The rabbi on the mountain uttered shocking phrase after shocking phrase. First, he identified the most unlikely of people as blessed. Then he told the same ragtag crowd they had an incredible, cosmic calling. In fact, the beginning of his sermon was all so jarring that they began to think Jesus was upending everything they knew about God and Scripture.
To the contrary, he said, this is what God and his Word have been saying all along.
Then, he taught how to become all that he was saying.
In this sermon we will walk in his jarring words again.
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Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: Kingdom Come: Sermon on the Mount
June 29, 2014
Obey
Matthew 5:17-26
All week I’ve been thinking about these passages, and I have had conversations with people, and some of them have been folks dealing with difficult circumstances…relational brokenness, their marriages are falling apart, or maybe their childhood history as they’re sharing it was really, really difficult. It’s easy for us as we hear those stories to think, “Oh man, your life is really cursed,” when Jesus is saying, “No, right there the kingdom is poised to break in. It’s at hand. For every person, the blessing is there.”
It just has changed my whole outlook, my whole perspective this week, looking at every single person, thinking, “The blessing of the kingdom of God is right nearby. How Lord? How do you want that blessing to intervene in their lives?” So these Beatitudes we begin with every week are words of grace. They’re not standards to which we must live.
Every time you meet someone who when you look at that person and you think their life should be rotten and miserable, yet they seem to exude this godly joy, it’s a living embodiment of what Jesus is talking about in these Beatitudes.
I think back to a man who we met in Palestine, in Israel, at the West Bank, and he has given his life to be a peacemaker. It sounds like a noble calling. In many ways it is a noble calling, but the truth is that his role, what he has chosen as a nonviolent peacemaker, puts him in the middle of the crossfire. So he has chosen not to take up arms and fight for his rights or embrace radicalism, be a bomber, nor has he chosen to just throw up his hands and say, “Well, we’re in such a rotten situation. We get so persecuted and oppressed, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
He has not chosen apathy nor has he chosen violence; instead he has chosen this way of peacemaking, and it has cost him dearly. He has been in and out of jail. He has been beaten. He has been abused. He invited us over to dinner one night, and we sat in his home, and just even looking around at his home, he has nothing. He has a beautiful family, but as far as material possessions are concerned he has nothing. It would be so easy to look at a man like this and think, “Oh, where has God been in your life?”
Yet when you talk to him, he begins to share, and he has a God story after God story after God story, and he has this hope that is just exuding out of him, and he is this living embodiment that the kingdom of God really is at hand. It’s close…even for the people who you would not expect to experience it. Even for the people who when you look at them you think, “They’re not experiencing it,” in fact, that kingdom of God is coming out of his life in beautiful, powerful ways.
Maybe you’re the person this morning as we’re reading this together. Here goes the Beatitudes… Maybe you’re the person who feels like you’ve experienced the curse of life. You have made the bad decision. You’re living in regret. Maybe you’re that person. Again we remember every week that these Beatitudes are words of grace, that even if you do feel spiritually bankrupt, like you have nothing in the tank, nothing to offer, you’ve blown it, the kingdom of heaven is yours. That’s what Jesus says.
Even this morning you should show up and maybe you feel like you’re in that spot where pretty empty. Jesus is saying in these words, “The kingdom of heaven is yours.” So if you have your Bibles, just open already to Matthew 5. We’re going to be reading there. If you haven’t opened your Bibles yet, go ahead and open them up to Matthew 5. If you don’t have a Bible, put your hand in the air, and our faithful volunteers will make sure you have a Bible to read with in Matthew 5.
There’s an interesting thing that’s going on here in the Sermon on the Mount. As Jesus begins to teach the crowds, he begins with that first statement, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The people who are bankrupt, who have nothing. But when you get to the end of chapter 5, not quite halfway through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives this other command where he says, “You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Sometimes we read that and we think, “Oh, that’s impossible. Perfection? Really? Nobody’s perfect,” which is true. Jesus is perfect, but we often read that word perfect and we think, “Oh, that means we never make a mistake, that we are morally perfect,” but actually in the original language, the idea of perfection isn’t so much moral perfection as it is wholeness, that our relationships are whole, that our relationship with God is whole, that our lives have integrity, they’re integrated around the words of God.
