And I invite you to turn in your copy of God's Word to the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 5. We'll be looking at verses 21 through 26 today. We are continuing with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which is chapters 5 through 7. And we are now in the second half of chapter 5. You will remember that one of the things that we said is one of the major themes throughout the gospel of Matthew is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God has come. The very King, Jesus, in His arrival, in His coming down to earth, brings the kingdom with Him. And that kingdom is God's rule in the hearts of people everywhere. It is a kingdom that is counter-cultural, that is opposed to the way the world works. One of the things that I have noticed, I'm sure you have too, but as you've watched entertainment, for example, Look at the comedies, the sitcoms from, let's say, the golden age of television, the 60s, let's say, maybe even the 70s, and then look at what they've morphed into in the 90s, in the 2000s, and so on. Not only they become cruder in terms of language and in terms of references to things that ought not to be referenced in public, But one of the things you notice is how much more the way people interact with each other has become acerbic. Many of the jokes have become put-downs. They've become about belittling people. And you see more and more conflict. And we love to watch conflict. Reality TV burst onto the scene in the late 90s, early 2000s. And really, what's reality TV with everybody sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya? It's the other way around. We want to see conflict. We want to see people yelling. We want to see people throwing pots and pans at one another. This is what passes for entertainment today. And this is what Jesus is going to be talking about in this passage here. We live in a day and age in which anger and being hateful towards others is considered not just acceptable but almost required in our interactions with people with whom we differ. But Jesus has been describing for us in the Sermon on the Mount a different way of living, a different way of being human. What he's doing in the Sermon on the Mount, he's describing what life is like in the kingdom of God. And one of the things we saw, and I know last week we took a break with Reformation Sunday, and we looked at Psalm 119, but we're back into this, and if you think back two weeks, we saw that Jesus, what he's doing here, he's now saying, look, if you're gonna talk about how we're to live, then we're talking about the law. And people misunderstood the law back then, they misunderstand the law of God today, and what we've been learning is that Jesus is setting up the law for us as a standard. But it's not the standard that you have to meet in order to come into the kingdom of God. The whole first part of chapter five tells us that the way you enter into the kingdom of God is not through your keeping of the law, but through grace, because Jesus kept the law in your place. But instead, the law now acts as a standard for how we're to behave because we already are in the kingdom. Because he's already made us his, this is how we are to behave. And that's what he's dealing with here. And he begins in the second half of chapter five to deal with some very specific applications of the law of God to our everyday life. And in a day and age in which we tend to belittle one another and put people down, he's gonna speak very clearly to the idea of anger and even of murder in verses 21 through 26. So now, let's hear Jesus as he speaks to us, the very Word of God, 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. 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, 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 of the guard and you'll be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. With us far, the reading of God's Word. May He bless it to our hearing, especially as it's preached to us this morning. People of God, you've heard me say from time to time that Jesus is the most dangerous person whom you will ever meet. Because the minute that you encounter Jesus, when you encounter him in his word as he appears to us and as he presents himself to us, we can't just hear what he has to say and remain neutral. We can't just sit there and say, well, this is what you say and we're gonna walk away from it unchanged. It never happens that way. Jesus challenges us with his very person and his very words, and he challenges us in who we think that he is and in how we think that we ought to live our lives. And as we stand here listening to him preach this Sermon on the Mount, much like his original listeners, it's terribly uncomfortable to listen to the King speak about the law of God and how it applies to us because if we're honest with ourselves and if we don't read it saying yeah yeah she really needs to hear that oh yes this is exactly what he needs and if instead we're honest and say wow this really speaks to us we see just how penetrating his look at the law of God is Jesus who embodies love himself is sometimes mistakenly thought that because he is love incarnate that he's going to come and he's going to relax the law and just say look it's okay but as we saw two weeks ago Jesus came