A Study of Matthew 5:21-26

INTRODUCTION:

Suggestions for constructing a good sermon:
1. First, make the introduction as interesting as you possibly can.
2. Second, make the conclusion as interesting as you possibly can.
3. Third, make the introduction and the conclusion as close together as you possibly can!

Reminds me of a pastor on one Sunday afternoon who asked his wife, “Do you think I put enough fire into my sermon?” She answered, “I don’t think you put enough of your sermon into the fire.”

The greatest message ever given is known to Christians as “the Sermon on the Mount.” Let’s pick up the sermon about a quarter of the way into it.

READ SCRIPTURE: MATTHEW 5:21-26

If you don’t get anything else from this message…latch hold of this: ANGER IS SERIOUS BUSINESS!

Jesus has just compared it to what most of us consider the most serious of all crimes – the taking of another life in murder!

STAGES OF ANGER:

1. UNEXPRESSED Anger

But I tell you anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. – Matthew 5:22a

Expressed or even unexpressed, anger is something for which someday we are going to have to give an account to the Lord. Sometimes a person will sit and soak in unexpressed anger for years. Anger against a brother or a sister that has harmed you; anger against an old workmate; anger against a neighbour, a child, a parent. Are you harbouring anger against anyone? The scripture clearly indicates that you will be subject to judgement.

2. EXPRESSED Anger

Again, anyone who says to his brother you are a fool is answerable to the Sanhedrin. – -Matthew 5:22b

The term ‘a fool’ means EMPTY.

The word alluded to mental emptiness. Our colloquialism today might be airhead, nitwit, bonehead, numbskull, blockhead, or doehead. One guy that wasn’t overly bright – he may have fit this category.

‘A fool’ was simply an insulting term used in anger against a person. In other words, if someone gets so angry with another that he looks at him and says, “You mentally worthless idiot!” we have not only gone too far but Jesus says that we will now have to pay the consequences for our expressed anger. In Jesus’ day, that meant the humiliation of going before the Sanhedrin and submitting to their “fine.” Never for a moment think that you are not going to have to pay for your expressed anger…there are consequences.

Jesus instruction is simple…don’t even begin to think of people as airheads or idiots. Afterall they are precious creations of God who fearfully and wonderfully made them and you will pay a price.

3. MEDITATED Anger

But anyone who says ‘you fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. – Matthew 5:22c

The term used in this third stage of anger is from the original Greek word moros. Can you guess which term we get from that? Yes, of course: moron.

Moros infers that a person lives a MORALLY wasted life.

This is not just an angry reaction, now you have thought about it and set yourself up as judge and jury and you have determined that this person is morally wasted. What is the consequence of this stage of anger? Such a person will be in danger of the fire of hell. Now be careful here. Do not put words into Jesus’ mouth. He does not say you go to hell; He says it brings enough guilt that you could be sent to hell.

TWO EXAMPLES:

1) Anger between FRIENDS

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. – Matthew 5:23-24

We are going to close the service by the reception of communion…during that time, I ask you to ask the Lord if there is anyone we have offended. If the Lord flashes a name or a face onto your memory screen, please, this week: “go and be reconciled to your brother.”

Maybe it is a former business associate, maybe your marriage partner. Maybe it’s your ex. Maybe it’s somebody on the ball team or somebody who is furious with you at school, or an angry neighbour. Understand this: We cannot be right with GOD until we are right with OTHERS . – -Chuck Swindoll

The call is not that we be at peace with everybody but…If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. – Romans 12:18

2) Anger between FOES (Matthew 5:25-26).

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. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.- Matthew 5:25-26

The image here is of one being thrown into prison as a result of our angrily offending someone else. You know, there are many forms of imprisonment. Many who are totally enslaved and imprisoned in their anger have never seen the inside of a jail cell. Some of the worst kinds of bars are not made of steel. They are forged of bitterness and desires for revenge. If you have truly forgiven…stop talking about it!!!

