A Heart of Peace

Hey, welcome to our online worship gathering here at Church of the Grove.

And if I hadn't had a chance to meet you, my name is Russ, and I'm one of the pastors here at Church of the Grove.

So excited you have joined us as we continue in our series called Say What and our Journey Through the Sermon on the Mount.

I have a very embarrassing story to tell you.

And if you're a dad, you I hope you can identify with me on this.

Most of the time when my children were very young, they spent time with my wife, their mom, and they were in the backseat of the car, strapped into the car safety seat, and that was just kind of the norm and our uh our way of life and our rhythm of life.

But but of course I had times when I was able to spend time with my children and they would be strapped into the backseat of the car as I am driving through town.

Now I I'm embarrassed to say this, but there would be these brief moments that I would be driving that I would kind of lose uh sight of the fact that my child was back there.

Maybe they were quiet for a moment.

I'm driving, I'm focused on the traffic, but I would almost just forget that they're they were back there.

One time my son Josiah was in the backseat, and I got caught up into an angry moment, um, which is common in Atlanta traffic, and I yelled out, what an idiot.

Now I'm embarrassed to say that, but I was even more scared to death when I heard my son in the backseat say, idiot, daddy, idiot.

And I just panicked because I knew what awaited me when I got home.

He was gonna repeat that to his mother, and I was gonna be in big trouble.

So I I drove around town trying to deprogram him from saying that.

But but as you probably know, um uh I was it it was inevitable that I was gonna be um outed and I was gonna be in trouble.

But but the funny part of that is that that um my son, I I had to deal with just maybe a little bit of anger from my wife, but the lesson in that is it how easy we are and how quick we are to get angry.

And see, today's sermon is gonna be, it is going to be in your face, and it's not in your face from from me.

It's it's in your face from Jesus.

It gets down to a difficult truth that we all have to come to grips with, and it's the anger that we sometimes have in our heart.

Now, I I would venture to say that any of you watching this and worshiping with us, and and I can tell you this from uh honestly and truthfully, that I've never committed physical murder toward anyone, and I would say that probably most of you haven't committed murder.

Um but the truth is, based on what we see in this passage, is if we have had anger in our heart, we are just as guilty as someone who's committed physical murder.

You know, the first murder, you you may know this if you grew up in church or you've been around the Bible, uh you you you've read through it, that where Cain kills Abel is the first uh homicide that's committed, the physical murder.

Um, and so so we we know that we're not supposed to commit murder.

Genesis says in uh chapter 9, verse 6, says whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

And so this this idea of murder is serious.

Now, this excludes what we would consider self-defense or or what we say is just warfare, where someone is fighting in defense of the innocent.

Um but but uh murder, as we're talking about, is this this idea of willful intent to take another person's life, either pre-birth or self-murder, which is suicide, or committing murder against another human being.

But here's what Jesus does in this passage in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus raises the bar, just like Jesus does all throughout his teachings and in this Sermon on the Mount, he raises the bar.

He says, if you have anger in your heart towards another person, you are just as guilty of murder as someone who physically takes the life of another human being.

And so we need to consider how serious this is.

There's a reason.

You've got to ask the why behind the what.

Why is this so serious?

The reason that the severe penalty that we see there in Genesis for for taking someone's life is this.

Every human being is created in the image of God.

Now, I I would say that most of us would agree on this, all of us, regardless of whether you are a quiet, tempered person or maybe you are a loud, boisterous-tempered person like I am, is we all struggle with anger at some point in our life or at some circumstance in our life.

We all struggle with anger, whether it's quiet anger in your heart or whether it's blowing up about something and yelling about something, whether it's with somebody at work, whether it's with your own kids at home, anger is something we all have probably struggled with.

Um listen, some of us are good at hiding it.

We're good at keeping it quiet in our heart.

Some of us aren't so good at hiding it.

We struggle with it.

Um, but to understand what Jesus is talking about is that is that we need to come to grips that anger is on equal par as taking the life of somebody else.

