The Ancients Were Told #1

I'm going to start by reading something to you, and then we'll figure out why in a moment. There neither is forgiveness of sins without repentance, nor can forgiveness of sins be understood without repentance. It follows that if we preach the forgiveness of sins without repentance, that the people imagine they have already obtained the forgiveness of sins, becoming thereby secure and without compunction of conscience. This would be a greater error and sin than all the errors hitherto prevailing. Surely we need to be concerned, lest as Christ says in Matthew 12, the last state becomes worse than the first. Therefore we have instructed and admonished pastors that it is their duty to preach the whole gospel and not one portion without the other. For God says in Deuteronomy 4, you shall not add to the word nor take from it.

Now, does anyone know who said that? Martin Luther said that. Now, why would I read you a quote from Martin Luther? Murmur, murmur, murmur. Because it's Reformation Day. Well, whenever we have these sorts of days, I wonder, am I supposed to stop my normal sermon series thing I'm doing and take time, a detour, a scenic route through some other land? And this week I thought, what would Luther want you to do? What would Luther do? Well, I read you that quote because that's what Luther wants me to do and you to do. He wants us to hear the whole counsel of God. He wants us to not think that there is forgiveness without repentance. And he says that that's the pastor's job. Your job is to do this work. And so I think that if we had a reformer, if it were possible to have a reformer come back and preach to us, and we said, Dear Mr. Reformer, it's Reformation Day, and we want to commemorate the hard work you did some 500 years ago in standing for God's truth against the pressures and the powers that be. We'd like to take a day to remember all the work you did. I think what he'd say is, don't do that. Do what I did, which is preach the truth. Preach the gospel. Carry on.

And so this week, we're going to be continuing in our study of the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to be in a new section. In this section, Jesus addresses six different laws, if you will, or sections of the law. And his aim is to explain them in greater detail. And by doing that, he's going to expose the religious leaders' failure to understand and to teach their followers the law of God. As we work our way through this section, which is the rest of chapter 5 in Matthew, it's important for us to remember that the things Jesus is saying here are not theoretical or abstract theological discussions. He's not saying, well, here was the law and you understood it, but what I want you to know is that there's a greater understanding that you need to aspire to. Now, it is true that there is a greater understanding that the people need, but it's not so that they have the knowledge in their head. That actually wasn't Jesus' point. He wasn't holding a systematic theology class on the side of the mountain.

His primary concern wasn't that they had all their theology straight. He was concerned with how those people lived in light of the true nature of God, which is what God's law shows us and teaches us. He says, I want them to know the law of God so that they know who God is, so that they live in accordance to it. He was concerned with how they lived, not simply with what they knew. And so my hope is that we will come to see the true nature of God's law, of God's character, and that we wouldn't just brush it off as though it's inconsequential to our faith.

And so there are going to be six sections, and I decided that while they're all going to be titled, the ancients were told, we'll just work through them a section at a time, or we would have a very long passage to read each week and only be dealing with a very small part of it. And so this morning we're going to be studying just the first section, and that section focuses on murder, the sixth commandment. And what I hope you come away with this morning is a clearer understanding of the sixth commandment and how you regularly break it. Now, we're not going to make it all the way through this passage this morning. We'll come back to it next week. So this is a bit of a, you may feel at the end of the sermon that it's a bit of a cliffhanger and that I haven't resolved all of your tensions. If I can have until 2 p.m., I can resolve all of your tensions, or try to. But I don't have until 2 p.m. So we'll come back next week and hear the rest. But this week, the goal is simply for us to understand the sixth commandment and to see that we break it. Okay?

Our text this morning is Matthew chapter 5 verses 21 to 26. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. You have heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court and whoever says to his brother you good for nothing shall be guilty before the supreme court and whoever says you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So Jesus is taking something that is very familiar to the people. They would have known the 10th commandment, or not the 10th commandment, the commandment you shall not commit murder is the 6th commandment out of the 10 commandments, and probably the one that is, we would think, is the worst. If we could say, it would be really, really, really bad to do these things. We have murder and adultery, stealing and lying.

