Audio Transcript:

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Pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are a loving God. We thank You, Holy Trinity, that You are a relational God. And we thank You, Lord, that You have created us in Your image for relationship with You and with one another, and we do confess and we repent of the fact that we have sinned against You, therefore that relationship has been broken. And we've sinned against each other, and we do have broken relationships, but through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, through the grace that You offer, through the forgiveness that You offer, there is potential for reconciliation. Show us today the ways of reconciliation, the ways of forgiveness, the ways of mercy and grace. Show us from Your Holy Scripture, Jesus, that You fulfilled the law, that You were never unrighteously angry, that You never insulted anyone, You never insulted in a way to hurt their humanity. Instead, Lord, You taught the ways of life. And show us, Lord, that if we have broken relationships, if there is sin in our relationships with one another, there is definitely sin in our relationship with You, and that we are to lay down our offerings, lay down our worship even, and go and seek reconciliation.

And Lord Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, continue to make us peacemakers seeking peace with You, seeking peace with one another, and extending peace to those who are not yet at peace with You. Bless our time in the Holy Scriptures, and we pray all this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

We're going through the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever preached, Jesus Christ. And here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, after calling His disciples to repentance and to follow Him, He shows us how we enter into the Kingdom of God, which is through confessing that we are spiritually bankrupt, poverty of spirit, and mourning over our sin, and growing in meekness, which is submission to God in His Word, and then also hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Jesus shows us how we can be reconciled with God. And then, in this text, in our text today in the Sermon on the Mount, He shows us that we are to seek reconciliation in our relationships with people. Loving God, "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind," we get it. That's great. Loving God. He's awesome. He's perfect. Loving someone who's perfect, steadfast, immutable, He doesn't change, not fickle, okay, we get that part. And then, God tells us, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Oh no. God's never living in Boston. That's the hard part. People are great. When our relationships are great, when things are going great, it's great.

And then, when they're not, it's awful. It's heartbreaking. Today, we're going to talk about this connection between anger and hatred, and insults in terms of our relationships with people. Do people ever make you mad? Do you ever get fed up with people? Do you sometimes wish that certain people just weren't? Just didn't exist? Stalin famously said, "No person, no problem." And he also said, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." That mindset of, "I wish this person were not," that's the incipient form of genocide. That's where it starts. And this is exactly what Jesus Christ is talking about is talking about today. This is the first of six paragraphs in which Jesus takes a moral law and He says, "You have heard that it was said by those of old," and then, He brings in the true meaning of the law, the fullness, and this is part of what it means that Jesus fulfilled the law, that He absolutely, completely obeyed it, and He also brought the fullness of the Word. He kept the law, and He told us that, if we are to be followers of His, we are to repent of our sins.

And one of the ways that we know we're true followers of the Lord is that we want to fulfill His commandments. You have a deep desire for true, better obedience than that of the Pharisees. And what He does in these six paragraphs is He sets up a righteousness that the Pharisees were teaching, a righteousness that's common to people, and then a true, deeper, more abiding righteousness, the righteousness that Christ fulfilled, but it's also a righteousness that he demands of us and He doesn't just demand it. He works it into our hearts and our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what we talked about this week. He gives us this law and we realize we can't fulfill it. And then, that brings us to asking Him for grace. He gives us that grace, which now empowers us to live according to His law. And no one does it perfectly, therefore we need Jesus, who does empower us.

This whole segment, my wife and I yesterday were talking about the sermon, and she's like, "What are you preaching on?" I said this, and she said, "Ha, good luck." And I said, "Can you please help me with this?" And she said, "Oh, great." We sat for a good hour and she told me about, "This is how you do it. Don't get angry with people. And when you say bad words, you've got to repent right way." And then, like an hour goes by and I hear her screaming at my kids, because it's bedtime now and they don't want to go to bed. In the Russian language, calling children the names of livestock, that's just a thing, you just do that. My parents did that, so we just do that. And I was like, "Baby, you can't just call them goats. We just talked about this. You can't." I can go into more graphic detail when she's not here. The first service, I'm like, "Yeah, I've still got to live with this person." But I also preached the sermon, and she's got to apply that, too.

