Women: Sermon on the Mount (Part 5) You Have Heard That It Was Said (Part 1) Jennifer Wilkin October 4, 2011

Transcription

1 2011 The Village Church Women: Sermon on the Mount (Part 5) You Have Heard That It Was Said (Part 1) Jennifer Wilkin October 4, 2011 Let me pray for us, and then we ll get started. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the opportunity to come together once again tonight. Lord, I thank You that You want to impress on us what the character of the disciple looks like, what the influence of the disciple looks like and what the righteousness of the disciple looks like. We pray that we would be a disciple, a learner and that we would learn well that we might bring honor and praise to You. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. So we started the Sermon on the Mount with the character of the disciple. In the Beatitudes, we saw exactly what it looked like to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. And then last week, Colleen taught on the influence of the disciple. We had two very powerful and very different images. A disciple is like salt. A disciple prevents the spread of moral decay in every sphere that they are in, they sting the consciences of those who they are around, they make people thirst for the gospel and they also add seasoning and give a flavor to this world that would not otherwise be there. And then we saw also that a disciple brings light. They bear the light of Christ into a dark word, they reveal truth which was hidden in darkness and they cause the growth of righteousness. So we had salt, which held back the decay and kept decay from spreading, and then we had light, which promoted the growth of good. This week, we move into the section that was set up for us last week where we learned what it means to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. What you have to understand is, when Jesus listeners, when a Jewish audience heard the phrase scribes and Pharisees, what came to mind was the pinnacle of righteousness. So as Jesus moves on through His ministry, He s going to come down really hard on the scribes and Pharisees, but we re at the beginning of His ministry. It is just becoming apparent to His followers what He means when He says, Hey, the scribes and Pharisees are way off. So at this point, they re going to hear an equivalent to Jesus saying to you, You need to have a righteousness that exceeds that of John Piper. I don t even have enough righteousness to exceed one of his tweets, much less the whole guy. That s the kind of thing that they would hear. Now John Piper is not a Pharisee, so don t take that illustration too far. But that is what they would hear. They were that level of righteousness in their understanding. So if they thought the Beatitudes were a shocker, by the time He gets to that, they re probably going to be even more confused than they were. So I m going to back up as we head into this section tonight where we re going to talk about anger, murder and adultery, and I want us to start back in verse 17 of Matthew 5 to set it up tonight. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I

2 have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. How is Jesus going to fulfill them? He s going to do this in two ways. He s going to fulfill them through a deeper obedience, because He s going to fulfill the Law perfectly as a human. He is going to fulfill all righteousness by obeying every aspect of the Law during His lifetime. And then He is going to fulfill the Law with a deeper interpretation. So He fulfills it through a deeper obedience in the way that He lives, and He fulfills it through a deeper interpretation through the way He is going to expand it. So whereas they may have read the law for external obedience only before, now Jesus is going to push harder on them, and He s going to say, You missed the point. There is way more here. And then in verse 18, He introduces that key phrase that you marked in your homework this week. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. So He says to them, Truly I say to you... again and again. It implies a couple of things. First of all, it implies that He is setting His authority above that of the prophets. You may recall in the Old Testament when the prophets were about to speak a prophecy, they began with the phrase, Thus says the Lord. But what does Jesus say? He says, I say to you... Because His words are God s words, and He s claiming authority as God when He says that. But also that word truly is interesting. Because doesn t it imply that someone else has spoken falsely at a different time? That s what we re going to be looking at tonight. What were the false ways that the Law had been taught? Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now as Colleen pointed out to you last week, what is being taught here is that, as we treat the Word of God, so will God treat us. If we take the Word of God lightly, then God will treat us in the same way. So this being called least in the kingdom of heaven would be a reflection of how we had treated the Word of God. But if we hold the Word of God in high esteem, and in this case the Law of God, then we will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Isn t that what we all want? We all want to be called great. Jesus has just said, This is what true greatness looks like. It is faithful obedience to the Law. It is faithful teaching of the Law through our actions and words. So who has been relaxing the commandments and teaching others to do the same? It s the scribes and Pharisees, and that s what He s going to point out in our time tonight. So then He says in verse 20, For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus calls for a deeper obedience. He calls for an obedience that is both internal and external. Now I want you to hear what it is He is focusing in on, because Jesus is a lover of the Law. I think that s hard for us to understand sometimes because we ve heard a lot of, Okay, now that you re a believer, the Law has no hold on you. Have you ever heard anyone teach that before? So you go, Okay, I like the sound of that, because the Law make me feel like a big loser because I can t keep it. So I m glad that the Law has no hold on me anymore. And this is true. Because what was the hold that the Law had on

