Anger, Hatred & Reconciliation

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I want to encourage you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew.
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We're going to be in Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 21.
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Last week, I began today's message, and I said that I was going to have to break it into two parts.
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I want to go ahead and give you a sense of relief.
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If you were not here, it's okay.
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You can still follow along.
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What you missed last week was a focus on the very first verse of this section, and I'm going to reiterate some of what I said, but move right into the next portion.
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Last week, I began with a quote.
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The quote is this.
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It's not the parts of the Bible that I do not understand that worry me.
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It's the parts that I do understand and don't want to do that worry me.
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You know, that's often the case with most people.
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It's not the parts of the Bible that they don't understand.
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It's the parts that they understand quite clearly, but they just don't want to obey those things.
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And that quote's been attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, all different kinds of people.
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It's not quite certain who first said it, but it certainly continues to be said even to this very day.
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And what we began talking about last week was the issue of murder and what we call the letter and the spirit of the law.
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We've been studying the Sermon on the Mount and in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus attacks false teachings about the law of God.
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He is determined to demonstrate that the Jewish leaders of his day had misread the law and they had become so focused with the letter of the law that they had missed entirely the spirit of the law, which undergirds that letter of the law.
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I want to show you something before we go to Matthew.
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I just want to and I'll just read it to you.
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It's in Romans chapter two.
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Paul says this in Romans 229, he says, A Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter.
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His praise is not from God, but from man.
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You see, in that passage, Paul makes a distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
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He says, you know, some people think that they are righteous because they live by the letter of the law.
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If the law says, don't I don't, if the law says, do I do and I obey those to the letter and I try to do everything I can to obey those to the letter.
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And as long as I do that, I'm OK.
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And yet Paul's point is simple.
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There's a spirit which undergirds that law.
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There's more to the law than just the letter of the law.
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And this was not something that Paul made up.
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This is not something that Paul came up with on his own.
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This is something that Jesus demonstrates to us in the sermon on the Mount.
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So as we begin our sermon this morning, let's read from the word of God, we're going to read Matthew chapter five, verses twenty one to twenty six, as is our custom in this church.
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I want to encourage you to stand to give honor and reverence to the word of God.
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You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.
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But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.
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Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council and whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.
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So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there you 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.
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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.
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Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
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Our father and our God, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you that we can trust what your word says, that it is absolutely true from beginning to ending and that we can have confidence in it.
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We thank you for the Sermon on the Mount and this lesson that we get to share today.
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I pray, oh God, that as I seek to give instruction, that you would keep me from error as I certainly am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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And I pray, oh God, that you would open the hearts of the people to the truth and that your Holy Spirit would be the teacher today and ultimately the instructor of hearts.
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And father, of course, we ask if there is anyone here who has never heard the gospel, that the gospel would be rightly proclaimed to them today and that you would use that as an opportunity to open their hearts.
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And be drawn to you, we thank you, we praise you in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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In this section of the Sermon on the Mount.
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Jesus's lessons can be summed up in an outline of three points.
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And basically is this, he gives us the letter of the law.
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He then gives us the spirit of the law.
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He then concludes with an application of the law.
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He says, this is what you've heard the law says.
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This is what you've given up and holding just to the letter.
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As a result, this is how you should behave.
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It's a very simple method for teaching, very didactic, and he opens it up for us very clearly in this text.
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He begins in verse 21 by saying the letter of the law.
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You have heard it was said to those of old, you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.
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Now, last week I spent all of our time just on that.
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I talked about the fact that in our day and age, the reality is we have even abandoned the letter of the law because we have we have begun to see murder as not even that bad.
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And you may say, Pastor, you're crazy.
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We all know murder is bad.
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Thirty five hundred babies every day would disagree with you.
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So the reality is we we've we've become a culture of death.
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We've become a culture which is infatuated with with with abortion and euthanasia and all kinds of things, we've become a culture infatuated with death.