Okay. That's the cycle. Perfection, you can't do it. Jesus, grace, back, back. This is what we're talking about today. Matthew 5:21-26. Would you look at the text with me? Matthew 5:21-26. "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; and 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 into prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny." This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word. May we write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points to frame our time. First, we'll talk about love and law. Then, we'll talk about how lovelessness is equal to murder, tantamount to murder in the heart. And then, three, that love takes the first step. Love and law. Matthew 5:21. "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.'" Jesus does not say, "You have read what is written." He says, "You have heard what is said." Why is that important? Because whenever Jesus quotes the Word of God, He said, "It is written." He says that over and over. "It is written." That's the Word of God. Here, He's not saying you have read it was written. He says, "You have heard what was said," meaning He's not contradicting the Word of God, He's contradicting the interpretation, the oral tradition from the rabbis and the Pharisees over the previous centuries. And what the rabbis did was, they would look at God's law and they would say, "This is impossible to fulfill, so we're going to make it a little more approachable, a little more doable," and they would interpret in a way where the heart wasn't even necessary to fulfill the law. Love wasn't necessary. You could fulfill the law according to the tradition of the Pharisees just through outward behavior.

For example, this commandment, it's not as visible, but we'll get into it later. They would say, "You shall not murder. Period." Meaning, if you do not kill a person physically, then you have not contradicted this law. Period. What they didn't understand was, and what they didn't want to understand is when God gives a law in the negative, this is a law that says don't do a certain thing, He assumes, He enjoins and it entails that you do the positive thing. "Thou shall not kill," but the positive side is, "Thou shall care for life and stand for life, and thou shall love your neighbor as yourself." It's not as visible here. We'll get into that. But it is more visible in Matthew 5:43. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" You have heard that it was said. Well, where is it written, this whole sentence? Well, the first part written, "You shall love your neighbor," is Leviticus 19:18. But not once in the Scriptures does it say, "Thou shall hate your enemy." That's a rabbinical tradition, interpretation because they said, "Oh, the law tells us to love my neighbor, but what if my neighbor is my enemy? Well, if my neighbor is my enemy, then I can hate him." That's a human idea foisted upon the text.

That's why Jesus comes in and He contradicts this rabbinical interpretation, pharisaical approach, because the pharisaical approach was to always take God's Word and to lessen it, to relax the true demand of the law, which is love, and to make obedience a little easy, a little more accessible, a little less demanding. That's what we see, if you go throughout church history, this is a pattern that we see over and over and over. A lot of people would look at the church and say, "We've got to grow the church. We've got to get more people inside, and the way we're going to do that is to make the message more palatable. Let's not talk about the hard stuff, let's just talk about the easier stuff." And what happens is, they emphasized the easier things and they minimized the harder things, the things of the heart. So, they did that here with do not murder. If you didn't actually take an innocent person's life, then you fulfilled the commandments. If you didn't stick a knife into a heart, then you're good. If you didn't pull the trigger, then you're good.

And they did the same thing with the next paragraph, which we'll get into next week, that if you didn't actually sleep with someone who is not your spouse, then you didn't commit adultery. And Jesus comes in and says, "No, it's not just about outward behavior. If you have lust in your heart for a person who is not your spouse, you have broken this commandment," and that's what Jesus does with this one. The murder. He says, "Do you have anger in your heart or hatred in your heart?" And what Jesus is doing is going deeper into every dark, shadowy crevice of our hearts. The Pharisees wanted to worry about sins, just breaking rules. Jesus wanted to worry about sin. He wanted people to worry about sin. A lot of people worry about what they do with their hands, and Jesus said, "It's not just about the hands, it's not just about your body, it's about your thoughts." You can contradict God's law in your thoughts and your desires. That's where Jesus is going.

And the other thing that the Pharisees did is they would create this merit system to counterbalance their sin. This is why they loved rules and they would invent rules. If you broke God's commandment of, "Thou shall not commit adultery," well, if you do enough other stuff, if you give enough to the temple, if you make enough sacrifices, if you do enough of the cleansing and the ablutions of the Old Testament, then you're good. And if you can accumulate more good stuff than bad stuff, you're fine. That's where we are as a culture. "Are you going to Heaven?" "Well, yeah. I think so. I'm a good person. I've done more good than bad." That mindset, that pharisaical mindset, and this is why Jesus hammered the Pharisees all the time, that mindset gets you to a point where you don't need Jesus. Why do I need a redeemer to die for my sins? I'll just do more good than bad to get into Heaven. And this is the way that we tame sin in our culture. Most of us haven't killed anyone. Most of us haven't stolen anything major. Most of us haven't slept with anyone's spouse or never lied in court. And Jesus says, "What about the heart? Where is your heart?"