3 you? It was always a curse to you, until Christ fulfilled the Law in His actions. At that point, grace was given to you and the Law took on a different purpose for you. It was not abolished, but for the first time, you were actually able to obey it. You can obey the Law. Are you going to obey it perfectly during this lifetime? No, but you can obey it with the grace given to you through salvation. And it pleases the Lord for you to obey it. Have you ever heard the parable of the talents? Something is given to three different people. One guy does nothing with it, and the other two people do something with it. We can obey that Law. We can t obey it perfectly, but Jesus here says to us, Obey the law. And now let s talk about what it looks like. Whereas before, the Law was over us, we were under the Law, now the curse has been removed and the Law is under us like a path leading us to righteousness. The Law now serves us. The Law is good, because the Law illustrates the character of a good God, a God whose character does not change. It becomes our joyful obedience to the Law that allows us to grow in righteousness by the power of the Holy Spirit as our hearts are changed. So Jesus says, Here is the truth about the Law. Let s see what He has to say. He starts out with the topic of murder. He s going to talk about two sins that we usually give ourselves a passing grade on when we go through the Ten Commandments. Okay, I have lied, I have coveted and I dishonored my parents. But I have not murdered anyone, and I have not committed adultery. So that gives me 2 of 10. But we found out this week that actually none of us has gotten a 2 of 10 on the Ten Commandments, because Jesus is pushing us towards a deeper obedience. This week He is going to talk about murder and adultery. He ll lead us right into divorce, oaths and retaliation next week. So these things that seem like simple commands to them, but He is going to say, This is just the tip of the iceberg. Let s really dig in and see what s underneath. In verse 21, He says, You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' Now who had said that? God had said that, the prophets had said that and then the teachers of the Law had taken that and had taught it in a particular way. What was the way it had been taught? They had taught that anything short of the physical act of committing murder was not sin. But Jesus says, Oh no. Murder begins in the heart. So He says, You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you... Now when He says, But I say to you... we should expect a contradiction. It sounds like He s going to come back and say, But murder is actually okay. But of course that s not what He s going to say. He s going to say, No wait. We re going to refine your understanding. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire. So Jesus is going to redefine what murder looks like. He says that anyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Did that bother you? Are we supposed to not get angry at all? One of the things that is sort of missing when you look at this translation is the idea here of anyone who is remaining angry, anyone who is carrying anger. So it s not just where something happens and you feel that anger hit you. This is talking about holding on to it, thinking about it and figuring out

