The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew): Our Joy Deeper than Anger and Lust

So in Matthew 5, we're going to work our way through this Sermon on the Mount, this core of Jesus' teaching.

And Jesus wants to tell us about two destructive poisons this morning: anger and lust.

Both of which come from legitimate good desires, if we think about this.

Anger really comes from a desire for justice, a desire for things to be right.

Something was taken from you, something was taken from somebody you love.

That's justice, the desire for things to be right.

And yet we can move into anger so quickly.

Lust is the illegitimate way of understanding and practicing our sexual desires.

Those are good.

Those are God given, God created, and those are good.

But lust in and of itself can become a destructive force.

So let's work our way through these two passages that Jesus teaches and moves us past just behaviors.

It really makes us look at our hearts of what's going on inside of us.

So Matthew 5, 21 and 22.

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

Okay, so there's the old way.

And Jesus says, I'm going to take it a lot deeper, verse 22.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry, right, so the stuff that's inside of us 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 certainly Jesus is leveling the playing field here, moving us past behavior, and certainly helping us understand that we need a redeemer outside of our own behavior.

Because right away we realize we're all doomed at this point.

We're all doomed.

We need God's grace to us.

We need God's grace to us.

Point number one is this dealing with anger is a work of the heart.

So it's not just a work of behavior, it's a work of the heart.

Yesterday we were headed home from one of our kids' soccer games.

Beautiful 95-degree fall weather out there on the soccer fields.

I had yelled for an hour straight at young children to be more motivated in their soccer skills, and so I was just sweaty and tired and get in the car and have one kiddo with me, and we're headed down from Big Shanty, coming down to Stilesborough, and we're gonna head by the mountain, okay?

And I know like Visitor Center on Saturday, you know it's gonna be a little crowded right there, but I also know another thing, and that is my favorite traffic sign.

And all of traffic signs exist there on that corner, and some of you already know it because you know this traffic sign.

Keep moving, right?

I mean, it's it's one of the only positive traffic signs out there.

I look forward to in a very strange, quirky way, every time I turn right there off Salzburg, around that visitor center, and it says keep moving.

I'm like, yes, I will.

I'm gonna speed up.

I will increase my speed throughout this turn because I can legally.

I can do this.

And I look forward to it, I want it, I can't wait for it, and so I'm coming up, and I know traffic should be moving smoothly because we should all keep moving here at this right-hand turn, but sure enough, like 23 cars deep, just dead stop, and I can see, I can see across that lawn and beautiful flags.

I can still see through the flags, and I can see the car way over there, dead stop, dead stop.

And it doesn't look like they're broken down, they're not frantically outside the car, you know.

Like it looks like dead stop.

We know what they're doing, taking 97 pictures of the flags, of which they should, right?

Beautiful flags, but there are two parking lots for this exact reason.

So I'm simmering just a little bit.

I'm hot, I'm hangry, not angry yet.

Maybe, maybe I'm angry, but I'm definitely hangry.

Um, and I'm simmering Christian passive anger, but inside verse 22, you fool is certainly an operation toward the car I see across the lawn, and I can't wait because I'm gonna cruise by.

I'm not gonna stop because I'm not like I'm not like them.

I'm not stopping, but I will cruise by at just the right speed to give them a little bit of a stink eye, right?

Hope it's none of you, right?

That's part of it.

Hope it's nobody comes from church, but just a little bit of a disapproval, and we turn that corner nice and slow, and at this point it's been it's been a while, you know.

It's like, how many pictures do you need, right?

And we pull up, and I'm like, you idiot.

Like, keep moving, right?

Keep it said it.

Just keep why are you parked?

It's not parked.

Two sweet grandmothers, probably one of them lost their grandson in 9-11.

I was probably some sweet story, like legitimate, like, right?

I mean, this is probably the reality of what's going on here.

It's two sweet little grandmas, right?

And I'm angry because I feel like something was taken from me, and of course, I feel like I'm superior to them in all ways of parking and driving.

So we get angry about stupid, silly stuff like that, right?

And you do that too.

Like you have your own thing.

That's my thing.

Like you can cut me off on 75, I don't care, you can call me a bad name, I don't care, but don't mess, don't mess with keep moving.

That's just my thing.

And here's what Jesus says when we're aware we're angry at a sister or brother or a neighbor or you know, sweet little grandmas taking pictures, I mean, your boss, your neighbor, a friend who's done something and they shouldn't have done it to you, and they did it and you can't believe it.

Jesus says, and it's such intense language, this whole passage.

