Hear now the Word of God from Matthew 5, beginning at verse 21. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, Rahah, will be in danger of the counsel. But whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Agree with your adversary quickly while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge. The judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny." Congregation, this is the word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated. So we saw in our last lesson in chapter 5, verses 17 to 20, Christ's agreement with the Old Testament Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, what the Jews would have just simply referred to as the Law and the Prophets. And Jesus says that He came to fulfill the Hebrew Bible, including the ethical commandments of God's Law. And I mentioned last week that what follows through the rest of chapter 5 are six antitheses. They are statements of contrast between what the people had been commonly taught and what the law of God actually required. And the contrast here, notwithstanding the claims of some, the contrast is not between Moses and Jesus. Jesus has already said he is in agreement with the law. Jesus has already said that he comes to fulfill, which must necessarily at least include upholding that law. The contrast is rather between the superficial, legalistic, and hypocritical way in which the law had been applied by many of the Jewish teachers, and the actual standard, the true intention of God for righteousness as communicated in the Hebrew law and brought to its full flowering, to its maturity in the New Covenant under the blessing of Christ. Christ comes to fulfill the law, and that means more, not less, than simply confirming and upholding its requirements. Jesus unpacks the law. He applies its true intention in ways that do, in fact, go beyond simply the statements of the Old Testament. And what we learn in Christ's exposition of the Law is the heart-righteousness that God had always required. He already meant this heart-righteousness to be the aim of His people by faith through their obedience, but that heart requirement had often been overlooked. or downplayed, or in some cases even outright denied by the rabbinical tradition. We'll see this even further in Matthew's Gospel, especially in the curses and denunciations that Jesus makes in chapter 23. Jesus goes beyond merely a legal perspective on behavior. He addresses the heart. He addresses the attitude that underlies human sinfulness. Now, the civil magistrate may not be able to address sin at that level. Not every sin is a crime in the state. But God's law is not restricted to dealing only with outward actions. The civil magistrate is charged to uphold God's law, but he cannot, and he must not, try to enforce every part of it. God's will is for us to be holy inside and outside. One theologian observes, quote, in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the commands of the law and shows how they provide a blueprint for a way of being fully, genuinely, gloriously human. And that's exactly right. This is what man is intended to be. This is man as we see him glorified in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what it means to be an image bearer and to truly reflect and represent God our Creator. Now the illustrations in the rest of chapter 5 are simply that. We'll take them one at a time in successive studies, but they are simply illustrations. Illustrations of the greater righteousness, you'll remember, that Jesus demands in verse 20 of our chapter. They are selective examples to demonstrate his point, but they are not exhaustive. In fact, you are to read the entire Law in the very same way. Jesus is teaching you how to read the Hebrew Bible. And as you read other parts of the Law of God, whether the case laws or the more didactic sections, you are to read them in the same way that Jesus is teaching us here. Jesus uses these commands to help us understand what it means to truly be the blessed man of the kingdom and of the covenant who was described in the Beatitudes at the beginning of this sermon. Now the rabbis interpreted and applied the Old Testament law primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of outward behavior and civil consequences. You can see this if you read any of the Talmudic writings, the Mishnah. You can see this in the Jewish writings that have come down to us even to the present day. And you can also see it in the Lord's treatment here of what we call the Sixth Commandment. The sixth out of the Ten Commandments, you shall not murder. You've heard that it was said, you shall not murder, and if anyone committed murder, he was warned that he would be liable to judgment. Well, so far so good. But is that all that the sixth command was intended to say? Obviously not. Jesus goes on, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause, and he is, of course, implying a righteous cause. We always have a reason. But whoever is angry with his brother without a righteous reason shall be in danger of judgment. Now, there's a textual variant here, so not all of your Bibles will include that intermediate clause, without a cause, but it's found in the majority of New Testament manuscripts. It's clearly implied by the context of the passage. Jesus, we know, became angry on several occasions. So did the apostles. So did the prophets. And in each of those cases, they were angry in a righteous way. The Lord's statement here would make no sense if He meant that anger was wrong in every case. It would actually contradict what is said in other parts of Scripture. So whether your Bible says without a cause or not, it is clearly justified because it is necessarily