We're entering into the very heart of the Sermon on the Mount now where Jesus is going to give to us an extended treatment on what it is to have a righteousness that surpasses that of the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees. as we saw in our last passage in verse 20 there, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And now we're going to find out, what does Jesus mean by that? And we're going to really discover God has a great interest in what's going on internally. In fact, the very promise of the new covenant in Ezekiel 36, 25, God says this, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart. and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and cause you to be careful to obey all of my rules. Jesus is going to teach extensively here in the Sermon on the Mount on that very idea, God's concern for internal heart change. And he's going to warn us against a form of godliness that is merely external and driven by an inward desire to only please other men and from other men receive glory. God is looking at our hearts, he's looking at our minds, he's looking at the person on the inside, and that is where his concern lies. And we're gonna find out Why? Why is it that God is so concerned about our hearts? Most of all, though, what's going to take place in this passage is that Jesus is going to drive us away from any belief, any thought that we, in and of ourselves, are naturally, by our works or just by who we are as people, that we're good. He's going to show us that in reality we're as bad as any murderer out there, and anything that we do externally doesn't really cover up the internal acts that we're all dealing with that are sinful before God. These passages call for us to examine not just what we do, but how we think. how we feel, the kinds of attitudes that are going on around us. It causes us to examine how we are reacting internally, not just externally, but internally to the situations of life. You see, mankind, when motivated by any religious zeal that comes apart from the internal work of regeneration, if we're not motivated by God's spirit being in us and God giving us a new heart and a new spirit, the complete change of the inner person to love God and to then love the things of God, any motivation to do religious things apart from that work of God in the heart is just based upon the belief that a person can achieve righteous standing before God apart from the necessary work of conversion. And nothing could so keep a person from heaven than that kind of thought process. A religious pride in works. We are not saved by works. We're not saved by just doing things externally. This is the exact problem that Jesus is addressing to the Pharisees here. It is by faith that we're saved, and by faith we are converted and justified before God. And it's by faith alone. Jeremiah 17, nine through 10, tells us this. And this is the answer. Why do we think that we can just do things externally when God sees us in our very heart and yet stand justified before God? And the reason is, is our heart is, according to Jeremiah 17, nine, Deceitful above all things. The heart is deceitful above all things. Literally, it's as deceitful as it can possibly get. And it says it's desperately sick. Who can understand it? And that's a good question. We can't understand our own hearts. We can't even judge our own motives most of the time. We don't even know why we do half the things we do. Verse 10 says, I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds. In other words, God's looking at your heart to see why you do what you do, why you think what you think, why you react the way you react. A deceitful heart, though, tricks us into believing that righteousness and obedience to God's standards is an issue of mere external conformity to God's law. An external conformity that is apart from this necessary internal change and renewal that comes only by the work of the Spirit and conversion and changing our hearts and making us new people and therefore giving us new affections and new desires. We think that if we just do things, if I just go out and do this, or that if I don't do that, if I don't murder people, if I don't just commit the act of adultery, then I'm doing pretty good and that's enough. The problem is the Bible over and over and over and over again illustrates and teaches and sets forth the propositional statements that God isn't just concerned about what we do or don't do. He's more concerned about who we are internally. What's driving our actions? What's going on in the heart? Proverbs 16.2 says this, and we should all take heed to this, all the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes. In other ways, we all think we're doing what's right all the time. And we really think we're doing what's right when we're abstaining from certain types of behaviors externally. And the problem is, we're not paying close enough attention to what's going on in the inside. If we ever get to a point where we start believing that we've arrived, that we've made it, you know, I'm doing pretty good, I'm pretty sanctified because I haven't killed anybody, I haven't committed adultery, I haven't stolen anything today, I didn't even lie externally today, we have missed the whole point. All the ways of man are pure in his own eyes, the verse goes on, but the Lord weighs the spirit. God is looking at what's going on in your heart. And that's what matters. And we have to understand that, that God's not impressed with any kind of religious duties or righteous acts that are done with wrong intentions, wrong attitudes, or wrong goals. We can set forth to do all the right things with the wrong goal, can't we? We can think, you know, if I go out and I show up to church and I give my tithe and I pray and I read my Bible and I know some theology, then everybody else in the church is going to think I'm a mature Christian and I'll receive glory from them. They'll look at me and go, wow, what a mature person, what a great Christian they are. Look at all the deeds that they do. Wrong goals. Right external behavior only pleases God when it corresponds to right internal motives. If we're not doing things for the right reason, God considers it sinful. And I think a great example of that is joy and gladness