And Junior Church, you can be dismissed at this time.
And as they're making their way out,
if you would find in place in scriptures in Matthew chapter
5.
Excuse me.
In Matthew 5, our text for this morning
is found in verses 21 through 26.
Jesus speaking, he said, you have
heard that it was said to those of old, that is the ancients,
that you shall not murder.
Whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.
But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother
without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.
And whoever says to his brother, Raqqa,
shall be in danger of the council.
Whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar
and there remember that your brother has something against
you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way.
First, be reconciled to your brother.
And then come and offer your gift.
Agree with your adversary quickly
while you're on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver
you to the judge and the judge hand you over to the officer
and you be thrown into prison.
Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means
get out of there until you have paid the last penny.
Let's pray.
Oh gracious Father, Lord, would you help us understand
your word this morning?
Father, may we sense the urgency.
And Lord, may we also understand the spirit
in which it was given.
Lord, we need you this morning.
Help us, Father.
And we ask this for the glory and honor of Christ
in whose name we pray.
Amen.
Recently, Sandy and I were talking
and she was telling me of an incident that occurred
with our oldest daughter, Adara.
Adara is a wonderful girl, but she's a handful right now.
And we love her, but she's making us pray.
And we say that often.
But our son Ezra, he always has notebooks with him.
And he likes to write.
He loves to practice letters and he loves to draw.
And Ezra is very particular about his things.
He's particular about his notebooks.
And he does not like for any of his sisters to touch them.
So one day, Ezra came to Sandy and he
was upset because Adara had taken one of the new notebooks
and had scribbled on every page practically
of this new notebook.
And Sandy had even seen Adara scribbling,
but she didn't know and she was unaware that it
was one of Ezra's notebooks.
So then Sandy goes to Adara and she questioned
Adara about scribbling.
And Adara denied it.
And she said, then Sandy's getting aggravated.
She said, Adara, I saw you scribbling.
And Adara says, I was not scribbling.
And then, so Sandy's getting more mad.
She said, I saw you do it.
And Adara said, no, I wasn't scribbling.
Scribbling is like when you do this.
I was drawing circles, which is when you do this.
So scribbling is this action and I
wasn't doing that technically.
And if you know Adara, that is her.
And she comes by it so naturally, just like her mother.
No, I'm kidding.
So anyway, she was trying to uphold her innocence
by a technicality.
Technically, in the strict sense of the law,
she had not scribbled.
And yet, she knew what her mother was referring to.
But this is how some people, even of ancient,
tried to interact with God's law.
They would maintain their innocence or their righteousness
by saying, technically, we have kept the law,
but they ignored the broader intention and the spirit
behind it.
In verse 20, which we started with verse 21,
but we ended up last week, Jesus said these frightening words.
He said, unless your righteousness
exceeds that of the Pharisees and scribes,
you will in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Heaven is shut off to you.
And then today, he's going to tell us,
if you call someone a fool, you're in danger of hell.
Now, one must keep in mind, when Jesus said that your righteousness
must succeed theirs, the scribes and Pharisees
were the most important people and the most
righteous people of the day.
They were the ones held in high regard, high esteem.
The problem was they were hypocrites.
Yes, they were righteous, but they were self-righteous.
They were purporting to have kept God's law.
And yet, the whole time, they were ignoring
the true and broader intention.
Now, in verse 21, it starts a new section of scripture.
It goes all the way to verse 48.
So verse 21 through verse 48, six times our Lord
will use this phrase.
You have heard, but I say to you.
He's showing how the Pharisees were mishandling and actually
misinterpreting the law of God.
So really, this section, verses 21 through 48,
is meant to be read as a whole unit,
showing what Jesus words in verse 20.
He's showing you how your righteousness must
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees
if you're to enter in the kingdom of heaven,
if this is meant to be lived out.
Now, again, keep in mind, the religious leaders,
they're experts.
They're experts in the letter of the law.
And yet, they were woefully deficient
in their understanding of the spirit of the law.
So they had rabbinical traditions
that had been passed down from ages.