implied. Jesus is talking about an ungodly anger. An unjustified anger. The kind of anger that is of this world, but is not of the Kingdom of God. Now as Western societies have fallen under the demonic spell of Marxism, they have begun prosecuting people for hate crimes. And this has predictably led to the prosecution of thought crimes, and even more recently, the prosecution of silent prayer in various European countries, including the UK, as you've probably seen in the news. And this is further evidence of why we need a biblical basis for law, and not merely social convention. Who says, and by what standard? What is the difference between simple murder and murder as a hate crime? Well, in our country, we probably know how the magistrate would answer that question, but we might ask in response, did anyone ever commit murder because they love the person that they killed so much? And if so, what does love even mean in that case? We're not defining anything in a biblical way. Anger and hatred are at the root of violence that results in murder. And Jesus understands God's law to regulate even that heart disposition, whether it leads to murder or not. The magistrate can do something about murder, but God will judge the attitude that might lead to murder, or the attitude that might not, but nevertheless would pollute your heart and damn your soul. Now the Lord uses this kind of casuistry that was common to the Jewish rabbis. You'll notice that he gives various illustrations. Whoever is angry without a cause is liable to judgment. Whoever says to his brother, Rahah, is liable to the council. Whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. And there are several points here that need to be noted. First of all, Rahah in your Bible is an Aramaic epithet. Now, it basically means empty head, but the point is not that particular expression. You're not supposed to read your Bible at this point and say, well, I've never called anyone Raha, so I must be okay. Well, that might not be your preferred insult, but understand the principle. Understand the point that Jesus is making. He is denouncing the utterance of insults in anger. And the same central point is being made in the next portion of the text. Whoever says, you fool. Well, Jesus calls the Pharisees fools. In fact, your Bible is full of examples of righteous men denouncing unrighteous men as fools. What is the point? The point is not to make racha, or fool, naughty words that no Christian should ever say, as if you were allowed to call the driver in another car a turkey or an idiot, so long as you don't use a bad word like racha or fool. When we interpret the Bible that way, we are playing the very same kind of word games that Jesus is denouncing. That is the kind of abuse of the text that Jesus is rebuking in this passage. The point of this passage is not lexical or linguistic. The point is that followers of Jesus should not use abusive and insulting language in anger. They should not. If you take Jesus as offering a diagram here for assessing your guilt and the associated consequences, then you're missing the point. That's because of this second observation. Jesus' use of this progression is actually a parody of how the rabbis interpreted the law. This is the way that the rabbis, in the writings that we have, the writings that reflect the rabbinical tradition even in Jesus' own time, they would diagram various offenses. They would categorize various sins and assign various penalties. And here's a major penalty, and here's a minor penalty, and here's... this is a big sin, and this is a smaller sin, and this one isn't even really a sin, but you probably should try to avoid that. Jesus is offering a parody of that approach to the law of God. As if you could take this text and say, well, let's see, being angry is a lesser crime. I can call my brother Racha, but I might have to go talk to the elders in that case. But at least I won't go to hell unless I accidentally call him a fool. So now I know I'm fine. Now don't misunderstand, there are degrees of heinousness associated with sin. We see that clearly in the scriptures. I would rather my brother be angry with me than actually murder me. Not all sins have the same impact. Not all sins are equally grievous. But all transgressions of God's law are sinful. And every sin is worthy of eternal condemnation. So when you are observing degrees of heinousness, understand that those are degrees within the same category of damnable offenses. As our larger catechism puts it in question 152, every sin, even the least, being against the sovereignty, goodness, and holiness of God, and against his righteous law, deserveth his wrath and curse, both in this life and that which is to come. and cannot be expiated but by the blood of Christ." Do we believe that? Do we believe that when we are angry in an unrighteous way, in an unjustified way, that we need the blood of Jesus as much as the murderer on death row? Well, that is what the Word of God teaches. And Jesus is mocking here in a righteous way the manner in which the rabbis categorized degrees of guilt. And we should beware that we don't play the same kind of games. Now a third observation about this categorization. Some theologians have tried to suggest that hell, as Jesus refers to it here, is an invented doctrine that the Bible doesn't really speak of because they will say in references like this Jesus is using the Greek word Gehenna And of course you know that Gehenna was just a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, which was a depression outside of the city of Jerusalem where they would dump the trash and they would burn the trash and sometimes the fires would burn on and on. And so Jesus is