So what we were seeing in the flow of the Sermon on the Mount is how the hollow become whole. How the poor in spirit move toward perfection in the sense of wholeness or completeness. Jesus is laying it out very clearly for us. I’ve been reading this week in this passage, thinking, “Wow, I want to take that journey. I want to move from hollowness to wholeness,” because we all have those areas of our lives where we know inside in our hearts there’s stuff that’s hollow.
There are broken relationships. There are things we wish we hadn’t done. There are choices we are considering that we know will bring lots of pain. We have that hollowness, and yet here as we’re sitting with Jesus on the mountain listening to his words, he’s saying, “Let me lead you from that hollowness, poor in spirit, all the way through to real wholeness.” As he’s doing this, as he’s showing us this journey, it’s a bit shocking actually because the people who you expect to be cursed are actually blessed.
Then even more so (we pick it up in verse 13), Jesus begins talking about these people who are unexpectedly blessed, and then he also gives them this amazing calling. He says, “You who are unexpectedly blessed are also unexpectedly called to something massive.” So again, verse 13. Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-16)
Salt and light…this great calling Jesus is putting onto the ragtag bunch gathered to listen and all the disciples who listen. Salt and light. It’s really difficult for us to grasp the significance of these two images because in our lives salt is everywhere. There’s always salt on tables, salt in kitchens. In fact, we make it a point to try to reduce salt as much as we can. We’re trying to lower the sodium we take in. Low-sodium diets. Our goal in life actually is to have as little salt as possible and yet have it still taste good.
Then if we get in trouble with our doctors for whatever reason involving sodium, we just eat stuff that doesn’t taste very good. That’s what happens. So for us, salt is just kind of almost like a throwaway substance. But in the ancient world, we have to recognize that salt was incredibly rare and incredibly valuable. The great value in salt was not just that it gave flavor; it also preserved.
They didn’t really have a lot of refrigerators around back then, and so the way you would preserve meat or even vegetables was with salt. That’s what kept your food in the pantry long enough to feed your family. It was so valuable, so rare in fact, that oftentimes soldiers or other employees were paid in salt. That’s where that phrase comes from, “He’s worth his weight in salt.”
Or even the word salary. You can hear at the beginning s-a-l. It comes from the original root that word for salt. You’re paid in salt. So now when Jesus is saying, “You are the salt of the earth,” he is saying not only that we have a role of preservation within the community of bringing flavor and preserving stuff that’s decaying otherwise, but it’s also amazingly valuable. That’s what Jesus is saying. This is so valuable.
Then on top of that, he says, “You’re the light of the world.” For the people listening familiar with their Old Testament, that imagery of light would’ve echoed all sorts of Scripture in the Old Testament about the calling of the people of Israel. God had this planned from the very beginning of the book of Genesis, moving through the Old Testament, to use this family of Abraham to be a display, to be the people who proclaim, shout out to the masses the goodness of God.
We get to the book of Isaiah and we hear the people of Israel are called to be light. Listen. Isaiah 49:6: God is saying, “It is too light a thing that you [Israel] should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
So the idea of light here is so valuable. Jesus: “You’re valuable salt. You’re valuable light.” Again, it’s hard for us to grasp the value of light a lot of times. We talk around here in Atlanta about light pollution. If you go out at night and it’s a little bit overcast, the city glow of Atlanta will just light up the clouds. It’s almost really difficult to see the stars if you live close the city because there’s just so much light in the air.
But back then they didn’t have high-wire power stations running through neighborhoods and street lamps and big lit-up buildings or anything like that. Back then, in darkness light was piercing and carried a long way. Jesus is talking here about this light of the world that’s shining like a city on a hill, this light you don’t cover up and hide. It’s light that penetrates. It’s salt that preserves. This is a massively high calling.
The thing about both salt and light is that they function their best when they’re shining or they’re flavoring into the community. So Jesus, as he’s calling his followers salt and light, he’s really carrying with it this sense of calling out into the community where the salt can preserve. You know the salt in a shaker doesn’t really do anything. It has to be on the food. It has to be in the mix.
