Good evening. As Pastor Kenny mentioned, we are
beginning a new sermon series tonight. And due
to a mystery white substance that myself and
my fellow Midwesterners like to call snow, I
have the honor and privilege of beginning it
tonight. And as Kenny and I began talking through
the sermon series and what he had in mind for
it and dealing with issues of I thought back
on my own life and I looked at society. And I
realized that more than anything else, the sin
of anger unfortunately defines the life of many
Christians and the life of many non -believers.
And it's one we can see so commonly, even in
the interactions with our spouses. Maybe you
men have been gone for a long day of work, you've
been gone for... nine or 10 hours and you come
home and the first thing your wife asks you to
do is take out the garbage. Or wives, maybe you've
had a long day with the children, they've been
sick, they've been throwing up, they got into
too much Valentine's Day candy and they have
been running rampant all over the house. And
you just need some help but your husband comes
home and he collapses tired and he wakes up the
next day ready for you to yell at him. And it's
one that we can see amongst believers online
as they argue theology, or even in person when
they argue theology. They are quick to throw
insults. This sin, the sin of anger, is ultimately
defined as murder. And Christian, you need to
face it, you are a murderer. At least that is
how Jesus defines it. In our text tonight, Matthew
5 verses 21 through 26. Again the the text that
Jesus uses to define anger is found in Matthew
5 verse 21 through 26 You have heard it said
You heard that it was said to those of old you
shall not murder and whoever murders will be
liable to judgment But I say to you that everyone
who is angry with his brother will be liable
to judgment Whoever insults his brother will
be liable to counsel and whoever says you fool
will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you
are offering your gift at the altar and there
you remember that your brother has something
against you, leave your gift there before the
altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother
and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms
quickly with your accuser while you are going
with him to court. Least your accuser hand you
over to the judge and the judge to the guard
and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you,
you will never get out until you have paid the
last penny." Now if we are going to understand
this text, I think it is first right and proper
to go to God in prayer and ask for help and understanding.
Our Lord and our God, we ask you as we examine
the words of your son tonight that you would
open our eyes to see and our ears to hear that
we would understand. what you would like us to,
that we would understand how great of God we
have because we are great sinners, and we have
failed on so many accounts. And we need your
help, Lord. Help us tonight through your Holy
Spirit to understand what is in this text. And
I pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen. Now
as we move into this text, I think it's important
to understand where we are at to have some background.
because this sermon is right at the start of
Jesus' ministry. It comes after his baptism.
It comes after his 40 days in the wilderness
where he was let out and tested by Satan. At
this point, he has called his disciples and he
has began to teach. He started in the region
of Galilee as he gathered people around him from
Jerusalem and Judea and the Decapolis, really
the central and southern parts of Israel. and
he has taken them north to Galilee. And he takes
them up on this mountain to preach because Jesus
did not have the convenience of having a microphone
like we have this evening. He had to get above
the crowd. So he takes them up to the mountain
and he begins to preach. And he begins with the
Beatitudes, explaining the types of characteristics
that should mark believers in the kingdom of
God. Then he moves into how he fulfills the law
and the true meaning of it. And he begins, actually,
with the sixth commandment of the law, which
is, thou shall not murder. And he recounts this
in verse 21. You have heard it said that those
of old you shall not murder, and whoever murders
will be liable to judgment. Jesus, in this statement,
he's doing two things. He's quoting the sixth
commandment from Exodus chapter 20, but he's
also counting the scribes and the Pharisees.
the people that were deemed more righteous than
everyone else. These were the Billy Grahams of
your day, your R .C. Sproul, your John MacArthur,
your Pastor Kennes. But unfortunately, they did
not have the same level of grace that any of
those men have or had. They had their Pharisaical
view. It was very literal, it was very wooden.
And I don't even think... literal is the right
definition. It was literalistic. They made it
so literal, it forced any other meaning out of
the text. And so as the scribes and Pharisees
approached the issue of murder, they just said,
well, as long as I keep my hands clean, and I
do not lay my hand upon my wife or another man,
and I do not take their life and cold blooded
murder, then I'm okay. This verse is not referring
to killing in self -defense or killing in a time
of war, but this is cold, and this is a cold
-blooded murder, murder in the first degree.
