Kingdom As Commonplace: Sermon on the Mount - Iniquities

Commonplace has a very special place in my heart, and uh, you know, a lot of our history overlaps, and it is always good to open God's word together, no matter where I am.

But uh really excited for this opportunity here today, and especially excited to dive into Matthew chapter five and the Sermon on the Mount together.

If you have your Bibles, you can turn there.

We just read through it, and it'll be up on the screen.

But we're gonna look at the goat of all sermons.

Uh, not my sermon, it's Jesus' sermon that we're looking at.

I hope it's okay, but uh, but Jesus's is the one that is uh just speaking to the heart of the people in a way that is absolutely paradigm shifting.

It changes what the people walked in, what they thought through as they thought of holiness, as they thought of righteousness, it completely turns it on its head, and Jesus begins to help us understand what it is that the vision for the kingdom of God and how God's people would operate would be in an amazing way.

And as we dive in, you know, Jesus is really confronting the religious leaders of the day.

He is, and we're gonna see this phrase that he repeats over and over.

He says, You've heard it said, but I say to you.

And he's gonna say it over and over and over.

And he's referencing the Old Testament.

He says, You've heard it said this, and they would have heard that said many, many times.

But when he says, but I say to you, he's not correcting the Old Testament.

He's not going in to say, well, you know, God said this in the Old Testament, but let me tell you what, what's now happening?

What he's doing is he's confronting the religious leaders of the day and their shallow view of what it means to walk with God.

Because religious leaders are really good at what?

Religion.

They're great at religion.

Religion tells you that you can, you know, do this and this and this and work your way to God, that you can somehow make yourself more presentable to God by accomplishing these things.

You check the boxes and you're all good.

And Jesus says it goes far deeper than that.

That you can check all the boxes.

In fact, he said something really shocking right before this passage.

He said that if you want to enter the kingdom of God, your righteousness has to be even greater than the Pharisees.

And if you were somebody listening to Jesus in that day and you heard him say that, you would be shocked, you would be discouraged, because the Pharisees, in terms of righteousness that you can see and observe, the Pharisees knew the Bible in and out.

They memorized the law.

They knew every word of it without having to look it up.

They could just tell you because it was imprinted in their heart.

But what he's saying is you can have the words of God imprinted in your mind and your heart, but you can miss the heart of God.

You can you can look great on the outside.

You can check all the religious boxes, you can be the leader of the religious people and still miss the very heart of God.

And he's gonna begin to share about the vision for what God has for us because you know, religion is about, hey, let's put some guardrails on our life so that we don't end up in a ditch.

That's what religion says.

God's vision for your life is way more than that.

It's way more than, you know, I just don't want you to end up in a ditch.

That's a low bar.

God says, no, I like if if you have kids, you know, like your vision for their life is not that they just wouldn't blow it up and end up in a ditch.

That's pretty sad vision.

Your vision for them is that they would thrive, that they wouldn't know who they are.

How God has made them.

How he's made them to know what their life could be abundant in Christ.

Jesus says, listen, that idea that you have of religion and earning your way and checking the boxes, that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what it means to really walk abiding in Christ.

And because he starts challenging the Pharisees, it's gonna get uncomfortable pretty quick.

It's probably gonna get uncomfortable for us because I think he challenges us too.

But his goal is not to make you uncomfortable.

That's not why Jesus is saying this.

It's not to make you squirm and you're in church, and oh man, I knew this was coming.

You're gonna say things that make me feel guilty.

Jesus' hope in sharing this with us is that we would not walk away with guilt and shame, but that we would understand the way our lives were meant to be lived.

Yes, there's guilt, there's shame for our sin.

He says, give your shame over to me.

He takes our guilt, he takes our sin, and it's dead at the cross.

But he's also alive three days later, and he wants us to live alive.

So as he jumps into this, Matthew chapter 5, verse 21, it says this.

Matthew 5:21

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

So Jesus starts with a really low bar, all right?

He's like, listen, you've heard the rule.

The rule is you don't kill anyone.

And they're all like, Yes, yes, murder bad.

Don't want to kill anybody.

That's that's definitely bad.

They're all nodding along.

They're like, Yep, got that one taken care of.

Thank you, Jesus.

Feel much better about myself right now.