just using an illustration that has a historical and geographic point of reference. And this doctrine of hell just isn't really a doctrine in the Bible at all. Well, it's easy to say those kind of things, so long as you don't read your Bible. But a careful examination of the texts of Scripture that use this term does not support that thesis in any way. As one commentator observes, he says, quote, the 11 passages in which Gehenna occurs cannot refer to the valley near Jerusalem. We have no evidence that the Jews ever burned criminals alive, or that the bodies of dead criminals were dragged out to this valley, or that constant fires were kept going on there. Hell cannot be abolished by such interpretations of Gehenna." And that's simply right. Jesus is using a term that is associated with a place that they know, but what he says about it over and over in the Gospels goes so far beyond anything that was true of that place. Jesus says, whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Literally, the text in the original says, will be bound unto the fire of Gehenna. will be bound unto the fire of hell. That is the danger that threatens those who abuse and insult their fellow man in unrighteous anger. You are literally playing with eternal fire. And remember, this whole conversation began with a command about murder. What is Jesus doing? Is he the one twisting and distorting the text? No, did you notice that in the case of Rachah, Jesus refers to speaking against a brother, but in this last illustration he simply refers to whoever says. Now you could say, well, the categorization of brother is still controlling the expression. It's only referring to what we say to Christians, as if we're allowed to curse unbelievers as long as he's not been baptized. But again, you would be taking the text in the same way that the rabbis did. You would be taking an interpretive page out of the Pharisees' playbook. Jesus is not playing word games. That's what you're supposed to understand here. He is mocking those who do so. He is talking about going to hell. And that should be sobering to us because he is speaking about condemnation to hell in the context of offenses regarding anger and speech. Now the problem was not what the people had been taught about the Sixth Commandment. What they had been told about the Sixth Commandment was true enough. Don't murder or you will be liable to judgment. No doubt. It's what they had not been taught about this part of God's law. Jesus takes the conversation to the heart. He addresses the anger that lay behind the acts of violence. Murder is an obvious enough transgression of God's law, but Jesus identifies other transgressions of the law that are just as sinful and just as liable to God's judgment. Anger that is unjustified is liable to that judgment, even if it's not outwardly expressed. even if it remains in your heart. Can God judge you for what's in your heart? If you control your speech, if you control your actions, you might even be able to control your facial expression. Insults and curses spoken in unrighteous anger are subject to God's judgment even if there is no act of violence or any physical expression. Now we said earlier that not every sin is a crime, and that is important. The civil magistrate is not authorized to punish sins that stay in the heart. We do not need thought police trying to discern motives and punish thought crimes, but that does not mean that unrighteous attitudes are therefore not a violation of God's law. Do you understand the point? The fact that the magistrate cannot discern that, the fact that the magistrate may not be empowered or authorized to punish that, doesn't mean that God won't. And we do not get a pass in heaven's court for what we think or how we feel. As the Hebrews writer reminds us, there is no creature hidden from his sight. We read this in the lectionary this morning. No creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. And I hope as we read Hebrews 4 immediately after reading Genesis 3, I hope you saw some new connections in Hebrews 4 that you might not have noticed before. Now what is Jesus doing here? He's not adding anything to the law. He is not correcting Moses. He is not departing from the Old Testament. He is opening up and revealing the true purpose and intent of that commandment. He is revealing and unpacking what it implied all along. Because after all, it is the Old Testament that tells us, be angry and do not sin. or as is expressed later in Psalm 37 verses 7 and 8, rest in Yahweh, wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret, it only causes harm. You probably ought to read that before you read the news. Or read that right after you listen to the news. cease from anger. You say, but my anger is justified. In some cases it might be. But that's kind of tricky, isn't it? When do we cross the line from righteous indignation to an unrighteous anger that is liable to the judgment of God? How can anyone read the Old Testament and think that God does not care about anger and hatred in the heart? but that was not the way that the rabbis were treating this commandment. Calvin says in his commentary, quote, we must not imagine Christ to be a new legislator who adds anything to the eternal righteousness of his father. We must listen to him as a faithful expounder that we may know what is the nature of the law, what is its object, and what is its extent, end quote. Remember, if the law of God is a transcript of God's holiness, a transcript of His character, then all of these ideas are already embedded there in that law in the Old Testament. Does Jesus fulfill it? Absolutely. Does He take the seed and bring it all the way to the full flower and