Text: Matthew 5:21–26
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
A Liturgy For Wrath
One of the things that you have heard me say, and will continue to hear me say again and again behind this pulpit, is that God’s instruction to us is not a straitjacket, but rather the removal of one. God’s thou shalts and his thou shalt nots are not fences to keep us from joy. They are fences to keep us from falling into sinkholes.
Sometimes, his instructions are painful up front—like setting a broken bone is painful. But they are always better than leaving the broken bone unset. So it is today in our time in the sermon on the mount.
My goal today, as we take up the next section in Jesus’ sermon on the mount, is that we would see the canker sore, the gangrene, the hidden infection of grudges, anger, bitterness, strife—and all sorts of related ills—healed, washed, bound up, and set right. Go ahead and look with me at Matthew 5:21. This is the Word of the Living God:
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
So if you are 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, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are 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 to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”
-Matthew 5:21–26
Thus ends the reading of God’s Word; may he write it on our hearts by faith.
This part of the sermon is very neatly divided into a two-part structure: In verses 21 and 22, Jesus gives a doctrine, then in verses 23 to 26, he gives its application. To put it another way, verses 21 and 22, he tells us “This is true.” And then in verses 23 to 26, he tells us “So this is what you need to do about it.”
So I’m going to mold this sermon around that shape. First, we’ll take up that this-is-true part, the doctrine of verses 21 and 22. Then, we’ll take up the so-go-and-do-this part, the application of verses 23–26.
Framing the Doctrine
Look again at verse 21, and we’ll take up the doctrine:
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
-Matthew 5:21–22
The first phrase in this section, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder…’” signals that Jesus is going to give us his exposition of various laws of the Old Testament. This particular one is from Exodus 20:13, the Ten Words, or Ten Commandments.
It’s important that we frame this teaching by making sure we remember its context in the sermon on the mount. There are three things I’d like to note in that vein. First see that…
1. Jesus isn’t contradicting or correcting the Law.
Remember what Jesus has just told us in verses 17–20. He is not here to abolish the Law.
And we could add, nor is he here to contradict it. Jesus isn’t here to contradict, correct, or alter the Law of God, but explain it, deepen our understanding of it, and give us a broader view of its requirements. Remember, Jesus is the word of God. As such, he doesn’t contradict himself.
Some have said that Jesus is merely correcting the Pharisaical misconstructions of the Law. That’s not the case, though. He quotes verbatim from the Law, not from a human commentary on it. He’s not necessarily correcting the Pharisees’ teaching (though he certainly does do that along the way), but rather pressing down into the Law that God spoke through Moses and showing us the inadequacy of a wooden, surface-level understanding and obedience to it. Specifically, in our text this morning, he’ll show us that obedience to the sixth commandment requires not only keeping our hands from shedding our brother’s blood, but also maintaining fellowship with our brother.
2. Jesus speaks with divine authority—the Word incarnate.
The way Jesus frames his teaching in this section is intentionally placing himself in the seat of God. He says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old… But I say to you…”
Who is it that spoke to those of old on Mount Sinai? God!
Who is it that is speaking now on this new mount?
See? He puts himself in the place of God. God spoke at Sinai. And God is now speaking in his Son—through the incarnate Word. On Sinai, God was discarnate; he did not dwell with man, but thundered in glory on the mountain in smoke and fire. But now, in Christ, he is no longer discarnate, but incarnate. And he again lays out the way of blessing and righteousness for his people.
So, number three,
3. He hasn’t changed the subject.
He is still proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven—a Kingdom where the meek are blessed, where the peacemakers are blessed, where the poor in spirit and the reviled for his sake are honored.
This isn’t a new topic. It’s as if he’s anticipated the potential question, “Ok, so what does it mean to be meek? To be a peacemaker?” And so he responds, “Let me explain. Don’t be ruled by anger.”