They had reduced God's law to a manageable religious system
that they could keep, and that would even
foster pride in them.
Then the more Jesus came out of nowhere, out of obscurity,
he comes on the scene, and he begins
to challenge their teaching.
He was not challenging the law of God,
but he was challenging the interpretation of it.
And he was going to show what God's true intention was that
lie behind the law and how that your righteousness must
go deeper than your actions.
Now, look at verse 21.
You have heard it was said to those of old,
you shall not murder.
If you do, you're in danger of the judgment.
Jesus is simply quoting the Decalogue.
He's quoting the sixth commandment here.
Exodus 20, verse 13, you shall not murder.
Now, if you have a King James Bible,
it'll say, thou shall not kill.
But the Hebrew word is actually not just killing.
It actually is the word murder.
And that's an important distinction, because not all
taking of a life is sin.
For example, you can have capital punishment,
just war theory, accidental deaths,
accidentally killing someone, and self-defense.
They were not considered in this commandment.
One of the arguments that sometimes you'll hear
people who are supportive of the abortion industry,
they will say, if you guys were consistent,
how do you oppose abortion, and yet you're
OK with capital punishment?
Because both of those are killing.
And the Bible says, thou shall not kill.
Well, they don't understand the Hebrew word is murder.
And the reason that we would be in favor of capital punishment
is because God was.
Genesis 9, verse 6, whoever sheds man's blood by man,
his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.
So if one had broken the sixth commandment,
you were in danger of capital punishment.
In fact, this is your danger of judgment.
What's Jesus talking about here?
It's not a vigilante system.
It's actually a court system.
They would go to court.
The court would seek witnesses.
And they would find them guilty.
And the punishment would be death.
The very first crime that we see mentioned in the scriptures
is murder.
Cain killed his brother Abel.
So from the beginning, sadly, murders have always been
and always will be a part of our fallen world.
And this is true in part because the world right now
lies under the influence of Satan.
And Jesus said in John 8, 44 that Satan was
a murderer from the beginning.
So what that means is murder in any form is satanic.
Satan hates mankind.
Why?
Because mankind was created in the image of God.
And this is an important point worth distinction, church.
All humanity bears what's called the imago
de, the image of God.
The imprimatur of God is upon each man or woman.
And Satan loves nothing more than to destroy that image.
This is why I say with absolute certainty,
the abortion industry is satanic.
It is satanic.
It seeks to end human life before they ever exit the womb.
Now some of us are sitting back very smug, almost self-righteous,
fair-sacred.
I've never murdered anyone, pastor.
I'm innocent.
I'm free of the sixth commandment.
Go back to the words of Jesus, verse 22.
But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother
without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.
And whoever says there's brother Raka
shall be in danger of the council.
But whoever says you fool shall be in danger of hellfire.
Friends, these are sobering words.
They're said, they come from the mouth of the Son of God,
the one who has all judgment committed unto him.
He says, you have heard, but I say.
Again, you're going to see this phrase six times
over the next 27 verses.
Now the pronoun I is what we call an emphatic pronoun.
And it literally means I myself say to you.
Why that is important?
Because if you go back to the Old Testament, the prophets,
how would they start a declaration from God?
Thus saith the Lord.
But Jesus, the God man, simply says, I say to you.
Christ, of his own divine authority,
he doesn't quote rabbis, he doesn't
quote other ancient sources, but rather he
speaks authoritatively, giving the true interpretation
of the law.
And by the way, he ought to know the intention of the law
because it came from him.
He's the great law giver.
Now what Jesus is telling us in this passage,
he's not merely concerned with actions.
Of course our actions matter.
But he's very much also interested in the actions
and motives from which the actions flow.
Matthew 15 verse 19, out of the heart
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
thefts, false witnesses, and blasphemies.
Before you will ever sin with your hand,
you will first sin with your heart.
In other words, your righteousness
has not exceeded the scribes and Pharisees
simply because you have not committed homicide.
The root of murder comes from an angry heart.
The evil of murder is not simply that you took the life,
but the heart that led one to take the life.
This is where it starts.