in worship that I brought up last week as opposed to like resentfully going through the duties of worship while internally you just want to be on the lake or you want to be anywhere but church and you just show up, kind of sing through the song, sleep through the sermon, go through the prayer, get up and say, finally, I'm out of here. The predominant theme of the Psalms is worship the Lord with joy. Worship the Lord with gladness. Sing with joy all the earth. These ideas that we get in our minds, if I just show up resentfully, and I go, okay God, I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna do these things, these religious duties, and now you owe me a big one. Because I don't even want to be here, and yet I'm here anyways, and that's how committed I am. God's not impressed by this at all. We have to be very careful that we're not fooled by the deceitfulness of sin, that we're not led astray by the deceitfulness of our own hearts to think that it's okay to be internally opposed to God while externally we just kind of somewhat conform to a certain aspect of religious duties. God can see right through that. And we all know something, and we would all, I hope, readily admit this, that if our internal thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and ideas that we had this morning were revealed to everybody in this room, we would be utterly undone and devastated. We have thought some things this morning that are horrific. And yet we kind of get this, well, I'm not actually doing those things, I'm just kind of entertaining them in my own mind. The problem is God sees all of this. God's looking into your heart, he's looking into your mind, he's looking into your attitudes, and he's seeing right through all the superficial facades that we put up in order to appear religious and holy in front of other people. The question is then, why don't I love God enough to love his ways? And as Christians, this is a question we need to be asking ourselves daily. What is it that's going on inside of me that causes me to resent these religious duties that God does give to us and to do them in a sense of I don't really want to do this. It's forbidding. Why do I want to go to church on Sunday morning when I can go do this on Sunday morning? Why do I want to wake up and read my Bible when I can turn on the news and be entertained? Why don't I want to pray to God? Why don't I love God enough to love His ways? That's the question we need to be asking ourselves. The answer to all of this, I'll give it to you from the beginning, is repentance. As I talked about last week, the goal isn't, or the idea isn't, like I wake up and I say to myself, I don't want to pray, and I don't want to spend time in the Word, and I don't want to do right things today, so therefore, because I don't want to do them, I'm not going to do them hypocritically, so I'm just not going to do them at all. That's not the answer. The answer is one of repentance. It's one of confession. We repent of wrong motives. We repent of wrong desires and goals. We repent that we don't have the proper devotion to God that we ought to have, and then we turn around and we devote ourselves to the means of grace that God has given us to increase our love and to increase our devotion to His glory. So it's not as though we go through like the Sermon on the Mount and we see that I've got these hard attitudes, I've got a murderous heart, and so I'm just gonna give up. No, the idea is to drive us back to what it says in Matthew 5 verse 3, blessed are the poor in spirits, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This drives us to a poverty of spirit. This is what the Sermon on the Mount does. It shows us that we're really not all that good, that we really don't have anything good going for us. And it drives us to Christ. 1 Corinthians 4. If we think again, we need to unmask any idea that we can rightly judge these things ourselves, that we can rightly judge our motives apart from the Word of God and the work of the Spirit in our lives. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul the Apostle says this, for I am not aware of anything against myself. So he's saying, I don't know of any sin that I'm living in habitually, but then look what he says, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time before the Lord comes who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. We can't be in charge of this assessment because we would do just what the Pharisees are doing here and what Jesus is going after. We would just say, well, I haven't actually killed anybody externally, so I'm doing pretty good. I haven't actually committed adultery, so I'm obviously doing pretty good. And we can't be the judge of that. Why? All the ways of man are pure in his own eyes. We think we're doing good. And so what Jesus comes in and does here is he dismantles that facade of righteousness that we have. This idea that we're doing all right. Availing ourselves to the means of grace, most especially to God's word, is the only standard by which we can actually examine our hearts in a truthful way. It's the only way we can look in and see what are my sinful motives? What do I need to change? How do I need to change them? In Hebrews 4 verses 12 through 13, you all know these verses, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. In other words, when we open God's word, especially passages like the Sermon on the Mount, all of a sudden we're undone. Everything's flayed open. Everything that we thought was hidden is laid bare. Verse 13, he says, no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him of whom we must give an account. In other words, we give an account to God for what's going on inside, and it is the scriptures that lay open our souls. And God's looking at all of this. He's seeing all those attitudes. He's seeing all those thoughts. He's not somehow ignorant of them. He knows what's going on inside. And so an external piety apart from an internal work of the Spirit and an internal change and a mortification of sin is nothing at all to God. The psalmist in Psalm 139.23 says, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. I was, Lord, I'm not sufficient to do this on my own. In my own eyes, I'm pure. In my own eyes, I've got it. Everything's