with the express purpose here in this sermon of restoring once again the integrity of the law because it's been our practice to always soften the law and make it easier for us to observe it to keep it so that we can build up our own righteousness but what Jesus is doing in this passage in fact we'll be doing all throughout the rest of chapter five is he's going to be deepening our understanding of the law he's not going to destroy the demands of the law he's going to deepen them And that's what we're going to see, especially here as he deals with anger and with murder. So we're going to look at three things in this passage. We're going to look at deepening and not destroying the demands of the law. We're going to look at homicide by heart. And the last one, the urgent need for reconciliation. We're going to see how Jesus deepens and does not destroy the demands of the law. We're gonna then look at homicide by heart, how we can kill people even in our own hearts, murder in the mind. And then we're gonna see the desperate and urgent need that we all have to be reconciled to those with whom we are at odds. So let's look at the first point, deepening but not destroying the demands of the law. This is gonna apply not only to our reading today, but really to the whole rest of chapter five. Because what Jesus is gonna be dealing with, he's already said, this is what the law really is. He's now gonna give us specific examples that dig deep into all the different ways that we try to get around the law, all the different ways in which we try to soften the law, downplay its demands on our life, so that we can say that we are not guilty. Here, he's gonna deal very honestly with what those demands are. And six times in the remainder of chapter 5, you're going to hear Jesus present a very important contrast. Six times he will say, you have heard that it was said. And he will contrast that with, but I say to you. Six times that contrast you have heard that it was said, but I say to you now when you hear that Some people have thought that what Jesus is doing is he's saying I have come to contradict the law of the Old Testament That is not what Jesus is doing at all remember what he said when we looked at this last two weeks ago in verse 17 He said, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Jesus is not contradicting the law. What he's doing is not challenging scripture, but he's challenging additions. man-made additions to the Scripture or man-made contradictions to the Scripture that have undermined the true demands of the law. How can you tell? Whenever Jesus is actually quoting Scripture, He says, it is written, like He did during His trial in the wilderness. It is written. But here what He's saying is, it was said. And that distinction is crucial so that we know that what he's not saying is, oh, the Bible says it was written, but I'm contradicting it. No, no, no. What we have here is a contrast between what others want to say about the law and what Jesus has to say about the law. And when he says, but I say, that in the original language is emphatic. He's saying they've said that. But here's what I say. So the issue that we're dealing with here is really the authority of the king. As his kingdom comes upon us, as he draws us to himself as his followers, he speaks to us as our Lord. And he says, this is how you are to behave. This is the new way of living. So what Jesus is doing in these six contrasts that we're going to see all the way through the end of chapter five, is he's contrasting the law according to the religious experts of the day, and so very often the religious experts of today, with the law according to Jesus. He's not contradicting it, he's rather teaching the full depth of the law. And let me tell you, people have gone, that is going to challenge us. If we're honest as we read these things, it's going to dive into the deepest parts of our hearts and of our mind. And we're going to notice all the different ways that we try to restrict and to diminish and to undermine and to soften the law. And Jesus actually says, look, this law is much harder to live out than you might have believed. Because when we understand the law of God properly, seen through the lens of Jesus, who is the true teacher of the law, the one who's come and said, this is my law which I myself have written, then we're going to be really challenged. It is far from the simple matter that many people have made it. So with that then, setting the stage, let's look at our second point that deals primarily with our text today, and that is homicide by heart. Let's take a look at what Jesus says. In verse 21, he references the sixth commandment. You shall not murder. Right? The Ten Commandments are found in Exodus chapter 20. They're repeated again in Deuteronomy chapter 5. The Ten Commandments are a summary of God's moral law. It's a summary of how God expects his people to behave. There's a lot of parallels to what you see in this passage. You might remember at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount it says that Jesus was not speaking to the crowds even though there was probably a large group. He was speaking to his disciples. These are his people. This is us to whom he is speaking and he is not saying believe this, behave like