Thank you. Thank you, Todd. Thank
you. Turn your Bibles with me over
to Matthew chapter 5, if you will. I hope that I have been just half the blessing and the
encouragement to you folks that you have been to me. In spite of preaching when I
got down here, I'm overjoyed to be here. I've always been
encouraged and I leave feeling so joyful and encouraged
in my heart when I come and worship for you dear people. And I'm
amazed that I would be invited here to preach to you. That amazes
me. And I pray tonight that God would
be pleased to bless you through my preaching this evening, through
the preaching of His Word. In Matthew chapter 5, and I want
to begin reading here in verse 21, this is the Lord, a portion of
His sermon that He preached that we often refer to as the Sermon
on the Mount. In verse 21. ye have heard that
it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill. And whosoever
shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto
you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall
be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his
brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the counsel. But whosoever
shall say thou fool shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore,
if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and thou rememberest that
thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before
the altar, and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother,
and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly,
whilst thou art in the way with lest at any time the adversary
deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the
officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee,
Thou shalt by no means come out hence till thou hast paid the
uttermost fine." You have heard that it was said, but I say unto
you, you have heard no doubt from their their scribes who
set themselves in Moses' seat, set themselves up as teachers
of the Jewish nation. And the Lord said, you've heard
what these scribes and these Pharisees say, and you've heard
their interpretation of the law of Moses. And then the Lord proceeds
to correct their misinterpretation of the law of Moses. He does
this six times. this fifth chapter. You've heard
it's been said, but I say unto you. Now, the Lord never had
one good thing to say about the scribes and the Pharisees' teaching.
He was always very critical. He warned his disciples about
their teaching. Beware of the doctrine of the
scribes and the Pharisees. And there's three reasons that
he warned people of their doctrine and the reason he was critical
of it. First of all was, most of the time they didn't teach
Scripture at all. They never opened their Bibles
and read from it. Usually they taught their traditions
and the commandments of men. The Lord said, in vain do they
worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandment of men. And you've
made void the commandment of God, he said, by your tradition.
They didn't teach the scriptures at all. When they read them,
they didn't teach them. They ran to their traditions and their
commandments. And then when they read from
the Old Testament, especially the Law of Moses, they didn't
believe it. That's probably why they held so closely to their
traditions and commandments. They didn't believe the scriptures
anyway. The Lord Jesus said, if you're to believe Moses, you're
to believe me, because he wrote of me. But if you believe not
his word, how shall you believe my writings? If you believe not
his writings, how shall you believe my word? So they never believed
the scriptures to begin with. Why do you and I find in our
days so many that will not preach the scriptures? They don't believe
them. We preach what we believe. But
the controversy the Lord Jesus had here in chapter 5 And the
reason he withstood their teaching here in this verse, these verses,
they misrepresented the law of Moses. They didn't understand
it. When they taught it to the people,
they completely misrepresented the Ten Commandments. And we
have the example here in verse 21. He says, you've heard from
your scribes and your Pharisees, your Sadducees, you've heard
from your teachers, thou shalt not kill. Now what's wrong with
that? Doesn't the commandment in Exodus
chapter 20 tell us that? That's the sixth commandment.
Thou shalt not kill. And the Lord Jesus said you've
heard your teachers say that time and time again. What is
wrong with that? Well, here's what's wrong with
that. They interpreted that as being carnal. They interpreted
that as the letter of the law. and not spiritually. They said
when the law says, Thou shalt not kill, it's limited to the
physical man. Thou shalt not kill, and that's
all it means, they said. You must never murder anyone.
They interpret it as what I call a carnal interpretation. And
you know this was very popular in our Lord's day. to interpret
the Ten Commandments in a carnal sense. And they did this, and
by doing so, by interpreting the law according to the letter
and not spiritual, they watered it down. They all but made it
void. That's why they went about bragging
how they could keep the Ten Commandments, because they watered it down
and made it only physical. And they said, if you want to
keep the Sixth Commandment, just don't murder anyone. And since
they didn't murder anyone physically, they went bragging and boasting
how they could keep the commandments. You remember that rich young
ruler that came to Christ one day and said, Lord, what must
I do that I could have eternal life? And he said, you've heard
the commandments. Keep the commandments. And he
said, which ones? One of the first ones he mentioned
was murder, wasn't it? Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt
not commit adultery. Thou shalt not borrow from false
witness." And what did this young man say of these? He said, there's
nothing to that. Well, that's a trifling thing.
