Hear now, the word of the Lord from Matthew 5:21-26.

21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 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. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are 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. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
Matthew 5:21-26, ESV

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. As Jim mentioned this morning, in our worship service, when we look around the world, we see all kinds of reasons to fear. If we think about what's going on and all the things around this world, it's so easy to look at this world and see countless examples of utter selfishness in this world.

We see people, on a small scale, who are obsessed with their image, their status, their personal brand. We see other people who are endlessly bickering and arguing about endless subjects. Whatever comes up is a new reason to argue and fight. We see wars, wars that rage among the nations all the way to the wars that split and divide our society, to the wars among the churches and the wars even in our own homes. It's so easy to look at the world and see all of this divisiveness, all of this bitterness, and to just ask what's wrong with this world?

Well, that was a question that isn't new, but one that was posed about 100 years ago, sent out by a letter, What's wrong with the world today? They were having problems still 100 years ago, just as we are having problems today as well. That question was sent out to thinkers and philosophers and theologians to try to wrestle with this question and maybe get some good answers. These letters were all sent out, "What's wrong with the world today?" A Christian man named G.K. Chesterton responded with this way. He said simply, "Dear sir, I am yours. G.K. Chesterton." That was his answer. What's wrong with the world? I am.

You see, we so readily look at the world and see that person's problems and that society's problem and those people's issue. At the same time, we so readily, easily, quickly overlook, we justify, we rationalize, we explain away our own sin. When we think about what's wrong in the world, that's the last answer that we pose, I am. Which is why what Jesus has to say in the Sermon on the Mount is so important. He wants us to know what's wrong with the world. I am. You are.

What's wrong with the world is the sin that rests in our hearts. So we talked a couple of weeks ago about this introduction to the section where Jesus is dealing about dealing with the law. Where he is saying that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law. That's the first of seven treatments, seven sections where Jesus is going to talk about the law. Not only preach the law, but give his authoritative interpretation of the law, where he is going to say that what we think about the law is not what God intends when he told us what the law is.

Jesus, I think very significantly starts with a command that we are very easily able to say, well, probably that doesn't apply to me. The commandment against murder. Jesus says, not so fast. This absolutely does. If you think you're safe, well, I haven't murdered anyone, Jesus wants to say in fact, there's far more to this commandment than you've given consideration to.

Our big idea where Jesus is going in his interpretation and expositional preaching on the Sixth Commandment, you shall not murder, is this Love your neighbor as yourself..

Three sections to our passage today.
1. The Requirement of the Law
2. Reconciliation with a Brother
3. Reconciliation with an Accuser

The Requirement of the Law

So let's start with the requirement of the law. What does this law require from us in verses 21 through 26? Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said to those of old you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment." Then in verse 22, Jesus says this, "but I say to you." This is the first of what Bible scholars call the six antitheses. So Jesus is going to say, you've heard one thing, but I say to you something different. He's giving the antithesis, a different teaching, a place where Jesus is contradicting and overruling what they had heard in the past about what the law taught.

Now, Jesus is problem is not with what Moses said. Jesus's problem is what they have heard from the teachers of the law who have sought to interpret the requirements of the law. Particularly because the traditional interpretation of the whole Ten Commandments, but especially of this particular commandment, had to do entirely with external requirements. The commandment was limited, and the teaching of the rabbis of the day, was just purely with murder, actually taking someone's life. Jesus is going to tell us that this commandment means so much more.

Now, to get a couple of things to sort of in order to understand where Jesus is going with this, it is correct to interpret this commandment as you shall not murder. The word here for murder did not forbid all killing. A different word, a different concept was in play when it talked about killing for self-defense or killing for accidental manslaughter or killing in just wars or capital punishments. Those are other issues perhaps to deal with on another day. This is the law that forbid taking someone's life out of hatred.

So what Jesus is going to say is that this law didn't necessarily forbid those things. There are sadly right times where those kinds of killings should happen, especially in terms of capital punishment to defend the image of God in cases of murder. What Jesus goes on to say is that this commandment, the sixth commandment, did forbid things that weren't commonly recognized, that they forbid. Particularly this forbade hatred in the heart that didn't flow out into the actual taking of someone's life.

The reason we know this, this is not something that Jesus is teaching brand new. It was simply something that had been lost in the interpretations and the teachings that had arisen since then. We know this because when Jesus reminds us of the two great commandments, you shall love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. He's quoting the second commandment, Leviticus 19:18, to love your neighbor as yourself. The requirement for love there obviously contradicts any inclusion of hatred in our hearts. If you hate someone, you are not loving them as yourself.

