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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Matthew 5:23-26
Well, this morning as we tick up again Matthew 5, we really begin part two of what we began last week, which is Jesus' teaching on anger, stemming from the sixth commandment. We saw, of course, that Jesus' understanding of the command from the Lord, thou shalt not commit murder, is actually explained fully when we address the issue of anger in our hearts, that which actually leads to murder.
And Jesus says to have that in our heart, that regard for another in our heart, that is spiteful, full of malice, that has bitterness or anger, even if it doesn't lead to the act, nevertheless breaks that commandment.
So we're picking up in some ways and bringing out more practical application as we press on from verses 21 and 22 now to 23 through 26. And I'm gonna be very brief in my comments on the text this morning, because I want to really get into some of the practical application that I mentioned last week.
So let me read for us from Matthew 5, beginning in verse 23. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way.
First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Agree with your adversary quickly while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge. The judge hand you over to the officer and you be thrown into prison.
Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny. Remember where we began this particular passage, Jesus has just proclaimed an absolute declaration. I say to you, right?
He's claiming authority over the law of God. He says, here is the right understanding, here is the right interpretation. He speaks as one who has this authority. And again, it's not the physical act of committing murder that exhausts the sixth commandment, but as Jesus says, whoever is angry with his brother, they are very close to the judgment of God.
Raka, fool, typical insults, nothing very fancy, nothing very eyebrow raising, but Jesus says that even a careless, impulsive insult when it's born from this kind of anger breaks God's commandment. I say to you, Jesus says, whoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of judgment.
So beginning in verse 23, we now have a slight shift. Whoever is angry is now actually transferred to the other party. It's not I who am angry, but the other person who I have provoked to anger. That's the shift we see in verse 23.
It's not if I have something against my brother, but if my brother has something against me, I have provoked him to anger. And Jesus says, in this case, if you bring your gift to the altar, and at this point, of course, Jerusalem is the center, the epicenter of all of the religious aspects of sacrifice, and so you would travel to Jerusalem to the temple to go to the altar of God.
And of course, in this understanding, this is the worship of the Holy One in the holy place, of the holy temple, in the holy city by a holy people. And somehow along this way, however the news is understood, maybe just a recollection, maybe just an insight shared from someone else, maybe a report, maybe a text message, we don't know how it happened, but somehow he realizes, my brother has something against me.
And Jesus says, in this case, if you bring your gift to the altar and remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, go your way, first be reconciled to your brother.
And notice that brother is mentioned twice. That's for emphasis, it's your brother. If you remember your brother has something, go be reconciled to your brother. So the offended party is not here called to act, the offensive party, the one who has provoked, the one who has offended.
And Jesus doesn't even adjudicate, well, is that really legitimate? Is he guilty or is he innocent? We really don't know. Jesus says, do whatever's necessary to be reconciled. In fact, he doubles down on that point.
Agree with your adversary quickly in the next verse. Before you go to the house of the Lord, you have to go be reconciled to your brother. And so we see the emphasis being brought out. If there is sin between believing brothers, then the worship of God is compromised.
If there is sin between believing brothers, or sisters by extension, then the worship of God is compromised. As D .A. Carson says, rightly, men would love to substitute ceremony for integrity, but Jesus will have none of it.
They'd love to just go through the motions of religious worship, but Jesus actually wants the heart, the purity that that worship demands. And by the way, as R .T. France, I think, points out in his commentary, most of the disciples that were with Jesus were men of Galilee.
Galilee's 80 miles away from Jerusalem. You can picture one of these disciples, and he's just had this long, maybe multi-day journey toward the holy city, and he's about 30 yards from the altar, and he realizes, I said that thing to Jimmy, and I know he's angry with me.
Now he's got an 80 mile walk back to be reconciled, and an 80 mile walk back to return to religious worship, and Jesus says, yes, go first, be reconciled. Of course, that's to make the point of the significance of reconciliation.
Verse 25, agree with your adversary quickly while you're on the way with him, lest your adversary, notice again, we have that double mention. Brother, brother, now adversary, adversary. The adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hands you to the officer, that would be the equivalent of a bailiff, and you'd be thrown into prison.
The idea here, agree with your adversary, it's actually a very rare verb, agree. It only occurs here in the whole New Testament, and the general idea is something like be well with, make peace with, make friends with, that's the idea.
Make friends with your adversary, be well with your adversary. So it's not just sort of a token agreement, it's actually a healing of a broken relationship. The command is to agree with the one who is actually dragging you to court.
It's a legal context, it's a lawsuit context, and the idea is agree with him on the way, on the way to where? On the way to the court, on the way to the judge, on the way to the one who's trying to get you to release your debt.
Now this draws back to the urgency of verse 22. Whoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment. You get that sense. He's now being dragged to judgment, as he were. He needs to be reconciled to prevent that judgment from falling upon him.
And Jesus really twists the knife handle of that conviction. Assuredly, you will not be released until every penny is paid. In Roman times, that would be the quadrants, the second smallest coin, a 16th of their common currency.
And he says, basically, every penny, every cent of the debt that you owe will be recovered. And so again, a legal case is in view.
The idea of debtor's prison.
You have a debt, in this case, the offense is likened to debt. You have a debt now that must be paid. And Jesus says, if you don't cancel that debt by reconciling with your brother, judgment comes, and you will not escape paying for that debt.
That's the context. It holds the whole passage together. Now Matthew, and we'll see this, of course, as we work our way into Matthew 6, one of the major themes in the Gospel of Matthew is the theme of forgiveness.
So much of the teaching content, so many of the parables focus in on this theme of forgiveness. God's forgiveness to sinners who have trusted Christ, and those believers in Christ learning how to forgive others who have sinned against them.
