So last week we went through verses 17 through 20 of Matthew 5 and we looked at how Jesus didn’t come to change or destroy the Law and the Prophets but did bring a new perspective to it. He talked about how it is still all important, but ultimately how it all pointed forward to Him as the fulfillment of it. How the law was there to keep people in check by understanding that God had standards, but by us understanding His standard we find out that we all fall way short of it. We find out that we’re sinners and our sin will never line up with His holiness, so Jesus in fulfillment of it all came to pay for and to deal with our sin so that we can get right as people with God again. He was the only one that could do this, and the Law paved the way forward for us to understand our need for Him.
But as we talked about last week, some people, even back then, weren’t understanding the heart and the purpose of the law. And so, Jesus took it upon Himself to bring a little lesson to the table, for the people that were listening to Him as He taught on the side of this mountain in Matthew 5. And we get to benefit from this as well, let me read our passage for today.
Read Matthew 5:21-30
Remember last week when we talked about the scribes and the pharisees? How these guys were writing all of these extra additions to the law and all of their commentary on these things and how they had dedicated their lives to following the letter of the law and most people in culture probably looked at these guys as the most righteous men on Earth. But Jesus wasn’t tricked by the outward appearances, Jesus was able to see the condition of their hearts. I read a couple verses last week in Matthew 23 where Jesus made this really clear, let me just read one of these for us again:
Matthew 23:27-28
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
This is the issue; this is why Jesus is teaching what He is teaching in our passage today. People were following the law to the letter, but they hadn’t understood and lived the heart of it. He’s like you guys look great on the outside, but inside you’re a bunch of hypocrites. Your heart doesn’t reflect your actions, you’re just putting on a show for everyone else and that’s just not good enough in God’s view. Gods interested in more than surface level and Jesus is teaching that lesson today in our passage.
And so, Jesus begins His lesson in verse 21, and His first subject for this lesson is murder. And generally, I think, we would be like, well that’s pretty straight forward, I know not to murder someone. We see in verse 21 that Jesus is referencing back to the ten commands, back in Exodus 20, and so let me read verse 21 again:
Read Matthew 5:21
So, we’ve got that, we’re not supposed to murder people and for these guys, that was the letter of the law, that’s what the law said. But Jesus is like, I care about more than that, I care that you don’t murder people, but I also care about your heart and your thought’s toward people as well. And so, He continues in verses 22 and 23:
Read Matthew 5:22-23
Notice the authority with which Jesus is speaking here. He’s talking about God’s Word; He’s dealing with these people in regard to all of the Law and the Prophets as we talked about last week. But notice what He says verse 21, He talks about other people talking and teaching saying, “You have heard that it was said to those of old”, that other people talked about these things before, even to the generations before the current people listening. But then Jesus has the authority to say, “BUT I SAY TO YOU”. All of these other people were saying and doing whatever they were doing, but Jesus is like, now it’s time to listen to Me and I have all of the authority to tell you like it really is.
And as that authority, because Jesus is God and this is His Word, He tells these people that it’s not just the letter of the law, it’s not just don’t murder, I mean that’s really important, but it’s also about what’s going on in your heart and mind as you engage with other people. He say’s whoever is angry with his brother, will also be in danger of judgement as well. He’s calling that anger a sin, just like murder would be a sin.
He talks about telling someone the word “Raca” or calling someone a fool. The word “raca” is like an insult against someone’s intelligence, like if we were to say idiot or stupid. And to call someone a fool is an insult against their character and often times accompanied by looking down at another person, like they don’t live as well as we do.
Jesus takes this heart of anger and this mouth that speaks insults towards another, and He is telling these people that yes the letter of the law says, “Do not murder”, but check your hearts and check your actions. You have been taught that you are just not supposed to go this far, but there are so many steps along that road to get there, that are still wrong in God’s eyes and that should be important to us. There were people teaching and telling other people that these other things are fine as long as you don’t do this, as long as you don’t go this far, as long as you don’t actually murder someone, but that missed the heart of the matter.
Obviously, murder is a horrible thing, it’s something unfortunately that I see way too much of through my line of work. But murder typically has its roots in something else and often times that main root is anger and that’s why Jesus is connecting the heart here. And this presents an interesting question for us. Jesus is bringing anger to the conversation and so we have to ask: Is anger in and of itself a sin? Jesus says here that if you are angry with another you are liable to judgement because of it. I want to go to another passage together in Ephesians 4.
