You are listening to a sermon from River Community Church in Prairieville, Louisiana. 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. 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 the court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. This is the word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated. Last week, we discussed how the how Jesus turns the Pharisees interpretation of the law on its head. The Pharisees and scribes, the rabbis of the Jews and the religious leadership had the tradition of focusing on minute and external applications of the law. And in doing this, they fundamentally limited the scope and extent and impact of things such as the Ten Commandments. They made the law fundamentally accomplishable, doable, and that actually robbed it of a significant portion of its personal impact in life. Jesus, by contrast, applies the law of God to the heart, and through the heart to the whole conduct of man. And so you can't take one of the Ten Commandments, for example, and just partition it off to dealing with just this subject. The Ten Commandments are more like a web that intertwine to form a whole framework of belief and lifestyle and faith and practice with our relationship with God and our relationship with men on the outside and on the inside. And we see this clearly in how Jesus reframes the typical interpretation and application of the Sixth Commandment, you shall not murder. And when Jesus says, you have heard that it was said to those of old and whoever murders will be liable to judgment, he's not simply speaking about the Sixth Commandment from Exodus 20 verse 13. He's interacting with the handling of the Sixth Commandment by the rabbis and scribes and the Pharisees. When he refers to those who were of old, he's not referring exactly to Moses on Mount Sinai or to Israel gathered below Mount Sinai when God spoke from the top of the mountain. Rather, it's the idea that we saw last week reflected in the Jewish traditions of the Mishnah. The idea that Moses received certain oral traditions that are not in Exodus, and Moses gave those traditions to the elders of Israel, and the elders of Israel passed it forward through the ages to the current day. It's these ancient elders, who receive these oral traditions that are in view when Jesus refers to those who were of old. And what is the oral tradition? Well, it is found in the phrase, whoever murders will be liable to judgment. Now that's clearly a biblical idea, but that's not in the sixth commandment, is it? The sixth commandment in the Hebrew is literally two words, no murder. You shall not murder in English. The clause, the addition provides a rationale for obedience. It alludes to the judicial process that would begin against murderers and that would result in the death penalty. You find that in such places as Exodus 21 verse 12, Deuteronomy 17 verses 8 through 13, and Numbers 35, 30 through 31. So while this addition to the text is reasonable, it does fundamentally reduce the prohibition against murder to the act of murder itself. And it also reduces the threat of judgment to the human realm. Martin Lloyd-Jones writes that, by their addition, the scribes and Pharisees had evacuated the commandment of its truly great content and had reduced it merely to a question of murder. Furthermore, they did not mention the judgment of God at all. It's only the judgment of the local court that seems to matter. They had made of it something purely legal, just a matter of the letter of the law which said, if you commit murder, certain consequences will follow. The effect of this was that the Pharisees and scribes felt perfectly happy about the Law on this point, so long as they were not guilty of murder. In response to this tradition, Jesus does four things. First, He reorients murder to the heart. He makes murder a heart issue first. Then he reveals how murder can be done even with our words, just by one way of example of how the heart can issue in murder that's not murderous. And murder cannot be reduced to the bare act itself. That's the second thing. The third, He reorients our understanding of judgment, the judgment that we need to fear to the divine realm, not simply human courts, not simply the human death penalty. And finally, He presses the urgency of reconciliation in the present, both with God and with other men. We'll hold off on the subject of reconciliation for next week. That leaves us with three points for today. So first, Murder is a matter of the heart. Murder's a matter of the heart, not the hands. Jesus says, you have heard that it was said by your teachers. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother is liable to judgment." In other words, it's not just those who actually physically commit murder who are guilty under the law and subject to judgment. The commandment reaches much further than that. It reaches even to your anger. Anybody in here ever been angry? Everybody said, aye. But why is anger condemnable as murder? For starters, without anger and hatred, there would be no such thing as murder. Murder is the last stop of a train that begins with anger and wrath that's unresolved. Because anger becomes resentment. Resentment becomes hatred. Hatred then vilifies and dehumanizes the person that we're angry at and makes them subhuman. Undeserving of dignity, honor, respect, fair treatment. And then when we've done that, hatred comes crashing down on its victim in violence. Whether murder is committed in cold blood or in the heat of passion, it always begins with someone being angry. Without anger, there would be no murder. But the problem is not just that unrestrained anger can potentially lead to murder. Jesus says that just like lust is already adultery of the heart, anger is murder of the heart. 1 John 3.15 states it clearly. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. I'll say that again. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life dwelling in him. Hatred of another human being, even if it's just in your own spirit, puts you in the same spiritual place as a murderer, even if you don't act on your anger. And the side of God who looks at your heart, he sees in you the same thing he sees in a murderer, rampant, hatred, rampant anger. It's directly analogous to killing somebody with your hands, shooting them with a gun, stabbing them with a knife. Inside, you are just the same. And so even though your anger, your wrath, doesn't make you liable before a civil court, it does make you liable before God because your heart is in the same place. Indeed, all you lack is the circumstances to act on your anger. When anger and wrath is given free reign on the hearth, all that's keeping us from actually acting on it, acting on revenge, on vengeance, on hatred, is that we don't have the opportunity where we think we can get away with it. But the fact that you simply haven't had the opportunity act on your anger the way that you would like to doesn't make you morally superior to somebody who has actually committed murder. You're just further back on the same path that they've reached the end line on. With this, we need to recognize that murder is a dehumanizing, animalistic act that begins in the heart. We dehumanize a human being on the inside of us before we do anything to the outside of them. Not only does it dehumanize the victim though, it actually makes the perpetrator more animalistic. Unrestrained wrath and anger and hostility and resentment and bitterness in you makes you subhuman. It corrupts and perverts your heart and the way that you think about things. This is a classical Christian idea in Christian ethics that evil, wrath makes us subhuman. God made us in his image to be holy and righteous and good. But when we act like the devil, when we entertain attitudes that resemble the devil, we become less than. We corrupt the image of God in us and we begin to resemble what we worship. We begin to resemble animals and snakes and lions and bears. Oh my. Now, interestingly, if you're a nerd like me, this idea is represented quite clearly in the character Voldemort and in his creation of the Horcruxes. This is only going to be for some of the people in the room, but track with me if you can. But in the world of Harry Potter, There's this idea that murder corrupts the soul. It actually tears the soul in two. It makes you more like an animal and the villain Voldemort himself becomes more bestial and snake-like in both his character and his behavior as the story goes on. But Voldemort had that character when he was Tom Riddle. It's just as he acts on it, as he entertains it, as he feeds it, it begins to resemble, he begins to resemble what he's always been on the inside. To borrow somewhat from that idea, Jesus is telling us here in Matthew that it's not just the act of murder that corrupts and dehumanizes your spirit. When you entertain wrath, when you harbor resentment, when you give free reign to your anger, you are already becoming animalistic and bestial. You're already on the path of darkness. And it will eventually change you. And you will eventually find yourself engaging in behaviors, doing things, saying things that you never thought possible because it will corrupt you. And one of the reasons it does this so effectively and so easily is that the very nature of anger makes you feel justified in your anger. Anger makes you feel justified in your anger. Think about this for just a moment. When you are angry, do you feel right to be angry or wrong to be angry? You always feel right to be angry. Your anger almost always feels justified in the moment. And the things that you say and do while you're angry feel like the just and right things to say and do. But what happens when you cool off? If you're a mature and healthy person, you realize that the things that you said in your anger were not only inappropriate and unjustified, they were awful. They were terrible. They were hurtful. They were sinful. This is why James writes, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Human anger makes you feel like you're pursuing justice, but it rarely accomplishes justice. Anger is more likely to perpetuate a cycle of violence and vengeance and retribution than it is to accomplish a state of righteousness. Revenge rarely satisfies. This is why God says repeatedly in Scripture, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. We have to leave justice to his hands, not let our anger take the wheel. I have a psychologist friend who says anger is an advocate. Anger is an advocate. It's a lawyer. It's a prosecuting attorney on the inside. It's fiery and hot, and it gives you the power and strength to stand up against your fears. to speak against injustice, to act against hurtful and wrong things. Sometimes anger will lead us to speak up for someone who has been victimized and we're angry on their behalf. If you've ever been angry because somebody's hurt your child, that's a natural, healthy, right thing to do, to feel. Because anger's telling you some wrong has been perpetrated here and it needs to be set right. But there's a right way and a wrong way to channel that anger. If I act out of that anger, I'm going to hurt somebody else. But if I let that anger tell me something wrong was done here that needs to be set right, and out of that knowledge, I cool down and I'm able to handle it rationally with a plan, with wise words rather than angry words, then actually a lot of fruit can be done. You can think of anger as like a combustion force inside your heart. That combustion, that heat, produces a lot of power and energy, but you have to direct it. You have to turn it into healthy motion. If your heart chamber isn't reinforced and able to convert that heat of anger into torque, your heart's going to explode with a violence that's going to hurt you and hurt people around you. What's more, this burning of your heart cannot be kept bottled up within. It will come out in some way, shape, or form. That brings us to the second point. Murder can be done with the lips. Even if you keep your hands back from physical murder, the seas of your wrath within you will break out eventually, and it will probably be in something you say. This is where Jesus goes next. He says in verse 22, whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. Jesus uses two words here from the Aramaic and Greek language. The Aramaic word used where the ESV says, whoever insults his brother, it uses the Aramaic loan word, raka, whoever says raka. And then the Greek uses the word moros. They both basically mean fool, though they have some different nuances. Moros is where we get the word moron for. So whoever says to his