When I was growing up, I grew up Roman Catholic, and uh, you know, I had to, as part of that, memorize the Ten Commandments.

And, you know, and when you did it, you felt pretty accomplished.

You got them in order, you know, got to number my my mom wanted to make sure I knew the honor your father and mother part.

That was her favorite one.

She wanted to make sure I knew that one.

But, you know, you get to commandments six, seven, and eight, and those were like like bad people 101.

Like the first five were like, okay, man, I should take a look at that.

You get to six, seven, and eight.

It's like, don't kill anybody, don't cheat on your spouse, and don't steal.

And I'm like, all right, I'm good.

Those are easy.

Really low bar.

And so everybody is feeling great.

Everyone's like, awesome, yeah, Jesus, I'm with you.

And I imagine there was a pause, and then he continued.

He said, 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.

Whoever says, you fool, will be liable to the hell of fire.

And it got uncomfortable.

Because yeah, I'm not killing anybody.

But wait, if I'm angry at my brother, that you said the same thing about murder that you're saying about me being angry at my brother, I'm liable to judgment.

Jesus is making people feel a little uncomfortable because it starts to touch on things that we all wrestle with, that we all deal with.

And we recognize that God cares about those things.

And we're gonna see four big things come out of the passage today.

And the first one is this sin begins internally before it ever manifests externally.

Sin begins in your heart before you ever see it start to come out.

That's the origin of it.

Jesus takes sins that most of us define externally, like murder, adultery, which we'll look at in a little bit, and he traces them back to the source.

He shows us that long before sin becomes visible to everyone else, that it's visible to God and that it breaks his heart.

Because it's not the way we were designed to live.

And that means that this passage isn't just about what we do.

It's not just about checking the boxes and making sure we don't steal and we don't murder.

It gets far deeper.

It's about how we think, it's about how we feel, it's about how we view other people.

It's far more pervasive.

You know, you can you can feel great about the Ten Commandments, but what Jesus is saying is it's not about the Ten Commandments or the law or following it.

It's infinite in its reach because our hearts are infinite in their reach.

The things that we feel, the things that we experience, the things that shape who we are, the reason why we respond the way we do.

It reaches deep to the roots of our soul.

And that's what Jesus wants to get at.

Because God loves you far too much to just say, okay, you're not in a ditch somewhere.

He has far more for your life.

He wants far more for you.

And he says that murder doesn't, you know, yeah, great.

We I'll just go on record, you shouldn't kill anybody.

Want to make sure I say that just totally explicitly.

Don't do that.

But when we talk about how we get there, like the reason why we feel so separate from that idea of killing someone, if we're normal, is because that's so far from where our minds and our hearts are.

But it's not like you flip a switch and you get there.

There are things that happen when it comes to our anger.

And Jesus talks about this as he says, listen, if you're angry with someone, it's sin.

And by the way, when I say sin, it's not because God wants to condemn you because you broke a rule.

When I say sin, it eats away at you, it destroys you, it destroys your heart.

He says it starts at anger, but then it says it goes into name-calling, it goes into contempt.

He says if you if you start calling someone a name, that's because you're you have contempt for them.

It starts to change how you view them as a person.

And then ultimately he says, you know, you who call someone a fool, he says, you fool.

But that word fool that we read, like you might call your friend a fool, like, yo, fool.

He's not talking about that.

It's actually a translation of the word raca.

And that word means worthless.

Do you see what happens?

It starts at anger.

And then it turns our heart to begin to have contempt for that person.

Where we don't even start to see them in the same category as us anymore.

And then it moves to dehumanization.

You're worthless.

You're worth nothing to me.

You're not even human anymore.

And you see how that progression, yeah, it's it ends in murder, which for us is a wild thought.

The way we treat them, the way we harbor anger, and then it turns into contempt, which then can even turn into dehumanizing.

And once you dehumanize someone, murder isn't far off.

You might have killed them off in your heart long ago.

But but the act, the physical act of murder, isn't that far off when you dehumanize someone?

That's why abortion is an issue.

It's not just about, you know, life good, abortion bad.

No, it's it's our hearts change.

We start to dehumanize things.

We start to say, well, that's not a human being yet.

And what happens when it's not a human being yet?

We can destroy it.

It's a progression of our hearts and our mindset.

That's why gossip is evil.