That's easy to do. I've done all those from my youth
up. What lack I yet? Give me something
more difficult to do. Keeping the Ten Commandments
is an easy thing. Well, it was, if you interpret the Ten Commandments
as they did. And there's why the Lord Jesus
had a controversy with those teachers. They were interpreting
the Ten Commandments as though they were trifling, carnal matter,
and easy and possible for this carnal man to keep. And the Apostle Paul had trouble
with that, didn't he, before his conversion? He bragged how,
according to the law, he was blameless. And he says it something
like this in the seventh chapter of Romans. He said, you know,
I was alive without the law once. Or at least he thought he was.
He knew the commandment said, if you do these things, you shall
live by them. So he thought, well, I've done
them. So therefore, I must be alive. I'm alive. And that's
what he thought about himself. He was so self-confident and
self-righteousness, believing in his own abilities. But he
said something amazing happened to him one day. He said this
commandment came. It came in its power. It came
as it never came to him before. It came in his spirituality.
It came to his conscience. It enlightened his understanding.
And it showed him that to lust was more than just going and
killing someone or stealing what someone else had. When the commandment
said, Thou shalt not covet, it reached the heart, the desires
of our hearts. And Paul said, Oh, I saw the
commandment as it was spiritual. And when it came to me in its
power and its purity and its holiness, and said, Thou shalt
not covet, all this sin and all this lust began to stir up within
my conscience. It was there all along, but I
didn't know it. And it revived, and he said,
I died. I died to myself. I died to my
ability to keep this commandment. And that law which I thought
gave me life, I found to be unto death. It's not something that
gives life, it's something that kills us. But that's what these
Pharisees never understood. These religious Jews, they had
great confidence in their ability to keep these Ten Commandments,
but it was the way they were interpreting these Ten Commandments.
So the Master comes here to interpret them to us Himself. That is a serious matter to be
a teacher of people. And it's a dangerous thing to
teach others what we don't understand ourselves. And they didn't understand. And because they didn't understand,
the people they talked to didn't understand. And the nation of
the Jews as a whole missed Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior. And
one of the reasons they missed him, they saw no need of him.
And one of the reasons they saw no need of him, they never saw
themselves to be sinners. And the reason they never saw
themselves to be sinners was they never understood the spiritual
nature of this holy law. John Bunyan made the statement
that those who don't understand the nature of the law cannot
understand the nature of sin. And those who don't understand
the nature of sin cannot know the nature of the Savior. And
that's the mistake these Pharisees were making. So the Master comes
here and says, you've heard, you have heard what they told
you. But let me tell you how it really
is. You've heard it's been said,
but I say unto you. Ain't that amazing? Here, the
Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, born in obscurity basically,
raised up in Nazareth. A mean city, around poor and
unlearned and uneducated people. Nobody knew who he was. He hadn't
been to the seminars. He hadn't sat under the rabbis
to learn. And suddenly here he shows up
on the scene, and without any hesitation, as boldly as he can
proclaim it, and as dogmatically as he can state it, he begins
to, without any hesitation, to interpret the Law of Moses. Ain't
that amazing? And the authority with which
he did it. Todd and I were just talking back in the study. I
loved what was said when our Lord finished His Sermon on the
Mount. You'll read it in chapter 7, the last two verses. When
He finished this message, they were astonished at His Word because
He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Or He was a preacher, but He
was more than a preacher. He was the prophet that was promised,
but he was more than a prophet. He was the Son of God come down
from heaven. And he had the right and he knew
how to interpret this law because he was the giver of this law.
He was there on Mount Sinai when the lightnings were flashing
and the thunders and the angels were speaking. He's the one by
his own finger chiseled these commandments out of those two
stones. He is himself the lawgiver. And
who better to interpret the law to you and I than this lawgiver. Oh, you've heard, he said. You've
heard from your teachers. But let me tell you how it really
is. You know, I think of all the rebukes. The Lord Jesus rebuked
these scribes and Pharisees. I think this is the most serious
rebuke, Brother Todd, that He rebuked. Of all the rebukes,
I think this is the most serious one. How would I feel this evening
if I preached to you And then I sat down and Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, stepped in this pulpit behind me and said, You've
heard what that man had to say. But I say unto you, he's all
wrong. Wouldn't that be a fearful thing?