It's in a heart.
See, the problem, if you look at scripture,
it's very consistent.
The problem with mankind is not out there.
It's not external.
It is internal.
The problem, as I said, it's not in our hands.
It's in our heart.
So you can't say that you are blameless simply
because you have not lifted up your hand against another
person to kill them.
But that's exactly what the religious leaders were teaching.
It was just very mechanical.
It was reduced, reductionistic.
It was reduced to if you have not committed homicide,
then you are innocent of the Sixth Commandment.
You're blameless.
And Jesus said, no, you're not.
You're not blameless because God's
not going to judge your actions.
He's also going to judge your heart.
So they were very careful, scrupulous.
They were kept to the strict letter of the law.
And they had all these rabbinical traditions
that told you what that should mean.
And since they were so proud of having kept the law,
they became self-assured.
Self-assured of what?
Their own innocence.
And yet, in their own self-righteousness,
they never stopped to examine their own hearts.
Because again, what Jesus is saying,
it's not just the action, but the anger
that fuels the action that is also prohibited by God.
Yes, murder clearly is prohibited.
But murderous anger, which lies in the heart,
is also prohibited.
Have you ever been simply angry with another in your heart?
Have you ever mouthed the words, I'm so angry
I could kill someone?
Have you ever called someone a fool, a moron,
a brainless idiot?
Maybe not out loud.
But have you ever thought it in your heart
when someone cut you off in traffic?
So we know that God's not only judging actions.
He's judging the heart.
And this is what the Lord is wanting us to understand.
This is the judgment, Jeremiah 17.
I, the Lord, I search the heart.
I test the mind even to give every man according
to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.
First Samuel, for the Lord does not see as man sees,
for man looks at the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks at the heart.
Psalm 7, 9, for the righteous God, that is the Holy One,
he tests the hearts and the minds.
He weighs them.
So when God judges, he judges absolutely.
Not just your actions, that's easy.
But the thoughts and motivations behind your actions
will be judged as well.
And that poses a big problem for us.
The religious leaders, particularly the Pharisees,
only concerned themselves with the letter.
Just like Adorah, she wasn't scribbling technically.
And they became proud of having kept the law.
And it's the height of irony.
And it's the height of arrogance that these religious leaders
that boasted they had kept the sixth commandment
would later prove themselves to be guilty of the murder
of the Son of God.
These are the ones who delivered Christ up to be crucified.
Boasting how righteous they were, and yet in history,
they stand guilty of the murder of God's Son.
Verse 22, I say to you that whosoever is angry
with his brother without a cause shall
be in danger of the judgment.
Notice it does say without a cause, angry without a cause.
So that means there is an anger that does have a cause, which
is what we would call righteous anger.
And some of us probably think too highly of ourselves
and we think that our anger is always righteous.
But righteous anger is anger directed at sin.
It is right to be angry at the abortion industry.
It's good to have righteous anger there.
Now that doesn't mean you direct it toward people,
but it's the satanic industry.
Or that which prompts us to defend ourselves
when attacked or to defend our families from evil.
It's the anger that is aroused when people seek to disparage
and dishonor God.
When you hear someone take your Savior's name in vain
or disparage your Savior and you kind of get angry inside,
that's a good anger.
But that's not what Jesus is talking about.
Here's an anger.
It is a selfish, seething anger, a feeling
that would lead us to murder if it were acted out fully.
Now the word angry here is the Greek word or gitso,
become enraged, provoked, brooding, simmering anger.
And you just allow it to fester.
It doesn't die.
It's when you hold a grudge.
You will not forgive.
William Farley says, we note in passing
that Christ deals here not with the emotion of anger,
but with the willing acceptance of it in one's life.
It is a longstanding grudge, not simply
the feeling of irritation, which is in view.
You just rehearse it.
You meditate upon what was done.
And what our Lord was doing, he's
teaching to the people gathered.
This is a sermon on the Mount.
Lots of people, his disciples, and by extension,
a great crowd is there.
And he's wanting to destroy the illusion of self-righteousness
so that you might cast yourself upon the mercy of God.