He is explaining further what that righteousness would look like which surpasses the “righteousness” of the scribes and Pharisees.
The Doctrine: Why is Anger so Serious?
Let’s get into his doctrine now, his teaching on the sixth commandment.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
-Matthew 5:21–22
Is anger itself an evil? That would be an obvious question to ask, right? Jesus says that anger can get you sent to Hell! So we need to start there and make sure we get it right, whether or not anger itself is evil. The biblical answer is exceedingly clear: Mere anger isn’t an evil.
God gets angry—though he is slow to anger. He is said, over and over again, to be slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. But God gets angry—even full of wrath—throughout the Bible:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”
-Romans 1:18
“Even at Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you.”
-Deuteronomy 9:8
“And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice…”
-1 Kings 11:9
“Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight.”
-2 Kings 17:18
“The LORD was very angry with your fathers.”
-Zechariah 1:2
Jesus gets angry. In Mark 3:5, he is angry at the hardness of heart in the Pharisees, that they would rebuke him for healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.
He gets angry when the house of the Lord is turned into a marketplace, driving out the moneychangers with a whip he made himself.
He gets angry in Matthew 23:17, calling the Pharisees blind fools—the very same word he warns against using here in Matthew 5.
God sometimes points at human anger and says, “This is right.” For example, Moses in Exodus 11 goes out from Pharaoh in hot anger, and Moses is also said of God to be the meekest man on earth.
Anger isn’t inherently wrong. So why does Jesus warn us so strongly against it, here? Why is anger so dangerous that it can send us to Hell? Especially if Jesus himself displays righteous anger, even calling some fools!
We start to see the answer when we see that it is in the nature of anger to move us. It moves us to act.
It can move us, for example, to good. Righteous anger, righteous indignation, can move you to oppose evil. To say a word in defense of anger, remember again: Jesus got angry. And Jesus was moved by that anger to righteous action. May we so be moved! May we get angry when we ought to be angry! May we hate what is evil! May we become indignant, may we be provoked, at the wickedness of the wicked!
The teaching isn’t “Don’t ever get angry.” So what is it? There’s a clue in the Law that I think will help:
“You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
-Leviticus 19:17–18
The heart of the Law, Jesus teaches us, is the right love of both God and neighbor. Again, there it is in Leviticus. This isn’t a new teaching in the New Testament. And one of the chief enemies of this right love is human anger and what it produces sinfully. Did you see it there in Leviticus 19?
“Don’t hate your brother in your heart.”
Ok, why would I hate him?
One answer given in the text is that you hate him because you bear a grudge against him. You’re angry with him for something he’s done. That’s why God warns the people “…not [to] take vengeance or bear a grudge,” and instructs them rather to “…reason frankly with him, lets you incur sin because of him?”
Do you follow? The scenario is that we are annoyed at someone for a slight, a wrong, an injustice, whatever it is. And the temptation is to stew and sit in that anger—refusing to deal with it directly, frankly, and quickly. And so that anger—and notice that it’s not even said that the grudge is for something that isn’t real!—grows into a sin that you incur because of him.
Here’s what is so dangerous about human anger, the reason that Jesus points it out and warns us against it and connects it to the commandment not to murder: It doesn’t stay put. It moves us. And because we are sinners, it often moves us to sin.
Even righteous anger can move you to sin—specifically to sin in the same way someone is sinning when they commit murder. It moves us to strife, to conflict, to hatred of a person, to nursing grievances and picking at old hurts like a little boy might pick at a scab on his knee, getting a kind of weird pleasure from the bloodletting.