That's a major theme in Matthew. And this framework of a debtor's prison, of offenses being like debt, is going to come again throughout the Gospel, in parables, we'll see it in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Those who have offended us. So we're going to circle back to a lot of this teaching in the Lord's Prayer. Now the main focus, as you can tell, in this passage is reconciliation. That's where everything is driven toward.
Be reconciled. Agree with your adversary. Both of these passages come together on this point. And so that's what I want the main focus to be, as we consider anger now in more practical directions. Anger and reconciliation.
I want to talk about reconciliation first generally, and then secondly, reconciliation in the home. Dealing with anger in the home. And then thirdly, reconciliation in the church. Dealing with anger in the church.
Okay?
I hope it'll be very practical. Of course it cannot be exhaustive. There's so much more that could be said, that should be said, that can be said, even at lunch today. And we'll have more opportunity to discuss these things tomorrow night as men, as we gather.
Let's consider reconciliation, generally reconciliation in the home, reconciliation in the church. Well, as I mentioned last week from Grant Osborne, there can be no anger marring the life and worship of God's people.
Theology is not just about God and the spiritual life. In Scripture, the way we relate to other people is the way we relate to God. This is what the law holds forth. Love God, love your neighbor. You cannot abstract these two aspects.
We cannot separate relationships with others from our relationship with God. That is to say all horizontal reconciliation, all reconciliation that's horizontal, that's between us, must flow out of vertical reconciliation.
We are to be reconciled to our brothers that we might be reconciled unto God. We are to be reconciled unto God so that we might be reconciled with our brothers. When David commits sin with Bathsheba and he brings about Uriah's demise, he has the audacity to confess, against you, O Lord, alone have I sinned.
And it's not because he was a cold, unfeeling man at this point. He was repentant. It was because he understood the supremacy of God. God is of such infinite value that my sin, even against Bathsheba, my sin, even against Uriah, is of such a nature that it's as if I've sinned only against the Lord.
In other words, God is always the most offended party when it comes to our sin. David realizes that. David could not say, well, I never really sinned against the Lord. I've been obedient to the Lord all along.
I definitely sinned against Uriah. That's not David's view. God is the most offended. God, against you only have I sinned. Against you mostly have I sinned. Far and far and away have I sinned against you before I've sinned against anyone else.
That's his understanding. It's surprising, and yet it's surprisingly true. David has actually begun to understand the gravity and nature of sin. He can't look at it horizontally because now he's looking at it vertically.
God is the most offended because of my sin. When we've wronged someone, or when we've been wronged by someone, we must understand these primary relationships are nothing compared to that primary relationship, that everything that is horizontal flows out of what is vertical.
And again, this is holding together the law. Remember, Titus 2 .14 says one of the reasons Christ came is to redeem us from lawlessness. And what is the lawlessness we're to be redeemed from? Well, it's abstracting love of God from love of neighbor.
To be redeemed from lawlessness is to hold these two things together, to be able to walk in light of them, to have a genuine love for God and a genuine love for neighbor. And so Jesus tells us what's the first and greatest, but he also says the second is like it.
And that means in order to love God, Jacob must be reconciled to Esau. Paul must be reconciled to Mark. Euodia must be reconciled to Syntyche. And you must be reconciled to the one who is offended or the one who has offended.
This is God's will. This is God's will for your neighbor. Something of God's forgiveness is to be shown in the way that we forgive. Jesus, of course, has many parables to this effect. The parable of the unforgiving servant.
Again, another image of a debtor's prison. Something of God's patience, something of God's long suffering, something of God's compassion is meant to be shown in the way that we forgive. Christians are those who want to be able to forgive freely, richly, abundantly, instinctively, effortlessly.
That's the idea. Jesus says of the woman who came washing his feet, as it were, with her own hair, with her own tears, he was forgiven little, loves little. Those who love much are able to forgive much.
Remember that this is not only God's will for the neighbor, this is God's will for you. This is God's will for us. This is part of how the Christian is sanctified in their walk with the Lord. Sanctification does not occur in a vacuum.
We cannot actually work out our faith in our lives if we don't do that relationally. So much of our growth as Christians depends on how we interact with and deal with other Christians, even before we deal with those that are not believers.
Primarily, our sanctification happens in this nursery, in this garden, as it were.
This is where it's cultivated.
This is where it's pruned. This is where it's sown and watered. Our sanctification will largely be fleshed out and lived out in terms of our relationships with one another. So redemption involves relationships.
Redemption involves relationships. And relationships involve reconciliation. Redemption involves relationships. Relationships involve reconciliation. To be reconciled is to be set back in a proper way, in a proper frame.
To be reconciled, to be evened out, to be made whole, that's the idea. Of course, we mentioned this last week, Colossians 3. But now, as a result of coming to faith, you yourselves are to put off all these.
What's the first thing that's to be put off in Colossians 3?
Anger.
And largely, then, what comes from anger? Wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. This is all downstream from anger. If you put off anger, you'll put off all these other things. What flows out of anger?
Wrath, malice, blasphemy, cursing, vulgarity. This is all the direct outflow of anger. Paul says he doesn't wanna find the church in this way. He says, in fact, he'll be angry with the righteous anger if he comes in and finds these kinds of things sprouting and spoiling the flock.
2 Corinthians 12, he talks about contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambition, backbiting. What an image that is. I don't know that I knew it that well until we had toddlers. Now I know what backbiting is.
They put their hands behind their back and they go like a shark. You don't even know what's happening. It looks like, are they wrestling, hugging? What's going on? And then you see the agony of the one who's being bit.
