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. 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're going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Amen. You may be seated. And Lord, would you please bless this reading and preaching of your word for your glory and our good. We pick up this morning back in Matthew chapter 5 verses 21 through 26 in Jesus's words on anger. Last week we saw Jesus reorient and reframe our understanding of the sixth commandment and of murder as something that originates in the heart. It's not just a crime that we commit with our hands. And as a sin of the heart, something that flows out of a corrupt heart, murder can be committed in a variety of ways with the things that you think, the things that you desire, and the words that you say. We also saw Jesus reframe our fear of punishment for murder. to the realm of divine justice, not simply the human courts. And without missing a beat, Jesus immediately moves to a matter of application, the subject of reconciliation, which is what we'll examine today. And in fact, I think Jesus is saying something like this. Understand it's not only those who actually commit murder that are liable before God and liable to the human courts. It's also those who are angry with their brothers and who say hateful things to them in their anger. So if you want to avoid judgment, here's what you need to do. You need to pursue reconciliation with people. You need to prioritize reconciliation with one another. And you need to do it before you can come before the divine judge or human judges. We'll examine our text under the following three headings. First, reconciliation with God. or before God. Second, reconciliation before the courts. And third, reconciliation with our brothers. First, reconciliation before God. Jesus says, if you're offering your gift at the altar in 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. So Jesus envisions here his Jewish disciple faithfully worshiping at the altar in Jerusalem. He's bringing an offering of some sort to God. It could be his tithe. It could be a thanksgiving offering. It could be a sin offering. Now, given the context, I think it's probably a sin offering. And I imagine this is a man who realized that he has sinned in his anger. He has violated a relationship with someone. He feels guilty about it. He wants to atone for his sin, but there's a problem. This man wants to make things right with God, but he has failed to make things right with his brother. He wants to make things right with God, but he's failed to make things right with his brother. So there's an ongoing breach in this relationship that hasn't been resolved yet, and it is going to negatively impact his ability to worship, his ability to benefit from worship. The means of grace are not going to flow to him because there's a crimp in the hose. Jesus doesn't say this explicitly. but a failure to reconcile with other believers will make our worship unacceptable to God. This man's sacrifice won't have the desired effect. Your prayers won't have the desired effect. Your taking the Lord's Supper won't have the desired effect. We see this principle worked out in other places. As Samuel says to Saul in 1 Samuel 15, 22, has the Lord As great a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. Or as David says in Psalm 66, 18, if I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. Or Solomon in Proverbs 28 verse 9, if one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Or Isaiah in Isaiah 59, one and two, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save or his ear dull that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. Or Peter in 1 Peter 3, seven says, Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered." Friends, if there is an area of hardness in your heart, or harshness in your life, where sin is tolerated, where a feud is allowed to go unchecked with another person, then your worship will be ineffective. You will not get from it what you want to get from coming to church, from serving God, from participating in the means of grace and the sacraments. Even your personal efforts to repent with God and find peace with God will be rejected. Unless you're willing to address the real damage you have done or are doing with other people, your prayers will hit a stone ceiling. Your conscience will continue to accuse you. Your sins will feel like they're still being held against you. Because you're not doing what God calls you to do, which is reconcile. For this reason, you need to prioritize the pursuit of peace in your relationships. You need to make things right in your relationships with your family, with your friends, with your co-workers, with your fellow church members. This is essential for benefiting from worship and experiencing the forgiveness of sins. Now, we'll see more on this connection between forgiving other people and experiencing God's forgiveness of us when we get to chapter 6. So I'm going to move on. Today's lesson is simply, if you want to benefit from worship in here, you need to pursue reconciliation out there. because they're intimately connected. As Sinclair Ferguson notes, what we are before God involves how we are related to others. And if we are enmity with others, how can we come into the Lord's presence with clean hands and a pure heart? It is monstrous to think that he will find our hypocritical offering acceptable. And on this topic, I want you to notice two things. First, I want you to notice that the issue here is that your brother has something against you, not the other way around. It's not necessarily the case. It doesn't have to be true that you're worked up about something. Somebody