Listen, I think all of us struggle with anger.

We live in a time where it seems like everybody's angry.

Everybody's angry.

And people are angry because some people aren't angry.

And they're angry over what other people are angry about.

Um there's this article in the Washington Post that came out this past year, and we all know what we went through this past year.

He it says that everybody has been living in an angry incubator.

One crisis after another.

Um we're angry.

We're angry for how the government has handled the pandemic or how they haven't handled the pandemic.

We're angry because uh there was a shutdown.

We're angry over whether we're supposed to wear masks or we're angry because people aren't wearing masks, we're angry over the racial tension, we're angry over um uh police, we're angry over over people who are angry with the police, we're angry because some people aren't angry with the police.

It's like we're angry over everything.

We're angry about vaccines, we're angry because some people uh believe in the vaccines, um, some people haven't been vaccinated, so we're angry with them.

We're angry in person, we're angry over uh on social media, we're angry everywhere.

Now there's a there Jesus speaks and the scripture speaks about a righteous, righteous anger, but more often than not, we're angry in an unrighteous way.

Anger is nothing new.

All throughout scripture, all throughout human history, anger is a is a is a is something we've all had to deal with.

And and we we've all probably seen the effects in our own lives and our own families because of anger.

And so so for many people in our culture, they would say that there's nothing wrong with anger.

It's just an emotion.

It's just we we've it's becoming it's become so common that we don't even see anything wrong with it.

And here's what some people say unless there's physical response and you hurt somebody physically, anger is not a problem.

But here's what we've got to come to grips with in this passage that we're looking at in the Sermon of the Mount is that Jesus takes our anger that is as it comes out of the human heart, and he raises the bar, and he says that anger from the human heart is just as guilty as anger that produces physical murder.

Here's the big idea.

Here's what we're seeing in this passage to have anger toward another person.

It's an assault on the image of God, and it restricts our access to God and worship.

Let me read it.

Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 through 26.

Matthew 5:21–26

He says, You've heard it, uh 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 the counsel, and whoever says, You fool, will be liable to the hell of fire.

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 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'll be put in prison.

Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you've paid the last penny.

Now, in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is doing something that we talked about last week.

He's contrasting human teaching from the divine word of God.

He is distinguishing what men have made God's word to be from what God's word is truly, actually what it is and what it is meant to say and what it really means.

And so you've got to understand Jesus' perspective here.

You you remember when Jesus went out into the wilderness, he went into the wilderness and the the devil came and he would quote portions of Scripture and twist God's word when he would try to tempt Jesus.

Um and so it's the same thing that what Jesus is saying that we do, what the Pharisees do, what people do, they take God's word and they manipulate it to fit what we want it to be.

But Jesus quotes back to the enemy.

He says, it is written.

And he quotes the actual word of God back to the tempter.

And Jesus is teaching us in this Sermon on the Mount.

He's saying, listen, you don't need to give in to what the scribes and the Pharisees and the religious leaders have made God's words to be.

I want to realign everything back to what it actually is and what it means.

And so, what were the scribes and Pharisees doing to God's law?

The late theologian John Stotts says that they were doing this.

They were trying to relax the commandments in God's word to fit their own interpretation and thereby fitting it to their perspective in a way that personally benefited them.

In a sense, they were taking the moral demands of God's law and making them more manageable and less stringent.

They were restricting the commandments and extending more permission to themselves and to other people.

They were taking what was what was known to be murder and a heart issue and trying to fit it in a box where it was just the physical act alone.

And see, Jesus never contradicts God's law.

But what he does is he takes it to the real standard, the inner compliance.

What we said last week is this heart level righteousness.

It's not just outer behavior, it's your heart, it's the intentions inside of you.

And so what Jesus is doing in this passage about the issue with anger is he's saying, listen, it's just as if you're taking someone else's life, and you need to know this.

If you've got anger in your heart, you can't come to worship God in the truest sense.

