Summer on the Mount: Anger + Reconciliation | Matthew 5:21-26 | Jarryd Cole

Pastor Jarryd continues our series through the Sermon on the Mount, going through Jesus' teaching on our anger + the path to reconciliation.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side. We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

All right, all right, you guys can go ahead and find your seats. Take a seat, take a seat. And man, welcome again to Ambassador Church. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Jared. I get to be the lead pastor here at Ambassador Church. Before we jump in, hey, if you're new to the room, we're glad you are here. Uh we see you, we welcome you, we acknowledge you. And before you leave here, do not leave without getting plugged in further into the life of this church, okay? Right there in front of you, that QR code you scanned for all the announcements. You can scan that again for a virtual QR code and what that's or a virtual connect card, and what that will give us is information about you, your phone number, your email address, and we would love to find time to meet up with you outside of this Sunday morning space just to get to know a little bit more about you, where are you coming from? How did you hear about Ambassador Church? Uh, and even share our story with you and hear your story. Uh, we love stories here at Ambassador Church. We look at the crowd and don't just see faces and people coming in and out of the doors, but we see family. And so we want to extend that to you even, okay? If you're more of a pen and pad type person, we also have pens and cards out at the connect station back in the cafe area. You can fill out that connect card and we'll do the same if you fill that one out, okay? There's no priority uh with the virtual one or the physical one. But before you leave, if you're new to the space, please fill out one of those. Well, hey, we're coming off of a week where we had a Sabbath Sunday last Sunday. Uh, did you guys enjoy your rest, your time off um from coming and gathering? I think there's a rhythm in the life of the Christian faith, right? Where yes, we need to come and gather and serve and all that kind of stuff, but also take meaningful rest. Uh, I love the rhythm of Sabbath Sunday that we have. It's not just a Sunday in July, but we also do one in December. And this is a two-time rhythm that we have in the life of our church to say, hey, God is God and we are not. It's true that God often uses his people to get across his work in the world, but he does not need us for his work. And so when we take pause, we take time out to rest and say, God, you are God and we are not, we're actually honoring him and we can actually delight in his creation and who he's created us to be and the things that he's given us and the places that we can go. We can actually take delight in that as we do those things to the glory of God. And so I hope you had some time to do that this week. But we're going to be continuing our uh series this summer called The Summer on the Mount, where we're unpacking Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, uh just chunk by chunk. So if you're new to the room, you are stepping into week four of a 12-week series. And today is special because we're not just going through the Sermon on the Mount, but today we're also celebrating baptisms today. Can you guys give it a different baptisms in the room? It's exciting. We have two people who are taking a step in obedience to be baptized today, two of them right here in the 9 a.m. service. And if you haven't been to a baptism service before here at Ambassador Church, here's what you need to know. What we believe about baptism is not that baptism saves you. Okay, we don't believe there's anything special about the water that's doing anything to you salvifically, but what it is is an outward demonstration of an inward reality. The people you're seeing get baptized this morning are not saying, hey, I'm declaring faith for the first time. What they are saying is, hey, I have been saved by Jesus. My heart has been transformed somebody entirely new. And what they're going to be doing by being dunked in the water is demonstrating that reality by going under, being dead with Christ, dead to their sin and coming out of the water, being raised a new life with Christ, the resurrection. This is what's being shown to you today. What's already happened to them internally, they are publicly displaying before God and witnesses here today. So we want to celebrate that with them. And so here's what we're going to do at the end of service. They're going to be able to share testimonies, they're going to be dunked in the water. We're going to have songs and worship and all of that. Um, we're going to be dunking as we're singing. And here's what I want you to do. When these people come out of the water and there's they're coming up, they're hugging their loved ones, all of that, we want to be loud and celebrating and clapping, okay? Singing and raising our hands to worship to King Jesus, that's great. We want to do that. But we also want to celebrate baptism. So if you're singing, stop