The Filling of the Law #1: Do Not Murder

Jesus uses 6 portions of the Old Testament Law to demonstrate the depth of the Law & the complete inadequacy of the superficial, legalistic way we approach it

Jesus uses 6 portions of the Old Testament Law to demonstrate what it means for Him to fulfill the Law, and what it means for us

Legally, they were reconciled the moment the father received the son. But is that a family?

Jesus uses 6 portions of the Old Testament Law to demonstrate what it means for Him to fulfill the Law, and what it means for us

This ‘mini-series’ is called The Filling of the Law, because we’re going to see that for the rest of , Jesus is showing us

Even though we call it “law,” the heart of the Old Testament is God’s plan to restore and redeem. In and 2, Adam and Eve dwell in the Garden with God, they walk and talk with God, they know nothing but goodness. There’s no sin, no death, no brokenness, no guilt and no shame. There’s a Hebrew word for this kind of wholeness - that word is Shalom. Peace.

When they sin in , relationships are broken. Instead of talking with God, they hide from Him. They try to cover up with leaves in shame. All the sorrows that extend from through arise from broken relationship. Alienation. A broken relationship with God, who is the source of life, is death.

Last week, we said that the Torah, what we call the Law, is the story and standard of God’s covenant with Israel. The heart of the Covenant, the heart of the Law, is reconciled relationships. Shalom. Peace with God and peace with man.

When God gives Israel their Law - the Torah - it included commands like the ones we are going to see in . But even in the Law, relationship to God and others are at the heart.

But if our greatest problem is alienation from God, then we ought to see that when we go to the Law. When the Law says, “Do not murder,” will we have fulfilled that command if we approach it without any relationship to relationships? Jesus says no.

With all the brokenness around us and in us, our inclination is to get Legalistic. Atomistic. Instead of looking for wholeness, we think in terms of checklists and technicalities.

The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day had built a system they thought they could keep. By building up extra teachings and laws around God’s Law, they thought they could protect themselves from breaking it.

But I remember visiting Washington

Pharisees - system for interpreting & teaching the Law.

But the result missed the point completely. When you divorce God’s Law from God Himself, you just end up with more brokenness.

EGG DROP - I missed the point and made a mess

But apart from divine help, we always turn it back into formality, legalism, casuistry.

The Pharisees did the same thing with the rest of the Law.

The sixth commandment reads in , “You shall not murder.”

If there’s one commandment most people think they’re surely doing fine with, it’s this one. And that’s why he starts with it.

Last week, I said that the scribes and Pharisees were the best that mere human effort had to offer when it came to living out the righteousness of God, and Jesus says that our righteousness must surpass theirs. Here, in verses 21-48, he’s going to show us what he means. Checklists of laws I keep can never get us to God.

Each of the six paragraphs in has a similar 3-part structure, starting with Jesus saying “You have heard that it was said to those of old,” or a variation of it. That’s where Jesus points to the Law, the Torah, and how it’s been mistaught and misunderstood. Then he gives a striking contrast: He says, “But I say to you” and speaking with all His authority as the divine Son of God He fills up the Law. He diagnoses our inner legalist and pins him to the wall, and He not only gets to the heart of what the Law was all about to begin with; He goes beyond it.

The Law was given with sin as the starting place. When God gave Moses the Torah, every single person at Mt. Sinai was a child of Adam and Eve, born into sin.

But Jesus starts somewhere else. He starts with “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” He starts with a different kind of people. Kingdom People. People who have been promised the satisfying, overflowing, world-transforming, presence of God.

The Kingdom starts with reconciliation to God and overflows to reconciliation with others. The dominating reality for you, if you are a Christian, is not the sinful nature that’s still at war within you, but the truth of

But when Jesus says, “But I say to you...” he is talking to people who have been set free from bondage to sin and death. Murder isn’t just a reality all around us; it’s an unthinkable idea for Kingdom People. Because the Kingdom starts with reconciliation to God and overflows to reconciliation with others. The dominating reality for you, if you are a Christian, is not the sinful nature that’s still at war within you, but the truth of

Romans 5:1 ESV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s not the absence of murder, but the presence of Shalom, that marks and demonstrates the Kingdom.