covetousness, and we'd say, if you had to say which one was the absolute worst, you'd probably say murder. And so Jesus takes this commandment, this awful, awful sin, and wants to teach the people about it. He says, you've heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. When he says that, he's saying, this is what you've always been taught. The ancients were told, our fathers, our forefathers, way back when, this is what we've been told they were taught. You shall not commit murder, and if you do, there will be consequences. You'll be liable to the court. Murder is not without judgment. And so this would have been the basis for their understanding. The law punishes murder, and everyone would have understood that being liable to the court for murder would mean that the consequence would be being put to death because murder was a capital offense. Now, before we get too far into murder,

I want to say to you that not all killing is murder. Sometimes there may be in an older translation, the King James, this would not be translated as, you shall not commit murder, but thou shalt not kill. Okay? And so there is some discussion of murdering and killing. And I want to say to you that not all killing of another person is murder. In the Westminster Larger Catechism, the question 136, the question is asked, what are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment? Meaning, what does it say we can't do? Ought not to do. How would we break it? And it says, the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are taking away the lives of ourselves and of others, except in the case of public justice, lawful war, or necessary defense. The neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of the preservation of life. And so there was in that answer three things that are killing but are not murder. What were they?

Public justice. He's saying that there is such a thing as sins or crimes that are worthy of death. And if that person, the defendant, is found guilty, that to put them to death, to take their life, to hang them, to stone them, whatever they would have done at the time, would not be a violation of this commandment. The second category was lawful war. And the third was necessary defense, meaning self-defense. If someone is threatening you, it's not a violation of the sixth commandment for you to defend yourself with the means necessary to preserve your own life, even up to taking the life of your attacker. Those are the three times when killing is not murder. When the judge does it or orders it, in times of war, and there's a greater discussion there about when and who is liable to be killed.

without being murdered in war and necessary self-defense. All other killing of another person would be a violation of the sixth commandment. And note that the first thing that they say is that there's to be no suicide, no taking of one's own life. There's also not to be any killing in anger or withdrawing the things necessary for life, okay? So one place you would see this in our society today, this type of murder would be in withdrawing palliative care from people who are suffering and who are dying, or maybe dying, or may just not get back to a standard of living that, or a quality of life that we deem worth living. And so things like withholding food and water from someone in a persistent vegetative state, someone like Terry Shivo, so many years ago down in Florida, is a violation of the sixth commandment. It is murder, according to God's law.

Unfortunately not according to our laws and our land. So the things forbidden are suicide, killing of other people in anger, or killing them by neglect. The things that are not a violation are death based on a judge convicting them, in war, or defending yourself. In each of those cases, the death wasn't wrong, it wasn't murder. And it's very important for us to understand that because death is something that we... have shielded from our eyes, and it's something that happens without any consideration. A lot of times, life now is something that we view as voluntary. If people want to live, or if you want someone else to live, then it's okay, and if they don't, then that's okay too. This would be how we would describe abortion. So not all killing is murder. Jesus says, you shall not commit murder, and whoever does shall be liable to the court. So with this understanding, With what I've just said to you, are there any murderers here? Were there any murderers where Jesus was speaking? I think by and large, many people would say, according to that definition, no. I've never done those things. I've never killed myself. That's sort of obvious. I've never taken the life of somebody else, either in anger or by neglect. I've not done that. And that's the end of the story.

in their minds. Now, is that the end of the story? And is that all that's entailed in this commandment? No, when I read you that, when I was reading to you, I only read you the first half of the answer. We'll come to the rest of the answer later. The rest of the answer is based on what Jesus says in the rest of our passage and in other places. But Jesus is bringing this up and speaking in this way first to deal with, you've been told that this is what murder is. It's taking your own life or somebody else's life. That's it. And if you do that, then you'll be liable to the court and you should be put to death. And they, like we, sit there and go, I've never done that. I never would do that. I can't envision where I would do that. And yet that's not true. There's a great lack of understanding of what the commandment actually requires or forbids that leads us to think we've never broken that law. I remember when we were ordaining our first elders, I'll give you an example of how we do this sort of thing.

When we were ordaining the men and they were being trained, one day Joseph gave them, he took the qualifications of elders and he listed them all out, you know, from 1 Timothy and Titus. List them all out. Dan's shrugging his shoulders because he knows what's coming. Rate yourself from 1 to 10 on each of the commandments of how, like, you know. How bad you are at this or how good you are at this? Like how much of a struggle is it or how, you know, free of it? Well, you go through them and it's like, you know, all the men come away and they're all like, I'm not qualified to be an elder. Except for one commandment. There was one requirement. They're like, we did it. That's not a problem. Anyone know what it was? Who wasn't in that class? Husband of one wife. Oh, yeah. I've only got one wife. Check. Perfect. I passed.