Is the sixth commandment still valid?
Absolutely.
But it's not just a strict legalistic interpretation
of the literal act.
That's rejected.
You and I have no chance at justifying ourselves.
God is going to judge our hearts and our hands.
And the sin of murder, like every other sin out there,
will begin the heart before it ever
finds fruition in your actions.
The Lord continues.
He doesn't let us off the hook even that easily.
He warns us to be careful against sinful anger,
but also to be careful with expressions of contempt.
Why?
When we speak contemptuously of others,
it reveals a seething anger.
Whoever says there's brother Raka,
you're going to be in danger of the council.
That's probably the Sanhedrin there.
Raka, what's it mean?
It's a worthless, empty-headed man, literally brainless
idiot.
You're witless.
You're foolish.
This is a term of malice.
There's slander here.
There's derision.
But underneath it lies a contempt
for another human being.
You're speaking contemptuously.
You are speaking contemptuously about another fellow image
bearer of God.
It's very serious.
In fact, it's terrible in God's sight.
Again, I want to quote Farley here.
What is envisioned is a contempt that
would write the other person off entirely.
What Christ condemns here is the rage
that implicitly denies the personhood and dignity
of the other.
Carl, when you say someone's worthless,
others are worthless.
It's an affront to the creator who created that individual.
To say that someone is worthless is criticizing the creator
that created that worthless one.
Contempt and derision for another is the very spirit
that leads to murder, whether you carry it out or not.
You and I, we have destroyed others with our tongues.
We have ruined others and killed their reputation.
Do you still think that you will stand before God innocently?
God's justice and his judgment is exacting.
It's comprehensive.
It's precise.
There's no wiggle room.
But Jesus continues.
He said, if you say you fool, you're
going to be in danger of the fire of hell.
Fool is moros.
It's easy to see where we get our word moron from, right?
Slow, stupid, dull.
It's to accuse someone not just being stupid, but godless.
Again, worthless, moros.
For you to call someone that shows a bitterness
and a hatred within your heart.
And what's in your heart comes out of your mouth.
For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
So when you're calling someone a fool,
Jesus said you're in danger of the judgment of hell.
Are you still thinking you're innocent and righteous
before God?
Do you still boast that you've kept the sixth commandment?
Martin Lloyd-Jones, he said, what
is the state of your heart?
How do you react to things that happen?
Do you find yourself flaring into a raging temper
when a person has done something to you?
Or do you sometimes feel anger against a person who's really
done nothing to you at all?
These are the things that matter.
It is that which God meant when he said thou shall not kill
and God sees the heart and he's not concerned only
with external action.
You think about what Lloyd-Jones said.
I think about traffic.
I talked to some of you two weeks ago.
I wasn't going to say this because confession
is good for the soul.
But not last Saturday, Saturday before.
We were coming back from a soccer game
and I was trying to go to get the van in a car wash
and a man cut me off in traffic.
He didn't cut me off.
He just wouldn't let me over.
And I had Sandy and the kids in the car.
And I mean, there's plenty of room.
He could have slowed down.
I couldn't slow down.
Someone behind me, I need to make this turn.
And he would not let me over.
He sped up.
And he's a brand new Subaru Forester.
So I'm laying on my horn and I'm sure
that I'm calling him an idiot.
I don't know that I did, but I'm sure that I did.
And he wouldn't let me over.
So finally, I just let him go and then I get behind him
and he goes to the same car wash I'm going to.
And I'm boiling.
Sandy's very good at playing the Holy Spirit in my life.
She's very good at that.
And she's just telling me, calm down, calm down.
And so I'm looking over.
I'm hoping he'll make eye contact.
He wouldn't, because he got stuck.
And I thought that was God's justice at that time.
And so I'm going through.
And I remember I'm calming down.
I told Sandy, I just need to calm down.
And so I'm in the car wash.
Van's in the car wash.
And so we're going through there and I'm just calming.
I'm like, OK, I just need to calm down.
Fine.
So I start to get out and I go to the vacuum
and trying the car off.
And they're probably four minutes behind us.