singing and cheer for the people who just took a phenomenal step in obedience towards Jesus. We're going to be celebrating baptisms today. So without further ado, if you have your Bibles, you can get those out. Matthew chapter five, this is where we're going to be. Matthew chapter five, verses 21 through 26. If you've been keeping up so far, we've gone through the Beatitudes here in the Sermon on the Mount. We've talked about being salt and light of the world. And then the other week, Micah just brought us through uh that Jesus didn't come to abolish the law, but he came to fulfill the law. It's a great message. You should go back and listen to it. And Micah taught us this that, like, when you think about Jesus coming not to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law, uh, you can be thinking, like, what is exactly does that mean? I think Micah did a great job unpacking it, but it means at least a couple things. One, it means that Jesus did everything necessary for us to be made right with God. That we're no longer subject to the law in terms of like, hey, we need to do these things in order to be made right with God. But what also it means that Jesus fulfills the law is that Jesus comes not to abolish it, not to do away with it. Remember, Jesus says, hey, not one letter, not one stroke, not one iota of the law will pass away until all things have come. And so what Jesus comes is, he doesn't like do away with it, but he brings the true meaning of the law. And believe it or not, he doesn't lower the bar, he doesn't make it easier to know and love God and be in the kingdom of God, but he actually raises the bar. He raises it. And today he's gonna take the sixth commandment from the Ten Commandments back in Exodus chapter 20 that says, Do not murder, and he's going to equate it with anger. Hey, do not murder. That is the bar being set, but then Jesus is going to say, Hey, even your anger is a stench to God. He raises it. He literally equates murder with anger. And he says, Hey, the judgment that would incur on you when you commit murder is the same judgment that you are qualified for whenever you experience outbursts and rage and anger. And this might seem like a wild statement to many of us in the room, okay? Because uh, if you haven't been angry before, raise your hand. None of you should raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you're a liar. You can't lie in church, so don't do that. Small things make us angry. Like when you hear the sound of people chewing, that's some of you. You get angry. When we set an alarm on our phone for 6 a.m. just to come to find out, it wasn't set for 6 a.m. but 6 p.m. Is that anybody in the room? Like after you're filled with that like shock and panic and chaos, then you're mad. You're angry, like, man, I can't believe it. You want to call up, you know, Apple headquarters and be like, yo, what in the world is going on? How dare you? That was on that was on you. See, I get angry. One of my biggest pet peeves, one of the things I can't stand, okay? And it's kind of a cop-out answer, but it's traffic. Uh, but it's a specific type of traffic, okay? Maybe some of you can relate to this. I don't know. I've never talked to anybody specifically who deals with this type of anger problem. Okay, here's mine. When I'm on the highway and traffic begins to build up, um, the specific type of traffic is when maybe there's some cars on the side of the road, maybe there's been an accident or something like that. And what happens is they're not even in the way on the road, they're off to the side. And in my mind, I'm coming and I'm thinking, and I'm sitting here in 10, 15 minutes of traffic, bumper to bumper, brake light looking around, cars coming on the side, and I'm thinking, like, why are we stopping? There must be something crazy on the road. And 10, 15 minutes pass, and I come up there, and it's like, no, no, no, there's just something on the side of the road. I'm like, yo, you can keep moving. Like, I don't know if you know that. Like, people just drive and they're leisurely looking, and I'm like, listen, don't do that. Do that somewhere else. Okay, you can decide if you're gonna be Superman or Superwoman somewhere else, okay? Like, jump out and help if you want to help. If not, keep it moving. You can see I get angry about stuff like that, and it's irrational, okay. I I agree, it is irrational, but oftentimes isn't our anger like that, it is irrational. See, and some of us, here's what's true we experience anger by exploding in rage. But there's some of us who deal with our anger differently, we just simmer in resentment. Some of us are both. I can be both. But no matter where you are or what gets to you, here's what Jesus wants us to know today that anger is far more serious than we give it credit for. Anger can be deadly and it must be dealt with. So I want to transition to the text. If you have your Bibles open, Matthew chapter 5, verse 21, we're starting there. Here's what Jesus says He says, You have heard it said to your ancestors, do not murder. And whoever murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Whoever