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So we've given up even on the letter of the law, and that's what's scary about our culture.
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But in Jesus's day, there was an understanding of the culture.
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There was an understanding of the law within the culture that murder was wrong.
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The Bible says that it was the sixth commandment that you shall not commit murder.
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And if you do, you're going to be punished.
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You will be liable to judgment, Jesus says.
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He says, you have heard it said that if you commit murder, you will be liable to judgment.
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And everybody around him is going, yeah, yeah, we agree.
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Amen.
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No problem.
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Hey, that's the sixth commandment.
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We agree.
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Amen, Jesus.
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And then he goes on to verse twenty two.
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Of course, he wasn't speaking in verses.
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But as we're reading it, he moves on to his second statement, the statement which I believe would have just thoroughly knocked them all for a loop because he moves from the spirit of the law, which everyone, including the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes, all would have agreed with.
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And he moves on to the spirit of the law, the undergirding of the law, the foundation of the law.
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And that is that anger and hatred are the root of murder.
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Read it with me, says, but I say to you, notice he's he's he has the word, but he's he's saying, but on the contrary, I say to you this, it's not enough.
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He says, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.
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Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council.
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And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.
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Now, there's a principle here.
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Anytime you see a term used in Scripture.
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Multiple times in a row in a very short span of time, it's calling our attention to something as when Jesus would call someone by name twice, Simon, Simon, you know, he would say it twice as a way to develop.
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This is something you need to hear.
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Verily, verily, I say unto thee, you know, this is getting a point across any time something is repeated.
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Well, in this text, we see something that is repeated three times in the English Standard Version, which is our pew Bible.
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It's the word liable now in the New American Standard Bible.
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It is the word guilty.
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And the King James Bible, it's the word danger.
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All of them come from the Greek word, which means to be bound and inescapable from.
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Now, what am I getting at? Jesus has just said, if you commit murder, you're liable to judgment.
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You're bound by it.
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You can't escape judgment.
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You're going to be judged.
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But I say this anger, malice, insults are also liable to judgment that were liable.
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Jesus is making the comparison there.
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He's saying we only think we're liable to judgment if we go forward with this sin of murder, but no, you are liable even for these sins.
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And beloved, that's hard to take.
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Because what he's talking about is something that I would dare to guess we all at some times in our lives deal with.
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Anger, insulting language.
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These are things that we all deal with.
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The word I want to kind of just break down the text here, the word insults when he says, but I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother is liable to judgment.
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Whoever insults his brother is liable to judgment.
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That word insults in some of your Bible.
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It's going to say RACA, R-A-C-A, because that's actually the word that Jesus used.
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It's an Aramaic word.
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And a lot of Bibles simply transliterate it into English.
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Because we don't really know exactly the meaning of it.
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It's one of those words that has nuanced meaning.
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In ESV, it simply says, if you insult your brother, I think in the NASB, it says, if you call your brother good for nothing, is that what it says? Those who have I know some of you guys are NASBs and that's what you use.
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It says good for nothing.
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But the idea that is trying to get across here, whether it's RACA or what, is that this is a contrast and a compliment to the word fool, because you notice that's what's coming next.
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He says, if you insult your brother, you're liable to judgment.
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And if you say you fool, you're liable to judgment.
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There's no real doubt as to what the word fool means, but there is a comparison to be made between RACA and fool, between insult and fool.
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Because the word RACA denotes in almost all cases an intellectual deficiency, it would be very common for us to call someone stupid.
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That's an intellectual deficiency or idiot.
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That's an intellectual deficiency.
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We're speaking a word which speaks to their intellect.
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But fool is different.
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And it's often it's often used that way in our modern language to say this person's a fool, but fool speaks of a moral deficiency.
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It is the fool who says in his heart there is no God.
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Foolishness is more than just lack of knowledge or understanding.
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Foolishness is lack of wisdom.
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And thus it indicates a moral problem.
