it freely.
Lay it before me, I can bring healing.
The one thing you don't wanna do though,
is you don't wanna hold it and say, you know what?
Not putting this thing out there.
I like this baggage, I like this hatred,
I like this anger, I'm gonna carry it all the way
until I stand before God.
Jesus says, don't do that.
Don't do that.
Only in a place of forgiveness can we begin to love this way.
And only when we've been brought into the love of God
and that love has been brought into our hearts,
can we love from our hearts toward others
as we're commanded.
We are invited through this series
and through Jesus' words, you and I are invited
to live into the kingdom of God.
To begin to set aside and let go of the sin
and to set aside and let go of living in our own kingdom
or in the kingdom of this world
and begin to live into the kingdom of God.
And it begins for our series today
with the idea of anger and murder
and attempt for others.