APPLICATION:

So what do we do when we feel anger mounting? Let me offer you the four R’s that Dr. Newton Maloney offers in his book: When Getting Along Seems Impossible.

1. RE MOVE (Romans 8:28; John 3:16)

When anger starts to rise up, the best thing to do is remove yourself temporarily from the situation before it gets worse. Now I’m certainly not talking about giving the other person the “silent treatment” or “stonewalling”…this is just a temporary, excused, polite, removal – in order to be with the Lord. We would be saved from a world of hurt if we just excused ourselves before we do something we’ll regret. Like the couple whose lawn mower broke. The wife kept suggesting that her husband fix it, but he had golf games to play and the truck to work on. One day he came back from golf and there was his wife in the front “field” with a pair of tweezers – “cutting the grass”. He got embarrassed, went into the house and a few moments later came out with a toothbrush: “once you finish cutting the lawn, maybe you could sweep the driveway!” The doctors now say that he will walk again, although always with a limp! The moral of the story is this: Marriage is a relationship in which one side is always right and the other is the husband. No, no, no…the moral is – remove yourself from interaction until you can get peace back into your heart – to save yourself from doing something dumb!

2. RE MEMBER (Romans 8:28; John 3:16)

When we get away, remember this: we get angry when we feel somebody has disrespected us. I feel like you have not treated me like I deserve to be treated…so I get angry in order to try to put you in your place and restore my rightful worth.

Remember that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You are precious to him. He loves you unconditionally. So how can someone else get us feeling like we are worthless and thus make us feel disrespected? We need to let this sink down into our hearts…

3. RE AFFIRM (Philippians 4:6-7):

Through reaffirmation we allow God’s truth to go deeper than head knowledge. The best way to accomplish this is through prayer. Through prayer, head knowledge becomes heart knowledge, insight becomes healing, truth becomes reality.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:6-7

4. RE PENT (1 John 1:9):

Once we are calmed down we need to repent and ask God to forgive us. For what? For forgetting about God’s care and his love for us to the point of us becoming anxious, angry and desperate.

5. RE ENTER (Matthew 5:25):

Once we have remembered, reaffirmed our worth and position in the Lord, repented, when we are calm and have the peace of God we are then ready to re-enter the disagreement free from anger that would have prevented any good from coming out of the discussion and try and work it out before you reach the court.

Celebrate communion and ask the Lord to speak.

The first step to overcoming anger is to confess it to the Lord and ask for his forgiveness. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9). You can do that as we receive the elements of communion today.

MONDAY MORNING MESSAGE / FRED G. CHILTON ©

Two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument and one friend slapped the other in the face.

The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: “Today my best friend slapped me in the face.”

They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone: “Today my best friend saved my life.”

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?”

The other friend replied, “When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.”

LEARN TO WRITE YOUR HURTS IN THE SAND AND TO CARVE YOUR
BENEFITS IN STONE.

_

STORIES AND ILLUSTSRATIONS / FRED G. CHILTON

A Disciple’s Ideas and Pride

A powerful story found in 2 Kings 5 -17 illustrates how we can allow our own preconceived ideas and pride to get in the way of God’s blessings: 

1 Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. 2 Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 4 Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. 5 “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. 6 The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”  7 As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!” 8 When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”  11 But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage. 13 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” 14 So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.  15 Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. Please accept now a gift from your servant.” 16 The prophet answered, “As surely as the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.

In this familiar story we have a man who the world would say has everything – wealth, power, prestige, fame – but he also had a crisis in his life which he was powerless to change – the disease of leprosy.  Naaman was so desperate that he traveled from his own country to the humble home of a prophet who, he has been told by a young girl, could heal him – this was his last hope for saving his life.  

Imagine his shock and indignation when the prophet refused to even come out and speak to him, but sent instead his servant who gave him the prescription for his healing. – wash in the Jordan River 7 times.  

What he was asked to do was not difficult, it was not expensive, but it was beneath his dignity, he felt.  Naaman felt he was important and should be catered to, that the prophet should have conducted a ceremony and if immersing in a river was needed, why not the great rivers of his home.  Naaman was trying to tell the healer how to do the healing, but if Naaman knew how to do it why had he not healed himself.  