The light under a bushel, as Jesus says, doesn’t really pierce or penetrate anywhere. This is why we as a church, even in obedience to this Scripture, we take very seriously the calling not to constantly just gather together and have lots of good gatherings in here but rather to be out in the community.
This is why we do Backyard Bible Clubs. This is why this fall we’re going to start these Good News Clubs at about a dozen elementary schools in the area, working with other churches, working with our kids, with volunteers and leaders to, after school, share the good news of Jesus. This is why we’re doing the Summer Manna project. Some of you guys may have seen that listed on your announcements, where a lot of the kids who rely on paid lunch at school no longer have lunches available to them in the community. So we’re collecting food to be able to help feed.
This is part of what it means to be salt and light. It’s a contrast to society. If most of the world is moving this way in the direction of selfishness, Jesus is saying, “Hey, you people, even though you’re a little ragtag, you’re the people who are moving in the opposite direction, the people of blessing, the people who are tasted and seen in the community, you’re salt and light in the community. You’re the people who will display what this blessing really looks like.”
Certainly, if you were there listening to Jesus give this… The problem is sometimes we’ve been in church, and if you’ve been in church for a while you’ve probably heard this and it seems familiar. Salt and light. It just loses its edge. But think back. If you’re there, one of the original people listening to this, listen to what Jesus has done in these first 15 verses.
First, he has said, “All the people you think are on the outside, excluded, who have no shot at the kingdom, actually they’re blessed because the kingdom is really close to them. Not only that, but those people who you thought were so far away from the kingdom are called to the highest calling, to be salt and to be light.” Jesus is blessing the lowliest of people and then giving them the highest calling.
You can imagine if you’re sitting there listening to this, “Jesus, what are you talking about? You must be off the deep end. Like, have you said, ‘Everybody is welcome here?'” Has Jesus gone liberal? Is Jesus off the reservation? Has Jesus left the denomination? This question starts coming up, like, “Jesus, are you completely ignoring that whole Old Testament Law? Are you starting things totally from scratch, totally over?” You can just feel this in the text as Jesus is teaching.
So then we get to verse 17, and Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20)
Whew! All right. Here we go. Now we’re getting into it. It’s all nice when it’s Beatitudes and salt and light. There’s a little trouble with the trample-under-foot part, but then, here we are. Jesus says, “Don’t think I’ve gone off the reservation. Don’t think I’m upending everything you’ve thought about the Old Testament.” Actually these verses I just read, 17-20, are probably the most important verses in the entire Bible about how to read the Old Testament.
Here’s what Jesus is saying, “Don’t think I came to abolish it. I’m not upending it.” In fact, the language is really strong. When he says, “Do not think,” it’s actually like, “Don’t even consider for a second I am devaluing the Old Testament. Rather, I am fulfilling them.” He’s showing us here’s how to read the Old Testament.
When you read the Old Testament, read it as though it is fully filled with Jesus. Constantly as you read through that Old Testament, be looking for the work, the person, the heart of Jesus. That’s how it goes. That’s how we read the Old Testament now. Jesus is the fulfillment. He fully fills that Old Testament story. Jesus loves the Old Testament. That was his Book. It was what he had on earth. He grew up reading it. In fact, it was probably the extent of his library.
My hope would be that we too would learn to love the Old Testament the way Jesus loves the Old Testament. He is serious about this. In fact, one commentator said that maybe it’d be a good idea, it might increase our love for the Old Testament, if we called it Jesus’ Bible rather than the Old Testament, because that’s what it is. That’s what he had. He had the Old Testament.
He takes the Old Testament very, very seriously. In fact, he starts talking about some of these laws. He says nothing is going pass away. Not an iota. Not a dot. He has this strong sense that the Old Testament is accurate and trustworthy. But then he says whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
There’s this sense here that he is speaking both about the commandments of the Old Testament and the commandments he’s about to give here in the remainder of the Sermon on the Mount. So this is interesting. Sometimes it causes us to have some challenging questions, because maybe you’re reading through the Old Testament and you get to Leviticus 11.
You’re doing one of those read through the Bible in a year. You’ve made it to Leviticus 11. Congratulations. Sometimes it takes a little while to get past all the burnt offerings, the peace offerings, the wave offerings in the first, like, seven chapters of Leviticus. But you make it to Leviticus 11, and there you read one of the purity laws about food and keeping kosher for God’s people, for the Israelites.
