Thanks, Richard. We’re going to just move a little further on in the sermon on the mount this morning. Last week, we looked at probably if there’s a thesis statement that Jesus makes in the sermon on the mount. Last week was it because he told the crowd that he had not come to abolish any of the law or that that none of it would pass away. He had come to fulfill it. So he talked about his own relationship with the law and then he talked about our relationship with the law of God and with righteousness and he said that if our righteousness doesn’t exceed that of the religious leaders of his time the scribes and the Pharisees would never have access to the kingdom of heaven. So what Jesus spoke to them, he spoke to all of us as he always calls us to move away from the safe shallow little pool of religion into uh the deep intimidating currents of God’s real will and desire for our lives. So in support of that thesis statement this morning, what Jesus does is he begins to open up six files or test cases, all of which insist on our righteousness being a radically internal thing. because our internal workings, our motives and our emotions and our level of sincerity and whatever we’re doing, all of that’s just as important to God as any of our actual actions or behaviors. So, we’re going to look at the first title or test case this morning begins with a really low bar of not murdering people. And most of us, if we put in a little bit of effort, a little bit of self-restraint, if we don’t let the sun go down on the anger with our spouses, we have a good chance of clearing this bar as we go through life. But Jesus then goes on to examine the things in all of our hearts that lie upstream of murder. And they’re every bit as concerning to God as the actual act of killing someone. As Jesus opens these files or these test cases, he’s not presenting a new law or an alternative law to the law of God in the Old Testament. Jesus simply explaining the full implications of the law of God that’s always been there. And if you read the prophets in the Old Testament, uh they do reprove people for wrong behavior, but they also confront people who go through the motions, the religious motions with hearts that are not aligned to God. So God has always seen and cared about the posture of our hearts and uh it isn’t just about uh so Jesus isn’t doing anything really new here. He’s just expanding on things that are already there in the Old Testament. His pattern in opening each of these files is is to compare a common standard limited restricted interpretation of God’s law with a deeper understanding which is a radical thing for the son of a carpenter to do because no prophet or rabbi explaining God’s law would ever do what Jesus is doing here. Jesus says, “You’ve heard it said, but I say to you, unless a rabbi or prophet wanted to get themselves stoned to death, they would never use such a turn of phrase.” But Jesus does exactly that because he’s the songwriter. He’s divine. He wrote the song of God’s uh God’s law and God’s rule and God’s authority. So Jesus has the authority. He alone has the authority to explain the lyrics of the song to us. So he begins with this. You have heard it said to those of old, “You shall not murder.” Whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who’s angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says, “You fool,” will be liable to the hell of fire. So Jesus is just saying here, upstream of murder is anger and contempt that we hold toward others. No one’s ever going to take us to court for being angry with them or for feeling contempt toward them. But in God’s court, in his evaluation, it’s all of one piece. It’s all feels very much like the Tom Cruz movie Minority Report, where those precogs have this prior knowledge of crimes that people are going to commit and so the police can arrest them and send them off to jail before they ever commit the crime. It’s a little like that because upstream of murder is anger and contempt and it’s all in of one piece in God’s eyes. I’ve actually had opportunity to spend a fair bit of time around actual murderers because for several years about every third Saturday afternoon, uh I’d be locked into the chapel of the Edmonton Institution, the maximum security facility northeast of the city. Usually my brother and I would go together and we would lead Bible studies and we would pray and we would worship and fellowship with a bunch of guys, most of whom had killed people. And at first it was a little unnerving the first time or two you go in there as you you get locked in the chapel for three or four hours with these guys and uh and there’s no guard and there’s no one else around and uh these guys have done violent crimes and uh soon though we would just bond over the Bible and we would lead uh several groups through the same experiencing God study that we’re going through as a church this fall and we’d share our needs and concerns. We’d pray for one another and we’d worship together. uh we’d um have some baptisms. We’d uh try to encourage those who were particularly discouraged. And over time, as we came to know these guys, most of them were pretty young, their stories leaked out. And it really was clear to me the connections between murder and anger and contempt. Because most of these inmates were were quite young or at least had been when their crime was committed. They had not uh most of their crimes were not planned or premeditated at all. It was something that someone said in a bar. Someone took offense. It was uh just seeing an opportunity to um to get drugs, to get money, uh maybe under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Whatever it was, uh they share in common with us the same feelings of anger and contempt. The difference and the thing that puts them behind bars for many years, it’s usually maybe they grew up with a lot of violence. Most of them came from a fatherless home, an addiction to drugs, access to a weapon, just possessing a handgun. Those who commit murders, they’re not in a different category than you or I. It’s just that one impetuous moment uh when their anger and their contempt overpowered their restraint and they committed