The Heart of Anger Matthew 5:21-26

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The testimony of history tells us that when the Word of God is preached, good things are happening among God's people.
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People are being saved and people are growing in their walk with the Lord. We can also say the opposite.
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When the Word of God is not preached, bad things happen among God's people. We have seen this in the history of the church over the last 200 years.
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Over the first 400 years, from the time of the apostles to about the year 500, things went generally well in church history.
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So from the time of Christ to about 500 A .D. To be sure, there were some serious problems, but there were plenty of churches in the world that resembled the
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New Testament where people were being saved through Christ and people were growing in their walk with the
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Lord. Then over the next 1 ,000 years, from about 500 A .D. to 1 ,500
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A .D., during a period known as the Middle Ages, things went really bad.
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Just like any period, there were sincere Christians, yes, but the church as a whole, if you looked across the whole world, the church as a whole went further and further away from the instructions of the
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New Testament. There was one church in the world and it was known as the Catholic Church and it was largely corrupt.
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The popes that were leading it were corrupt and the leadership was corrupt and people didn't have a Bible, so people didn't understand that they were leading them down a really bad path and so you can see why so many problems happened.
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A teaching that said you can earn your way to heaven was taught during this period. Not everywhere, but in many places it was.
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Causing the truth of God's Word to be lost and the people paid the price as they became confused about how to become right with God.
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What the global church needed was a return to the Bible. This is what happened in the 1500s through people like Martin Luther and John Calvin during the period known as the
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Reformation. The Protestant Reformation to be precise. The Bible began to be preached, taught, and read again and what has resulted is that over the last 500 years, the church has experienced significant growth both in converts to Christ and in growth in holiness even though the church has been far from perfect, which is the theme throughout history until Christ returns.
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But my point in saying this is that when the Bible is properly taught and understood by the masses, people's lives are transformed through the power of the
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Gospel. Something similar as to what happened in the church in church history happened in Jewish history as well.
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During the period from when the Old Testament was completed, which was around 400
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B .C. with the prophet Malachi to the time of Christ, which was the first century
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A .D. A lot of history here today. During this period, this is known as the intertestamental period between the
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Old Testament and the New Testament because the New Testament was written in the first century A .D.
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What happened during this period was similar to what happened in the church during the
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Middle Ages. The truth of God's Word became misunderstood.
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It was confused by the teachers who led people the wrong way and a lot of the people didn't have a copy of Scripture like we do.
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And so they were led down this bad path. And what happened was, once again, a works righteousness salvation where you don't get to heaven by believing in God, by believing in Jesus Christ, but you get there through your own works.
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So this happened in the Roman Catholic Church over the last 2 ,000 years when people stopped reading the
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Bible and it happened in the Jewish religion in between the Old Testament period and the
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New Testament period. The problem was the rabbis during this intertestamental period, what they did is they had their own tradition.
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They either misunderstood the Old Testament in many places or they added their own laws to it.
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And so the reason I bring this up as we introduce the sermon today is because what we're gonna see in the
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Sermon on the Mount is Jesus is going to be correcting these false teachers, these
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Jewish leaders who led people astray. And what we're gonna see in chapter five of Matthew five here, over the next,
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I think, five or six weeks, Jesus is going to be correcting these Jewish teachers, these false teachers.
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And he's saying, this is what they told you, but this is the truth. This is what they told you, but here's what you need to hear.
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So this is gonna be really fascinating as we are going to see. So what
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I encourage you to do right now is to turn with me in a Bible to Matthew chapter five. We'll be looking at verses 21 through 26.
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And you can always use a red Bible in the pews as well. This sermon is titled,
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The Sin of Anger That Lies Beneath. And our big idea, our proposition is this.
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Jesus calls each believer to address the serious sin of anger directed toward others.
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And we're gonna see two warnings that Jesus gives about our anger. The first warning is this, and you'll see this in your bulletins, take care of your heart, not just actions.
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Take care of your heart, not just actions. And we'll see this in verses 21 and 22.