And yet that's what he was saying. You've heard by your teachers
concerning this law. But I say unto you, they misinterpret
it all together. So what he's going to do here
now, he's going to interpret the law for us. And he says here
in verse 22, But I say unto you, Whosoever is angry with his brother
without a cause is in danger of the judgment. The Lord Jesus
is saying here, don't think that you fulfill the law just because
you've abstained from murder, just because you've abstained
from physically killing someone. He says, whosoever has causeless
anger in his heart against a brother, he's exposed to the same demands
and the punishment as someone who has physically killed somebody. To hate, he says, to feel bitter
or to harbor resentment against a person without cause is murder. That's murder. I've searched
some of the other versions that I have there in my office, and
none of them put in there without cause. Every one of them eliminate
without cause. And I looked in the little Greek
enelineer, and it even eliminated without cause. So I thought,
if that's so, it even makes demands more tremendous, doesn't it?
Whosoever hateth his brother, where he have cause or not. He
is a murderer. John interpreted that, I think,
like this. Whosoever hateth his brother
is a murderer. Now, I don't quite understand
all this. I'll be honest with you. I don't understand how David
could proclaim he hated people. But it seems like what the Lord
Jesus Christ is telling us here, for us to be angry in our hearts,
for us to hate people in our hearts, is never justified. To
hate is only justified when it's directed at sin. You say, what
about God? Didn't he hate people? Well,
sure he did. Sure he did. But his is a just hatred. His
is a judicial hatred. His is a holy hatred. Now, if
you and I can always say that ours is that way, then maybe
we could go ahead and hate. But until we can, it seems that
we're only justified in hating a person's sin and not the person
as a person. And the Master even tells us
here in this sermon to love our enemies. Pray for them that hate
us and despitefully use us and would persecute us. Whatever
the case is, the Lord is saying here it's not enough to abstain
from physical murder. You may do that and yet be a
lawbreaker. What's your attitude towards
the brother? That's what he's saying here
in this passage. Do you harbor anger in your heart? Do you harbor
hatred there against a brother? Does your temper flare up when
you perceive that someone has done you wrong? Do you get angry
over what happens to you? Do you sometimes imagine anger
against someone, maybe though he hasn't done you any harm at
all? Do you think evil against another? Do you accuse him falsely
in your heart? Christ is saying here, don't
think you're free and don't think you're guiltless and have not
committed murder simply because you haven't physically taken
someone's life. Don't get lifted up in your self-righteousness
and imagine you've fulfilled the demands of the Sixth Commandment
because you've reduced it to something physical. Here is the
interpretation. Here is the meaning of the Sixth
Commandment. If you're angry with someone,
if you harbor ill will or hostility, then you're a murderer in your
heart. Our Lord is not saying that physical
murder is not wrong. Well, we know better than that.
We've always known better than that, haven't we? But he gets
right down to the root of the matter. He gets down to the motive. He gets down to the thought.
What's going on in my heart? I remember, I think it's in Genesis
chapter 6, in the days of Noah, when the Lord looked upon the
world. and he saw the wickedness of
men, was great. I've often wondered, when I think
of the old world that God destroyed, I often think that everybody
is laying around drunk, and men and women are hauled up in the
beds together, and everybody is just open and profane. But
I wonder if it was really that way. I wonder if really it wasn't,
for the most part, that God looked upon men's hearts and he saw
the imaginations of their heart was only evil continually. I wonder if that's what it was.
They still married and gave in marriage. They still worked.
They billed and they sold. But it was a hard thing. God
looks upon an individual's heart. And there's where he sees the
anger. and the bitterness and the ill will. And that's where
he judges it to be murder. How do you feel this evening
when you hear our Master interpreting these things? When he brings the law before
your conscience, makes you aware of your sins, how do you feel
about this? Does it lift you up in yourself? Or does it humble you? Are you
like the Pharisees that you just put on a religious front and
think because you look good to men, you must look good to God?
The law is not to build us up. It's not to give us self-confidence. It's to reveal and expose our
sins. It's to tear us down. It's to
show us where we're lacking. It's to bring us to repentance.
It's to make us to mourn over our sins, to make us hunger and
thirst for this heart-righteousness, for grace. Some people say, well, the law
is not the believer's rule of life. I agree with that wholeheartedly.
But is the believer's rule of life contrary to the law of God?