And this is Matthew 15:19. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, and murder, and adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person." Eating with unwashed hands, these are manmade rules that they would add to the law of God, and they would focus on the manmade rules because I can do that, but the heart, that's impossible. Focusing on the heart gets me to a place where I realize that I am a broken sinner and I need repentance and forgiveness. Jesus cared about the spirit of the law, not the letter, because the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

And I start here, where Jesus wants us to get to the point where the law is to bring us to a point where we realize our heart is full of sin. And it does that by showing us that the heart of the law is love, and I have not loved God perfectly, I have not loved people perfectly. That's where Jesus starts, and He contradicts the pharisaical mindset of just doing the outward thing, because if you can approach the next part of the text pharisaically, where Jesus says, "If you call anyone a fool, you are liable to the fire of hell." You can look at that pharisaically and say, "Okay, I won't call anyone this specific word, fool, but I've got a lot of other words that I can call anybody." Yeah, you get it. So, Jesus here is fighting the pharisaical mindset of, "I've done enough," and He wants us to get to a point where we really do look at the depth of the darkness of our heart, which is to bring us to the cross of Jesus Christ.

The sixth commandment, it does prohibit premeditated murder, but that's not where it stops. "Thou shall not murder," that's the sin of commission. Don't commit murder. But also, there's sins of omission. Do not omit, what? To care for people and love people, and stand for life, and be pro-life from the womb to the tomb. Same thing with the other commandments. "Thou shall not steal." The positive side of the commandment is, "Thou shall care for the belongings of others, and thou shall be generous, and thou shall provide for those in need." The law wasn't just to prevent bad behavior, but also to promote good behavior. When it comes to, "Thou shall not murder," we ask, "Why is this commandment here?" Is it just because people are important? It's more than that. Why is this commandment here? People are important. Why are people important? Why does God say that people are important? Because people are created in the image of God. People image forth God. So, what God is saying is, "Every single person is Mine. They're created in My image," therefore, when you dehumanize someone with words, or with anger, you desire that they were not. What you're doing is, you are marring the image of God. You're trying to get rid of an image bearer. That's why that commandment is so important.

When we love people, we are loving the God in whose image they are created. That's why point two is lovelessness is equal to murder, tantamount to murder. In verse 22, "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; and whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire." The modern standard of goodness, when you try to share the Gospel with someone, you're like, "I'm a sinner. You're a sinner. We're all a sinner. We all have transgressed the commandment of God," and people push back and they say, "No, I'm a good person. I've," what's the next sentence? "Never killed anybody. Never killed anybody." And this is actually very convenient, because Jesus says, "Actually, no. You have. You are a homicidal maniac in your heart every time you get on 93 and 95. Every single time." Some of us, we have committed genocide in our heart by being angry at just nations of people, or races of people, or ages of people. This is what Jesus is saying. In the heart level. This is where God is judging. He's not just judging the act, He's not judging what you've done, He's judging the things that you hope for in your heart.

So, it's actually possible to kill someone in your heart, or with your tongue, and no one around you ever even knew that you disliked the person. He's talking about murder in the heart. Murder with the tongue. Why is this important? Because anger is incipient murder. That's a seed form. What kind of anger are we talking about? There's two words for anger in the Greek. There's thymós. Thymós is the quick burst of anger, anger that surges and then subsides. When you lose your temper, but then you regain everything, that's thymós. That's not the word that's used here. The word that's used here is orgē. It's the deep-seated animosity that seethes. It's something that you feed. It's a long-lived anger over which you brood. You nurse this anger. It's anger that you fan into flame by reminding yourself over and over how this person has hurt you, how they've wronged you, how wrongly you've been treated. This is the anger that Jesus is talking about, where we devote energy and intense activity to this. And this anger is destructive. It's murderous in character. There's people in your life that, after a falling out, you haven't talked to for years, but you think about them daily.