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But before we jump into our text this morning, let me give you a little recap of where we were last Sunday. Last week in Jesus' famous sermon, known as the
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Sermon on the Mount, he preached to this Jewish crowd something that they would have been wondering. This prophet from God starts telling this
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Jewish crowd what they needed to know. The people would have been asking the question, is this man's preaching consistent with the
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Old Testament, or is he starting some entire new movement? They would have known he was a prophet from God, but is he the
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Messiah? Is he the true prophet? The Bible to these Jews was the
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Old Testament, the first 39 books of the Bible, since the New Testament had not yet been written. So they would have asked this question, this
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Jewish crowd that heard Jesus speak. And Jesus made it clear, as we saw in our text last Sunday in Matthew 5, 17 through 20, that he was not abolishing the
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Old Testament. He wasn't starting some new movement. He was continuing the Old Testament.
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In fact, he was fulfilling the Old Testament. The entire Old Testament pointed to him, and you can't properly understand the
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Old Testament without Jesus Christ, because he's everywhere in it. There's predictive prophecies that said he was going to come.
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There's the symbolic images like the Passover and the
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Sabbath and the sacrifices, and all of these found their fulfillment in him.
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And so Jesus explained this to the crowd last week. Now, what
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Jesus told the crowd is that their works were going to look different from the works of the
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Pharisees. So Jesus not only fulfilled the Old Testament, but he said, you're not going to get into the kingdom of heaven unless your works exceed the works of the
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Pharisees. Because remember, the Pharisees thought that you could earn your way to heaven based on your own good works.
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And they thought if the good outweighed the bad at the end of your life, then
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God would let you into your kingdom, not because of his righteousness, but because you are righteous.
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But of course, that's a false teaching. And Jesus says, unless you have true works, which means that you believe in Jesus Christ, that his righteousness is counted to you, and that the works you do after that are spirit -generated works that are true works, unless your works are like that, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
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So this would have been quite a teaching for them to hear. But what Jesus was teaching was what the
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Old Testament taught. Remember, Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as what?
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And whose righteousness was it? Was it his, or was it God's? It was God's righteousness.
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And then you could start doing true works. But the works, of course, we'll be talking about this a lot, and we talk about it all the time, but I'll say it again.
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The works do not earn your salvation. They're the evidence of your salvation. So you stand before God, and you receive entrance into heaven because of what
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God did for you. Not what you do, but then once the spirit is given to you, then you're able to obey.
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Okay, so after saying that, here we are in our text this morning, and this needed to be made clear, the correct way of entering into this relationship with God.
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This was so important for Jesus to make clear, and for the entire New Testament to make clear, because the
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Jewish leaders who came after the Old Testament got it wrong. And you know what?
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So many people today get it wrong. If you talk to the average person, they will tell you, how are you gonna enter heaven before God and not be rejected?
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And the answer is, well, I'm a good person. Well, that's first righteousness. The answer is, I'm a sinner, and I need the grace of God.
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And without that, I can't ever get here. Okay, so that was not in my notes, but I just wanted to make that clear.
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And we talked about that in Sunday school today too, so I figured it'd be good to do here. So let's get to the sermon text here.
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I'm gonna read this, and then we'll take a look at it. Verses 21 through 26. This is what Jesus says to this crowd as they're overlooking the beautiful Sea of Galilee.
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He says this, 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. 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 remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.
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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.
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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.
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Verse 21 is the first of six times, as I've already mentioned, where Jesus says to the crowd, you have heard that it was said.
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Okay, so the next six Sundays, we're gonna hear this statement, you have heard that it was said, and he's not correcting the
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Old Testament, as I've already told you, he's correcting the false teachers, these rabbis in between the
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Old Testament and New Testament period. These are people who got the Old Testament wrong.
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Now let's look at each of these verses and see what we need to see. In verse 21, when
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Jesus says, 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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So the first topic and sin that Jesus addresses is the topic of murder.
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We're gonna see several topics addressed in the coming weeks, and why would he address this topic first?