going good, and I'm doing everything right. God, search me. Try my heart. See what's going on inside of there, and show it to me that I can confess it, and repent of it, and begin to mortify the sin that's still indwelling me. That should be the prayer of every single one of us. And not just like on a weekly basis, but on a daily, hourly basis. Every time we begin to think that, hey, you know what, I'm doing pretty good, and we all think this, don't we? We get in these moments where we're like, I don't even know what to confess today. I'm sure there's something, Lord, but I can't see it. And it's like we blissfully go through our prayer. That should be a warning sign to us all. Lord, search me and try me. In my own eyes, I see myself as pure, and I know I'm not pure. Test me. See if there's anything in me, and then lead me in the way everlasting. Show me how to get out of this. Show me how to mortify this sin. We have to attack sin at its root. The root of sin is the heart. Sin doesn't come about, it doesn't find its way in through external circumstances. We have this whole idea we bought into secular psychology that we've all been taught in college and everywhere else that, you know, it's all nature versus nurture and all these other things. How you're born and what culture you live in determines who you are and what you do. you know, mass murderers probably, you know, had a bad childhood or something. That's why they're mass murderers. And Jesus is coming in here and saying, no, that's not the problem at all. It's that man's heart is deceitfully wicked above all things. We were born into this. We inherited it from Adam. It has nothing to do with what's going on on the outside. In fact, external circumstances merely allow for the sin in our hearts to manifest itself. It pushes us and squeezes us so that that evil actually pops out into the surface and we go, wow, I don't even know where that came from. It came from inside of us. exposes us for who we actually and really are. I hear all the time people say, oh, you know, so-and-so, he's hooked on drugs and he's in prison for rape, but he's really a good person at heart. No, he's not. I don't know why we've bought into this. He just ran into some tough times, had some tough circumstances. All that did was expose what was really going on in his heart or her heart. And if we bring that down to our own level in life, we realize the same thing is true, especially when we start talking about anger. We think we're doing pretty good on anger and somebody really annoys us. The co-worker that we just can't stand, the neighbor who's playing his music loud, the spouse, the kids, whatever it may be. All of a sudden, external circumstances start compressing and we go, well, it's all their fault and I'm getting mad. No, actually, that was in your heart to begin with and all they did was open the window to expose what's already there. The Sermon on the Mount demonstrates this over and over and over again and again it should cut us all to the heart as we realize the serious nature of the heart issues of sin. This is rebellion against God that's going on inside of us and that's driving our actions and we must deal with it in order that we would demonstrate a righteousness that is by faith. giving a true demonstration of the results of conversion and the work of the Spirit in salvation and sanctification in our lives. You will not get any more holy externally than you are internally holy. If you're not working on thoughts, attitudes, ideas, all these things that are internal, you're never going to surpass that externally because it's out of the heart flows the wellsprings of life. Everything we do is driven by who we are internally. And so righteousness and our obedience as citizens of God's kingdom is always a matter of the heart. And that's the point of the Sermon on the Mount. This week we're going to focus on the serious nature of sinful anger, which I hope and pray will serve the purpose of driving you all to Christ and to God in prayer and confession and repentance. That's my goal today. I don't have time to go into all the sanctifying aspects of how we battle anger today. My hope is that today you will see that you are guilty, that you'll see the heinousness of your sin. that I would see it more and more and more in my own self. And then the following weeks, we'll talk about how to combat sin, how to mortify sin in our hearts, and especially we'll focus in on the sin of anger. And then after a few weeks, we'll jump into verses 23 I'm going to do that throughout the Sermon on the Mount. I decide I'm just going to take my time and work through it. I don't want to just tell you how heinous this sin is, and what it comes down to is murder of the heart, and then just kind of leave you there to deal with it. I want to stop and spend some time dealing with the heart issue of anger, the heart issue of lust, and so on and so forth as we work through the book. So, Matthew 5.21. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment." Here's the foundational statement. And before we jump into this verse, what I want to do is I want you to note the context from which the statement's made. If you just go back to verse 18 there, it will suffice to set our context. Verses 17 through 20 are all about the eternal authority of the Word of God. God's words are not failing. Jesus says, I didn't come to abolish the law or the prophets. All of those things stand, so don't misunderstand me, is what he's basically saying. And in verse 18, truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not any yoda, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. So before we jump in, we need to understand that Jesus is not turning around then in verse 21 and making a contrast between the law of God and then what he says there in verse 22, but I say to you, He's not saying the law of God and what I'm saying are opposed to each other. Jesus is making reference here when he says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. He's making reference to the rabbinic traditional interpretation of the sixth commandment from Exodus 20, 13, you shall not murder. What he's doing here is devastating traditional understandings of how that law is kept. He's not saying you shall not murder is not