Does it bother us, brothers and sisters, when we see the state
that we're in? in our utter inability to do
anything about it? While our thoughts and our attitudes
are contrary to that which is holy and right and just, don't
it make us mourn? Don't it humble us? That's what
this message of the Sermon on the Mount is all about. It's
not to lift us up. doesn't lead us to think good
of ourselves and boast in our abilities, but is to show us
our sins and our inabilities to do anything about it. The
law is to drive us out of ourselves to Jesus Christ, not only to
save us from the curse by His merits, but to be subdued by
His power. and ruled by his grace, and filled
with his goodness and his love. He that is angry with his brother,
and who among us is not guilty? We are not Pharisees. God has
taught us better, and he is teaching us better. He is bringing these
things to our conscience, and as he does, he humbles us. Something else the Master says
here. Notice this in the second part of verse 22. And whosoever shall say to his
brother, Raca, that is, you vain, useless, worthless fellow, shall
be in danger of the counsel. Why does our Lord condemn this
language? And He condemns this. He said,
Whosoever shall say, Raca, you vain, wretched fellow. shall
be in danger of the judgment, because it expresses what's in
the heart. It expresses the anger. What
comes out of the mouth always expresses what's in the heart. Remember Matthew chapter 15,
verse 18? Those things which proceed out
of the mouth, they come forth from the heart and they defile
the man. For out of the heart proceed
what? Murders. Murders. There is more than one way to
murder an individual. You can murder his reputation
by speaking evil of him. You can murder his confidence
by reckless criticism. You can murder his conscience
with harsh rebukes. You can discourage him by careless
fault finding. Murder reaches deeper than destroying
the body. It's murder when one attempts
to destroy the soul and the spirit of an individual. And using these
expressions of contempt and anger is an indication that down in
the heart there is anger. And it expresses itself in saying,
you're a worthless creature. You're a vain fellow. And the
Lord Jesus condemns it. Well, he's God's creature. Yes,
he is. He may be God's child. He may be a man for whom Christ
died. And he may have done no worse
than I have. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'm going
to try in some way, to some degree, to murder him. To murder him. And the Lord Jesus said, you
are in danger of the judgment. And then he says in the last
part of verse 22, look at this, Thou fool, whosoever shall say,
Raca, shall be in danger of the judgment, but whosoever shall
say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Matthew Henry had
something, and John Gill had something. Let me read what they
said about this. Henry said to say, Raca, that
is vain person, useless fellow. is to describe a man as ignorant
and worthless. But to call him a fool is to
judge him as wicked and a reprobate, a man whom God has abandoned.
And Gill said this about this. He said there is a graduation
in this text from careless anger in the heart to words of reproach
and contempt to a mean and critical judging of a man's spiritual
and eternal state. To say thou fool is to say thou
wicked man, thou ungodly wretch, thou graceless creature whose
portion is eternal damnation. And to say it with the intent
not to hit him, not to bring him to repentance, but to say
it with heart anger. And he said there in verse 22,
he is in danger of And I imagine this made an impression upon
these Jews when they heard this, because it means the way they
tell me, literally, the fire of Gehenna. That valley there
just south of Jerusalem where they burn all the refuse, their
carcasses and things that they cast out of their houses they
didn't want. They carried it all here to this valley and they
burn it. And you remember if you studied the Old Testament
much on the Valley of Hinnom what that was. They first started
worshiping the idol where they built this Moloch, was that his
name? And they built this large fire in him and they'd bring
their children there and they'd put it in the arms of this idol
and offer their children to this idol and bake him, literally
cook their little child. And it became such a reproach
to them. after they came back out of captivity, that they made
a valley of burning out of it. And John Gill says history shows
that even when Christ was there in his day, that that's where
they still hauled all their garbage and their dead carcasses. But
they always had to keep this valley burning, had to keep the
fire going, obnoxious smell and always burning, a continued burning. And Christ likened hell to that
valley of Gehenna, of Hellfire. Look here in verse 23 and verse
24. Up to now, he's told us what we must not do. Let this anger rule our hearts
and harbor it there. But now he says here in verse
23, Therefore, he says, if ye bring your gift to the altar,
and there remember that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave
there your gift before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled
to your brother, and then come. offer thy gift." This is an amazing
thing for the Lord Jesus to say. It's almost as I read it, and
I know we have to be very careful of these things, interpret these
things, but don't you take it as you read that He's almost
saying, if you come to the Heavenly Father in prayer, and there you
remember that you did something to cause your brother to stumble,
or you sinned against Him and you've injured Him, just quit
praying. and go to your brother and get
things straightened out with your brother and tell what he
seems to be saying. He seems to be saying that he
not only values and insists upon our fellowship with him, but
he seems to be insisting on our fellowship one with another.
That we must not only keep pure hearts between us and the Father
and must never regard iniquity in our hearts or he won't hear
us. But now he's saying this, we must endeavor to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace one with another. If
I come here in prayer and I remember that I've caused someone to stumble
and offend, then I must go to that brother or that sister and
be reconciled to them. Is that what the Master is saying?
He must count our fellowship one with another to be very crucial
and critical. That just as we have to keep
our spirits clean and pure before God, we must have this pure fellowship
one with another. Not harbor anything one against
another with our spirits and in our spirits. But it's amazing
that he would tell us, in a sense, break off from prayer. You're
regarding iniquity in your heart. You're not right with your brother.