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At bare minimum, almost everyone in the world believes that murder is wrong.
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There's some disagreement on some morality, and we see it in our world. We see that, even the
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Bible's clear on morality, but people in the culture kind of form their own. But when it comes to murder, everybody's in agreement, right?
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This is wrong. And you hear people say this sometimes. I have done a lot of bad things, but at least
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I haven't murdered anyone. Have you ever heard anybody say that? The Jewish leaders would have had a hard time denying the darkness of their own hearts, but they explained that away by saying, as long as their actions were mostly good, then they were morally upright people, and they were acceptable to God.
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These Jewish leaders only thought of works as external. As long as they kept the law outwardly, they were good with God.
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But Jesus goes much deeper than the faulty rabbinic traditions went.
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And Jesus' teaching agrees with the Old Testament that emphasized that one's heart be right toward God.
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So this is what Jesus says to the crowd in verse 22. He says, 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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When Jesus warns this Jewish crowd about not committing this sin against their brother, what he means by brother here is a fellow
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Israelite, right? He's talking to these Jewish crowds. The word brother can be understood differently in the
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New Testament, but that's how he's mentioning it here. And so he's saying, this is how you need to treat your fellow brother in this community.
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And as we will see down the road, when Jesus addresses these issues, sometimes he completely corrects the rabbinic teaching.
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But here, what he does is he goes deeper than they went. Murder is wrong.
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And the rabbis got that right. Exodus 20, 13 says in the 10 commandments, you shall not murder.
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But Jesus explains where murder comes from, right? It's not just an outward act, something that you just do.
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It's so much deeper than that. People don't just murder someone on a whim.
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People murder because there is evil in their hearts. Typically, when one murders, it comes from a place of anger.
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Of deep anger and hatred. Anger boils up and that person hates another, and the person goes to the extreme of taking the life of another.
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They can't even stand that the person is in their life, and so they just want to eliminate whoever it is and that's when murder takes place.
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And what Jesus is telling the crowd is that if you think you are a good person because you have not murdered, you need to think again.
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If you have anger in your heart, you have the seeds of murder already there, and this is very evil.
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It's fitting, now that my mom is here today, because I remember as a child asking her, what does hatred mean?
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And do you remember what you said? You said something along the lines of you want harm done to someone else, or you want to eliminate the person from your life.
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If you or I wish ill will on another person, we have the seeds of murder in our hearts.
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And as I'm talking to a bunch of Baptists in this room, I realize that you are probably not going to take someone out.
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It does happen on rare occasions, but it's pretty rare in these circles. But we can still wish ill will on someone, and Jesus is going after that very sin right here.
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Gordy and I have been reading a book recently, and in fact, we're going to be looking at this book as we finish out our Wednesday night
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Bible study. It's called Respectable Sins. Okay, sins that we tolerate in the
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Christian community. And one of those sins he mentions is anger. We hold this anger and resentment and this bitterness in our hearts toward others, and we think it's okay.
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And what Jesus is saying is it's not okay. It's very sinful. The type of hatred that Jesus describes that we can have toward another is harboring, as I mentioned, bitterness, resentment.
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And this often shows through abusing another with our tongues, through insults, like calling them a fool, like Jesus says here in verse 22.
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And you might say, shouldn't we call people out for their foolishness? Yes, we should, since places throughout
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Scripture, like Proverbs, warn about fools, but we should always do so constructively with the person's best in mind.
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The sin that Jesus has in mind here is that you want harm done to another. And you might not get physical with the person, but in your heart, you want harm done, and you are willing to slander that person with your tongue.
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This is done through painting a person in the worst possible light, and even telling lies, in order to tear down another's reputation.
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We see this every time there is a state or national election. And sadly, it's become acceptable.
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I wanna see the candidate who just says, you know what, I'm just gonna run on my policies, and I'm not gonna tear down my opponent.
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I don't know if we've ever seen, I don't know if I've seen that in my lifetime. That would be quite a rarity to see. But that's what anger in one's heart leads to, and we see it on public display all the time.