I mean, that that's part of the point, is he's using intense language to kind of get us to awaken to like move into your heart and recognize how destructive this stuff can be.

And then he, you know, he really goes into like he says, This is so important, you should alter your worship.

Like you should change your worship.

Like right now, you you should just like kindly just walk out of the sanctuary and go make the phone call.

That's what Jesus is saying.

Verses 23 through 26.

So if you are offering your gift to the altar and there, 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.

So, in other words, uh, if I'm recognizing it even now, I should do something now.

Like now is the moment to do something and to move towards somebody in reconciliation.

Verse 25, come to terms quickly with your accuser.

So now if you've been accused, so you've been accused of something you did, you want to right now, now.

Come to terms with your accuser.

Point number two is this we must deal with our anger, or it will deal with us, won't it?

We deal with our anger, we want to be reconciled.

I mean, Christians, we tend to use words like uh stressed, disappointed.

I was disappointed in the two grandmothers.

I was so disappointed with those two sweet little grandmothers.

No, no, I was angry.

Like I was silly, stupid, angry at two little grandmothers taking 137 pictures of the flags, right?

But no, no, no.

I was just disappointed in them, right?

But really, we're angry.

We're angry because someone took something from us.

I grew up watching Ferris Bheelers Day Off pretty much every afternoon, my entire high school life.

I spent more time in Fairy Spieler's Day Off than the Bible by far.

And it's a movie, 80s movie.

And Cameron, if you remember the storyline, there's Cameron.

And Cameron, at the beginning of the movie, he is depressed.

And I'm ruining the movie just a little bit, but you've had about 40 years.

Okay, so Cameron, at the beginning of the movie, he's so depressed that he's in bed and he's just sulking and he's just, he's just, it's like he's always feeling sick.

And all of this we come to learn throughout the movie, is it's because he because his dad doesn't care about him.

Because we know at the end of the movie, he ventilates the anger.

If we show the picture again, at the end of the movie, he ventilates the anger, and he just beats the beats the Ferrari to death, if you've seen the movie, right?

He goes to town on his dad's vintage antique Ferrari because he loves the Ferrari more than he loves him.

And so he ventilates it.

But the Bible's more profound than uh we have to compartmentalize and package it down inside of us.

Or we have to ventilate it and let it out.

The Bible's more profound than that, and it teaches that any sort of anger, that passive anger or the ventilating anger, both will eat us up.

Both will eat us up.

We have to go to the heart.

We have to go to the heart that we understand our anger's there because we feel like, we feel like somebody took something from us.

Here's what Frederick Buchner, author, says this about anger.

Anger is fun.

To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll your tongue over the prospect of bitter confrontations yet to come to savor the last to some morsel over the pain you are given and the pain you give back.

In many ways, anger is a feast for a king.

The chief drawback is what you are wolfing down as yourself.

The skeleton of the feast is you.

We know this by experience, don't we?

When we live out of anger toward somebody else, or a family member, or a friend, or neighbor.

We we love it for a little bit.

It makes us feel like we're in control over the one who took something from us.

And then we realize we're eating our own selves.

Hebrews 12:15 says this see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.

Hebrews 12:15

Oh, that's nice.

Okay, so relish God's grace to you, that limitless favor and delight and love that God has for you, not because of anything you've done, but because of what Jesus has done for you.

Undeserved, isn't that good?

And here's what it connects to in this thought that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.

So the way in which we root out bitterness, and we say anger, is by relishing that grace of God, and we do that so that we wouldn't become defiled.

Not that you become not worthy, but that you become troubled, right?

You eat your eat yourself up.

The implication of the grace of God is that anger no longer has to rule your heart for you to feel whole.

We don't have to use anger in that way.

For me, this leads to the question just a contemplative question to say, Holy Spirit, what am I still angry about?

Where's that still inside of me?

And then you just get really quiet, you go for a walk, journal, and you try to get to the root that's inside, inside of you, so that we're not destroyed by it.

Now, here's why we can do that.

The reason why we can do that is, like I said, that first part of Hebrews 12, 15.

And that's this.

Point number three, we are loved by God in our anger and loved by God out of our anger.

And we need both of that.

We need both.

If we don't have the first part, we don't have the second part.

We need God to love us in our anger in order for us to be freed from it in order to love us and for us to process out of our anger.

Verse 22 says this interesting verse.

I probably, when I read it, maybe you could kind of caught your attention.

But I say to you that everyone who's angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Oh, okay.

I mean, you we can read this and think, like, oh, we're all like we're all going to hell, right?

Like, I mean, you can read it and just be like, oh, goodness.

Like, because you've been angry.

