Matthew 5:21-26 | The Litmus Test of Murder

Sunday Morning | September 13, 2026 | Colby Flowers | Louisville, KY

Student Pastor Colby Flowers continues the Sermon on the Mount Series with Matthew 5:21-26 | The Litmus Test of Murder.

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Church, how are we doing this morning? I need some a little better. Good morning church. How are we doing? I'm excited to be with you this morning. Open up God's word if I've met you. My name is Colby Flowers. I'm the student pastor here, and I'm excited to continue our series in the Sermon on the Mount. Today we're back in Matthew chapter five. We'll be in verses 21 through 26 this morning, and I'm excited to open up the text. So if you've got your scriptures, go ahead and open those. If you don't have anything, we've got some Bibles out here in the lobby that we'd love to give to you. We'll also have the words on the screen, and we gave you a little hand out so you can follow along. And I'm excited about this passage this morning. And I want to begin by, by sharing a little pet peeve of mine when, when I was, when I was a teenager. I was not a believer, and I never really read the Bible yet, but I had already worked out in my head my own moral system. You might call it a, some moral litmus test, if you've heard that before. I had some principles and standards and rules in my head that I would judge everybody else by, and even myself. And if you met the standard, you were a good person. If you didn't meet the standard, you weren't a good person. And I for so for instance, one of these tests I kind of worked out at my first job. I was in high school, and I worked at Kroger as a bagger, but occasionally they would ask me to go and do in cart duty. And if you've ever pushed carts, you might not have liked it. But I want to tell you I am. I oddly enjoyed pushing carts and I would go out there and and enjoy getting to push carts. But there was one thing that would get under my skin is when customers would not return the cart to the proper place. Instead-- Wow, someone's really passionate about this. Wow. But you might find carts scattered across the parking lot on in parking spaces or off on the curb. And there, there was just something that awoken inside of me when that happened, and I vowed from that day forth that I was going to return my cart back to the proper place every single time. And it was kind of a program in my head. I thought, I there's going to be no cart left behind. Amen. And then I would even go as far as you know what? I'm not only going to take my cart back, I might even gather up a few stragglers around as I'm heading back on the way. Or if I see someone about to put their cart away. I'll take theirs with me. I keep adding on the goodness to myself, and what I would do is, is I put my cart back. I'm a good person, you heathens who don't. Y'all aren't good people. And of course, as a teenager, not being a believer, I'd have all this stuff worked out. But in my head, I kind of categorized people as good and bad based off of my own personal standards, my own personal litmus test. And so what we're going to pack this morning is like that. We've already talked and and kind of unpacked this already in the Sermon on the Mount. But today it becomes very obviously clear, because Jesus is dealing with the Pharisees, who were all about appearances. They were good at obeying the external part of the law, or, as some might say, the letter of the law. They did it on the outside, externally, but inside, internally, they weren't really honest with themselves. And Jesus was not about appearances. He gets to the heart of the matter. So here's what we're going to see is our main idea this morning that we can deceive ourselves and others with external appearances, but God knows our hearts. We can disguise ourselves. We can be self deceived into believing we're good people based off of some standard or litmus test that we've created for ourselves. And yet we don't really want to get to the deeper inside issue. Some of us might do this in driving. Some of you all might treat the speed limit this way. You know what? I may be speeding a couple miles mile an hour over, but that person that just zoomed past me, if 20 miles an hour, I'm better than they are, or I always use my turn signal, unlike these heathens always use it. So I am therefore a good righteous person. I think we all do this to some extent, some of us more than others, i.e. me. Okay, but praise God and by his grace I've kind of overcome that a little bit, a little bit. But today we're going to unpack this idea that external appearance is only get you so far, but it's the heart that matters. So look here, Matthew chapter five, verse 21 is where we're going to start. And Jesus just got done explaining why he came. And John unpacked this. I love John's message last week and he dealt with verses 17 and 18 that said, Jesus said, do not think that I've come to abolish the law, but I've come to fulfill it, to keep it, to perfectly do it not just the letter of it, but perfectly keep the law. And then in verse 20 he goes on to say, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, these external appearance people, unless your righteousness exceeds them, you won't enter the kingdom. So you might think, wow, that's a pretty high standard. But Jesus says, well, wait, let me show you what their standard is. He starts here in verse 21, and here's what he's going to do. He's going to get to the sixth commandment. And over the next six passages, next six Sundays, we're going to unpack this idea. And he begins here talking about the commandment, you shall not murder. So here it is, verse 21. He says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. Now murder here is murder. It's the premeditated decision to kill someone. It's not manslaughter. It's not