An Angry Heart

Well, we have been in isolation and social distancing for over a month now.

Let me ask you: how are the moods in your house? I am not there to see you today, so you don’t have to put on a face and pretend like you are all doing fine.

If you have family there with you, I imagine you have had some moments recently where tempers have flared some, and things have become heated.

Maybe you are alone, or you and your family are doing okay, but you are finding yourself frustrated with the governor or the president or whoever is hoarding all the toilet paper and Lysol.

It would be easy to try to justify ourselves and say, “Well, we are all stressed. It is just normal and natural for us to be a little testy.”

It may be normal, and it may be natural, but that doesn’t make it right.

In fact, if you are here and a follower of Jesus, then we need to remember that our life isn’t to be characterized by the normal and the natural, because we are citizens of a different world.

We are going to see that as we continue our study in the Sermon on the Mount this week.

Go ahead and open your Bible to Matthew 5:21-26 as we get ready to look at his Word today.

In Matthew 5-7, Jesus is outlining how those who follow him as Lord and Leader should live and act.

Last week, we said that Jesus was introducing a new section of his message. He is getting ready to outline for us a key reality of for those in the kingdom, and that is that the righteousness that characterizes those who follow him as king starts in the heart.

As we saw, he has fulfilled all the pictures, all the law, and all the commands of the Old Testament.

However, in fulfilling them, he didn’t do away with them. Instead, he continues to expect us to respond to his grace by living out the moral commands he has given us.

We saw that last week, especially as we looked at verse 20, where he said that kingdom citizens’ righteousness has to be greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees.

Those guys were the main religious leaders of the day who looked like they had it all together.

However, their righteousness was all about the externals to try to earn favor with God or make themselves look good. Their hearts hadn’t been changed.

Having explained that principle to us, Jesus shifts to give practical examples of the difference between the scribes’ external righteousness and the inward righteousness that his followers should hold to.

Jesus doesn’t dismiss the commands God had given; if anything, he raises the standard of the day by pointing past the actions to the heart.

He will tackle several different topics between now and the end of the chapter, but he starts right where many of us are: with the issue of anger.

To do so, he is going to start with one of the clearest commands that almost everyone in the world would agree with. Read verse 21...

This comes from the Ten Commandments, one of the most well-known section of God’s commands. He then gives a general summary of several other sections of the Law that explain how a murderer would be judged.

Pretty much everyone in the world would agree that it is wrong to take a life in an unjust way, and that those who do must be punished and judged.

Here’s where Jesus takes it up a notch, though. Read verse 22...

Woah! That escalated quickly, didn’t it? If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that Jesus says that being angry with your brother or sister is also worthy of judgment! He says both, “…will be subject to judgment.”

That doesn’t mean that anger and murder have equal consequences, but it does push us to realize that both the sin of anger and the sin of murder are rooted in a heart that is wrong.

We are going to see this over and over in this section: the sin we think of as starting with what we do actually starts with our heart.

Let’s go ahead and make the caveat and get it out of the way: Yes, there is a proper way to be angry. At the right time, and for the right reasons and in the right ways, we should be angry.

Jesus got angry and overthrew the money-changers in the temple, and Paul sure seems mad at the false teachers who had turned the church at Galatia away from the truth.

So, yes, when we are face to face with sin that is destroying lives, disrupting worship, and distorting the truth, we should get angry.

That anger should lead us to stand up for those being harmed and fight to defend the cause of Christ.

However, let’s be honest: I seriously doubt that your outburst at the kids this week when they wouldn’t quiet down, or your snipping at your spouse in frustration, or your Facebook rant about this person or that person being an idiot was based off a concern for righteousness and the King who saved you.

Most of our anger and frustration is actually based off the selfishness of our hearts, not off a concern for the righteousness of God.

That kind of anger has no place in the kingdom of God, which is what Jesus is getting at here.

You see, although you and I may not act on our desire to murder, that desire to take someone’s life started with a heart that was angry!

So, then, followers of Jesus must, first of all:

1) Avoid unjust anger.

Although unjust anger is always wrong, it has even greater damaging consequences when it is directed at our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Again, some manuscripts added a phrase in later that said “angry without cause” to this.

Although that probably wasn’t in the original text, it gets to the right interpretation. There is a time and a place to get angry, but most of the time we are angry for other reasons!

We aren’t getting our way, we don’t like what is happening, we are afraid—any number of these motivations cause us to lash out in anger, even towards those who share the same salvation and kingdom citizenship with us.

To make that even more clear, Jesus gives a couple of examples of ways that anger is expressed.

First, he says that we insult our brother or sister. This is the idea of calling someone a feather-brain or empty-headed. Have you ever called someone an idiot because you were frustrated that they weren’t doing what you wanted them to do?

Then, he talks about those who call someone a “fool”, which may be a stronger way insulting someone that unjustly implies that they are acting in a godless or immoral way. This isn’t just accusing them of being an idiot, it is accusing them of being intentionally bad.

In pointing out that these things make us liable to judgment, the courts, and even hellfire, he is actually pointing us away from the physical punishment for sin or anger and into the spiritual.