So the commandment did require us to love our neighbor as ourselves, but that's something that's been lost. This commandment has been boiled down to, reduced to something that only deals with external murder. So what Jesus does in verse 22, when he gives his antithesis, his teaching that contradicts the traditional interpretation of the law, is he names three transgressions. Three ways for you to break the sixth commandment that would not have typically thought about as being ways to break the Six Commandment.

So the first thing he says in verse 22 is this, "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment." Now again, this is right away where Jesus starts showing how this commandment steps on our toes in ways that we don't think that it would.

Which of us have not been angry with our brother? But Jesus says whoever is angry with his brother is liable to judgment. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that God's going to write you a heavenly ticket for this? This is a citation. Get this cleaned up. Come back when everything is in order. Well, look at what Jesus said in the previous verse, "Whoever murders will be liable to judgment." He's talking about the judgment for murder. The judgment for murder was the death penalty. Jesus is saying that if you are angry with your brother, you are liable to the punishment of the death penalty. You deserve capital punishment. Right away he's got our attention. Which of us don't apply to that?

Then he goes on and talks about insults. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. The council we're talking about the Sanhedrin. This is the Jewish Supreme Court. Jesus is saying this isn't a light thing for you to insult your brother. It may be common, everyday part of the speech that is surrounding us and maybe the speech that comes out of our own mouths. But Jesus says it's so significant, that it should require a convening of the Jewish Supreme Court to deal with that issue. But he's not done.

He goes on and says, a specific insult, you fool. It's the Aramaic word, Rakha. Whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. Now the word for hell here is the word Gahanna. It referred to an area, it's a very vivid illustration Jesus is giving and referred to an area outside of Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump. It was a garbage dump that was forever on fire. It was a perpetually burning garbage dump where people could bring their garbage. The reason they use this area as a garbage dump was because it had been profaned. In the Old Testament times, Israelites following the examples of the nations surrounding them, doing what God had forbidden them from doing. They brought their children to this place to sacrifice their own children, to murder their children to the demon god Molech. When they did this, that area forever became so profane that they couldn't use it for a good and noble purpose. Instead, it was relegated to becoming a burning trash dump.

Now, you may have heard that some people use that as an argument to say that Jesus is talking about that physical place, but there's no evidence that people were ever brought to that place for judgment. Jesus is referring to that particular place where the fire is never quenched. To give us a picture of what hell is. The hell of fire where the fire never quenches, not just for a certain amount of time, but for all of eternity. Not just the physical fire, but the spiritual fire of the wrath of God. Jesus is saying, if we even insult our brothers, we are deserving of that kind of judgment. He's got her attention. This is a terrifying thing.

What Jesus is doing then is to say that these sins are more significant than we know. Sometimes people look at this verse and say, well, these must be three sins, and they try to identify sort of a progressing severity to the sins and the progressing severity to the corresponding punishments. That's not what Jesus is saying. He is saying what all of these do is that these render us liable to God's condemnation, because in these we are guilty of violating the Sixth Commandment.

Now, he's not saying that all sins are equal in God's sight. We shouldn't look at this and say, well, Jesus says that anger is equal to murder. That the murderer really isn't so bad because it's just as bad as murder. Jesus is not bringing down the severity of murder to the level of anger. He's not lowering the ceiling for how much we think the law should require. Murder is essentially the same as anger. What he's doing is lifting up the floor. He's saying what you thought was sort of a minimal sin, what you thought was just a minor infraction is, in fact, he's raising it up and saying this is a violation of the Sixth Commandment. You're liable to judgment. You are liable to the counsel. You are liable to the hell of fire for all of eternity.

So how do we think this through then? What does this mean if all sins aren't equal, but Jesus says that anger makes you guilty of violating the Sixth Commandment, how do we understand this? Well, the Westminster Larger Catechism has a really helpful section on this. Westminster Larger Catechism questions 150, 151 and 152 are so helpful at clarifying this. I just want to read you a little bit of this. In question 150 we have this statement that, "All transgressions of the law are not equally heinous." So when Jesus is saying this, don't think that he is saying that anger and murder are equally heinous, rather some sins in themselves and by reasons of several aggravations are more heinous in the sight of God than others. Murder is more heinous in the sight of God than others. Jesus makes that clear in everything that He says in the Gospel of Matthew.