So here in , Jesus fills the Law by showing us

Relational wholeness - peace w/ God leads to peace w/ others (, )

Q. What is at the heart of God’s command against murder?

<<READ 21-26>>

I. The Deceitfulness of External Righteousness (5:21)

<<READ 21>>

Explain: Most people didn’t have access to the Scriptures on a day-to-day basis. They learned God’s Law by hearing it.

The formula Jesus

But over the centuries, two things happened that increased the distance between what the Jews learned and what the Law said. The first is that most Jews in the first century spoke Aramaic or Greek, and not many spoke Hebrew.

The second is that the rabbis believed that the collections of teachings about the Torah by all the rabbis before them was the starting point for teaching the Torah. They taught and believed that when Moses was on Mt Sinai, God gave him the written Law, and then told him the oral Torah, unwritten explanations of the Law, and then that oral Torah was passed down from teacher to teacher, until they started writing it down in what today is called the Mishnah. The rabbis then argued and commented on how to interpret the Mishnah, and wrote it down, and it’s now known as the Gemara. Put the Mishnah and Gemara together and you have the Talmud.

To this very day, Orthodox and Conservative Jews believe the Talmud is the authoritative starting point for understanding the Old Testament Law.

So when Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old,” we can paraphrase this way:

You don’t have the Scriptures in your homes, but when you go to the synagogue, your teachers tell you that God told Moses, “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will have to face judgment.”

They tell you the Law says “You shall not murder; and whoever murders will have to face judgment.”

That looks pretty similar to what the Old Testament says. In fact, he starts with a direct quotation of - “You shall not murder.” But the rest of the quote is a watered-down summary. Notice what’s missing:

There’s no mention of God. The murdered person isn’t mentioned, either. Somehow, we’ve turned murder into a victimless crime here.

It’s telling for my own heart that when I came to this text, it didn’t jump out at me. The legalist in me read “Do not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment,” and said, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

But notice something else: The judgment Jesus mentions here is referring to a local court. “You have heard that it was said that whoever murders will go before a trial.”

That trial may judge the murderer to be guilty, or it may judge him not guilty. And so he may go home at the end of the day with no penalty at all. And if he is found guilty, the penalty may or may not fit the crime.

This kind of teaching led people to the conclusion that if they had not been sentenced in a court, then they were right with God. If your whole understanding of "Do not murder” is “I’m not in jail or dead, so I must be on the right side with God,” then you start to think that everyone in prison deserved it, everyone who gets the death penalty deserves it, material wealth means you’re righteous, and poverty means you’re a sinner.

The tradition divorced the command from the Covenant. From the story and standard that God had given. Right before the 10 Commandments, in the Lord says, “I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself… You will be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” And in , the introduction to the Ten Commandments, is this:

Exodus 20:1–2 ESV

1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Exodus 20:1–3 ESV

1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

exod 20:1-3

Relationship is at the heart of the Law. But there’s more to it than that.

Illust: Cain & Abel - In , the first murder in history, Cain murders his brother, and God’s response is this:

Genesis 4:10 ESV

10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.

gen 4.10

Murder is more than a criminal act worthy of a local judge’s attention. It cries out to God to make it right. It destroys what was meant to be whole. And in , after the flood, the Lord says to Noah,

Genesis 9:6 ESV

6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Genesis 9:5–6 ESV

5 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Every human bears God’s very image in the world. Every murder is a desecration of God’s image, an act of hatred for God and the murdered victim. But the tradition sanitized it, divorced it from relationship, divorced it from Shalom, replacing it with an external form of righteousness.

Imagine a marriage, where you said your vows, went home, and said, “As long as I do what the vows say, my spouse will be totally fulfilled. So, I said

It took

It’s a deceptive kind of righteousness. It’s the source of self-righteousness. I check off laws and say, “I haven’t broken these, I’m good.” Consider a marriage: Are you an ideal husband if you haven’t broken your vows? Does the entirety of a marriage consist in keeping rules?

The deceitfulness of external

The tradition was deceitful because it led people to believe that they had fulfilled the Law.