this, and then I will make you, my disciple, know you are already mine, and this is how you to behave in the kingdom of God." Well, the Ten Commandments opens in exactly the same way. It doesn't say, do these things and I will deliver you from Egypt. When you look at the preamble of the Ten Commandments, it says, now that I have delivered you from Egypt, now that I have redeemed you and made you my own, This is how you are to behave. So the Ten Commandments is a summary for how God's people are to behave. It's not everything that God has to say about our behavior, but it summarizes everything that God says about how we are to live as His people, a new people, a regenerated people. And He quotes the Sixth Commandment here in verse 21, you shall not murder. And you might say, I'm off the hook because I've never stabbed anyone. I've never shot anyone. I've never poisoned anyone. I've never strangled anyone. I never pushed somebody onto the railroad tracks or any other number of ways that you can think of taking somebody out. I've never murdered anyone, so I'm good. And yet Jesus responds in verse 22, and this ought to catch us and grip us. 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. That is insulting someone will be liable to the hell of fire. Well, you see, look what happened in verse 21. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. So far, so good. That's the sixth commandment. And whoever murders will be liable to judgment. You see that little addition that they had added? What they were essentially saying is, don't murder, don't plunge a knife into somebody. And only those who do that will be liable to judgment. You see, that's what's implied in that addition. If you literally physically murder somebody, then you will be the one who's liable to judgment. And Jesus says, oh no, it's not so simple as that. you're not going to get away with diminishing the sixth commandment to simply the act of physical murder. He's telling us that it's not just the outward physical act, but breaking this commandment includes every destructive word and thought. That's why earlier in the service we read from Ephesians chapter four as our call to confession of sin, because it tells us that when we speak What we should be doing when we speak, it is not to tear down, but to build up. It says to give grace and to know when to do it and to do so in love. And those are challenging, challenging words. Jesus tells us it's not just our deeds that are murderous, but our thoughts and our words can be murderous as well. He calls us to examine our hearts and see how much of that sinful anger is there. And by the way, when he talks about anger, we're talking about sinful anger. There is a way in which one can have righteous anger. In that same Ephesians 4 passage, you might remember we read in Ephesians 4, 26, where Paul says, in your anger do not sin. There is a way to be angry that is not sinful. There is a place for righteous anger. That righteous anger was once well described by Martin Luther, the great reformer, who described it as an anger of love. One that wishes no one any evil, but one that is friendly to the person, but hostile to the sin. And you've heard that expression, right? I hate the sin but love the sinner or love the sinner but hate the sin. That was not some broad evangelical statement from the last 50 years or so. That was Martin Luther who first pointed that out. There is a place for righteous anger. But what Jesus is referring to here, and we all know it, I have to say my calm demeanor that you see before you, at times has spilled over, sometimes in our own minds only, but that unrighteous anger, which is an anger of pride, an anger of vanity, an anger of hatred and malice and revenge. And we've all harbored it. And what Jesus is doing is He's going beneath the surface. He's going beyond the mere act of physically murdering someone. And he's saying what's really important here is the cause of murder. What is it that leads a person to take someone else's life? And he's telling us whether you literally stab someone or shoot someone or whether you belittle them or insult them or are sinfully angry, even if it's just in your heart, they both reveal the same spiritual problem. And that's what Jesus always gets to. That's why he's so uncomfortable to be around. Because he always gets literally to the heart of the problem. He always digs in deep and goes much deeper than we would like. Perhaps much more deeper than we want to hear this morning. Now, let's be clear. Actual homicide is worse than gossip, is worse than insults. We recognize that distinction in terms of the actual act and the hatred that's behind it. But Jesus wants to dig and say, look, I want to show you, I want to reveal to you that it still has that same animosity, that same hatred of the heart. It's an animosity that is evident in our words because our words reveal our true spiritual condition. As Jesus will later say in chapter 15 verse 18, what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this defiles a person. We'll get to that in chapter 15. They were asking him, what is it that defiles a person? What outwearing external things? And again, he says, it's not what's out here. It's what's in here. And it's that that issues forth in our language. The