When you talk about someone that's not even there and you're spreading things about them, what are you doing?

You have contempt for them.

You're talking about them as if they're not even in the same worth category as you are, and you don't care what it does to them and their hearts and how they feel, and whether they feel like they're loved by a God or not.

It begins to change our hearts.

That's why contempt is dangerous, why bitterness against someone is dangerous.

Bitterness is cancer.

It invades our hearts, and we start to see someone differently.

We stop feeling for them anymore.

When you stop feeling for someone anymore, then it makes it okay to do whatever you want to do to them.

That's why this is way bigger than the act of murder.

This is how we're killing the hearts of people off in our hearts.

Anger often wears respectable clothes.

We can defend it, we can justify it.

And look, there is a righteous anger to be had against things that are injustice.

But when you harbor anger against someone, which leads to contempt and dehumanization and bitterness, it affects not just your relationship with them, it affects you, and it affects your relationship with God.

It's a prison.

Sure, we could say we didn't murder someone, but some good questions to ask that as I was even praying through this this week and saying, like, God, where does this show up in my own life?

Do you replay arguments in your head?

Think about how you were right, and if you had said this, you would have won the argument.

You always got a better response later on when you think about it.

I should have said this.

Do you secretly enjoy someone's downfall?

Do you secretly take joy when someone that you don't like gets it?

Do we punish people with silence, not even treat them like humans anymore?

That are meant to communicate.

Do you withhold grace from people because you want them to feel pain?

We can this this creeps in.

And it can look fine, it can look justifiable, but it changes our hearts.

And we miss the heart of God.

It also exposes things in our lives, it exposes our idols a lot of times.

When do we get angry?

We get angry because somebody challenged something that that is important to us.

You know, or when we tell ourselves I deserve better, I'm I I should have been treated better.

Or when they challenge things like our comfort or our security, they threaten our reputation.

They blocked our agenda.

James puts it this way: it says, What causes quarrels among you?

Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

What causes the anger that you have?

What causes the bitterness?

What causes the strife in relationships?

Is it not that we have passions in us that get challenged by other people?

That's what causes these things.

What do we do with it then?

The real issue is not merely that person or what they did.

It's what our hearts worship.

That's what we're really longing for.

Control and comfort and recognition.

Respect.

When those are threatened, anger rises in us.

So point one, sin begins internally before it ever manifests externally.

The second point is this: reconciliation matters deeply to God.

Reconciliation, the restoring of relationship, being reconciled to someone else matters deeply to God.

He gives a stunning example.

Look at what he says here.

So 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'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've paid the last penny.

Those are two interesting examples, almost seem disconnected a little bit, but what is he saying?

If you have an issue with someone, don't bring it to a court.

Don't just turn to litigation to solve your issues.

These are things that you should be bringing to one another and coming to a place of restoration and reconciliation on.

Don't hand it over to a judge who has no sense of the heart of God, has no sense of the relationship that you had.

For that person to make some decision, that the decision should have been made before in the way that you approach this person.

It's a wild thought.

He says, listen, if you if you come to worship and you bring your offering, and again, this can look a number of different ways in this context that he's saying here, but I mean, this is an offering you're bringing that's it's sacrifice for you.

You're bringing your best before the Lord.

You're coming to worship, you're bringing your family, you know, you're not getting in your car and driving a few miles, you're walking miles and miles and miles to gather with the people of God.

It's no small undertaking.

He says, listen, if you've done all that, you know, and on your way there, you've already heard 10 times from your kids.

Are we there yet?

No, we're not there.

Keep on going.

We're going to worship.

He says, if you get there and you realize, and and hear what he says.

Not that you have an issue with your brother, not that you were wronged by someone.

But if if your brother has an issue with you, if you know that someone has an issue with you, not even if you have an issue with someone else.

I think inherent in there is this idea that if you have an issue with someone else, you should be processing it well already.

You should be loving them, you should be pouring grace out on them, you should be trying to reconcile with them.

But if your brother has an issue with you and you're unreconciled, he says, get out of there.

Leave right there.

Go talk to your brother.

It is that important to our God.

It's that important to him that you reconcile.

What is he saying?

That our horizontal relationships, they affect our vertical worship.

We can't just separate these things.

Here's the thing: we we come to gather with the people of God and we praise him and we give him thanks for what?