I mean, I was angry at two grandmothers yesterday, right?

And you're like, oh no, it's all it's all gone.

Heaven's all gone for me.

You know.

I don't think that's what it's saying at all for those of us who know Jesus.

God already sees us as righteous because of Jesus' righteousness, not our ability to never be angry.

So God's not waiting to zap us every time we get angry.

This is about us living in the implications of grace and not in the ways of judgment.

The ways of judgment is the ways of checklists and scoreboards and paybacks and is exhausting and it's cyclical.

Uh we're trying to use it to feel like we're more in control rather than living out of the grace of God, which is a way of rest and heart transformation, that we're finding our wholeness there.

And so while Jesus is sort of devastating us in this passage, he does it again, we're going to read it here about lust.

Devastates us.

It's in the bigger context of who He is for us.

He's devastating us on purpose to help us recognize, diagnose us.

To see, we have anger and we have lust, and we we need to deal with it, but we also need to not use our own behavior or heart motives as our justification with him.

All right, the second poison is lust.

Matthew 5, 27 through 30.

You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

So there's the kind of Old Testament, the old law.

People are living by it, and they can feel righteous on their own.

They don't need God, they don't need God's grace.

But Jesus says, Oh, I'm about to about to level you.

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

So we can switch his and her there for us to understand this is not just a male problem.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

For it is better for you to lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better than you lose one of your members and your whole body to go into hell.

So this is not about somebody who has lust going to hell.

This is about, in the context of the meta-narrative of the scriptures, this is about leveling us to understand when we use these ways to feel justified or whole, you are on a path that is far from God.

That Jesus is always our redeemer.

This commentary is the intensity of the issue of lust and affairs and adultery and the destruction it produces and the shame it creates.

I read this years ago and it hasn't left me.

Maybe the most insightful words I've ever read on adultery.

Dr.

Esther Peelers, researcher and sexual therapist.

I think I read it about five years ago in a sermon.

Very often we don't go elsewhere.

And I think when we say elsewhere, I think to me that that could mean longing for somebody else.

It's not your spouse, or even pornography.

Very often we don't go elsewhere because we are looking for another person.

We go elsewhere because we are looking for another self.

It isn't so much that we want to leave the person we are with as we want to leave the person we have become.

So in this way, adultery, lust, pornography, this is sexual idolatry of the heart.

And what I mean by that is, like we've been talking about all these different idolatries throughout the Judges series, sexual idolatry can say something like this if I can have that experience or that pleasure, then I will finally be enough, fulfilled, or affirmed.

And it's never ending.

Right?

It's never ending.

It's never ending with anger, it's never ending with lust, it's never ending with power, it's never ending with all these things that become idolatry of the heart.

The lust actually lies to us and it erodes the meaning of sexuality, sexual desire, and it erodes the integrity of our own souls.

Now we can hear this text and we could hear easily that sexual desire is wrong and uh you know hellbound.

But the biblical sex ethic is God given sexual desire, there's a reason why it's there, for the highest form of relationship.

Our sexual desire is for the highest form of relationship, for the building up of marriage, for covenant marriage, and for the mutual pleasure of both the husband and the wife.

And that is good news.

That is not shameful news.

That is like good news to celebrate.

Because what it means is it's not a sh it's not a shame issue.

The biblical sexual ethic is true because sex is that good and is that powerful.

And that sexual desire inside of us is that good and that powerful when it remains as desire in the right relationships.

But lust turns it as a consumerism and erodes the meaning of sex and the integrity of the soul.

Point number four is this lust resides in the heart and erodes meaning.

It's sort of like that water that comes down your driveway or down the hill in your backyard, and it's just eroding away that hillside you need, or maybe it's along the side of your house and it erodes away.

You need the soil to grade a certain way, but that water keeps channeling that way, and it just erodes and it erodes and erodes.

And the good that was once there is slowly going away.

Now, if you've lived a season of life or a long period of life controlled by lust, you know everything I just said.

You know what that feels like.

Because it erodes an integrity of who you are, it erodes the goodness of something that's supposed to be so good and powerful inside a covenant of marriage.

And it keeps, lust keeps making these promises and it never delivers for us to really fulfill affirmed or whole or enough.

So our sexual desire has to find its proper place and home.

And then we also get to recognize this other thing, and that there is a desire for us under the desire.

Like a desire for meaning and acceptance and affirmation and joy that sex is never gonna give us.

As good as it is, it's never gonna give us.

So it's deeper than even the most sublime experiences in the world.

And this is our soul's cry for our Creator.

Psalm 63, 1 through 4.

I keep returning to this passage.