Your worship is unacceptable.

You are not allowed into the presence of God.

And so what I want you to see in this passage that we could draw out of are these two big truths, these two big ideas, these standards.

And the first one is it is this is that Jesus' words, they shatter the illusion that we have of our self-righteousness.

I mean, it just completely dismantles our view of our own righteousness.

Going back to verse 21, you've 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 the counsel.

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

See, here's what's so funny is we feel pretty good about ourselves when we don't commit sins outwardly.

I can't, I if I if it's happened once, it's happened a thousand times.

Where I've been in a conversation with someone that I'm sharing my faith with, or I'm having a conversation about the gospel, and here's what comes out of their mouth.

Well, I've never killed anybody, I've never murdered anybody, and and it's the same kind of prideful um uh arrogance that that comes from the scribes and the Pharisees when they're trying to reduce God's law to outward behavior when Jesus is saying, no, there is a righteous standard that is a heart-level righteousness.

Um, rabbinic tradition and and and and and and most cultures, they viewed murder just as a physical act of taking someone's life.

But here's what Jesus is emphasizing He's saying that God's righteousness surpasses and exceeds that of the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

And so it's this idea of heart level righteousness.

Jesus' main point here is that is this that even the best people, even the best of us, in our hearts we are sinful.

And as a result, we're in the same boat with the worst of anybody that we could imagine, the worst of people, the people that are sitting in a jail or in a prison somewhere.

We're just as guilty as they are.

And so not to consider the state of the heart and this all-important truth is to ignore what Jesus is teaching.

Listen, we're all guilty.

Let me say it from a personal standpoint, and I'm not proud to say this.

I am guilty.

Now, when I'm pointing a finger at you, there's three pointing back at me.

You are guilty.

We are guilty.

If we had anger in our heart, which I think all of us have, I can't imagine it.

Think of a think of a child, think of uh of uh whatever age a person is.

We're all guilty.

We're guilty of transgressing God's law.

Jesus is saying to insult your brother or your sister.

And in some translations, there's this strange word, racca, and it's this idea of insulting someone.

It's this idea of relentless, malicious abuse, derision, slander.

It's equivalent to saying someone is a brainless idiot, a worthless person, silly fool, uh, empty-headed, blockhead.

I mean, think of any unmentionable names that would be inappropriate to say.

Um it's the equivalent of modern day bullying, online bullying that is so prevalent with our young people.

It's this idea of shaming, shaming people, um, body shaming, um, um mental abuse, and it's it's this malicious attack on other people, other people that are created in the image of God.

And so we also see this word fool, and it's this, it's the Greek word, uh, it comes from the Greek word moros, and it's it's the word where we get moron, and it's and we know that we're not supposed to call people morons.

That's not a good word, but it's it's a word that people commonly use, and it's and it means stupid or dull, and it's this idea of calling someone godless, saying that they aren't created in the image of God.

And that's that's wrong.

There's this Jewish legend of a young rabbi named uh Simon Ben Eliezer.

He had just come from a session from his his teacher, a rabbi, and and he is feeling especially proud about how he had memorized um and and and and shared back the knowledge that he had learned from his rabbi, and as he was basking in all of his wisdom and holiness, he passed by a man on the street who was probably considered unattractive.

And when the man greeted Simon, uh the the this this young rabbi repeated back or responded back, You Raka, how ugly you are.

Are all men of your town as ugly as you?

Here's the response.

That I do not know, the man answered.

But go and tell the Maker who created me how ugly is the creature that he has made.

Now, can you imagine calling anything that God has made ugly?

Man, we're we're we we look at creation and we bask in the beauty of creation.

When we look at other people, we should bask in the beauty of people that are creating the image of God.

Every person matters.

Every person is beautiful, every person is attractive because they're creating the image of God.

To speak about people in such a way, Jesus says, is to make yourself liable to the hell of fire.

Now that's guilty right there.

And I don't want to be in that category.

We're all guilty.