There's this one shining spot in me. I don't have to worry. I can check that box. Nothing to be concerned about. Were they right? No. No, they weren't right. And then Joseph proceeds to tell him. He says, well, actually, what we're getting at here is not just have you only ever been married to one woman, but this question encompasses marriage, certainly, and divorce. But it also has to do with lust. And when you say, have you ever lusted? Have you ever sinned sexually? All of a sudden it's like, I have not. I need to change my answer. Because there's no one who's perfect, not even your elders and pastors. There's no sin that we're like, never committed that one. Don't have to worry about that. So all of a sudden their answers went away from, I've never done that. What are you talking about?

No, I don't think I'm very good on that one either. I think I have failed. Same thing is going on here with murder. And I think it's why Jesus starts with this one. It is the commandment of the 10 that I think if we could list all 10 commandments and say, which one have you never done? This is the one we pick and we say, I've never done that. I've never killed anybody. And so Jesus starts with it. And it's a way of his first pass over of opening us up and showing us that we're wrong. That the Pharisees and the scribes and those who were teaching at that time were wrong. You remember when the rich young ruler came to Jesus and said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, well, you know the law. What's it say to you? And then he lists off, you know, these commandments. And Jesus says, well, how have you done? And he says, I've kept them from my youth up.

Now we might look at that because we know the rest of the story and we'd say, oh, that man doesn't know himself. What a fool. How could he be so proud? And how could he be so arrogant? How could he be so blind as to say in front of the law of God, I've done all that stuff the right way. Jesus said to him, well, there's just one more thing you lack. He doesn't even address the foolishness of what the rich young ruler said. He just says, well, there's just one more thing you lack. take all that you have, go and sell it and give to the poor, and then you'll have treasure in heaven. Then you'll inherit eternal life. Then you'll have checked all the boxes. Well, it says that the rich young ruler was dejected, was sad, went away disheartened. Why? Well, because he owned many things, and he wasn't willing to go sell those things. Now, why did Jesus address him that way? Because he knew that the rich young ruler had actually kept all of the law.

No, he knew that that man was deceived and that if he had entered into a long discussion trying to convince him that he had broken any one of these laws, it would take forever. He says, let me just give a real life example. Here's something you need to go do. And all of a sudden, the man goes, I'm not willing to do that. That's not going to happen. So what is the trajectory of the rich young ruler? Well, I think it's the same trajectory that we have when it comes to this sort of law. And it goes like this. I had, we start out saying, I haven't broken this law. And very soon we say, I haven't broken any of them. Because we redefine the laws in such a way that we've never screwed up or failed. How quick are you when someone comes to you and confronts you about sin? Is your heart soft? And do you say, yeah, I did that. Now, I'm not saying do you get to that point after two or three hours of fighting, but I'm saying initially, are you willing to say, you're right?

No, every one of us has this knee-jerk reaction to defend ourselves and say, no, I didn't do that, or I did do that, but it wasn't just like that, or you don't understand what they did. We've all got a justification. What are we trying to do? I didn't break the law. I didn't do the wrong thing. And if I did, they did it first. Why should I have to obey if they don't? You and I would like to think very highly of ourselves and are very quick to say, I didn't sin. I didn't sin. I didn't sin. Romans 12.3 says, I say to everyone among you, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment. And 1 Corinthians 10.12 says, Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. Now why does Paul say these things to the Romans and to the Corinthians, to us? Well, because we do think more highly of ourselves than we ought to. We don't even have to try to.

We do think we stand. We do think that if an accusation were to come against us, that we would have a defense that would stand up in court. That if someone came and said, you committed murder, we'd say, I'll go to court with you. I'll stand before the judge and I'll plead my case and I'll be declared innocent. I didn't do it. But we're foolish if we think that we would stand before even the judgment seat of men, let alone the judgment seat of God, and make a defense that would be acceptable to him. To think that there's any law of God that we haven't broken and don't break regularly. In James 2, he says, in verse 10 and 11, he says, whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, and I can't imagine James writing this with a straight face. He's like, okay, I'll go this far with you just to show you. Like, if anyone keeps the whole law, it's like, how could you even think that? But for whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point,