Backbiting, whisperings, conceits, tumults. Paul says, no, you need to take seriously what it means for you to be the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 10, 16, and 17, this bread which we break. Is it not the communion, the fellowship of the body of Christ?
For we though many are one bread, one body. We all partake of one bread. It's so easy for us to think that we somehow have these disparate lives that aren't bound together. And Paul is constantly reframing that identity.
He says, when you are a Christian, you are in the body of Christ as the body of Christ. You cannot abstract yourself from the relationship you have with your brother. That's driving the theology of Matthew 5.
Be reconciled to your brother. It's your brother after all. And so there's no place for jealousy, no place for bitterness, no place for tantrums. These are blood-bond brothers and sisters adopted by the Spirit of God into the body of the Savior.
How could we be cool? How could we be distant?
How could we be so prone to grumbling and being full of maybe conceit? Is there unity in the body of Christ? You know, what I find in my own life is we protect what we prize. If you prize something, you'll take great measures to protect it.
If we prize unity as a church body, we will take great measures to protect it. You prize unity, and you'll find yourself being very thoughtful, very quick to examine yourself, how am I regarding my brothers and sisters?
Is there unity? Do I love others? Can I say that I love my brothers and sisters all together in this way that I'm watchful for them? I care about them. This is part of what Paul says discerning the body looks like when we partake, that we don't go into our fortress of solitude and say, how did my week go?
I'm about to partake the Lord's Supper. Discern the body. Is there anything I have against anyone in this room? I better leave that little thimble of wine and be reconciled first. That's the idea. They're my brother after all.
We're in the same body. That's partly why we celebrate the Lord's Supper every week. It's to be a heart check, a gut check. How are we regarding one another? Do we truly love one another? Are we walking in the forgiveness that we have received from the Lord?
Remembrance of the cross at the Lord's Supper helps us to reflect on what the cross has brought about. Not only does the cross bring about vertical reconciliation between an offended God and offensive people, not only does the cross satisfy that judgment of God, but now it establishes reconciliation horizontally.
Now I'm to be reconciled to all those who name the name of Christ. And so we cannot reflect on the cross as merely our relationship with God. We must reflect on the cross as also our relationship with one another.
God teaches us that our own imperfections have caused us to find peace with his grace, with his mercy, we are satisfied. And so in some ways, when we're dealing with difficulty, with friction in a church body, we see our own imperfections, we recognize the grace of God that is so rich, so abundant, mercy that renews every morning, and we seek to present that grace, that mercy, to those who have been offensive, to those who have offended.
We seek it with those who we have offended, even carelessly or thoughtlessly. This is something clearly that only believers can do.
Clearly.
I'm really convinced that those who don't know Christ at best can give superficial forgiveness, at best. When you are born again, then everything begins to change, doesn't it? Everything begins to change.
Your self-understanding begins to change. How you think of yourself, how you regard yourself, how you identify yourself, that all begins to change. Your ambitions begin to change. What you're working toward, why you're working toward anything.
Your relationships begin to change. How you interact, how you love, and how you forgive. We see this illustrated so well in Philemon. You remember the context of Philemon. Paul's writing this letter to Philemon, who's a Christian, and he has this fugitive slave, Onesimus, who's run away.
And the context, it's never spelled out, but the context is most likely Onesimus was perhaps running as a thief. Perhaps he had stolen from his master. For whatever reason, he's on the run, and he comes, and he actually is converted, and he finds his way to Paul, and here's his little connection.
What a small world. I actually know Philemon very well. Maybe he knew of Paul and thought, I need to kind of go here and find some shelter, find some safety. He gets converted, and the answer is, now you have to go back.
But as Paul writes this letter to try to reconcile now a new brother with his old master, he says, Philemon, I want you to receive him, that is, my own heart. That's what he says, my own heart. He says, in fact, I want you to forgive him.
Don't receive him as a slave, receive him now as a brother.
Amazing.
World-shifting in the first century. Paul says, in fact, he's so dear to me, it actually pains me to see him go. But in a way, Paul's saying, he must first go and be reconciled to you. Before he can even be useful to me in gospel ministry, I'd much rather keep him.
I've got all sorts of ways that I can use him and depend on him, but first go be reconciled. I want you to receive him. My own heart. So the gospel has transformed this man's life. And Paul expects the gospel to transform Philemon's affection for this man, the way that Philemon will treat him and regard him.
Reconciliation, forgiveness is at the heart. And this is clear evidence that the gospel is at work. When the gospel is at work in relationships, broken relationships are on the way toward reconciliation.
In so far as it depends on the believer. Some broken relationships are sort of a dead end.
For that very reason.
You make the best efforts you can, but there's no reciprocation. And reconciliation is a two-party system. It's a two-way street. But as much as it depends on the believer, they seek to restore, to mend, broken or frayed relationships.
And where there's been wrong on their part, they seek to make restitution. This is what Jesus declares to his people. If you're presenting your offering at the altar, and remember your brother has something against you, leave the offering.
First be reconciled to your brother. Then come and present your offering. That's an incredible piece of theology. What's more important than the worship of God? What could possibly be more important than the offering at the altar?
It's the worship of the Holy One. Wouldn't you think anything else could wait? Everything else pales in comparison. It's stunning that Jesus says, first be reconciled. That's stunning. And it's not because worship matters less.
It's not because worship doesn't really matter as much as your relationship to your brother matters. No, brothers, sisters. It's because worship matters so much more. That's why Jesus says, you must be reconciled to your brother.
You can't come with unclean hands. You can't come with a defiled conscience. You can't come as a hypocrite. God's worship matters far too much for that. Don't come and leave a gift at the altar that will not be accepted by a holy God.
