Sermon for MHBC (24 July 2022). You can watch on our website or on Facebook or YouTube. Live at 11:00am on Sundays.
This morning we are continuing our teaching on Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7. We’ve spent two weeks in this section already. In the first week, we saw the virtues Jesus blesses. Last week, we saw his teaching on genuine righteousness and its impact on the world.
This week, we begin looking at a section where Jesus addresses a number of specific topics that all humans deal with. And it is worth repeating that Jesus isn’t interested in mere conformity to outward actions. In other words, keeping a rule doesn’t mean our heart has been transformed. Often, keeping rules produces self-righteousness, which is the opposite of genuine righteousness. Jesus is interested in deep, heart-level transformation.
Let me give you an illustration. Imagine someone who never curses or yells at other people. They wouldn’t dare strike someone. They wouldn’t even gesture to them in traffic when they are upset. But every time someone even remotely offends them, they are filled with resentment and bitterness. Their mind is occupied with how wronged they are. It’s really the only thing they can think about for hours, sometimes days. And there are plenty of things they remember for years and decades. Jesus says that isn’t the experience of genuine righteousness. Everyone else may be fooled, but that person’s soul is eaten alive with spiritual cancer.
Jesus holds out a better way. It isn’t just about following some rules. It is about deep, heart-level transformation. Think about it this way. We could follow a lot of rules, which produces a rigidness, often a bitterness, that doesn’t change the heart. By contrast, we would forget about any standards and just do whatever without any burden for change. But Jesus offers us a third way. He offers us way of deep transformation, of real, genuine change at the heart-level. But here’s the catch. The only way to experience that change is through death.
In chapter 16 of Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew tells us that “Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.”[1] But Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples, we are told, takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You.”[2] So Jesus says to him, “You are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”[3]
Then, listen to the very next verse. “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”[4] Before we go any further in Jesus’s teaching, we must answer this fundamental question of discipleship or apprenticeship to Jesus. Am I willing to die? Am I willing to put my whole self on the cross to be crucified?
Every single one of Jesus’s teachings call for the relinquishment of our rights. Every one calls for surrender and death of our natural desires and inclinations. Every one of his teachings requires us to die. And it’s only through this death that we will experience the type of real transformation that Jesus talks about. And listen, this is no rosy walk to Calvary. It is painful. It is terrifying. It is hard. But it is the secret. Jesus puts it this way in John’s Gospel: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”[5] The mystery of Christianity is that in the death of Christ there is life. This is Paul’s teaching in Galatians 2:20 when he writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
Some early Christians grabbed hold of the mythical idea of the phoenix to illustrate this. You might recall that the phoenix in mythology is a bird that dies in a flame of fire, but from the ashes it rises to new life.[6] The secret of transformation is the death of self, and all of Jesus’s teaching calls us to greater levels of death to ourselves.
Let’s look at what he says about anger, beginning in Matt 5:21: 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.” You may recognize this from the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are just a summary of the laws found in the OT. In Matthew 5, Jesus’s teaching is going to center on OT teaching and how it is understood by the religious people in his day. But what Jesus is going to show is that God’s intention with the law was not an arbitrary list of rules. I love the way Calvin puts this. He says the law was given “for the government of the heart.”
Look what Jesus says in v. 22: 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, “Raca!” shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, “You fool!” shall be in danger of hell fire. So Jesus goes further with this. Mere conformity to a rule doesn’t equate to genuine righteousness.
Now stop and consider the authority of Jesus here. Who is he to quote the law and then say, “But I say to you”? That’s bold. But what it tells us is that the same voice who gave the law to Moses on the mountain is speaking here.
Jesus says if we harbor secret anger, then our heart is being corroded by murder. Now there’s a bit of variation in the early copies of Scripture on this verse. Some copies have “without cause,” which you see in the KJV or NKJV. Others do not have that phrase. I don’t actually see this as a significant problem since we see instances of Jesus himself being angry. What sort of anger is problematic then? As we will see in the rest of the passage, anger directed at our neighbors seems to be the primary concern. That is different than the appropriate anger we feel toward evil and injustice. The psalms are particularly helpful here because they give us language to pray against evil in the world.