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Now the sentence of this anger in one's heart is very severe. What Jesus says is that those who commit heart murder, and that's what anger is, it's heart murder, they are guilty of being punished in hell forever.
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Now that's a strong statement. And it's a true statement. We can see how seriously
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Jesus takes our hatred toward another person. Every sin is worthy of hell, including this sin of hating your neighbor by storing up anger in your heart toward them.
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And this is where we need to remember the cross of Jesus Christ, and realize that our anger in our hearts makes us deserving of eternal punishment.
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But if your trust is in Christ, then Jesus paid for those sins. And praise be to God that He did this on our behalf, and for the sins of our anger.
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Now you may be wondering, is all anger the same? And the answer is no.
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There is a biblical category for righteous anger. Now let me say this right out front, that most of our anger is not righteous anger.
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We might think it is, but it's not. The anger in our hearts is usually selfish, and a lack of love toward God and others.
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However, at times, we may experience righteous anger since wrongs are done to God and to us.
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If a legitimate wrong is done, and you feel anger for it, that's appropriate. You should be.
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An example of righteous anger shows up later on in this Gospel, in Matthew 21, verses 12 through 13, where people treated
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Jesus' father's house like it was Commerce Street, like it was a house of trade. And what did
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Jesus do? He drove them out. In fact, He even overturned their tables. And we know that it wasn't sinful because Jesus never sinned.
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That was appropriate. It was what we call righteous anger, righteous indignation.
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This would be the equivalent of someone who is trying to physically harm someone that you love, and in anger, you drove that person away.
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That would be the appropriate response in that moment. So it is appropriate to feel righteous anger, but we must handle this in a
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God -honoring way. Ephesians 4 .26 is an interesting verse. It says this, be angry and do not sin.
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Okay, the first time you look at that, you're like, what in the world is he talking about? Be angry and do not sin.
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Then he says, do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.
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The anger he's talking about there is righteous anger. Our righteous anger, when a legitimate wrong has been done to us or to someone we love, is appropriate.
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But it should not consume us, as the text above says. The sun shall not go down on your anger.
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Righteous anger can easily lead into sinful anger, where we want harm done to another person, and that's when you know it's crossed the line.
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And this is how sinful anger occurs. You want the best for someone, and then it turns to not wanting the best, right?
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So as long as you want the best for someone, then your anger is okay. And this means you pray for them, and you don't wish ill will upon them, because when someone's wronged you in some way, you're not just gonna forget the wrong done to you.
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You can't just erase it from your memory. It's gonna be there, and you might think, when that happens, that man, that really hurt, and I wish that he or she did not do that.
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But as you're thinking that, you should say, you know what, Lord? I've done bad things to people, too, and you know what,
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I wanna pray for this person. I want the best for this person. Mark 11, 25, Jesus tells us how to pray for those with whom we are angry.
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He says, whenever you stand praying, forgive. If you have anything against anyone, so that your
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Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. So believers in Christ are those who understand what they've done against God.
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Our sin against God is enormous, and we realize how much we need
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His grace, and what happens is that we are so willing to forgive others because we have been forgiven ourselves.
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We saw that in the Beatitudes, and so we need to be those kind of people. So forgiveness, when we're angry towards someone, it means not holding their sin against you, thinking the best of them, not bringing it up.
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Every time you see them, that's how you know you've forgiven someone. We should always aim by the strength of the
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Spirit to put to death the sin which so easily stores up in our hearts. So Jesus calls each believer to address the serious sin of anger directed toward others, and the first warning is to take care of your heart, not just actions.
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The second warning that Jesus gives us here about the serious sin of anger is this.
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He tells us to develop the habit of pursuing peace quickly with others, and we'll see this in verses 23 through 26.
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As I've already mentioned, and this goes without saying, our anger is almost always directed toward others.
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There are times when we are angry at ourselves, and that is usually a good thing, right?