There you see in Leviticus 11:9 where the Scripture says, “These you may eat, of all that are in the waters. Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. But anything in the seas or the rivers that does not have fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is detestable to you.” (Leviticus 11:9-10)
Okay, so you’re reading that, and then you think about the last time you went to a seafood restaurant. Did you evaluate the menu in terms of the things with fins and scales, or did you perhaps order something that does not have fins and scales, like shrimp…delicious, delectable shrimp? I love shrimp. I love it cold in cocktail sauce. I love it fried in butter. I love it fried in anything really. I love it fried with coconut. I mean, shrimp is so good.
Here’s Jesus saying, “Don’t relax any of these commandments.” You read in the Old Testament that you have this law about not eating swarming creatures that lack fins and scales. That’s definitely shrimp (or lobster if you can afford it). You read this law and you go, “Okay, well, what am I supposed to do? Am I still supposed to obey this? Should I feel bad or guilty for having eaten the shrimp?” What do you think? I mean, it’s not really good for you, but before God is it a sin to eat shrimp? Jesus says, “Don’t relax any of these commands.”
Here’s what’s going on. Remember Jesus shows us, “Here’s how you read the Old Testament. Look for the way that I fully fill the Old Testament.” So as we get to know Jesus more and more, specifically in the gospel of Matthew, in Matthew 15, Jesus talks about how there’s nothing that goes into the mouth that make a man unclean. Rather, it’s what comes out of the heart that defiles a man.
This law in Leviticus 11 is a clean, a purity kind of law. It’s one of those boundaries God put in place in the Old Testament so the people would know how to live with purity. Yet here Jesus, because he has come and he is the fulfillment of the Law, we find that true purity, true cleanness isn’t found necessarily in the shrimp we eat or don’t eat but, rather, is found in Jesus. So Jesus is the fulfillment of this passage about shrimp, if that makes sense.
So should we care about purity and cleanness? Yes, but it is a deeper purity, a deeper cleanness through Jesus. Not just a cleanness depending on shrimp. So yes, you can order the coconut shrimp, but you should really pay attention to the Old Testament. In fact, you should love the Old Testament.
Sometimes we can get so caught up in the details… “When is this Scripture fulfilled, Jesus? What commands are least? What commands are great?” Sometimes we get so caught up in the details of the passage here, and there are answers to those things, and we can research that, and we can dig into that, but sometimes we can get so caught up in the details that we miss the big point.
The big point for Jesus here is that right at the beginning, right before he gets into some of the real commands of the Sermon on the Mount, as he’s setting us up to walk on that road from hollowness to wholeness, he’s saying right from the beginning that the Scripture is going to be essential to that, that God’s Word, the Law, is crucial. It is central to the work of transformation.
That’s really what he’s doing here, which is why every week when we get together here at Grace, we open the Bible. We read it together, because we take these words from Jesus very seriously. Jesus is discovered through the Scripture, and so we dig into the Scripture week after week, ask God to breathe on it so that it might transform us and change us.
So the big picture here of these verses as Jesus is talking is really that we would have a hunger, a respect, a desire for the Word of God. The truth is sometimes we don’t have it. Sometimes we don’t really want to read the Bible. The news, the sports page, just about anything seems more engaging than the Bible. I mean, it’s true. It happens to me. Sometimes reading the Bible just is not the number one option in my life. I’d rather just eat some Cheerios in the morning. Sometimes reading the Bible just feels like a job, which I guess for me literally it is.
But listen. Let me tell you. One of the most powerful prayers you can pray is in those times when your heart is not passionate for the Bible, just ask God to give you passion for it. A lot of times, we try to think, “Okay, well, I have to work up some enthusiasm for the Bible. If I just keep reading it then I’ll eventually love it.” You’re probably not going to love it if that’s your approach. That’s true in your marriage too.
What we need is God’s help. That’s why it begins with the Beatitudes. It begins with grace, this reminder the kingdom is nearby. So in those moments when you’re not excited about the Word, just say, “Okay, Lord, I confess I’m not very excited about this.” I pray this prayer somewhat regularly, probably too regularly. “But Lord, today I don’t have that hunger, that passion for your Word. Give me that hunger.”