First go be reconciled. Cleanse your hands. Cleanse your conscience. Then come and offer a sacrifice that's acceptable to God. In other words, you cannot simply worship God properly until you do what's in your power to be reconciled to the one who is offended, to the one who is offensive.
Jesus says, you are the one to seek it.
I love that.
It just puts the ball in your, whoever you are, you are the one that has to act. There's no one that can say, well, Jesus says that they're supposed to do it. It's everyone sitting here, it's on me. That's what you take away from the text.
It's on me. No one else has a responsibility but me.
That's the idea.
It's on me. You're not allowed to ignore the breach. You're not allowed to be passive. If you have a sense of friction, if you're aware of some tension, it's on you. How am I gonna go walk on eggshells?
How am I gonna go stomp on toes? How am I gonna go bring up something so awkward? How am I gonna go have this sort of cringe encounter? Jesus says, first be reconciled. This is a challenging teaching, isn't it?
I'm a master of walking on eggshells. I can walk on eggshells for years. Jesus says, no, first be reconciled. Your worship will be compromised. Your worship will be rendered unacceptable until you are reconciled.
That's what Jesus teaches. That's too much, we say. Does Jesus really know this brother? If he knew this brother, he maybe wouldn't have taught so starkly. How often should I forgive a brother that sins against me?
Remember when Peter asked that question? Seven times? That's what Peter asked. Is it seven times? Isn't that just crazy mercy that I would forgive seven times in a day? Man, this guy's got a real issue here, relationally.
He's going out of his way to offend me to the point where he sinned against me seven times in a day and Peter says, am I really still supposed to forgive him? And Jesus says, oh no, no, no.
Peter, of course not.
Much more than that. 70 times seven. So much that you'll lose count along the way. In other words, it will never exhaust. Before you know it, it's a new day and your brother's got all sorts of sin against you and you're just in that mode of forgiving all over again.
That is the power of God's grace at work through his gospel. And only a Christian can do that. Only a Christian can do that. I was talking about this with Melanie yesterday.
After the feast.
There's this sense that people think, well, yeah, I know Christians are supposed to forgive and if I became a Christian, I know that I'd have to forgive. And they think that Christian forgiveness is like this.
You kind of grit your teeth and you're supposed to because you're a Christian but you really don't want to and you really shouldn't have to. It's just because you're a Christian and it's like, no. The first thing the gospel does is show you your own sinfulness.
You become so humble about your own sin that it becomes very natural to forgive others. And maybe it's hard in some ways depending on the nature of the offense, the nature of the sin against you. But as you walk forward in forgiveness, the marvel of God's grace is you actually begin to pity, to empathize with the person who was a sinful against you.
You say, you know, I'm no different than them really. I actually feel bad for them. They don't know the Lord in the way that I know. You actually begin to have pity. That's how free Christian forgiveness is.
We forgive because we've been forgiven. And the more that we understand how we've been forgiven, it becomes very hard for us to hold on to grudges. We're like oil and grudges are like water. We just can't quite combine it.
You can shake us up but things just sort of break apart and they always settle back into a difference. That's a Christian. Redemption involves relationships. Relationships involve reconciliation. So secondly, let's talk about reconciliation in the home, anger in the home.
Well, the home is often the headquarters for anger issues, isn't it? If you think about, I don't know the statistics on this, but I remember hearing that most car accidents happen within a mile of someone's home.
And you wonder, why would that be the case? Why do most car accidents happen within a mile of someone's home? Well, it's because you're paying a lot more attention when you're driving through unfamiliar places or busy places.
But as you head to that driveway, everything is so familiar that you let your guard down, right? Everything's so familiar so you're not paying attention. You just let your guard down. And sure enough, you get into a car accident for that reason.
Well, that's like anger in the home. The home is so familiar that you let your guard down. You're not aware of your behavior. You're not watchful over your conduct, over your words, over your reactions because you're comfortable.
You're at home. It's the driveway. You can kind of put off being vigilant. You don't have to be polite. You don't have to be thoughtful about how you're coming across. You're just in your domain, in your element, in your home.
And for that reason, the home really becomes the headquarters of anger issues. Generally speaking, it'll go one of two ways. Either the situation at home is so distressing that in other areas, you take out your anger.
Or in other areas, you constrain and restrain your anger and you kind of let it loose at home. That generally is how things work. So if you see someone losing it in the workplace, it may be that the family would have no idea that they're actually losing it in that way.
Maybe they contain it at home and they just lose it elsewhere. But more often than not, it's the other way around. People contain themselves in a certain way, but at home, everything is let loose. Let me speak to husbands first.
The husband is the head of the home. I think we're all, generally speaking, I know we have some visitors among us, I think we're all, generally speaking, familiar with some of the verses. I'm not gonna take the time to qualify or explain the backdrop of this.
I'm just gonna go in where I think the peloton of the church is in our understanding of marital roles. I'm just gonna speak at that level, okay? The husband is the head of the home. And in that sense, the husband is first, right?
Not first in terms of value, first in terms of order. With that, first in terms of responsibility, first in terms of accountability. The husband is first. The husband is the head of the home, and in that sense, he's the first.
In his primary role, there's all sorts of shades of this, but primarily, authority has been given to the husband in order for him to bless. This is very, very important. And I hope this will be insightful to you.
The authority that you've been given as a husband is not to pad or reinforce your own preferences and comforts. You've been given authority and relationships as the head in order to bless. You are to bless and to be a blessing.
That is primarily why you are the head of your home. The flesh and the world take authority as an opportunity for self-advancement, luxury. Basically, I get to call the shots. That's how the world and the flesh want to view authority, but that's not why the Lord gives authority.
The Lord gives authority to bless and to be a blessing. Abraham is singled out with all of these great covenantal promises, and he's put at the head, as it were, of the people of God covenantally, and why?
