Matthew 5:21-26 | Mad Enough to Kill

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Thank you, Webb.

Good morning.

Please take your Bible to the Gospel of Matthew.

Gospel of Matthew and Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

My wife asked me to ask you this morning for an extra measure of grace.

She knows me best, probably better than I know myself, and last night was a very rough night for us with a teething infant.

I was walking the floor with her somewhere around 1.30, and I think it ended somewhere around 3.30.

And Allison was gracious enough to allow me to get four hours of sleep or so while she got two.

So she knows when I get that little sleep, my mouth gets ahead of my brain.

And so she told me, make sure you ask for an extra measure of grace for when you misspeak.

So I have done what she asked.

Please give me grace this morning.

Now, as we approach the Word of God, this is just a wonderful privilege to approach the words of our King.

I want you to have in mind before we begin reading that song that we have just sung.

Dressed in his righteousness, standing faultless before the throne.

Dressed in his righteousness, standing faultless before the throne.

Would you follow along as I read from the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 5?

Again in the Sermon on the Mount, we're reading now in verse 21 through verse 26.

Matthew chapter 5, verse 21.

Matthew 5:21

Jesus says, You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder.

And whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

But I say, Jesus says to you, that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the 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 remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there and go.

Leave it there, right there at the altar and go.

And then come and offer your gift.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are 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 till you have paid the last penny.

Amen.

I'm guessing that just hearing this passage will generate maybe two or three responses.

Those who do not struggle with anger might say, Oh, this sounds interesting.

Those of you who struggle with anger, who have a weakness towards it, might be groaning and saying, Oh boy, here we go.

But either way, it will likely pique your interest because of our familiarity with anger.

Is there anyone here this morning who is not familiar with anger?

I thought so.

Good.

Now, this section of the Sermon on the Mount begins a series of evaluations of Israel's Old Testament law by Jesus.

He begins to recount some of the rules and the regulations that Israel was to follow in following God.

And he evaluates their processes, their thought processes in relation to what God said.

Now we have to be careful, though, with how we approach this passage because of that familiarity with anger.

Now the temptation for me is to preach a sermon that is overly moralistic.

In other words, I could preach a sermon on anger or maybe on reconciliation.

That would be quite applicable to our lives.

I could focus on how to deal with your anger or to encourage you and command you to work harder on your anger.

I could do that.

But I can't preach that kind of sermon if I'm going to be faithful to what Jesus said.

I can't preach that kind of sermon if I'm going to be faithful to what Jesus said.

Because the whole point of this part of Jesus' sermon is this.

You can't do it.

You can't do it.

God's standards are so high that you cannot meet them.

I grew up in a pretty strict home.

My dad held some convictions that today might be considered fundamentalist by some, pharisaical even.

But he felt as though they were biblically informed convictions.

And two of those convictions pertained to dances and movies.

Now, some of you older Christians are nodding your head saying, yes, preach it, brother.

My dad was of the generation of Christians who viewed both of those activities as, well, at best, as less than holy.

Most likely they were sinful.

So I was not allowed to participate in either of those activities as a child.

I couldn't attend school dances.

I couldn't go to a movie theater to see a movie with a friend.

But the problem there was that those convictions were my dad's, not mine.

I didn't see things quite the same way he did.

Now, today I believe that I can say that I understand how my dad arrived at those convictions, but at the time, they just made me mad.

They just made me mad.

It felt like over-restrictive parenting designed to ruin my life and keep me from having friends.

You see, to 16-year-old me, it seemed as though my dad was erecting a fence for me with the belief that I would be a good Christian as long as I remained within the fenced area.

Now I think that was part of my parents' thinking, but I believe it was more than that too.

They didn't simply want to put up fences.

They wanted to impact my heart and impact my own personal convictions.

They wanted me to become more like Jesus.

And that was part of the way they thought they could help form that in me.

Now there were two primary results from that time in my life.

One was that I was often mad at my parents.

Quite mad.

I don't know if they ever knew how mad.

I knew they meant well.

I believed that they were doing what they believed was right, but oh, did it make me mad.

Now the second result was that as a pastor's kid, I was a good little Pharisee.

I looked like the good pastor's kid on the outside when we went to church, when we were out in public.

While on the inside I was kicking down every fence my parents sought to put up.

I towed the line when people were watching, but I got as close to crossing the line as I could on the inside.

Now I'm not saying my parents were terrible parents.

I love them and I believe that they followed Jesus and Scripture the best they knew.

They're all in glory now, so they they know better, but uh, I'll be corrected too, I'm sure.