Primarily for the fact that he has reconciled us to God through his death offering and then given us life through his resurrection.

We get to praise Jesus for that every day.

It's like Easter every day.

It's awesome.

But how can we come before God and say, I praise you for reconciliation, but we're not reconciling?

And how can we be okay with that?

Like, listen, if there is something between you and a brother and it's not taken care of, it is that important to me that you go take care of it first, then come back and worship.

I wouldn't even be mad right now if one of you got him left.

Because it means that much to God.

We can't praise Jesus with our mouths and sing those words that we were singing before.

I thank God.

He picked me up.

He saved my soul.

Forever and free, I'm not the same.

But if we look the same as everybody else because we hold bitterness and grudges, what are we even singing?

He says, listen, this matters.

You're my people.

Don't bring it to a judge.

What does he know of the goodness and the grace of God?

Go to each other.

Work it out.

And it's that important that I even want you to do that instead of coming to the church gathering that day and then come back.

Then come back and know, man, God is good.

He reconciled me.

I can reconcile with my brother.

God cares deeply about reconciliation.

John echoes it in 1 John.

He says, Whoever says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar.

I love you, Lord.

Hate that guy.

That guy's not God, so it's okay.

I can hate him.

No, you can't.

You can't.

That's strong language.

He prioritizes reconciliation.

And again, he doesn't say if you're the offended one.

He says if someone is offended by you, if somebody doesn't like you for something, what does that mean?

Take initiative.

Take initiative.

Be proactive.

Don't be the one who waits.

I'm oh, you know, I'm just gonna wait until they come and ask forgiveness.

I'm just gonna wait until they come talk to me.

If it matters to them, they'll come talk to me.

No, what is that?

That's entitlement.

That's pride.

That's self-righteousness.

It's really your defensiveness and your insecurity covering up where your heart's really at.

But he says, take initiative.

Bitterness has to go.

And listen, reconciliation doesn't mean full restoration all the time.

Okay?

It doesn't mean that you're gonna be best buddies.

It doesn't mean that you can just trust them, that there aren't boundaries that are needed.

I get that.

But reconciliation means you are responsible to forgive them.

No matter what they did.

You can't, it doesn't mean you're gonna be fully restored.

But you and your heart need to let go of that bitterness.

Because if you don't, it infects everything.

This is What Hebrews, well actually Romans 12 says this in terms of initiative, it says, as far as it depends on you, I love this verse, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Whatever you can do, don't wait.

Whatever you can do, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

It doesn't depend on you to change their heart.

It doesn't depend on you to make sure that they're sorry for what they did.

That doesn't depend.

Release yourself of that responsibility.

It does depend on you whether in your heart you can walk with peace.

Because if not, it'll just grow into bitterness.

In Hebrews 12, it says, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.

See what it's saying?

See that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.

How do they get the grace of God into relationships?

You offer them grace.

You give them grace because you've been given grace.

That no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.

When there's a root of bitterness in our heart, it's gotta be uprooted.

And if it's not, it infects all of our heart.

And guess what?

It says, by your root of bitterness, many become defiled.

It goes into your family, it goes into your marriage, it goes into your kids, they see your bitterness.

It says, pull it up.

It's like a weed.

I'm an awful gardener.

I I can't make anything grow really well.

Years ago, we lived in West Milford, and uh we had this really nice flower bed, like in the front of our house, and I had never had one of those before, and I was like, oh, this is cool.

And whoever was there before us planted some cool stuff because I didn't.

But you know, I would I would go over and I would water it, and it was springing up in spring.

It was beautiful.

I had these flowering bushes, it was amazing.

My mother-in-law came over.

I'm like, man, check this out.

See, they're I love these flowers, they're amazing.

She said, Man, it looks great.

She's like, that's a weed.

I'm like, what do you mean it's got flowers on it?

It looks great.

It's I think it's the best-looking thing in my room, my flower bed.

It's like, no, that that's a weed.

It's a pervasive weed.

And if you let it grow, it's gonna choke out everything else in there.

I couldn't see it myself.

I couldn't identify it myself.

I needed somebody else to come alongside and say, hey, that's a weed in your life.

A lot of times we're so blind to the weeds in our life.

We need someone that we know loves us to come along and say, hey, you've been watering the enemy and you feel good about it?

You think it looks great?