a law in and of itself. He's saying how the rabbis have taught you this oral tradition that you have received, that's not how you fulfill this law. That was not the sole purpose and intent of do not, or you shall not murder. It goes way beyond that, and he broadens it for them to understand it as God presented it in the Old Covenant. Not just an external adherence, but an internal one as well. If you remember, I've pointed out several times in 2 Corinthians where Paul talks about 23,000 people in Israel being killed for what? Grumbling. Grumbling. God's law was not just, okay, as long as you just fit in to the Ten Commandments, my moral law established here, in an external way, you'll be fine. The Israelites started grumbling. There is no thou shalt not grumble. What was it? It was a heart attitude that was at variance with God, discontent with God, and wanted something more than what God had given in His providence. And so as we go into this, Jesus is not throwing out the law. He's throwing out the traditions of the elders that said, as long as you just keep this commandment by refraining from the physical act of murder, then you could consider that act fulfilled. And this was the mindset. I want you to look at Matthew 19. This was the mindset of the typical Jew of Jesus' day who was religiously pursuing a keeping with the law of God. In Matthew 19, we see this plain and clear with the rich young ruler, the rich young man is the title in the ESV here. You have this guy, it says in verse 16, Behold, a man came up to him, him being Jesus, saying, Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. And we sit there and for a moment we just go, wait a second. Is Jesus saying that if we just work our way into heaven, we can make it? It's not what he's saying at all. We have to read the rest of the story here. He said to him, which ones? So Jesus says, keep the commandments. He goes, okay, which commandments do I gotta keep? I'm pretty familiar with them. Jesus said, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And the young man said to him, all these I have kept, what do I still lack? Amazing. The guy had done all of them. You know what Jesus doesn't say? He doesn't say, you're in buddy. Just keep going. Keep going and you'll make it because you've got it all figured out. Jesus drives right at his heart. He drives right at his idol here. If you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. In other words, Jesus lists these commandments and he gives them all out and yet noticeably absent here is the commandment to love the Lord your God. to put no other God before him. And what was his God? His heart idol was money, his possessions. And in other words, if your heart's not in the right place, you're never going to make it. I don't care what you do externally. I have no doubt, maybe the guy probably made it his whole life. I can't imagine he never told a lie, but Maybe he never killed anybody, never committed external adultery. Maybe he never stole anything. Maybe he honored his father and mother. And maybe he was making these external attempts at loving his neighbor as himself. But again, that's impossible internally to love your neighbor as yourself when God is not your first priority. So Jesus isn't turning around here and throwing out the law. He's making the point that the rabbinical interpretation of how the commandments are to be kept and applied was false. It's at variance with the heart and spirit of the scriptures. And I'll begin to explain this, how this relates to murder and anger here in a moment. The next statement there, you shall not murder. Obviously, now that's taken from the sixth commandment, but wrongly applied and wrongly interpreted as an external issue. of referring, or rather refraining from, the act of murder itself. Now, murder is from the Greek word phonousis, and it's specifically referring, it's not just talking about killing. Some of our English translations have really goofed this up by putting killing. We put a different connotation with killing and murder. Those are really two separate words in our vernacular, and so murder's a better translation. It's more More in line with what the Greek word actually means. It's specifically referring to criminal murder of another human being. It's not talking about killing in general, because killing in general could be very broad. It's not including capital punishment. That's obvious because God prescribes capital punishment in Genesis 9.6. And so if God's saying, you shall not murder, and it means all killing always, all the time, and then he prescribes capital punishment, we've got a conflict there, very obviously. So it's not capital punishment. It's not even warfare. Warfare is a different issue altogether. It's not accidental homicide, because the liability to judgment spoken about here is a liability not to go to the city of refuge, which is how the people of Israel would have understood this. If you accidentally killed somebody, there were cities of refuge set up that you could run to so that no one could take revenge. No, liable to judgment means liable to being stoned to death. It also does not refer to self-defense killings. Rather, it's referring specifically, it is a specific word talking about intentional acts of killing another human being entirely for personal reasons. In other words, somebody says something, does something you don't like, and you don't go to a court of law or anything like that, and you just take matters into your own hands and get rid of the inconvenience that is that person. The serious nature of murder is what we need to understand going into this. We have to understand why murder is such a serious offense, and that's going to tell us why anger, Jesus here presents as synonymous with murder. I want you to look at Romans 128, because oftentimes we can extract the seriousness of a sin from its consequences. Those who do not acknowledge God are given over to commit such atrocities. In Romans 1, beginning in verse 28, it says, and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, they are full of envy, murder, Strife, deceit, maliciousness, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents. You wonder how that one gets thrown in there. Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. You see, once again, you notice in that list, many of these things are heart issues. Covetousness, malice, envy, strife, deceit, maliciousness, the idea of slanderers, all these things proceed from heart issues. In other words, what happens is when people fail to acknowledge God, God removes common grace as a punishment towards those people. He removes restraining grace that keeps this wicked and deceitful heart from committing the atrocities that it actually wants to commit and that it would commit apart from God's restraining grace. And we see that restraining grace in issues like government authority, a fear of punishment, all of these things. When God hands a person over and they begin to commit this, though they know God's righteous decree, that those who practice such things, in other words, those who do these kind of things, They deserve to die. They not only go out and do them, but they're giving hearty approval to those who practice them. So this is the serious nature of murder. It is really born out of this idea where God is removing common grace, removing restraining grace and allowing the heart to go in its own direction. So why is it so serious at its fundamental level? And you need to know this. In Genesis 9, 6, I want you to look at this because I want you to read it with me. If I can get there. Now notice how this whole idea of the heinous nature of murder is always seen immediately after new beginnings in God's work. We see it in Genesis 4 with Cain and Abel. We see it here in Genesis 9, just after the flood. Both times we have these right in the newness of things. God comes in and he states this, but here he makes a very great statement. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image, in that for there. In other words, why? Why should somebody who kills another person be killed? Why should one who sheds the blood of man, and this is speaking of murder, he's not just talking about cutting somebody, he's talking about shedding their blood unto death. Why should they be then killed? Why? Because God made man in his own image. Murder is so serious and it demands such a strict punishment because man is made in the image of God. This is where we find value, intrinsic value, intrinsic worth in people, right here. Our value, our dignity as people is the result of the special creative attributes that God put into us to mirror His own image. That's why murder is such a heinous act. God absolutely hates murder. In Proverbs 6, we see that murder listed among the things that God specifically says He hates. He hates it when innocent men's blood has been shed. Murder again is so serious because it is the systematic slaughter of that which is made by God in the image of God. It's a direct attack on the valuable life of a person who is then disregarded internally by the murderer as invaluable. In other words, the murderer in his heart determines, I'm gonna kill this person because they're worthless. Their life has no value. Their life has no dignity. And therefore murderers are liable to judgment. Murder cannot be overlooked because it's a crime against God directly. In fact, when the first murder happened, if you go back just a few pages to Genesis 4, when the first murder happens, the very blood of Abel cried out to God from the ground, and it was a cry for justice. I want to read Genesis 4, 1 through 10, because this section is important, and I want you to note the progression of murder here. This will be infinitely important as we understand Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Genesis 4, verse 1, now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." Now look at this. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you do what is not well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Now what's God specifically speaking about in the sin here? I think he's moved into the area of anger. Sin's crouching at the door, Cain. Why are you mad? Why has your face fallen? You need to overcome. You need to overrule this sin before it overrules you. Cain spoke to Abel, his brother, in verse eight. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother. Let's put it this way. He let sin overcome him and he killed his brother. When the Lord said to Cain, where's Abel, your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. The passage puts such supreme value upon human life that far surpasses any other kind of creative act or creature that God has made. Murder is so heinous because it flows out of a heart that regards that which is made in God's image to be worthless. It's not just killing another person as we've been taught in Darwinian evolution. It's not that. This is not just some piece of slime that evolved through billions of years and came up and became into this more complex organism. If we have that idea, then murder has no, there's no problem with murder at all. We're just killing a piece of slime. The biblical worldview says we shouldn't murder because man is made in the very image of God. There's an intrinsic value there that cannot be taken away. He mirrors the glory of God. Murder is a failure to recognize that. It's a failure to acknowledge the intrinsic value of human life as being God's most unique creation work amongst all the creative work He's made. Genesis 127, while we're there, So God created man in His own image. This is, I mean, this is summing up the creation narrative here. And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, so twice He says it. Just make sure you get this, in other words, male and female He created them. What that passage does is it puts a supreme value upon all human life. A supreme value that surpasses all the other created things that God just made in the entire universe. Man was the only thing made in God's image. And that passage defines how we're to think about people, how we're to consider people internally. I mean, say goodbye to any notion of racism, of sexism, any idea that one person is intrinsically more valuable than another person. You have to say goodbye to all of that. Human life is absolutely precious because all people, everyone, man and woman, brown and black and white and everything in between, they're all made in the very image of God. God put that into us and it gives us value. So murder, murder