So that in that very way, he can both be a blessing and be blessed. He's gonna bless all of the nations of the world because of his headship within the covenant. Abraham is singled out for blessing. This is in part why husbands are called by God to love their wives.
Colossians 3, Ephesians 5, you constantly have this overture, husbands, love your wives. What is it to love? A good gloss on that is, to love is to bless. Blessing and love have so much overlap. It's to seek the good.
It's to strive for what is best. It has within it the idea of affinity, of unity, of protection, of provision, of enhancement, of self-sacrifice, but fundamentally, the idea of a husband loving his wife is a husband actively seeking the blessing of his wife, being a blessing to his wife.
Of course, this authority, this means of blessing, is so that God's will, God's intention, can be carried out in the lives of His people. What is God's intention? To bring about the blessings promised to Abraham to the ends of the earth.
How in a microcosm is that going to happen? By husbands blessing their wives. And husbands and wives blessing their children. And grandparents blessing their grandchildren. And church members blessing other church members.
And the church blessing the lost world around them. We are to bless and be a blessing. Yet we live in a world tilted by the curse. We are blessed and to be a blessing, and yet we live in a world stained by a curse.
And that curse runs through the very fabric.
Of our relationships.
And so what was given to be a blessing can become actually shaded by the curse. And this makes loving, walking, agreeing, blessing in marriage rather difficult. Living together as a husband and wife becomes frustrating.
There's tension, there's conflict, there's things around you that frustrates you against one another. There's things between you that cause you to be disparate and move in different directions. And this is where anger begins to crop up.
Anger is harbored. Anger perhaps is given as an outburst, but more often than not, anger will just be a cool sort of distance, a sour face, a depressive mode of engagement. That's the idea. No longer is a husband a blessing.
He might in fact be harboring hidden anger and thinking, well, at least I'm containing how I feel. At least I'm not lashing out. But he's walking around with dejection. What kind of blessing is that? So my first exhortation would be, husbands, love your wives.
Be a blessing to them. Doing your best to constrain your anger and wearing it as sourness, as bitterness, as stress is not being a blessing, is it? So that means a husband should pray for and seek out.
I'm gonna give two things to the husbands, two things to the wives. Again, you could give a dozen more, but I'm trying to zero in on what I think is so important. Pray for and seek after patience.
Patience.
I don't think patience is heralded as a masculine virtue when it ought to be for this very reason.
A husband who struggles with patience is likely living or wallowing in bitterness and outbursts of anger. A husband who struggles with patience is likely living in or wallowing in bitterness and outbursts of anger.
And again, that anger may not be an outburst. It may just be dejection. It may just be a sort of sour countenance. Patience is fundamentally the idea of being slow to anger. Patience means I'm slow to anger, I'm patient.
I don't overreact, I don't react too quickly. I'm slow, I'm patient, I'm thoughtful. Proverbs 16, 32, whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty. He who rules his spirit is mightier by extension than he who takes a city.
Do you see the idea there? The Lord doesn't count strength as carnal men count strength. It's easy for a hothead to go to the gym and vent for a little while, but for a man to have genuine strength means he has self-restraint.
He's a patient man. Now, patience doesn't come naturally, especially to young men. And the Lord has a wonderful tackle box of all sorts of things he can pull out to help you grow in patience. And like a tackle box, most of them are very sharp and pointy and they hurt if you don't wield them rightly.
In other words, God is very faithful and he will give you all sorts of trials to produce what in your life as a man, as a leader, as the head of your home?
Patience. Patience.
You cannot be a blessing to your wife, to your family if you're not patient. We'll just say it very plainly. Patience, of course, must be trained. It must be conditioned. Patience should never be understood as somehow condoning disobedience.
I'm just gonna allow things to be insubordinate, to be sinful, to be in all sorts of ways against how I want to lead the home. You can never allow patience to become license, in other words. So that's not the patience we're talking about.
We're talking about a patience that restrains that fleshly reaction, a patience that has been trained to think soberly, not to speak from the flesh, not to speak in a sort of immediate reaction, not to speak out of my needs, my deprivations, but a certain sober way of looking at things.
The bigger picture, the vision, the calling, my role, I'm to be a blessing. I have to be a blessing in this small framework so that God can make us a blessing in all of the other ways that he seeks to redeem from the curse, right?
So that means you're leading to holiness with holiness, and that requires patience. Further, and here's the second point to this, add to your patience kindness. Again, perhaps not heralded as a great masculine virtue, but absolutely necessary if you would be a husband that blesses his wife and his children.
Add to your patience kindness. Husbands may show kindness to everyone else, and yet struggle to show kindness where God requires it most. It's easier for a husband to be kind to everyone, but the very people he is foremost to be kind to, his wife and his children.
Some men, of course, can restrain their temper, and I think I'm of this stripe. I don't struggle with outbursts of anger, outbursts of wrath. I can actually, I can restrain a lot and hold things in, but what I can do is I can push buttons.
I'll be unfazed, but I know how to push buttons. I know how to get a rise. I know how to provoke. That would be my temptation. So a man may restrain the excess of his temper, and yet be a provoker. And the head of a home is not to be a provoker in chief.
There's a reason that Paul says to these angry, selfish husbands, in terms of their children, fathers, don't provoke your children to anger. Husbands naturally learn how to provoke. Their anger can provoke, and sometimes their restraint and their ability to push buttons can provoke.
And so the antidote to this is kindness. If I think of it this way, kindness is patience, smiling. That's kindness, patience, smiling. And while we're talking about smiling, husbands, how often do you smile at home?