Apostle James makes that so clear in his own little letter again and again telling us in chapter three how dangerous our tongues are. And we know the hurt that we've done even to the people who are closest to us and those whom we love the most. And how we hurt them with the words that we say. And how quickly we launch invective to those who we see as outside of our circle of those whom we are to love. We'll talk about that in a few weeks as Jesus gets to that part. But how easy we fall into that trap. Many of you have experienced perhaps a spouse, perhaps a parent, A co-worker or a boss who can tear you apart with their words, who can whittle you down, and who can destroy your confidence in yourself, your very own identity. Jesus tells us that that word, that language is destructive because it is as murderous as the real thing. 1 John chapter 3, verse 15, the beloved apostle points out something that we may not want to hear, and that is that when we insult people, when we have even angry thoughts, in God's sight, yes, there is a difference in human affairs between literally killing somebody and insulting them. But in God's sight, it's tantamount to murder. 1 John 3.15 says, everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. There's no wiggle room left here. Those who hate those people, everyone who hates his brother is, not has the same potential or could one day become, is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. It is a real problem that Jesus is exposing us to. He's letting us see just how bad and how dark our hearts really are. And John Stott, the beloved Anglican preacher who died just a few years ago, had a wonderful church in London, taught so many things for so many years. He once described the depth of his sin this way. He said, anger and insult are ugly symptoms of a desire to get rid of somebody who stands in our way. Our thoughts, looks, and words all indicate that, as we sometimes dare to say, we wish he were dead. Now, we increasingly live in a culture in which people don't simply wish it. We've watched just in the last few months how people have had that anger and that hatred in their own hearts, and then they've moved to action to actually take someone else's life. And you might say, that's horrible. And we were horrified to watch the assassination of this young man, Charlie Kirk, just now still only a few weeks ago. And yet what Jesus is telling us is that when we sit there and say, oh, I really want him dead, we are just as guilty in the eyes of God as the person who pulled the trigger on that day. It's a terrible thing. It's homicide by heart. It's murder in the mind. And Jesus tells us that our heart is the problem. Unfortunately, another one of the problems we have is that we become so blind to the depth of our sin. We don't want to see this. We want to imagine that this is other people and their problems and not ours. The great Scottish theologian Sinclair Ferguson has said, we treat the damage we do with our lips very lightly because we do not see the corpses we leave behind. The damage is not as obvious. There's no yellow crime tape at the scene. There's no CSI's gathering evidence. So we become blind to the murder that we commit in our mind. We become blind to the homicide that we commit by heart. And that, according to Jesus, puts us in grave danger because he says it's not only that anger and insults are murder in the eyes of God, but they're punishment. is no less than the divine judgment of hell. Look what he says in verse 22, that we are liable to judgment, liable to the counsel, liable to the hell of fire. Jesus is making clear that our sin is far more serious than we normally assume. So people have got as uncomfortable as this is to hear, that is Jesus' message. We have to wrestle with it. We have to look at ourselves and say, these words that I use sometimes so easily, so quickly, not just with those near us, but we get online. We have the anonymity of hiding behind our screens and we say the most terrible and hateful things. So we see the divides now in our nation, political divides, racial divides, ethnic divides, and yes, increasingly religious divides. What kind of people are we? How will we be characterized? How will the world see us? Will we live in accordance with life in the kingdom or will we live in accordance with life in the world? That's what Jesus is challenging us here. Now, we do need to wrestle with the question. Why is it that anger and insults are so heinous in the sight of God? Why does He treat them the same as if we had murdered someone? The answer might surprise you. It's because when we insult someone, when we are angry with them in a sinful way, when we belittle them and put them down, we are in essence assaulting those who are created in the image of God. This is what we see again and again in other parts of scripture. For example, in James chapter 3, which we already referred to. James 3 verse 8, the apostle says, the tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison. You know, we kill people with deadly poison. The tongue is full of deadly poison. With it, now look at this contrast. With it, we bless our Lord and Father as we've just all done here singing. And then we turn around and he says, and with it we curse people who are made in the image of God. You see why he points that contrast out? Here we are highlighting God himself and then we turn to those who are made in his image and we curse them with that same tongue, that same heart. And that is a great evil. Earlier Scott read from Genesis chapter 9 where God made a covenant with Noah and Noah as the new father of the human race after the flood. He's in essence making covenant with all of us. And there is a new thing that he puts into that covenant, and he says in Genesis 9 verse 5, for your lifeblood, and that is for the murder of anyone, the taking of someone's life, for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning from every beast. I will require a reckoning from every beast, I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Why? Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his image. See, that's what we come back to again and again in all these passages. You and I bear the image of God. We reflect God. We are, in that sense, little gods reflecting the glory of who God is. You and I have been designed for dignity. Every one of you has immense worth. Every one of you has immense value. Even the most heinous person that you see on the street. The most vile murderer, literal murderer, and adulterer, and thief, and politician, but I repeat myself. Every one of us, even the very worst, that image may be marred, but we are made and created in the image of God. We reflect who He is. And so what we're learning here is that murder, whether it be physical, or whether it be anger or insults, is an assault on the image bearer of God. That's why this is so heinous. When we yell at our children, when we belittle our spouses, when we attack our co-workers or our classmates, When we get on the keyboard and say things about people thinking we can hide behind that screen, we are assaulting the image bearer of God, and that is an assault on God himself. Very serious crime, and that's why it carries a very serious penalty. The very hellfire, it says here, and no one will enter the kingdom, as we heard from First John. And so, people of God, you can see the reality of this sin, the reality of how Jesus didn't come to play games. He wanted to show us what the true demands of the law was. He wants us to see just really how almost outside, not almost, how completely outside of our own ability, keeping the law perfectly really is. And he makes it abundantly clear in the things that he says here. Because it is such a serious crime in the eyes of God, and I use that word crime because we think of murder as a crime. Because it is such a serious crime that carries such a serious penalty, nothing else but eternal death, eternal condemnation. then it behooves us to take every possible step to promote the opposite, to seek the well-being of others, to seek to be in right relationships and to seek for reconciliation. And that brings us to our last point, the urgent need for reconciliation that exists. And Jesus is dealing with that in the second half of our passage. Whenever we express animosity toward another person, whether we recognize it or not, whether we admit it or not, that relationship is now broken. And how serious is it when we have broken relationships with one another? A broken relationship with another person is ultimately a broken relationship with God, again, because we are image bearers. Hear again what Sinclair Ferguson had to say. He said, what we are before God involves how we are related to others. And if we are at enmity with others, how can we come into the Lord's presence with clean hands and a pure heart? It's one of the reasons when we talk about coming before the Lord's Supper. We often say that if you are at odds with other brothers and sisters, then to refrain from the Lord's Supper for this day and go and instead make things right. Because the Lord's Supper, its nickname, you know, is communion. We are communing with one another. We're not just communing vertically. We're not just in our union with God celebrating that through Christ, but it's also a horizontal communion with one another. That's why we do the Lord's Supper as a corporate gathering of God's people. It's not a private affair. So how can you say you have that vertical communion when your horizontal communion with the body of Christ is broken? It makes a mockery of that communion. So we have to take this sin very seriously because literally your relationship with God is at stake. As I said at the outset of the sermon, Jesus is not speaking to those other people. He's speaking to each and every one of us. And starting in verse 22, he gives us two illustrations, two pictures, two examples of where we want to seek reconciliation. The first is within the church. In verses 22 to 24, he repeatedly refers to your brother, your brother and your sister in Christ. We can sometimes be at odds with one another right here in the church. And then he gives us another illustration in verses 25 and 26, where he refers to the court, to the court of law, and he refers to not a brother, but this time an enemy who is an accuser. who has accused us of wrongdoing. And yet Jesus' message is the same for both. He speaks of our great need and the urgency to be reconciled to that person, whether it be a brother or sister within