Anger, Worship, and Peace

You therefore must be perfect. Just as your heavenly father is perfect.

All right. So the scribes and Pharisees, we can, we can see how that that's a daunting task, but it also needs to be. you know, better and that is internal, not just external, but this one. Think about those two bookends of these six commandments and expectations of what he expects of us. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Friends, we can already see what the law is supposed to do for us. And it should take us back to chapter five, verse two, verse three.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The law's good work isn't to save you. The law's good work is to help you see how far short you will come at being perfect. The law's perfect work is to show you how much you need a savior who will actually forgive you, redeem you, and save you. And so we can look at all six of these commandments regarding anger and lust and divorce and oaths and retaliation and it should heap on us how far we are from even being faking it as good as the Pharisees. And how far we are from the perfect father so that we trust in his perfect son who came down to forgive us. who came down to remove the guilt we have for falling so far short and to renew that heart so that we can pursue being the kind of righteousness Jesus has died for and risen for, for us. Citizens of the kingdom, these are good commandments for us to strive for, but only in the grace of God in Christ. So Christian, our king is teaching us the law. Let's make sure we're listening. Judgment for anger. That's the first point of the sermon, judgment for anger. We've looked at Jesus, the law giver, but now judgment for anger. Verses 21 and 22.

You have heard that it was said of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

They've said this, but who said it first? As we look at the different sayings, it's important to recognize, is he quoting scripture? Is he quoting tradition? Is he challenging something that's been misunderstood or confused? Well, here, you shall not murder, that's simply quoting the Ten Commandments. That's quoting the sixth commandment that God gave to Moses on Sinai, that Jesus himself gave to Moses on Sinai. It's straightforward and clear. You shall not murder. Now, murder is taking a human life without cause. That means self-defense is not in view here. Just war is not in view here. It's taking another human life without righteous or just calls. He's speaking to them as to what he's already said. God has declared all human life valuable. He breathed life into us and the 10 commandments are protecting the good things and the righteous things of God. Every human has the right to live according to God, and we are not to take that life. It's pretty universally recognized, thou shalt not murder. And for some reason, I can't say it without the King James. We've got to put a thou on there to make sure it has all the weight. But that second part, that isn't directly quoted from anywhere in scripture. But I believe he's affirming this declaration because he's actually intensifying what this is teaching by telling us what else is liable for judgment. And I believe that liable for judgment is clearly implied in the text Patrick read earlier from Genesis 9. If you take a human life, your life should be taken from you. There's a liable to judgment because God made every human being with dignity. Honor and value. Being made in God's image means our life is sacred. There's a position that we have as image bearers that someone else destroying life should be liable for judgment. Now, we are here in this text because it's where we're preaching through Matthew and we're picking back up in the Sermon on the Mount where we left off, but it is Sanctity of Life Sunday, and so I believe it's good that we address Abortion. And make it clear, abortion is murder. If we're going to properly categorize things according to scripture, abortion is murder because it's taking life. God-ordained, God-sanctified life. It's destroying something that God has made good with life. It's destroying another human being. Abortion is murder. And we can look back to the years past and be thankful that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, but that was just a legal battle. There's a much, much greater difficult battle. See, abortion is part of a bigger cultural problem that has despised marriage and abused sex. The God who made us in his image, male and female, ordained us, male and female, to become husbands and wives and declared marriage as good and sex to be the way in which that marriage is rehearsed and enjoyed. It's a covenant practice. But our culture with the sexual revolution and the culture of death, they go hand in hand, has declared, no, there should be sex without consequences. And that's not just women. The amount of men that make their, the women they've impregnated get abortions is sickening. This isn't just a female problem. It's a culture problem that has despised God. He's declaring who we are in his image, are despising marriage and perverting sex. It's a greater, bigger picture, church, which is why we wanna make sure we're promoting the goodness of all those different things regularly. It's why we celebrate new marriages, and engagements and babies with showers is why we have Matcombe. The culture is despising these things regularly. We as a church need to be promoting the goodness of all that God has given us faithfully. One of the things I want to encourage you to do is pray for Way Truth Life and ask how you can be helping them. That is truly the front line of the battle. Praying right at the gates of hell. Now preaching, they're preaching God's word of God's goodness and his gospel right at the gates of hell. Please pray for them to have courage, boldness, and clarity. You should have murder, is liable to judgment. Now Jesus is going to add or make clear what needs to be understood from this and about this commandment.

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 the council. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.