insults his brother or sister will be subject to the court. And whoever says this, you fool, will be subject to hellfire. And so if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, here's what you should do: leave your gift in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Reach a settlement quickly with your adversary while you're on the way with him to the court. Or your adversary will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison. And truly I tell you, you will never get out of there until you have paid the last penny. So the reading of the word. And in this text, here's what Jesus is doing. He's entering into this part of the Sermon on the Mount where he's going to give us some really jaw-dropping moments as he spends some time kind of reinterpreting the law. Like six times over, Jesus will begin to say these words or some variation close to them. Hey, you have heard it once said, but I say to you. And each time, what he's going to do is mention a command from the law, the law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, and explain what the common understanding is. And then he's going to give the true interpretation of what it really means. And when Jesus does this, y'all, we need to know he's not like rewriting the law. And he's not making up some new law. We know that based on the passage just before this. But what he is doing is he is fulfilling it in the sense that he is expounding on what it was always supposed to mean. That the law of God was never meant to only be about some external obedience, but also about an internal heart transformation. Um, there was a um a dam that was blocking this body of water down in southeast Missouri back in 2005. I'm from Kansas City, Missouri, and I remember this distinctly uh because it was a huge thing on the news, right? I was a sophomore in high school back in 2005. For some of you, you're like, dang, you're a dinosaur. For many of you, you're like, I just got some years ago. But 2005. And this dam was called the Tom Sock Dam, okay, in Southeast Missouri. And this dam was like, it was, it was a feat of its time. The engineering prowess of this thing, like it was supposed to be this thing that was unsurpassable in the moment. It was the first of its kind, actually. It sat on top of one of the highest elevated places in the state of Missouri, about 1,700 feet up or so. And what it did was it was battery powered and it pumped water up to hold back water in order to make a way, a reserve, and a state park and all these different things for the town that it was in. But what happened to this dam is that over time it began to malfunction. And it was a surprise to so many engineers because they were like, hey, this shouldn't be the case. This shouldn't be the problem. And what ended up happening is that the sensors in the dam began to fail. And the leveling mechanisms in the dam began to fail. And what happened is the water level would rise and it would rise and it would rise, and sometimes it would begin to spill over the top, and they come and they do some kind of addressing the issue, do some repairs, and they would fix the sensors and they would fix some of the leveling, and then they would get back to normal for a while, and then over time they would just do it again. Fill back up, sensors would fail, leveling problems, and water would begin to spill over the top. Until this one day in December of 2005, this same thing happened. And what happened was catastrophic. Not only did the water build up and fall over the top, but it busted the wall open, and now over a billion pounds of water flooded down into this city. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, nobody was killed in this flood. But here's what we need to know that this is kind of what it's like with our sin, especially with our anger. Like often we think that, hey, we we have things at bay, we're doing all the things to keep to make sure that things are level, to make sure that the sensors are working, and when they're not, we kind of want to do this kind of stuff, but we never pay attention to the cracks in the foundation. We never pay attention to the wall that's literally about to burst open. Like we look at that and we're like, man, at least we're not there yet. At least we're not there. I haven't murdered anybody, but we don't pay attention to the foundation. The reason why the Tomstock Dam failed wasn't because of the wall itself, it wasn't because of the outward thing that it was kind of uh proposing, but it was down in the foundation as the water was coming over the top, it would go down into the rocks into the sediment there. And what they realized is that sediment was not firm foundation. And so, inevitably, over time, there was nothing that they could do, but it was gonna crumble anyway. It was gonna crumble anyway. So, this is what Jesus is getting at. He's saying, Hey, it's not just about whether there's cracks in the wall, but it's about, hey, are you making sure you're checking on your foundation? See, the Christian life isn't primarily about maintaining the wall, it's about addressing the foundation, it's about getting to the