by accident. This is a premeditated decision to kill someone. And God declared this in the sixth commandment in the Old Testament. And Jesus picks this out because this is a clear cut, obvious disobedience, right? When someone is murdered, it is clearly against God's law. And so what the Pharisees would do is they would point to this and say, I have never murdered murdered anybody. And as a result, I am a good person. I keep the law. I am good with this commandment. I don't murder anybody. So Jesus is saying, you've heard that it was said. You've heard that it was said. God declared it. And now we as the as the Pharisees, the religious community, they would bring it up. We keep this commandment. We don't murder anybody. And he says, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment, so they should be judged for it. And so what would the Pharisees do? I'm not a murderer, so I'm good. So I want you to see this morning that the sixth commandment can be wrongfully used as an easy litmus test to justify yourself. And I think we sometimes use the sixth commandment in this way, or at least in our mind, we might think this like, I'm a pretty good person. I've never murdered anybody, right? But that's a pretty low bar, isn't it? That's a low bar to say well, I've never murdered anybody, so that means I'm a good person. But we can't do that because Jesus is trying to get at the point, not just it's not just the appearance of what the law states. He's trying to get to the heart of it and see, here's what I think. I think we may focus on easy surface level tests to avoid and distract from deeper issues. My wife and I have had some plumbing issues over the past several months, and, we call the insurance and they we were hoping that they would take care of it. And they came out and they weren't satisfied, and they weren't going to be able to take care of it because they couldn't see the problem, which means we were going to have to start breaking down some walls, busting out some tile, getting down underneath the house. And when that process starts to happen, you're going to be like, we were like, oh, what are we going to find? Because we've lived in this house for for about four years, and we love the house, but anytime we renovate or fix or do something, we always find more problems. I don't know about you all. And so when this happened, we had to start getting in behind walls and pulling up tile. And wouldn't you know it, we found more issues, more problems. So we're little hesitant to start projects because we're afraid we're going to find multiple projects behind stuff. But I think we kind of do this mentally. We do this in the sense that I don't want to go deeper because I might find an issue I don't want to deal with. I'm okay dealing with the issue of murder. I didn't murder anybody. I'm a good person, but I don't want to go deeper than that, because if I do, I might not find something that I like, and then I have to open up about it, because I think the idea of personal inventory and self-reflection and getting under the surface, it can be terrifying. So instead of going to the problem into the issue, we avoid it. And so Jesus is not about staying surface level, is he? He wants to get to the heart of it and look what he does here in verse 22. But I say to you, he replies, you've heard that it was said murder’s a sin, and I agree with you Jesus would say. But I say to you, now what Jesus is doing, he's going to go further. Jesus is sometimes often labeled as this person who's full of grace. He's very nice. He's very meek, he's very mild. He doesn't judge anybody. But Jesus takes the law and says, let me go a little bit deeper with the law. You think murder is a sin? You would do well. But listen, here's this also aspect to it. But I say to you that everyone who is angry. Angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, not just murder. But if you're angry with your brother, you are liable to judgment. So what Jesus is doing, he's connecting two things here. He's connecting murder with anger. See, murder can be the result of unresolved anger. Murder is the last step of it. I think the story of Cain and Abel perfectly illustrates this. And if you're familiar with this story in Genesis four, it's perfectly illustrating what Jesus is saying here. Because Cain comes up with an offering to God, he offers this offering to God, but it was not received, and it was not accepted because it wasn't worthy of God. But Abel's, his brother’s, was accepted. And the text says that Cain is angry. Angry. So then God goes to Cain and says, Cain, why are you so angry? Do you not see it? And then he gives some very vivid and very humbling words. Sin is crouching at the door, and it's desire is for you. And he tells him, you must not let it rule over you. So this anger, this desire is welling up in him. And instead of repenting, instead of employing some things for him to deal with his anger, what does he do? He murders his brother. So murder is just down the line from anger. So Jesus is making the connection. Murder is a sin. But let's go all the way back down here to the very beginning, in which anger is just as liable to judgment as murder. You see what Jesus is doing? He's getting to the heart of the sixth commandment, the heart of the law, not just the external appearance. Because many of us could say, I haven't murdered anybody, but not any. Probably nobody in this room could say, well, I've never been angry. See, listen, sin is not merely an external act, but an internal desire. You can sin without moving a muscle. You by looking at someone. And because maybe you don't have, or because maybe you are jealous and you have anger towards them, you have already committed murder in your heart. You see that? So sin goes way deeper than what we can physically see. And so the religious leaders, they