a rash act that resulted in this severe severe penalty in their lives. Late Dallas Willard, he was a philosophy professor and a Christian. He wrote wrote a lot on the idea of spiritual formation and he notes how in its simplest form anger is just a spontaneous reaction that serves a vital function in life. Anger alerts us when our will is obstructed. It raises alarm and resistance before we even have time to think about it. Willard says, “If that was all there was to anger, all would be well. Anger in this sense is no sin, even though it’s still better to be avoided where possible. And we can certainly all think of situations where not being angry would be entirely wrong. We saw a child being abused or a mentally challenged person being bullied. If we didn’t, even without thinking, feel anger, we’d be a much bigger mess inside than if we felt that anger rising up within us. So anger is somewhat involuntary. But it’s when our anger combines with our ego, some chemical reaction takes place and our anger gets put to bad use. is volatile and we use our ego-driven anger to hurt other people. They’ve obstructed our will. Anger is a good anger is a good thing to start our engine with, but it’s really lousy fuel to try to use to get anywhere. Someone has said there’s nothing that can be done with anger that can’t be done better without it except maybe opening a jar. And I think that’s probably true. So Jesus says that our anger and the insulting words we throw at other people, they’re the headwaters of murder. He says just calling someone raqa, which is an Aramaic term meaning empty, or calling someone a fool, in God’s eyes, all of that renders us liable and deserving of judgment. Now, if we were with Jesus on that Galilean hillside when he was preaching this sermon on the mount, we might listen to those words and then want to raise our hand and just ask him a question and say, “Don’t you, Jesus, call people a lot of names like snakes and whitewashed tombs and stiff- necked people and dirty cups? You don’t ever apologize to the Pharisees when you say things like that.” And don’t you get angry sometimes, Jesus? We read in Mark 3 of an incident where people are uh looking to jump on Jesus if he has the nerve to heal someone’s withered hand on the Sabbath day. And Jesus asked the crowd, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” It’s dead quiet. No one wants to venture and answer. They think that’s a trick question. So it says that Jesus looked around with them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart. So if Jesus insulted people and if Jesus got angry, doesn’t that let us off the hook at least a little here? Well, when you think about the metaphors Jesus used for the Pharisees, like cups that were clean on the outside but filthy on the inside, tombs that were freshly painted on the exterior but contained rotting flesh inside. He was describing them truthfully, exactly as they were. The metaphor is hard to hear and hard, I’m sure, to take, but they were accurate. And when Jesus became angry, it was due to the hard-heartedness and the injustice and the soulless religion he saw operating in people around him. His anger was never just a response to a personal attack. So Jesus, I don’t think, had any ego at all attached to his anger. When he was falsely arrested and put before this kangaroo court and spat on and crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross, he didn’t say a word. when he was reviled, he didn’t revile others in return. With parched lips, he said, “Father, forgive them. They just don’t know what they’re doing.” So, the anger that Jesus is talking about here in Matthew 5, I think it’s the kind of anger that Jesus never had, but it’s the kind of anger that you and I have all the time. We have great reservoirs of ego-driven anger all ready to jump to the surface of our lives. And it’s personal, and we’re thin skinned, and it does involve contempt for others, and it’s murderous by nature. and such anger. It’s all around us and it’s all the time. Ecclesiastes 7 tells us that it’s just not smart to make a blanket assumption that the olden days were so much better than the ones they are today than our days today. He says it’s not it’s not true. It’s not helpful. But an equally vacuous argument or assumption would be that our generation is the smartest, the most advanced, the most civilized. uh we’ve got things figured out that no other generation come before us has ever figured out. But we think of our generation and our generation has invented and perfected a technology that monetizes the manipulation of our anger and the contempt we feel toward others. The algorithms, the news feeds, uh they capitalize on the fact that advertisers make more money the more you and I get riled up. And we know exactly how this works. We see a story, gets a little emotional reaction from us, some mild outrage. We click on that, we read it, then we get fed a bunch more stories just like it. They don’t really have any new content maybe or nothing to add. But each time we click on them, we get another fresh little pellet of outrage that comes our way and we feel a little contempt toward those who don’t feel exactly as we feel about uh about things. and and every time we do that, some advertiser makes a little more money off of us. You know, Elon Musk, he’s the wealthiest person in the world. I think this month, he’s going to be finalizing for $44 billion um the purchase of Twitter, a platform that makes most of its money from advertising. And speaking of what would change, when he acquired Twitter, Elon Musk vowed to unlock the company’s potential by advancing free speech. He said, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” I think, could you really say make that sentence with a straight face? I don’t know how you do that. Twitter is the um digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. He texted one of his investors and he said, “Free speech matters to me. Matters most to me when it’s someone you hate who is spouting what you think is garbage.” Now, he doesn’t like Twitter. He doesn’t like any of the rules that aim to curb harassment or hate speech that try to tamp down