And all of a sudden, they come out
and they make eye contact with me.
And I am furious all over again.
And I throw my rag down.
I'm just shaking my head like, what's up?
And I couldn't believe it.
And I'm feeling myself out of control.
I walk toward their car and ask them to roll down the window.
And I tell them exactly.
I didn't cuss them.
I can't claim innocence because it's
like it wouldn't have been better.
But I looked at them and told them that they
were what's wrong with the world.
I said, you, sir, you are the type of people
that's a problem in the world today.
And then I don't know what else I told him.
And I said, I was an idiot.
And I just said, I have four kids
and hope none of them grow up to be like you.
None of them.
All against it.
He then got smart and said, well, congratulations
on the four children, which made me more mad.
And I'm like, and Sandy's over here.
And she's grabbing my arm.
And she said, stop, Ryan.
What are you doing?
Come back over here.
And I'm just furious.
I mean, I am.
And I don't know why.
He cut me off in traffic.
And she said, what are you going to do, Ryan,
if those people show up in church one Sunday?
And how are you going to greet them?
I said, probably with an apology.
But I remember the truth is, and this
is honest before God.
And I share this with other people
because I'm like, y'all need to pray for me.
I found myself really super angry.
But as soon as I got back to the van,
the Holy Spirit jumped all over me.
And I remember reading.
Do you remember when Saul goes into the cave in Getty
and David cut off his robe?
So he did cut off his robe.
And then Saul walks out.
And David walks out.
And he's like, look, I could have killed you if I didn't.
And the Spirit of God got on David
and said, you shouldn't even cut his robe off.
This was what I mean, I'm telling you,
I felt like the worst just, Lord, forgive me.
I don't know what I was doing.
I was out of control.
And I went back to that same car wash yesterday,
hoping to see them.
Not to tell them anymore what I thought.
But I really was.
I was praying, like, let them see there,
because the next time if I see them,
and I'll remember who they were, I want to apologize to them.
I was wrong.
And do you know what was worse?
You know what I was studying?
Matthew 5.
See, we're not to be angry.
I think condemn there.
We're not to be angry in a sinful manner.
We're not to use contemptuous speech.
We're not to tell people they're the problem with the world.
You know what the problem with the world is?
I am.
See, the command is not murder.
Yes, but it's also, it goes beyond that.
So that's the negative aspect.
But every negative command has a positive application.
It means to take steps to make sure that you're
right with your brother.
When God prohibits one thing, by extension, he enjoins
or he commands the opposite at the very same time.
So what does that mean?
Look at verse 23 and 24.
It's what he's doing.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there you remember that your brother has something against
you, well, leave your gift before the altar and go your way.
First, be reconciled to your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Don't murder.
OK, he says, but don't stop there.
Be reconciled to those with whom you are
estranged or at odds with.
You have to go further, Christian.
You have to actually remove the barrier between you
and your brother.
You may not murder.
You may not say unkind things.
You may even try very hard to have no ill thoughts.
But you ought to go further and seek peace and reconciliation.
You ought to have shalom, wholeness in your life.
Sinclair Ferguson, he talks about this,
and the quote I'll get to in a moment.
He says, picture a man in church.
You're about to express your devotion to the Lord in worship
by giving an offering, but you have not
been enjoying fellowship with your brother.
There's disharmony in that relationship.
Jesus says, you should leave your offering,
go home, be reconciled to your brother,
and then return to worship God with a clear conscience
and a full heart.
Now, is Jesus saying that the only important thing in worship
is right relationships with our brothers?
No, hardly.
He recognizes our relationship with God is primary,
but we will always appear before God
as those who are related rightly or wrongly to our fellow man.
What we are before God, Ferguson says,
involves how we are related to others.
If you and I are enmity with others,
how can we come into the Lord's presence with clean hands
and a pure heart?
It is monstrous to think that he will
find our hypocritical offering acceptable.
Obedience is better than sacrifice.
The principle is clear.
Right relationships with others are
part of the meaning of the commandment to not murder.