brother, you moron, liable to the hell of fire. But it's hard to comprehend how simply calling somebody an idiot or a numbskull, a moron or a fool would warrant judgment. Who would possibly go to court because you called them a fool? Even more shocking is the end of verse 22, where Jesus says, whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. Why is this so serious? Again, for Jesus, murder is not something that's done only with the hands. It's something that originates in the heart, and it can take many forms. It can bear many different-looking fruits from within the heart. And one of the most common forms is violent and dehumanizing speech, including saying things that we would consider quite tame, like we can come up with some pretty good words to say to people besides just, you idiot, you moron, you fool, you numbskull. Like, I'm pretty certain all of us have said harsher things to other people than that. That doesn't even make the list of curse words. However, the sad reality is that We can just as easily murder someone with our lips as we can with our hands. When we do violence with our hands to someone's body, it can leave a mark. It can kill. It can hurt. But the body is also able to heal with relative ease. The body can be bandaged. The skin can be stitched up. Bones can heal. Physical pain can be relieved with Tylenol or Advil or something stronger. But what about the spirit? When you do injury to somebody's heart and soul, what's going to fix that? What medicine are you going to apply? Proverbs 18, 14 asks, a man's spirit can endure sickness, physical ailment, but a crushed spirit, who can bear? Words have a very powerful way to pierce into the heart and soul of a person. We've all experienced firsthand how stupid the childhood rhyme is. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I'm sorry. I've been hurt a lot more by words than I ever have been by sticks and stones, and so have you. The damage done by our words can be longer lasting and more devastating than physical violence. There are fates worse than death. God spoke the universe into being with his words. We are made in his image. And so our words, while we don't have creative power with our language, we do have pretty amazing destructive power with our words. For this reason, we have to be very careful with the things that we say to people. Whether we intend to do lasting harm or not, the things that we say in our anger especially can wound deeply the heart and the soul. Our words can warp a person's self-conception. I'm not just talking about hurting someone's feelings. I'm talking about destroying the way that they think about themselves. If you tell a child that they are stupid, If you tell a child that they'll never amount to anything and they believe you, what will that do to them? How will that affect their ability to do life? Well, dad said, I'm an idiot. My parents told me I never amount to anything. If you smear a person's reputation, if you spread embarrassing gossip about them and they're humiliated in school or in the workplace, what will do that do to them? If utterly humiliating rumors about a person are spread. If you tell a girl that she's ugly, that she better have a good personality and learn how to cook, What will that do to her? If you convince a girl that nobody can love her. If you tell a young man that he's a loser, that he's good for nothing, that no girl in her right mind would ever be interested in him, what will that do to this young man? If you belittle and mock and verbally abuse your spouse, what will that do to their spirit and to your marriage, even if you never lay a hand on them? If you make fun of them, if you mock them, if you scorn them, if you berate them, if you nag them, if you tell them in one way or another that they're a loser, they are beneath you, you're superior to them. They have problems and nobody can fix it. If you convince someone that they are a victim of an oppressive societal structure, of the patriarchy, of heteronormativity, of racism, what will that do to them? These sorts of things will tend to make people either weakly passive or violently angry. They can and do lead to chronic despair, depression, anxiety, and suicide. They can drive a person into extremist beliefs, driving them to believe that Violence is the only answer because they have no other power to make a difference. They can rob a person of personal agency, draining them of total ambition and life, putting them in a position of chronic neediness, inability to get, keep, hold down work, always relying on help from others, and probably addicted to something. It can make a person feel like a perpetual victim, always suffering at other people's hands with no ability to help themselves. And it can turn a person into a vengeful demon of hate. Your words can destroy other people's souls, my friends. You cannot excuse your words that are spoken in anger or frustration. It's not okay to give free reign to your wrath. You cannot vent and vomit over your family, over your employees, or on social media. Certain words, once spoken, cannot be taken back. Certain words, once spoken, cannot be taken back. The damage has been done. It's too late. You can't hit rewind. As Sinclair Ferguson notes, spewing insults on one another, attacking a person's dignity and personal agency, dehumanizing and belittling people, all these things are far more serious than most of us assume. In fact, our insensitivity to their real seriousness is indicative of the dullness of our spiritual senses and our lack of compassion for one another. That brings us to the third point. The judgment we have to fear is God's. Not only does Jesus correct the externalized reduction of the sixth commandment to the crime of murder, He also returns the judgment of the law to its proper framing under the justice of God. Because the death penalty under Moses was always intended to be a reflection of, an enactment of, an enactment of God's own divine judgment against the murderer. In Romans 13, Paul tells us that the death penalty is given to the state by God Himself to punish evildoers and murderers. Scripture calls this authority to execute justice the sword. It dates back to God's covenant with Noah in Genesis chapter 9. By God's decree, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, because God made man in His own