Do you smile at, it's a genuine question. If we had random Polaroids taken from your living room throughout the day, how many of them would find you smiling? Our girls every now and then take one of our phones and they know how to open the camera and they'll take, I'll find 1 ,000 pictures, I'll go, great, and I have to delete 1 ,000 pictures.
But often, in them, I'll have random shots of myself. And I'm not smiling, I'm like, yikes. I hope this one doesn't get posted. I hope this one doesn't get shared. I look miserable, I look curmudgeonly.
What was I, I have this resting face or I seem like something is wrong. Patience is kindness, smiling.
Did I say that right?
Kindness is patience, smiling. As one said, your kindness should not be an appetizer for your family, it should be the main course. This isn't something that comes and goes, a sort of, oh, I'll show you a little kindness for five minutes, and then you'll never see that again.
This is a way of life. It's not a part of a character you're playing toward others,.
It's who you are in your character,.
As a man, as a husband, as a father. Patience will lead to kindness. You must have patience before you can begin to cultivate kindness.
But if you would be a blessing,.
If you would love your wives and your children, you must have patience, and your patience must smile with kindness. Let's speak to wives now. For the wife, just as the husband, the home is where the guard is let down, and wives have a unique place within the home.
In some ways, that's their domain,.
That's sort of their atmosphere.
A husband, of course, directs and leads the home in fundamental, pivotal ways, and yet the air that is breathed in the home will largely be a result of the wife. The atmosphere of the home will largely be the result of the wife.
Even worldly wisdom says a husband can have a house, but a wife makes it a home. We understand that that's true. It's part of the genius that's unique to women, that they can arrange and decorate and frame and relationally involve things that actually makes life gleam and glimmer, actually beautifies things.
This is an element of order that the sort of feminine mystique brings to everything it touches. And of course, for that very reason, the woman can also be the foremost to tear down all that the Lord would have built in the home.
To be a blessing,.
To suck out the air of peace in domestic life. There was this video from 2016 of a couple, it's just CCTV camera footage of this drive-through safari. It was some safari park in China where they had all sorts of safari animals, and apparently this husband and wife were fighting in their car.
So you see the car come to a stop and all of a sudden the door flies open and the wife storms around the front of the car to the other side and opens the husband's door and she's beginning to yell at him.
She's forgetting she's in a safari park. And all of a sudden out of nowhere, a tiger leaps on her and grabs her and drags her off.
Thankfully, authorities were there.
And they were able to spare her. And so she wasn't, I think she was wounded, but she recovered fully. But in that moment of anger, she lost track of where she was and what was going on. She went to go lash out at her husband and he's just sitting there kind of taking it.
And all of a sudden his wife's dragged away by this massive cat, this flurry of orange and black stripes and a roar. And then you see the husband darting out to try to grab his wife. That's a, what a way to end an argument.
Well, you remember Peter says that Satan prowls around like a lion, looking whom he may devour. And my hunch is that for a lot of ladies, they may think it's just an argument, just an opportunity to vent, just something that has to be said.
And they may not realize spiritually speaking, the same thing is happening to them. They go to say their peace, to vent their frustration, to lash out in a quick moment of anger. And spiritually speaking, the lion has dragged them away to do his bidding in the home.
Certainly this applies to an explosion of anger, but more often than not, women are not prone to explosions of anger. I think Latinas are in some ways, but I say that with bias. No, actually the Lord does wonders.
More often than not, women aren't as prone to explosions of anger in the way that men are. Women are prone to a continual dripping of anger, to use the imagery of Proverbs. Proverbs 27, 15, a continual dripping on a very rainy day, and a contentious women are alike.
Whoever restrains her restrains the wind, grasps oil with his right hand. You see, in other words, it's impossible to restrain a contentious woman. It's impossible to stop that continual dripping on a rainy day.
The idea is this constant harping, this constant nagging, this argumentative spirit, this hostile combativeness. That is something that a wife is very prone to. That may be for good reasons. She may be frustrated or reactive about the failures of the husband, things that are falling through in the home, ways that the home should be led that it's not being led.
And yet for that right understanding of the situation, she goes about addressing it in all of the wrong sinful ways. In disrespect, she vents out in front of her children against her husband. In anger, she goes and lashes out rather than sitting him in the gates, encouraging him with her respect, showing that quiet and gentle spirit that's precious in the eyes of the Lord.
She becomes what those on the left would say is a nasty woman. And they say that with relish. And we should say that with contempt. So what do you do when you open your mouth as a wife? You open your mouth with wisdom.
Proverbs 31, 26, she opens her mouth with wisdom. And on her tongue is the law of kindness. And so much like the husband, a wife is to bless and to be a blessing in the home. And in some ways, the atmosphere of the home will be set by the wife.
And so when the wife opens her mouth, she opens it with wisdom. And on her tongue is this law of kindness. It's a law now. In this house, we are kind. In this house, we smile. You don't say that as a Stepford wife or as Judge Dredd.
You actually live out the very things you would seek to see in others. You become the source, the wellspring, the fountain of kindness. This too, of course, this wisdom, it involves kindness. Against the foolishness of feminism, it involves godly feminine wisdom.
An immature or a selfish wife will often take advantage of her husband's kindness, or at least take it for granted, and she'll never return that kindness. Again, some men dispositionally are very kind.
And for that reason, they may not lead in ways that they ought to lead. They may not know how to lead against a wife who's very self-assertive. And their kindness is actually being manipulated.
By the wife.
A wife needs to be very careful in this respect. But that is not the image of the virtuous woman. The virtuous woman is not one who takes advantage. She's not one who opens her mouth to vent or to let out some steam.
She's not one who lashes and leverages or drips with contention. She's one who loves to bless her husband. That's Proverbs 31. She does him good, not evil, all the days of her life. And so the image of the virtuous woman is a woman who loves to bless her husband because her husband loves to bless her.