source. And Jesus in these six antithesis is going to start with our anger. And the first thing that he's gonna say is, Hey, if you want to address the foundation of your anger before it spills over into things that you don't want it to spill over into, he says, We have to examine our heart. Look back at the text, Matthew chapter 5, verse 21. Jesus says, Hey, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Like Jesus doesn't just say, Hey, but I tell you because there's something wrong with the law. We have to know that. Like the law is good. I think everybody in here would agree that the law, don't murder, is good. Right? Keep your murdering to yourself, all right? Like, like, don't do that. We would all agree on that. It's a good law. The unjust killing of another person is wrong, and God forbids that as he should. But what Jesus is uncovering to a group of people who would think, okay, well, I've never murdered anybody, so I'm good. He is going to show them, hey, that the spirit of the law has a much deeper application than that. And it's that sin goes well beyond the surface, it goes beyond the cracks of the wall, it goes deep to the foundation. And Jesus tells us, Hey, but I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother and sister will be subject to judgment. He's he's saying basically, hey, you don't just violate God's law when you move your hand in murder, but you violate God's law when your heart is filled with sinful anger. And now it's possible to be angry and not sin. I think this is an important caveat to give to the room today. Ephesians 4 actually commands this of us to be angry and not sin. And this is important for many of us because some of us grew up in a background where anger was the emotion that you couldn't show. Anger was the bad emotion. Is that any of you in the room? Like, have you have you thought that? Maybe you didn't hear that verbatim, but you knew because things would make you angry. You would care about some stuff, and what people would do is say, Hey, don't lash out, don't scream, don't get upset, don't stop your life. Like you just associated, okay, well, the thing that's blowing up in me, this is this is anger, and this is bad. It's a bad emotion. But here's what I want you to know this morning: there are no bad emotions. All emotions are good. But here's what's true: even though all emotions are good, not all expressions of the emotions are good. There's a book called The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd. If you're a note taker, you can write that down. It's a phenomenal book to read. It's kind of like the movie Inside Out, okay, but in book form. It's great. And in it, here's what Dodd gives us. He gives us this kind of full treatment on several emotions, but one of them is anger. And he gives a helpful definition of authentic anger. It's gonna pop up here on the screen. Here's what Dodd says about authentic anger. He says that authentic anger is a caring feeling, telling us that something matters. In other words, anger exposes what we value. It's the thing that lets you know to point to the evil and injustice in the world and say, hey, that's wrong. That's not fair. That shouldn't be. It's what happens when you experience marital infidelity. It's what happens when your kids disobey or go rogue when you when your desire for them is to obey and find the right path. This is what happens. And Jesus even demonstrates this type of anger. You know the story. When he exposes the corruption in the temple and he braids together this kind of whip, of course, and he drives out the money changers. He was filled with anger when he did that. And yet he did not sin. So, yes, it is possible to be angry and not sin. It's called having what we would call a righteous anger. But here's the thing: you're not Jesus, and neither am I. And if we're honest and truly examined our hearts, about 99% of the anger that we express is not righteous anger, nor is it an authentic anger. Like so often, the foundation of our anger is not rooted in righteous concern for the glory of God. That's what righteous anger is. But so often the foundation of anger is rooted in sinful concern for our own priorities. And if we truly examine our hearts when we come to this place to say this is mostly true of us, that if you were to trace back the origin of your anger most of the time, it goes back to a feeling of you when something didn't go your way. Something that you wanted went left, not acknowledged. Somebody not acknowledged, they forgot to acknowledge that you were the center of the universe. This is what happens with our anger. See, Jesus' anger isn't like that. Jesus' anger isn't peaked by personal interest, it's not peaked by bad traffic on 94. It's not peaked by that. His anger is peaked by injustice. His anger is peaked by sin, by unbelief, and the exploitation of others. Sorry for your Chicago Bears fans in the room. I just can't seem to get together. When someone tells us no, when our politician isn't in office, when our bosses and neighbors, our coworkers or family members, when they do those things that get on our nerves, when something you