the church, or a person outside of the church who is taking us to court. So let's take a look at the first of those pictures. In verses 22 through 24, and he says in verse 23, If you find yourself offering your gift at the altar, and this is of course a reference to worship as it was in the Old Testament, the gift referring to your sacrifice. And as you come to worship, as you come to offer your sacrifice, of course we no longer offer literal sacrifices anymore because we have Jesus Christ who is the final sacrifice. But the idea is that if you are at worship, Right, again, recognizing that your horizontal communion affects your vertical communion, and you realize that something is wrong in your relationship with a brother or sister in Christ, that they have something against you, then he says, stop right there. You can't continue worshiping because this can't happen if this is broken. So go out there and repair that relationship and do it now. Jesus is emphasizing not only the need for it, but the urgency of it. Let's get that done. And that's what he calls us to do amongst brothers and sisters in Christ. Let me just say, that's really hard to do. Sometimes, you know, it's like hugging a prickly cactus. You don't want to do it because that person has hurt you. He calls us to do it. We hope here in the church to help you if you find yourself in that situation and you recognize this. Come and speak to us, to the elders, to me. I'll be happy to sit down with you. We would be happy to help to repair a broken relationship. Jesus goes on in verse 25 to talk about that other setting. Now it's no longer within the church, it's out there in the secular world. And he says, you're on your way to court, you're there to settle the dispute, and you bump into your adversary, and he says, settle it, settle it right now. Again, remove the basis of the animosity that person has to you. Because if you don't, the price is that that relationship will be permanently destroyed, and you will keep on paying. You might even win your court case. But you will keep on paying in that regard forever. And people who have gone through these civil disagreements know that that is true. The one thing that's important to note in both of Jesus provisions for us here, or admonitions for us here, is that whether it be within the church or whether it be outside, is that he calls us to take the initiative. Notice what he says, if your brother has something against you, you would think it's in the brother who has to rise up and come to you and say, hey brother, like he will tell us about a little later in Matthew 19, when you have something against someone that you think they've sinned against you, you go to them and you say, hey brother, I think this is something that you've done that's hurtful to me, or this is sinful. But here he tells us, if they've got something against you, you don't wait, you take the initiative. to go to them and seek that reconciliation. Jesus' point is, as soon as you realize that a problem exists, deal with it. Now, sometimes the other person doesn't want to deal with it. Sometimes the other person wants to reject you. You can't control what they do. that Jesus calls us to take the initiative and to step in, to not allow that rift to enter into that relationship, much less to grow. As we read in Ephesians 4, 26, do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Deal with it while it's still day. So many broken relationships might very well have been repaired if appropriate words or actions had been taken to preclude it. So in summary, what we're seeing here is that Jesus is calling us to take every positive step to live in peace and love with all people. As Paul says in Romans 12, 18, if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. And that takes work. And that requires us to put in the hard work. Ultimately, it's a matter of the heart, of having our heart in the right place. And I would be remiss if I stopped right now and said, now go and do it. Because the reality is, if anything is, as we've seen in this passage and in the passage before, is that what Jesus is doing in all this is he's revealing that we're much deeper sinners than we actually realize. That we're much more broken than we care to admit. That our hearts really are not naturally in the right place to be able to do these things. As Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can understand it. And that who can understand it doesn't mean who can intellectually understand, but who can grasp the depths of the darkness of our own hearts. We can't. We deceive ourselves. We lie to ourselves. And we think that those little words that we say are not as bad as if we had literally taken a shotgun and shot that person. Our hearts are desperately broken. Jesus calls us to have different hearts. And yet, all throughout the Sermon on the Mount, as we've been seeing, what he does is he doesn't just tell us about these things, but he's the one who makes them happen. You see, Jesus is the only one that can fix these murderous hearts of ours. Before you can be reconciled to other people, we first have to be reconciled to God, and Jesus is the one who makes that happen. The reason He's so tough on us in the Sermon on the Mount is He's revealing to us our great need