They are a blessing to each other. They've sought to be a blessing to each other, and they've become a blessing to each other. And by extension, the children are blessed. They rise up and call her blessed.
Why?
Because she's a source of blessing to them.
You see?
Whenever she opens her mouth, it's wisdom. Whenever she speaks, that law of kindness is reinforced in the home. That's the idea. And further, speaking of the home, she watches over the ways of her household.
And here, I think wives have to be very guarded because there's a beauty that a wife's instinct is to watch over the ways of her household. Again, often the frustration and the sort of friction in a marriage is a result of a wife watching over the ways of her household and seeing things that are wrong, that are maybe sinful, things that are damaged or broken, and that becomes frustration against the leader, the head of the home, right?
Management always gets blamed. And the marital unity begins to break down in that way. Well, there's other ways that watching over the ways of the household can go awry. You may actually have peace in your marriage, unity in your marriage, but as you watch over the ways of your household, this may cause friction with others, other people, other church members, other family members, relatives.
And this all comes back to a wife watching over the ways of her household. I wouldn't have thought of this application without reading C .S. Lewis. He makes this great point. Again, you might find him rather provocative.
Better he say it than I. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, talks about intense family patriotism. Intense family patriotism. And I say this is a unique struggle for a wife. Listen to Lewis. The relations of the family to the outer world, what might be called its foreign policy, must depend in the last resort upon the husband because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to outsiders.
Now, give him a chance to explain that. He's saying, generally speaking, the way a family relates to other people, other families, it's gonna fall upon a husband who's usually a little more just, a little more patient toward those people that are not family members, all right?
Now you go, wait a minute, but let him explain. He says, a woman is primarily fighting for her own children and her husband against the rest of the world. It's what we call a mama bear, isn't it?
Mama bear.
What's that instinct? I protect my family. I don't allow any begrudging insults against my family. I don't let, I may even agree with them, but if they have the gall to question how I'm doing things, I won't let that stand, right?
A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world. Naturally, almost in a sense rightly, their claims override for her all other claims. What matters most, instinctively, as a virtue, my husband, my children.
I'm the wife, I'm the mother. This is my life. My life consists in these things. So Lewis says, she's the special trustee of all of their interests. The function of the husband in this way is to see that this natural preference of hers can't become the head.
He says, that's wonderful when it's contained in the order that God has given the household. It's not very wonderful when it's not. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife.
That's very insightful. In other words, he's saying, when friction happens, a wife will often be very offended, very frustrated, that maybe some shade was thrown against her, her family, her child rearing, how she does things or so on.
She'll take great offense to that. And the husband, in some ways, will have to learn how to deconstruct that offense and say, well, we have to remember what they don't understand, what they don't know, how they're different, what they're like, what we're like.
We shouldn't overreact in this way. And what he's doing, and he's recognizing, a wife has this natural bent to be defensive. Instinctively, she wants to protect and contend for her own family. But in some ways, that can lead to the very things that Matthew 5 is talking about, the very things that need to be reconciled, the very sources of anger and malice and bitterness, secret discontent, jealousy, whisperings, backbiting, being busybodies, do you see?
And Jesus says, none of this gets a pass. None of this gets a pass. Since I'm stepping on ladies' toes, let me just do one more crunch before we move on. Don't hide behind hormones. Don't hide behind hormones.
Scripture does say that a husband is to walk with his wife in an understanding way. And in some ways, women are a little more fearfully and wonderfully made than men in this regard. But I don't find a chapter or a verse anywhere that says do not be angry unless, you know, hormones.
Then it's okay. I just don't see that in Scripture. Of course, things must be accounted for. The Lord knows our physical stature. He also knows our weakness. He knows our proclivity towards sin in light of those natural weaknesses.
A husband ought to know them. He ought to lead graciously and mercifully accordingly. He's to walk with his wife in an understanding way. He's to regard her as something delicate and precious like a fine porcelain cup that can't be thrown into the sink like the old iron stock pot.
But don't hide behind your hormones. Don't excuse what Scripture does call sin for a category that doesn't exist in Scripture. Don't excuse what may be sinful despite the power and influence of hormones and bodily changes you experience as a woman.
And I'm gonna say we'll be very consistent as we go to the very next passage in Matthew 5 which deals with lust in the heart. And for the same reason I say women should not hide behind hormones, I'll say young men cannot hide behind hormones.
Despite the power, the influence of hormones, bodily changes, that just never gives a license to sin. It never excuses sin for what it is. The Proverbs 31 woman is industrious. She is excellent in this very way.
She opens her mouth with wisdom. She reinforces this law of kindness. She's a wellspring of all that nurtures and sustains life in her home. She adorns the home with warmth, with beauty, with graciousness.
Mercy renews in that household every morning because the wife wakes up and she knows how to regard her husband, how to regard her children, how not to take offense against her family with that intense family patriotism.
She's able to reinforce all that is precious in the sight of God. It may be that wives need to see Proverbs 31 in new light. This call to excellency may mean that some women need to be more faithful in this high and holy calling of being a wife, a mother, a homemaker, a homekeeper.
But within that calling, and this is my last encouragement now, within that calling I would say don't be industrious at the expense of a gentle and quiet spirit. Don't be industrious at the expense of a gentle and quiet spirit.
In other words, don't seek your ideal Instagramable moment if it comes with all this frustration and stress and you're not able to actually live in a way that's peaceable and gentle and rewarding. Proverbs 15, 17 would put it this way.
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted calf with hatred. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted calf with hatred. In other words, your family is better off with ramen noodles around a table if that table is rich with kindness and love than a five course Michelin star spread that lacks it.