Just that simple prayer. “Lord, Lord, put in me a desire for your Scripture.” As that begins to happen, that awakening, that desire, and we begin to read and the Lord begins to speak and transform through us, that sets us up for everything else in the Sermon on the Mount. So now Jesus begins walking through the real nuts and bolts of this Sermon on the Mount. He has introduced things. The blessing is at hand. The calling is high. The Scripture is central. Now we get down to the nitty gritty.
Starting at verse 21, “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 to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
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, 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 until you have paid the last penny.” (Matthew 5:21-26)
Oh man. Jesus now is leading us on the way from hollowness to wholeness, and the first issue he deals with is anger. Anger and murder. Maybe you’ve found this to be the case. Really sometimes reading the Sermon on the Mount can come across as a little defeating. It can feel sometimes that this is not even obey-able. Jesus is saying in the old days you shouldn’t murder, and now I’m not even allowed to be angry at all? But I was angry 22 minutes ago.
You just think, “Well, is this even possible?” Is Jesus really giving us something we can live, or is he just setting up some standard that is supposed to crush our will and we have to rely solely on the grace of God in everything? Well, we do have to rely on the grace of God, but he is also, at the same time, giving us something we can live out.
But that’s not always the way it has been interpreted. In fact, people as famous as Martin Luther, when he read the Sermon on the Mount, in his sermons on it, he says that the sermon preaches a way of life that is unattainable. Karl Barth, coming out of that same Lutheran tradition about a hundred years ago, said, “It would be sheer folly to interpret the imperatives [commands] of the Sermon on the Mount as if we should bestir ourselves to actualize these pictures.” Basically, he says it is foolish to think we could ever live this out.
Another great scholar, Gerhard Kittel, says, “The meaning of the Sermon on the Mount is: Demolish! It can only tear down. In the long run it has only one purpose: to expose and exhibit the great poverty in empiric human beings.” It’s kind of a downer. On and on it goes. In fact, many, many people have said the Sermon on the Mount is unattainable.
Maybe you’ve even heard the good news or evangelism done this way. The strategy of going up to someone and saying, “Hey, so you think you’re a good person?”
“Yeah, I’m a pretty good person.”
“What do you think about the Ten Commandments?”
“Well, I’ve never killed anybody.”
“Great. Have you ever been angry?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’re a murderer!”
“Oh no.”
Now in a certain sense, the Law in the Old Testament reveals our brokenness before God and also in a certain sense this Sermon on the Mount reveals our brokenness before God. But there’s way more to this than merely a crushing impossible standard. Dallas Willard said it this way. He says sometimes people read the Sermon on the Mount as though Moses was mean.
Like, “You know, the Ten Commandments and everything else. You can’t live up to these.” Then Jesus comes along and he’s even meaner. “You can’t even look at a woman with lust or else you’re an adulterer.” It just becomes this impossible sermon, and you read it, and it just feels like discouragement.
Robert Frost, the great American poet, in his poem “A Masque of Mercy,” one of the characters speaking in the poem is asked, “What do you think of the Sermon on the Mount?” The character says it’s a beautiful impossibility, an irresistible impossibility, a lofty beauty no one can live up to.
I think for a lot of people, the Sermon on the Mount occupies that space. It’s a beautiful impossibility. Lovely. Great words, Jesus. Impossible to live out. But is that Jesus’ heart? Is this really what he’s doing up there on the top of that mountain as he’s sharing with his disciples and the crowds that have gathered?
By the end of the sermon, what we see is that actually Jesus is saying the people who hear and do these words are the ones who are like those who build their house on a rock. Jesus is saying that there are people who do it.
So apparently for Jesus, this isn’t an impossible standard set up merely to crush our moral aspirations before God. This is something that can be done, something that can be lived. So then how can we read it? How can we read this passage on anger and the other passages that are to come in such a way that we might be transformed, that we actually might live out what Jesus is talking about?