There's perhaps family members with whom you haven't spoken in months or years. This is the anger that leads married couples to a place where you can't but divorce. It's an anger that has a corrosive effect on your heart and on your health. And it starts young. The whole bullying endemic, or pandemic, this is a big deal where kids learn that words hurt, and they throw words at one another, hurtful words, like daggers, in order to hurt. Anger in and of itself isn't necessarily evil. It's not always wrong to be angry. Sometimes it's wrong not to be angry. There's legitimate forms of anger. God Himself is indignant with evil. Psalm 7:11. "God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day." This is Jesus Christ making a whip and tossing the tables of tax collectors and moneychangers. Theologians say He probably did this twice, once at the beginning of His ministry, and once at the end. Nor is it wrong for humans to be angry at those with whom God is angry at the things that they do. It's healthy to feel moral outrage at injustice in the world, at racism. We are to be angry at racism, as we are to be angry at abortion.

Our problem is our indignation and anger is not at sin or injustice, but usually it's when people offend us. It's a personal anger. It's when someone does something to slight my ego, and that's where my anger takes on. When Jesus was personally offended, He made the whip when He was offended for God's glory, there's an indignation against God's glory where these moneychangers weren't allowing people to come in and worship God. They were inhibiting people to worship God. He was doing that for God's glory. But when He Himself personally was offended, He didn't become angry. When He was unjustly arrested, when He was unfairly tried, when He was illegally beaten, contemptuously spit upon, crucified, mocked, what came out of His parched lips was, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." I Peter 2:23. "When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly."

Martin Luther said, "An anger of love, one that wishes no one any evil, one that is friendly to the person but hostile to the sin." Jesus is referring to that kind of ... That's the righteous anger. He's referring to an unrighteous anger. He says, "Whoever is angry with his brother," and then He goes from anger to insult. They're interconnected. Anger to insult. And here, whoever insults, it's the word rhaka, it just means nobody. It means indifference. It means good for nothing. It's demeaning, denigrating, disdain, contempt for the other person. And you're not just saying, "You're a nobody," that's not the spirit of this word. He's saying, "I wish you were not." That's what the word means. This is what it means to insult is, this is the absolute worst form of hatred, which is indifference. I am indifferent. I wish you were not. And you're like, "I've never really done that," well, every one of us has. Every single one of us.

My first year of marriage, my wife and I, we've been married now 14 years, my first year of marriage, this is the way that we would fight. She's from Ukraine. I'm from Estonia, former Soviet Union. We are really good at Cold War fighting. Cold War fighting is, you just don't talk to each other. We would do this for days on end. Just not one word. And I would look at her. I'm like, "You're so good at this." And we're at a point now where it's like, we're 15 years in and we don't have the energy to do that, or to seethe with this indignation. Nah. I'm sorry. You're sorry. We're all sorry. Okay. Let's keep going.

I remember one time, my sister was, I think first year of college. I was a sophomore. We decided to buy a car together. We decided that it's a good idea to go splitskies on a car. We got a Nissan Ultima. Dark green. Still remember it. And the idea was she would use it part-time, I'll use it part-time. And it turned out that she used it like 99% of the time and whenever I needed it, she couldn't get it to me. I got so livid at her, and she wouldn't change, that one time I came home and I wrote her a note. I taped this note on her door to her bedroom. I wrote, "Have a nice life. Meh." And we didn't talk for like a year. That's the anger that He's getting at, where it's like this person does not exist. You might not do that to an individual, you might do it to groups of people. In Boston, people pretend children don't even exist. I feel like people treat dogs better than children when you're out and about. People call dogs, "This is my son, and I'm a dad to this." Don't do that, because words matter, and that's your dog.