He has become guilty of all. And you say, no, I didn't become guilty of all. It was just this one failure. It was just this one thing. He who stumbled at one point becomes guilty of all. And then he says, for he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not commit murder. Now, if you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. And so, what should we... take out of that. We should take out of that. No one keeps the law. Romans 3 tells us this. There's none righteous. No, not one. We break the law. And we don't just break the law here and over there and sometimes over here. What we should learn instead is that if I break the law at this one point, I'm learning something about myself that applies to all of me, not just part of me. If I'm capable of breaking the law over here, I'm capable of breaking it

And not only am I capable of doing it, I actually do it. Whenever we think, I've never committed that sin, like murder. I've never done that. We should recognize very quickly that we are in danger. Because what we believe about ourselves in that moment is a lie. And if that lie is allowed to take root, it will very quickly lead us astray. And we will end up like the rich young ruler, justifying, everything we've ever done. So Jesus says, you've heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. And the people are saying, yes, they did tell us that. We do know that. That's not what I, we didn't do it. We haven't done that. We've done a lot of things maybe, but not that. His whole point in bringing this up was to say you, for them to come away and for them to feel and go, I am a murderer.

That's the whole point of this passage is for Jesus to get them to realize that they are guilty of murder before God. That's the point of it. They didn't think they were. And he says, no, I want you to see that you have failed, that you have sinned, and that the sins you've committed are rightly called murder and are worthy of death. That was the point of this discourse. Okay? I want to read to you the rest of the catechism's answer. It started out saying, the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are taking away the life of ourselves or of others, except in the case of public justice, war, or necessary defense. The neglecting or withdrawing of lawful and unnecessary means of preservation, that would be a sin committed. And then it goes on and it says, sinful anger, hatred, that these are ways that you break the sixth commandment. Sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge.

Excessive passions. All excessive passions. All excessive passions. Distracting cares. Immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations. Provoking words. Oppression. Quarreling. Striking. Wounding. And whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any. And all of a sudden, it's like you're in a straitjacket that you can't even get a breath in. Anger is a violation of the sixth commandment. Sinful anger. Arguing and fighting. Wanting to take revenge. I mean, who's not a murderer? Who hasn't done this in the last 24 hours? I mean, really. Come on. There are many, many places in Scripture that supports these lists. The Westminster divines weren't just going, we're just going to pile on. We're just going to, you know, we've got them on their heels. We're just going to, you know, stack it all up, all their failures. There are Scriptures to support each of these expressions of murder. But let us limit ourselves for the sake of time to simply what Jesus says in our passage in Matthew.

as expressions of murder. He says, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother, there's that anger, shall be guilty before the court. And whoever says to his brother, you good for nothing, shall be guilty before the Supreme Court. And whoever says you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. So he gives us three things here and he says this is murder. The first is anger. If you've ever been angry at someone, You're guilty of murder. Murder. Now you might say, it was righteous anger. A lot of my anger is righteous anger. I'm upset about them sinning. And I'll tell you that being angry that someone else sinned against you or sinned in some other way is not righteous anger. Righteous anger is a jealousy for God's glory. You're angry for God's glory, not because they've inconvenienced you.

not because they've spoiled their own lives or the lives of their spouse or kid, whatever. You're angry that they have sinned against God. And there's not anything else in it. That's what you're angry about. It's not because they've burdened you. I don't think righteous anger is nearly as common as we might like to think it is. Being angry about sin is not. I'm angry because you sinned against me, but I'm allowed to be angry because you sinned against me. No. You never see Jesus angry because people sinned against him. You see him angry because they've sinned against God. When he went into the temple and he cleansed out the temple, that was righteous anger. That was righteous anger. It wasn't about him. It wasn't about his inconvenience. He says, this is supposed to be a house of prayer and you've turned it into a den of thieves. And he goes in there with a whip and he flips over the tables. That's righteous anger. You ever done something like that? Maybe you have.

There's an elder in our sending church who used to work in the statehouse, that beautiful marble and stone building downtown. He used to work down there, and they were having an abortion rally one time, and he couldn't abide it. A pro-abortion rally. So he came out into that big building. If you've ever been in there, it's wide open. Floor story's tall. The whole center is wide open, and the people are down on the bottom floor, and he's up wherever he's at. And he just comes out and yells at the top of his lungs, abortion is murder! And then he went back in his office. He was angry.