want bypasses your hand and ends up in the hand of another, simply put, when things don't go our way, this is what causes anger to well up inside of us. But we need to know this is not authentic anger, this is not righteous anger. And we need to examine our hearts. We need to check for that. This is what Jesus is saying. Because he says that kind of anger is deadly and it's subject to judgment. So it's not just murder, it's not just the visible cracks in the wall, but it's also the anger, the invisible rotting of the foundation, and if left unchecked, the latter can lead to the former, and both are subject to judgment. And so to address the foundation of your anger, you have to first guard your heart, but secondly, you have to guard your speech. The second point today. Look what Jesus says in Matthew 5 at the back half of verse 22. He says, Whoever insults his brother or sister will be subject to the court, and whoever says you fool will be subject to hellfire. To hellfire, Jesus? I guess isn't that a little extreme? So the term for you fool in this text maybe have a different translation. We're in the CSB, but some translations are the word to this word rakah, which is an Aramaic transliteration of this kind of word that we would translate to you fool. And I love that this is in here, right? Because this is like, yo, Jesus saying, don't call people boneheaded, okay? Birdheads, blockheads, all that kind of stuff, right? Whatever insult you have for insulting the intelligence of another person. Hey, like that's actually wrong. But we also have to know that this word rock gets to something deeper than just this kind of intellectual thing on the surface, but it's not as intellectual, it's also moral. Like it has these kind of moral implications. Like this word was an attack on someone's character, it was an attack on their well-being. It was an attack on their standing with God. Like it was saying something definitive and judgmentative about this person when you're saying, hey, raca to this person. And don't we know that words don't carry any power in and of themselves? But the way you use the words do. And so it's not so much whether you literally say the word raca or not, or whether you say the word you fool or not, but it is about the intent behind the word. It's any words you use for degradation and humiliation and harm to another person. Jesus saying when you use these words, you are subject to hellfire. And what Jesus is saying is that when something like that is coming out of your mouth, it is revealing that there is anger in your heart. You know the word. From the overflow of your heart, the mouth speaks. So, Room, have you ever said something to or about someone that you knew would hurt them? Have you ever done this before? Maybe you've been a victim of people doing that to you. That's what Jesus is talking about here. And look at the consequence of this. He says, When you do this, you will be subject to hellfire. Okay, I was reading this part of this text a little earlier this week, and I was like, geez, maybe you're like me. Hey, this seems a little bit extreme. Like literally, if I say something like you fool to somebody, this means I'm subject to hell, Jesus, like what? And I was feeling like, man, I felt this conviction that this kind of blinking red light on the dashboard of my life alerting me to pay attention to this. Like instead of being like, Jesus, you need to pump the brakes on this. I started to feel this conviction of the words that I can even tend to speak, or maybe not even speak, but the words that I can harbor up in myself, maybe the resentment that I'm holding on to, the things that I want to say. Maybe you're like me in the room, and sometimes you walk around your house or you walk around your workplace, and you just like have these little conversations with yourself. And the thing that you're saying under your breath is like end up being this kind of argument you've made up with this imaginative person in your mind, or maybe someone that's like sitting next to you in this office or whatever, and like they don't know you have a problem, you just know you have a problem, and you're too cowardly to address it, right? Like we can all be, and you're just like, I'm just gonna do it under my breath. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna say right here. Do you know that even that is anger welling up in your heart? And anger that welling up in your heart that, if left unchecked, could lead to the same thing Jesus is talking about here, of being liable for judgment. It's like that red flashing, blinking light. So when we hear this and you're like, man, I think Jesus is overstepping a little bit, I would just admit, maybe you should pay attention to what Jesus is saying here. This is true from my experience. I believe it might be universal for so many people in this room. Because part of what Jesus is showing us all throughout the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is He's showing us this true fact that we don't tend to take the righteousness that Jesus is talking about seriously enough. And this should wake us up and alarm us to