They are essential if our righteousness
is to go deeper than that of the scribes and Pharisees.
It is interesting in this example our Lord uses.
He said, you're bringing a gift.
And in this context, the temple is still standing.
It's a sacrificial animal.
You bring it to the altar.
You're coming to worship God.
And many times what we find when someone does wrong
and they're convicted of it, they
try to atone for their sin themselves.
Well, I'm just going to overcome evil.
I'm going to do more good.
So we know that we've done wrong,
or we know that we have a problem with someone else,
but we try to salve our own conscience by, well,
I'm going to go to church.
I'm going to work in a Juana.
I'm going to work in the youth group or sing in the choir.
It doesn't work.
You cannot atone for your sins to religious involvement.
It will not work.
If you know that there's disharmony with another,
get it right.
You can't try to make up for the evil by doing good.
It's not going to work before God.
And Jesus said this, and this is what I find very, very sobering.
Before we can truly worship God, we
must be reconciled to our brother.
There is no true worship as long as we are harboring
known sin in our lives.
There's none.
For instance, God's judgment's exacting.
It's precise.
There's no wiggle room.
He gets us in the corner, and he doesn't let us out.
You and I cannot be right vertically
if we are not right horizontally with our brothers and sisters.
Again, I want to quote Martyn Lloyd-Jones here.
If you are in a state of conscious enmity
against another, if you're not speaking to another,
if you're harboring unkind thoughts and a hindrance
and an obstacle to that other, God's word assures you
there is no value in your attempted worship.
It will value nothing.
The word will not hear you.
According to our Lord, the matter
is so vital that you must, as it were, even keep God waiting.
Go and put it right.
He says you cannot be right with God
until you put yourself right with man.
Get right with the person.
Then you can be made right with God.
Taking the first step in reconciliation
is our responsibility as Christians.
Friends, this is hard to do.
This is really hard.
And there are many reasons and excuses
why we shouldn't do it.
For example, I'm not mad at them.
They're mad at me.
It's her problem.
They need to deal with it.
But look carefully at the text.
If you're offering your gift and you remember your brother has
something against you, it doesn't
say if you remember you have something against your brother.
God's desire is for us to do everything in our power
to remove the offenses between us and other Christians,
remove the barriers.
If not, our worship is hollow.
That ought to be motivation enough to seek peace, right?
What our Lord is asking of his people is tough.
It's so very difficult to set aside the issue of blame.
But I was not wrong.
When we feel we're innocent, we want justice.
It's only when we know we're wrong we cry out for mercy.
You're like, yeah, but that person,
you don't know how they're going to respond.
You're not responsible for the response of anyone else.
They may react well.
They may not react well.
Your job is to seek a peaceful resolution as much
as lies within you.
That's it.
At the end of the day, they will bear the responsibility
for how they responded.
And by the way, as we close here,
there ought to be an urgency in all this.
Let's look at the last two verses here.
Agree with your adversary quickly
while you're on the way with him,
lest your adversary deliver you to the judge.
The judge hand you to the officer,
and you'd be thrown into prison.
Assuredly, I say to you, you will not get out of prison
until you've paid the very last penny.
Jesus is referring to a common practice at the time,
a person be imprisoned for an unpaid debt.
It's called debtor's prison, in fact.
So Roman law would allow a plaintiff,
they could bring the person with whom they have the odds
to court with them to face the judge, all right?
But on the way to the court, excuse me,
the two people could settle the matter out of court
and there'd be no problem.
But after the court became involved,
once you got to the court, it was too late.
The court then took matters into your hands
and you couldn't back out.
It was better if you owed someone something,
make it right on the way there,
so you would not then have to go face a judge in court
and possibly thrown into prison.
That's what's happening here.
That's what Jesus is saying.
And again, what's the point?
MacArthur said it well.
The illustration is a picture of sin against another person.
Such sin must be resolved to avoid having to face a sentence
from the divine judge.
The basic teaching is plain and unmistakable.
We are to make every effort with no delay
to make our relationship right with our brother
before our relationship can be right with God
and we can avoid chastening.
I must be willing to do all that I can to remove that barrier.