Anger is only safe for the righteous, because only the righteous know how to rule it, to make it bend the knee to the God of justice and mercy. Our anger tends to bend towards vengeance and away from mercy. Listen to Proverbs 15:18 and Proverbs 29:8,
“A hot-tempered man stirs up strife,
but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.”-Proverbs 15:18
“Scoffers set a city aflame,
but the wise turn away wrath.”-Proverbs 29:8
Anger inside the hot-tempered man doesn’t stay put, doesn’t say there in his heart, but boils over into the stirring up of strife. When does murder happen? In the field of strife. But the wise man is slow to anger. He doesn’t set cities aflame, but rather turns away wrath and quiets contention. And even worse, this kind of anger and strife is contagious. Proverbs 22:24–25,
“Make no friendship with a man given to anger,
nor go with a wrathful man,
lest you learn his ways
and entangle yourself in a snare.”-Proverbs 22:24–25
Don’t be friends with a hothead. You’ll become just like him.
Parents, you and I need to soberly consider this: Our children are learning from us how to respond to inconvenience by the way we respond to them when they are inconvenient.
The proverbs warn against befriending a man prone to anger, lest you become like him. Our children have no choice, though, as to who their parents are. They are stuck with us. Will they learn anger at our feet?
Thinking about kids and the anger that is common in all of us in parenting our littles, I think we can agree that sometimes our anger is a fig leaf for our own failings. We often get mad at our kids for being un-self-controlled, rude, unkind… and so we get angry with them.
We don’t realize that what we’ve just done is to teach them to deal with inconvenience with rage, shortness, annoyance, and anger. Which leads to more anger, shortness, and rudeness from them. And so we get angry… See? It’s just a fig leaf for our own failings. We don’t realize we’re getting angry at a mirror.
So here’s the bottom line: Anger is something that must be dealt with quickly. Remember Leviticus 19? Don’t harbor hatred for your brother, but rather reason frankly with him. Deal quickly with this emotion, because it is a spark that can either burn hot like a lamp, giving the light of justice to a situation, or it can burn down your house with you in it.
We must deal quickly with it, because as Peter Leithart says, “Anger doesn’t stay put.” It moves either to justice or to sin. But it doesn’t stay in one place. The admonition of Christ, then, is to make sure that anger doesn’t grow up into strife, malice, murder, and bitterness.
Don’t sit and stew in it and let it do what anger does when it stews—which is to curdle and rot and sour and become an evil thing.
What’s an Angry Man to Do?
That is the doctrine: Anger is prone to unrighteousness. Specifically, anger easily moves us to sin in violation of the spirit of the 6th commandment against murder.
Now, let’s look again at verses 23 to 26, and we’ll see what the Lord would have us do about it, that is, how he would have us respond as citizens of this Kingdom of God he is building and invites us to participate in. Verse 23,
“So if you are 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, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are 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 to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”
-Matthew 5:23–26
This is a very simple application: When you have sinned in your anger against someone, when you have fallen under the condemnation of the 6th commandment, making yourself liable to the council and the fires of Hell, what would Jesus have you do?
Do you want to know? Because I do. Man, I sin this way so often. My kids are listening tot me preach this. They know. So often, in my pride and arrogance, I get annoyed and frustrated and short so quick with them. I have nursed wounds into gangrene in the dark parts of my mind, turning over the mean things someone said about me until it is a grudge and a rock to haul around.
Can you identify? So what would Jesus have us do? I want to know. I hope you want to know.
The answer is simple. He would have us be clean. The answer is confession, repentance, restitution, reconciliation, and insofar as it’s up to you, restoration of fellowship, living at peace with all men.
That’s it. If you remember that your brother has something against you, go be reconciled. This is, he says, more important than even the important things, things like religious duties. We might say, even more important than coming to worship on the Lord’s Day to sing loud, receive the supper, hear the Word. It’s that important.
So listen: May we obey this injunction. May we be doers of this Word. May we be a people who go out and do this hard, good work of reconciliation. Because the warning here is that if we won’t be a repentant people, we may not be God’s people. We may be in danger of Hell, of imprisonment until we pay back a debt we can never pay back.
A Liturgy of Wrath
I’d like to leave us with something very practical to think about as we think about obedience to both halves of this text—the avoiding sin part and the what-to-do-when-we’ve-sinned part.