But that thing is a weed.

Ask somebody who knows you.

Ask your spouse.

That's a risky one.

Where where do I have where do you think I have some bitterness?

Is there anybody that you think like I kind of keep at bay with with my bitterness toward them?

You need somebody else sometimes to speak in and see those weeds and help you root them out.

And whether you identify it or somebody else does, ultimately it's gotta be it's gotta be ripped out.

It has to be pulled out.

Reconciliation matters deeply to God.

I know how our minds work even right now as you're sitting here.

You've had flashes of people flashing through your head, many of us.

We go, am I bitter toward that person?

No.

No, I'm not bitter toward them.

No, no, no.

Don't let it pass by.

If there's somebody that flashed in your head that you might be bitter toward, there's a reason.

Don't let it pass by.

Take initiative.

As far as it depends on you, live peaceably with them.

So sin begins internally before it shows up externally.

Reconciliation matters deeply to God.

And then we see this third teaching.

Jesus continues, he says, You've heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

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

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

For it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away, for it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell.

I think the third clear point here, and he makes it a real point to speak into this, and it's a separate issue, but it's connected, is that lust is adultery of the heart.

Lust is absolutely adultery of the heart.

When it comes to our relationship with God, idolatry is the root of all sin ultimately.

It's where we place ourselves or something else above God.

Idolatry is the root of all sin ultimately.

But lust is the root of adultery, and it has to be dealt with in an extreme way, in a clear way.

Again, most of the listeners probably felt secure.

You've heard it was said, don't commit adultery.

Yep, yes, Jesus.

And then he says, listen, it's your heart.

If you look at a woman with lustful intent, you've committed adultery with her.

Same thing with men.

Ladies, you're not off the hook.

And look, this isn't the same as noticing attractiveness, by the way.

Like, it that's disingenuous to just say, like, you know, Brad Pitt's an ugly ogre.

No, no, the dude's good looking.

Like, you know, I used to get so upset when my wife would tell me she thinks David Beckham is handsome.

I'm like, what?

David Beckham, he's a soccer guy, but you know, what are you talking about?

He's not handsome.

No, the dude's good looking.

He's attractive.

I mean, I don't not I don't think so, but she does.

I get I'm not gonna go down that rap.

But like, that's disingenuous.

If you start to just take this to mean you can't notice that someone is objectively good looking, that's not what Jesus is saying.

What does he say?

Looking at them with lustful intent.

Lustful intent.

It's where you're looking at them and your mind starts going places that are reserved for things that should only exist in the beauty and the gift of marriage.

Your mind and your heart starts going places that it's not designed to go.

Lust is not accidental noticing, it's a deliberate desire that turns a person into an object of consumption.

You just want to consume.

Love sacrifices, lust consumes.

Lust wants to take part of them and have it satisfy this flesh desire in you.

Lustful intent.

Love gives, it pours out, lust takes from someone.

Love sees image bearers, sees them as an image bearer of God.

Lust sees a product for you.

That's why pornography is so destructive.

That's why it is absolutely destructive.

And people justify and say, well, you know, I'm not really doing it, it's not hurting anyone.

No, I could go into many reasons why it's hurting many people, even to look at it.

But you are taking from an image-bearer of God to fulfill your desire.

It's lustful intent.

It trains the heart to detach pleasure from covenant love.

It teaches consumption without sacrifice and desire without commitment, intimacy without vulnerability with someone.

And Jesus says the issue isn't merely what's on a screen, it's what's happening in our hearts.

And he doesn't say we should just tailor swift it and shake it off.

Like he's not, oh well, you know, just when that happens, just, you know, eh, kind of shake it off, move on.

No, what does he say?

He says we need to deal with it in an extreme way.

Scripture's clear.

Flee from sexual temptation.

Run.

It says, flee from the devil, and the devil will flee from you.

But we can't ask God for victory while protecting our favorite temptation.

He can say, God, please deliver me from this, but I'm not going to cut it off.

He's like, listen, if this is an issue, kill it.

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

He's not promoting mutilation.

All right?

Jesus is not literally saying, go pluck out your eyes.

By the way, you can pluck out your eyes and still have lust.

That's not what he's saying.

But what he is saying is, if you have an issue that you know is seeking to destroy you, you have to do everything possible to cut it off and cut it out of your life.

