Anger
Notes
Transcript
Exceeding Righteousness
Exceeding Righteousness
Lets establish, before we forget, what the law does for us...
7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
looking to the one who fulfills all righteousness, what does that look like? How might one fulfill the law?
Remember the summation of the law - Mark 12:29-31 “29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.””
we are now dealing with the interpersonal
if you love God, what will that look like in relationship to those created in His image?
how are we to follow Jesus in this righteouness?
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount Chapter Twenty: The Letter and the Spirit (5:21, 22)
The glorious possibility that is offered us by the gospel of Christ is development as children of God and growing ‘unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ’.
He fulfilled the law that we would be free to know God. He gave us His Spirit that we might abide with Him.
We abide with Him that we might know Him more, serve Him more purely, reflect His glory that others might see Him, become more like His Son, taste all that is good, etc.
MLJ speaking on Lent as a mere religious exercise...
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount Chapter Twenty: The Letter and the Spirit (5:21, 22)
I may stop smoking, I may stop drinking or gambling during these six weeks or at any other period. But if during that time my poverty of spirit is not greater, my sense of weakness is not deepened, my hunger and thirst after God and righteousness is not greatly increased, then I might just as well not have done it at all.
Thou shalt not murder
Thou shalt not murder
“heard” - Israelites lost their ability to read and speak Hebrew as a nation during the deportation to Babylon, they are mostly using Aramaic or Greek in the first century. They rely on their teachers to tell them what the law says.
what did they hear? you murder, you will be judged, ultimate judgment, temporally and possibly eternally
23 But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life,
24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
v.22 But Jesus says...
He establishes His authority over and through the law - exceeding righteousness
God is not tolerant of unclean hearts, He sees unlike we do - 1 Samuel 16:7 “7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”” (seeing Eliab, Jesse’s firstborn)
angry
without cause? you always have a cause, the question is whether it is justified or unjustified
omitting the qualifier, anger in the household of faith is particularly offensive to God, it is a contempt or desire for destruction of some sort, leaving no room for reconciliation
with the qualifier - righteous anger is usually only expressed righteously by God
17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
cursing your brother
raca - worthless, empty headed, unimportant
council - sanhedrin
an attitude of contempt, aside from the NT teaching of reconciliation and seeking others good before our own, is not in keeping step with the ministry of the Messiah and the redemptive purposes and heart of God
reconciliation is so important that it is preemptive to worship - v.23
Be Reconciled to God
Be Reconciled to God
19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
A spirit of repentance and forgiveness will characterize HIs people, He will not tolerate anything else.
32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’
34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.
35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Anger is a short madness. The less we do when we go mad the better for everybody, and the less we go mad the better for ourselves.
John Ploughman’s Pictures, Page 36
Charles Spurgeon
1 A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
An exceeding righteousness is void of unrighteous anger. Reconciliation is a redemptive quality of redeemed people. Christians are not murderous, angry people, because we exist as forgiven people.
how not to be angry with a brother...
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.