Now, verse 22 is making it clear it's not just murder that is liable to judgment. It's everything behind murder and everything that might lead up to murder. Everything that is inside of you that is practicing murder. There's three statements that build up. Everyone who is angry, everyone who insults, and everyone who says you fool. There's a getting more specific, there's a outworking here. These are three statements from our king. He's giving us a lesson in sin, challenging our concept of sin that really wants to minimize it as much as possible about mere actions rather than the desires within. See, anger within is the root that spills out into our slander, insults, dehumanizing others, destroying others, abusing others, murdering other image bearers. The God who made us has declared each of us in his own image, has made us all sacred and good, and this kind of speaking and acting, the hatred of another human being is out of bounds. He's warning us about attitudes and behavior and words. Notice they're all liable to judgment. The very picking up of murder is liable to judgment, your anger, which is your what you and only God know you're doing in your heart. It's liable to judgment. That repetition is supposed to be seeked powerfully. The counsel will be the Sanhedrin who you would have to answer for before a judge and the hell of fire, that's the absolute final punishment. Now, notice there's a very specific person he's speaking of that if you are angry with your brother, it is such an important word. in the New Testament. We kind of ruin this word and how we use it regularly in ways that aren't helpful, but it's a thick, rich theological word that Jesus is already interpreting and giving to us before the disciples really know the doctrine of adoption. God the Father has sent his only begotten Son, not just to become like us, to die for us, to forgive us, and not just to But to rise again so that we can be renewed in the image of God, but so we can be adopted into the very family of God. He's going to teach in a little while that you can pray to God as father. That's revolutionary. To look at other disciples as brothers, because we've all been adopted by the father in the son. And the beauty of it is we not only get to call God father, we get to come together as a family around the table with our father. There's a nearness we're supposed to have with God the Father and with each other as fellow siblings, brothers and sisters in Christ. There's a way in which there's a family unity to the citizenship of heaven already being introduced. Within the kingdom, hatred is out of bounds. Within the kingdom, insults are out of bounds. It's really helpful when somebody tells you that's not what you're allowed to do. It's good to know what the goal is and what the boundaries are. The community marked by the love of God from God toward one another is supposed to be marked with love, not hatred, not insults. We've seen this already in 1 John. You cannot say you love God and hate your brother. You cannot insult your fellow brothers in Christ while also seeking to praise God. Now we could say a broader application of this, which the verses 25 and 26 are, I think, a broader application. You're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself, but the goal is to focus here among brothers, those who have even more in common than just being image bearers. We've been purchased by the blood of Christ. These instructions are all through Scripture. How we talk to and about each other, Scripture is regularly addressing. You're supposed to build each other up, speak truth and love. That's opposed to giving insults and anger. Jesus is making it very clear what is out of bounds. Christian, anger is dangerous to hold on to. When we hold on to anger, it gets to grow roots and fester. And it will burst forth with insults. It's just what God and us know in terms of what we're really angry about, but it does come out. How we disrespect in our body language. We deride with our tongue. We mock and disrespect others. Anger is that internal disposition towards someone else. Insults are the way we use our words towards our brothers. At the end of verse 22, there's a hierarchy. There's anger, and then it spills out in insults, and then the more specific insult, fool, and then murder. So murder is worse. But the way that Jesus set up these three, you fool, stands out because it's the hell of fire and it's the last one. Why fool? The word behind this is the word we get moron from. You fool. If we were to look at how fools are described throughout scripture, the fool says in his heart there is no God. The fool despises God's wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So the fool is someone who despises God, hates God, and rejects his instruction. I believe here in order to what Jesus means by calling someone a fool, you're declaring them godless. You're