And the man says to Jesus, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.”

The man was deceived by legalism. According to Mark’s account, Jesus looks at the man, and loves him, and then Matthew’s Gospel picks up and says “If you would be perfect” - and that’s a word that means complete, whole - he says “go, sell everything and give to the poor, and you’ll have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.”

The man goes away sorrowful, because he had great possessions. When he says, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” he thought he must be close. He says that from childhood, he’s stayed away from stealing, and dishonoring his parents, and adultery. He hasn’t slandered anyone in court. If this is what God is all about, then all you have to do is get a cabin in the woods and never see anybody else, go be a hermit in the desert or something.

Jesus’s response brings us back to the heart of the matter. First, notice that Mark says he loved the man. His words begin with love - with God’s relationship-restoring, death-destroying love. Second, his words to the man are imminently relational and connected to the kind of Shalom that God intended from the beginning - He has given you great wealth for a reason - give it all away. And then you’ll have treasure in heaven. If you had nothing at all, but you treasured the Father, you’d be richer than Bezos or Buffett. And then, he says, come follow me - the true fulfillment of the Law.

Illustrate

But Jesus shows us in verse 22 the depth of the command:

Surely the Law was about more than that? Let’s look closely at Jesus’s response to find out.

When you’re trying to get coverage for a medical procedure, and the insurance company keeps turning you down for ridiculous reasons, they tell you to look at this obscure paragraph on some website you never would have found. And maybe it even turns out they have a solid legal case for turning you down. In your heart you say, “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. This is a legitimate need, and the purpose of my insurance is to have this kind of need covered.” But they say, “I’m so sorry, but this word in this seventy-page document means we don’t have to pay. We’ve fulfilled our obligation”

When someone gets away with a crime on a technicality, your internal sense of justice and right bursts into outrage. Surely nutritional supplements shouldn’t be allowed to lie to our faces just because they’re not called “drugs” or “medicines.” Have you ever noticed that nutritional supplements never claim their product does something specific, but then they have recordings of actual customers claiming the supplement boosted their testosterone or memory or got rid of their back pain or cancer? If the company says it, then the FDA says “You can’t claim that without proof.” But if a customer says it, even if it’s placebo effect, or a fluke coincidence, they can play the most outrageous claims? They’re technically following the law that requires them not to deceive us with unproven claims, but really they’re deceiving us with unproven claims. They’ve emptied the law and then claimed to keep it.

We can see the deceitfulness of the external righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. Instead of resolving the hostility, alienation, and rebellion of sin, all it does is tell you what not to do, and what happens if you do.

Surely the Law was about more than that? Let’s look closely at Jesus’s response to find out.

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II. The Depth of God’s Command (5:22)

<<READ>>

EXPLAIN: The instinct is to soften what Jesus says. To say that he’s only talking about selfish anger. We want to exempt ourselves when it comes to righteous anger, right? Jesus was angry at the money-changers in the temple, and He was without sin.

There’s some truth there, but it gets us off on completely the wrong foot. The instinct that starts making exceptions is the exact same instinct that got the Pharisees where they were. If you want to justify yourself before God on the basis of law-keeping, things are much, much more extreme than you or I ever thought.

But when Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, He really means it. Everywhere He walks in the Gospels, sins are forgiven, people are called out of darkness into the light of eternal life, shame and guilt are replaced by the faces of children and men and women who know they are accepted and loved by God, and in His death and resurrection, the forces of darkness that hold sway over us are put to open shame, disarmed, and defeated.

Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. He brings a Kingdom where the starting point is peace with God. Hostility, anger, broken relationships, slander, rage, these are characteristics of the old age.

Romans 5:1 ESV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul says in ,

Peace with God - reconciliation with God - Shalom, wholeness - this is at the heart of God’s plan of salvation. Hostility, anger, broken relationships, slander, rage, these are characteristics of the old age. The age where sin reigned and Law condemned.

But peace with God through Jesus Christ is where Kingdom People start. And like the waters of life that satisfy our hunger & thirst for righteousness and overflow to the world around us, like Jesus the light of the world, who lit us up to shine in the dark world, the peace of God that you have in Jesus Christ is your new starting point for the world.