harvest? Most definitely. But it was in the seed already. And unfortunately, we read the Bible through the lens of our presuppositions. And that lens is often very selective. Consequently, we see what we want to see, we see what we expect to see, and we remain unable to see whatever there might be that would conflict with the idols we cherish. You see, that's not just a problem for the rabbis. It's not just a problem for believers in all of those other churches. It's a problem for every one of us. Every one of us is subject to the same kind of selective blindness, selective listening. And when you really take the Sermon on the Mount seriously, you will inevitably find it profoundly convicting if we have eyes to see it. God's law is not only concerned about our outward behavior. The Law shows us who God is, His righteousness, and the kind of character that God demands of us and is producing in us by the work of His Spirit. Now the sixth command says, do not murder. Many of you will have learned that from the King James translation, thou shalt not kill. But of course, the Hebrew verb there is more specific than this. It's not just killing in general, it is murder. The law of God, in fact, commands killing in certain circumstances, as in the case of executions by the civil magistrate or prosecuting just wars. It even allows killing in cases of self-defense, right there in the book of Deuteronomy. And likewise, what Jesus condemns here in His exposition of the sixth command is unrighteous anger, not righteous indignation. So don't make the same mistake that many make in the Old Testament when they read murder as if it meant all killing of any kind. Don't make the same mistake when you read Jesus rebuking anger. There is a godly anger, to be sure. The Lord is righteously angry both with sin and sinners. and his servants sometimes become righteously angry. In fact, it would be wrong if they did not do so in certain circumstances. When Chrysostom preached on this text many, many centuries ago, he said this, quote, being angry then is not a transgression, but being so unseasonably. That's a good way to put it. Anger is our most dangerous emotion. Anger is always a response to a perceived injustice. Always. Anger is a response to a perceived injustice. But it's only perceived. And the problem is that our perception is sometimes misguided. We should become angry in a godly way when we see God's righteousness blasphemed and opposed, and His law transgressed in gross and harmful ways. That should offend us. But more often we become angry because we think something unfair is happening to us. Your wife is not sufficiently understanding. Your children have once again failed to read your mind, as if that's hard to do. Your boss is impatient when you fail to complete your tasks on time, and other drivers dare to occupy the lane you want to drive in at a speed slower than you want to go. And it feels unfair, and you become angry. Our perception of injustice is filtered through the lens of our sinful nature and our weakness. But the problem is that anger always feels justified. Always. I mean, have you ever felt angry and not felt justified? Have you ever felt angry when you knew for a fact that you were wrong to feel that way, and you still felt justified anyway? I hope you can relate to this because if you can't, I'm gonna feel really silly because I know exactly what I'm talking about. When you know you're wrong, I know I shouldn't feel this way, but it feels so good to feel this way. Even in that moment, you felt justified because that sense of justification in indignation is always a corollary to anger. In this section of the sermon, Jesus calls us to go to war against our own anger. He points out that unrighteous anger is a sin against God that exposes us to the danger of hell. That if we insist on retaining and justifying our misguided anger, that we do so at the expense of a relationship with God. That's a pretty strong way to put it, but I think what Jesus says is actually stronger than that. He's talking about going to hell. I mean, is anger really that big of a deal? Apparently it is. When we choose to retain this anger, we are choosing ourselves over God. Our pride has been offended. Our selfishness has not been satisfied. Our sense of grievance that others have failed to acknowledge must be satisfied. The path of anger is a road that leads away from God. And it also leads away from the joy and peace of the Gospel. I mean, when we say that you are hurting yourself by your sin, it's true. You are taking away the joy and peace that knowing God and being at peace with Him can bring to your heart. Because you just are so angry, so hurt, so wronged. James says in James chapter 1, So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. That's an important principle. Be angry, but do not sin, because even the best expressions of anger oftentimes do lead to that very thing. And yet we live in a society that tells us how we feel is always okay. It's always right that no one can criticize, no one can judge how we feel in any given situation. That you need to speak your truth and others simply need to listen and affirm. But that is not true. That is a lie. It's a self-justifying delusion. In fact, it is a species of secular legalism. It is a type of self-righteousness that repudiates the need for the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. It's saying, however you feel, you're justified in doing so. Even if no one else thinks that there was a sufficient reason, if you feel that way, you're justified in what you feel. But that's just not the case. We're not justified in feeling whatever we feel for whatever reason. God's law regulates our emotions