is rooted in a heart idea, a mindset. that determines human life to be worthless. It determines that human life has no intrinsic value beyond that which is convenient. You understand, most murder is committed because people are seeking convenience. They want their life to be easier. This person's annoying me, this person's causing me trouble, so I'm gonna get rid of them. And it's a failure to see their intrinsic value. And it speaks volumes about the hard attitude they have towards God. Murder is just the extension that says, hey, I have no regard for God in his image at all. Now you may think, well, I'm just really glad I'm not a murderer. I'm really glad that I don't go and kill people, and that proves that I have a regard for God, I have a regard for His glory, I have a regard for human life as being made in the image of God, and most of us believe, if we're truthful, that we're good in this area, simply because I've never killed anybody. And Jesus is about to devastate our notion of righteousness. He's literally about to just pull the rug out from under us, and we're gonna fall flat on our face when he exposes our hearts as being filled with murderous intent, even if we have never followed through with it for whatever reason. Maybe we were just too scared to kill somebody we wanted to kill. Maybe just the laws in place kept us from actually doing it, but that never removes the problem of intention. Do we want them gone? Do we consider them worthless? Look at verse 22. Three descriptions of the sin of anger and its deserving punishments that make it, in one great sense, synonymous with murder itself. 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. John Calvin writes this, Christ assigns three degrees of condemnation besides the violence of the hands. In other words, in verse 21, he said, yeah, if you kill somebody externally, you're liable to judgment. That still stands. But then there's three degrees of condemnation besides that. Calvin says, which implies that this precept of the law restrains not only the hands, but all affections that are opposed to brotherly love. And this is going to be the lesson for anger right here. When in our hearts we are angry with other people, maliciously angry with them, it is because we have thrown off the second commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. Everyone who is angry with his brother. I mean, you read that and you're just like, great, I'm guilty. I'm absolutely undone, totally guilty, and I'll be honest with you, as I stand here today, I'm well acquainted with the sin of anger. Well acquainted. What is anger? Robert Jones writes this, our anger is our whole person's active response of moral judgment against perceived evil. In other words, it is us as a whole person, both internally and externally, reacting against a perceived injustice. We perceive something to be unjust in our lives, and we have a desire to see the injustice rectified through punishment. And so we look at situations in life and we go, that really makes me mad. Why does it make me mad? Because I'm seeing it as an injustice or seeing it as an inconvenience to what's going on in my own life. Now there is a righteous anger and there's an unrighteous anger. And I'll begin to define those next week for us so we understand that a little better. Right now we're focusing on what we all know is the sin of anger. When we're actually angry with other people maliciously in our hearts. We're not even willing hardly to forgive them at this point. See, the feelings and the emotions of anger are driven by this desire to enact a punishment or to bring about justice to a perceived injustice or a wrong done to us either by another person or by the supposed injustices of providence itself. When we're speaking about being angry with our brother, we're talking about being angry against somebody sitting next to us, whoever that may be, because we perceive that they have done an injustice to us. And because there's a portion of us that seeks to see justice done, we want to inflict punishment in order to bring about a righteous result. The problem is our heart's deceitfully wicked. We are not capable of enacting that punishment in a righteous way. That's why James tells us that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. We will think that injustices done to us are worthy of the greatest punishments simply because they inconvenience us or shoot us down in our pride. And that's not the right way to be. That's not what God's called us to. You see, one goes after people made in the image of God when we're angry at our brother. The other one, angry at circumstances in general, goes directly after God himself. The problem with anger is that we're not fit to render these judgments. We're not fit to enact punishments due to our very prideful nature. We would commit injustices of the greatest magnitude just to show how better we think we are than other people. We would shoot people down for calling us names. What's the saying of the tough guys in the movies? I've killed people for less. That's the heart of man. Anger then is the seed that blossoms into murder when one disregards the value of the life of another person because of inconvenience. We just think, oh boy, they're just really bugging me. Is there something I desire in life and they're stopping me from getting that desire? Whether it's peace and quiet from a neighbor, whether it's getting down the highway faster in the morning and there's a slow guy in front of you, any of those things. And rather than being content in who we are and what we have and the circumstances and loving that person as we're commanded to love them, as made in the image of God, anger blossoms up and we'd rather they just get out of the way or not even be around at all. It's a disregard for their value. Anger, rather, is secret indignation against another person that desires that person to go away for the sake of your own convenience. And if we examine our hearts truthfully, we'll find this to not only be true, but a very honest assessment. He says angry with his brother. In other words, brother here is not specifically speaking to other Christians. It's in the more of the context of who's around you, just people in general. And we get these ideas, you