What makes certain sins more heinous are these aggravations. So, for example, in Larger Catechism, 151 we read that, "A sin is more heinous if it's not only conceived in the heart. (That's where anger begins, it's conceived in the heart.) But if it breaks forth into words and actions." One of the things that makes outright murder more heinous than anger is because it breaks out and it begins to harm other people in specific ways.

If all sins are not equal, then what is Jesus saying here? Well, I think Westminster Larger Catechism 152 really captures this where it says, "Every sin, even the least, being against the sovereignty, the goodness and the holiness of God and against his righteous law deserve his wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to come and cannot be expiated (it cannot be removed or taken away from us), but by the blood of Christ." Even anger makes you liable to the hell of fire for all eternity. It is such a significant sin that it cannot be removed. Your guilt cannot be removed except by the blood of the precious Son of God.

You know, every once in a while, you hear a horror story on the news or something of someone's legal nightmare. You hear a story of how something seemingly insignificant really spirals to a very significant consequence. So maybe it starts with a parking ticket or a speeding ticket or in one story, maybe someone catches the wrong fish during the wrong season. Or maybe another story, a woman whose dog gets out of her yard one too many times. Something fairly minor, something insignificant. Then from that, they get some kind of a ticket or citation. Then from that, usually there's some kind of fine they didn't pay it on time or the paperwork got lost or they didn't get the notifications they needed. So there's summoned to court. Maybe after that there's a medical instance that comes up where they're not able to go to court and all of a sudden there's a warrant out for their arrest for something minor.

You can see it kind of makes sense how the chain of progression ends these people up in jail. But you look at the whole situation and you say, this is this kind of a situation. It's not that kind of a situation. It's a small situation. Why did this kind of a situation get treated like that kind of a situation that deserves jail time? We think of our own anger this way. I didn't do that kind of stuff. It was this kind of a thing. It's not that big of a deal. I was justified. Let me rationalize how this was okay for me. But Jesus says, understand, there's a direct connection between this and that. Anger is directly connected to murder. Why? Because anger is the route that left to itself grows up and bears fruit that carried to its logical progression is directly to murder. Anger leads to murder. Anger left to itself in full flower is murder. Jesus says these aren't separate things. These are directly connected. The law of God does not only condemn the ultimate fruit, but the law of God also condemns us all the way down to the roots of anger in the depths of our soul.

Jesus is not denying that some sins are more heinous than others. Jesus, rather, is affirming that every sin deserves the eternal wrath and curse of God. It condemns not only the fruit, but the roots down in our hearts. Not just the death penalty in this life, but the unquenchable fires of hell and eternity to come.

Reconciliation with a Brother

If Jesus takes sin so seriously, how then should we live? Jesus begins to explain this, if the Sixth Commandment is really that significant, here's what Jesus does to illustrate how then we should live. This brings us to the second section, the first of Jesus's two illustrations. First, he deals with reconciliation with a brother and verses 23 and 24. Jesus says "So", in other words, therefore. In other words, here's how to apply what I just said Jesus is saying. "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."

The first illustration deals with proactive reconciliation with a brother. So it's like Jesus is saying, look, the sixth commandment certainly condemns murder. Not only that, it also on top of that condemns the anger, the roots of murder down in your heart. Even more than this, the Sixth Command also proactively requires you to live in a certain way where you are seeking reconciliation with your brothers, whom you have offended.

He gives us this illustration of a really inconvenient kind of a way to go about reconciliation. So he talks about leaving your gift at the altar. Don't think about all of you gathered here today and you could just sort of you know, drop whatever, you know, your gift in the offering box and then head off to do something and then come back to worship. It's not that convenient. Remember, the Jews would come to Jerusalem, all of them, all the males had to come to Jerusalem three times a year. They would travel sometimes from long distance away, sometimes with their sacrificial animals, their gifts coming along with them. They would have traveled a long way. You think about all of the male Jewish men in Jerusalem, all at one place. There was a bottleneck because there weren't lots of synagogues, they could go to do this. There was one temple where the sacrifices could be offered.

So as they all come and they stand in these intensely long lines with their animals bleating and doing all this kind of other stuff, and they're waiting and waiting and waiting, waiting for their turn to come to the one sacrificial altar. Imagine you get to the front of the line. If you've been to the DMV, you know what this is like. You get to the front of the line. If you've been an amusement park where you've waited hours and you get to the front of the line and suddenly someone has something against me, Jesus says, even as inconvenient as it is. Go to the back of the line. Get out of the line. Reconcile before you offer that gift as a sacrifice to the Lord.