4 what to do with it. So let s talk about anger. Is anger sinful? We know that all anger can t be sinful because we have two examples of Jesus getting angry in Scripture. He gets angry at the money changers and overturns the tables. And then there s that day when He wants to heal a man on the Sabbath and He gets into a tangle with the teachers of the Law. It says that He was extremely angry in that scene. In that scene, it translates into words how He handles His anger. In the scene in the temple, it translates into actions. So anger can t be a sin or Jesus would have not experienced anger. Furthermore, there are verses that say things like, In your anger, do not sin. So it must be possible for someone who is not Jesus to be angry and not sin. In the book of James, it says that everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, but it doesn t say that you should not get angry. Why is that? Because anger is an emotion. Like joy or sorrow, anger is an emotion, and it does not carry a moral value. Emotions are morally neutral. It is what happens next with them that determines whether sin is going to happen or not. Anger is our emotional response, our natural response to our will being violated. This is the two-year-old sitting on the floor and your friend brought in her precious little twoyear-old. You set them next to each other. That little two-year-old grabs the Tonka truck and what does your little two-year-old do? He smacks him. Why? Because his will has been violated. That s my truck. Don t touch it. So his natural response in anger. Anger can be a protection response for us. We don t want to not ever get angry. That would be weird. The question is what should we do when anger comes? Anger is our natural response to having our will violated, so let s put that in the context of Jesus for a second. Jesus gets angry because His will is violated? Yeah, but really more so because His Father s will is violated. It is His Father s will that a man be healed whether it s the Sabbath or not, and these men want to obstruct that. So He becomes angry. He s angry on behalf of the will of God being violated. So that s a righteous anger that is without sin. It is a righteous anger that He is able to act on in word and in deed without entering into sin, because His Father s will has been violated. How often is that the kind of anger we feel? Not very often. We d all like to say when we fly off the handle, Oh, it s a righteous anger. I love the sinner. I just hate the sin. But is that really true? It is very hard for us to separate out our sinful desire to get even with someone from any kind of righteous anger. I m not saying that it can t happen; I m just saying it s probably the exception to the rule. So we are very quick to get angry in a sinful way. Think about Jesus. The two recorded instances we have of Him getting angry are the result of Him watching someone violate the will of His heavenly Father. He s sinless. So that means, for 33 years, every day, all day, He has watched people violate the will of His Father every time they sin. But how many recorded instances do we have of Him expressing His anger? Two. How about you? You may not be like crazy road rage girl, but do you yell, Come on! every time somebody cuts you off? How quickly do we let our anger turn into some verbal or physical expression because our will is violated? So a lot of people want to say, Oh, Jesus got angry. So I m just being like Jesus. But in 33

5 years, we have only two recorded times where His anger found expression. That is an amazing level of self-control that we can only dream about. So anger is not a sin. It is an emotion. So what Jesus wants to show us is what happens to that emotion. Let me just give you an example like joy. Jesus is going to say, You have to watch out, because anger is going to deepen into something else. So He gives you this progression. He says, Any of you who is angry is guilty. Any of you who says raka (which is like you stupid head ) and then any of you who says, You fool! is guilty. One commentator compared you fool to calling someone a bleeping moron. It was that level of contempt. It was assigning moral worthlessness to a person, and Jesus is saying, Watch out, because what begins as anger degrades into contempt. It moves from, I m mad at you, to I want to harm you because you are worthless in my sight. So let s look at the flip side of anger joy. Joy is a positive emotion. What happens when joy deepens? When joy deepens, it turns into love. When love deepens, it turns into commitment and a death to self. Let me give you an example of this. When you have a baby, you feel joy that the baby has come into the world. I don t know that you can find the dividing line between the joy of having the child or finding out that you re pregnant and that love that begins to develop in you. This deep, inexplicable love wells up in you. And before you know it, you are like, I will do anything to make this baby s life go the way it needs to go. I don t need to get my hair colored anymore, because the baby needs food. I don t need to get my nails painted. I m not going to clean the house anymore, because I m just going to give this baby all my time. We begin to become selfsacrificing in a way that we have never been self-sacrificing before. Even the most selfish of us sets aside so much of our selfishness with the birth of a child. Why? Because joy deepened into love which deepened into a commitment in a relationship that led to selfsacrifice. But now look at anger. What happens there? Anger deepens into contempt, which deepens into broken relationship, and rather than a death to self, there is a desire for the death of another. Anger is the beginning of the progression that leads to murder. I ve never physically murdered someone, so that can t be true, right? But we said that anger turns into one of two expressions. It either turns into actions or it turns into words. So maybe you re not a physically violent person. I hope that you re not. But what do your words sound like? What do your words sound like when you re talking to that husband, to a parent or to a child? And you get angry because that child didn t obey like you had hoped they would. Any expression combined with the right look and tone that conveys the sense that you could have finished your phrase with, You bleeping moron is an expression of contempt, and it kills relationship, it kills that child s confidence and it is character assassination, one stabbing word at a time. But because they re just words, we say, I didn t do anything. Jesus is calling us to a deeper obedience. Contempt is such part and parcel of the way we speak today, it is on every TV show. I love Modern Family, but Phil and Claire are the most horrifying parents ever. I think, Do people watch this show and think this is the way a family should talk to each other? Because so much of it is the language of

