Sermon Tone Analysis

A Christian's Righteousness: Avoiding Anger & Lust

November 10, 2021

Response to the video:

God is calling us to be “all-in” to learn and obey the Commands of Christ.

Open: Have you ever slowed down your car because you saw a police officer?

What did your action indicate about your attitude toward the law?

I see it as a suggestion until there is someone to enforce it.

Purpose: To understand how anger and lust are related to the commandments against murder and adultery.

The scribes and Pharisees calculated that the law contained 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions.

But they were better at arithmetic than obedience.

So they tried to make the law's demands less demanding and the law's permissions more permissive.

Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seeks to reverse this tendency.

He came to deepen not destroy the law's demands.

In this passage he explains the true meaning of the sixth and seventh commandments, the prohibitions against murder and adultery.

Tonight, let’s see if we can get through the 6 verses regarding anger

Read Matthew 5:21-26

Jesus starts this passage and several others with the:

You have heard it said ...

But I say to you ...

Said by whom?

Moses?

Someone else?

Sam Storms says:

The most likely scenario is that the contrasts in view are between the teaching of Jesus and the perversion and misunderstanding of the Mosaic law on the part of the scribes and Pharisees.

Jesus is not setting himself over against Moses but over against the distortions of Moses by the rabbis in Israel.

We must distinguish between the written Torah and the oral tradition in Israel.

The latter, known as the Halakah, by the end of the 2nd century had come to be regarded as equal in authority to the written law of God.

Both were thought to have been given at Sinai and transmitted faithfully down through the centuries.

This view emphasizes Jesus’ use of the words “heard” and “said”.

The point is this: Jesus does not say, “You have read in the written Word of God,” but “You have heard it said …” Jesus was opposing the oral tradition of the scribes, not the written Word of Moses.

By whom was it “said”?

By the rabbis, those who expounded, interpreted, and applied the Law to the people.

For example, in the last “antithesis” Jesus declares, “You have heard that it was said … hate your enemy” (5:43).

But nowhere in the OT are God’s people told to hate their enemy.

Jesus is challenging an oral distortion of Moses, not one of his written declarations.

1.

The NIV translates the sixth commandment as "Do not murder" rather than "Do not kill."

Why is this an important distinction?

Question 1. Matthew 5:21 is not a prohibition against taking all human life in any and every circumstance.

This is clear from the fact that the same Mosaic law, which forbids killing in the Decalogue, elsewhere calls for it both in the form of capital punishment and in the wars designed to exterminate the corrupt pagan tribes which inhabited the Promised Land.

Does not bear the sword in vain...

Law enforcement, soldiers, etc. are the arm of the government — they don’t exercise their own authority (not supposed to anyway).

2. In Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus places murder and unrighteous anger in the same category.

How are they related?

Here is where the KJV has different wording:

How did this happen?

Newer manuscripts include this “without a cause” — not OLDER manuscripts copied closer to the time of the original.

I heard, but cannot verify, that King James wanted this addition.

According to the KJV, “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment,” but the phrase “without a cause” is a later addition to the Greek text, designed to make Jesus’ words more tolerable.

The other man’s anger may be sheer bad temper, but mine is righteous indignation—anger with a cause.

But Jesus’ words, in the original form of the text, make no distinction between righteous and unrighteous anger: anyone who is angry with his brother exposes himself to judgment.

There is no saying where unchecked anger may end.

“Be angry but do not sin,” we are told in Ephesians 4:26 (RSV); that is, “If you are angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin; let sunset put an end to your anger, for otherwise it will provide the devil with an opportunity which he will not be slow to seize.”

How are murder and anger related?

Question 2. The scribes and Pharisees were evidently seeking to restrict the application of the sixth commandment to the deed of murder alone, to the act of spilling human blood in homicide.

If they refrained from this, they considered that they had kept the commandment.

And this apparently is what the rabbis taught the people.

But Jesus disagreed with them.

The true application of the prohibition was much wider, he maintained.

It included thoughts and words as well as deeds, anger and insult as well as murder.

Not all anger is evil, as is evident from the wrath of God, which is always holy and pure.

And even fallen human beings may sometimes feel righteous anger, although, being fallen, we should ensure that even this is slow to rise and quick to die down (James 1:19 and Ephes.

4:26-27).

The reference of Jesus, then, is to unrighteous anger, the anger of pride, vanity, hatred, malice and revenge.

3. A. B. Bruce writes: "Raca expresses contempt for a man's head = you stupid!; [fool] expresses contempt for his heart and character = you scoundrel!"

Why do you think these thoughts and words would be murder in God's sight (Matthew 5:22)?

4. What do Matthew 5:23-26 teach us about broken relationships?

Question 4. In these verses Jesus proceeds to give a practical application of the principles he has just enunciated.

His theme is that if anger and insult are so serious and so dangerous, then we must avoid them at all cost and take action as speedily as possible.

We must never allow an estrangement to remain, still less to grow.

We must not delay to put it right.

If we want to avoid committing murder in God's sight, we must take every possible positive step to live in peace and love with all people.

When we have offended someone, why is it so important that we go to him or her immediately?

Read: Matthew 5:27-30

5. What, according to Jesus, is the full meaning of the seventh commandment: "Do not commit adultery" (Matthew 5:27-28)?

Question 5.

There is not the slightest suggestion here that natural sexual relations within the commitment of marriage are anything but God-given and beautiful.

We may thank God that the Song of Solomon is contained in the canon of Scripture, for there is not Victorian prudery there but rather the uninhibited delight of lovers, of bride and bridegroom in each other.

No, the teaching of Jesus here refers to unlawful sex outside marriage, whether practiced by married or unmarried people.

Similarly, Jesus' allusion is to all forms of immorality.

To argue that the reference is only to a man lusting after a woman and not vice versa, or only to a married man and not an unmarried, since the offender is said to commit "adultery" not "fornication," is to be guilty of the very casuistry which Jesus was condemning in the Pharisees.

His emphasis is that any and every sexual practice which is immoral in deed is immoral also in look and thought.

6.

Some Christians have taken Matthew 5:29-30 literally and have mutilated their bodies.

How do you think Jesus intends us to understand his warnings?

Question 6.

On the surface it is a startling command to pluck out an offending eye, to cut off an offending hand or foot.

A few Christians, whose zeal greatly exceeded their wisdom, have taken Jesus literally.

The best known example is the third-century scholar, Origen of Alexandria, who actually made himself a eunuch.

Not long after, in A.D. 325, the Council of Nicea was right to forbid this barbarous practice.

The command to get rid of troublesome eyes, hands and feet is an example of our Lord's use of dramatic figures of speech.

What he was advocating was not a literal physical self-maiming, but a ruthless moral self-denial.

Not mutilation but mortification is the path of holiness he taught, and mortification or "taking up the cross" to follow Christ means to reject sinful practices so resolutely that we die to them or put them to death (see Mark 8:34; Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:24; Col. 3:5).

7.

In what situations might we need to "gouge out an eye" or "cut off a hand"?

How might this spiritual surgery differ from person to person?

8. Throughout this passage, how has Jesus challenged a superficial view of righteousness?

9.

In what specific areas do you feel the need for a deeper righteousness?

Question 9.

This question might be too threatening in some groups.

If this is true of your group, you might suggest that people reflect on the question silently.

10.

Ask God to help you rid your life of anything that causes you to sin.

Pray that you will be able to obey him in your attitudes as well as your actions.

LifeGuide Topical Bible Studies - Sermon on the Mount.