know, they bug me. They annoy me. They're in my way. This is unjust. I want it to stop. And so in our hearts, we begin to fashion an idea where life would be better if they weren't around. If they just weren't in the picture anymore and Jesus would say, this is murder of the heart because you're failing to recognize their intrinsic value of life and you're liable to judgment here because I see what you're doing. And we read this and we just, we thought we were doing so good because we didn't kill that person who was driving so slow this morning. We didn't, we didn't, just whack that annoying co-worker or that neighbor who drives us nuts or our spouse or our kids or whatever. We just got mad at them and that's not that big of a deal. Jesus says it's a huge deal. Anger is the seed of murder. It's the seed of murder that blossoms into the act. What Jesus is saying here is when you're angry with somebody, you're playing with fire. You don't realize what could happen here. You think you're incapable of this? Do we really believe ourselves? I've heard people say, I don't think I could ever kill somebody. Really? David wrote Psalms. In the Bible, we have them, we read them. And what did he do? He murdered a righteous man. Why? Inconvenience. Out of pure inconvenience. Do we really think we're better off than David? A man who has, God said, he has a heart after me. If God would just say that, that Matt has a heart after me, I could just die happy, but I don't think it's true most of the time. The fact of the matter is, we're all capable of this. And when we let anger fester, when we let it build, when we don't deal with it, we are playing with fire. I have people tell me all the time, I can't imagine, you know, you have kids, I can't imagine these parents who shake their kids to death. And they get mad and frustrated because they're crying. The problem is, I can see myself doing that. Apart from the grace of God, I would be that person. Apart from God's grace, there I go. And Jesus is saying, don't play with this fire. Don't let this sit in your hearts. This will come out. You live out of the wellspring of your heart. It goes on here. It gets worse, if that's possible, because he drives it home. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Have we ever insulted anybody? Now, what's he moving from here? Just a pure, internal, brooding anger at your brother, moving forward to insults. And he's not speaking specifically of just insulting them directly to their face, but when you're insulting them behind their backs, you know, you get in the car and you're driving home from whatever event, and you're like, man, that guy's such an idiot. And your spouse goes, yeah, they are an idiot, and we think that's okay. They didn't hear it, we didn't really insult them. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel." This is the manifestation of hatred, is what this is. 1 John 3.15, here's another passage, everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. That's what I love about 1 John, there's no nuance there at all. It's just, listen, everyone who hates his brother, you're a murderer. backing up exactly what Jesus is saying here. And then it goes on in 1 John, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. What's that saying? Everyone who is hating other people is a murderer, and murderers don't go to heaven. Insults is the word raka. It's got a very, it's difficult to translate. It had a cultural meaning to it. It was a very, It was a low blow. It was a term of derision. It was calling somebody absolutely worthless, just completely nothing. You're empty. You're void. There's nothing good about you at all. You're a raka. You're better off being dead. You're a waste of oxygen. That's what raka meant. Consider that though as you consider murder. See, all these things are flowing out of the heart. When you're calling somebody worthless, it's flowing out of your heart. It's how you regard them. Murder regards a person, its heart seed is regarding a person as having no value. It comes out when you say they're worthless, a murderous heart. They no longer have value in your thinking and you're willing to express that to them and to others. Demonstrates a hard attitude that you have towards him that's not one of love, but one of hatred. Insults spring forth from anger. Anger that desires to exact punishments upon people. We take God's place and say, I'm going to bring justice to this situation. You're better off dead because you're worthless. James 1.20, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. If we can get that into our heads, we can really begin to attack sinful anger against other people. We think we're gonna bring justice by getting mad and then insulting the person. We'll knock them down a level. You insult me, how about this? You're worthless. And we think, yeah, now they're gonna feel the bite. Because I just took the place of God. And it doesn't produce the righteousness of God. It doesn't produce the justice of God would be another translation of that. I want you to understand something, we don't say things we don't mean. And what I mean by that is, it's in the context of insults, not grammatical errors or just stumbling over our tongue as we're all well acquainted with. I want you to look at Luke chapter 6. We get this idea, well, you know, I called them this and that, I didn't really mean it. In fact, we base most of our apologies around that, don't we? We go to somebody, we get in a spat, we say you're an idiot or whatever, and then we come back and say, you know, I didn't really mean that. I don't think you're an idiot. No, the fact is you do. You actually do think that. And by making an excuse that I didn't really mean that, you are avoiding the whole process of repentance. You're circumventing confession. You're circumventing the idea of going to them and having a true apology and saying, listen, I did think that about you, and it was wrong, and it was sinful, and I'm sorry. Will you please forgive me? You say, I didn't really mean to do that, so no forgiveness is necessary, because it was just a mistake. Everything that comes out of our mouths, we mean it. We actually mean it, and here's the proof. Luke 6, beginning in verse 43. Stay with