I think it feels like life in many ways.

Oh God, you are my God.

Earnestly I seek you.

My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power, glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live.

In your name I will lift up my hands.

Point number five is this we have a supreme joy beyond any good of this world.

There's a lot of good in this world.

And we have a supreme joy that is the meaning under the meaning, the desire under the desire, the love under the love.

This week Christy and I went on a day date to crumble cookie.

You've been to crumble cookie, you know crumble cookie?

It's a big deal.

Crumble cookie's a big deal.

I don't know if you picked up on it.

It's not an Oreo.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, it's not an Oreo, not a Nutter Butter.

I know about the Nutter Butters.

I know about the pepperage farm Milanos.

If you get fancy with your cookies, you know, you know about those.

And we had a staff, Redeemer staff analysis of cookies this week.

And it's not even fair.

Like, it's not fair to compare like Kroger bought cookies to the Crumble Cookie.

But then also, it's not what's not fair, it's not fair to talk about like your grandma's cookies and compare it to the crumble cookie.

So we can't do that because it's a store, crumble cookie is a store-bought cookie, okay?

We're aware of what crumble cookie is.

It's a little storefront you go in, they're baking cookies, really expensive cookies, okay?

12 bucks for like four.

I think it was four for twelve.

It was a date, okay?

That's a date.

It was the whole date.

This is what that was.

The entire date was the cookies.

But I got home, got that chocolate chip cookie.

Put it in the microwave for about nine seconds.

You know what I'm talking about because you know how many seconds your microwave takes to heat up.

Just a cookie or a brownie, you're like, yeah, ten seconds is too much, but nine's just right.

Pull it out, you know, it's not overcooked, it's warmed up enough.

And that crumble cookie warmed up in that microwave.

I mean, that was a legitimate.

Now, it's not grandma's cookies homebade.

We're not not that, but that for a store-bought cookie.

That was, it was a little taste of heavens what it was, right?

You've had it, some of you.

Even at$12.

Now the majestic Teton Mountains that I love so much.

I can't hike to Amphitheater Lake enough.

Okay?

I can't do it.

I can keep going.

Over.

I can't, I can't hike up there and have a quiet lunch enough.

I can just keep doing it over and over again.

I love it that much.

Like the taste of beauty in heaven that is the love of my wife.

Swimming in the ocean with my children.

Like a really great long meal with friends where you have just wonderful food and wine, and nobody has to be home.

Like, okay, and nobody's paying for babysitters somehow.

Like the grandparents are covering all the babysitters.

So you're not even that pressure's gone.

Nobody has to wake up in the morning.

Just a long, great, wonderful Uber's picking everybody up, meal, like just that freedom and that discussion.

You're laughing, and then you cry, like you cry at some point in the meal because somebody talks about something that's horrible going on.

They haven't talked about it in a while.

And oh, you're like, I had no idea.

And then you laugh again.

Right?

Like a taste, those tastes that are just so good in life.

So good.

The most amazing taste we have in this world.

There's just tastes of a greater love.

The love that's under the loves.

Now I could end the sermon there.

That was kind of where the sermon ended originally.

Then I realized there's one big problem.

And that there's a lot of us who feel guilt and shame over anger and lust.

Maybe because I grew up.

Maybe because of that one time.

Maybe because it's still going on.

Maybe because of that season of life.

And like I said, as Christians, when we read the Bible, we have to remember any text and context.

Jesus just said in Matthew 5.17 that he fulfills the law for us.

So we're heading into weeks of reading how we should be.

And we better remember 5.17, or else we're toast, right?

We need Matthew 5.

We need Jesus to be the fulfiller of the law.

That He is.

He is our forgiveness of our sins.

We do not have to earn any more forgiveness.

We are fully forgiven with God.

Isn't that amazing?

He is our righteousness.

Righteousness, full, complete righteousness, is imputed to us because of his work for us.

That's God's grace to us.

And God loves us, loves you.

God loves you and delights in you as he does his own son.

So my brothers and sisters, God is welcome you to himself, to the love that is under the love, deeper than the love.

To a love that's better than life.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace and mercy.

May we obtain this grace of God that we might root out anger and lust.

May we relish more in a love that is greater than this life, that does fulfill, is enough, and that we are enough before you because of your love for us in Jesus.

May this be so fulfilling, so affirming, so welcoming, that our forgiveness is sealed, our righteousness is sealed.

Would we not have to use anger and lust?

Would we not have to use them?

May we be aware of them more, confess more, live in the implications of grace, to come more alive to your love for us and to live to honor you out of our heart and with our lives.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.