But I tell you all that because I want you to see from my own life the truth that Jesus addressed here in this passage in Matthew.

As human beings, we we excel at setting up fences to be good Pharisees.

It's something we're good at.

And we excel at making others into good Pharisees as well.

But the root problems that we have go deeper.

They go far deeper than obedience to some set of rules and regulations.

You see, we have a heart problem that can't be fixed by fences.

And one way that heart problem is seen is in our anger.

Before we jump into the text here, let's remind ourselves of where we've been.

Jesus is the promised king, who has been looked forward to, and who, as Matthew has said over and over and over again, has fulfilled everything that God has set in place for his Messiah.

And Jesus Himself said, I've not come to abolish the law of the prophets, but to fulfill them.

He fulfills everything, and as king, he's come to establish his kingdom, a kingdom that is built on his righteousness that he gives to those who come to faith in him.

And then he made a stunning declaration in chapter 5 of Matthew, verse 20.

He said, I tell you the truth, unless your righteousness goes beyond, exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter my kingdom.

He will say later at the end of this same chapter, the last verse of chapter five, and you must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

Do you understand what that means?

Maybe you are not a Christian, but but you feel religious, you feel some sense of needing to be in church or of doing the right things, of being a good person.

Maybe you believe that God has certain standards, and it's and it's your responsibility to follow those standards.

Jesus says you still fall short.

If you are a Christian and all you do is follow God's rules on the outside so that you're a good Pharisee, then you fall short.

See, that's the powerful thing about what Jesus goes on to say.

We all fall short in some way.

But in Jesus, there is a way for all of us good little Pharisees to be right with God.

But we have to start at that place of expectation.

The standard that Jesus sets is impossibly high.

He demands that we be holy as He is holy.

Unless our righteousness exceeds that of a good Pharisee, we will never be with Jesus.

Let that sink in.

Unless our righteousness goes beyond that of a good Pharisee, we will never be with Jesus.

There is more, Jesus says, than rules and regulations.

Rules have their purpose, right?

They're good, they're appropriate.

God's laws are righteous and good.

They show us how much we sin and how much we fall short, but they don't increase our holiness.

Christian parents, if I if I may speak to you for just a moment.

Having rules and maybe you call them household rules or household laws, they are they are good and proper.

You need to teach your children boundaries and right from wrong, how to love others.

But if if all you are doing is setting up fences and raising little Pharisees, then you have failed in your duty as a Christian parent.

Grandparents, you take that to heart too.

You must pursue for yourself and for your children and your grandchildren something more than simply doing the right thing.

Because we all need a change of heart.

See, the Pharisees did the right thing.

They pursued the right things, at least on the outside.

When Jesus said to them, You've heard that it was said, you shall not murder, all the Pharisees were saying, Amen.

Preach it, Jesus.

The scribes and the Pharisees would be nodding their heads in agreement with him, saying, Yes, you're right, absolutely.

I've never killed anyone.

I can stand before God with a clear conscience and in full righteousness because I've never taken anyone out before.

Perfectly obedient they were.

Like Paul the Apostle said, before the law, blameless.

And there is the first truth that we need to grasp from this particular text.

When we are talking about rules and regulations, we need to understand that mere laws and the justice that comes with those laws only leads to the righteousness of the Pharisees.

The law said, You shall not murder.

That's the sixth commandment in Exodus 20, right?

And that law had an element of justice in it.

Whoever murders would be liable to judgment.

They would face whatever the law demanded in terms of consequences.

If you broke the law, you better be prepared to face the consequences of the law.

We get that, right?

We understand that.

Speed limit signs adorn most of the roadsides in our country.

If we drive faster than the posted speed limit, we need to be prepared to face the consequences of doing that, right?

Wherever there are laws, consequences exist for breaking the law.

Anyone, any one of us, if we try hard enough, can be a good Pharisee.

If you try hard enough, some of us have to try harder than others, if you try hard enough, you can obey the speed limit.

It is possible.

I think.

If you try hard enough, you can use that little device on the steering column called a turn signal.

You're getting a sense of my heart, aren't you?

If you try hard enough, you can go your entire life without killing someone.

I tried hard and managed to avoid going to movie theaters and dances as a kid, but the moment I turned 18 and my dad said you can do whatever you want, guess where I went.

See, there's a problem, isn't there?

I'm mad on the inside.

I'm mad that someone has established a law that impacts me, that limits me.

I often drove from my home in Montana to college in Missouri.