Now you think about that and you're saying, okay, so does that mean that reconciliation with people is more important than worship? No. Jesus is saying it is not acceptable worship when you are out of accord, when there is something between you and your brother. Now remember, he's still talking about the Six Commandment. It certainly forbids murder. It certainly forbids anger in the roots of our heart. But more than that, it requires us to live in a way where we are proactively seeking to restore and repair any grievances that others may have against us.

Well, Jesus then goes on beyond this first illustration, this proactive reconciliation with a brother, to identify those situations where things get out of control, when the conflict escalates up so that the consequences are spiraling down. It's a time when you're past proactively dealing with something when it's on a low heat, this is something where the temperatures turned up and where everything is boiling over and the situation is out of control.

Reconciliation with an Accuser

So Jesus is giving the same advice, but he's giving it with more urgency in the second illustration, the third point, reconciliation with an accuser. There's urgency here. Verse 25, "Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court lest, your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard, and you'll be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny." John Noland, one commentator on this, said, "In the first illustration it was God's approval at stake. What kind of a sacrifice will God accept? Well, the one that is brought by a worshipper who has clean hands and a pure heart. But here, it's no longer God's approval, it's God's judgment at stake."

The prison here. We're not talking about a worldly prison. We're talking about the prison of the fires of hell. You are liable to the fires of hell. Jesus is saying quickly come to terms with your accuser here or you will never get out. This penny, someone did the math. It's about 1/64 of a workday. It's about seven and a half minutes of an eight hour workday. Until you pay even that much, you will never get out of this. He's talking about the eternal, unquenchable fires of hell.

Why wouldn't someone try to settle this debt? Why wouldn't someone go to the pains of trying to work this out before they end up in this kind of a prison? Well, John Calvin in his commentary, I think, really puts a finger on the issue. The problem is our pride. Why don't we settle with an accuser? We're too proud. We've gone too far. We'll lose too much to admit at this point that we were wrong. Calvin writes this, "For where do all injuries come from but from this? That each person is too demanding for his own rights. That is, each is too much disposed to consider his own convenience to the disadvantage of others. Almost all are so blinded by a wicked love of themselves that even in the worst causes, they flatter themselves that they are in the right."

The Six Commandment forbids murder. It forbids also the roots of murder that go down into the depths of our hearts. The Sixth Commandment also proactively requires us to reconcile with our brothers. But now the Sixth Commandment asks, even perhaps the hardest thing so far. It's that we uproot the pride that is buried so deep in our hearts that wants our own causes above anything else in this world.

You know, there's a special kind of fear in all of our hearts about losing face, even when we know that we are wrong. There's that moment where you realize, oh, I may be in the wrong here. You have to make a choice in that, and it's so hard to do. Should I confess that I was wrong? I'm sorry I was wrong. Or should I just paper over this? Should I just grit my teeth and redouble my efforts and try to go after you by proving that, in fact, you were wrong this whole time?

I used to watch the show, Matlock growing up with Andy Griffith, it's one of those, I don't know, 1980s courtroom dramas. Andy Griffith played Matlock, who was a defense attorney for those who are accused of murder. In almost every episode, his clients were actually innocent, but he had to prove this. He had to show this. So there was the dramatic courtroom scene at the end where he would show it.

In one episode, that always stuck out to me, he discovers at some point that his client is, in fact, guilty. You did it, didn't you? But he says while I'm your defense attorney, I'll do whatever it takes. So he goes into the courtroom and begins to pin this crime on this woman who's been accused and who actually is guilty of it, pins it on her friend. He's making a very compelling case. I mean, this is Andy Griffith we're talking about here, actually. He makes this very compelling case that she, in fact, is guilty. You can see the jury eating it up. The woman who realizes that she stands to lose a lot, but that she doesn't want her friend to suffer, so she stands up and says, stop this, I did it. The defendant acknowledges her own guilt because she knows that as much as it will cost her, she can't do that to her friend. The only cure for the pride and the hatred of murder is when we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Application

How do we summarize this? That's the big idea, love your neighbor as yourself. That's what all of this is requiring. Jesus is here exposing in this passage the heart of murder. It is a prideful love of self above all others around us. A heart that says I will do anything for me. I will protect my convenience. I will defend my rights. Even if you don't physically take a life, you've murdered in your own heart.