this. For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit, for figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person, see that's where you mess up and it's grammatical and you stumble every time. I didn't mean to do that. The good person, out of the good treasure of his heart, produces good. You see where good comes from? It comes from the heart. If you've got good things in your heart, good things are coming out of your mouth. And the evil person, out of his evil treasure, produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. Either way, if you say something good, it's coming out of the goodness of your heart. If you say something evil, it's coming out of the evil of your heart. When we say to someone, raka, we mean that. And we need to drive at the heart of that sin, which is a murderous heart. And we need to deal with it and not play with that fire. We need to confess it and repent of it. Murder of the heart gives or attributes, again, no value to human life. And now the overflow of the heart, we express that in words when we tell people, hey, you're worthless. You're a waste of oxygen. Liable to the council there, the highest Jewish court, the Sanhedrin, they ruled on the most prestigious and serious criminal cases of the time, and they would prescribe also the most severe punishments. And Jesus' point here is that you're guilty. You're liable to the highest human court that you know of. We could say the Supreme Court in our cultural context. You're guilty of murder before the Supreme Court. And we think about this, how often do we insult others? How often do we insult others and express how we really feel? Now again, get this, this is how you really feel about the value and dignity of people made in the image of God. It's not just mistakes and slips of the tongue. We say these things out of the abundance of the heart. And it's not, being mad is not an excuse. We can't say, I was just angry and I just said things I didn't really mean. No, that was circumstances squeezing sin out of you. You meant every word of it. Insults are attacks against the very character of a person without regard to their value. Look at the last part here, whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. See how Jesus moves from this whole idea of liable to judgment, to the counsel, to the final judgment. You fool, the word is moray there in this form of it from the lexical form of moras. Probably can guess with that where we get our word moron from. It means dull and stupid. Now we get moron from that but it had a connotation in Jewish culture that went way beyond. This is about the worst thing you could call somebody and the term, If you said this, this was the highest of insults in Jewish culture because it referred to an obstinate, worthless, and godless person. It's not just that you are worthless and without, it's not just that you are raka, in other words, it's that in addition to that, you're godless. Why? Because of Psalm 14.1 and other places. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Now, in Jewish culture, you call somebody an atheist, that's about the worst thing you can call them, because you summarize every aspect of human stupidity that can be put into a bottle, if you will, and you shake it up and you throw it on them and say, this is you. You're a fool. Now the verse doesn't speak about calling out foolishness for what it is, that's not what he's saying here, but rather calling someone a fool in order to cut them down. You're just there to just bring the biggest insult you can possibly bring to them. You're showing how you really feel. Not only are you worthless to society, you're worthless to God, you're good for nothing but the hell of fire, you're good for nothing but being kindling for eternal wrath because you disregard God himself. So we have to understand that Jewish context here. I don't know if there's a word that I could say in church that's translatable here to give us this idea, but this is the idea that it is. Now, it isn't calling somebody a fool in order to speak truthfully about them, because the Bible does that. Even Jesus on the road to Emmaus says what to the disciples? You foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the scriptures have said. Don't disregard God here. Why are you acting like an atheist? MacArthur says, we are certainly not wrong to show someone what scripture says about a person who rejects God. Jesus' prohibition is against slanderously calling a person a fool out of anger and hatred. Such an expression of malicious animosity is tantamount to murder and makes us guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Now, how many times have we said things to people? I mean, we wanna talk about habitual murderers. Hell is the word here in Greek, Gehenna. There's two words in the New Testament in which, you understand the New Testament makes a distinction between two places, Hades and Gehenna. Hades being the place of the dead. Two compartments, you have a compartment of paradise and a compartment of torment. Death in Hades is thrown into Gehenna after the final judgment. Gehenna is empty right now. There's no one there. We're waiting to the final judgment, and eternally, sinners who will not repent and believe in the Lord Jesus go to Gehenna. And what Jesus is doing here is he's essentially saying, skip it all. You call someone a fool. You extend this murderous heart intent. Anyone who's angry with his brother, essentially you say no murderer is going to get into heaven ever. This is your place. This is where you go. the eternal torment, the place of eternal punishment where God sends everyone not found in Christ at the final judgment. Again, it's not Hades. It's not the final judgment of the dead. He's making a specific technical term here. This is where you go eternally to hell. Don't confuse it. Begs the question, how serious are heart issues? How serious is it that we deal with anger? I know it. Our culture just says, listen, if you're not angry, you're not even American. You gotta be angry at everybody and everything and it's great. Drive down the road and flip everybody off who gets in your way, honk your horn and yell at them because this is what we do. And Jesus is saying this is murder. I don't care what the culture says. We have to deal with this.