extremism or misinformation over things like elections and public health. He argues that Twitter’s previous efforts to promote what what it terms healthy conversations are just too restrictive other than spam accounts and those who explicitly advocate violence. He’d like to welcome back all those folks who previously been banned from the platform. And those who study social media and study these networks fear that this is just going to open up new floodgates of toxicity, new levels of misogyny and racism, abuse and misinformation. They look at alternate uh platforms that are out there right now and they see that people gravitate to those platforms because they can participate in those cauldrons of abuse and misinformation and they fear that Elon Musk’s changes to Twitter will just usher in more of the same. So it doesn’t look like Twitter is headed toward becoming a kinder, gentler place to relate to people. and his notion of free speech. It seems like a pretty thin disguise for masking the very things that Jesus is warning us about here. Author Ralph Deelli writes of how the news is designed to keep our opinion volcanoes bubbling. As a result, we form all kinds of opinions about things we don’t know much about, things that don’t concern us, things that can’t be fully answered, things that require much more in-depth thinking. We just develop all kinds of opinions on that thing. And as we consume the news and our opinions keep erupting, he says if we just back off the news a little bit, our opinion volcanoes will stay a little more dormant. Long before our internet, 2,000 years ago, the Roman emperor stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote to those who form opinions without due consideration. He says, “You are at liberty not to form opinions about all and sunundry, therefore sparing your soul unrest, for the things themselves demand no judgments from you.” So we see here again how Jesus’ words in the sermon on the mount, they go against the grain of our modern culture. And we might convince ourselves that anger and contempt are relatively innocent emotions and that they lie a long way upstream of murder. But Jesus wants us to know that the same moral danger runs the whole path of that waterway. So then Jesus recommends a spiritual practice in our lives that will help us navigate our murderous hearts. To conclude this first file or test case, he says, “So if you’re offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift.” So he gives us two scenarios that require radical commitment to reconciliation. The first involves coming before God with an offering. This is a spiritual sacred act. But something’s up in one of our relationships with someone else. And God says, “You want to give me something today? That’s fine. I’d love you to do that. But I’ll wait while you first go and reconcile with that brother or sister who has something against you.” Spoke those words to a group of northerners, to a group of people from Galilee, and they had no means to offer a gift or sacrifice in their local Jewish synagogues. So the offerings could only be made at the temple in Jerusalem. So we have this picture of a northerner taking 3 or so days to travel 125 kilometers south to the capital city getting their calf or their lamb or their pigeon or their grain sacrifice ready. They shuffle through the lineup in the temple till they’re suddenly at the front and a face comes to mind before them. The face of someone the worshipper knows has a problem with them. And Jesus doesn’t specify or seem to care at all whether the person has a legitimate beef with us or not. Maybe we did something to offend them. Maybe we did nothing to offend them. To God, none of that seems to matter very much because that person who has something against me, their life is being chewed apart by unrest and anger and their turmoil and the unfinished business in our relationship, it’s hurting them. And so God would like us to take opportunity to diffuse that in their lives. Maybe we can give them that opportunity. Maybe we need to apologize. Maybe we don’t. But if we can step over ourselves and just try to erase any feelings of offense, then God would have us rather do that than just offer our sacrifice or our worship to him. You know, there was nothing easy about this for Jesus’ original hearers. They couldn’t just take up their phones and just text the person a sad face emoji and figure that was all that would take care of things and clear things up. If you think about it, they would have to leave their animal or their sacrifice in Jerusalem with someone, trekk back up to Galilee, track down the person, try to have a conversation with them, and get things right, and then finally return down to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifice. That whole ordeal would probably cost them a week out of their life. But Jesus isn’t apologizing here for any inconvenience. It’s a hard application for us because it involves humbling ourselves and maybe feeling a bit of a fool at times. I’ve had times when I’ve felt convicted about something I’ve said and and uh I felt I need to go to someone and ask them to forgive me. And sometimes they have no idea what I’m talking about and they’re not carrying any offense at all. Other times they might not be ready to admit that they’re carrying an offense against me. But a radical reconciliation is what Jesus is looking for from us. Romans 12:18 says, “If it’s possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” In Hebrews 12, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Second scenario Jesus gives very much like the first except the context shifts from unresolved relationship while trying to come before God to having an unresolved relationship that’s headed for court. And Jesus says it’s a real good idea for the plaintiff and the defendant to head things off before the judge comes into the courtroom and decides things for them. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you’re going with him to court. lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly, I say, you’ll never get out until you’ve paid the last penny.” Now, Jesus isn’t he’s not giving us free legal advice here, but he’s simply reinforcing his point. Don’t allow bad relationships to remain unresolved. Every relationship’s important to God. So the negative side of this passage this morning is uh to avoid murder, anger and contempt and try to deal with that as much as we can in our lives. Positive side is pursue radical reconciliation whenever one of our relationships turns sour. And if you think how Jesus pursued radical reconciliation with us in Romans 5:10 says when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son and were saved by the life of his son. And the radical reconciliation that Jesus enacted with us, it happened because he allowed people like us to pour our contempt all over him. And uh and he allowed us to pour our anger out all on on him. and he allowed us to murder him in cold blood on a Roman cross. So in asking us to refuse anger and pursue reconciliation with those uh who don’t like us in all those things Jesus did did them to a cosmically greater degree. So he made a way to forgive us for us to have an opportunity to put our faith and trust in him alone so we could enter his kingdom and then emulate his love and concern for people who didn’t like him. two fairly obvious implications I think that we can take away from Jesus’ words this morning. One is just to honestly consider if there’s someone in this room or out there who might be holding something against us. And if the Holy Spirit brings someone to mind, we don’t know if we can retrieve or recover that relationship. But as as as as much as it depends on us, we can try we can try to live at peace with people and try to resolve the relationships that uh that have gone astray. That includes flesh and blood relationships. It also includes our virtual relationships on social media. Those are real people with real feelings at the other end of the conversations and they read the comments that we put out. And we have really no less responsibility before God with them than we have to those that we see face to face. Second implication from this passage is to be very discerning and work at cutting off our anger at the source. That may seem pretty backward for us to think of stepping away or moving backward from our consumption of TV news or internet content or modifying our browsing habits and and using more discretion. And we’re all so used to this stuff now and we enjoy all the benefits of our wired world. But we shouldn’t assume that the benefits don’t bring along some real significant dangers wrapped up in it as well. CS Lewis wrote on the subject of what he called chronological snobbery which he defined as the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that was whatever has gone out of date on that count is discredited. So he just said we need to discern. He said we need to ask questions like why did that idea go out of date? Was it ever refuted? If so, by whom, where, and how conclusively. In other words, he says you need to determine if an old idea is false before you reject it. We would not want to say that everything believed in an ancient culture was false. Which things are false and why? And which things remain true. So he’s just saying that our idea of cultural progress needs to be critically evaluated. And he he senses as he says that that someone’s going to come his way some objection and say, “Surely you’re not telling us that we should turn back the clock. Not in our century.” Lewis responds with this. As to putting the clock back, would you think I was joking if I said that you can put a clock back and that if the clock is wrong, it’s a very sensible thing to do? But I’d rather get away from the whole idea of clocks. He says, “We all want progress, but progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you’ve taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road. And in that case, the one who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” He says, “We’ve all seen this when we do arithmetic. if I started a sum the wrong way, the sooner I admit this and go back and start over, uh, the faster I’ll I’ll get on. He says, there’s nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on. So sometimes the most progressive thing that you and I can do is to stop our forward motion, step back, evaluate, retrace our steps so we can get back to the place where we made a wrong turn and get on the right road again and we just can’t blindly trust our technology to lead us forward into progress. And if we have a sense this morning or if we know all too well that our technology is manipulating our anger and our contempt toward others, then going backwards is the only progressive thing for us to do. So Jesus wants us to imagine and inhabit a righteousness that’s so internal, so deeply a part of us that when we look at people who we know don’t like us or who we don’t like, our first response is one of reconciliation. Let’s just pray that God would give us eyes to see and open us up to that. Jesus, it cost you so much to be reconciled to us and we poured our contempt and anger and murder on you. Thank you that you made a way to forgive us. Thank you that uh when you call us to inhabit a very inner righteousness, it’s not something that you uh don’t inhabit yourself. And so I pray if there’s even in our time this morning, if there’s a face that you want to bring before us or a name you want to bring to mind of an unresolved relationship in our lives, I pray that you would give us the conviction and the courage to take the radical steps of doing as far as it depends on us, doing what we can to reconcile that relationship. Pray you’d give us such a commitment to knowing that when we come to church, when we bring an offering and our worship to you. It’s more important to you that we resolve relationships that uh that have gone sour than it is uh to offer our sacrifice of worship to you. Pray all of this would infiltrate our lives and our minds and our hearts and uh we would find ourselves thinking about our lives and thinking about our technology and thinking about the way we interact with other people and uh if progress means going back I pray we’d be very progressive people and we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.