So what can possibly uproot this prideful outlook? Again, it's love. Love is the only agent that can dissolve our rock hard hearts. Particularly, it's the love of Jesus. The love of Jesus alone is the only dissolving agent to soften the hardness of our hearts. Understand Jesus is the one teaching here. So sometimes maybe because he's teaching, we're listening to his words and we lose sight of him. But behold, Jesus in this passage. Think about what he is saying. Think about who he is. In this passage we have here the righteous Son of God, the King of Heaven, who is veiled his glory. Who has taken upon himself the place, the form of a lowly servant. Who is come into this world why? So that he will stir up the root of murder in the hearts of those around him. Which will eventually spill out into outright murder. He has come to be murdered. He's come to do this. The very thing he's teaching against will be perpetrated against him.

Why would he do this? Why would he come on this errand? It's because Jesus radically loved his neighbor as himself. I want to unpack that. Think about the way Jesus loves his neighbor as himself. First of all, understand Jesus is the Son of God, the eternal Son of God. God is not a neighbor with human beings. We are not God's neighbors. When we say that God is not only holy, but that he is holy, holy, holy, we are confessing that He is utterly set apart from us. He is utterly separate from us. He doesn't live in our neighborhood. He is so far above us that he is not properly our neighbor. He is our God. Which is why Jesus took upon himself a human nature to move into the neighborhood. He became our neighbor because of his radical love for his neighbor as himself.

Then think about Jesus's place in the illustrations he give. Again, he is the Son of God. In the first illustration about the worshipper bringing the gift and having to leave it to go reconcile with his brother. Where is the Son of God in this passage? He's the object of worship. He is the one being worshipped. The one who is at a certain degree distant from all of this fighting that's going on here. Yet the Son of God came into this world so that He could proactively pursue us, to call us and reconcile us back to himself. He had no part in that dispute yet he came into this world to reconcile less to himself, even at the cost of his own life.

Think about the story of the accuser and the judge. Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead. Yet he came into this world, not because any accuser had anything real against him, but because he came to be accused in our place. This is radical self-love. Jesus, again, he's teaching us about the Sixth Commandment. He's saying, yes, it forbids you from murdering. Yes, it drives deep into the root of hatred in your heart, the root of murder. Yes, it requires you to proactively love your brother and seek to reconcile with him. Yes, it means dethroning that idolatry of your own selfish pride in your heart. But more than that, Jesus is adding the infinitely high as heaven standard of the law. To say this even prompted God, the Son, Almighty God, to come into this world to die for you to be murdered for you who are guilty of murder. Jesus came to be murdered by murderers for murderers. I don't know if I said that right, but you get what I'm saying.

Jesus did all of this for us. He did all of this, not to abolish the law, to fulfill the law. To bring it up to its highest demanding standard. This should melt our hearts to see this love of our Savior for us. We're seeing here that the unrelenting standards of the law, but we are also seeing the Savior and his great love who has come to win us by the gospel. Let go of your pride. Let the love of Christ soften your heart, hard, self-loving heart. Come to terms quickly with him, kiss the Son lest he be angry and you perish in his way. Jesus came once a Savior. He comes again as judge. Until you've paid your last penny, you will never escape the punishment that he comes to bring. So if you reject him now, there will be no escape. There is no sacrifice that remains from your sin outside of Jesus. So what the scriptures call us to is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in order to be saved.

Then as we think about this as the love of God fills our hearts and displaces and uproots that root of bitterness and anger and pride, we have to think, Where have I committed these sins? Where do I need to proactively reconcile with my brother? Where do I need to set aside my pride to reconcile even with my accuser? Where do I need to go? Not merely to step over the very low bar of not murdering someone, but to do all that God is required of me in His law. Not to earn something, I can't do that. It's already too late. I'm guilty. But as a response by faith to the Gospel of Jesus, of loving our neighbor as herself, of loving others, just as God has first loved us.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us grace to love your word, to love your law, to love what you give us in the Law of Christ. Father, we recognize that on Sinai, this law thundered condemnation against us, not just for an outward act, but for even the smallest and slightest inclinations of our heart toward hatred and pride. So we pray that you would forgive us, not for our own sake, but for the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, who was murdered for us, who are guilty of murder. We pray that you would give us grace to love him. That the love of God through Jesus Christ that comes into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit would so fill us with love that it would overflow in seeking to reconcile with those who have something against us and would seek to forgive others, just as God in Christ has forgiven us. We pray all of this, Father, for God's glory and for our good. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.