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So this is what Jesus is saying.
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He's saying that when you use words of insult, whether you're insulting someone intellectually, whether you're insulting someone morally, whether you're insulting someone according to their whatever character trait you may be attacking.
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When you use these words of hate, when you use these words that are filled with ugliness towards another individual, words that are not intended to build up, words that are not intended to rebuke and rebuild, but instead are just intended to destroy.
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Those words are sin.
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And see, that's a new idea.
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This is a new concept, because, again, the idea was, well, as long as I don't kill him, I'm OK.
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I can hate him.
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I can talk bad about him.
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I can say all kinds of evil against him.
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But as long as he's alive and I didn't kill him, I'm OK.
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I'm not in sin.
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I just hate that guy.
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And Jesus is attacking that.
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Now, I do want to make something clear that is important because somebody liable to ask me this at the back door, somebody is bound to ask me this either or an email this week.
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Is Jesus saying that anger and insults are the exact same as murder? No, he's not.
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Just to clear that up, he's not saying they're exactly the same.
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I think people get confused when Jesus says that they're both worthy of judgment and saying they're both functionally the same thing.
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They are not exactly the same thing.
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And I'll just tell you, I would certainly rather you talk ill of me than kill me.
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Just I mean, just logically, they're different.
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Insulting someone is not the same as murdering them.
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Being angry with someone is not the same as murdering them.
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To make the two equal is not Jesus's point.
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What he is doing is demonstrating that you can't say that you're not sinning just because you don't go all the way through with the act of murder.
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That's his point.
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He's not necessarily trying to make an absolute equation between anger and murder.
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What he's saying is that just because you don't murder doesn't mean you don't sin, because that was the problem in Jesus's time.
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As I've said, there were a bunch.
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There was such a demand for adherence to the law.
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And the latter of the law was the only thing that was understood to be imperative.
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So long as you didn't murder someone, you were free to harbor all kinds of spite, all kinds of hatred, all kinds of malice in your heart.
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That was OK.
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Brian Swartley, one of my favorite commentarians on this subject, says this.
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He said, if we harbor unjust anger in our hearts, then we will commit murder with our tongues.
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There is the tongue murder of the personal insult, and there is the tongue murder of gossip and slander.
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Many a man's personal reputation has been permanently destroyed by the murdering tongue.
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End quote.
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Isn't that true? Isn't it true that our words can destroy lives? Our words can destroy reputations.
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Our words can destroy people emotionally.
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The old thing, sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me, is a lie.
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Words can be very damaging emotionally.
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They can be very damaging even physically on people because it can cause people to have stress and anxieties and all of these things which are unnecessary.
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But unfortunately, also very common.
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Now, I want to address something else in this text before we move on.
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I want to I want to make sure that we understand something else, which is also very important.
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In verse 22, he says, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.
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Now, there is a clause here which is found in some Bibles and not found in other Bibles.
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If you have a King James Bible, it will say this.
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It will say, I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be liable to judgment.
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That's an important statement.
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Now, I do not have time today to discuss the nuances of textual criticism, manuscript history and why there are certain phrases that are included in Codex Sinaiticus and not in Codex Vaticanus and things like that, and why we have the Byzantine text type and the Alexandrian text type.
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Unless you want to be here for about six hours, let me suffice it to say that this is what is called a textual variant.
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It is in some manuscript history and not in other manuscript history.
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But here's the reality of it.
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It's unnecessary.
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Whether it's to be included in the text or not is not the point.
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We don't have to be told this to know that it's true, because when it says he who is angry is liable to judgment, there's a necessary consequence or a necessary deduction that we make that the anger is unrighteous anger.
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The anger that he's talking about is unrighteous indignation.
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So the fact that some manuscripts say without cause and some don't is really unimportant because we can deduce that without even the variation.
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We can deduce that on our own because here's the deal.
