Murder in the first degree 3-1-09
Murder in the first degree
Mt 5:21-26-(NIV)- 21-“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22-But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. 23-“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24-leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. 25-“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26-I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.
We are in the middle of a series of messages from the sermon on the sermon on the mount we could call it "The Only Way to Live." It is based on the greatest sermon ever preached in history - the Sermon on the Mount. Up to this point in the sermon, Jesus has been very general in his comments but now he gets very specific. He several critical areas where what goes on in the inside of a person is far more important than what occurs on the outside of a person. He is going to be dealing with murder, adultery, divorce, honesty, revenge, and loving your enemies.
What he is about to say is not only going to astound the common people who heard him, but also deeply anger the Pharisees. Because you see the Pharisees believe that righteousness begins and ends on the outside of a person. Jesus is going to teach us that righteousness begins on the inside of a person.
Some people believe that Jesus is contradicting the teaching of Moses and contradicting the Old Testament Law. But He is teaching the way the Law had been mishandled and misinterpreted by the legalistic Pharisees and what the Law really meant. Jesus is not denying what the Law taught. He is deepening what the Law taught.
The first situation he deals with is murder. The first crime ever committed in the Bible was murder. That was not the first sin but it was the first social result of man's personal sin. We are still reaping the bitter fruits of that sin today. There are 25,000 known murders a year in the United States. That is 70 every day. That figure does not include suicides and abortions. We have now become the murder capital of the western world.
Yet, if you were to ask the average American "Have you ever murdered anyone they would say No!'" But then here is the shocker. Jesus would say, "Not so fast!"
The Lord is going to show us that murder is not only an act it is an attitude. In fact, before one becomes a murderer with the hands, he first becomes a murderer in the heart.
This reminds of the old joke about the pastor who was talking to a couple one time having marital difficulties. He looked at the wife and said, "Have you ever thought about divorce?" She said, "No, but I have thought about murder on a number of occasions."
A perfect illustration is the prodigal son. You remember the prodigal son comes to his father and says "I want my share of the inheritance and I want it now." Well, in Bible days, the only way that you could get a share of the inheritance was if the father died. What that son was really saying to that father was "I wish you were dead."
If you have ever been angry at a person, angry enough to have even a fleeting thought of wishing they were dead, you are guilty of murder. But Jesus goes beyond that to show how ordinary everyday run-of-the-mill anger that we see even in our homes is really murder in the first degree. It is a great lesson on how we should view anger and have victory over it.
I) Acknowledge The Anger Before You
Mt 5:21-22-(NIV)- 21-“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22-But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
People then, just as people now, thought that murder was simply the unlawful, physical taking of a human life. But now Jesus is going to teach us that you can be a murderer in your heart without ever committing murder with your hands.
There is more to murder than just actually taking someone's life. For example, suppose you want to kill someone and you even have the murder all planned out but at the last moment you change your mind. Jesus said you are guilty of murder. Just because you didn't follow through, because you couldn't pull the trigger or because something stopped you does not mitigate the fact that you had the attitude of a murderer.
Jesus carries murder even deeper than that.
Anger that is seen in the gritting of the teeth, the clenching of the jaw, and the flashing of the eyes. Someone makes you so angry as the old saying goes - you could just spit. But you really don't do anything. Nobody sees it except God. He sees that boiling burning rage inside of you that nobody else can see. Jesus said you have the spirit of a murderer.
There was a little girl who came forward during a revival and told the pastor she needed to be saved. After church the mother went up to the daughter and said, "Why did you go forward?" She said, "Mother, I needed to be saved." The mother said, "Honey, you are a good girl. You read your Bible. You go to church. You never give Dad and me any trouble. How can you say that you need to be saved? You're too good to need to be saved." The little girl looked at her mother and said, "Mother, you can't see my heart." Well, God can and he sees those times when you are angry and boiling on the inside though you cover it up on the outside.
The word "raca" is a word that doesn't really have an equivalent English translation. But the best scholars say that it literally means to call a person "a valueless person." Jesus here is referring to the times when you get angry and you say something that you really wished you hadn't said. You allowed poisonous venom to come out of your mouth before you could plug up the jar. Perhaps you let profanity spew out of your mouth and you curse someone before you even realize what you had done.
Someone Once Said …
• He that would be angry and not sin, must be angry at nothing but sin.—Rev. William Secker, seventeenth century British minister
• Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way—that is not easy.—Aristotle
• Quick, angry motions of the heart will sometimes force themselves into expression by the hand, though the tongue may be restrained. The very way in which we close a door or lay down a book may be a victory or a defeat.…—Frances R. Havergal
• Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
• A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.—Proverbs 29:11 (NIV)
• People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.
• Anger is only one letter removed from Danger.