And Jesus rightly explains that anyone who murders
will be liable to judgment. This is the idea
of eye for the eye, which actually comes from
Leviticus 24, 17, which states, whoever takes
a human life shall surely be put to death. It
is just in the eyes of God that those who murder
in cold blood, they should also have their life
taken. But Jesus does not want to stay on this
wooden understanding of the law. He wants to
get at the heart of it, what is behind it, to
the heart of the believer. The law was never
meant to be a box to live in. It was meant to
be a convicting sight that stood before believers
that made them look inward. That made them understand
their sin and the weight of it and that was meant
to drive them to a holy God to a holy Savior
and Jesus goes on to explain it says I say to
you to you Now it's important to understand that
Jesus is not adding something new to the law
He is doing he is explaining what the law always
meant That it was meant to get at the heart.
I love how pastor Adriel Sanchez puts it in this
passage, the law of God has jurisdiction over
our hearts just as much as he has it over our
hands. The law was always meant to guide the
heart just as much as it did our hands. And this
is where we will have our great accusation from
Christ that we are murderers. Because he begins
to say, whoever becomes angry with his brother
is liable to judgment. He takes the words from
the law, from the wooden understanding of it,
and he puts it into practice at the heart level.
He talks about anger. Now this anger is not a
holy and righteous anger. We know from Ephesians
4 that you can be angry and you cannot sin. We
see Jesus even execute this type of anger when
he goes into the temple to cleanse it out. He
goes into the temple and he sees the tax collectors
and the money changers exchanging money and selling
goods and selling things to sacrifice. But this
was not the place to do sale. This was the place
to sacrifice, to come and worship. And Jesus
and his anger drove them out, flipping the tables,
even forming a whip as he began to chase them.
This is a holy and righteous anger. And you might
not think, well, forming a whip and chasing people
out is not very righteous. But you are dealing
with the Son of God, someone who knew and knows
the law perfectly. And the mercy that he showed
in that forming of a whip and the flipping of
the tables was one that was designed to keep
those men, those people from eternal judgment.
That maybe in this one action of Christ, they
would repent and turn to God, that they would
come to worship instead of coming to sell. This
is a type of anger that many believers struggle
with. There's maybe one time in my life where
I could say I was genuinely angry in a righteous
way. Because usually our anger comes from a sense
of pride. It comes from a sense of self -righteousness.
It's the same exact sin that the serpent committed
in the garden. He put himself above God. And
that is what we are quick to do. We do not need
provocation. We do not need anyone calling us
a name or doing anything. We just need One action,
maybe they just look at us wrong. They don't
have to get to calling us a name. Maybe our neighbor
looks at us funny one morning as we were walking
up to the car and we do not like the way that
they look at us. So we decide to take vengeance
upon them. We decide to go over to their garden
and pull up all of their daisies and leave it
as a dirt bed. There's no reasonableness to our
anger. Our anger will make us punch holes in
walls, throw our keys out the window of our cars,
curse at people going down the street. And I
think for me, the perfect example of this comes
from freshman year in high school when I played
football. And I know many of the women are really
a football analogy. You're just going to have
to bear with me. I'll do my best to explain the
terms of the game. When I played football freshman
year, I was third string. As third string that
meant I was not the primary people. I was not
the backup to the primary people. I was the backup
to the backup. Which meant in rivalry games I
never got a chance to play. And we were playing
one of our main rivals one evening and I had
sat through about three quarters of the game.
Well enough people were tired from this bitter
rivalry taking place that I had the opportunity
to go in at kick return. Now kick return happens
when the game is progressing. and the other team
is not making it far enough up the field so you
get to go in and someone gets to catch the ball
as it gets kicked off and your job or my job
at the time was to protect the guy running up
the field. While I had sat there on the bench
being filled with more anger because we were
not doing well in the game I was not getting
a chance to go out there and fight alongside
of my brothers and I decided as we took off down
the field before the guy I was meant to defend
even got to the running back, I decided to hit
him with all my force and with all my might.
And if you know football, you know that would
be a massive personal foul and would result in
time on the bench if it was not for high school.
But what happened in that instance is he got
thrown on his back and I got thrown on my back
and I think we both stood up with a concussion
not knowing what just happened. And that is the
type of anger that Jesus is challenging here.