as well as our actions. It speaks to our attitude as well as our behavior, and if we claim otherwise, well, we've fallen into the error of the Pharisees. We're doing the very same things that Jesus rebukes them for doing. We're saying that we're content to be whitewashed tombs, to harbor anger and hatred and malice in our hearts, as long as outwardly we're doing the right things. I didn't kill him. I didn't curse at him. I didn't do anything outwardly. But how I feel is how I feel, and it's okay how I feel. Not according to God. Now, Jesus begins giving some practical, ethical instructions in verse 23. He says, if you're going to worship and you remember that you've offended your brother, leave your gift and be reconciled to him first. Now we know that sometimes other people will not be willing to make peace no matter our efforts. That's why Paul says in Romans chapter 12, as much as lies within you, be at peace with all men. You learn the hard way that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, others will not be at peace with you. But Jesus is explicit here. Proactive desire for and pursuit of reconciliation is a prerequisite for worship. And you say, that sounds very legalistic. But it's Jesus saying it. Legalism is what he is indicting. He's not promoting legalism. He's correcting it. There is some exaggeration here, I think, for rhetorical effect. You imagine, like, Jesus is preaching this sermon in Galilee. And so you can imagine, like, a hyper-literalism with regard to what Jesus says. The worshiper goes from Galilee all the way down to Jerusalem. He buys an animal for sacrifice. He gets to the gates of the temple. He's ready to present his goat for a sin offering. He remembers, I wronged my brother, and we haven't reconciled. So he leaves his goat standing there. He takes the journey back up to Galilee. You know, the goat's just standing there for a week. When am I gonna get slaughtered? Can somebody feed me in the meantime? No, just understand the point. Don't be hyper-literalistic in what he's saying. Don't miss the point. If you think you can worship acceptably while remaining estranged from your brother due to a fault you have not sought to correct, you're deceiving yourself. The Lord says he will not accept you or your worship. And this is hardly the only time or the only place where he says this kind of thing. How does Jesus teach us to pray? How did we pray this morning? Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Surely he didn't mean to say it that way. But he did. Reconciliation is a prerequisite. And if peace is not possible, it should not be because we are unwilling or because we have not sought to achieve it. Now the second application Jesus makes is interesting, and I want to think about it at two different levels. The Lord describes a situation in which your adversary is taking you to court. You've wronged him, and now you're about to be held accountable by the magistrate. First of all, notice the two different contexts of application in these two sets of instructions. One is in relation to the church. The other is in relation to the civil court. One is about the need to seek reconciliation in the context of worship, the other in the context of a civil complaint. In either case, the believer is to be proactive in seeking reconciliation. Both of these scenarios envision a situation in which the believer is at fault, although in Matthew 18, Jesus says the same responsibility applies to you even if you're the one who was sinned against. So if you sin against your brother, it's your responsibility to go try and make peace with him and be reconciled. And if he sinned against you, it's your responsibility to go to him and seek to make peace and be reconciled. Why is it always on me? It's always on you, whether you are the offended or the offender. Whether ecclesiastical or civil, the Christian is commanded to be a peacemaker. We've heard that recently, haven't we, in the Beatitudes. He is not to be the angry person who refuses to be reconciled, but believes that he can work things out, either in worship or in the courts, without dealing with his own heart. But there's another level at which to think about this instruction in verses 25 and 26, and although it may seem a little more subtle at first, I think it has a lot of explanatory value when you put it in the broader context of Matthew's gospel. Once you begin to recognize that Jesus refers frequently, and I do mean frequently, to Jerusalem's imminent danger and the looming judgment of AD 70, you're going to see it all over your New Testament. And I think there may be an allusion to it here as well. Israel has offended God, broken covenant with Him, turned His temple into a flea market, turned worship into a self-righteous hypocritical formality, killed the prophets, and now is in the process of rejecting the Messiah. And disaster is awaiting just over the horizon. This is not the last time you're going to see AD 70 alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. Many of the people who heard Christ speak that day would live to see Israel's final judgment and the end of the Mosaic order. The judge, Yahweh, would hand you, Israel, over to the officer, Rome, and they would throw Israel into prison. And there they would experience the full wrath of God for the blood of the righteous that they had shed and the grace they had squandered. Now sadly, what Jesus tells them to do here is not the path that many of the Jews would pursue. There were some, of course, who heeded Christ's warnings and turned in penitent faith to God for mercy, but most of the nation continued following a path of resistance and rebellion that is well documented in the history