If we've had anger in our heart, we're just as guilty as a person who's committed physical murder.

And so this big truth, this first big truth, that Jesus shatters the illusions of our self-righteousness.

The second big idea is this that sin, that the sins of anger and hatred, they affect our relationship with God and our worship of God.

Listen, sins of anger and hatred, they they keep us from entering into the presence of God and worshiping who God is.

He says in verse 23, so, and some translations say, therefore, if you are offering your gift at 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, 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 into prison.

Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you've paid the last penny.

And I love that last part because Jesus is saying, whoever is guilty has to pay the price for their guilt.

See, worship was a major concern.

It was a major issue for scribes and religious leaders and for Pharisees.

It was, it was, it was their whole focus in life.

They spent all their life in synagogues and temples and modern language.

They were listening to all the podcast sermons.

Uh they were going to revival meetings every night to listen, listening to the best preaching.

They offered the best prayers, they gave the best tithes and offerings, and they they showed outward generosity, even though their heart might have been far from God.

They were part of religious ceremony in everything they did.

Um, but here's the problem: it was all external.

None of it was from the heart.

It was all external.

So so what Jesus is saying is that righteousness is not external.

Righteousness is internal.

Righteousness comes from the heart.

As long as there is internal sin, your worship, even if it's external, it doesn't count.

You are not connecting with the presence of God.

And so when we consider how how our relationships factor into this, we've got to understand that if our relationships with other people is not right, our worship is futile.

It's futile.

And so here's what Jesus is saying.

He's saying that our if we're gonna worship reconciliation with other people must precede our worship.

He's saying you've got to you've got to get things right with other people before you can come into the presence of a holy God.

See, in in ancient life, observant Jews lived all over the Middle East in Palestine as we as we know it.

And they would have these several uh ceremonial festivals every year and Like Passover, and they would they would all travel to Jerusalem and they would either carry an animal with them for sacrifice at the temple or they would buy an animal when they got to Jerusalem and they would take that to the to into the temple area and they would take it and then symbolically place all of the sins of them and their family on that animal and they would hand it to the priest.

They weren't allowed at the altar.

They would have to hand it to the priest, and the priest would offer the animal for a sacrifice.

And so the priest would sacrifice the animal to bring forgiveness and provide remission for the sins of that individual and the family of that individual.

Now, can you imagine?

See, we don't think about that because we drive 15, 20, 30 minutes to church.

They would travel for days to go to offer sacrifice to worship in the temple.

Here's what Jesus is saying to that person in ancient life.

He's saying, you've got to leave your animal.

If you've got anger in your heart towards somebody, if you've got something that's unresolved, something that's unpacked, something that hasn't been made right, you leave your animal there at the altar, you travel back three days to wherever you came from, you make that relationship right.

Then you travel another three days back and you offer that sacrifice.

So for those of us that are in church and in worship, we can't be in the presence of God until we get our relationships right with other people.

We unpack the anger, we resolve it, we forgive them, and we ask for forgiveness if we need to be forgiven, and we get it right, and then we're allowed into the presence of God.

Now, that that's that's that that blows my mind.

I think about every song that I've ever sung in church and about sometimes how I've been angry with my with my parents or angry with my my spouse, angry with a friend, angry with somebody I worked with in a church.

If we think about history, all the wars that have taken place, war leaves lethal leftovers.

Let me say it again.

War leaves lethal leftovers.

See, the bombs of World War II are still today killing people in Europe.

They turn up.

Sometimes they blow up.

They blow up at construction sites, they blow up in fishing nets, they blow up on the beaches.

Um 50, 75 years later, they've blown up and they've killed innocent people.

There are fields all over the world that have leftover landmines that kill people on a daily basis.

And what is true of lingering bombs is also true of lingering anger.

Buried anger is going to explode at some point.

And maybe when you least expect it.

See, we've got to unpack and we've got to deal with our anger so our relationship with others will be right so we can approach a holy God and worship him with a right heart.