declaring on your own that a fellow brother, and that's very important to understand what brother means. You're declaring a brother, someone else in the kingdom, someone else Christ came to die for, is a fool, meaning they're godless, distant from God, rejecting God. Jesus says this is out of bounds. Now, Jesus will call Pharisees a fool later because they are living in a godless way. I believe Jesus has given the church as a whole the responsibility and authority to declare when someone is professing faith in Christ but their life is living as if there is no God, what we call church discipline. The church alone as a body, as a unity, can declare something like your profession does not match your living. You're living like a fool while professing Christ the wisdom of God. It's important the individual does not have that authority. That's a wonderful protection for you, church. According to Christ's instruction, it is a wonderful protection that no individual, not even a body of elders, can simply declare you fool. It's the church that can declare and warn, you're living so foolishly, you're denying the gospel. There is a way to have the warning. There's a way in which we want to have correction. You're not living according to Christ, but to simply declare you fool, you're dismissing somebody, you're bringing division in the church. You are acting as if you know God and what he's declared about someone, you're making an absolute judgment on someone. Here, the wise Christian recognizes in his own heart The temptation to anger, to insult, to dismiss, to disavow, to distance themselves. Here, if we think about that anger and those insults, it's really scary when we think about them because they really tell us more about ourselves than the person we're insulting. Scripture regularly puts our relationship to God in view of our relationship of one another. We're to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. If we're regularly insulting others, we're really saying more about our heart and what we think of God and we think of what he's done in others than what we really think of them. Every human is made in the image of God. There is no murder. Fellow disciples have been renewed in Christ's image. They've been bought with his blood. They are not to be despised and insulted in this way. We are to build each other up. That liable to judgment, God is the judge here who will judge us for the way we treat one another. So church, we really need to wrestle with what is inside towards others. What is going on in our hearts and what kind of words do we say? This is the scary part of what we really think about sin here in light of what Jesus is teaching us. It's not just some mere simple actions. It's at the very core of who we are in our hearts. Sin comes from inside and bursts forth. Give you an example here. This is a water bottle. What do you think's inside of it? And then when things get upset, what do you think happens? What comes out of it? Water. Think about the words that come out of your mouth. Think about the thoughts you entertain. They're not pressed on to you. They come from inside of you. That's terrifying. It is terrifying what comes from inside of us. Which is why we pray to God for help from outside. We constantly believe the lie, the problem's outside and the solution's inside. That's a lie. Oh friend, the problem is inside of us. We cannot fix what's inside of us, it's us. Praise be to God, all the help we need comes from outside. Christ who came to live for us, die for us, and the Holy Spirit who then comes and dwells us, to save us, to renew us. For those who really wrestle with anger, the first place to go in wrestling with anger is first to forgiveness. Meditating upon the forgiveness you have received from God. The fuel of God's grace that forgives you It is the only way you can truly forgive others in a way that's going to put away the anger that resides and eats away. You also want to evaluate what makes you angry. Is it sin or is it just inconvenience? Is it people getting in our way? Philippians 2 might be a helpful place. Are we considering others more important? Are we so focused on our selfish intent that we are easily angered? Are we angry about everything? We are trusting God who is good. Do we trust him to be the true vengeance, righteous one? This is the principle. It's not just your outward murder that would be liable to judgment. It's your anger, it's your words, it's what flows out of you. Now, two scenarios. One is about a brother related to worship, and another is an accuser related to the judge. Our second point is verse 23 to 24, reconciliation before adoration. And that word before is central to this text. To really understand what Jesus is teaching in 23 and 24, it's about what should happen before. There's a prioritization of time and what should happen before worship. Look at verse 23.

So, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there at the altar, remember that your brother has something against you,

then, it's an if-then statement,

leave your gift there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.

So two important parts of this passage, there's an if-then, if you're approaching to give God an act of worship, a gift. You're coming to God, and you remember there's a sin between you and a brother. You put off worshiping God with that gift, and you go and worship God by reconciling to that brother. The first is important here. You then offer your gift after being reconciled. Now, let's wrestle with this text. This is an outflow The kind of anger and words we might use and hostility or quarrel we might have with a brother. The conditional statement. If you're bringing a gift, and again, this is, Jesus is speaking to his audience who would understand there's a temple. We worship in a different way now, but we're going to try to make that clear in a little bit. Jesus has not yet died to destroy the curtain of the temple. when you're there and you're bringing a gift to God, and then you remember a brother has something against you. Now it's important in verse 23, you know you sinned against somebody, because you remember they have something against you. Now, just for a moment, there is a world in which somebody might be upset with you that you didn't sin against. I know that's hard to believe, but it could happen. That's not addressing that particular problem. This is addressing the very specific problem that you know you've sinned and you know you need to seek reconciliation. There are people who would get upset with you that you may not have sinned against. I'm gonna give you two rules. You should not repent of sin you did not commit. That confuses what reconciliation is. Two, you have sinned in ways you do not recognize. I'm thankful that I've been able to apologize at times, not fully convinced I had sinned when I apologized. but a faithful brother who saw my actions towards somebody else told me I had sinned, and I know I can trust him better than myself. Therefore, I have sinned when not yet fully convinced that I had done as wrong as they had said, but I'm fully convinced my sin blurs my mind and confuses my actions and my understanding, and I can trust them that if they said I had sinned, I should make sure I have apologized. I'm not convinced I hadn't sinned, I just had not yet fully been convinced. If no one else can convince you've sinned and you're not convinced, there's something scary. Go be reconciled. If you know you've sinned, we're gonna focus in just that particular problem. Interesting, we look at Matthew 18, that'll be a few months from now, maybe a year. Here, you are thinking about somebody you sinned against. Matthew 18 is somebody sinned against you. Here, you know you've sinned, and you're seeking to apologize. You're seeking to make sure you're reconciled. And part of worship is making sure you're rightly relating to everyone else God has deemed your kingdom, fellow citizens. If we think about worship, it isn't just you and God. We have been purchased by the blood of Christ. We have been adopted into the family of God. We need to repent of our individualism here. I think what is actually challenging is kind of an over-spiritualization of worship that is just me and God and nothing else matters. It's just me and however I think I should worship God. No, every aspect of life falls under worship. What you eat, what you drink, how you work, what you enjoy as entertainment, how you rest, who your friends are, how you relate to others is related to worship. James 3 makes this very clear. With the same tongue, we ought not praise God and curse man. We hear are warned, do not think you're going to come and give a gift of worship to God while you still are unreconciled and reconciled with your fellow brother. I want us to think about something here. Jesus in Matthew 22 is going to give us the two great commandments. Love God with all your heart. That is the first and foremost. Love your neighbor as second. Here we see we're supposed to love God by loving our neighbor. Being reconciled is part of worship. And there's a great danger here to think I'm going to worship God even though I am not properly ordered and reconciled with my fellow brothers. He says, leave your gift there, go find your brother. It's assumed this is really inconvenient. It's assumed it's very inconvenient because they would have traveled to the temple to make this gift and now they've got to go and find the brother. Reconciliation, this is one of the most important words regarding the gospel. God has reconciled us to himself. Christ came to be our peace. First to reconcile us to God, but then to reconcile us to one another. There should not be any hostility anymore with the people of God. Reconciliation requires two things. There's two ingredients. There's an equation. an apology, and forgiveness. Christian, let's make sure we have this right. In order to have reconciliation, it means someone says, I'm sorry for the sin, and the person sinning against says, I forgive you for that sin. And those are both promises that I will not act in that sinful way again. much as I can, according to God's grace. And the forgiver says, I'm not going to let that be an obstacle of our relationship. Reconciliation means these two have had sin between them is no longer going to let it be between them. But those two things have to be there. Here, the person who has sinned is going to say, I'm sorry to the one they've sinned against with the hope that they would forgive and be reconciled. The focus is on the Responsibility to apologize. That the priority is to apologize to the human you've sinned against before you go and worship the God who has forgiven you for sin. Christian, we, we, we cannot refuse to worship God with our relationships. He has created us all. He saved us all to, to, to pretend I'm going to worship God outside of the, the relationships I have as a form of idolatry. If you wanna see how important this is, flip over to Matthew 6 real quick. How the vertical relationship with God is bound up with the horizontal relationship with one another. Chapter 6, verses 14 and 15.

For if you give others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

We'll get there in a few weeks, but one of the most terrifying passages in all scripture that shows us how significant our relationships with one another are in terms of our relationship with God. Matthew chapter seven, verse one, you'll be judged according to the same judgment you give others. Again, we too often think we're just individuals with God, whenever he's created us to be a church. Another one that is daunting, 1 Peter 3, husbands are commanded to live with their wives in an understanding way so that their prayers will not be hindered. How we relate to those that God has put with us, next to us, beside us, Husbands hear that your father will stop listening to your prayers in the same way because you're not caring for his daughter that he gave to you. We have to understand our relationship with one another has a significant impact in the way we worship God, the way he even receives our worship. The most practical way we can consider this application or this declaration in this scenario is the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist. The family of the church, the unity we celebrate is all focused on Jesus who died, whose body was broken, whose blood was poured out. We come to give thanks together, but it's dangerous if we come as individuals and we don't consider the body. That's actually the entire point of what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 11. They're coming and eating without everybody. They're coming and eating all the best food first. They're coming and just self-consuming and thinking this is about them and Jesus. No, it's considering the whole body of Christ. Considering how we relate to one another. That's why one of the questions we ask that you consider before taking the Lord's Supper is, have you sinned against someone else in the church? Do you need to practice verse 24 of chapter five? Do you need to first be reconciled? before coming and celebrating the forgiveness of Christ that you've both received. There's a way in which we're supposed to be mindful of how we relate to each other and how that affects our relation with God. And also to see what a blessing it is to come together to the table. Church, this highlights the importance of how we relate to each other in our disposition, our words, our actions, Most importantly, how we would say, I am sorry, and I forgive you. The final two verses, peace instead of punishment. Jesus given his principle, it is not just murder that's liable to judgment, it's anger, it's insults. If you are about to worship the God who has adopted you, you need to first be reconciled with your brother. That is a scenario with brother before God in a temple. Now it's a different kind of scenario. It's with an accuser before a earthly judge.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court. lest 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.