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We know that not all anger is sinful, don't we? Does the Bible not tell us that God is angry over sin? Does not the Bible tell us that Jesus Christ cleared the temple and he made a whip of cords? And I'm sure he didn't do that while smiling at the people.
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I'm sure he did not chase them down like Joel Osteen with a big smile on his face.
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There was indignation on the part of Christ in that temple.
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So the idea that we that all anger is sinful is not biblical.
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It's just not biblical.
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In fact, William Hendrickson said this anger as such need not be sinful.
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It is described even to God and to Christ.
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In fact, the age in which we are living in could use a little more righteous indignation against sin of every type.
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Think of that.
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We you know, it would be nice if we actually were a little bit more upset about sin than we are because we seem to just not care anymore about sin.
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We seem to not care anymore about about the world that seems to be just digging its own grave and trying its best to go to hell.
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And what do we do? Oh, well, that's the way they want to live to each his own, you know.
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No, no, there is such a thing as righteous indignation.
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There is such a thing.
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I am angry that thirty five hundred children every day are murdered in the womb.
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That angers my heart.
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And I think righteously so.
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I am angry when I hear that a child has been abducted.
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I'm angry when I hear that a child has been beaten by his or her family members or parents, that they've been molested.
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That angers me.
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That raises the the the it doesn't make me say I'm so good and I'm sinless and I'm perfect.
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No, it demonstrates the depravity of our world and the depravity of our world breaks my heart.
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And there is righteous indignation over that depravity.
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The danger with anger is not that there are things which should cause us to be angry in this world.
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There are.
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The problem is that we often become angry with the wrong things and allow ourselves to be governed by the emotion of anger rather than love for our neighbor.
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That's the problem.
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The problem is not there are things to get angry about.
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The problem is we often get angry about the wrong things.
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We often get angry over things that do not matter.
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We allow this anger to cause us to use our tongues as weapons against each other.
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We destroy each other verbally.
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We destroy each other emotionally because of this anger.
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That's what Jesus is addressing.
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He's not saying there's never a time to be upset.
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He's not saying there's never a time to be angry.
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But he's saying that when we get angry over those things which are not worthy of our anger, that is in itself sin.
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Again, Christ's point here is that it's not enough to say, well, I didn't kill the guy.
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The spirit of the law goes to the heart of the attitude towards our fellow man.
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If we hold hatred and animosity and spite towards another person, we are in sin.
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And if we allow our tongues to stab them with our words of hatred, we are in sin.
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And we need to be considering this as part of our Christian ethos.
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Our ethic as Christians is to live a life that is determined to keep control over the emotion of anger, because anger leads to verbal outbursts.
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It leads to attitudes of hatred.
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And it leads ultimately to a spirit of murder, even if it were not the action itself of murder.
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So that's Christ's point in verse 22.
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Then we move to verse 23 and he begins with the application of this.
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He's told us what the letter of the law is.
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Don't murder.
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He's told us the spirit of the law and that even our hatred and our words of hurt, hurtful words can be like murder.
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So now what do we do? What is our responsibility to do? Well, in a short just overview of the next few verses, what he's going to show us is that our goal should be to seek peace with others.
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Our job as Christians is to seek to live at peace with other people.
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Our walk is supposed to be marked by forgiveness, encouragement and peace.
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That's just what forgiveness, encouragement and peace.
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It is not supposed to be marked by strife and turmoil and drama.
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But that requires two things of us.
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If we are to be people who live in forgiveness and encouragement and peace rather than strife and turmoil and drama, that requires two things of us.
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It requires one, that we need to work to reconcile with those who are at odds with us.
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And two, that we need to keep from situations getting out of hand.
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We need to work to reconcile with those who are at odds with us and we need to seek to keep from things getting out of hand.
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And now I'll show you where that is in the text.
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First of all, the reconciling with those who are at odds with us.
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Verse 23, so if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you.
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Now, remember, this is a different time of worship.