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Because usually our anger is directed toward others, and a lot of times that's not good. And when you're angry at yourself, that means you're examining something that you did, something wrong that you did.
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We wanna have that kind of anger. But what Jesus is addressing here is anger toward others.
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Sometimes this means going to someone who has offended us or going to someone that we have offended.
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So let's begin looking at this section by digging into verses 23 and 24. This is what
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Jesus says to the crowd and to everyone in this room. He says, if you are offering your gift at the altar, in 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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As Jesus is saying this, he has the unbelieving Jewish leaders in mind. And one of his main emphasis during the
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Sermon on the Mount is do not be like them. These people who've been leading you astray, don't follow them.
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Do what I am telling you to do. When they brought gifts to the temple in Jerusalem, what the gifts are referring to are sacrifices and tithes.
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They also offered prayers at the temple and in the synagogues, which were the local places of worship.
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But as we've already seen, everything they did was external. They thought, oh,
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God's looking at me, do all these wonderful things. All these people are looking at me, and I can do all these wonderful things and everybody just knows
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I'm just this great guy. These unbelieving Jewish leaders would bring these sacrifices to the temple and have an enormous amount of sin stored up in their heart.
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And God was not honored through their sacrifices or tithes. If you think about how sad that is, right?
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They're just offering these up and God's thinking that meant nothing. Empty. You know, these external works.
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The Lord cares about the heart and true obedience and not mere external obedience.
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First Samuel chapter 15 verse 22 says, does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the
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Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
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The Lord said in Hosea 6 .6, for I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
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An acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings. And so they were going there and they weren't even worshiping
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God. They were just saying, checking it off the list. And you can see the application to this in our lives, right?
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You could come to church and just say, you know what, I want to check this off the list. I want to be a good person. And so I'm checking it off the list for today.
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I feel better about myself. God doesn't want that. He wants you to come and say, you know what,
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Lord? I just, I want a fellowship with you and your people. I want to grow closer to you today.
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I want you to be pleased with my thoughts. I want you to be pleased with my worship towards you. That's what
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God wants. So Jesus gives these instructions to the
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Jewish crowd before him. And he says, make sure you are right with your brother before you offer this tithe or sacrifice before God.
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As one author I was reading said, Jesus was telling them, settle the breach between you and your brother before you settle the breach between you and God.
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Why did Jesus instruct them to do this? The purpose of bringing an animal without blemish to the altar at the temple was that the sacrifice represented an act of repentance toward God.
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And if your repentance is sincere to God, then you will be repentant to others. So Jesus tells them, go and settle this dispute with your brother.
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And then you will have a right heart toward me. In that way, you are not being a hypocrite.
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One of the ways you confess your sins to God is by confessing your sins to another when you have wronged someone else.
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And this may sound familiar to us. When we take the Lord's Supper, which is the first Sunday of every month, we are to be at peace with one another.
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The Apostle Paul instructed the churches to do that, to be at peace with one another before they came to the table.
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He says that in 1 Corinthians 11, 18. And we need to confess our sins to each other when a wrong has happened as we confess our sins to God.
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In these verses, the guilty party is the one who is initiating the reconciliation.
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And I know this because in verse 23, someone has something against the one offering the gift.
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If you sin against someone, then go to them before you offer your gift to God, as Jesus tells the crowd.
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And as we worship the Lord, we must do our best to make sure we are at peace with everyone. And what we must understand is that this can be difficult.
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You might have a lot of people you're in conflict with. Hopefully not, but you might have that. And you might say, so I need to go to these people.
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Some people I don't even know. Some people are dead. You know, I can't reconcile with them. And in those situations, you just need to recognize that before God and say,
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Lord, I am repentant about this. And the circumstances are so that I can't go to this person.
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But in that case, at least God sees your heart and He sees that you are sorrowful for what you did for another.
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But if you can go to the person, we should. As scripture tells us, the
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Lord wants our worship of Him to be right, not artificial. Fake worship does not honor
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Him. The greatest commandment is Deuteronomy 6 .5,
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which says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
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So love God with everything that you have. The application for us is clear.