from the time. And that resistance and rebellion led ultimately to Jerusalem's destruction by the Roman armies. What you may not be aware of, although it's by no means a secret, it's not insider information, it's right there in the histories, is that in the couple of years leading up to AD 70, Jerusalem was being torn apart by internal anger and division. Various factions of the Jews went to war against one another. They were killing each other in the city during the siege before the end finally came and the Romans overthrew it all. Josephus, who saw it and recorded it, describes it in his Wars of the Jews, Book 7, Chapter 9. He says this, quote, the entire nation was now shut up by fate as in a prison. And the Roman army encompassed the city when it was crowded with inhabitants. Accordingly, the multitude of those that therein perished exceeded all the destructions that either men or God ever brought upon the world. For to speak only of what was publicly known, the Romans slew some of them, some they carried captives, and others they made search for underground. And when they found where they were, they broke up the ground and slew all they met with." It's interesting, at multiple points in his histories, Josephus seems to be reflecting biblical language. And of course, as a Jew, he knew the Hebrew Bible, but he also makes references that seem shockingly similar to New Covenant Scripture. The disaster that Jesus prophesied had come upon them. As Josephus said, they were now in prison, and they would not get out of there until the last penny of debt had been paid. Israel had accumulated a debt of wrath, and the debt would be called by Yahweh, who was their covenant Lord and now creditor. And this way of reading Jesus' instruction doesn't change the personal application we may and should make of it, but it does remind us of the bigger picture of Matthew's gospel and that nations can also incur judgment because of unrepentant anger. And that is a sobering lesson. As one theologian puts it, Jesus, it seems, is not simply talking about individual anger and behavior, vital though that is, he is alluding to yet a greater danger. Unless Israel learns right now how to be God's chosen people, How to shed God's light in the world, disaster is in store. A disaster which has its roots in personal failure to deal with anger and its fruits in the national insistence on letting centuries of persecution justify violence. The people were offended. And they were offended, rightly, about some things that had been done against them. But that anger turned to malice and bitterness and self-destruction and finally judgment at the hands of God. This is a convicting section, and I think every one of us should feel the weight of it. Whether any of us have actually murdered someone, every one of us have been guilty of unrighteous anger, however justified we might have felt at the time. And that anger, if it is not dealt with biblically, will easily lead to hatred, and a hatred that is not holy, but rather grounded in our selfishness and pride. John reminds us in 1 John 3.15, whoever hates his brother is a murderer. Just says it. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. That's a sobering thought. Am I a murderer? Well, not according to the state of Arizona. Not according to the government of the United States. But in God's sight, I have been guilty of that very thing. And it is among the many sins I must repent of and look to Christ for mercy and forgiveness. And yet, for some reason, it's those heart attitudes that we don't always seem to feel a sense of urgency about the repentance that is required. If I speak harshly to my wife, I need to repent. If I speak harshly to my brethren, I need to repent. But if I have sinful thoughts and attitudes and emotions welling up within me, well, I just need to control that and deal with it as best I can. The way you deal with it is by repenting and asking God to forgive you. One commentator on Matthew's Gospel makes the following observation, quote, among children of the kingdom, acceptable worship involves repairing relationships and reconciliation with others flows from reconciliation with God, end quote. And this is the note that we want to end on. It is because God's anger has been assuaged by the cross of Christ. It is because we have been forgiven and reconciled to God that we are able to pursue reconciliation with others. And it's the only way. We can repent of ungodly anger and bitterness because the Holy Spirit dwells within us and is pouring the love of God into our hearts. Jesus does not call us to emotionless stoicism. Elimination of feeling is neither possible nor desirable for a servant of God. That idea is in no way reconcilable with a biblical ethic. There are times when we should be angry and it would be sinful not to be. But more often, we are angry at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons. And that anger is itself an offense against God. And if you say, but pastor, I try to be good, I try to do the right things, I try to control my speech, but I'm just an angry person. Well, remember that God did not create you to be so. And Jesus did not die so that you could remain so. And the Spirit is not at work in your life right now to preserve that particular character trait. You do not have to be an angry person. Because Jesus has not only forgiven your sins, He set you free from the tyranny of them. He is changing you according to His perfect righteousness, and the pattern for that righteousness is found in the law of God, which Jesus says He has come to confirm, uphold, and fulfill. And may God make our hearts submissive to it. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.