Read Ephesians 4:25-32
There’s a lot of people that try to give a pass for anger and even use fancy words like righteous indignation. Which basically just means righteous anger. But just because you slap a fancy coat of word paint on anger, doesn’t just magically make it ok at that point. And oddly enough this passage in Ephesians 4 is often used as the justification for it. Some are like “See! it says Be Angry”, it just tells me not to sin. But what we need to understand is that there is a difference between the emotion of anger versus actually giving into and accepting that anger and acting on it. There are a lot of things that we might experience or see in this life that might cause the emotion of anger to build up inside of us and we can’t necessarily stop that emotional build up, but absolutely have the choice to give into that anger and let it stay or even act on it. If break down the wording of that verse, we could say something to the effect of “as you are getting angry (the emotion), don’t sin, don’t accept it, don’t give in to it, don’t let the anger stay, don’t act in anger. People like to use this verse as a crutch for the problem, yet again miss the heart.
The Ephesians verse is also actually just a quote from Psalm 4 which actually says a little bit more. It says:
Be angry, and do not sin.
Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still
Because when we’re feeling angry and then we go lay down on our bed and think about it, we’re probably going to realize that it’s something dumb to be angry about in the first place, or there is a better way to engage with the situation, rather then to engage with anger. None of this is a pass for anger, it’s saying when the emotion of anger begins to come, get rid of it, it’s never going to lead you to good places. And it’s made all the more clear in verse 31 when it says that ALL ANGER should be put away from us. There are no exceptions in that statement. All literally means all. It’s why James 1 says:
“For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
Our anger can NEVER be in line with God’s righteousness. Psalm 37 tells us that anger and wrath ONLY lead to harm or evil. When we read about the fruits of the Spirit of God, who is inside of us that believe in Jesus, we find these in Galatians 5. We find things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We are called to walk with the Spirit of God through life and if those are the characteristics of what that walk looks like then how in the world would anger ever line up with that? It just doesn’t and that’s the point. People try to justify anger, but you can’t really, and we shouldn’t. Ephesians 4 said, don’t let the sun go down on your wrath or anger OR GIVE PLACE TO THE DEVIL.
When we let anger take hold, when we don’t get rid of it immediately, it gives the devil a place to hang out. He’ll hang out there and leverage that anger, he’ll keep fueling that fire, and that sort of anger can become all sorts of bad things. That’s how some people end up at the point of murder and that’s why Jesus is saying that we need to deal with our hearts, we need to deal with what’s inside, because these things aren’t right before God, but they can also lead to much worse things. Anger can take you to all sorts of places, but none of them will be good, and none of them will align with the righteousness of God. Jesus has dealt with literal murder, He’s started peeling back the layers to reveal the heart behind it all, and then Jesus continues into the next verses and reminds us that we need to deal with issues that may be between us and other people before trying to be all religious with Him.
Read Matthew 5:23-24
God is more interested in us actually doing right by Him and towards other people than He is with us performing some sorts of religious duties. I think maybe we can get into the mindset of “oh, I do all these things for the Lord” so He’s not going to be concerned with these people issues over here that I haven’t dealt with. But, no, Jesus is like the offering is great, the Lord will accept these things, but let’s deal with the issues first, so we can be in the right place as we seek to do the right things. Over and over again, it’s about the heart before the actions, the actions don’t mean much if they come from a messed-up heart. And sometimes it can be difficult or even impossible on our end to fix issues with other people, but we have to try, and we have to try in love. Romans 12 tells us: “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.” It’s saying do our part, it’s saying take that step and try to be at peace with others. Sometimes another person won’t want peace, but don’t let that be because we never tried for it in love. So, the core point here is to get our hearts right, so that we can worship the Lord from a heart that is in the right place.
And in verses 25 and 26, Jesus just says, deal with these things quickly, and relays that our problems can have consequences and I’m sure we have all experienced that a time or two at least. At the very least. But then, moving into verse 27, Jesus is still teaching the exact same lesson, He’s still teaching the heart behind the law, but He brings a new subject to the conversation.
Read Matthew 5:27-28
Again, you were told by people before, the letter of the Law, You shall not commit adultery. And again Jesus, in His authority, goes to the heart behind things and says that looking at another woman. or lusting after another person, has already polluted your heart, and your heart already has adultery in it, even if the action hasn’t been taken.
And mind you, Jesus isn’t saying that the thought of anger is the exact same thing as murder and that the thought of lust is the exact same thing as actually physically engaging in adultery. But what He is saying here is that there is more to the message that people have been missing, that it’s not ok to have our heart polluted with these things even if we haven’t acted on them.