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This was a time when they actually brought offerings to the altar and they made sacrifices there at the altar.
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So Jesus is talking in a very different paradigm than what we're in now, but it can be easily applied to us.
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If you walk into church worship service and want to raise your hands and praise Jesus and then remember, that's the point.
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It's just a different time, but it's still the same thing.
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He says, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you.
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Leave your gift there before the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.
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Notice something about this, and this is something we all have to consider.
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The onus of responsibility is placed upon our shoulders.
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The onus of responsibility is placed on the believers shoulders.
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It says if somebody has a problem with us, we should go to them.
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He even indicates that not doing so would interrupt worship.
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That if we're in worshiping and yet we know that this issue is out there hanging.
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That we need to be going and seeking reconciliation when we come into the church.
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We know that there are people in the world who have an issue with us and we have not yet tried to reach out to them.
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We've not yet tried to bring reconciliation.
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Then we need to stop and do so.
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Now, I want to add a thought.
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It is not always possible to be reconciled with everyone.
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Because not everyone is willing to be reconciled with.
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But that doesn't take the onus away from our trying.
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That doesn't take the responsibility away from us to try.
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I like Romans 12, 18, because I think Romans 12, 18 is very important.
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If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live at peace with all.
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And that tells us right there, it's our responsibility to do everything we can, if possible, to live at peace with all.
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But it's not always possible.
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It sadly is not.
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Some people do not want to be reconciled with.
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Some people are happy to live in drama.
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But we shouldn't be those people.
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We should be at any moment ready to forgive.
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At any moment ready to reconcile.
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At any moment ready to give up whatever thing we're holding on to and give it over to God and let God deal with it.
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Here's the thing to remember, beloved.
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No one is unworthy of reconciliation.
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No one is unworthy of our seeking reconciliation.
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Remember what Romans 5, 8 says, while you were yet sinners, Christ died for you.
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Remember, Paul said that while we were yet.
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This is what he says, you know, not many people would die for a bad person and some people might die for a good person.
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But while you were yet sinners, Christ died for you.
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What's the what's the point of Paul there? Is that it's not about worthiness.
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It never is about worthiness, because if it were about being worthy, we would not any of us make it because none of us are worthy of the love of God.
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None of us are worthy of the blood of Christ.
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None of us are worthy of those things.
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But he in his grace and mercy gave them freely to us.
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So to we extend grace and mercy to those who have offended us.
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That's our responsibility.
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It's hard, but it's still ours.
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So we need to work to reconcile with those who are at odds with us.
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And number in the second thing, which is required for living at peace with others, is this not let situations get out of hand.
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We start with verse 25 and read with me.
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Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court.
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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." Now, I think that's confusing to some, but it really shouldn't be, because Jesus is simply making the point here of the natural progression of conflict.
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The natural progression of conflict is that it starts out slow and escalates quickly.
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That's how it starts out, with a cross word with somebody, and by the time you get home, there's three or four Facebook messages all about what happened.
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That's a modern take on what Jesus is saying here.
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It escalates fast.
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And Jesus is using the picture of someone taking you to court.
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He's saying, if somebody's taking you to court, you need to get with them before you even get there and work this out, because once you get before the judge, it's out of your hands, it's going to start, the ball is rolling, it's snowballing, and at that point, you are going to be in an insurmountable situation.
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Everybody understand? That's what Jesus is saying.
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He said, you need to reconcile this early on in the conflict, rather than letting it snowball and snowball and snowball until it gets out of hand.
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You ever been in a situation, look around and go, that escalated quickly? Yeah.
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That's what Jesus is telling us that we need to avoid.
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We need to preempt situations before they get out of hand.
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If someone is going to accuse you before the court, go and reconcile with them quickly, so that the situation does not erupt into a series of negative situations, which you then have no ability to fix.
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And again, this is easy to apply to all of our lives.