He didn't violate the sixth commandment with that anger. I know that my anger is not righteous, hardly at all. And so I want to, you know, there is such a thing as righteous anger, but it's the sort of thing, you'll know it when you see it and it will shock you. It will put you on your heels and you'll go, whoa, that's a thing I haven't seen before. So don't dismiss your anger as being righteous anger. Presume that when you get angry, it's sinful. You say, but I get angry every day. And I say, I know. That's why I'm saying it. Jesus tells us that anger against our brother is enough to make us guilty before the court. We might think we go plead our case. You have children. You've seen this happen. You hear the anger, right? You hear it. Or you hear the big loud cry or you hear the scream and you go, I hear anger. So you go and here I come and I'm the court. What's going on?

And I've got these, pull this and then that and then this and there's tears and it's not fair and he broke my and took my. And what are they doing? They're pleading their case. They're trying to justify their behavior. These are my kids. These are your kids. These are you. And so as a father in that situation who's supposed to be judging, figuring out what's going on, what do I do? Do I enter in and say, oh, no, no, it's okay, it's okay. No, I heard you scream in hatred at your brother. Guilty. I saw you punch him. Guilty. Well, but. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You're right. He shouldn't have done what he did. You're absolutely right about that. But you shouldn't have done what you did. You are guilty and he is guilty. No one here is innocent because you're angry. If we would be convicted of murder in the eyes of men, in the courts of men, how much more so would we be judged by God? You remember Job thinking that he had a reason to be upset.

had the sort of suffering and difficulty in his life that is unbelievable. Unbelievable. And he does say in his rant that he could bring his case before the court and he could justify himself. Then he gets his opportunity to, and it does not go well with him. Were you there when the mountains were formed? Were you there? Did you walk the Leviathan and lead him around? We might look at other people's cases and say, you know, I think they might be able to make a case of defense for their actions. We would probably look at Job and put his circumstances at the top of the list and think, he's somebody who could make the case. But when he got his chance to make the case, guilty. So we would be really stupid to think that we could do better. He who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. Second, he who...

says to his brother, you good for nothing shall be guilty before the Supreme Court. Now, I want you to see that there's a progression in what Jesus is saying here. Anger, then speaking to your brother and telling him he's worthless, and then just saying, you fool. And in our minds, we would say these are becoming less problematic. So the second one is to say, you good for nothing, which is to say to your brother, you are worthless. You're not worth living. You're a waste of space, probably in much worse terms than what I've just used. Speaking this way to someone is to deny the most basic truth about them, which is that they're made in God's image. To think and to speak to someone, to tell them that they're worthless, is to deny that they bear God's image and to say, there is nothing of value in you. There is nothing redeemable. It would be better if you were not here. You bring no value. You have no

nothing worthwhile in you at all. There is no reason for you to exist. Now, when we put it in those terms, you say, well, that sounds awful. And I say, yeah, that is actually the most wicked thing about abortion is that's exactly what is happening when a baby is being denied life, especially in the case of fetal abnormality. You realize in our society, and I'm not saying that every one of you feels this way, but you do realize that fetal abnormality in a society is just accepted that that's an okay reason. We can say their life is not worth living or their handicaps are incompatible with life, so we should just wipe them away.

If we talk about it in terms of abortion, all of a sudden, even in cases of fetal abnormality, we say, yeah, yeah, I see that. I watched when Roe got overturned. I watched all the states make accommodations there. And I knew that it was still murder. And why is it murder? And this is why it's murder. They've looked at someone and said, you are worth nothing. So we can see it clearly there. Do we see it clearly in our own lives? When we look in our own mirrors, that we look on other people and we say, You're worthless to me. There is a time in Scripture, at least one, where men are called worthless. And I think we just kind of pass over it and we're like, oh, that's not good. Eli's sons, you remember? Hophni and Phinehas, it says of them, they are worthless men. And what was being said of them? That they had denied and destroyed the image of God in them so much that there was nothing left of them. They were so filled up with sin and so consumed that there was no value left in them.

And it was such a damning thing to be said about them. You would never want someone to say to you, you're worthless. We wouldn't like it even if we didn't understand it this way. But now that we understand it this way, we say, I don't ever want to be treated that way or told that way or thought of like that. And yet we do it to others. Third, you say, you fool. Now, this is harder to define, and it's very close to calling someone a good-for-nothing. One thing to note the difference is, is that the second one, you good-for-nothing, you say it to your brother.