for Him. And there's not a single one of us who can live out the Sermon on the Mount in our own strength. I've said several times as we've gone through this, the Sermon on the Mount is the most popular sermon in the history of mankind. It's the most quoted sermon. People love to be able to point and say, oh, this is how you behave. And they love to refer to the golden rule and so on. But when we read what Jesus is really saying, what we have to walk away from is to realize we can't do this. It's beyond our ability. In fact, dare I say, it's beyond our desire to keep it in our natural state. We don't want to live that way because we want to hate and we want to harbor that anger against others. We want to make ourselves right. And Jesus says, no. And he reveals that we can do it, but he offers himself as the one who makes it possible. There's a passage in 2 Corinthians 5 where the Apostle Paul deals with this. He says, if anyone is in Christ, that is to say in a relationship with Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. He's telling us when we are united to Christ, there is a new way of living. We don't have to speak that way anymore. We can do as we read earlier in Ephesians chapter 4, where our speech is now to build up and not to tear down. This happens when we become His. That which was impossible for us now becomes possible through Him. We can love other people. And Paul goes on to tell us why it is possible. He says all this is from God. who through Christ reconciled us to Himself. You see, before you can behave this way with other people, you have to be made right with Him, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." He's saying you won't be able to have this new way of living until you've been made right with God. Because once he forgives our sins and puts us in a right relationship with him, then you are empowered to do that. And he's kind of working his way backward because now he's going to explain how we're reconciled to God. He says, for our sake, verse 21 of 2 Corinthians 5, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And of course, what he's referring to is when he says him, he's referring to Jesus. Jesus, who had no sin of his own, God laid upon him our sin. Our record, all those murderous words that we have said and thought in our hearts, he laid that record upon Jesus and that eternal damnation, that hellfire that he spoke about in this passage in the Sermon on the Mount that we're liable to, he paid in our place. Jesus was murdered because of our murderous hearts. And he took it upon himself. And his perfect record of righteousness, of always loving and always speaking in a way to build up, was given to us. And not just given to us then as a record of righteousness, which it is, we call that justification by grace. But then he gives us the Holy Spirit and transforms us, as we said at the beginning of the 2 Corinthians 5 passage, and he makes us a new creation. He regenerates us, he changes us, he molds us, and he begins to conform us to the image of Christ so that we can begin to live. like this one who was murdered because of our murder. It's an amazing thing. So how do we live up to this? We said at the very beginning that Jesus is the most dangerous person you will ever meet. He's challenging you, he's pointing out just how murderous we really are in our hearts, just the depth and the darkness of our sin. He's showing us that there's no way we can live up to it in our own strength, but he's calling us to rest upon him because he's done it in our place. And He has borne the full penalty that you and I deserve in our place so that we can now be free to love others. When we trust in Christ in this way, then we can have this reconciliation of which Paul spoke, a vertical reconciliation and communion with God, a horizontal reconciliation and communion with our fellow man. May God enable that to be true in our hearts as we trust in Him. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, Jesus has been leading us up to this moment where we knew he was going to describe the application of the law. And yes, Father, it leaves us in a very uncomfortable place. We recognize our inability to live up to the things that we have heard and we have read here. And we recognize that we too have murderous hearts, that we too are ones who altogether too often destroy, tear down with the things that we say. And sometimes we're too cowardly to say them, even in our hearts. We've committed murder, and you hold us liable. But we're so thankful that Jesus Christ is the one who took that penalty upon him. And we pray, Lord, that we will rest upon the finished work of Christ, rely on him to continue to change us and shape us and mold us through his Holy Spirit, so we become those who truly love and build up with what we say. May we take these words very, very seriously. And be with any who might be with us here this morning or listening to this online. who yet believe that somehow they can prove and they can show Jesus and God that they're good enough to live up to these things. And as Jesus unfolds the true demands of the law, may it pierce and prick that person's heart to the point that they realize that they need Christ as their Lord and Savior. Draw that person even now to yourself, we pray.