Now here’s the problem. Through most analysis, most commentators, scholars, through history, when you read what they have written about these passages, about anger, lust, divorce, oaths, and so forth, they’re often called the Antitheses, which is kind of a long word that means basically two opposites. The antithesis or the opposites they recognize is that Jesus begins by saying, “This is what it used to say in the Law. Don’t murder.” But then here is the antithesis, the new way, the new thing Jesus is teaching. “Don’t even be angry.” So it sets up these either/or statements.
Don’t commit adultery. Actually, don’t even look lustfully. So they set them up in these one/two antitheses or opposites. But here’s what happens. Because they read it as Jesus is saying, “Don’t murder,” and then over here, “Can’t even be angry,” all the focus is now on not being angry. If we read it that way, we try to do everything we can never to be angry. Not only is that impossible; it’s unbiblical.
You realize God himself gets angry. He is slow to anger it says in the Old Testament, but he gets angry. He snorts. His nostrils flare, it says in the Psalms. Jesus gets angry. In Mark 3:5, the man with the withered hand in the synagogue. The Pharisees and the scribes are watching. They don’t want Jesus to heal the man on the Sabbath. It says Jesus was angry.
In the passage we just saw, Jesus is saying, “If you say, ‘You fool,’ you’ll be liable to the hell of fire.” But then if you flip forward, later on in Matthew, Jesus is talking to his opponents, and he says in Matthew 23:17, “You fools!” Wait a second, Jesus. Are you condemning yourself? Because you just told us back here we’re not supposed to say, “You fools,” and now over here you call them fools. Same word. What’s going on? What’s going on here?
Here’s the problem. If we read it as an antithesis, an either/or, the old way and the new way, what we do is we turn this, “Don’t be angry; never be lustful,” into the command, and we try to spend our whole lives getting rid of anger. But anger is the natural response to pain and injustice in our lives. If people abuse us, if we see something that’s troubling, things that go against the heart of God, anger is actually necessary in many ways.
The trick is ruling or managing our anger well. Like Paul says in Ephesians 4, “Be angry, yet do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.” It’s something that needs to be handled wisely. So if we spend our whole lives thinking Jesus told us never to be angry and trying as well as we possibly can just to remove all the anger from our lives, we feel defeated, and it’s an impossible calling. It’s an impossible task.
Fortunately, that’s not what Jesus is doing here. There is a writer, a scholar, named Glen Stassen, who has some really helpful stuff on the Sermon on the Mount. He says actually these passages are not dyads, two parts, or antitheses, two parts; they’re in fact triads. They have three parts. He goes through the whole Sermon on the Mount and he says over and over with amazing consistency Jesus gives us these little three-part teachings, building one after the other, after the other, after the other, the other.
What are these three parts? When Jesus does it, each of these triads, Stassen says, begins with a traditional teaching. “You have heard it said.” “It was told those of old.” Here Jesus then quotes most often the Old Testament passage. In our case, the verse we’re looking at, verse 21, “You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” So he gives first the traditional teaching. This is what everybody thinks and believes. Traditional teaching.
Then Jesus goes into the vicious cycle that confirms why that’s the traditional teaching. Let me give you an explanation of what I mean there. Look in verse 22. Jesus says, “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
What Jesus is talking about here is the outcome, or the vicious cycle of maintaining anger in our lives. He’s not saying, “Never be angry.” He’s saying, “Whoever is angry ends up in judgment. Whoever is angry and nurses that anger ends up in the place of a murderer. Whoever is in insulting his brother is liable to the council. Whoever says, ‘You fool,’ is liable to the hell of fire.”
What Jesus is saying is that these are the warning signs. These are the indicators that anger is not just being healthily provoked and then moving through us, but it’s actually being nursed and cultivated within us. In fact, the word there, everyone who is angry with his brother, that word angry… There are two words for anger in the original language. One of them is the anger that flares up quickly. The Greeks described it like burning straw. Just, poof! and it’s gone.
Then there’s another one that is this long-term, extended anger that is nursed and cultivated. That’s the word that’s used here. Jesus is talking about nursing and cultivating that anger. What happens as a result of that? You become a deeply angry person and it leads you into places where you experience immense judgment. I think we would know this to be true.
I think we understand in our own lives or maybe in those around us, our loved ones, that when they are dealing with those vicious cycles of anger without any release or reconciliation it just eats away. Even physically, people get ulcers. People sleep less. They live shorter lives. Anger eats away.