The third one, it just says that you say it when no one's around. Maybe you just think it to yourself. This person's an idiot. It's stupid. What's wrong with them? Why can't they figure it out? So stupid. That, that is enough for you to go into hell because that is murder. Now, isn't it interesting how we can start out at the beginning saying, I've never murdered. I've never done that. And in the course of... Less than an hour, we can say, is there anyone I haven't killed? Is there anyone? Is there any other sin I commit besides this one? That's what I'm left thinking. Is there anything else I do except murder people? Maybe you get frustrated with someone and you decide, I'm going to hold my tongue. I'm not going to say it. Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough to avoid murder.

You've still murdered them in your heart, and you're guilty enough to be thrown into hell simply by thinking it. Ugh, what a burden. What a burden. Why would Jesus take them up on the mountain and then lay this on them? They're supposed to feel like you feel if you're listening. It's an awful feeling. It's how I felt preparing and thinking about this. It's awful. Well, it's good for us to see this about ourselves. Why is it good for us to see this about ourselves? So that we can just despair and feel terrible and go, uh... Fall into depression? No. No. That thing you're seeing about yourself right now, if God's being gracious to you and you kind of feel sick to your stomach about yourself right now, if that's how you feel, God's already seized you that way. And not just with this one sin, but all the sins you commit. All of them. It's not news to him like it's news to you. By now, you and I should be seeing the countless ways we've sinned and murdered. There's no one here who's avoided this sin, even for a day. And this...

This is where I'm going to stop. We'll come back next week, but I will give you a preface to next week, okay? What we want and what we've been conditioned to desire is for someone to relieve the pressure and say, you felt bad and that's the point, but God loves you and it's okay. If you read the rest of the passage, that's not what Jesus does. He doesn't tell you it's okay. What does he tell you to do? I'm going to read it to you. You think of the summary of what it is. Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there, remember, your brother has something against you, meaning he has an accusation. You've sinned against him.

Leave your offering there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering. Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer and that you may be thrown into prison. Truly, I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent. Full of grace. Full of de-escalation. Right? No! What's he tell you to go do? You have to repent. You have to repent or you will be condemned. And you won't get away from that condemnation until it's all paid for. What Jesus gives us is so helpful. And we'll talk about it next week in more in-depth repentance, turning away from these sorts of things. We do no one any good. Ourselves, our spouses, our children.

our friends and neighbors, and whoever it is we interact with, if we think that being a Christian, our whole job is just to de-escalate the pressure and the guilt that people feel. To tell them you shouldn't feel guilty, you shouldn't feel bad, you shouldn't have sleepless nights, you shouldn't worry. It's all going to be fine. Jesus doesn't hear, he does not say, it's all going to be fine. I just wanted you to see it. Now that you see it, you won't do it anymore. And now that you don't do it anymore, you can be a Christian. He points these things out to us so that we see.

that our lives have to be marked by repentance. Discernible repentance. Not just discernible to us, but discernible to our brother. You realize in this next passage where he says, go to your brother and make peace with him, it's like your brother has to say, I don't want to go to court with you anymore. I forgive you. I don't need someone to judge you because I forgive you. I'm not trying to keep God's grace away from you. I'm not trying to tell you it's not for you. I'm simply trying to say that... There are other things that go into the Christian life that make his grace very, very valuable to us. His grace is not, he does not extend his grace to his people so they can continue to murder without any trouble. My point in saying these things to you is to get you to see the narrow path that few find, but all who walk that path know this is true about them.

And they see it, and their life is marked by them turning away from it with the help of God. But to say, I've kept these commandments from my youth up, that's not really a problem of mine. It's to behave like Job and to get yourself front and center before the judgment seat of God one day with no defense. With no defense. When you read in 1 Corinthians where it says that... God came to save murderers, you should not look at that and be like, oh, that's not, yeah, there's some of those sins on that list that I commit, but that's not one of them. From now on, you should read it and you should say, there I am, right there. There I am. I did that, and I did that, and I did that, and I do that. So this week, we should be asking God to show us how we've broken this commandment. It's a bit overwhelming. It really is. And so we should ask God to help us see it, to feel it, and to repent of it.

With urgency. Before it's too late. Let's pray.