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It's easy to apply to my life and to your life, because I'm sure that we all have situations that we can look back to in the history of our lives and say, man, if I would have just dealt with this at the beginning, if I would have just done this at the very minute I was offended, or the very minute that I offended them and didn't realize it, if I would have just went and apologized, or if I would have went and asked for an apology from them, or if I would have just told them that they hurt me, if I would have just done that first, wouldn't life be different now with that individual? And beloved, I'm preaching to myself.
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I know all of us can look at some point in our lives and see something in our lives that we could have done better, that we could have done and handled better.
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Our responsibility as believers is to not only allow our own anger, or not ever to allow our own anger to keep us from seeking reconciliation as we ought.
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Our goal should always be reconciliation with others.
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And unfortunately, though, it seems like some folks just love to live in drama.
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It really does.
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But that's not an excuse for us.
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Because that should never be described.
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That should never be descriptive of us.
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It should never be described of us that we love to live in drama.
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What should be described of us is we love to see reconciliation, that we love to see people who are at odds come back together.
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That's what it should be said of us.
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That is our goal.
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That is what a Christ follower should seek.
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So we see in this section on the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus has expressed to his followers three things.
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He said there's the letter of the law.
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Do not commit murder.
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There's the spirit of the law.
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Anger and hatred lead to a murderous spirit.
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And the application of the law is this.
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Believers are not to be governed by anger, but rather to be governed by a desire for reconciliation.
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Now, I want to end with these words.
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It is important for us to remember as we study through the Sermon on the Mount that the Sermon on the Mount is not intended to stand as a model for how a person is to get saved.
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The Sermon on the Mount doesn't tell us how to get saved in the sense that this is telling us what to do to earn salvation, because, beloved, you can't earn it.
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We are saved by the work of Christ alone.
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Perfect allegiance to the law by the letter or by the Spirit is out of our grasps.
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The only person who has ever fulfilled the law perfectly is Christ, and only in him are you made righteous.
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But having said that, the Sermon on the Mount does provide the foundation for the Christian ethos.
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Because those who have been saved by grace have not been saved to go out into the world and live as the world, but we have been saved for the purpose of living for Christ.
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We have been saved for the purpose of living a new life in Christ.
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And one of the foundations of that new life in Christ is a heart that seeks reconciliation.
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So I ask you this morning, and I ask you not to raise your hand.
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I don't want you to come forward and that's not what I'm asking for.
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I want you to ask yourself in your heart, are you harboring anger and hatred this morning? Do you have anger and turmoil which is flooding your heart and it's affecting your worship, and you know that there are people and persons that you need to reconcile with, but yet you refuse to because you refuse to submit yourself to the emotion of humility and give in to your pride and say you're sorry or seek their apology.
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Beloved, it's not enough just to say, well, I didn't kill him.
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We're supposed to live at peace with all men as much as it relies on us.
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Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study the words of Jesus Christ.
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I pray that those words would flood our hearts and encourage our souls towards a walk which is closer to you.
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I pray, Lord, for reconciliation for the relationships in this room for everyone, Lord, for certainly we all have those in our lives to which we need to forgive or from which we need to receive forgiveness.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would open our hearts, relinquish our pride, and turn us over to a closer walk with you.
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We thank you for the gift of love that you've given us in Christ.
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We thank you for the gospel.
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We thank you that salvation is not dependent on our imperfections, but it's dependent on the perfect work of Christ.
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We lay on that work today.
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We lay prostrate before the cross knowing that only by the cross can we know salvation.
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I pray, Lord, that if there are those here who need reconciliation, that you encourage them and strengthen them this week.
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And I pray, Lord, if there are those who need to be reconciled with you because they've never submitted to the gospel of Christ, they've never submitted to an understanding of their sin and repentance of sin, that you would call them to that this morning by the power of your Holy Spirit.
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And in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Beloved, let's stand and sing.
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And if you do have a need for prayer, please feel free to come.