6 contempt. It s waiting for your turn to mock the next person. Phil s an idiot. How many episodes are there around Phil being an idiot? Apparently quite a lot. But that s a typical pattern you see on TV, the idiot husband. He becomes an object of contempt. Which is going to lead nicely into what Jesus is going to talk about next. So anger goes into contempt, which goes into at the very least character assassination. Because once you have decided that someone is worthless, it s just not that big of a leap to say, This person doesn t even deserve to live. So you throw in the right amount of stresses, the right difficulties and whether or not you actually commit the act of murder or not, you will live as though you wish that person were dead. So anger contempt murder. Jesus calls us to a deeper obedience. And then He gives us a way to help the problem. He tells us it s important to reconcile quickly. Because it interferes with true worship when we are at odds with someone that we should not be. So let s read the next section and see what it says. Verse 23, So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. So Jesus is giving us two different examples of how we ought to handle a situation that has deteriorated due to unforgiveness. The first one is dealing with a brother. So this is a fellow believer. He s saying, There is a way you deal with a fellow believer. And then He s going to talk about an accuser. So he s going to talk about you you deal with someone who may not be a believer but with whom you re having conflict. So He says, If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you. Do we do this? You don t offer your gift at the altar, do you? This is an analogy, an illustration that can be hard for us to understand. You need to think of this in terms of walking down the aisle to take communion, to partake in the Lord s Supper. You realize you have an offense against someone. So you walk out of the service and find that person to be reconciled. One commentator said it this way. It is as if you were standing at the altar of your own wedding and realized that you needed to go be reconciled to someone. So you leave your wedding and go make peace with that person. We go to churches and buildings that look like this with music that sounds casual and welcoming, and sometimes we don t have a good sense of the formality, of the heaviness, of the weight that accompanied the type of ceremony that s being discussed here. So think of the most significant setting you can think of where you would be at the altar, and you leave that to go be reconciled. Because it is more important and in fact you can t even approach the altar rightly if you remain in conflict with your brother. So it says, Remember that your brother has something against you. Literally that s, Remember that your brother has anything at all against you. So He s really calling us to a rigorous examination of, Okay, is there someone with whom I need to go sit and have this difficult conversation? Now I know what you re thinking. You re thinking, Yeah,

7 but it wasn t my fault. That person was more in the wrong than I was. If I had a nickel for every time I had sat down with a girl to have coffee and she has told me what someone has done to her and why she cannot go and reconcile that situation because she is in the right, I d have a lot of nickels. We have to be the bigger person. We have to set aside our own need to win. We have to understand that, in a conflict like that, if one of us wins, we both lose. For the sake of relationship, we are the bigger person and we go and approach that other person. We ask forgiveness for what we can ask forgiveness for. Sometimes we ask forgiveness because they were hurt. Whether we meant to hurt them or not, we still apologize. We go and seek reconciliation with them, because reconciliation matters. It matters to God, so it should matter to us. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Is it always possible to reconcile? No. And Scripture acknowledges this. It says, As far as it is possible with you, live at peace with all men. But there are a lot of things that are possible for us to do to effect forgiveness. So we have to ask the Lord to convict us rightly that we have taken every step that we can and that we ve reached out in every way possible. So with a brother, go and seek reconciliation Verse 25 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. So basically he s describing someone pursuing legal action with you through the court system and what you should do. Try to get to that person before it goes all the way to the judge. See if there is room for mercy and grace in there before justice comes into play. Because once it s time for justice to happen, that s where you re going to be. So this is an admonition to get in there and be a peacemaker. Go be someone who reconciles. Go be that in your relationship with other believers, and go be that as far as you are able in your relationship with unbelievers as well when it comes to matters where there is forgiveness at stake. So then Jesus moves on naturally to His next topic, and that is adultery. Because you can see very easily how any marriage that is bathed in anger and contempt is a prime target for adulterous behavior. It starts with, He didn t unload the dishwasher, and it goes very quickly to, He is a worthless loser. I do everything in this house. And then we re on Facebook, we see the high school friend, we remember him as such a nice guy, we re pretty sure that guy unloads the dishwasher at his house and we re off and running. So let s see. Verse 27, You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So basically Jesus says, It has been taught to you that any behavior short of the physical act of committing adultery is not sin, but I say to you that adultery begins way before that. Adultery begins in the heart. So He says this deeper obedience is necessary and a deeper obedience is what we re called to. Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So right off the bat, we re going, This is great. This is a passage about men. Let s talk about how men have a lust problem. Also, what a dirty dog my husband is, because when we re out somewhere and some beautiful woman walks by, his eyes pop