It came out of my own pride. Our anger comes
out of our own pride, and it makes us do ridiculous
things that often get us hurt, and most definitely
hurts those around us. And this type of anger
leaves us liable to judgment. It leaves us liable
to go before a local council, and this time it
would have been seven elders or seven religious
leaders that had the ability to pronounce a prison
sentence, or at worst even a quick death penalty,
something like a beheading, something that happened
instantaneously. they were able to handle unjustified
murder. And so in this case, they would be able
to handle our unjustified anger. Now this anger
does not usually stand on its own, it usually
progresses as Jesus progresses in the text. And
he said, whoever insults his brother will be
liable to counsel. Now if you have a different
translation, you might see the word, call his
brother Raka. It is a Greek term. And it's most
similar to the German word Doomkopf, which just
means dumb head if you translate it literally.
Empty headed, stupid, airhead, any of those types
of words that you can think of. It is a full
insult. It was really a cultural word that you
were not meant to say. It would be equivalent
to one of the curse words that we have today
because it even tied into the idea of The word
raka would be used with heretics as Jewish leaders
spit upon a heretic that was espousing theology
or things about God that were not true. The Jews
today actually have maintained this practice
in Israel. They will, as they walk down the street,
they will spit upon Christians as they tried
to proclaim the gospel and to proclaim the Messiah.
This is what the word raka is getting at. It
is a full insult. And I think most commonly that
happens most often to us in road rage. We are
driving down the street or trying to get onto
the interstate and someone drives around us in
their little car at a speed that is not necessary
or appropriate. And then they get in front of
us and they slam on their brakes for some reason.
And usually the thing that comes out of our mouth
is something to the extent of, you idiot, I cannot
believe you would do that. I have a place to
go and things to do and You could have hurt me
or someone else. It is a quick anger. It is an
insult. This also, as I mentioned, can come out
with our spouses as we get frustrated or we get
upset. We may have a way of doing things, and
then our wife or our husband comes in and tries
to do it some way else, in a different way than
how we would do. And we think, how stupid can
you be? Why would you clean the dishes that way?
Why would you clean the blinds that way? Why
would you vacuum the floors that way? And this
type of anger, as it progresses, leaves us liable
to counsel. This would be liable to the Sanhedrin,
the counsel of 71. It was designed to handle
the worst cases of heresy. This is the counsel
that Jesus had to go through and was spat upon
as he faced. the wrath of God on the cross, the
righteous anger of God on the cross. They could
pronounce stoning. They could put people up for
crucifixion. And this is the type of death that
Jesus says we deserve if we are willing to insult
people, if we are quick with our tongue. And
this continues to progress because often we do
not just stop at calling people stupid. We need
to attack them morally. We need to believe that
they are godless. And so Jesus gives us a warning.
And he says, whoever says you fool will be liable
to the hell of fire. And the word fool here is
often used in scripture. God uses fool in scripture.
Psalm 14 .1, for instance, says, the fool says
in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt.
They do abominable deeds. There is none who does
good. So the word fool is a moral condemnation.
If you call someone a fool, what you are saying
is they are without God. They have no knowledge
of God. They are far from him. You are excommunicating
people with your words and your thoughts and
your deeds when you call someone fool. The type
of fool that God wants us, or the word. fool
that God wants us to be able to use is the same
way he uses it in Psalm 14. There is an element
of grace to it. We can acknowledge that someone
is without God while also acknowledging that
they need great grace. Because we too were once
fools. We were blind to our sin. We were dead
in our trespasses. We were without God and the
wisdom of him. But it is out of his great grace
that he has called us to his mercy. He has called
us to know him. We are no longer fools, but we
have the wisdom of God because of his spirit
working in our lives. And if we are willing to
call someone a fool and morally condemn them,
there is only one punishment that Jesus lays
out, the hell of fire. And this is the word for
hell. This is the word Gehenna. It is not the
word that we see King David use in the Psalms
where he says, which is the place that people
would go as an intermediate state, the place
of death. This is the place of weeping and gnashing
of teeth. This is not a place of a little red
devil where there's just some fire around us
and we get to walk down a lane as we be punished.