else is upset with you and we would presume for good reason. You've got a responsibility that you haven't accepted. You've caused an objective offense that's unresolved. This is the situation that Jesus is addressing. Yes, sure, if you're in worship and you realize you've got a grudge or ill feelings towards someone in your heart while you're at worship, you need to deal with that. But here's the thing. If it's inside you, it's a you problem. And you can deal with that in prayer as you worship. You can forgive in your heart as you worship. In Matthew 18, confrontation, discipline thing, notwithstanding. You have a responsibility in your heart to make things right with God as you worship. This isn't talking about that. Jesus has in view the situation where somebody else has a problem with you. Your responsibility is to reach out to them, not wait for them to speak up, not hope that they forget about it. If you know that somebody has a valid complaint against you, it's on you to initiate, even if they haven't asked for it, even if they don't think they want it. Because you can't make things right with God until you make things right with Him. Second, Jesus is speaking to His disciples up in Galilee. But they offered their sacrifices down in Jerusalem. That's a hundred-mile journey one way. This means that Jesus is potentially requiring these disciples in Matthew 5, to return from Jerusalem all the way to Galilee to make things right. This would mean interrupting their worship for a whole week to make this journey on foot. In other words, the distance is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how big an inconvenience it is. Or how unpleasant the conversation may be. Or you being noticed is, why did Steve just leave his cow at the temple and leave? Where is he going? Is he coming back? Don't worry about it. Do what you need to do. It doesn't matter how far you have to go. It doesn't matter who notices the awkward situation. If you need to make things right with another person, you need to make things right. You need to do whatever it takes and you need to do it now. And friends, if that's you in worship, whether it's today or some future date, And you realize there's somebody in here you need to have a conversation with. It is worshiping God to go grab that person and say, hey, can we step outside and talk? It is worship. It is a delight to the Lord for you to step out of the church service to do what God commands. He will honor that. For sure. Don't just not take the Lord's Supper and not make things right. To go without the Lord's Supper indefinitely because you're putting off having the conversation you know you need to have. Do it now. Do it right away. Get right with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And do it now. That brings us to the second point, reconciliation before the courts. In verse 25, Jesus says, come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're 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. We're probably here dealing with a case of litigation, as in a civil lawsuit. Financial liability in some form or fashion is clearly in view because the threat from the judge is being thrown into debtor's prison until you pay the last penny. So either you're being brought to court because you have an outstanding debt that you have not paid or refuse to pay, or you are being sued for liability and damages. Of course, it bears stating that as Christians, you should absolutely avoid getting yourself into this position. You should pay your debts. You should honor your agreements and contracts with others. You should avoid things that would necessitate such legal actions against you. You should drive safely. You should maintain your property. And insofar as it is possible, you should avoid taking other Christians to court. In 1 Corinthians 6, one through eight, Paul writes, when one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to the law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you know that you're going to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there's no one among you wise enough to settle the dispute between the brothers? But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers. To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers. Paul rebukes the Corinthians here on two fronts. First, they are sinning against one another and cheating against one another. They're refusing to pay their debts to one another. They're violating their business contracts. They're just rascals. And as a consequence, they are regularly needing to resort to the civil courts to resolve these breaches of contract and outstanding debts. And this, Paul says, is an objectively shameful state of affairs. They are an embarrassment to the name of Christians. Further compounding this shameful behavior is that they are pursuing justice through the Roman law courts, that is publicly, rather than resolving these disputes within the family, within the church. God has given to his church the spirit of wisdom. And this wisdom is especially rendered to the elders and pastors and leaders of the congregation. So whenever possible, Christians should seek the wisdom of the church courts The wisdom of the elders rather than the justice of the civil courts. And so if you have to be taken to the civil court by another Christian, or you have to take another Christian to court, understand that you have already lost. It's a no-win scenario. It's not that it's always sinful or never appropriate to do it, but if Christians have to go to court with one another, there's already something dreadful going on. There's already major dysfunction in the system, in the relationship, and it