REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Repeat the verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” (Heb. 10:14) HAVE SOMEONE COME FORWARD AND EXPLAIN THE CHART.)
FLIP CHART: Go over John Stott’s outline of SOM. Show that 5:17-20 was an introduction to a Christian’s righteousness.
INTRODUCTION:
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.‘ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
“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.”
“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” (Mt. 5:21-26).
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
1. Review of the Six Anti-Theses
2. Form and Content in Matthew 5:21-48
Since the “axial age” mankind has been asking the question, “How should we live?” The quality of life desired by the founders of the great religions, the Greek philosophers and the Hebrew prophets was “righteousness” (dikaiosune / dik-ah-yos-oo’-nay) which is defined as “true inner goodness” or “moral excellence.” In the six anti-theses of Matthew 5:121-48 Jesus continues to describe true inner goodness and moral excellence.
MURDER & ANGER ON THE SAME PAGE? (Pt. 2)
I. REVIEW OF THE SIX ANTI-THESES
These six illustrations are sometimes referred to as six anti-thesis because they are contrasts of two ideas that are in opposition to each other. Statement / Anti-statement; Concept/Anti-concept
(1) Prohibition against murder – Warning against anger.
(2) Prohibition against adultery – Warning against lustful thoughts.
(3) Regularization of divorce – Permanence of the marriage
(4) Oaths = truth telling / lying – Integrity = truth telling.
(5) Retaliation / revenge – Reconciliation thru creative suffering.
(6) Hatred of one’s enemy – Loving one’s enemy
“Jesus was contrasting His teaching – and the true teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures themselves – – with the Jewish written and oral traditions that had accumulated over the previous several hundred years and that had so terribly perverted God’s revelation” (MacArthur, 285).
II. FORM & CONTENT IN MT. 5:21-48
“What ‘killed’ the Wesleyan movement was people taking Jesus’ teaching – in which he refuted general rules without establishing new ones – in the Sermon on the Mount and turning them into legalism.” (Dallas Willard in Christianity Today, Sept. 2006, pg. 48)
QUESTION: If the Sermon on the Mount is not primarily about providing us with heavier rules and more exact interpretation of the Old Testament law, what is it about?
1. The spirit/content not the letter/form of the law must be our primary focus.
“Surely you desire truth in the inner parts (being) ….”(Psalms 51:6)
“Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart”…. (I Sam. 16:7)
“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”…. (Mt. 15:19)
“…greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’” (Mark 7:21-23).
“Even when our worship services are infused with the greatest meaning in the world, e.g. the Lord’s Table, it is so easy for us to participate as a matter of habit. We can worship on autopilot and forget the true meaning behind the things we do. We can walk into church week after week and never seriously consider the moral condition of our heart” (Abbreviated from a quote from “Danny Hall” on the internet).
2. Conformity to the law is more than just actions.
Ill: Did the law or a policeman ever instill in you a love for driving the speed limit?
3. The law contains both positive as well as negative values.
4. The law is to be used as a means of developing spiritual character.
5. The law is not an end in itself, but a means by which we come to know God.
ILL: (Read from Blink the highlighted portions in pages 21-32) Dr. John Gottman, University of Washington’s Psychology Laboratory: “… they assign a SPAFF code to every second of a couple’s interaction, so that a fifteen minute conflict discussion ends up being translated into a row of eighteen hundred numbers. … On the basis of these calculations Gottman has proven that if he analyzes an hour of a husband and wife talking, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later. …. Gottman has published a 500 page book titled The Mathematics of Divorce. … One of his finds is that for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a given encounter has to be at least five to one … A central argument in Gottman’s work is that all marriages have a distinctive pattern, a kind of marital DNA, that surfaces in any kind of meaningful interaction … Gottman has found out that he can find out much of what he needs to know just by focusing on what he calls the Four Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, contempt and criticisim.” (Blink, pages 21-32).
QUESTION: Which of the “Four Horsemen” – stonewalling, contempt, defensiveness, criticism is the most important of all in determining the outcome of a marriage? (If you have read Blink you are not allowed to answer.
III. ANGER LACED WITH CONTEMPT
Last week we mentioned that the Greek term for anger in this text is “orgizo” which has to do with brooding, simmering anger that is nurtured and not allowed to die. It is seen in the holding of a grudge, in the smoldering bitterness that refuses to forgive” (MacArthur, 294)
“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”
What does “Raca” mean?
“Raca” describes a tone of voice with an accent on contempt. To call a man Raca was to call him a brainless idiot, a silly fool, an empty-headed blunderer. It is the word of one who despises another with an arrogant contempt.” (Barclay, 139).
Other synonyms = nitwit, blockhead, numskull, bonehead, bird brain.
What does “Fool” mean?
The Greek term here is moros (from which we get moron) and means a moral fool. It refers to a wicked and reprobate individual, an apostate. It is not a judgment of one’s head but of his moral condition. By using such terms the angry person was acting as a judge and consigning the individual to hell. It would be similar to saying, “You brainless idiot and moron, go to hell.”
We are not forbidden to use the word “fool” but we are forbidden to use it in venting our rage to belittle and demean someone.
Jesus uses moros to describe the foolish man who built his house on sand in Mt. 7:26.
Raca expresses contempt for a man’s head = you stupid! Moros expresses contempt for his heart and character = you scoundrel. (A.B. Bruce).