8 out of his head and he flatlines and drools. And the Bible says that s not right. Is that what the Bible says is not right? No. When a very attractive person walks by, I have to say that men and women often have the same response to an attractive member of the opposite sex walking by. Beautiful people are distracting. I m sorry, they just are. That is a natural thing. That is not a sinful response. It s if you hang on to it, think about it, entertain it and imagine what might come next. That s when we start to get into dangerous waters. Is it just a man problem? No, I don t believe that it is. But there is a difference between seeing a beautiful person and losing all brain function for a few minutes and lusting after someone. Every year, I have to go for my annual skin check at MD Anderson. That appointment involves several unsavory things. One is I have to take off everything and put on this gown. And then a whole troop of people come through, because it s a learning hospital. So first you get the very new person who s like, Why are you here today? And then they look you over head to toe. And then another person comes in who is a littler further along in their studies, and they go through the whole thing again. And finally a real doctor comes in. Also for me, it involves having all of these photos of myself, photos that if my children ever discover by accident is going to wreck our relationship. But they re necessary because they have to see how things change for me from year to year. So here I am in this room in my robe. The first person had already come in, and then in comes the second person. I was not prepared for this. It was one of the nicest looking men I had ever seen in my whole life. I could feel myself flush. To make things worse, he apparently got me confused with another patient. Because he said to me, Hi, Mrs. Wilkin. It s good to see you again. How s the physical training going? Are you still a physical trainer? And I can t even put words together, because this guy is really cute and I m wearing nothing but a hospital robe and I m going to take the robe off in a minute and he s going to know he s got the wrong girl. There was no lust involved there. It s just that really pretty people freak us out. So when does it turn into lust? It turns into lust when you linger on the thought. Wow, he s really cute. I wonder what it would be like to hang out with him in private. And it goes on from there. But for a lot of us women, that s not where we struggle. Lust over a man s physical attributes is really not what it s about. It s about something else, isn t it? It s about all of those things that he is more of than the person that I m with. He s more considerate, he s more romantic and he s just more present. He s not gone all the time. He s more helpful. Maybe he s more fit. Maybe he s not as lazy. Maybe he s more financially successful. Maybe he provides better than my husband does. There are all these points of comparison where we hold the husband we have up to the idealized version of someone who is in a romantic comedy we watched. This is the whole reason that the chick flick genre exists. Now you did not just hear me say that it s sinful to watch chick flicks. I personally love them. But I don t ask my husband to be Mr. Darcy. If he wanted to be, that would be okay. I am not setting an expectation for him based on the content of those movies, but there are some of us who do. There are some of us who draw on things that we ve read in a romance novel, things that we ve seen on TV or just tings that we ve heard another