Ageism, where it's like a certain age of a person, now you no longer like. "You are not a category of a person to me." That's the dehumanization that he's getting at by saying the insult, rhaka. And then He says, "If you call someone a fool," mōros, what does Jesus mean here? Because Jesus often calls groups of people fools. He calls the Pharisees fools. Matthew 23:17. "You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?" Luke 24:25. "And He said to them, 'O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!'" Jesus does use this term, fool, but then He says, "Don't call your brother a fool." What's going on here? Well, like I said in the very beginning, it's a matter of the heart, the posture of the heart. Is your posture of heart in saying a certain word towards a certain person, is the posture full of love or hate? Are you hoping to be helpful or hurtful? Jesus is saying, "I want to help you Pharisees. I want to turn you from the way of folly to the way of wisdom."

The whole book of Proverbs is about this, about groups of people who are fools, that it leads to brokenness of life. He wants to turn them from that by calling a spade, a spade. It's all about the heart. Heidelberg Catechism says, "I am not to dishonor, hate, injure, or kill my neighbor by thoughts, words, or gestures," important to emphasize that, "And much less by deeds." This is what Jesus is talking about, this anger that leads to insults that leads to name-calling, verbal abuse. Did you know that murder is not one of the deadly sins? Which doesn't really make sense. Why wouldn't murder be one of the deadly sins? Murder isn't, wrath is. It's this anger that gets you to the point where you don't want this person to exist, and Jesus says, "Be careful," because that anger that's a hellacious anger, and that's why He connects all this, anger, hatred, insults, calling someone a fool, He connects it with hell. Liable to judgment. And then, He talks about fires of hell. Hell of fire, Gehenna. What He's referring to is a garbage heap outside of Jerusalem. Famous garbage heap. At one time, this is where human sacrifices were made to the pagan deity, Moloch, and then King Josiah comes in, makes religious reforms, and now it was just a garbage heap.

But even at the time of Jesus, when the Romans decided that a person was unworthy of burial, they would bring the person to this garbage heap and they would be burned. Jesus is saying, "This is a visible representation of hell, of a place of eternal conscious suffering where, if you do not repent of this sin, if this sin wasn't paid for on the cross of Christ, this sin will be paid for for all of eternity in hell." Why does He say that? He's talking about words, calling someone a fool, insulting a person, anger at a person. The penalty for that is hell. And Jesus says, "Yes, because in insulting an image bearer of God and dehumanizing a human, you are sinning, transgressing against a holy God, in whose image they're made." This shows us the importance of repenting of our sin and turning to Christ.

And it also shows us that we've got to be very careful with our words, because you can break a person with words. Proverbs 18:14. "A man's spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?" There's warnings all throughout the New Testament about this kind of anger. Galatians 5:19-21. We have the fruit of the flesh. "Now, the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God." Meaning, if you struggle with these fits of anger, that is a sign that you potentially are not yet a regenerated believer, a sign that you do not have the Holy Spirit, and it's a sign that you need to repent of sin and turn to Christ. Ephesians 4:26. "Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil." He's saying, "This anger, unrighteous anger, if it's allowed to fester, it gives Satan the opportunity to come in and stick his finger into it, exacerbating that anger, leading to more brokenness in relationships."

Ephesians 4:31. "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice." James 1:19-20. "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." Angry thoughts, insulting words may never lead ultimately to murder, but in God's eyes, they are. They're tantamount to murder. I John 3:15. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Hate is the acorn of murder that, when fertilized and nurtured, can lead potentially to even murder. And the difference is only quantity, not quality.

Here, at this point in the sermon, I'm going to ask you some heart-searching questions. And whenever I listen to a sermon and the pastor says, "I'm going to ask you heart-searching questions," I'm like, "Oh no. Please don't. Two X. Two X. Four X." This is important. Have you ever wished someone were dead? Even yourself. Even anger at yourself. Desire like, "I never asked for this." It's like when kids throw this around, "I wish I were never born." Right there, that is anger toward self, and it needs to be repented of. Suicidal thoughts, you are thinking of killing an image bearer of God. Or even angry thoughts with yourself. Or perhaps it's a relative, or someone close to you. Do you ever say anything just to hurt someone because you know this will hurt? Do you ever take secret satisfaction at another person's misfortune? That's usually a sign that there's an anger or hatred toward them. Do you have an enemy? Someone you are out to get? Do you want to make someone pay for what they've done? Do you ever get so angry that you are out of control? And really, the thing you've got to look for, the canary in the coal mine, is words. Words. When you want to speak things out loud about certain people, that's a sign that there's things going on in the heart that need to be repented of.