the reality that Jesus is very concerned about what is going on in our hearts. And there's so many texts to back this up. In Matthew 22, 37 through 40, Jesus talks about, hey, what are the greatest commandments? Jesus said to him, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the greatest, most important command. The second is like it though. Love your neighbor as yourself. Why? Because all of the law and the prophets depend on these two commands. In 1 John 3, 15, he even says, Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. In 1 John 4, 20 through 21, he says even further, if anyone says, I love God and yet hates his brother or sister, he is what? A liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot, cannot, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And we have this command from him the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister. So, y'all, if we're gonna be citizens of the kingdom of God, we need to become people who take seriously the righteousness about which Jesus speaks. How? First by examining our hearts and then by guarding what comes out of our mouths. But then, thirdly, we should be people who initiate reconciliation. Examine our hearts, guard our mouths. Thirdly, initiate reconciliation. Uh, this past week, along with our Sabbath week, my wife and I, we went back to Iowa. My wife's from Iowa, we have family out there, and we tend to spend that week, we call it Family Lake Week. My wife's family has a lake house, and we have a lot of people in that family, okay? A lot of kids. We have four kids ourselves. She has several siblings, nobody has less than three kids, okay? And so you can imagine it's wild, right? And so one night we were all hanging out and the kids were doing their thing, and it was one of those times where it was like, hey, late nights and early mornings and all kinds of stuff. Kids are doing their own thing. And in the evening time, they would go out and play, and they would play like ghosts in the graveyard or some kind of tag or some kind of thing like that, right? They'd be having a good time. But one night, um, we hear some crying, and one of the kids comes upstairs, and and I want you to know, like, this never happens, okay? Like, this is this is a one-off in this family. You would be surprised if you hung out and been like, like, is this normally how it is? Because it's normally super peaceful. So you can imagine this caught us off guard. One of the kids comes upstairs, he's crying, and he's like, yo, man, what's what's going on? What's going on? What's going on? And he's like behind tears, and they locked me outside. They locked me outside. And we're like, Oh, well, what happened? Right? Parents rise to the occasion, hey, what's going on? Who did it? Where they at? Tell them to come in, right? All this kind of stuff. Because, like good Christian folks, we want to foster reconciliation, amen. And so we're like, oh, where are you? Where are they at? Who did it? And he begins to tell us this story. And so, we're the parents, we call the other kids, right? Hey, tell us the story. What happened? What happened? What happened? Trying to get all the information that we can get. And it was hard to get the kids to fess up to what they had done. It was hard to get consistent stories. We got a bunch of them, okay? And we had to piece together the thing like a puzzle piece, like you would normally have to do, okay, because kids are like, I want to protect him and her, and da-da-da-da. And I don't really know. I wasn't really a part of it, but they were, you know, and all these different kinds of things. But what we saw was that it is hard when there's brokenness in a relationship to see relationship reconciled. But you want to know what? It's worth it. Because when the kids finally got to a place where they can come together and acknowledge what actually happened, what went wrong, and who did it, what they were able to do was now make it right. And we still had a couple more days to go. And it would have been a terrible experience if they would have just rested in that and been like, I don't know, I mean, at nighttime, they're all like down in this room sleeping together. Who knows what's been going on down there, like in whatever times of night, right? If they hadn't reconciled the relationship. And so they did. But what do we know about reconciling relationships? It can be hard to humble yourself to settle the score and make it right, can it? It can be hard to settle the score and make it right. But here's the lesson Jesus wants to show us in initiating reconciliation is that there are few things more important to your Christian faith than this. And he ends with two principles of reconciliation. The first principle is that reconciliation outranks religious activity. Reconciliation outranks religious activity. Look at verse 23. Jesus says, Hey, so if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, then leave your gift there in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. There's two scenes you're gonna unpack here. The first one's a temple scene, the second one is a court scene. Here is the temple scene, and