9 woman say about her own husband. We idealize that and say, I want that. I deserve that. Why don t I have that? Because at it s root, lust is a form of covetousness, isn t it? I want something that is not mine to have. Covetousness is something that happens on many levels and in all places. But Jesus has a solution for it. He says in verse 29, If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Oh my gosh. Are we supposed to take this literally? Did Jesus just tell us to chop off our hands and gouge out our eyes? Do you know that people actually did take this literally? Origen of Alexandria, a 3 rd century scholar, made himself a eunuch to deal with his lust problem. It wasn t until the Council of Nicaea in 325A.D. that the church formally came together and outlawed the practice of mutilation. They had to say it, because some goofy person thought that Jesus was telling them to actually do this. But Jesus was reducing to absurdity the argument of the scribes and Pharisees who said that an outward compliance with the Law was all that mattered. So Jesus says, Hey, if outward compliance is all that matters, there s a simple fix for that. Just cut off whatever body part it is that is causing you to sin. Sounds great, right? But of course it would not work. Because if I cut off my hands so that they won t touch or grab things that I m not supposed to grab, if I gouge out my eyes so that they couldn t see things that would lead me into sin, if I stopped up my ears so that they couldn t hear things that would draw me into sin, if I cut out my tongue so that I couldn t taste that food that I can t stop eating, if I cut off my feet so that my feet can t walk me to the places I ought not to go, I would still have a wicked, wicked heart. The problem is inside, but what Jesus is calling for is a ruthless moral denial, not a physical self-maiming. What extent will you go to to keep yourself away from lust? Would you get off of Facebook? Would you get rid of cable TV if your problem was what you were watching on TV? What would you get rid of? Where would you stop going? Who would you stop hanging out with? What arm would you cut off? What eye would you gouge out? A person who only has one arm is the subject of curiosity and ridicule from other people. They can t blend in. What current behavior are you unwilling to get rid of that draws you into sin but will make you the subject of someone else s scrutiny if you no longer engaged in it? Is it related to your music choices? What is it? Your thing will be different from someone else s thing. My husband and I haven t had cable since we got married, not because cable is of the devil. My mom always called HBO Hell s Box Office. It s because we knew that we love TV more than we love spending time with each other. So we never got it. Feel free to have cable. I m not laying that on you. I m just asking, what is your thing that you will not get rid of because you re afraid it will open you up to scrutiny? My family thinks we re idiots for not having cable, but we don t think we are. We know our limits, and we re living within them.

10 As I was thinking about this tonight, I thought about the story of Aron Ralston. The movie came out recently, but the actual event happened in He s the hiker who was out climbing in the canyon in Utah. He fell into a slot canyon, and an 800 pound boulder crushed his right arm. So for five days, he drinks 12 ounces of water. He nurses it out over five days. Finally on the fifth day, he realizes that there is a way for him to live, but it s going to require dramatic action on his part. He literally cuts off his right arm to save his life. He does it first by breaking both of the bones, pulling out his little utility tool, which had a 2 inch knife on it, and cuts through every layer until the arm finally came off. That s ruthless determination to live. What if we regarded our sin like that? I will do anything not to die here. I don t care if it means I walk around for the rest of my life as a one-armed man who people think looks funny. I want to life and not die. Whatever it is, food, a skinny body, a different husband, what is the thing you have to have? Is it shopping? Is that your thing that you lust after, more stuff? Are you willing to just not look at those catalogs anymore and just throw them away? What if you just didn t go to the mall anymore. What if it were as simple as that? So many of the sins we need to address don t even require a ruthless denial. They require a minimal denial. Are we willing to do it? Can we see that all sin is ultimately death? Can we see that all of us have our arm trapped under the 800 pound boulder in some way or another? But we do have the tool to free ourselves, and that tool is grace. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. So where does adultery begin? Adultery begins the same place that murder begins. It begins in anger and contempt. It begins in unforgiveness. So what can we do to control how we relate to anger and divorce? If we could control anger, contempt and lustful, covetous thoughts, then a provision for divorce would be unnecessary. Next week, we re going to talk about divorce. If we could get this week s material under control, then there would be no need for Jesus to have continued on to divorce next week. Now I know that divorce is a difficult topic for many people in this room. It s a personal one for me. My parents are divorced. I know what that looks like. I know what it looks like 33 years later. I know that it still hurts and it s still hard. Some of you have been through a divorce yourself and you re not wanting to come next week. So I want to tell you that you can trust us to talk about this topic in a way that is loving, in a way that is gracious and in a way that does justice to what Jesus would have wanted taught out of this text. It s one of several things we re going to talk about next week. So be brave and come on. Because God s Word is for our good; it s never for our harm. But Jesus has set up this discussion so perfectly by first introducing us to what it is that tears down a marriage in the first place. I don t care if you ve never been married. It s a good thing for you to think about. Because in any relationship, anger and contempt is what will kill. Of course the answer that we have to help us with these problems is to walk in forgiveness towards others. Forgiveness is that deeper obedience that we re being called to. We have to forgive our offenders. We have to flee from sin. You can see the pattern that the Pharisees had set up in their teaching. It wasn t, Is sin somewhere over here? Because I ll just go over here. It was, Where is sin? Is it right there? Because I ll go