He says all of these things in a way that makes them parallel, pointing to the reality that those who insult their brother and sister in Christ, who are angry without cause, are demonstrating that they are still in danger of eternal judgment!

Stop and let that sink in for a minute: If you are known as an angry person with a short fuse, your life is marked with the same heart issue that leads someone to murder.

According to Jesus, that anger reflects a heart that is in danger of eternal judgment, that has never received the grace of God and been transformed by Christ’s inward righteousness.

Going back to what we saw in verse 20 last week, do you see how this goes beyond the scribes and the Pharisees? They would, like most of us, boldly have said that they haven’t committed murder.

Yet, in their hearts, they carried unjust anger that left them exposed and guilty. Eventually, by the way, that anger manifested itself in having Jesus put to death!

Are you doing the same? Are you angry and short-fused and thinking that everyone around you is wrong and out to get you? What relationships around you have been disrupted or destroyed because of your unjust anger?

If those statements hit home, you need to take Jesus’ words in the rest of this section to heart.

If we find unjust anger in our hearts towards another, then we need to make sure we...

2) Deal with anger quickly.

Jesus tells us what to do when we realize that we have sinned this way.

He begins by addressing how we make our relationship to the other person right. Start in verses 23-24...

Jesus says that reconciling to the person whom your anger has hurt is a higher priority than even worship at church.

Look at the picture. In those days, you would bring your sacrifice to the altar at the temple.

If you were there, ready to offer your gift, and you realized that your unjust anger had divided a relationship you had with a brother or sister, you should stop what you were doing and begin the process of setting it right.

Here is how one commentator explained it:

The New American Commentary: Matthew 2. Paradigmatic Preaching: The Sermon on the Mount (5:1–7:29)

“Has something against you” probably implies a “just claim” and also suggests that we ought not bring up our grievances with others that they do not yet know about but that we deal with situations in which others remain upset with us.

There may be times when someone is unreasonably upset with you, or that your anger has not been expressed yet and can be dealt with between you and the Lord.

However, when your anger has damaged the relationship and there is an ongoing hurt, you need to seek reconciliation.

We also have to understand and acknowledge that we may not be able to set everything right immediately, and some relationships may never be the same as they were.

That’s why Paul says:

Romans 12:18 CSB

If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Jesus says that we are supposed to put a high priority on doing our part to make the relationship right.

It may not always be possible, but if we are serious about ridding our lives of the unjust anger that Jesus is talking about, we will put a high priority on making things right where we can.

By the way, notice that Jesus says we are supposed to come back and offer our gift.

After you do what Jesus calls us to do to reconcile, then get back in and worship as God commands.

Because, you see, there is another reason to settle things quickly.

Not only are we supposed to repair relationships with others in the kingdom quickly, all this comes back to the ultimate relationship that is at risk.

Remember, Jesus is telling us that harboring unjust anger in your heart may be a sign that your heart has not truly been made right with God.

That is what he is talking about in verses 25-26...

He shifts from personal reconciliation to settling matters before the court.

As we mentioned earlier, Jesus uses the language of the courts to point to the fact that those with unjust anger in their hearts are subject to eternal judgment.

Although this is good, practical advice for anyone who might get sued, he is specifically pointing his hearers to the fact that they need to get things right before they stand condemned, not only for their anger, but for all the sins they have commited.

This isn’t defending a doctrine of purgatory or anything like that; Jesus is making one main point: those who don’t get right with God will be condemned.

It isn’t just the murderer sitting on death row, it is the church member who looks with anger and contempt at their brothers and sisters in Christ.

I would hate to think that someone would listen to me preach week after week and think that was good enough to get them to heaven.

Have you ever been angry with someone you shouldn’t have? I think if we were all honest, we would have to say that we have been, and it may have even been this week.

If that’s the case, then you and I guilty before God and stand condemned.

Well, then, what in the world is our hope? How can I make it into the kingdom of God?

Because the one who said, “But I say to you...” was willing to take your condemnation and mine upon himself on the cross and die in our place.

Listen: on the cross, Jesus wasn’t just dying for the sins of the serial killers, he was dying for the times you and I have called someone an idiot because we were angry.

He was taking my sin upon himself, sin he hadn’t commited, and paying the price for it.

Now, he has defeated death and been raised from the grave and sits exalted over all creation as the Messiah, the anointed one that God sent to save and rule the world.

In his grace and his goodness, he is drawing us to lay down our lives at his feet and accept his free gift of salvation.

You and I could never be good enough to earn it, but he earned it for us.

Now, we live our lives in gratitude and surrender to the one and only God who would die in our place.

If you have not surrendered your life to Christ, I want to invite you to call or text the number at the bottom of the screen. That is our church phone number, and if you message us, we will get back with you today about how you can have that relationship with Christ.

If you have surrendered to him, then you can scream with joy at the top of your lungs that your sins are forgiven and you are no longer condemned for your sin, even your unjust anger.

However, that freedom should push you to seek reconciliation and to be marked by the peace that God has placed in your heart.

Who do you need to get right with today? What call do you need to make to take a step to repair what your anger has damaged? Do you need to sit down with your husband or your wife or your children and seek forgiveness before the day is over?

That’s what those whose lives have been transformed by the gospel do, so do it today.