what Jesus is doing is helping us see the priority of reconciliation. He's saying, Hey, leave your gift and go be reconciled. He's saying hey, if if you're thinking that you have a broken relationship with the people in your life, and that you can come to the house of God and raise your hands in the air, give of your money and your offerings, and do all the service things and missions work in the city and call it good and be like, man, it doesn't matter if my life's a mess because I'm worshiping Jesus. Jesus is saying, Hey, there's a priority here. Relationships matter. The lie that we believe is that our faith in God is separate from our relationship with the people around us. Didn't you hear the greatest commandment? To love the Lord your God with all of your heart, my soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. You can't say that you love God and hate your brother or sister whom you do see, love God who you don't see. God inextricably links these two things together. So, what is Jesus not saying here? He's not saying that if you have broken relationships, that you can't come and worship. He's saying, No, he's he's honored at whatever worship that you give, okay? Like this is this is true. He's not communicating an absolute here. What he's doing is communicating a principle, and the principle is the priority of reconciliation. It's guarding against the fact that you can't say, Hey, I think I'm good. I think I'm good. If I just go and worship Jesus, no, but Jesus pushes you and pushes you to something different, to love the people around you, to initiate the sense of reconciliation. He's not making a prohibition about coming to worship, similar to the command, hey, uh, don't let the sun go down on your anger. That's not a prohibition on going to sleep and still having some mess in your heart. It's a principle that says, hey, we should be people who prioritize people and prioritize peace. Paul says it in Romans 12 like this: as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. As far as it depends on you. And I know this is hard because some of us we have broken relationships, and maybe we've tried. And maybe we've been pushed off by the people we've tried to go to and reconcile relationships with. Listen, that's not on you. The fact that people push you away, and I would even go far as to say that there's some relationships where reconciliation shouldn't be possible because there's so much harm there. From the pulpit, I want to tell you like no one's asking you to go back to an abusive and harmful relationship. No one's asking you to do that. But most of our division is far, far, far less than that. And that the priority of the Christian faith is to lean into reconciliation, not lead out into division. The prescription that Jesus gives to our anger is to be a reconciler. The second principle he gives us is that delayed reconciliation compounds the cost. So reconciliation outrankes religious activity, but secondly, delayed reconciliation compounds the cost. Look at verse 25, the last part of the text. He says, So reach the settlement quickly with your adversary while you're on the way with him to court. Or your adversary will hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison. And truly, I tell you, you will never get out of there until you have paid the last penny. So, really quickly, what Jesus is saying here is that hey, the longer you wait to pursue and initiate reconciliation, the worse it gets. And you can see the progression here. He's saying your adversary will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the officer, and the officer will toss you into jail. And while in jail, look at this, stuck behind the bars. And these can be whatever bars you have in your life that's holding you back from the people in your life that has broken relationship, the unforgiveness, the unspoken word, the unsaid apology, the unreceived apology. When you're stuck behind the bars that you've created yourself, you will continue to pay emotionally, you will continue to pay spiritually, and maybe even pay generationally until you have paid the last penny. We think that when we withhold forgiveness and right relationship with others, we're doing harm to them, we're protecting ourselves. But in reality, it's doing one thing and one thing only. It is bringing pain to us in our own lives. There's a phrase we use here in America that's not a true phrase at all. And it's this time heals all wounds. That's not true. Time doesn't heal necessarily anything. One of the favorite things I do is spend time in premarital counseling with couples. And one of the things we do is talk about communication and conflict resolution. And what I want people to know is that one of the most important things you can do and be in your life with your spouse or other is work on your communication so that you can come and say the things necessary and they're really important. Because what's true is problems will come. You will have problems. Jesus says you will have trouble in this world, but take heart, I have overcome the trouble. You will have those even in your relationships, and you want