We live in a world where so much of it is hyper sexualized, and that’s not anything new. I think sometimes that we think that we are unique in how bad sin is in our current times, but the reality is that it’s always been bad. But maybe, especially in this area, maybe it’s just a lot more accessible in this day and age. There’s so much junk across all forms of media, and social media, and of course still the temptations that may be there with other people around us. And Jesus dealing with our hearts is telling us that we can’t get caught up in this stuff. That even if we never act on something and so are never actually caught in adultery, that our heart can still be full of it.
Now I don’t think we had to deal with the fact earlier that murder is wrong, I think we did need to deal with the fact that anger is sin, because it’s often mislabeled or ignored, but then you have lust and adultery, and these ones might be getting into the area these days where maybe some people would be like, well they are “morally questionable” things, but they’re pretty well accepted in culture. Like I said with just seeing how hyper sexualized our culture is, it’s obvious that as a culture that we aren’t really shying away and distancing ourselves from these things. Maybe they aren’t really considered all that serious in this day and age, but then you see that Jesus goes into extreme response mode in verses 29 and 30 and maybe we should rethink that.
Read Matthew 5:29-30
And now Jesus’ words here are a figure of speech. He is speaking with extreme language because dealing with the sin in our heart sometimes requires an extreme response. Jesus this whole time has been taking the basic rule following mentality of before and shifting the focus to questioning the health of our hearts before God. It wouldn’t make any sense to just take this outward extreme approach of mutilating our own body, because that still wouldn’t stop our ability to sin in our hearts. Jesus is stressing the point that our response to these things shouldn’t be half-hearted or small gestures. He’s saying that these things are serious and demand serious action. So, let’s not actually gouge out our eye or cut off our hand, but maybe we can see some things in our life, that maybe we like, but we know that they aren’t good for us, we know that engaging with these things will lead us to sin and maybe before our thought process was, “it was only in my mind”, and I didn’t actually act on anything.
But know today that our heart and our mind matter before the Lord. So maybe the best question for today is: how far are you willing to go and how much would you be willing to give up to keep our hearts in the right place before the Lord? Maybe there’s people that we hang around with, that lead us to bad places, the Bible says that bad company corrupts good morals. Maybe we need to cut ties or limit time with certain people. Maybe in this day and age something like politics for example or whatever else causes us to be angry at other people, and hang onto that anger, and so maybe we need to lay that down and focus on our Kingdom citizenship. Maybe some device like our phone or computer or something is giving us too easy of access to sin, maybe we just need to get rid of it or go back to the old trusty flip phone. Maybe, like King David in the bible, we simply aren’t doing what we need to be doing for the Lord, and that laziness is just giving us way too much time and opportunity to sin like He did. So maybe we need to get busy following Jesus.
The reality is that maybe a lot of things need to change, but unfortunately a lot of times we get stuck with just some wish for things to get better someday, rather than actually doing something about it. But doing something about it will probably require some sacrifice, we might have to change things, we might have to give some things up, but Jesus here is obviously concerned about the condition of our hearts, and we really must be to. Whatever it takes. Go with me to 1 Peter 1.
Read 1 Peter 1:13-16
There is going to be a constant battle against sin. Maybe we look good on the outside right now, but inside there are problems. We need to deal with these things. Maybe we’re doing ok right now, but the point of this 1 Peter passage is: don’t let your guard down! When it says gird up the loins of your mind, it basically means prepare for battle. He’s talking about the battle to live right in this life as we fight against sin. Peter says prepare your minds and be ready for this battle, he says rest your hope on Jesus, and don’t go back to the sin that we went for before we knew Jesus, but now realize that a holy and awesome God has called us as His people to be Holy, because He is holy. And that holiness isn’t just the outward show of the Pharisees, it’s our heart, and our mind, and our actions. And none of it is hidden from Him. And so, should we be like, oh no God is just waiting for me to mess up? Not at all. But hopefully our relationship with Him and our understanding of Him and our love for Him would compel us to do everything that we can, to actually live holy before Him.
These people from our passage in Matthew that were sitting there listening to Jesus that day, had grown up through generations of people just arguing over the wording of, and the technicalities of the Law, and following it to the letter, without the heart. Jesus was taking the time to personally teach them that there’s so much more to it than that. Let’s make sure that we take that same lesson with us today, because He is absolutely worthy of us making the sacrifices or changes necessary to live right before Him, to have our hearts right before Him, so that He, not us, might be glorified by the way that we live.