No, this is a place of condemnation. And to understand
the picture that Jesus is laying here, we must
understand this word, Gehenna. The word comes
from the Valley of Heman. This is a place of
apostasy. Solomon would use the Valley of Heman
to set up places of Moloch worship. Moloch was
the god of child sacrifice. King Josiah, when
he took the throne and second king, he would
come in and he would destroy these places of
worship. And then he would use it not for pagan
worship or even just to throw away and things
that belonged to the pagans, he would use it
to dump bodies after a war, bodies that had died
that were unbelieving, and they would be burned
up. They would light the pile on fire, and there
would be condemnation for it. The Jews even continued
this practice in the Jesus' day, and they did
not use it to dump bodies, but they would use
it to burn their trash. So this is a place from
the Old Testament all the way into the new. that
was a place of condemnation, of apostasy, a place
of unbelief that was meant to burn the worst
trash. And this is the condemnation that we all
deserved when we walked without the wisdom of
God. This is the condemnation we deserve when
we are quick to look at people on the highway
as we drive down it and we see them holding up
their political signs of different messages and
we think, you fool, how can you think any of
those things? Or maybe you're having a Bible
conversation with one of your brothers or sisters,
and you start to think, you fool, how can you
not believe in infant baptism? Or maybe how could
you believe in infant baptism? We are quick to
do this condemnation. As we look through each
one of these, the gradation gets worse and worse
and worse in terms of punishment, but the sins
themselves become more and more common. Nowadays
it is so easy to see people, quick to say, you
fool, to claim that they are without God and
show them no grace. We are a little slower, but
not by much to call them stupid. And we are slower
yet to just pull off and use our fist, use our
hands to cause harm. And this should make us
ask ourselves as we reflect on this text, why
are you holding onto your anger? What is beneath
the surface? I understand that maybe you have
some sort of physical ailment that makes it hard
to get out of bed in the morning. I understand
that people abort children and those children
do not deserve it. But why are you holding on
to your anger? Why are you angry at God? Why
are you angry at your friend who tried to give
you good advice? Or at your wife who just wanted
your help? Or at your husband? who all he needed
was a hug himself. And we as Christians should
be quick to let go of this anger. We should be
willing to trade in this heart of anger, and
we should trade it in for the heart of Christ.
Ephesians 4, 31 and 32 tells us, let all bitterness
and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be
put away from you, along with all malice. Be
kind to one another, tender -hearted, forgiving
one another as God and Christ forgave you. Just
as God has shown us grace, we should be quick
to show grace. We even sing this or we pray this
when we pray the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our
debts as we forgive our debtors. We need to forgive
in the same way that Christ forgave. We need
to take radical steps. to fix our relationships
and to have relationships. And so we move on
from these three condemnations of murder, of
anger, to two demonstrations of how we should
be rectified with our neighbors, with our spouses,
with our friends. The first one comes when you're
going to worship. Worship, when you're approaching
it, is always a time where you're meditating
on the week before. You're thinking of of the
sin that you committed. You're thinking of the
fact you just got angry at your wife as you loaded
the children into the car. You're maybe thinking
of the time you cursed someone out at work and
they did not deserve it. And we should reflect
on these sins. And maybe you do it as you're
coming in or maybe you do it while we're praying
our prayer confession during that time of silent
prayer. Hopefully you're doing it during this
sermon. Right now you're reflecting. on these
times. But Christ tells us if you're coming in
to worship and you have a sacrifice to offer,
you have prayers to pray and hymns to sing, but
if you are still angry with your brother, do
not come. You do not have a worship. You do not
have a sacrifice that can truly approach the
Lord. The Lord wants a perfect sacrifice. In
the Psalms we were told, for you will not delight
in sacrifice, or I will give it. You will not
be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite
heart. O God, you will not despise. God wants
us to come and to worship with a broken heart,
a heart of repentance, one that seeks to have
right relationships with him and with others.
And we cannot come and offer our sacrifices unless
we have come repentant of all of our sins. And
as Jesus is giving this command, everyone in
the crowd would have been thinking, well, this
is preposterous. The trip from Galilee to Jerusalem
was an 80 mile trip. It was a four or five day
trip. And so they're in one way. And so they
have already come to Galilee. Now they need to
go back to Jerusalem. If they get there and they
have a sacrifice to give, but they have had a
fight with their spouse, if they have had a fight
with a friend who tried to give them good advice,
they need to leave their sacrifice, go back,
take another four or five days, make reconciliation,
and then come back to worship. Because only then
they can come with a pure sacrifice. As one commentator
ultimately put it, if you are unfit, for worship,
you are unfit to die. And so God wants us to
come before him with a broken and contrite heart
so that we can be worshiped, that he can be worshiped
properly, that we can be ready for the Lord to
come back as we sung this morning, as we talked
about this morning. And Jesus gives us a second
demonstration of how do we seek reconciliation.