See, allowing anger to grow and fester in our hearts, it gives the devil, our enemy, Lucifer, Satan, it gives him a foothold in our heart and in our life.

The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4, 26 and 27, he says, to be angry and do not sin.

He's speaking about a righteous anger.

An anger that comes up, that's an anger that comes because we we hate uh we hate sin and we hate doing what's wrong.

We hate anger in our hearts.

He said, Be angry, do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

How many relationships have disintegrated because of anger in the hearts of somebody?

How miserable are many of us that call ourselves followers of Jesus because the enemy has allowed anger to creep into our hearts?

So here's what I want to do.

I want to ask you.

I want to ask you some questions.

And these are questions that are meant to help us apply what Jesus is teaching.

Questions like this.

Have you recently blown up about something?

What's the real issue?

Deep.

Where are the roots of that blow up?

Are there people in your life that you secretly hope will fail?

Why is that so?

Is there unforgiveness?

Is there something that needs to be unpacked?

Is there something that needs to be resolved?

Are there people in your life that you've wronged?

Let me ask you this.

Do you have a clear conscience with the people in your family?

Do you have a clear conscience with the people in our church family?

Do you have a clear conscience with the people in your former church family?

Ouch.

Is your conscience clear with a lost and broken world?

And what I mean by that, do you look at people without Jesus and are you moved with compassion more than you are critical of them?

Is your conscience clear with people you work with?

Is your conscience clear with your spouse?

Is your conscience clear with your own past?

Now, that's man, that's tough.

When I think about the fact I'm guilty, we're guilty, this is tough medicine.

This truth.

But let me tell you something that's good news.

The mercy of Jesus is good news.

Man, thank you, God, for mercy, because if there wasn't mercy available to me, man, I am I'm dead meat because of my heart issues and my anger that I've had.

See, see, can I just read this over you right now?

Psalm 145, 8 and 9 says, The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.

Lamentations 3, 22 and 23 says, The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

See, see, when we come to grips with how we've transgressed, the Holy God, we can call on the mercy of Jesus.

And we can ask for our Heavenly Father to forgive us.

Which brings us back to the Beatitude that says in Matthew 5, 7, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

And when Jesus says in Luke 6 that to love our enemies and to do good, to lend, expecting nothing in return, your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Be merciful as your Father is merciful.

So I want to encourage you.

If you're feeling far from God, maybe it's because you've never responded for the first time to the mercy that Jesus offers us in his life, and his death, and his resurrection.

We like to say it at Church of the Grove, the gospel is simple.

It's as simple as ABC.

Admit that you need Jesus.

Admit that you're a sinner.

It means to confess your anger.

Admit that you're guilty.

And then you believe.

You believe and trust in the gospel, this good news of Jesus.

You repent and believe, as Jesus says, to approach him and we confess him as our Lord.

And so your prayer might be something as simple as this is, dear Jesus, I admit that I'm guilty, that I have had anger, and that I'm a sinner, and that I need you.

Would you come and live inside of me?

I trust and believe in your good news that you lived and you died and you rose again for my salvation.

And I confess Jesus as my Lord and my Savior.

That's you this morning.

You pray that.

You don't have to repeat those words.

It's not a magical mantra.

You pray that in your own heart, in your own personal space, and then you let us know by texting.

Start to follow to 9700.

We want to know.

We want to partner with you.

We want to help you take your first steps as a follower of Jesus.

Now, if you're a believer and you're a follower, you're part of the church family, you're part of God's family, then maybe these words maybe are a little bit painful to hear.

Maybe it's hard for us to hear that we're guilty.

But let's call upon the mercy of Jesus.

And listen, his mercies are new every morning.

See, that teaches me that I've got to depend daily on the grace and the mercy of Jesus.

So would you join me in depending on his grace and his mercy?

Father, would you lead us and guide us on this daily dependence where you offer us fresh mercy every day?

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Come back next week for this next section in this series, Say What.