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If we are to worship God in the right manner, then we need to be loving toward one another.
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This means confessing our sins to one another and forgiving one another. The context of our passage is specifically the sin of anger.
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So if we are angry against someone, we need to make it right for our worship to be pure.
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And like I said, in most cases, this means confessing our sins to another. In other cases, it means just bringing it to God.
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And you need to pray for the wisdom to know when that is appropriate. And we can sin against others by having unrighteous anger toward them, or we can refuse to forgive others.
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Both happen, and both we must not do. Holding resentment against those we think we have sinned against, and as we have already seen, righteous anger is always forgiving of others.
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So we always need to be in the pattern of forgiveness. Now in verses 25 and 26, once again, the one who has wronged another is clearly in mind.
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Okay, so let's see the last two verses of our text. Let's see this again, where Jesus says, 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.
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Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. As we read this, we once again need to keep in mind that the specific sin and focus here is anger.
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What Jesus is specifically addressing is that if we are sinning against someone else by harboring anger against them, then we must reconcile with the person with whom we are in conflict.
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When we have resentment towards someone else, what this does is it puts a barrier between us and the person who is the object of our anger and God always wants us to be at peace with others.
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This illustration that Jesus gives about the person who has this debt and they don't pay the debt and they're given to the judge and he's thrown into jail and he's stuck in jail until he pays his last penny.
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This illustration that he gives, the purpose of it is Jesus is saying, you need to resolve this quickly.
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In ancient times, if someone owed a debt, they had to pay it and they had to pay it in full.
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And what he says is that if you resolve this with the person you offended, then the judge does not have to deal with it where the result would be worse.
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So deal with it while you can before serious consequences take place.
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Our anger can easily get us in trouble and we see this all the time.
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If you carry your anger with you, what happens is that it not only fractures your relationship with someone else, but one who harbors anger does foolish things and says foolish things.
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And one who carries this anger is not pleasant to be around. And there was a famous basketball coach,
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Bob Knight, anybody heard that name? A coach for the Indiana Hoosiers. So he, to tell you his story, so he had a long career at the
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University of Indiana. He was there for about 30 years. He won three national championships.
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He has one of the most all -time wins in the history of college basketball. And he was fired,
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I think it was 99 or 2000. He was fired because of his conduct.
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I mean, he was really out of control in so many ways. And he was so bitter and resentful that he was fired that for 20 years, he never went back to Indiana.
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He was invited numerous times because they had all these ceremonies, all these old teams coming back, people inducted into their
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Hall of Fame. And he was invited to many of these. And he always rejected it because he was still angry at those who fired him.
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He was still angry at the university. In fact, when the president died, he was interviewed during a radio interview.
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And he said that he was glad that the man had died. I mean, you can see the extent to where his sin took him.
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Now, it's funny that I mentioned this because I think about two weeks ago, he actually went back finally. So it was good to see that he finally came back to Indiana.
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But what it shows is where anger can take you. Where bitterness can take you.
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Think of how much better his life would have been over the last 20 years if he would have just forgiven those who he thinks wronged him.
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But he wouldn't do that. He still stored up this anger toward them. And frankly, I don't even think he was sinned against.
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I think he deserved to be fired. And he should have just repented of his anger. But what
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Jesus is saying through this illustration in verses 25 and 26 is that you get yourself in bigger trouble through your anger.
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He's saying you need to resolve it before you're sent to the judge and you have to pay the last penny.
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What scripture teaches us is that we must always be those who aim to be at peace with others.
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To do this is to be obedient to God. And what we know as believers is that we never face
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God's punishment. Everyone here who's a follower, a genuine follower of Christ, you will not face
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God's punishment because Jesus faced it for you at the cross. However, God does discipline those who belong to Christ.
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He carries out this kind of discipline when we continue in a sin without turning from it. And specifically here, we're talking about the sin of anger.
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If you are harboring anger in your heart towards your brother and sister in Christ or anyone else, then this hurts your closeness with God.