image. And so when the civil government executes a murderer, it is acting as, quote, the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. That's when the Old Testament law prescribed the death penalty for murderers, and it was not just a civil or social or judicial matter. It wasn't just a matter of deterring crime. It was the execution of God's own wrath against the murderer. As such, this judgment was intended to establish fear, not only of physical and earthly punishment, but of divine and eternal punishment. If you murder or insult or hate, it is not only man you must fear who can destroy the body, you must fear God who can destroy the body and soul in hell forever. Galatians 5, 19-21 says, ìNow the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Colossians 3, 5 through 8 says, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. These are very much the same things that Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount. I want us to return here to how Jesus drives this lesson home. He begins with the same term used by the rabbis and the Pharisees. He says, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. That's the same word that the rabbis and Pharisees had used. And if your mind runs on the same track as Jesus's listeners would have had in their heads, there'd be a moment of confusion here. Again, how can we be brought to trial for anger? How is that a punishable offense? Everybody would be going to court all the time if you could sue somebody for being angry at you. But then Jesus continues, whoever insults his brother, that is idiot, will be liable to the council. And the word for council here is the word Sanhedrin. It referred to the high religious court of the Jews. It would be equivalent to our Supreme Court. Again, we might think, hold up, Jesus. Why would the Supreme Court get involved if I called somebody an idiot? Something's not lining up here. And Jesus finally clarifies his meaning when he says, whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. And here he uses the word Gehenna, which referred to the Valley of Hinnom, Southeast of Jerusalem, where they burned the city waste. And it was a physical and visual metaphor for what the eternal state would be like, the eternal state of punishment when the Messiah brought the kingdom of God. Jesus is talking here not about physical or civil judgment, but divine judgment. When Jesus refers to Gehenna, He places everything else He said in a different light. He's talking about divine judgment. When He talks about the Supreme Court, He's not talking about what can be found in Jerusalem, but the divine courtroom of heaven. When he talks about the Gehenna of fire, he's not talking about the refuse pit outside of Jerusalem, he's talking about hell. Again, the problem of anger is far more serious than we assume. The problem of a harsh, belittling, insulting, and abusive tongue is far more serious than we would assume. God takes it so seriously. that an angry spirit and a hateful tongue will drag your whole body and soul down to hell." James 3, 5-10 says. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every beast, every kind of beast, and a bird, and a reptile, and sea creature can be tamed, and has been tamed by mankind. But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so." Friends, you have to answer to God for things you say and for the ways that you feel inside. And some of you are angry people. You may know that you're angry people. You may not know that you're angry people. You need to understand this, you will always feel justified in your anger, but that doesn't make it justified. It's not just who you are. It's not just expressing yourself. You're expressing your emotions doesn't give you cause to beat your wife. Expressing yourself doesn't give you cause to belittle and demean your children. It doesn't matter what you think you mean by it. What matters is the effect it has on others. An unrestrained anger, an unrestrained tongue is unrighteous, unholy, and in God's eyes, criminal. The point I'm trying to make is that for some of you, anger is not just an emotion that you have. It's a state of being. If you're an angry person, you're an angry person. It's who you are in your heart. And the only thing that can change that is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not just a matter of trying harder. It's not just a matter of having better discipline. You need an internal transformation. That's the only thing that will do the trick. That's the point of the Sermon on the Mount. It's the point of the law, is to show you that you desperately need Jesus and you cannot fix yourself. You need a heart transplant. You need the water of life to flow through you, body and soul, and extinguish the flames of hell that are burning in you. And even if you aren't really that angry of a person, you don't frequently say hateful and insulting things to other people, which if so, the Lord bless you. May your tribe increase. But even then, it's easy to say things under your breath. The Lord still sees what you're like in bad traffic when a person cuts you off. The Lord hears what you say under your breath when your spouse leaves the room, or when they walk through the door. Even the things that you think, the nasty thoughts that you have, the visualizations of your boss's head exploding, that you would never dream of acting on. Or that car that's zigging through, just dreaming. The motorcycle, that's been happening lately. Motorcycle zooming through, somebody just kind of steering over that Schadenfreude that you just like delight in somebody's karma coming back to get them because they're being idiots. Even that, my friends, is falling short of the righteousness that God requires. Because it's wishing or harboring thoughts and desires. that want somebody's harm or grumble against rather than wanting somebody's good, somebody's blessing, somebody's wholeness. All of us have room to repent here. All of us have a need to grow and change here. Nobody gets off of this text, not even me. Thank you for listening to this sermon from River Community Church in Prairieville, Louisiana, where you will always find biblical preaching, meaningful worship, and the equipping of disciples. For more information on River Community Church and its ministries, please visit rivercommunity.org.