Finally, point three is, love takes the first step. What are we to do with that? We are to repent of that anger, the desire to insult. But then, also, the flip side is, we are to make sure that we don't provoke people to anger. There's two things going on here. Don't be angry with another person, but also don't provoke. And that's what's going on 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 into prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny." The second part is a metaphor where He's going from it's an argument from lesser to greater. If the severity of human punishment is so great, how much more so is punishment of God? He uses that metaphor.

The other metaphor that He uses is one of worship. One legal system, one of worship. And the urgency is so important. Both urgency. If you're going to court, if you're getting sued, you settle so you don't have to pay the ... Especially if you're guilty. And then, with worship, as you're worshiping God, as you're doing the most important thing that we are called to do, there's nothing more important than worshiping God, as you're worshiping God, if you realize that someone has something against you, you are to drop everything, everything and the most important thing, and go and seek reconciliation with the person. Reconciliation isn't guaranteed. As far as it depends on you, you go and you seek reconciliation. Note several things here. It's not a question of whose fault it is. That question is irrelevant. Jesus doesn't single out the guilty party. He insists that both parties take initiative. That's what He's doing here. Each is responsible to make the first move. This is really important.

Whenever I do premarital counseling, I tell every couple, "You're going to get in fights. You're going to get in so many fights. Here's what you do. And listen, this is very important." And they're like, "No, we're getting married. We love each other. We are going to be the exception to the rule. We are going to do it." And I'm like, "No, you're going to get in fights." I do that thing, and after a while, I'm like, "They'll come back for me. We'll chat." This is what I say. I say, "Husband, you are the leader. You. The onus is on you. Jesus, when He saw that we had sinned against God, Jesus, He was perfect, but He's the one that comes and seeks reconciliation. But whenever I do that," and my wife loves listening to premarital counseling, because she's like, "Oh, good. You needed that reminder," but when I do that, I'm like, "Oh, next fight, I've got to be the first one to say I'm sorry. But it's her fault. It's always her fault."

But then, this text, I found out there's a loophole. Men have to lead. Husbands have to lead, but the responsibility is still on both. Man's got to lead, yeah. You've got to do that. You've got to do it. But when the man isn't leading, when the husband isn't leading, the responsibility is on the wife as well. And I see that from Matthew 5 and Matthew 18. Matthew 5 is, "If someone has something against you." You're not even sure. Did I sin against you? What did I do? You go and you deal with it. Matthew 18 is, "If your brother has sinned against you." On the one hand, you have offended, and I'm going to go deal with it. On the other hand, I have been offended. On both sides, whatever happens, the responsibility is on whom to go and seek reconciliation? On you. That's really, whenever you get in a fight, on whose responsibility is it for reconciliation? Me. I am to initiate reconciliation. That's what's going on. And obviously, the hope is both of you are tremendous Christians and you're filled with the Spirit, and you got in a little fight, and then you meet halfway. That's really the hope. And you hug and kiss, and everything's fine. But usually, it's going to be one or the other.

The other thing I just want to mention here is, as we look at this law, as we look at these rules, you have to feel the weight of the impossibility of it, and that's kind of intention. The intention of the law is to be like a mirror where you look into the mirror and you see imperfections, but the law is helpless to fix the imperfections. This is where the law is to bring us to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins. He saw that we are not reconciled with God. He comes and He dies on the cross for our sins. Why did that need to happen? That needed to happen because we insulted God. Remember when I said that to insult someone is to so dehumanize them, you wish they were not? Well, every single one of us has, at some moment, at some point, wished that God were not, which is the greatest insult to God. To wish that He were not, to wish that He were not on His throne, to wish that He were not King, to wish that perhaps He didn't create you, to wish that He did not have moral commandments for you. We have insulted God that much.

And most people, we live as if God doesn't exist. That's how indifferent we are to God. That's how calloused we are to God. God seeing that, that we insulted Him, God comes, and for the people that insulted Him, for His enemies, He lives a perfect life, Jesus Christ, for people that want to murder God. He goes and He lives a perfect life. And then, on the cross, He actually, physically allows people to murder Him as He bears the weight for our sin. The wrath of God. Why does Jesus Christ do all of this? Why does He say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?" Why does He do that? To forgive us. To give us mercy. To give us grace. The very moment that we repent of our sin, of our anger, of our insulting people, of our insulting God, that very moment, He forgives us completely.