And that was that was in the wonderful days when Montana had a speed limit that was called reasonable and prudent.

You laugh.

And that was great.

That was fantastic.

There was just one problem.

I couldn't get my 1964 Ford Fairlane to go much beyond 75.

So as I'm driving, you know, from Montana and you cross over into South Dakota, the speed limit changed.

The posted speed limit was 75.

Well, that was okay because I couldn't go much faster than that anyway.

Yeah, whatever it took to get across South Dakota, four or five hours, whatever, that was that was great.

But then you turn south, you go into Iowa.

I'm sorry, Shannon.

You turn south, you go into Iowa, and that number changes to 65.

And then 55 in some places.

Do you know what was going on inside of me?

Do you have a clue?

I had to work extremely hard to go that slowly.

And the whole time I'm yelling at the speed limit signs.

I'm frustrated and I'm mad that I have to go that speed limit.

Now, is that a problem with the law or is it a problem with me?

It's a problem with me, isn't it?

And that's the difficulty with laws and regulations.

They don't change the heart, they only reveal what's already there.

Laws and regulations don't change a person's character, they only reveal a person's character.

Even God's good laws don't make a person holy, they reveal how sinful we really are.

Mere laws and the justice that is meted out from those laws does lead to a kind of righteousness.

But it is a righteousness of the Pharisees that is just obeyed on the outside.

Now, if we aren't astonished by Jesus yet, we should be with his next statement.

But I say to you.

Not someone else, I do.

He does that because Jesus possesses all the authority because Jesus is the lawgiver.

Remember chapter 1?

He will be called Emmanuel, God with us.

He is the God who made and gave the law in the first place.

And so he stood before the people expositing, explaining the true intention of God's law.

He acted like the Supreme Court, interpreting the intention and the meaning of the law, but he did it as the author of the law.

And so he said, But I say to you, anyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel.

And whoever says, You fool, will be liable to the hell of fire.

About a week ago, I drove to Pine River, Minnesota, and I succeeded in making it all the way there and all the way back without getting pulled over.

But imagine that I did.

Okay, I didn't, but I want you to use your imaginations with me.

Imagine that I did.

Here's why.

For a good chunk of the way, I was stuck on a two-lane road behind somebody going five miles below the speed limit.

Yeah.

So imagine that I'm following behind that car five miles below the speed limit, and I see the flashing lights in my rearview mirror.

And I pull over.

Fully thinking that the officer's going after somebody else.

He's not got me.

And then I'm I'm incredulous as I'm forced to recognize he's pulling behind me.

Okay, we're imagining.

I'm incredulous because I've been forced to drive under the speed limit.

Then the patrolman asks for my ID, and as he asks for my ID, he tells me why he's pulled me over.

And he says, I have to give you a citation because while you were traveling under the speed limit, you were angry about the person driving in front of you.

It's hard to imagine such a thing, isn't it?

I mean, there are so many issues with that.

My first question would be, and how did you know?

You can't see my heart.

You might be right, but you can't see my heart.

How can a judge ever determine that?

How could I go to court and a judge would sit there and rule, yes, you were angry because you are following somebody five miles below the speed limit?

And yet that's what Jesus says.

The intent of God's law goes far beyond outwardly obeying Allah in the eyes of other human beings.

You may have avoided killing your neighbor and avoided the justice that comes with killing your neighbor, but you still have to answer for killing him in your heart.

And you will answer to God, the judge who knows your heart.

And there, if we can narrow it down to a specific truth, is what Jesus intends to communicate in this section of the Sermon on the Mount where he's addressing Old Testament issues.

The intent of God's law wasn't so much to establish right order among human beings.

The intent of God's law was to show everyone that they need to be right with God, the God who sees what you're like on the inside, who knows your character, who knows your intentions, who knows your thoughts, who knows your feelings.

It's possible that Jesus here intentionally makes three unique statements.

That is, we could see Jesus making three statements of, you know, angry with your brother, insulting your brother, and saying, you fool.

It could be that there are three separate ways, each with a slightly different form of justice.

There may be something to that.

I'm of the opinion that Jesus spoke in proverbial form.

In essence, saying the same thing in three different ways.

In the law, physically taking a life made one liable to judgment.

But the intent, the lawgiver now tells us, goes deeper.

You are liable to judgment if you are angry with someone.

You are liable to judgment if you've ever insulted someone, or if you've ever been derogatory towards someone.

Now it could also be that Jesus was pointing out that the law was not simply addressing physically murdering someone, but that the intention went beyond the physical realm to the emotional and verbal realms of life.