Romans 5:6–8 ESV

Romans 5:6–10 ESV

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

In the book of Revelation, chapter 20-22, we see the culmination of history, the Millennial Kingdom of Christ, the final defeat and destruction of Satan, the final judgment, and in chapter 21, God reveals to us a vision of the Kingdom as it will be for all eternity. In the New Jerusalem, a loud voice declares, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And from the throne, God says, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

And for the uncountable ages of eternity, He will be there with us. Perfect peace - perfect shalom.

Isaiah 57:18–19 ESV

18 I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, 19 creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.

isa 57:

Now, you and I do not live in the New Jerusalem yet. But already, here and now, we have the peace of God that comes from knowing the King. The Kingdom of God has arrived in the person and work of Jesus, and He is at work in you.

Anger is totally at odds with the Kingdom we belong to. This is why later, in , Jesus tells us not to retaliate, but to love our enemies and pray for them. It’s why and tell us to put away anger and wrath.

So instead of starting by trying to find loopholes or exceptions to Jesus’s words, we start with the Kingdom.

Jesus introduces verse 22 with the phrase, “But I say to you.” In contrast to any man-made tradition about God’s Word (like “you have heard that it was said to those of old), Jesus speaks on His own authority as the Word-Made-Flesh. Any claims about the Law that contradict what Jesus says should be cast aside. On the mount of Transfiguration, the voice of the Father booms down from heaven and says “This is my beloved Son. With him I am well-pleased. Listen to Him.”

And so, we should. Here in verse 22 He fills up the commandment “Do not murder” in three steps, showing just how deep the original commandment goes and calling us to a new, Kingdom-focused starting point for our relationships to God and one another.

Here in verse 22 Jesus fills up the commandment “Do not murder” in three steps, showing just how deep the original commandment goes.

First, he tells us that anger with a brother is enough to incur judgment. You’ve heard that everyone who murders will face a trial? Your anger is enough to get you there.

Because anger with your brother is the exact opposite of the peace-making to which you have been called.

The word angry here is

- Prodigal Son’s older brother

And anger is the root from which insults, and slander, and even murder springs, and we see this in the next words. Whoever insults his brother will end up before the council - the highest court of the land.

(it means “empty-head.” To say “you’re brainless” invites the highest human condemnation.

And in the final step of Jesus’ filling up the commandment, He says to say, “You fool!” is enough to get you eternal condemnation in hell.

I wonder if you notice something else that happens in verse 22. We start with a brother - whoever is angry with his brother, whoever insults his brother. But in the last one, he says “whoever says ‘You fool’”! Anger turns a brother into an enemy, or even worse - a nothing.

Remember how the tradition emptied the Law? It turned murder into a victimless secular crime. No reference to God at all. Jesus fills the Law back up. Even a careless insult to a stranger breaks the commandment.

I wonder if I’m the only one who struggles with this one when I’m by myself in the car. When another driver makes a mistake, or does something dangerous, and my immediate response is to say, “Idiot.” They’re not there. They don’t hear me. Like the person in verse 22, I’ve said “you fool!” to the air.

TV and the internet have a mighty way of drawing this out of us. One of my favorite webcomics has a stick-figure sitting at a computer, typing away, and offscreen someone says, “What are you doing?” And he says, “I just thought of a bad opinion someone could have, and now I’m searching to see if anyone does so I can be mad at them.” The offscreen voice says, “Sounds like you have a healthy relationship with the internet.” And he says, “Hey, at least I’m not this guy I just found!”

How often do we read an article, or listen to a radio show or podcast, or watch reality TV, or scan social media, looking for an opportunity to be offended or outraged?

And how many times do we look at

Anger reduces your brother to a stranger. It reduces strangers to nobodies. It alienates. It opposes God’s Kingdom.

rom 5.6-8

rom 5:6-

Later, when Paul starts drawing out the implications of our peace with God, he starts by saying

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

rom 12.1-2

And one of the chief ways this

And that makes anger dangerous. It doesn’t help to start with exceptions for righteous anger. God is angry at sin because He perfectly loves what is good. He will not tolerate the destruction of what is good. But he is patient beyond measure. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to eternal life. He is good to all that He has made. He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good.