And he talks about... Come to terms quickly with
your accuser while you are going with them to
court. Least your accuser hands you over to a
judge and the judge to the guard and you be put
in prison. Now this accuser has two different
meanings. There is the real life meaning where
a legal crime was committed. Maybe someone insulted
you and you thought the only just punishment
for them was to pick up your fist and press it
against their cheek. or maybe you had a coworker
who you thought he was lazy and maybe a glutton
and you decided to make it known before the whole
office. You decided to call him a liar and maybe
even pronounced sins on him that he did not even
commit. And now he's looking for a restoration.
He sues you for defamation or he gets sued for
assault. And before you even get to court the
commandment that God gives us, is to go and make
reconciliation. Go apologize in repentance. Pay
the hospital bill that the man needed to have
after being assaulted by you. Go to your boss
and say, hey, this coworker, there are times
he is lazy, but I am lazy, too, and most of what
I said was not true. You need to go before you
ever get to the court date. You need to go before
you even go to talk with a lawyer. The first
step you should take is to go and seek reconciliation
with this person because if it gets to court,
you will justly owe him everything. They could
take everything you have, all of your savings.
If there's not enough there, they could come
after your car or your house or anything you
own. They could take it and they are right to
do so because you have attacked them. You have
murdered their name. You have done great wrong.
against them, and it needs to be reconciled.
But then there's a second meaning to this. There
is a spiritual meaning that we must remember.
Because throughout this whole passage, Jesus
does not want to just deal with physical actions,
not just with the hands. He wants to deal with
the heart. The spiritual side of this is that
if we get to heaven and we have been unfit to
die, we have been unrepentant, we have Jesus
not as a mediator, not as a friend, but as an
accuser, and justly so. If we stand before God
with unrepentant sin, it does not matter how
loudly we proclaim Christ, we show ourselves
to be unbelievers if we are unrepentant with
our sin. Now, this does not mean that we can
never get angry. Even unjustly, the Lord knows,
Paul tells us in the scripture that we will still
wrestle against the flesh. But as John Owen puts
it we must be killing sin or it will be killing
you and especially when it comes to anger because
anger destroys relationships it destroys marriages
it destroys friendships and Often it is blasphemous
against God because as we dwell in our anger
We almost cease being angry at our spouse or
with our friend and we begin to be angry at God
especially if we're facing the loss of a loved
one or a medical issue. We start to wonder why
God would put us in this place, why God would
allow us to exist here. Why has he abandoned
us? It's very similar to the Israelites in Numbers
21. As they're pulled through the wilderness,
they begin to doubt God for the food and the
manna that he has provided, and they call it
worthless. That is often what we do to God with
our anger. We forget all of the blessings and
the graces that he has given us and we get angry
at him. Anger is a radical sin and you must take
radical steps to repent of it and have right
relationships. Let me say that one more time
because if there's anything you get from the
sermon, this is it. Anger is a radical sin and
you must take radical steps to repent of it.
and have right relationships. Maybe, Christian,
you are sitting here and you're thinking that
these things that I have described, described
yourself. Maybe you realize that you have forgotten
the grace of your good God who gave His Son in
your place, who took upon the wrath of God, the
righteous anger of God in your place. He was
spat upon for you. Reflect on your Savior. Turn
back. You do not have to be a slave to your anger
any longer. You can be a slave to righteousness.
You are an heir, a child of God. Take on the
heart of Christ. Take on a tender heart. Take
on a forgiving heart. Follow your savior. He
has given you the example. Now follow him. Leave
here seeking forgiveness. Leave here seeking
reconciliation and restoration. with your friend
or with your spouse. Now maybe you are here tonight
and you do not know this Christ that I've talked
about, but you do know that your life has been
one filled with bitterness and with strife, with
fighting, with yelling, with maybe broken marriages,
divorces out of it. You can turn to Christ. Christ
is the only Savior you can have. He died for
sinners. He died in the place of sinners, and
you can turn to him. Now, maybe you fit none
of these categories, but next time you get angry,
you should stop and say, does this represent
Christ? And if it does not, seek repentance.
Seek the radical steps to have right relationships.
Let's pray.