to know what time's not gonna heal them. Those are like cuts, and those are like wounds in your life, and you know what happens to infected wounds, they don't get better with time, they don't get better with time, they need to be addressed. Infected cuts when left undiagnosed and untreated, they don't get better, they get worse. And so Jesus proposes that when it comes to our anger that leads to broken relationships, we should be people who examine our heart. We should be people who pursue reconciliation, and we should be people who guard our speech. This is important, and I've gotta admit, as I was studying for this this week, this teaching was hitting me in a certain way because I don't get this right. Like I would be a fool to think I can come on stage and talk about anger and talk about reconciliation and not know that I have anger, outrage, built-up resentment, broken relationships, even in my own life. Like I think about how often I get angry when things don't go my way. This is what's true of my life, more so than I like to admit. And what's often true is I don't really lash out about things. That's not really my most dominant character, but I can simmer in that thing. And I can mumble with the best of them and say things under my breath. I think about how many times, even in my own house, towards my kids, the things that I say often reveals the anger and the resentment in my heart. This is what's most often true of me. And maybe this is true of you in the room too. And here's what I want you to know if you're feeling the same thing, and maybe you're just now starting to diagnose it, that the anger you mostly feel isn't this authentic anger or this righteous anger, but it's a sinful one, and you're now recalling the handful or the many relationships in your life that you have brokenness with, and you're like, man, this is overwhelming. I don't know what to do, I don't know what I would do, I don't know where to start. You think this is this is overwhelming, like the anger just feels too deep. Maybe this is you. You have all these relationships, and maybe you're at the point now where you're thinking these relationships are actually beyond repair. I have hope for you. Your hope ultimately is not to deal with your anger and its eternal consequences on your own, it is not to clean yourself up from the inside out. But here is your hope. Your hope is on the finished work of Jesus Christ. It's not on you doing it your own. Like you don't have to bet a thousand on the three ways to address the foundation of anger in your life. You don't have to have a better internal process all figured out today. Like you don't have to have all of your strength together and work on your own accord to try to reconcile the relationships in your life right now, right here in this moment. You don't need all the tools to address all the different things. Yes, you might have a rocky foundation, but you are ill-equipped. You are not adept to deal with the depth at which your foundation is cracked. Even if your walls look okay, your foundation is ruined, and you need more than just a few things to say, hey, I can deal with the foundation of my anger. You need Jesus Christ. You need to know and trust in the gospel that Jesus Christ really lived the perfect life. He was angry and he never sinned, and he went to the cross and he died for you. He died for our sin, for your anger, and for your unresolved relationships and conflicts. And then he rose, defeating sin, defeating hell, defeating death, reigning over them all. And what he does is he is ready and willing to receive you. And when you give your life to him, he begins that construction project on your life by first giving you a new heart. A new heart. This is what you need: the power of the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit to be with you. You walk alongside him as he turns your heart of stone into a heart of flesh. This is the theme for the series. We talked about this in the first couple weeks, that we want to be kingdom people, people of the kingdom of God. And here's what's most true about the kingdom is that the kingdom doesn't press you into harder religion, it presses you into deeper dependence. And so, more than workshopping the relationships in your life, you need a radical dependence on God. You want to see your foundation get addressed, you want to see your foundation be built up from the ground up, you want to see your walls not just be a show of not murdering, but also be full of authenticity and integrity, of rightly dealing with your anger and showing authentic and righteous anger over sinful anger. It starts with you allowing the Holy Spirit into your life to do a reworking of you, starting from the heart, from the bottom up. You can't do it yourself. And then and only then would we be supernaturally empowered to deal with the anger in our lives.

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Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast. To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE. And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m. at 2308 East Bellevue Place. Grace and peace.