So Jesus first gives a traditional teaching. Then he goes into the vicious cycle. This is not the command. In fact, there is no command in that second part. He never forbids being angry. He just simply says, “Here’s what happens when you cultivate anger.”
Then the third piece is what Stassen calls a transforming initiative, where Jesus actually says, “Now, if you want to know the way out of a life of anger, here it is. Let me show it to you. Now let me actually lay out for you a path to escape the vicious cycle of anger so you might actually live a life that is more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees, that you actually might become whole rather than maintaining that hollowness of anger within.”
So what is this transforming initiative that Jesus gives? Well, here, this third part, is where the commands begin to come in. This is where Jesus really says, “Here’s what you need to do.” We just read verse 23. “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.”
In the ancient world, going to the altar to offer your sacrifice before God was priority number one. Nothing should take precedence over that. Here Jesus is saying, “Here’s the transforming initiative. Here’s the thing to do. Here’s what you can do to deal with anger in your life. Prioritize reconciliation.” He says, “First, be reconciled to your brother.” That word first is so powerful. Before anything else, be reconciled. What would your life be like…? We don’t go up to the altar of the temple and offer animal sacrifices anymore, but we do every week come together…
Imagine what it would be like if every week we came to worship and before offering that praise, that sacrifice of worship to God, the singing and everything else, we just took a quick inventory. “Does anyone have anything against me? Have I provoked anyone this week? Are there any ruptured relationships around me? Maybe some gossip that got a little bit out of control? Or maybe I really don’t like that person and so I just stuck it to them at work? I said that insulting thing to that person in front of everyone.”
Maybe it’s within your own family or in your own marriage. We know how to pull our spouse’s strings just a little bit sometimes. If every time we got together, can you imagine what it would be like if before we even opened our mouths to sing we actually took Jesus seriously and said, “Wow, first go and be reconciled”? So every week we just made sure we had a clean slate. Do you know what that would do to our lives, rather than letting that stuff just sort of muck around inside of us and generate more and more brokenness, but actually just to deal with it?
Jesus is showing us a very simple transforming initiative that changes so much of our way, our approach to anger in life. What do we usually do? Usually we avoid reconciliation. Usually we feel the hurt of anger, the slight or something else, something has broken down. We don’t want to go to that person. They’re angry with us. I’m angry with him. I don’t want to go. So we de-prioritize it.
What’s Jesus saying? “Top prioritize it! Move it up to the top of the list. Reconciliation number one, before anything else. Drop your offering at this altar. Go be reconciled quickly and with your accuser (verse 25) while you’re going with him to court.” So go directly to that person. Don’t involve a bunch of other people. Jesus is giving us something that is actually doable. If we actually did this, I believe it would transform so much of our lives, especially our inner lives and what’s going on inside of us.
Cain and Abel is a classic example of this. Cain, of course, and Abel are two brothers in Genesis 4, the sons of Adam of Eve. They bring their offerings before the Lord, and the Lord accepts Abel’s offering, rejects Cain’s offering. Now most likely from the way Cain understood the world the reason God would have rejected his offering is that his offering wasn’t good enough, that God looked at it and said, “No, it’s not good enough.”
So Cain is a farmer. He doesn’t know how to grow good enough crops, and so he feels like he can never satisfy God, and it makes him angry. Listen to what God says to Cain. After his offering, he had no regard, and so Cain was very angry. This is Genesis 4:5. “So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.'” (Genesis 4:5-7)
The moment of anger. Cain is disappointed that God has not taken his offering. He’s jealous and angry with his brother for producing an offering that was received by God. He feels like, “That was the best I have. I don’t have anything else I could give to God, so I feel totally trapped by God in this situation. I can never make an offering good enough that’s going to please you.” He’s just consumed with anger. He could just feel it ramping up within him.
God says, “Hey, anger is crouching at your door. It is ready to devour you. Rule over it. You need to learn what to do with this anger. “Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” (Genesis 4:8) His anger made him a murderer. The vicious cycle of anger led him to murder. Exactly what Jesus is talking about here.