brings dishonor to the reputation of Christ and His church. If one Christian has to sue another Christian, or if a Christian tries to sue their church, or whatever, what does that say about our character? What does that say about the way that we treat one another, that we can't mediate disputes, that we can't resolve these things in-house? It's shameful. And it denies the power of Christ to reconcile. But what if you do find yourself in that position? Well, here we return to the words of Jesus. What is more, Jesus doesn't say here, brother. He changes His vocabulary. He talks about the accuser. The word means plaintiff. So this is not limited to Christians going to court with one another. It includes being sued or brought to court by unbelievers, too. And remember as well, the suggestion in this passage, given that it's connected with anger, saying ugly things to one another, wrath, murder, this category of things, I think Jesus is dealing here with suits that have grounds. It's not baseless unjust charges, like you are at fault in some manner. You do have some manner of responsibility in being brought to court. Here, Jesus' exhortation is to make things right while you still can. Resolve your civil disputes, pay your debts, settle your cases outside of court before things come before the judge. Don't passively drag your feet, hoping that the court will take your side. Don't rely on your lawyers to get you out of trouble. Take action for yourself to settle things while you can, because there's no guarantee that the case will go your way. Be wise. Don't leave it to chance. Don't leave it to the whims of a jury or the judge. Indeed, Jesus actually seems to be suggesting that if you presume that God will let you off because you're a Christian instead of negotiating, God will actually allow the case to go against you. Christians have no right to presume upon the grace and favor of God when they are in sin. And so, if you as a Christian are in the wrong, if you are liable, and you're trying to avoid that liability, God will not uphold your case. God will not allow his people to engage in corrupt behavior and escape without the consequences. He won't allow you to use the civil, judicial, and criminal system to get off scot-free. He loves you too much to allow you to get away with it. I think that's what Jesus is getting at here. So make things right before you go to court. Third point, reconciliation with brothers. One of the interesting details of this paragraph is that Jesus refers to these conflicts as being between brothers, not neighbors. He says everyone who is angry with his brother, and insults his brother, and remembering that your brother has something against you, the only time he drops the fraternal language is when he talks about this last point, about going to court. Now, in using this fraternal brother language, he adopts the terminology of the case law of Moses, especially from Leviticus, in a very fitting passage. In Leviticus 19, verse 17, we read, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. That sounds familiar. But you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, using neighbor and brother as synonyms. lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." I've heard that somewhere. In its context, Leviticus 19.17 is almost a perfect analogy or point of reference for what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5.21-26. And even though in Leviticus neighbor and brother are used as synonyms, Jesus chooses not to use neighbor language at all. He opts exclusively for family language. And in doing so, he forces us to understand these breaches of relationship in intimate terms. He frames these ruptures as being inside the family. Given where the New Testament teaching about Christian relationships goes, it should be no surprise to you. In Christ, we are adopted into God's household. We are not by blood or ethnicity one family. We are in Christ one family. We are all in Christ, sons and daughters of God, and that means that we are brothers and sisters of one another. By His Spirit, we have been forged into one spiritual family. And that means that the kinship between believers is thick. It's as thick as blood, the blood of Jesus Christ. The blood that runs in the veins of your natural families is nowhere near as thick as the blood of Jesus. It's thicker than anything else in all the world. And therefore, we need to recognize that the relationships we have with one another as Christians, especially when we're members of the same church, it carries a deep debt of obligation and duty. Our responsibility to pursue peace and love with one another as Christians surpasses our duty to pursue peace and love with family members. Indeed, oftentimes in our blood family, in our natural family, we have to actually forego pursuing reconciliation because there's a place we can't go past with them, probably because they're not believers. And we just have to allow there to be a certain boundary or a barrier. We're not going to have peace with this cousin, with the sibling, with this parent or child beyond this area because God's Spirit's not at work in them. Well, we don't have that excuse in the church. We have to be willing to go places to pursue reconciliation with one another that we don't always have to do. And it's often unwise to do with our natural families. Because the peace of Christ is to reign between us in this house. Now, the church does not supplant the family, not at all. And we don't need to pit church and family against one another, but we do need to recognize that our spiritual family in Christ should have a stronger pull on us and wait for us than it usually does. Your natural