When we look at it this way we are amazed at how illogical this action was on Naaman’s part, but if we stop to consider our own dealings with God we all too often do the same thing.  

We pray – God I have this issue and I just do not know what to do – and then we pray – God here is what I want you to do about this!  

How many times have we sought God’s wisdom, guidance, assistance, mercy or protection but were frustrated because the path that seemed to be opening up in our lives was not what we had decided God should do about the issue.  

Maybe we need to stop and consider how we are responding – we have a problem we cannot solve ourselves, we have come to the God of the entire universe for His assistance and wisdom, but then we question His direction because it is not what we expected.

Thankfully for Naaman he had a loyal friend who told him to get over himself. If the prophet had told him to do some difficult thing he would have gladly done it to be healed so why not be obedient to the small thing he has asked.  When Naaman was obedient to God’s direction through the prophet – he was instantly healed and restored.

In the same way, God is waiting to bless us with his peace, protection, mercy and grace but we delay or miss so many blessings because we are spiritually hard headed.  I can say this because I have the spiritual headaches from those times I kept trying to push my way through a door which was closed for a good reason.

I pray that if you have been struggling with some area of your walk with the Lord or some situation that you have been seeking God’s direction about, that you will pause and ask God to show you if you have been ignoring His guidance because it did not agree with your own decisions about what should be done.  

More importantly, I pray that you will seek each day to be increasingly transformed into Christ’s image and be less conformed to the values and priorities of this world.

MONDAY MORNING MESSAGE / FRED G. CHILTON

A Disciple’s Life’s Accomplishments

One of the popular concepts in personal development today is drafting a personal mission statement.  For some this is a list of specific things they want to accomplish in their personal and professional lives during their lifetime.  For others it is a one or two sentence summary of their overall aspirations and the means by which they will seek to reach them. 

The truth is that each of us has a personal mission statement whether we have intentionally developed one or not because the actions, reactions and choices of each day are controlled by what we have decided we want to do and how we will do it, i.e. a personal mission statement .  The sum of the decisions we make reveal what our priorities are and the true nature of our character. 

Until we encounter the love of God in our lives and enter into the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ, the overriding theme of our mission statement is a focus on self.  The change which Jesus Christ desires to bring about in our lives, which is so dramatic that He likened it to being born again, is to remove ourselves from the center of attention and instead focus our lives on loving God, serving Him and each other.

A Disciple’s Mission Statement

One of the best examples of a disciple’s personal mission statement is found in Romans 12:

1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Our mission and purpose should be to each day present all of our lives to Jesus Christ as a humble sacrifice of love for all He has done for us and commit to drawing closer each step of the way to the example of Jesus Christ; transforming our thoughts, actions and priorities by the renewing of our minds, instead of being conformed to the value structure of this world. 

One of the challenges we have in accepting God’s unmerited favor and forgiveness resulting in salvation and the commitment of our lives to God is that we do not want to accept the fact that we cannot do anything to earn or achieve salvation, God has already done it all.

This same attitude that causes us to delay accepting Christ into our lives appears again to try and keep us from moving on from a babe in Christ to a spiritually mature disciple. 

We are never totally free from problems,

   Accidents happen, sickness comes,

Mistakes are made, things break down,

   These are things that we all know well.

But there are times when it seems,

   Almost everything goes wrong,

And nothing seems to be going right,

   We don’t know how to get on top again. 

We become discouraged and depressed,

   God knows why you feel the way you do,

He promises to be there as you turn to Him,

   God will never leave you when you’re down.

FRED G. CHILTON / OCTOBER 2003

Below are five stages of renewal as presented by Rick Warren, Senior Pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. (christianpost.com). Please reflect upon these and see what God is saying to you.

Every time a new reformation has come, five renewals have preceded it. The awakening and reformation of the global church will begin with local churches and with the same five renewals preceding this movement.