What could Cain have done? Could Cain have been reconciled to Abel? “Hey, Abel. Man, I was really jealous of you. Let’s be reconciled.” Maybe Abel, who was a better shepherd than Cain, actually teaches Cain how to grow better crops. Maybe even how to produce a better offering or whatever else God would receive. The whole story changes if when Cain and Abel talk they reconcile rather than continue in the vicious cycle that leads to murder.
So this is what Jesus is doing here with anger. He’s giving us a realistic way to face our anger, to face the hurt of domination. He’s saying, “Okay, if you feel powerless or stuck in your anger, here’s the way out. It’s reconciliation. Do it quickly. Make it a priority. Go straight to that person.”
It’s amazing actually. In Matthew 18, Jesus talks about this subject again of reconciliation, and in this passage in Matthew 5, he says if you go up to offer and someone has something against you (so basically you’ve done harm to someone else), go and work it out with that person. Reconcile quickly, first. Prioritize. But then in Matthew 18, there’s another story where if someone has sinned against you, Jesus says, “Go to that person and work it out.”
You say, “Well, which is it, Jesus? Like if I’ve hurt somebody else, is it my responsibility? Who should go? He’s got to come to me, right? He has to talk to me if he hurt me, right?” Jesus says, “No. Whether you’re the offender or the offended, prioritize reconciliation.” Why? If you don’t, anger will eat you up in that vicious cycle. It’d be like Cain, crouching at your door and overtaking us like that.
Then Jesus says something amazing in Matthew 18. As he’s talking about that reconciliation conversation, someone has sinned against you, he says, “Go directly first, and if it at first doesn’t work, go with a couple of people. Maybe one or two others. If that doesn’t work, involve the whole community.” But that’s the passage of course where Jesus says, “Wherever two or more are gathered in my name there I will be with them.” Do you remember that?
A lot of times we think of that and we think that refers to prayer gatherings, particularly small prayer gatherings. If you’re getting some people together to pray and there are just two or three of you and you’re going, “Well, that wasn’t as many as I thought, but at least the Lord is here with us.” That’s one of those verses we like to use in those situations. And he is among us even if it’s two or three. It’s great. Even two or three praying together is wonderful. I’m not digging at that.
But the context of, “Two or three gathered, there I am with them,” is actually the context of reconciliation. It’s not a prayer meeting. It’s not a worship gathering. It is a conversation between two people who feel like there is wound and hurt and anger between them. So there are two, whether it’s one on one, or you’ve brought somebody else with you, two or three people together.
This is what Jesus is saying about the kind of King he is. He says, “Whenever you go to have a conversation of reconciliation, it is so important to me I will make sure I am there too. I am asking you to prioritize reconciliation, but just so you know, I also prioritize reconciliation. If you go into one of those conversations of reconciliation, it’s not just you and that person. I am there also. I’m going with you into those conversations of reconciliation.”
So what Jesus is doing is not setting up this impossible standard by which we can never be angry. In fact, what he’s doing is very clearly saying, “Here is the pathway out of a life consumed by anger. Here’s how you escape anger crouching at your door. Here’s how you rule over anger. Be reconciled. Quickly prioritize it with your accuser.”
So typically at Grace, you know we worship at the end of the sermon because we believe worship is responding rightly to revelation. We hear from the Word, it shows us who God is, and then we want to respond. Oftentimes the way we respond is through song or through listening. This morning, as we’ve read this passage from Jesus, I don’t think there can be any response that honors his words other than taking seriously what he said and taking a moment to let God search our hearts to see if we’re caught in any vicious cycles of anger right now.
To think about in our lives, whether it was growing up in a bad exchange with parents or a pattern in our home life or it’s in our marriage or at our workplace with a boss, with a coworker, the way to respond rightly to revelation this morning, the way to worship this morning is not so much by singing songs as it is to listening to the Spirit of God, letting the Spirit of God reveal any of those vicious cycles of anger within us, and then taking action to obey what Jesus has told us to do.
So what we’re going to do is Aaron is just going to play a little bit of music, and we’re going to pray that God would search our hearts. Some of us this morning don’t have any anger issues. If that’s the case with you, praise the Lord. God bless you. Pray for the people around you. But if you do have anger going on in your heart this morning, pay attention to that. We want to respond to what Jesus has told us here.