I must be willing to humble myself
and I must be willing to look foolish if need be.
And that goes against our fleshly pride.
It goes against our sense of rights.
It goes against our entitlement.
I'm talking to the church today.
But for Christ's sake and for the sake of fellowship with him,
will you do it?
See, we're going to come to the table in just a minute.
You should not partake of the elements
if you have something against your brother.
You should not.
It's one of the reasons it's urgency to get it right.
When I was in college, I knew someone
had something against me and we were taking communion.
I had to go ask them.
It was very awkward.
I said, I need to talk to you.
I know you have this against me.
Can we resolve this before we go to worship this evening?
See, the time to be reconciled with your brother
is right now.
So let's do the bottom line then here.
Just because you have not committed homicide
does not mean you are innocent of the Sixth Commandment.
Unjustifiable anger, estrangement from others,
is also forbidden by the Sixth Commandment.
So now the question is, who is guilty?
And the resounding answer is, we all are.
Every one of us.
That's why we need a Savior who obeyed this law completely,
fully, perfectly.
If you and I were to only be judged by one commandment
that we thought we could find blamelessness in,
if God said, pick one commandment
and I'll judge you by that and I'll let you into heaven,
I would probably have picked the Sixth Commandment.
Thou shalt not murder.
I'm like, not murdered so I can get in.
Based on what we've heard this morning,
we would still be found guilty and cast into hell.
We need the deliverer.
We need the one who can deliver us
from the weighty demands of the law.
Do you see, friends, do you see the righteousness
and heart attitude that God not only desires but commands?
Can you see where you're guilty?
If you do, here's what I know you'll do.
You'll cast yourself upon the mercy of God.
You will run to Christ.
You'll cast yourself upon Him.
Jesus began this great sermon opening up
with the blessing of the spiritually bankrupt man.
If you understand your own spiritual poverty,
run to Christ and there find grace and mercy.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
That's bankrupt in spirit.
For theirs, the kingdom of heaven belongs to those people.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Mourning over what?
Your own bankrupt position.
For they are the ones who'll be comforted.
There's a great reversal coming, friends.
And it's all owing to the grace of God.
Today, celebrate Christ.
And if you're here today and you don't know Christ,
you've never repented of your sin.
You have never bowed the knee to the King Jesus.
Today is the day of salvation.
Run to the Lord.
Confess Him right now.
And if you want to know more about that afterwards,
I am here.
I would love to talk to you about that.
What does it mean to have Christ as Savior?
Let's pray as we prepare for the table.
Father, Lord, I come to you today.
And Lord, I am guilty, Lord.
I've confessed that to you.
I confess that to my brothers and sisters here this morning,
Lord.
It surprised me how angry I was.
But Lord, I can't change it.
Lord, I can't go back in a tone for it.
But I cast myself upon the mercy of Christ.
And Lord, there you meet us with mercy.
You meet us with grace.
Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters this morning.
No doubt there are some who are strange from others.
There's obstacles.
There are barriers.
They need to be taken down if possible.
And Lord, your word tells us as much as lies within us
live peaceably with all men.
Sometimes we understand it's not possible.
But Lord, God, I pray that we would do everything in our power
as the people of God to live peaceably with our brothers
and sisters and with our neighbors,
help us to be peacemakers.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
And Lord, God, we ask this, Lord, in the name of Jesus.
Lord, we ask that you would cleanse us this morning
as a body.
Would you forgive us?
Lord, we confess our sin before you.
And the way forgiveness is found is
in the bloody death of Jesus.
It's in his broken body.
And it's in his shed blood that we find life.
And Lord, this morning, we thank you for that.
We thank you for the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus
in where we find eternal life.
What a great God you are, Lord.
Thank you, Lord, for not casting us off.
And thank you for not treating us as our sins deserved.
What a wonderful Savior you are.
And we come to you in the name of Jesus now.
Amen.
Blessed deacons, if you're going to come to the table
at this time, please.
And this is the time of communion.
So if you're here joining us, we're
going to make sure that you're watching our video and Thou