were really good at appearing righteous, but their heart was far from God. And we have to be able to say this to ourselves that we too do this. And due to our sin nature that we're born with, due to our sin nature, we often minimize our sin to avoid guilt. And our hope is that we would appear righteous. So I may struggle with this sin, but it's really not that big of a deal. It's not murder. It's not something terrible. I can just stuff that's in deep down in my heart, and I can have this appearance of righteousness so that I can escape guilt, so I can escape shame. Here's my first point for you tonight or this morning. Test your heart, not your appearance. You need to get to your heart. You can't just test yourself and take a personal inventory and check yourself on the outside, although those things are important. But to get to the inside, the root problem, the root issue with inside of us is what Jesus is saying. And Paul, I think, gives us a little bit of a test in Second Corinthians, Second Corinthians chapter 13. He tells believers to do this. He says, examine yourselves. Why should we examine ourselves? Well, to see whether you are in the faith, test yourselves, or do you not realize this about yourself, that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail to meet the test? What is he saying? Look inside and tell me if Jesus is really in your life. Test. Because church attendance, by church attendance, we might be able to say, yeah, I follow Jesus. But is Jesus really present in your life because you've placed your faith in Christ? Same thing with sin. Yes, I know you haven't murdered anybody, but listen, do you struggle with anger in your heart? The point is, we need to test our heart and not settle for an appearance. Amen. He goes on here to finish verse 22. Read this again. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. And whoever insults his brother -that word insult there, this is the only occurrence we have in the New Testament. And it's a, it's a word that, that people that the commentators who have written on Matthew, they think that this was a common word that the Pharisees would use, that they would use this against people to share or share their disapproval, to judge them, to push them down. And Jesus is using this word specifically here to get at the at the Pharisees. He says, so whatever insults his brother will be liable to the council. That is the heavenly council, that is God's counsel. You are liable to judgment. And then he says, you ever says, you fool, will be liable to the hell of fire. So he's going from murder, connecting that to anger, and then from anger to your words. Am I stepping on toes yet? And I'm preaching a message about anger and want you to me what you know, I don't want you to get angry with me. Okay? My toes were stepped in this. Okay. So, see this. Sin does not have to be a shocking action, but it can be a careless word. It doesn't have to be something that ends up on the news later. It could be something that you said in a in in a subtle way, to your wife or to your husband. It could be a word that you said to your child or to your coworker that you didn't think about. It can be in the heart, beginning with anger and coming out of your mouth with a word. My second point for you this morning be slow to speak, slow to anger. We're talking a little bit. It's not that anger 100% of the time is a sin, but anger that continues will eventually get you there. Anger is like a fire James talks about. It is very hard to control the tongue. So if there's anger or emotion that's undealt with within your heart, it's eventually going to come out somewhere. And often the first place we see it is our words. Look here in James one, know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. And he says, why? For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God to give in and give control over to our emotions and give control over to our anger. It will lead to words that you never thought that you could have said before. And maybe we we, we can probably admit that we look back and think, how could I ever say that? Or how could that person ever say that to me? Well, they didn't just get there in one single moment. It's because anger has been present and they never dealt with it. But what I believe James is saying, and what Jesus would say, is that we need to be slow to speak, slow our words down so that we're not reacting, were responding. And so we need to be slow to anger. And Jesus goes on and he gives us here in verse 23, the rest of verses, he gives us a common situation that an everyday Jew would have dealt with a common situation. That illustrates the point, because first he talks about what happens if you're angry, if you deal with anger in your heart and you have to protect yourself from your words. But what if you have made someone else angry? What if you have offended somebody? Look what he says here in verse 23. So if you are offering your gift at the altar. This is a free will offering. Someone, a Jew would would come and offer a gift on the altar as worship and adoration to God and sacrifice. It wasn't as a result of sin, but they're coming to do their typical religious duty and praise and honor to God. And look, it says, and there, remember that your brother has something against you. That is, something comes to mind that you have possibly done to another person, another believer, and they've got anger or offense because of what you did. Now, I think this is cool because I think Jesus is subtly saying here that sometimes things will come to mind that we don't, we're not really even in control of- something that might come to mind and remember, like, oh, I forgot about that, because here's what I think the beauty about being a Christian is. And the difficulty about being a Christian is, is that the Holy Spirit will often bring things to mind. If we would listen. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will bring a person to your mind. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will bring something that you did to mind, and we have an opportunity to either engage with that thing or to avoid that thing. And he's saying, you're coming up to offer your sacrifice to God, and you remember something. You remember that you have offended and angered somebody. And the Holy Spirit does this to me all the time. He will bring things to mind. And I have fallen for the trap of disregarding it, not remembering, not holding on to it, not doing something about it. So when I say this this morning, we can worsen a conflict by avoiding the issue. The Holy Spirit might bring something to your mind, and we can worsen the conflict by completely avoiding it and not going to that person. Especially the longer that it lingers, the more time that is that goes on, the more thoughts that are put towards it, the more speculation that comes into play. We can worsen a situation by avoiding it. Now. Wisdom is always needs to be taken into account, because there might be a situation in which you can't immediately address an issue. True, we need to have wisdom towards that, but to avoid the issue altogether, to not seek mediation, to not seek someone else's help, that is a problem. This is like being okay with vacuuming the rug, but not pulling that rug back and see what's underneath. We gotta get to the issue. We can't avoid the hard conversations and the hard issues. But I'll also say this that reconciliation cannot occur if we believe that we are never wrong. If we think into our mind, I'm never wrong, and most of us probably wouldn't say out loud ‘we’re perfect people.’ Excuse me. Excuse me. Most of us wouldn't say that. But we sometimes think in our mind I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not wrong in this situation, you know whose fault it is? The other person. Can't be me. I told them the truth. I said it the right way. Can't be me. But what happens? We avoid it. We say it's not my fault. And we'll never take a step toward someone in reconciliation. If we constantly think I'm wrong and they’re-- I'm right and they're wrong. But notice it's the one who offended that should be going. The one who offended the other person. Even if Jesus doesn't even say whether the person was right or wrong, notice is if your brother has something against you, you go to them because look what he says here in verse 25 or 24. He doesn't say, keep offering your gift, does he? Leave your gift, leave your offering, leave it there and leave it before the altar and go first. I love that word. First. Be reconciled to your brother and then come offer your gift. Here's the danger I think we can make as Christians. We can continue to pursue a religious duties and religious services, and spending time with God and spending time at church, and completely miss our relationships that are around us. See, I think what Jesus is trying to get to here is that reconciliation must take priority over our religious duty. Should you attend church? Yes. Should you be in your word? Yes. Should you pray? Yes. Should you fast? Yes. But if we're doing those things, avoiding having that hard conversation, we're missing the point. Church. That is, if we continue to offer up our sacrifices to God. But our brother has something against us and we're avoiding it, and we're running from it, and we don't think we're wrong in it. What good is this worship is going to do when God wants us to go to that person? Instead, I need to leave this go reconcile, and then I come back and offer my gift. Do you see what he's saying? There needs to be already in our reconciliation. We need to reconcile. And look what he says in verse 25. He describes how we should do it. He says, come to terms quickly. Come to terms. Come reconcile, be agreeable, find agreement. As Christians, we should be some of the most agreeable people with each other. But often that's not the case. I want to say often. Sometimes that's not the case. But Jesus says, go quickly. Notice there's not a hesitation notice. We need to go to the person that we have offended and notice he goes on and says while with your accuser, while you were going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard, you be put in prison. Pretty clear and stark example he's giving. He's saying as your accuser, as your opponents going to court to accuse you of something that you have done to them. Walk with them quickly and reconcile. He's giving it because we need to do this without delay. We should not delay. Reconciliation in verse 26 gives us the result. If we don't, he says, truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. Here's what he's saying. You shouldn't put your hope and your trust in a court. In a secular court that doesn't value mercy. But we should, as believers, go to one another to find mercy with each other in forgiveness and reconciliation, and not to put our future and our disagreements and issues into the hands of a secular court. Now, it would be naive to think Christians are never going to disagree. It would be unrealistic. Unrealistic to say that Christians there, they're always going to get along. I have to say that some of the most, some of the biggest disagreements I've ever had in my life have been with other pastors, not Pastor John, by the way, although we do disagree on some things though. But it's okay. Go cats. Anyway, I could keep going with that. Julie's in favor with me anyway. Here we go. So it's not that Christians aren't going to disagree with each other because we are, and we can't be naive in our realistic about that. So we need to consider what should I be doing to help bridge the gap? I want to say this here we cannot allow anger to linger. We can't allow it to