Can we say with certainty that what we call “righteous anger” in ourselves springs from that same place? I notice that I am much more likely to get righteously angry about offenses against me than I am about offenses against God. The best, most righteous anger I’ve ever felt was much less pure and holy than I’d like to consider.

But instead of providing exceptions to His own Word, Jesus applies it for us in two different situations that illustrate the danger of anger in verses 23-26.

APPLY:

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III. The Danger of Anger (5:23-26)

In the first application, in verses 23-24, Jesus says you’ve made the 80 mile trip from Galilee to Jerusalem for one of the great feast days, and you’ve waited in line at the Temple, bringing your sacrifice with you, and you’ve finally made it to the altar. You’ve stepped forward to the priest. You’ve tied up your offering, and pulled out the knife, and you are in the act of offering your sacrifice - and then you remember that your brother has something against you, he says

STOP. There are four imperatives here in verse 24 that make up the main point of the verse. He says LEAVE it there, GO back, BE RECONCILED FIRST, and then OFFER your gift. Don’t wait. Don’t say to yourself, “I’ve come all this way, I’ll make sure to do it first thing when I get home.” Don’t say, “If I leave this offering here, what if it’s gone when I return?” Don’t say, “I’ve repented to God already, and that’s more important than reconciling with my brother.”

To come before God in worship while you know you’ve wronged a brother in anger is an abomination to God. You are the salt of the earth. Bringing the flavor of God’s favor to a perishing world. Worship without a commitment to reconciliation is like salt without saltiness. The danger of anger is that we will insult a brother, or say, “You fool,” and then come to worship the Lord and act like our hearts are pure, our lips are clean. The Kingdom starts with peace. Peace with God, and peace with our brothers and sisters.

Matthew 22:37–40 ESV

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Leviticus 19:1–3 ESV

1 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. 3 Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God.

Is there someone you know has something against you? Maybe someone in this room. Maybe your own family. Did you say a word in anger?

The world trains us that words are weapons that we can use & throw away. Disposable swords. The world trains us, some of our parents have taught us, that we can hurt someone with our words, and then just wait a while and act like it never happened. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve had spouses come in and tell me the horrible things their spouses have said to them, and never, ever apologized. Or children.

In the first case, an argument breaks out, and it turns into a wildfire. says

James 3:6 ESV

6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

Anger flares up, your mouth opens, and you say things no one should ever say. And then everyone turns around, doors are slammed, one of you goes and works on the car or does yard work or starts cooking. You chop carrots like they’re the enemy. Or one goes and sulks, and huddles in a corner, and cries. One escapes into TV, or video games, or drunkenness.

And that’s it. The house is a quiet, miserable place for a while, and then you come to church and everybody sort of resets.

Friends, if that sounds familiar, may I make a suggestion: Before you come here next Sunday, before you even go to lunch today, you need to sit down together and say “This is the exact opposite of the Kingdom of Heaven. I can’t take away the words I’ve said. But my words are like a destructive fire. Instead of loving you like Jesus, instead of loving you the way I want to, I’ve pierced you with words. And then we’ve just moved on. Today, right this moment, with God’s help I am STOPPING. I have no excuse, and no hope but Jesus. Instead of war, I’m committing to the peace of God that passes all understanding. I am so sorry for acting like you should just get over it when I’ve hurt you. Please forgive me.”

For some of you, it has never occurred to you until this morning that the fight you had yesterday, and then just ignored, is still hurting you and your relationships. You’re so used to the fight, flee, forget method that you don’t even realize you’re doing Satan’s work for him. I’m not talking about theories here. The legacies of those kinds of families are parents who never see their grandkids, divorces, brothers who hate one another.

And there are ramifications for the whole church. If your brother or sister in the Faith has something against you, and you ignore it, and then join us for worship on Sunday, you’re sowing the seeds of division, injury, church splits, or worse.

And there are ramifications for the whole church. We are one family in Christ. If your brother or sister in the Faith has something against you, and you ignore it, and then join us for worship on Sunday, you’re sowing the seeds of division, injury, church splits, or worse.