family, your parents, your cousins, your kids, even your spouse. These are natural relationships, but they're temporary relationships because of that. When Christ returns, all the ties of blood family will become irrelevant. Jesus teaches us that in the resurrection, marriage will be no more. Marriage is the foundation of the natural family. So if marriage is no more, the natural family will be no more. What will matter is Christ, our relationship to Him, and in Him, our relationship with one another. The blood family is temporary. The spiritual family is eternal. And we should place appropriate weight on that reality. Thus when we sin against one another, when we're angry with one another, when we hurt one another, when we insult one another, we are sinning against family. We're sinning against Christ's family. He takes that seriously. So just as you desperately want peace and wholeness in your family, Jesus wants peace in his. Just as you don't tolerate when your kids are bickering and arguing and fighting one another, Jesus doesn't tolerate it when His do. He will put you in His get-along shirt. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we should get along. Not just in a surface manner, not with just a surface peace, but with the peace of Christ, a deep, real, lasting, loving, and wholesome peace. Now as we close, I need to direct your attention to Romans 12, 18. Romans 12, 18, you don't have to turn there. If you're a note taker, I want it in your notes. It says, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. In other words, it's not always possible. After a sermon like this one, some of you are really wrestling with what this sermon means because you are hypersensitive to people being upset with you. It's not uncommon for you to feel like you have offended someone, when in fact you haven't. Some of you are people pleasers, and you have a deep need for people to be happy with you. Some of you can't stand it when anyone is even remotely unhappy with you. Others of you, quite frankly, don't care, and that's a problem too. So first to the people pleasers in the room. Jesus isn't telling you today to go around and make sure everybody's okay with you. Some of you would never be able to come into worship or take the Lord's Supper because you always feel like somebody's mad at you. and you spend all your time going to repair relationships that don't really need to be repaired. In fact, you have the potential of making things worse. It's like apologizing to your wife every time you lust. Like, okay, I appreciate the effort, but you may be making the situation worse if you share with your wife every thought that goes through your head. Facts. Don't let your anxiety misinterpret this text. Again, Paul says, if possible, that means that peace is not always possible. You aren't going to be able to reconcile with everyone all the time, and about half the time, when you are able to reconcile, it's gonna leave you feeling like that could have gone better. or it still isn't where it needs to be. And that's okay. What you're responsible to do is take the initiative when you recognize the need. If there is someone you know has something against you, then you extend the olive branch, especially if there's good reason to. This passage is not just about somebody being mad at you. You can be safe and somebody be mad at you. It's not about somebody being mad because there was some friction. You still need to reconcile. But it's about you owning up to doing something that was wrong, owning up to hurting somebody, owning up to sinning against somebody, accepting financial responsibility for Hitting a baseball through the window, I don't know. All Jesus is requiring you to do is take ownership of your sinful behavior. He's not making you responsible for how other people feel. You're not responsible to make people not angry with you. And if you reach out to somebody to reconcile and they aren't interested in reconciling, that's okay, you've done your part. As far as it depends on you, there are going to be people in your life and in this church who get angry with you and upset with you because of their own issues, not because you did something wrong. Yeah, we could always say something a little better. Welcome to humanity. There are going to be people though who want to stay upset with you even after you try to reconcile. There are going to be people who say that they forgive you or that something doesn't matter and it stays in their heart like a burr for a long time. You can't fix that. It's okay for you to give people time to cool off. that you realize there's a problem doesn't mean it has to be addressed right away when the other person's still spitting mad. In marriage you know this. Sometimes your spouse just needs to cool off a little bit. It's same in the church. Often you can make matters worse if you try to force a conversation with somebody who doesn't want it. It takes two to tango. It takes two to reconcile. Reconciliation is a two-way street. Forgiveness is a one-way street. I forgive you. So if somebody else walks away from the process of reconciliation, refuses to engage, that's on them. You've done your part. You can have a clean conscience before God. The main thing, again, is that you need to take responsibility for you. when your conscience stings you, when you become aware that somebody is angry with you or upset with you, when you realize you need to apologize, when you need to make something right, you do it. You do it. Don't wait. Treat it with urgency. You take care of it right away if possible. That's it. That's all I've got to say today. Let's pray. 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.