But notice what Jesus says, “Whoever is angry with his brother.” The issue lies in our heart toward other people. Notice what else Jesus says in the rest of v. 21. He gives two examples of verbal insults. Raca and fool are verbal abuses. We can murder people with our tongue. And let’s not downplay it. That is the intent of the heart. Laws may restrain us from physically assaulting someone, but being filled with anger toward another and then lashing out whether in their presence, in another’s presence, or privately, has the intent of destroying the other person. Our desire is to make them hurt, to make them pay, to force them to our will.
Bonhoeffer wrote: “Anger is always an attack on the brother’s life, for it refuses to let him live and aims at his destruction … Every idle word which we think so little of betrays our lack of respect for our neighbour, and shows that we place ourselves on a pinnacle above him and value our own lives higher than his.”
This is the core problem of anger—it violates love for our neighbor. And that has some serious implications for our spiritual life. Festering anger makes worship impossible. Look at vv. 23–24: 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.
Jesus’s illustration is drastic here, and we will come back to that in a moment, but for now notice the hindrance to worship. Jesus doesn’t say, “Continue with your worship.” He gives us priorities. He says, “Pause the worship, because reconciling to your brother is going to hinder the worship.” In terms of priorities, it is necessary to reconcile because this in itself is part of our worship.
Look at virtually any list of problematic behaviors in the church in the NT, and you will see anger in that list. Why is that? Because festering anger makes worship impossible. It is cancer for the church. It eats at the spiritual life, killing all that is good and vital. And by the way, what else are gossip, truth-twisting, divisiveness, than expressions of festering anger? Take gossip for example? What is our end goal and intention with gossip? To destroy and malign another person. It’s an instructive illustration that etymologists argue that the original meaning of the word slander has to do with laying a trap.[7] When we use our words to attack others, even if done in a “sweet” tone, we are laying traps to destroy them. Let me give you one example. Have you ever heard this? “I shouldn’t say this, but…” When you hear it, take the biblical advice and flee, because the truth is that the trap being laid will snare your soul as well.
And this is one of Satan’s stratagems for destroying the church. In Ephesians 4, Paul lists some of these things that destroy the church. Look at the sequence in vv. 26–27: Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Just note how closely anger and slow reconciliation is linked to giving place to the devil. In fact, there is an argument to be made that the NLT captures the sense of this by translating it as follows: Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.[8]
In our second reading from James 3, we see the same concern there. James says the tongue has the potential to destroy the whole body. Why? Because we are talking about the ability of anger to corrode our soul.
So what do we do? Pay attention to Jesus’s instruction here. His remedy is quite drastic. Jesus’s remedy for anger is the crucifixion of our stubborn self-love. Go back to our verses in Matt 5:23–24. The altar Jesus refers to would have been in the temple in Jerusalem. His primary audience is in Galilee, so Jesus is talking about a considerable journey, not a walk down the street. And what does he say to do? Be reconciled first, then return for worship.
Jesus puts the responsibility on his disciples. Now why would we resist this? Because it means giving up our rights. It means the awkwardness of reconciliation. It means the embarrassment involved in that. In short, it means death. It’s the way of the cross.
Look at the final part of this teaching in vv. 25–26: 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.
Jesus’s teaching here is good general advice, but it also gets to the heart of the matter. There are real consequences to our persistent anger. There are real consequences to our unwillingness to deny ourselves.
What are we trying to accomplish? Are we trying to reconcile? Or are we trying to control? See it is the control that is our attempt to force our own will upon our neighbor. Like Peter, we are afraid of death, so we try to control. “No Lord, you can’t go to the cross.”
But in the death of Jesus we not only have an example to follow but by being united to him in his death we have the power to die to our old self and then to be raised to newness of life by God’s own Holy Spirit. There is a better way.
How is your soul? What are you up to? What strategies are you using to avoid death to self? Jesus is inviting you to a better way. He’s inviting you to learn from him. Here is what is before us: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
[1] Matt 16:21. All quotes are NKJV.
[2] Matt 16:22.
[3] Matt 16:23.
[4] Matt 16:24–25.
[5] John 12:24.
[6] See 1 Clement 25.
[7] https://www.etymonline.com/word/slander
[8] The argument would be the use of μηδέ instead of καί. BDAG gives the first entry for μηδέ as “continuing a preceding negation.” In such a sequence, the second prohibition is closely linked to the first and in many ways a continuation of the preceding thought.