I’ll call it “a liturgy of wrath,” meaning a kind of order of service for what to do with anger.
1. Be slow to anger.
A Christian’s fuse ought to be long.
“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
-James 1:19–20
This is the evergreen aim we are looking for, Refuge. Being unoffendable, hard to anger, slow-fused, jovial Christians. We remember what we’ve been forgiven before getting enraged or easily offended.
2. Quickly classify your anger.
As soon as frustration, anger, annoyance, or wrath peeks out from from behind the curtain, you need to capture it and figure out which kind it is.
What am I mad about?
Am I justified to be angry?
Where in Scripture would I go to show that my anger is just?
Am I deceiving myself, hiding, or playing fast and loose with the facts to justify my anger?
Am I blaming someone else for my own failings? Like the dad who doesn’t discipline his kids, then gets mad when his kids are undisciplined?
Is my anger just or unjust? If unjust, it’s a thing to be quickly captured, repented of, confessed to God, and put to death. It’s a thing to put a collar on and brought before the throne of God to be put down. If it is just, or righteous anger, then I still need to put a collar on it, make sure I deal with it quickly, soberly, and not let it drag me into sin. Even if I think I am justified in my anger—whether that anger is annoyance or full out wrath—I would be served by asking, number three:
3. Ask, “Can I cover this offense?”
Proverbs 19:11 says,
“Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
-Proverbs 19:11
It is glory to not get offended at the drop of a pin. Can I overlook this slight? This wrong? Can I simply put it away from the offender? Look, God does this for us all the time. His slowness to anger doesn’t mean that he isn’t just, won’t deal with all wrongs in their time—he will. He will bring all things to perfect justice, whether on his cross or in Hell.
But God is slow to anger, overlooks offenses patiently, endures offense. It is a glory to overlook an offense. Are you easy to offend?
Ladies, are you always boiling under the surface at your husband and your kids for 10 different things they do, don’t do, say, don’t say—whatever? Put it to death. If you can’t do that, if you can’t overlook it, then…
4. Move quickly and in accordance with Scripture.
The Scriptures are the tracks that keep us from flying off the cliff in responding to our anger. If we cannot overlook an offense, and our anger is just, then we need to move quickly and in accordance with God’s Word to get to fellowship.
Move quickly to confession, forgiveness, restitution, and forgetting.
Have I stolen? Repay.
Have I gossiped? Confess and ask forgiveness
Have I lied? Come clean.
Have I hated? Make peace.
5. Get back in fellowship.
In dealing with anger, Jesus teaches us that the restoration and maintenance of fellowship is chief.
In his allegorical look at heaven and hell in The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes Hell as a place where unregenerate, immortal sinners are able to instantly wish themselves further away from anyone who bothers them. The result is an infinitely increasing isolation of person from person, until each human in Hell is so far away from all other people as to never have the hope of being with another person again.
When a brother sins against you, bothers you, annoys you—whatever it is—Christians don’t get to fix the problem by jettisoning the person. No, we either have to “cover the offense” in the way Proverbs speaks, or we need to deal with it head on, with the goal at hand being the restoration of fellowship.
Gossip is not a Christian response—talking to someone else about your problem with someone rather than that person.
The cold shoulder is not a Christian response.
Shunning is not a Christian response.
Leaving a church whenever someone bothers you is not a Christian response. And in Utah, you’ll run out of churches in about 6 weeks anyway. That’s why there is a band of bitter, roving Christians, who have left every church in the area in anger—because of course, it’s all the churches that are the problem, not themselves.
Whether it is your kids, your spouse, your neighbor, your brother or sister at church—whomever it is—our aim is to be in fellowship insofar as it is up to us. I’m sure there are things maybe that we all have to deal with in our own hearts before God in response to this teaching of Christ. Let’s go to the Lord now and ask for his help in doing so.