That's possible too.

But whatever, whatever perspective we take, I think the point is clear.

The demands of this God go to the heart.

We must have exceeding righteousness.

Jesus says very clearly that justice will be meted out, will be given out for our character.

And when it comes to judging our character, God Himself will be our judge.

He will be our jury and our executioner.

Have you ever been angry with someone?

Even for just a moment?

Just that tiniest moment.

You're a murderer.

Have you ever insulted anyone?

You're a murderer.

Today it's really popular to throw out derogatory terms.

Have you ever done that?

You're a murderer.

And God's justice demands death and hell for murder.

Now it doesn't matter at this point if you're a Christian or not.

None of us can escape the pointedness of Jesus' sermon.

We're all guilty.

Oh, we might be good Pharisees, but we're still murderers.

We all fall short of God's expectations.

And if we remain in that position such that we have to face the justice for our sin, then we will die in our sin.

So in verses 23 through 26, we see some illustrations where Jesus seeks to apply this truth to his listeners.

One pictures someone on their way to church for worship.

The other imagines someone on their way to court because they're being sued.

They're simple images, really, but full of meaning.

But before we look at them directly, let's kind of take a step back and see the whole picture.

Jesus is addressing righteousness.

It's not so much about anger and lust and divorce and other issues, oath-taking that we'll see in the future.

He's addressing righteousness.

And righteousness is being right before God.

It's being able to stand before God and say, I am holy as you are holy.

It's about that relationship with the holy God, of standing with Him, not being condemned for your sin.

That's the overall theme of what Jesus is talking about here.

We might even say that Jesus is addressing the greatest commandment.

That's what's at the heart of righteousness.

And the Pharisees pursued that with vigor.

They pursued it by setting up fences.

They pursued it by outwardly obeying all the laws and the rules that they could make up.

And then the lawgiver himself came and told them you're failing.

You're not meeting the greatest commandment.

You're not loving the Lord your God as you should.

And you can't do that if you're not fulfilling the second greatest commandment.

Loving your neighbor.

To put it differently, if we have the kind of character that might get angry, that might verbalize an insult or throw derogatory language around, is equivalent to hating your neighbor and breaking God's law.

And if you're breaking God's law, it is a failure to obey the greatest commandment of loving God with all that you are.

And so to illustrate, Jesus told two stories about loving one's neighbor.

The first is about loving God through worship.

And in the story, Jesus paints a picture of someone who has voluntarily come to the temple to offer a gift, most likely that's not one of the required sacrifices, but a voluntary offering of adoration to God.

Saying to God, I love you, I'm adoring you, and I want to give this gift to you, to honor you.

And there, within sight of the altar, he remembers, oh yeah, so-and-so has got something against me.

Now notice there that it's not his problem with somebody else.

It's that he is aware that there's a person that is irritated with him, that is angry with him, that is holding a grudge against him.

We're not even told if the worshiper has done anything wrong.

We don't know that.

We don't know if he's offended someone, if he's injured someone.

We are simply told that another person has an issue, right or wrong, with the worshiper.

Turn around, find that person, and make things right before offering your gift to God.

That's a surprising statement.

It is more urgent for you and I to be reconciled to someone who has something against us than it is for us to come and worship.

Catch that?

It is more urgent for us to be reconciled to someone who has something against us, more urgent to be reconciled than it is to come and worship.

Reconciliation takes priority over worship.

Why is that?

Why would that be?

Here's why.

You cannot properly love God if you are not properly loving your neighbor.

And if you come and worship all the while ignoring the fact that someone has something against you, you are nothing more than a Pharisee.

You've dealt with the outside, making sure that you look good to come and worship at the temple or in church, but you've not addressed the inside.

And so you are just like the person who is mad enough to kill, but does not actually take a life.

We need to recognize that worship, and in that sense we're talking about loving God through worship, is in essence compromised.

It's undermined if we ignore the relationships we have with people.

And worse, it may point to our righteousness being no more than the scribes and the Pharisees.

That's the first story.

Second story is about being sued.

Now we're not given the reasons here, only that someone has made an accusation and taken the accused to court.

Now, in the first story, the worshiper may or may not be guilty of wrong.

He may actually be innocent.

In the second story, there is an assumption of guilt.

The accused is guilty of some wrong.

And so Jesus says, come to terms quickly.

Why would you want to come to terms quickly if someone is accusing you of guilt and you are actually guilty?

Well, the reason is that standing in the courtroom in front of the judge is not the place to become friends.