Confess it.

Expose it.

Bring it into the light.

Sin cannot live when you bring it into the light and you make it known.

Confess it to your spouse.

Confess it to if you're a guy dealing with the brothers who you know love you.

And you're like, I don't know how they're going to react.

If you have something confessed to you, react with grace and love and be thankful that they confessed it to you.

I know it's hard, but be thankful.

It takes courage.

And then ask yourself, what keeps feeding this thing?

Is it your social media habits?

What you're scrolling through all the time?

If that's not helping, cut it off.

Delete it.

Get rid of it.

So what?

Your 80 followers aren't going to see your vacation picks.

Like, get rid of it.

How's it helping you?

That's not even cutting off an eye.

Like, that's just cutting off a fingernail.

Just chuck it.

Your late-night browsing habits?

Emotional attachments to somebody, you just find yourself gravitating toward them.

Cut it off.

Before it destroys you.

Don't manage temptation.

If you're trying to manage temptation, you will never see victory in it.

Kill the supply lines.

Cut it off.

That's not legalism.

It's not legal.

And I'm not saying you're wrong for having social media.

It's not legalism.

What I'm saying is, you know, if you have a conviction, you need to do everything you can to fight that thing because it's only good for you and for your freedom and your life.

There's one more piece Jesus is going to address in this passage, and it's related.

There was something pertinent 2,000 years ago, and it still is today.

Here's what he says: it was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Really complicated passage here.

And I'd need three more sermons to go into all the details of it.

I'm sure Pastor Kirk would love to talk to you at length about this issue.

But here's the point in the context of what he's saying here.

His point he's getting at is look, sin starts internally, reconciliation matters to God, but God cares about covenant faithfulness, not loopholes.

Religion and the Pharisees were about introducing loopholes to get around their unrighteousness by looking righteous.

He says, listen, I'm not here for loopholes.

In this culture at this time, ancient Jewish culture, divorce, they spent more time debating about divorce and talking about what's permissible for divorce than they ever spent talking about how to love their spouse better.

Like that'd be a great debate.

Hey, how do you love your spouse better?

Oh man, I should do that.

No, they're sitting around talking about, oh, how can I get out of this marriage?

Not how to love other time, but how to leave.

That's how they spend all their time.

It's like, listen, you're trying to find loopholes.

This is a covenant you've made.

You are one with this person.

It was treated casually.

In fact, some rabbis permitted divorce over trivial things.

Like, literally, you burn your dinner.

Like, Lord, I asked for medium well.

Can't you give me a rare wife who can make a rare steak?

This is what people were finding loopholes in marriage to try to get around.

He says, listen, you are missing the heart of God.

You're missing the whole point.

When you made this covenant, it's designed to reflect the heart of God and how he is toward us.

Even in our mistakes, even in our sin, he runs after us.

He keeps grace upon grace upon grace.

And by that, by the way that we love each other, by the way that we reconcile, by the way that we stay in our marriages and hold to each other, by that we reveal to the world the heart of God who runs after us in our brokenness and our mess because he loves you.

And that kind of love is what we're called to experience and to share.

So that the world can see who he is.

People always want to ask, and it's the same way in our sin.

People always want to ask, what's allowed?

How close can I get to sin?

God, where's the loophole?

Is this sin?

Does this count as sin?

Do you miss the heart of God?

It's not how can I get close to sin?

It's how can I live free and alive in Christ?

It's not how do I get a loophole out of my marriage?

It's how can my marriage be something that the world looks at and says, man, God is so good in the way he loves, and that's reflected in the way they love each other.

It mirrors God's love toward us.

Here's the deeper issue.

Notice this passage isn't about anger, it's not rules about anger, it's not commandments about anger, it's not rules about lust or divorce.

It's all about our hearts.

About understanding the heart of God, that we might live lives that are abundantly free in Him.

He exposes, Jesus exposes something here that is really hard to admit.

That we are all far more sinful than we want to admit.

That when you get underneath it, yeah, we didn't kill somebody.

But the root of killing someone is there.

Yeah, we may have not cheated on our spouse, but the root of that is there.

We may not be getting divorced.

But the heart there that leads there, if we're not careful about the way we love and the way we understand God's love through one another, we can easily become that.