1. Personal Renewal:

·       It starts with the heart. You might call it rededicating your life, being filled with the Spirit, or the “deeper life.”

·       The bottom line is to fall in love with Jesus again and, all of a sudden, it’s not about religion and rituals; it’s about a relationship with Jesus.

2.Relational Renewal:

·       After you get right with God, you’ve got to get right with others.

·       When you have relational renewal in your church, the gossip goes down and the joy goes up.

·       People hang around longer after the service when a church has been through relational renewal because they want to spend time together.

3.Missional Renewal:

·       This is when a church discovers what God wants it to do and happens when we focus our churches on the God-given purposes of:

1) Worship

2) Fellowship

3) Discipleship

4) Ministry and

5) Evangelism

4.Cultural Renewal:

·       In this stage, God renews the culture of the church.

o      Many pastors have tried to change the culture of the church without going through the other three renewals.

o      There’s a word for that, says Pastor Warren: martyrdom—Only God can change the culture of the church.

5.Structural Renewal:

·       After a church has been through the first four renewals, it’s going to outgrow the current structure.

·       The structure that works for a church of 100 won’t work for a church of 250 and so on. _

•    The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with watches you from the mirror every morning.

•    Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

•    Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.

•    It doesn’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.

•    Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

•    Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

•    The best sermons are lived, not preached.

•    A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.

•    Words that soak into your ears are whispered…not yelled.

•    Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.

•    You cannot unsay a cruel word.

•    Every path has a few puddles.

•    When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.

•    Most of the stuff people worry about is never going to happen, anyway.

•    Don’t judge folks by their relatives.

•    Keep skunks, bankers and lawyers at a distance.

•    Live a good, honorable life; then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.

•    Don’t interfere with something that isn’t bothering you.

•    Meanness don’t just happen overnight.

•    If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

•    Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.

•    Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong.

•    Always drink upstream from the herd.

•    Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.

•    If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.

SUMMARY: Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly and leave the rest to God!

STORIES AND ILLUSTSRATIONS / FRED G. CHILTON

Mistakes

I would like for you to think back to some moment in the past when someone made a mistake which impacted you either directly or indirectly.  What about the person in line ahead of you at the bank who waits until they are at the window before beginning to fill out their deposit slip – Or you are in the 10 items or less line and the person ahead of you is over the limit by 20 – Or the driver in front of you does not move quickly enough or cuts in front of you to make a turn – Or someone makes a comment about you or something you are involved in which is incorrect and hurtful.

Modes

In each of these situations how did you react — were you in lightning or loving mode?  What are these two modes, you ask?

Lightning mode is where we desire immediate consequences and if we were in charge of things there might be a lightning bolt to emphasize the point!

Loving mode is where we consider first why the person did what they did and do not assume that it was intentional or malicious, perhaps it was merely an oversight or they had other things on their mind.

Now that we have defined these different modes of responding when others act in ways we do not approve, or do things which interfere with our plans, let’s consider which mode we as Christians should seek to develop as our first response.

God has a unique way of teaching us things and for me, when it comes to understanding His mercy and forgiveness, He uses specific times when I have done something that I know immediately or soon thereafter was a mistake and I felt awful because I knew better.

In almost every instance the mistake was not intentional or deliberate, but still it was something I wish I could have handled differently.

Mercy

When I make a mistake, what I want most is mercy and not justice.

Later when I am in the other position of being the one impacted by another’s actions and begin to revert to the lightning mode, God softly reminds me of the last time I deserved justice, but received mercy instead and I am humbled before Him.

Jesus spoke often about the need for His followers to develop the proper attitude about forgiveness and mercy.

In the portion of the Sermon on the Mount which is the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says we are to ask God to forgive us to the same extent that we forgive others.

This seems an almost impossible standard, since when it comes to ourselves we desire total and complete forgiveness from God and for His understanding of our weaknesses, especially at those times when we have to seek forgiveness for sins we have previously repented of.
But when it comes to our forgiving others, we cannot seem to imagine that God would expect us to show the same level of mercy, forgiveness and patience with others as He does with us.