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As a believer in Christ, your relationship with God is always steady, but there is a fracture when you have bitterness toward others.
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In this illustration, when Jesus says you will face the judge, he's talking about God. And he will discipline you if you harbor anger in your heart toward others.
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As Hebrews 12, verses five through seven say, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the
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Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.
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So we see here that if we do not deal with our anger, you can expect discipline to come if you're a sincere follower of Christ.
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And we don't know what that discipline will be. It might be an illness. It might be you have problems at work.
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I mean, God will mess with your life if we don't deal with our sin. And he does it out of love for you.
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He's trying to give you a wake -up call. But the point of this is that you never have to get to that point.
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You don't have to face the discipline if you deal with it, if you deal with your anger, if you're forgiving of others.
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And so the urge here is to do it quickly. Don't hold on to this bitterness. Don't hold on to this resentment.
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Let it go. Be forgiving toward the person to whom this is directed.
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So to wrap up our sermon this morning, Jesus calls each believer to address the serious sin of anger directed toward others.
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And he's given us two warnings. The first warning is to take care of your heart, not just your actions, right?
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So that the inside counts to God. It counts a lot. The second warning is to develop the habit of pursuing peace quickly with others.
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Now, as we look at this, we must understand that we all fall short of this.
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We need to do our best by God's grace to deal with our unrighteous anger. It is true that every genuine
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Christian is always in a right relationship with God, as I've already mentioned, right? The righteousness of Christ is counted as yours, but God still wants us to repent throughout our journey with him, right?
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There's this fracture that happens if we're not walking with him closely. This is where 1 John 1 .9
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is so helpful to us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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We'll make that a verse of the month sometime. We need to confess our sins to God and we need to confess our sins to those to those we have sinned against, specifically through the sin of anger.
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And as we think about our struggle with anger, and we all struggle with it, we must look to the cross where Jesus died for our anger and all of our sins.
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And the worship that is truly pleasing to God is where we rely 100 % on Christ for our salvation.
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And we strive by his grace to kill this anger in our hearts day after day.
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And in that way, you're different from the Pharisees. You're different from these hypocritical
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Jewish leaders. We are not to be hypocrites as Christians.
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And those who honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far from God, as Matthew 15, eight describes, those are the people we wanna be exact the opposite of.
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And even in the 21st century church, we can be like Pharisees. We can have
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Pharisee tendencies and we need to run from those. Because these were people who harbored this anger in their hearts.
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And yet they went to the temple, they went to the synagogues and they pretended like everything was good. When God was telling them, you need to deal with your anger.
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And if we rely on him, realizing we need him all the time, then our worship will be much different from them.
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And that's what we as a church must aim for. And in this way, we will have this sweet fellowship with God.
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Okay, so that wraps up our journey through anger here in the Sermon on the Mount.
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Now next Sunday, we're gonna look at another sin. And that's the sin of lust.
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And once again, Jesus doesn't just look at the act, he looks at the heart. And we will be challenged by this next
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Sunday. And I look forward to opening up that with you. Let's bow our heads in prayer again. Father in heaven,
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Lord, it is a fearful thing to stand before you. Lord, I know my own sin, my own struggles.
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And as I proclaim this, the spirit is pointing things to me as well.
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And I pray that he would do that to people in this room. Lord, we so often sin with the heart, even if we don't commit the action.
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And if we entertain a thought, and our emotions grab a hold of that thought, then we have crossed a line.
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And you're not talking about some fleeting thought, we're talking about this entertainment of these thoughts of anger toward others, where we imagine harm being done to them, where we imagine bad things, where we hope their life goes downhill.
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That's when we've crossed a line. Or we want nothing to do with the person. That's when we cross the line.
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You don't want us to have anger in our hearts like that. You want us to be at peace with others, Lord. We are at peace with you through Jesus Christ.
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And you call us to be at peace with others as well. We need to forgive others as we have been forgiven.
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So may we as a church live that out. And I ask this in Jesus' name,