And there are ramifications for the whole church. Jesus says that peacemakers will be called sons of God. We are one family in Christ. If your brother or sister in the Faith has something against you, and you ignore it, and then join us for worship on Sunday, you’re sowing the seeds of division, injury, church splits, or worse.

When Jesus spoke these words, He didn’t just speak them for first-century Galilean Jews. He knew that you and I would be here this morning. He knew the ways that we would let anger get between us. He knew we would stab one another with our words on Saturday, and then come in here on Sunday without reconciling. And He says that’s incomprehensibly opposite to the Kingdom of Heaven. If you remember today that your brother or sister in Christ has something against you, don’t wait for tomorrow. Jesus says stop what you’re doing and go be reconciled and then come back. He would rather half or all of us stood up and walked out right now and pursued peace with our brothers & sisters than sing one more song to Him while we harbor anger and the roots of murder.

There’s an urgency in his words that we can’t miss.

In verses 25-26, with Jesus’s second application of the heart of the command “Do not murder,” that urgency gets even more serious.

Matthew 5:25–26 ESV

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.

Look how anger has made things even worse here. Anger turns brothers into strangers, and strangers into accusers.

Jesus says don’t wait. Here is the last chance. The last moment on the very road to the courthouse. Notice how every stage in the process takes you further and further from personal relationships. Your accuser could be a brother if you act quickly. But once you get to court, you’re in the hands of a judge - someone who doesn’t know you. Maybe you can plead your case before him, maybe you can’t. But if he finds you guilty, he’ll hand you over to the guard. And the guard will do what the judge tells him. Even if he’s sympathetic, he has no power to change the result. And the walls of the prison won’t even be sympathetic. They’re completely impersonal.

The hollowed out legalism of the tradition turned murder impersonal - a sterilized, victimless crime. That kind of thinking about God, and His world, and His Law, and His creatures gives us angry men who stew in their anger until brothers are accusers and hollowed-out people rot in hollowed-out prisons.

Jesus says not to wait. Reconcile quickly. Run towards peace.

, and Jesus says that way leads to angry men rotting in impersonal prisons.

Proverbs 18:6 ESV

6 A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating.

Psalm 32:6 ESV

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him.

Proverbs 25:8 ESV

8 do not hastily bring into court, for what will you do in the end, when your neighbor puts you to shame?

The Kingdom of God is

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IV. The Alternative: Love borne from new hearts

I want to wrap this up with a story that you might be familiar with.

<<PRODIGAL SON OLDER BROTHER>> MENTION Luke 15

The Father in the story represents God, and the older son represents the Pharisees and scribes who hated the idea that God would pursue lost, broken, sinful people like prostitutes and drunks and Gentiles. And at the end of the story, the Father is still inviting the son to come inside. In many of Jesus’s parables, the house represents the Kingdom of God or salvation. And here we have a man who has been around the Father his whole life, he knows the feast that awaits him inside. But anger threatens to keep him outside. The parable ends on a cliffhanger. Will the son go in and celebrate with his Father, or will he stay outside, separated from his father and his brother? Separated from the joy of the Kingdom?

Anger is much more dangerous than we realize. Jesus ends today’s text with the warning that anger might land you in prison. He says “Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.” But there’s a much more serious danger earlier in verse 22. Anger is enough to keep you out of the kingdom entirely. Why would that be? Why is anger such a serious problem?

For one thing, like the Prodigal Son’s older brother, it leaves us standing outside fuming by our own tragic decision. And if you asked the older brother, he would have told you that his anger was surely righteous. We should beware nursing anger and calling it holiness.

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So many people have walked away from Jesus in anger. Either they’re angry at Christians, or the Church, or someone who hurt them, and maybe you’re on the edge. Ready to shake the dust off your feet. Don’t let anger - even well-deserved anger - keep you out of the Kingdom. There is healing for every wound in Jesus Christ.

For another thing, anger is serious because it violates the very heart of God’s Law and Christ’s Kingdom.

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Blessed are the peacemakers

Conclusion

Gospel? Be reconciled?

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