Anger: The Volcano of the Heart

Introduction

The most overlooked of the Ten Commandments

Quick Review: The Righteous Expectation of God’s Word in the Inner Man

You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not murder; and whover murders will be liable to judgement. But I say to you...”

When we were last in Matthew we looked at what it meant for Jesus to say, I have not come to abolish but to fulfill (the law). In saying this, Jesus was qualifying his future statements, since it would sound to his hearers that Jesus is preaching a way forward to God by abandoning God’s Word. When Jesus tells the Jews that their righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, He isn’t telling them that they need to be stricter in their outward conduct, for surely they would not succeed, but rather they are to obey the law on a deeper level than the Pharisees. When Jesus says, you have heard it was said…but I say… he isn’t contradicting the original command or saying that it wasn’t good enough. Instead, he is showing these Jews that the over-literal interpretation of the law is not a sufficient understanding of God’s intention and the implications of these commandments.

For the example we have here today, we see Jesus expose this over-literal interpretation of the sixth commandment, you shall not kill. What do I mean by over-literal? I mean that when a pharisee read the command, you shall not kill, they thought that as long as they had not directly caused the unlawful killing of another human being they were guiltless of breaking this commandment. Their error is putting more weight on what is or is not directly said rather than on the heart of God reflected in the commandment itself. You Shall Not Murder never meant merely that you should not activley contribute to someone’s death. It was always based on the foundational command to love thy neighbour. Since it is possible to not murder someone and still not love them, we know that to truly obey this commandment, it must be obeyed from a heart of love. Not murdering isn’t good enough, and that is what Jesus points out as the first example of the righteous conduct of the Blessed Ones.

Three Manifestations of a Murderous Heart

Anger: The volcano begins to boil

“Rakka”: The Smoke

“You Fool!” The volcano erupts

This final state of bloodless murder goes beyond abusive words to erupt into full contempt of the object of their anger. While the meaning of the words “rakka” and “Moron” here are similar, the context is slightly different. Rakka is an abusive phrase that you would throw at someone, but this here is a personal moral sentence. It goes beyond simple abuse and descends into love-rending hatred. It is said with conviction that the person is a God-forsaking moron. The word is used in Romans 11:22 where Paul labels the hearts of godless gentiles as “foolish”.

So obviously there is a time to make such a judgement in a cool manner. We can say that the world is foolish, and those who chase after sin are fools as well. We can admit that we’ve all done foolish things, and even at times confront each other about foolishness. But it is not in our individual juristiction to pronounce a brother or sister in Christ a fool; this is something only the church can do by lawfully excluding a sinner from the fellowship and the Lord’s Table. It is wrong to escew the image of God that we bear with outbursts of rage, and it is wrong for us to let unaddressed bitter or angry passions fester in our hearts. All of these show the heart of a murderer.

Relavence and Consequence

How painfully relavent is this sin to each of us, for by this standard we all stand before the throne of God as murderers at heart. You ask someone if they are a relatively good person, and they might respond with, well I’ve never killed anyone. Jesus takes the sixth commandment, the most ignored of all the commandments, and makes it relavent to everyone.

In the Old Covenant, if someone killed someone they were liable to the judgement. That is, they would go to court. Now it may be that the court found you innocent, perhaps a victim of accidental death. Even then, the carelessness was very limiting for the one who killed. It may be that your anger is justified, but think about this. Could you stand up before a judge and jury, with each angry thought on display to be judged and scrutinized, and argue that it was completely justified? Anger can be righteous, but because of the influence of our sinful passoins it very rarely is. It is important that we can recognize righteous anger, always suspecious of angry feelings and always willing to put those feelings under scritiny before we let our minds wanted in them.

Righteous anger is led by reason and righeous, judicial judgement. Sinful anger is led by sinful passions, which will make our sin of anger seem small compared to their sins against me.

Righteous anger gives the benefit of the doubt, but sinful anger is often triggered by an emotional state and biased towards first impressions.

Righteous anger is slow to manifest and quickly forgotten when reconciliation is made. Sinful anger is quick to flare up, quickly reawakened, and overstays its welcome in our hearts.

Preventitive Measures

Reconciliation before Worship

Dont Let it Get to the Courtroom

Conclusion