Now, if you are a Christian and you know that I've insulted God, but He forgave me, and while I was still an enemy, He died for me, as you see what's happening on the cross, next time someone wrongs you or sins against you, you look to the cross. Yes, this person has insulted me. Yes, this person has sinned against me. How much more so have I sinned against God? So, you go back to God, you get some more mercy, and then you extend mercy to this person. That's how the Gospel gives us strength to keep going.

A few other questions here at the end. If someone has something against you, is it because of something you've said or done, or is it because of something you shouldn't have said or you shouldn't have done? Am I to blame? Have I taken sufficient steps to be reconciled? And if not, am I willing to humble myself and make contact before I take part in Communion today? This is what Jesus has before us. Before we transition to Communion, I said that when God gives us a commandment there's a negative part, do not murder, there's the positive part, love your neighbor as yourself.

And here, I'll end with a quote from Martin Luther, who said this, "This commandment is violated, not only when a person actually does evil, but also when he fails to do good to his neighbor, or though he has the opportunity, fails to prevent, protect, and save him from suffering bodily harm or injury. If you send a person away naked when you could clothe them, you've let them freeze to death. If you saw someone suffer hunger and do not feed them, you have let them starve. Likewise, if you see anyone in similar peril, and do not save him, although you know ways and means to do so, you've killed him. It will do you no good to plead that you did not contribute to his death by word and deed, for you have withheld your life from him and robbed him of the service by which his life might have been saved."

Heidelberg Catechism. "Is it enough then if we do not kill our neighbor in any such way? The answer is no, for when God condemns envy, hatred, anger, He requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to show patience, gentleness, mercy, and friendliness toward him, and to prevent injury to him as much as we can, and also to do good to our enemies."

That said, we transition to Holy Communion. Holy Communion is given to us as a reminder of what Christ did on the cross for us. For whom is Holy Communion? Holy Communion, Lord's Supper, is for the repentant. It's for those who have repented of sin and turned to Jesus Christ by grace through faith. If you are not a Christian, if you have not repented of sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It'll do nothing for you. But if you do repent of your sins today, right now, in prayer to the Lord, you can partake. And then, it's for the repentant Christians, or Christians who have repented of sin. If there's any unrepented sin in your life, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service, or repent of that sin today in prayer.

Before we take part, I'm going to give us an opportunity to pray. And pray in particular about people whom, perhaps you have hurt, or people who have hurt you, and we can pray about that and seek reconciliation from the heart. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank You for grace. We thank You that, though when we were enemies, You died on the cross for our sins. We thank You for the mercy that you extend to us, and we pray, Lord, if there's anyone in our life now that comes to mind whom we have hurt, perhaps with words or with deeds, we repent of that sin and we ask that you send reconciliation to that relationship, healing. Or perhaps, Lord, there's people who have hurt us, and we hold a grudge against them. I pray, Lord, take that weight or that grudge from our shoulders, from our hearts, and give us a freedom, freedom to forgive them, since You have forgiven us. Lord Jesus, we thank You that You died physically on a cross, bearing the weight of our sin, and that Your blood was poured out in order to cleanse us from the inside, to gives us new hearts, hearts that beat with love and obedience to You. Bless our time in Holy Communion now. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

If you haven't received one of these cups and you'd like to partake in Communion, just raise your hand and one of the ushers will help you. One in the back here. Two in the back right there. And for the rest, you can take the top little piece of plastic off. Grab the bread, and then pull the second piece of plastic off. "On the night that He was betrayed, Jesus took the bread, and after breaking, He said, 'This is my body, broken for you. Take, eat, and do this in remembrance of Me.' He then proceeded to take the cup, and He said, 'This cup is the cup of new covenant of My blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of Me.'"

Jesus, thank You for the grace that You extend to us, and I pray that that grace is not in vain, but as Saint Paul said, he worked harder than all of them. It wasn't him, but the grace of God in me, so we pray that You give us strength to fight the good fight, and to work out our salvation and love our neighbor as ourself by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.