Jesus here condemns angry contempt and all its cousins – animosity, malice, malevolence, wrath. … Jesus is seeking to make a point … and the point is this, all such contempt and animosity can land a person in Hell (Hughes, 101)
The terms used here are the harshest terms of abuse used in that society and to find true equivalents in English we would have to shift to gutter language, e.g. “That person is a piece of &*#@*.”
Contempt is communicated by more than words e.g. by a sneer, a rolling of the eyes, a wagging of the head, gestures etc.
QUESTION: What are some of the words we use to show contempt?
Moron, loser, sap, mousy, rat, louse, pond scum, ape, pig, dog, snake, skunk, reptile, beast …. animal names.
QUESTION: Why does contempt make anger and rage so much worse?
It seems from our text that anger that finds its outlet in contempt is the worse form of anger.
1) Contemptuous anger makes a person an “incipient murderer.”
“Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (I John 3:15).
“Sociologists and psychologists report that hatred brings a person closer to murder than any other emotion. And hatred is but an extension of anger. (MacArthur, 293)
You may never have been in a fist-fight in your life but you may still possess a murderous spirit, a spirit of angry contempt for another person.
A contemptuous man may never have committed a murder but he is a murderer in his heart (Barclay, 141).
2) Murder kills the body; angry contempt kills the soul.
If a person were only a body, then the idea of murder would be limited to just taking a physical life. But a person is more than a body. He has an eternal soul. Angry contempt kills that soul.
A rhyme says “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” The reason the rhyme was developed in the first place was to protect against words that hurt and hurt deeply.
Words of contempt can injure for life. Some of us are still struggling with contemptuous phrases that were thrown at us in the past, venom that killed our spirit, our self-confidence. This contempt reacts like acid and poison in our spirit. Every one of us, if given time to think about it, can list some name you were called when a person treated you with contempt.
Contempt kills a person’s self-worth, dignity, spirit. And contempt is not limited to words. We have the phrase, “If looks could kill.”
3) Angry contempt makes a person a “non-person.”
Thus the Muslims call Jews pigs and apes, just like the Nazi’s did in the WW II. It is easier to kill a pig or an ape or a rat or a snake or a mouse.
Those Jews who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, some of whom He has transformed into monkeys and swine… (Koran, Sura 5.60)
In one of his sermons, Saudi sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, imam and preacher at the Al-Haraam mosque – the most important mosque in Mecca, beseeched Allah to annihilate the Jews. He also urged the Arabs to give up peace initiatives with them because they are “the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs.”
Angry contempt dehumanizes a person and destroys the very essence of who a person is.
The true nature of this verse is challenging the anger that attacks through spoken words the very essence of who someone is.
“Contempt is closely related to disgust, and what disgust and contempt are about is completely rejecting and excluding someone from community” (Blink, 33).
“Gottman has found, in fact, that the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or a wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system” (Blink, 33).
ACTIVITY: Take a few minutes at your table and discuss how you would explain the command against murder in the light of the “Five Principles that are the Foundation for a Christian’s Righteousness.”
1. The spirit/content not the letter/form of the law must be our primary focus. (What would be ‘form’ and what would be ‘content’ in the prohibition against murder?)
2. Conformity to the law is more than just actions. (What does the commandment against murder challenge us to investigate?)
3. The law contains both positive as well as negative values. (In the light of what we have been studying, what is a positive value from the commandment prohibiting murder?)
4. The law is to be used as a means of developing spiritual character. (In this case of the commandment against murder, how will it help us to develop our spiritual character?)
5. The law is not an end in itself, but a means by which we come to know God. (How does the commandment against murder help us know God better?)
IV. MAN, THE CROWN OF GOD’S CREATION
God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name.
Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs that drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble.
I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way?
Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,
bright with Eden’s dawn light.
You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,
repeated to us your Genesis-charge,
Made us lords of sheep and cattle,
even animals out in the wild,
Birds flying and fish swimming,
whales singing in the ocean deeps.
God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.
(Psalm 8)
Verse 5:
“You made us a little lower than yourself …” (Contemporary English Version).
“And cause Him to lack a little of the Godhead” (Young’s Literal Translation>”
“Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden’s dawn light” (The Message)
We were knit together in our mother’s womb under the observation of God, “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed body” (Ps. 139:13).
He made each of us with a will, emotions, intellect, the ability to create, the ability to imagine and to reflect. He made us immortal. He made us with the ability to accept His love and to love Him back. He made us like himself. He made us just a bit lower than himself. We narrowly missed being gods. We have been made in the image of God, the highest honor imaginable.
Ill: A Jewish legend tells of a young rabbi named Simon Ben Eleazar who had just come from a session with his famous teacher. The young man felt especially proud about how he handled himself before the teacher. As he basked in his feelings of erudition, wisdom, and holiness, he passed a man who was especially unattractive. When the man greeted Simon, the rabbi responded, “You Raca! How ugly your are. Are all men of your town as ugly as you?” “That I do not know,” the man answered, “but go and tell the Maker who created me how ugly is the creature He made.”
CONCLUSION
READ: Rumors of Another World, pages 191-195 about the “Elephant Man.
When we show angry contempt / contemptuous anger for another person we move ourselves into a class of murderers, for we are sneering at and disdaining God’s creation, creatures who are the apple of His eye, ones who have narrowly missed being gods. We are murdering them by dehumanizing them.
The only adequate warning to give to such a person is to say “You are in danger of the fire of hell” (Mt. 5:22)