And it's not even about becoming that, it's about how far away from the design of God and his love and his life we're supposed to be, we're supposed to be walking in.

We get so far away from that.

If righteousness requires purity of heart, who of us can stand?

Well, one of us.

Only one could.

The only one who could.

And he tells us the secret of it is knowing God's heart and drawing near to him and walking in that freedom.

He isn't giving us impossible standards to crush us.

He's revealing our need for a savior.

He's revealing our need to be changed from the heart outwardly.

The one preaching the Sermon on the Mount is the only one who perfectly lived it.

Jesus never sinned in anger.

He never lusted after a woman.

His heart was perfectly pure.

He fulfilled the righteousness that we failed to achieve.

And then he went to the cross.

Think about the irony of this.

Our anger murdered Christ.

The anger of humanity is what murdered Christ.

Appeasing that hunger and that lust in who they are is what ultimately led to him going to a cross.

The one who had every reason to write us off and say, I want nothing to do with those people anymore.

I divorced myself from them.

He chose in covenant love to love us because his new covenant is greater.

He made a covenant promise.

And yet from the cross, he cried out, Father, forgive them.

He pours grace out.

That's astonishing.

The one we offended offers reconciliation.

The one we betrayed offers us covenant mercy.

The gospel says you are more sinful than you ever thought, but you are more loved by him than you ever could imagine.

And he doesn't just cleanse your external sins.

Jesus cleanses our internal corruption and he brings us to life and he renews and he restores.

He gives new hearts.

We need a new heart.

This is all a heart issue.

We need a new heart.

Ezekiel says it like this, and I will give you a new heart, a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Maybe you're here today and you've never realized you need a new heart.

You've been trying to manage your temptations, you've been trying to manage your issues, your anger issues, your lust issues, your relational issues.

You're not going to manage it.

The only solution is to be given a brand new heart by the only one who can do that.

Have you ever gone to Jesus and say, I know that I need a new heart?

The old me needs to die.

I need to be made new.

I need to be made alive.

I need to be reborn.

Have you ever said, I give my life to you, I want the old one to die?

He offers you a new life.

He offers you forgiveness.

All of that stuff that you walk around carrying the guilt and the shame of that sits like a weight on you.

He's taken your sin and your guilt and your shame.

He took the punishment that you deserve, and he offers you freedom of life.

And more than that, he offers you a brand new heart to experience the kind of abundant life that you can experience in Christ.

And even if you're here and you've known him forever, we need heart checks.

Every one of us.

Again, it's a progression.

Sin is a progression.

And all of us sit somewhere in that progression.

But he shares these things to identify them so that we can come before him and say, Lord, I want to lay this down before you today.

I don't want to walk in that anger.

I don't want to walk in that lust of my heart.

I want to see people as image bearers of you, and I want to pursue reconciliation and walk in peace as much as it depends on me.

Our peace with God.

Praise God didn't depend on us.

It depended on the one who did everything that he could and did everything that was needed to give us peace.

That's what it means to walk in the kingdom.

I pray that we would.

Would you join me in prayer?

God, thank you so much for your grace.

Thank you that you continue to pour it out on us and pour it out on us.

And God, we don't want to abuse that.

We certainly don't want to be people who come and praise you with our lips and yet our hearts are far from you.

So God, I pray that in those ways that you've just pricked our hearts today, in those ways that you've tugged at our minds and our hearts to know that these are things that we're wrestling with and dealing with.

These are things you call us to deal with.

Not because you you're you're putting forth your commandments, but because you love us so deeply, God, I pray that today there would be more freedom in our lives because of the word that your Holy Spirit speaks.

For anyone here walking with bitterness and anger toward anyone.

Lord, I pray that that that would be laid down before you and they would see the grace you offer them and that they would offer grace.

I pray for reconciliation of relationships in this church and in your church.

God, I pray for those dealing with trying to manage their temptation.

God, I pray that we would take steps to kill it, to cut off the supply, to not feed the things that we think we can manage.

God, you are the one who has who has come to take sin and crush it under your feet.

So Lord, I pray that we would long to see it crushed in our own lives so that we can be brought to life.

God, thank you for Jesus.

Thank you for salvation.

I pray that from that place we would, with genuine hearts, knowing our own brokenness, we'd be able to raise our voices to you.

I ask that in Jesus' name.

Amen.