". . .But whoever says, ?You fool!' shall be in danger of hell fire." (v.22c) Now, the Greek word for fool is the word moros. Obviously you can guess that we get from that the word moron. This was a word that was used to refer to people who were basically morally wasted people. In other words, when you get to this point and lose your temper and scream insults at someone like this you have determined that person is nothing but trash.
This is the type of anger when we get to the point where we just lose it and begin to yell and scream, rant and rave, at the top of our lungs not caring who we hurt or who we insult.
There was a University of Auburn football player who was on spring break down in Florida. He went to one of these get acquainted parties and met a beautiful female student from an Ivy League school. He walked up to her and said, "Where do y'all go to school?" She said, "Yale." He took a deep breath and shouted: "Where do y'all go to school?"
Now when you get to this type of anger where you are yelling and screaming and losing control even to the point of degrading someone's human worth, you have reached the guilt stage of hell fire. Now Jesus is not saying you are going to hell. But he says you have enough guilt to send you to hell. You have the guilt of a murderer
What Jesus is trying to get us to understand is just how destructive murder is. One of the phenomenons we are seeing now in America is what is called road rage. Recently, on the Golden State Freeway in Sylmar, CA; Delfina Moralis and her daughter were irritated by an unnamed driver. Other motorists saw the two women tailgate a van and make angry gestures at the driver.
When the van exited from the freeway, Mrs. Moralis followed closely and then got into position to spin her tires and splash the van with mud. She quickly spun around flinging mud and then drove up the ramp from which both vehicles had just exited. In her state of anger, she lost her bearings and treated the off ramp like an on ramp. She drove straight into oncoming freeway traffic. She and her daughter were instantly killed when they crashed into a Federal Express truck. Anger, like that, cannot only cause you to become a murderer in your heart but it can become the murderer of yourself.
II) Arrange To Put Anger Behind You
Mt 5:23-24-(NIV)-23-“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24-leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
I would be shocked if there is not someone listening to this message right now that either does not have something against someone or maybe does not know someone that has something against you. Either way Jesus said reconciliation is so important that you should drop what you are doing in the church. Get outside the church and find that person who needs the church and get right with them before you can worship God.
Imagine this scenario. You get up early Sunday morning. Take your shower. Put on your Sunday best. Come to church. Park your car. Walk inside. Sit down and begin to focus on the Lord. You begin to sing hymns. You begin to pray. You begin to listen to the Word of God. Sometime during that service, someone flashes across your mind. It is not just a nameless person or a faceless person. But it is a face with a name. It is either someone you have offended or someone who has offended you. The Lord brings that person to your attention. He pulls that face up on your memory screen. It becomes the screen saver of the monitor of your heart and you can't forget it. All of a sudden, worship goes out the door. That is exactly what Jesus is talking about.
You can sit in church, have your Bible open, nod your head, say "Amen" and still not worship God because you are not right with a brother or a sister.
Incidentally, Jesus is speaking here of someone who has something against you. In other words, you may not have anything against anybody but if you know someone that has something against you then you should try to reconcile with that person. But let me just add these words, "If it is possible." Paul said in the book of Romans, "If possible, live peaceably with all men." In other words, when you made a good faith effort to reconcile with someone and they refused to reconcile, your conscience is clear. But until that happens, you need to do everything you can immediately to be right with others so that you can indeed be right with God.
III) Actively Place Anger Beyond You
Mt 5:25-26-(NIV)-25-“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26-I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.
The point Jesus is making here is simply this. You better make things right with everyone you know before it is too late. Jesus here is referring to someone who has been accused of owing another person money. In Bible days, if you were convicted for not paying whatever you owed, you went to prison. Here in America, in our early days, we had what was known as debtor's prisons. There was no time limit on your punishment. The only way you could get out would be to pay your debt. But the problem was while you were in prison you couldn't work. If you couldn't work, you couldn't earn money. If you couldn't earn money, you couldn't pay your debt. If you couldn't pay your debt, you couldn't leave. So in effect, if you went to prison for owing someone money it was a sentence of life without parole. It is best to make things right before prison.
Jesus advises you to settle quickly and quietly and finally before it gets to court. Because once it got to court, it was too late.
Jesus is illustrating a truth that I hope you will really take to heart today. It is very sad, to say the least, to have bitterness in your heart toward another person or for someone to be bitter toward you. For either person to die before they at least make an attempt to be reconciled.
I want to die right with God. To be right with God I must have made every effort to be right with my fellow man. Incidentally, there's a greater truth and that is this. You better settle your sin case with God before you die. That's why I don't fear meeting God when I die. Because once I gave my heart to Jesus Christ, I settled my case out of court.
In a sense we have all been guilty of murder of first degree because we are all guilty of murdering the Lord Jesus Christ. But if the Lord Jesus can forgive us and make things right with us even though we crucified him, how much more, through his power and because of his blood, can we do the same for others.