Here, it's peace instead of punishment. Because the command there, verse 25, come to terms quickly, it implies this kind of be friendly, make peace. Now, it is possible that the brother and the accuser, the brother, verse 23, and the accuser, verse 25, are the same person, but I don't think it's supposed to be that way. because the earthly court should never be making a judgment between two Christians. That's the church's job. Here, it seems to be a neighbor made in the image of God who you have sinned against. The assumption, again, is that this accuser has something that will truly be deemed as liable for judgment, and as he goes to court, make peace beforehand. Seek to make peace with the one you've made an enemy. Be at peace with all men as much as it depends upon you. Here we recognize a number of different things in the text that's important for us. The church has a certain authority for fellow believers. God has ordained a court outside of the church, normally associated with the nation, to have a certain authority to settle things. And Christian, do not be at be in sin against your neighbor in a way that they will be able to bring you to court. It isn't stated here, but be terrified of bringing shame in the name of Christ that you carry, because you've publicly been declared guilty before a court. At some level, that's how you be salt and light. Make peace. Come to terms with your accuser. Be reconciled as much as one can be with a non-Christian here. so that your salt and light be a peacemaker. Seek to settle the grievance. The last verse, there is no simple get out of jail free card because you've been forgiven of God. No, the court will demand justice. The earthly court will demand justice. Important as we just step back in the whole text, Murder, I think most everyone understands murder is a sin against fellow human beings. We deny that God made us in his image. We don't get that if we don't truly trust who God is. But the depth of sin that he's introducing, it's actually the root sin of anger. It's insults that are liable to judgment for those who are of the household of God. It's declaring someone ungodly on your own without true wisdom. It's not prioritizing God in the way he has called us to worship with one another. There's a heavy law here and good godly instruction for how we should be conducting ourselves and prioritizing our lives. As we think about what sin is, notice what is repeated liable to judgment. You'll go before the judge and you will pay every penalty. There's a way in which we should be overwhelmed with a sense of guilt. A sense of how wrong we are and how far we are. There is only one true cure for the sin of anger that resides within. There's only one true cure for the words we use that destroy fellow humans and destroy us. It's Jesus Christ. He came to be like us in every way, yet without sin. He only had righteous anger. He hated the sin that we have practiced so much that he came to be punished for it. He hated the death we deserve because of our sin to die for us. And he rose again to give us new life. Christian, we're supposed to be renewed in the image of God. Witnesses to the world of what peace is supposed to look like. We're supposed to be ambassadors of reconciliation, going out into the world, telling them how they can be reconciled to God. Be also clear, if we don't know how to reconcile with each other, we're not telling the whole truth and we're gonna confuse the world as to what reconciliation is. If we don't know how to practice reconciliation as fellow Christians who have received reconciliation from God, we're not going to be able to go out into the world and faithfully and powerfully be the ambassador's salt and light that we're supposed to be of reconciliation. Praise be to God, he has not left us in our hatred, in our death, in our insults, in our sin, but he has come to give us life and love. Will you pray with me? Father, even here as we are probably sitting next to the person we have most recently been angry with or insulted, Lord, help us to have the courage we need by your grace in Christ Jesus to apologize. Help us, Lord, to be eager to seek swift and lasting reconciliation, to be eager to confess sin, and eager to hear the words from the Christian you're forgiving, that just echo your words of forgiveness. Help us, Lord, to be quick to give that kind of assurance and joy to another believer who would be humble enough to ask for forgiveness. We thank you that we can enjoy and rejoice in and celebrate the reconciliation you've given to us by being reconciled with one another. Help us, Lord, to be faithful to this high calling. so that we can more faithfully enjoy the reconciliation you've given to us as children adopted by you the father in Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, amen.