Meditation May 18, 2020

Matthew 5:21-26

21“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, ^a and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister(without cause) will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

23“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

25“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

I am taking more time on this section of the Sermon on the Mount than I ever anticipated. Undoubtedly that is because it has hit me where I need to be hit. I suspect if most of us could hear past comments played back to us or would read again some of the things we have posted on various social media, we would have to confess it is correction we sorely need.

Yesterday I was surprised to discover there was much more to be said about this segment of the Sermon on the Mount than I had anticipated. I will blame that in part on the fact that I don’t recall I have ever heard sermons on this segment that gave it more than the passing recognition that Jesus is teaching that God judges a man’s heart and not just his actions. Thus later, when men come to Jesus saying Lord, “We have done this and done that, we are going to be in paradise with you now, right?” He is perfectly consistent with His teaching when he tells them, “Depart from me. I never knew you.”


Here, Jesus, has just taught the beatitudes. In the beatitudes He lists the characteristics of the blessed, not what they need do to become blessed but what they are having been blessed. God has made us alive (made us blessed) by grace through faith; not works. (Eph. 2:44) We are His handiwork, a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). As it was in the beginning so it is in the new beginning that God has made us and not we ourselves. (Psa. 100:3) In the beatitudes, Jesus is describing that new creation, a new character, that which constitutes a new heart and a new creature. He then makes that personal. In vv. 13-16 He speaks of you who are the new creation; you who now have these characteristics. You, He says are salt and light in the world. And in so saying He clearly implies that apart from believers the world is normally without salt and light. It doesn’t take genius to deduce from that that if we see the world about us rotting in darkness, we need to examine not the world but ourselves.


Beginning with v13 that we looked at yesterday, Jesus begins to put flesh, as it were, on the characteristics of believers. A believer is not a person who is abstractly poor in spirit, mourning, meek, a peacemaker but a believer is such a person in fact and in deed. That means there are definite things a believer does and there are definite things a believer does not do. Jesus is now teaching those with a Jewish background, those who have grown up with a  knowledge of the law of God as a measure by which the gauged their conduct and their standing with God, and turns now to law to explain it as it is; not as they suppose it to be. Having in the beatitudes shown the character of a believer to be of the heart, of the inner man and not of the external deeds of religious fidgeting, He now begins to show that sin is of the heart.


Thus, He says, “You have heard”; i.e. you have been taught by the scribes, Pharisees, Rabbis etc. that you shall not kill, an outward act, the taking of another person’s life. Yes, you had heard that and Yes, that is correct you should not do that.  “But I say” if you are angry “without cause” you are just as guilty of murder as if you had laid them in their grave. Laying them in their grave is the ultimate outcome of the violation but violation lies elsewhere and is no less subject to judgment. The violation lies in unjust anger, i.e. anger that has no cause - an excuse perhaps but no cause.


Anger, in and of itself is not sin. Jesus was angry. In the Bible, God is said to be angry. Matthew Henry has this explanation: The reason God planted “this passion (anger) in the mind of man is to rouse him to an immediate defense of himself when suddenly attacked, and before his reason would have time to suggest the proper means of defense.” Anger becomes sin when we let it act when there is no real threat, i.e. without cause or when we let anger, defense act beyond that which is necessary to protect life.

Without, at this time, getting lost in the details of anger, suffice to say the point is that anger without cause is a violation of the new character you have as a believer, Anger without cause is contrary to being meek and a peacemaker.

The Jews were a narrow interpretation of the law. We generally are given to the same interpretation; i.e. to kill is to unjustly and physically take the life of another person. Jesus is showing that murder is a matter of the heart and one that does not necessarily take the physical life of another. Not only are their violations of the commandment “You shall not kill” that do no not entail taking the physical life of another but the implication is that they are the worst of the violations. Jesus says, “again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, Raca, is answerable to the Sanhedrin.” The Sanhedrin had the jurisdiction to impose death by stoning. I suppose, once one is dead, the manner of death is of little consequence; nonetheless, we all recognize there are manners of death we would prefer to others. In considering death, I much prefer a nice peaceful lethal injection to being tied to a post eaten at leisure by a wild beast or flayed or slowly roasted. Besides that, there are manners of death, like that of the Roman crucifixion, that are particularly ignominious and leave a taint on any memories of a person for as long as any memories of that person last. Such was stoning. 


Now, Jesus says, such a judgment and punishment, death by stoning, a painful, ignominious death, will be faced by those who say of their brother or sister, Raca. The exact meaning of Raca is unclear. Most think it meant empty headed, vain or useless. Some say it was an Aramaic expression of disgust which had no real meaning apart from the fact that it was and expression of disgust. That comports well with Augustine who says he was told by a Greek that it probably had no real meaning per se but was simply an expression of disgust; a sound one made to express inexpressible disdain as if on hearing another person’s name one spat on the ground as if to clear having even entertained taking the other person’s name into his mouth. It is as if the person in question is considered so far beneath us that a fit description is impossible and the very thought of attempting to form such a vile description is an abomination that gives a bad taste in the mouth. 


I was blessed to learn this lesson as a kid in high school - I would like to say I learned it better than fact will allow me to say – when my Mom corrected my indiscreet tongue. There was in the town in which I grew up, the town prostitute. It was known to everyone from grade school on up that this woman was a prostitute and not just a prostitute but an undiscriminating prostitute. There is no way to tastefully describe the depth of depravity to which she had fallen. Almost all those in grade school in the fifties in the little southern town where I grew up had absolutely no clue what was meant by a prostitute other than that whatever a prostitute was, it was something that was not good for a person to be. Nonetheless, this woman was so well known to be a prostitute that she had become a byword for those from grade school to adults. If you wanted to call someone a bad name, you would say “You Suzie” – not he prostitute’s real name. One day I made the mistake of letting that slip out in the presence of my Mom. “Son, I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. She is wrong but God made her.”


That is the sin Jesus is dealing with here; i.e. the sin of failing to recognize and respect the image of God in man. It is not so much a sin against the person per se, - though it is that –

And yet worse. of still greater worthiness of judgment and severe punishment was to say of a another, “you fool”. Whoever says that “will be in danger of the fire of hell” or as it is as it is a veiled charge against God that He made a mistake in breathing into such a worthless creature the breath of life. Murder is despite for that which God has created. It may take the form of taking another persons life or it make take the form of an indiscreet tongue or thought of the heart. The one, Jesus is saying, is no less murder than the other.