There are many reasons for our thinking in this manner — perhaps we think we are special in some way as compared to others, otherwise known as Pride – or we try to make excuses such as saying we have forgiven but cannot forget, nurturing bitterness in our hearts.

But what Jesus truly desires in our lives is for us to embrace this new life we receive when we accept Him as Lord and Savior and continuously seek to grow stronger and more mature each day in our faith and as a disciple.

Maturity

As we mature as Christians, our lives will begin to exhibit more and more the fruits of the spirit. As we more fully understand all that forgiveness includes as God defines it, we will see that it is expressed in the fruits of the spirit which Paul wrote of to the Galatians.

Galatians 6:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self control….Christ’s forgiveness, which He desires that we seek to develop in our lives as Disciples, involves each of these nine fruits of the Spirit.

LOVE which focuses on others needs, even at its own expense
JOY which comes from lifting the burden of guilt from others
PEACE from removing all bitterness towards others from our hearts
PATIENCE which seeks to see things though the other person’s eyes
KINDNESS which seeks to share the Grace of God which we have received
GOODNESS which seeks the very best for others in each situation
FAITHFULNESS remembering each day how God deals mercifully with us
GENTLENESS desiring to calm those who are hurting from their mistakes
SELF-CONTROL to avoid reacting in lightning mode instead of loving mode.

Message

If we can comprehend the full measure of the forgiveness, mercy and grace we have received from God, we will realize it is so far beyond any measure of forgiveness we could be asked to grant to anyone else.

In Matthew 18:21-35 Jesus told of a Master who was owed 10,000 talents by a servant who begged the Master not to imprison him over the debt and the Master forgave the entire debt.

But immediately thereafter the servant confronted another who owed him 100 denarii and he began choking him, demanding his money. Even after begging for mercy, as the original servant had just done, his plea was denied and he was thrown into prison.

To put the two amounts into context, a talent was equal to 15 years of wages for a manual laborer, so 10,000 talents was Jesus way of saying this debt was impossible to repay; the same as our saying he owed a zillion dollars — and the 100 denarii owed to the servant was in comparison pocket change.

When the Master heard about this, he confronted the servant and asked how could he not show mercy for such a small debt, when he had been forgiven a debt which was impossible for him to ever repay?
The servant apparently believed he was forgiven because he deserved it, not because he had received mercy; and therefore he saw no need to show mercy to one whose debt to him was nothing in comparison.

How many times have we withheld forgiveness from others for things which were nothing in comparison to our sins which Jesus Christ forgave? I know in my life that I have received forgiveness in far greater measure than I could ever be asked to grant another and that God has provided His mercy and protection over and over again to keep me from harm when I have made mistakes.

When I look honestly at the quantity and quality of God’s love and mercy for me – God forbid that I should fail to forgive others and not show them mercy and patience.

Years ago we sang a chorus that I still remember

He paid a debt he did not owe
I owed a debt I could not pay
I needed someone to wash my sins away.
And now I sing a brand new song,
Amazing Grace all day long
Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay

I pray that this week you will look at the quality of forgiveness contained in your witness for Jesus Christ as His Disciple and ask God to show you those areas where you are responding more with lightning than love.

May God remind us of the times we have received mercy from Him and been blessed by the amazing grace of Jesus Christ in order to spur us on to sharing with others a patient, merciful and forgiving spirit.

MONDAY MORNING MESSAGE / FRED G. CHILTON

You are seeking to live life to the fullest,
To completely enjoy each day that God gives,
But breakthroughs in our Christian walk,
Seldom comes when all is going smoothly.

God seems to choose your dark times,
The problems, pains, and temptations,
Through those sufferings and disappointments,
He invades the struggles of your daily walk.

Laboring under trials and tribulations,
Place your trembling hand in God’s hand,
The very situations that causes the most anguish,
In His light become treasured memories.

God is now reaching out to you,
In your places of weakness and strain,
You’ll find your humble afflictions are dignified,
By His immeasurable grace.

BY FRED G. CHILTON 2006 ©