And this is my claims, he says, upon you. And don't you rejoice
in the claims of the Master. You go. You get things right
with your brethren. And then you come, and then you
offer your gifts. Unity with the brethren. We cannot worship God and have
Him accept our worship while we deliberately and purposely
are not right with our brethren. That's what he said. No matter
if it embarrasses us, no matter if we're apprehensive about it,
we must go and do what we can that's in our power to be reconciled
to our brethren. That's the master's interpretation
of this. Those Pharisees gathered there
in the temple, bringing their tithes and blowing their trumpets.
bragging about how holy they were, and all the time their
hearts were full of hatred and enmity. I thank you, God, I'm
not like that rascal. Well, he is more justified than
the Pharisee, wasn't he? The Lord said, You're not like
that. That's not my people. My people won't be like that.
My people are poor people. They're poor in their spirits.
They do a lot of mourning. They do a lot of hunger and thirst
for righteousness. They need grace. They need power.
My people aren't high-minded. They're not self-willed. I delivered
them from that. I delivered them from darkness.
They're in my kingdom. Now they must submit to my claims
and the rule of my kingdom. And here's what I insist on,
he says. If you have ought against your brother, or he has ought
against you, you go be reconciled to your brother. That's my claims
upon you. And he presses it. Look here
at how serious he tells us to take it in verse 25 and verse
26. He tells us to agree with our
adversary quickly while you are in the way with him, lest at
any time the adversary deliver you to the judge, and the judge
deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into the prison.
You will not come out, he said, until you have paid the uttermost
part. He tells us what to do and what
not to do. And now he comes here to tell
us the seriousness of it. He gives us his commands, and
now he tells us how serious it is. And this is just a picture,
brothers and sisters. We can't establish doctrine with
this, I realize that. But what's he teaching us by
this picture? The old Jewish law, if you had
wronged someone and you were on your way to the courtroom,
they had another room off to the side. The accuser and the
accused got together in that room. And the one that had been
harmed says to the one that had done the wrong, here's what you've
done to me. And here's what you owe me. Now,
will you confess to what you've done? Will you pay me what you
owe me? If you don't, then we must go
out before the judge. And I assure you of this, he
says, I can prove what I'm accusing you of. And when I prove this,
you're going to be hauled off to the officer and they're going
to put you in jail. And before you can get out, you're
going to have to pay everything you owe me. And here's the picture
the Lord Jesus gives us, and what's it teaching us? This picture
is teaching us the seriousness of what the Master's been teaching
us already. Here's God's claims upon us.
Here's what He tells us. He says, I'll have your heart
cleared with your brother and your sister. I will not have
hatred harbored in your heart against one another. Here's my
claims upon you. Here's what I'm telling you to
do. You go make things right with your brother. You go be
reconciled to your brother. And then you come and I'll deal
with you. When you've been reconciled to
your brother, then you come and offer your gift. Then I'll deal
with you, he says. Then I'll forgive you. I don't
understand the doctrine of that. I really don't. But this is what
the Master said. I'll deal with you, the Father
says. Then I'll hear you. Then I'll receive your prayers.
Not because you're good. Because you're vile. And you
know you're vile. And I've taught you that you're
vile. And the very fact that you went and been reconciled
to your brother, the very fact that you've had to do that proves
your vileness. That you was indeed harboring
this. But now I forgive you all. Not because you're worthy of
it. Not because you've earned it. But for the sake of my dear
son, I'll forgive you all. You owe me a debt that you can't
pay, is what the Father tells us. You cannot pay it. But I sent the Son of my Love,
the One in whom my soul is wrapped up, I sent Him to pay this debt
for you that you could not pay. And now for His sake, I forgive
all. I forgive all. Brothers and sisters,
I don't understand all of this, and I'm hesitant sometimes to
even preach on it because you slip off into self-righteousness
on one side and legalism on the other side. But I know that those
in the kingdom of Christ love His commandments. They love His
claims upon them. And they're not high-minded about
it. When they feel His demands and feel His claims, the first
thing they recognize Oh, Lord, if you command it of me, you
must give me grace to do it. If you command me to love my
enemies, then you must fill my heart with love. Because I can't
do anything in myself. His claims. Don't you love His
claims? Don't you love His kingdom? Don't you love the rules and
the laws of His kingdom? Don't you love Him? And it's
not grievous to you, is it? Because it's Him. It's His kingdom. God bless His Word to your hearts.
Thank you so much.