But if you don't become friends, then justice will rain down on you and you will have to pay every last bit of your judgment.

So any compromise before getting to court is less costly than the alternative.

If reconciliation doesn't occur, the accused will have to bear the full burden of being reconciled.

If you aren't reconciled with the accuser, then you bear all of the justice.

And if you aren't fully reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, then you will have to bear the full burden of being unreconciled with God.

Did you catch that that the person in the first story is presented in more positive light?

That of pursuing reconciliation.

But the second story is perceived in a negative light, that of being imprisoned.

The first evidences grace.

Be reconciled and then come and offer your gift.

Love your neighbor and then come and offer true worship to your God.

The second doesn't evidence grace so much as it evidences justice.

You will never get out until you've paid every last bit.

There is grace when you come to Jesus to be reconciled to God.

There's grace.

There's grace greater than your sin.

His mercy is more than your sin.

But you will face justice if you ignore that.

There's clearly much that we can take away from this.

Much that we could take away about relationships, about reconciliation, about loving one another, about our attitudes, our hearts.

We could ask questions like, do we view reconciliation as highly as Jesus does?

That we would seek out reconciliation even when we're innocent.

We would seek out when somebody has a perception of wrong against us before we come to worship.

I wonder how many of our churches would be empty.

We could ask questions like, are we willing to bear the burden of being reconciled?

Because when you're reconciled with somebody, somebody has to bear the cost.

It will cost us, but it's worth it.

Are we willing to consider others more significant than ourselves?

Or will we demand our right to be angry?

To shift the blame and not take responsibility?

How often are we like the Pharisees and come to church to worship all the while ignoring others?

There's much to be considered here, for sure.

But none of what I've just mentioned is the primary application.

The primary application is not in our relationships with others, but in our relationship with God.

We must have exceeding righteousness.

This is about whether or not our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

Think about it this way.

If you really process what we've just covered, to be the kind of person Jesus has described is insanely impossible.

How can we never be angry in our lifetimes?

My daughter is six months old, and I think she's already been angry with me.

How can we go throughout life and never be angry?

How can we never throw out an insult or a derogatory statement?

The people that Jesus is speaking to are primarily from Galilee.

If they are in Jerusalem at the temple offering their gift and they have to turn around and go home to reconcile, they could, excuse me, they could have to walk up to 80 miles one way before returning to offer their gift.

Who would do that?

Just leave it at the temple and you're good.

Who always considers others more significant than themselves?

Who has that kind of character?

Jesus does.

Only Jesus.

Last time we talked about two kinds of righteousness.

There is the kind that you develop by doing.

And there's the kind that is received by faith.

The only kind of righteousness that meets Jesus' standards is the righteousness that is received by faith that comes from somebody other than you.

Look back at the Beatitudes with me.

Beginning of chapter 5.

Look back there, remembering that Jesus in these beatitudes is describing the kind of people who are in his kingdom, the kind of people who follow him and trust him, the kind of people who have come to him hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

What kind of people are the people that have exceeding righteousness?

They recognize that they can't do it.

And they mourn over their sin.

They're the kind of people that are merciful to others.

They're the kind of people that are peacemakers.

They are like Jesus because they have received his righteousness.

Keep pursuing righteousness like the Pharisees, and you will fail to love your neighbor, and you will fail to love God rightly.

And you will end up facing justice of God for your sin.

But pursue the king.

Pursue the king's righteousness by trusting in him, by believing that he paid the very last penny of your judgment, and he will do an amazing thing.

He will clothe you with his righteousness.

He will give you a righteousness that exhibits itself in love for others and in genuine love for God.

He will give you a righteousness that in the end, when you stand before God, you will stand before him and say, I am holy like you are holy, not because of what I've done, but because of who Jesus is.

Oh Lord Jesus.

Help us not to get caught up on the things that Pharisees do.

It's so easy for us.

It's so easy for us to think, oh, I'm I'm doing the right thing.

I'm I'm I'm keeping the law.

I'm I'm doing everything the way I should.

I'm I'm a good person.

Oh Lord, erase that thinking from our minds and help us to recognize who we are before you.

Lord Jesus, this day I beg you, give light to those who can't see you.

Enable all of us to see you with new eyes, with eyes that see that you paid every last bit of our judgment.

And that because of who you are, we can stand before the Father in the righteousness of one who was perfect.

It's then that we can say it's my Lord's perfection before the Father, with which I am clothed.

Father, forgive us, because the blood of Jesus was shed to forgive our sins.

Give us eyes to see you, give us hearts to trust.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.