So don't be so industrious that you can't be gentle, quiet, putting off anger, putting on mercy. So the big encouragement here, husbands seek patience and add to that patience kindness. Let your patience smile.
Be a blessing to your wife and children. And for wives, have kindness with wisdom. Add to your kindness wisdom. Understand your weaknesses. Don't hide behind them. Don't overreact against them. But seek what God would have for you in your home.
I realize we're not gonna get to the third point. We're talking about reconciliation in the church. Let me just close with three exhortations to both husbands and wives, okay? First, don't mistake mistakes.
Don't mistake mistakes. This is a point that I read from Samuel Renahan. I thought it was very good. He says, many conflicts in relationships are about annoyances, pet peeves, mistakes, opinions, preferences, and the like.
If your reaction to mistakes is the same as your reaction to sins, there's a problem in your judgment, all right? If your reaction to a mistake is the same as your reaction to a sin, there's a problem with your judgment.
If a police officer pulls you over for speeding, you expect a ticket, not a jail sentence, all right? If your spouse makes a mistake, you ought to be able to cover it, to overlook it, to make up for it in very simple ways.
The nagging wife and the micromanaging husband usually fail at this very point. They treat every mistake as if it were a sin. Okay, that's a very good insight. Don't mistake mistakes. Not having something to your preference, not having things go the way you would like does not mean that your spouse has sinned against you or is walking in sinfulness.
Let a mistake be a mistake covered in love. Let sin be a sin that can be exposed and repented of and forgiven with rich mercy. Second point, don't resist humility. Don't resist humility. What that means to me is take the high road when you have anger issues, when you have an argument, take the high road, and taking the high road is not saying, well, I'm just gonna take the high road.
When you say, I'm just gonna take the high road, you are not taking the high road. You're actually going low, you're being smug. Taking the high road actually means going low, humbling yourself. It may feel like losing the argument.
It may feel like you're giving ground that you don't want to give, you don't intend to give it. If I apologize, if I own for this, and they're gonna kind of run with that, I'm gonna give them all this leash to run with, and no, I'm actually still disagreeing, I just, I know that I'm being sinful about it.
Well, don't resist humility. It may feel like you're losing the argument, it may feel like you're giving ground you don't wanna give, it may feel like you're even giving your spouse.
A hold over you.
Well, guess what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Be reconciled.
Be humble.
Apologize for what you need to, and then apologize for what you can. What does Jesus say? Agree with your adversary quickly. The idea is that, well, wait a minute. I don't even know if he's right to feel this way about me.
Just agree with him, you're on your way to judgment. That's the urgency he puts on reconciliation. So don't resist humility. Reconcile, how are you gonna reconcile?
More often than not, a wife will think more of a husband who humbles himself for unchecked anger. The husband will think, I'm gonna lose respect, I'm gonna show how pitiful I am, how I lack self-control if I apologize and have to kind of keep owning up to this, and they fear, wives don't know this, how powerful a wife's respect is in the life of her husband.
That, in a sense, a man can make it to the moon coasting on the respect of his wife. And a lack of respect for a husband can essentially break him, paralyze him. You ladies don't realize how powerful your respect is.
And for that very reason, a husband may be prone to not wanna lose respect. He'll allow that anger to sort of seethe and break out and settle, and he'll never really own up to it. He doesn't wanna lose respect.
Let me tell you, husband, you'll actually gain respect when you humble yourself, when you actually apologize, you repent, you ask the Lord to forgive you. You ask for prayer, you ask for encouragement, help.
Your wife will respect you more for it, not less. And a husband will find new empathy for a wife that had been combative, but now she comes with a humble apology. That's very disarming. That's like a little judo maneuver where all of a sudden, like that guy in Detroit that was like, you do this and you flip the gun.
That's sort of a judo maneuver. That's contention, that's combativeness, and all of a sudden, husband's got all these arguments in stow, and he's, there's no way I'm gonna let this slip away, and the wife just says, I'm sorry.
And it's just like this judo maneuver. What, oh, I'm sorry, too. Everything kind of settles after that point. Be sure that you don't say, I'm sorry, but.
Big mistake.
Again, saying I'm gonna take the high road is not taking the high road. Saying I'm sorry, but is not saying I'm sorry. Let your sorry just be, I'm sorry, full stop. Don't say I'm sorry as a token of humility to continue the argument and make your point.
Third and last, don't let the sun go down on your anger. That is very brief and simple point. Be slow to anger, be quick to listen, be more than quick to forgive. Don't let the sun go down on your anger.
Agree with your adversary quickly, Jesus says. Be reconciled quickly. Don't let the blue sky begin to turn pink and orange and yellow. Don't let the sun even begin to set when there's contention, when there's anger in your home.
Well, we'll have to close here at this point and leave reconciliation in the church for perhaps another day. Let me just close with this encouragement, with these words from Scripture. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God in Christ forgave you. Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word. Bless it to us, Lord. Every person here faces different challenges.
And difficulties, Lord.
In addressing husband and wives, Lord, we recognize there are children, there are those who are single, those who perhaps are divorced, those who are widowed, Lord. We recognize that there are many different seasons that come with many different trials.
And yet, Lord, we know your word is profitable to us all. We do pray, Lord, that we would all learn this kindness, this wisdom, this quickness to reconcile that befits your people. We pray especially, Lord, for the marriages reflected in this church, whether about to be, whether new, or whether stodgy and old or somewhere in between.
We pray, Lord, that we would ever be learning and relearning what it means to be a husband, to be a wife, to have a faithful marriage that reflects the gospel and is a blessing to all those in and around in order that you might bring a blessing as far as the curse is found.
These things we ask in your Son's name, amen.