linger. Paul says in Ephesians, Ephesians 4, 26 and 27, be angry. He says, be angry and do not sin. So there's a way in which we can be angry and not have sinned yet. Do you see that, Christians, it's okay to be angry. If there's a righteous purpose, if there's a righteous heart behind it. Yes, but what he says is, do not let the sun go down on your anger. Meaning don't linger without dealing with it. Sometimes I think we might have anger, righteous anger for a good purpose, for a good reason. But then because we stew on it, we stew over it. We speculate, we consider, we think it gets to the place where now we are angry for the wrong reason, especially our brothers and sisters. So what is? What should we do? Come to terms quickly. Quickly. And I think this too, and I think this needs to be said. And I cannot pack all of this idea this morning. But to the best of our ability, we must pursue reconciliation and not litigation. Too often in the church. Divorce has become the answer. Now, that's not to say that there's never grounds for divorce. There is. Jesus gives that for us. It is better to divorce than to stay together. Yes, but too often that might be the solution, when really there needs to be a pursuit and seeking of reconciliation. But it's not just something like that. It's I'm just going to avoid that person for the rest of the time that I'm at the church, I'm going to sit on this side. They're going to sit on that side, and we're just going to have to just agree to disagree. Does that sound like unity in the body of Christ? But Jesus is warning them, you don't need to go to a secular court to solve your issues. You know, where you need to solve your issues is in the family of God with other believers. There are certainly times that we need to go to court. There are certain times when when abuse comes up that we need to go to court. Sure. And we need to help one another in those processes. But too often we jump to those to to situations of litigation and not to reconciliation. Because you know why? I think reconciliation is very hard. But I want to bring this up to you because I think this humbles me whenever I have an issue with someone and I would and I'm tempted to not reconcile and avoid or distract or to go another direction. This this helps me. We need to reconcile with others as God did with you. Do you know what God did to reconcile with you? God loved you so much that he sent his own son to be crucified on the cross, so that you are no longer an enemy to God. You're a friend to God. Talk about reconciliation, but some of us get so scared or worried or concerned for the reality of going and talking to someone about an issue that I have, that we won't even go across a room to talk to someone. But you know what God did? He left heaven. He came to earth to live a perfect life, to die on a cross for you and me, to reconcile us to God.

Look at this in Romans 5: 32:52

10. I can't say it any better, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life in his resurrection. So this helps me keep in mind that I need to be able to pursue reconciliation, if at all possible. You know why? Because God did it for me. Church, here's your challenge this morning. Are you covering up a sin issue with religious appearance? Are you okay with the external appearance of appearing righteous? Or are you comfortable and honest with yourself to get to the deeper issue that is to pull the rug back, that is the bust through the wall to see the problem under the house. That is, are we willing to get to the heart of the issue? Because listen. That's what Jesus wants to do with your life, because his is true. Also, external appearance will not save you. External appearance will not make your life better. It will only look better. But here's what Jesus offers to you. First John chapter one. If you confess with your mouth, if you confess your sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all, all, all, all unrighteousness. So our goal is, as Christians is not to stay on the surface, but to get to the heart. Do you hear me, church? So I encourage you, if that's you this morning, you have an issue with someone in this room. You have anger built up. You have hostility. Maybe you have anger towards God. That you would come and find someone to pray and to seek reconciliation, to find hope, to get to the surface of your issues or to the heart of your issues, and not just deal with the surface. If we want to be a church that loves God with all of our heart, and not just coming and offering a gift, let's pray. Father, thank you for your word today. Thank you for the gospel that saves us, that reconciles us even though we don't deserve it. Thank you father. That you give us the perfect example of what it looks like, of what it looks like to reconcile. Father, I know all of us have had bouts of anger, some more so than others, but in the least, all of us have dealt with sin. All of us have dealt with an internal battle with sin that that others might not even know about. I pray that we would not settle for trying to clean up our life on the outside. And not getting to the heart of the issue on the inside. I pray, father, that we would be bold. I pray that we would be honest. I pray that we would trust you in this time, that we would come and offer these things to you so that we can actually start fighting sin and dealing with the deeper issues in our life. And we can only do this because of your grace. There is not enough religion to fix our anger. There is not enough religion to fix our sin. The only solution to our sin is Christ Jesus alone. And we claim his name. We we say his name today knowing that if we confess our sin and we come to you, you will not only forgive us of our sin, but you help us fight against it. Today we pray this in the powerful, mighty name of Jesus. And everybody said Amen.