11 stand right next to it, but I won t cross the line. Jesus says that radical obedience says, I ll flee from sin. I m not so worried about where the line is. Because if I m over here, I don t have to worry about accidentally crossing a line of sin. And when it comes to anger and contempt, a person who walks in forgiveness toward others cannot harbor those things in a sinful way. But how do we do that? How do I get rid of all that? How do I not let it turn into bitterness? I think we have to turn once again to the example of Christ. You and I, when someone wrongs us and we get angry, even though we may have done nothing to deserve the wrong that has come our way, we know that at other times we ve done things. We ve done things that deserve to be punished, but not Jesus. When Jesus was wronged by us, He had done nothing at any time ever to deserve being wronged. And yet, as He was on the cross, what did He say? Father, for give them. Why? Because they don t know what they re doing. Do we believe that about people who offend us? I don t think we do. I think if we slowed down and thought about it for a few minutes, we might get there, but for most of us, when someone offends us, we go straight to, I believe that my offender woke up this morning and said, How can I wreck Jen s day? But who does that? Do you do that? Do you wake up in the morning and say, Today I m going to make life hell for my husband and kids. Today I m going to make my employer regret the day he ever hired me? No. You don t do that, so why do you think that other people do either? Most sins against us, most offenses are committed in ignorance. When your husband leaves his underwear in the same spot on the floor for three days, can you believe that it s a sin of ignorance or does it have to be a deliberate whittling away at your sanity? No. Well he should know. Okay, but he doesn t, and he s not a mind reader. Maybe he should know, but he doesn t. He doesn t wake up in the morning and go, Today I will dangle underwear from every surface in the house to drive that woman absolutely insane. He doesn t. Your children don t wake up and go, Today is my day to disobey, every time and every place. Bring the rules on, sister. I got you. See this truck? I m smacking my little brother with it. They don t do that. We have to believe that about people if we re going to extend forgiveness to them. And it s so easy to forgive someone who doesn t know what they re doing. Isn t it easier to forgive a two-year-old than it is to forgive a sixteen-year-old? Yes. But really the sixteenyear-old didn t set out to wreck your day either. So we need to remember that. Jesus remembered it in His moment of greatest extremity. In the midst of excruciating suffering, when all He should have been thinking about is, How am I going to get through the next 30 seconds? He thought about our perspective on harming Him. So when I m having my moment with my hot tea in the afternoon and someone interrupts me, I m not in a moment of great extremity. Surely I can pause and say, I don t think this interruption was planned from the beginning of time to suck all the fun out of my ginseng. It s just not. So we can follow Jesus example and understand that most offenses are committed in ignorance. But also we can grasp Christ s provision. What do I mean by that? A person

12 who loves their anger is turning away from a great reality. The reality is that God is no longer angry at us. He who had every reason not to set aside His anger did so. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 says, For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 3:12-13 says, Put on then, as God s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. We struggle to forgive others to the extent that we do not understand God s forgiveness of us. The more that we understand the depth to which God went to forgive our sins, the further we are willing to go to forgive the sins of others against us. So if you struggle with anger towards a particular person, don t focus all your energy on why that relationship is not working and why forgiveness isn t happening there. Turn first to that vertical relationship. Ask the Lord to give you a deeper understanding of your own forgiveness and that His wrath was turned on Christ instead of on you. Can t you set aside your anger? Because if you can set aside your anger, then no one gets murdered, no one gets dealt with in contemptuous tones, adultery doesn t make the radar and so many things fall into place. Forgive as you have been forgiven. Let s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You that Your Word is so clear on these issues that affect each of us daily and in so many ways. We pray, Lord that we would allow Jesus teaching on the Law to enable us to walk in the grace that comes through that. Lord, we thank You that You don t leave us to wander around wondering why our relationships are broken, wondering why nothing is working the way it should and wondering why we always want a different this or a different that. Lord, thank You that Your Law points us toward Your character. You, Lord, are not adulterous toward us. You maintain relationship with us at every expense. You, Lord, who could have killed us, instead gave us life. You, Lord, who could speak to us in anger, speak a word of love to us. We pray, Father, that our desires would be so fixed on You that the things of this world would have no appeal. And as our hearts come into alignment with Your desires, we pray our hands, our eyes, our feet, our ears, our noses and our mouths would all become engaged in a work that glorifies You. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.