No points for not murdering. No points whatsoever. So if you had that on your resume, as you're looking for new work or on a scholarship application, as you're trying to get a few bucks for school, you might as well just take off the line that says, ain't never murdered nobody, because that counts for nothing. I've got good Bible authority from Jesus himself to say big deal about your not murdering. However, he then flips around his tacit agreement with the idea that murder is bad to go towards something more proactive. And he says in Matthew 5, 22, I'll start in 21, he says, You've heard it said, the people long ago don't murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who's angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, Raka, which I guess means like empty-headed, is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, you fool, which I guess was worse, will be in danger of the fire of hell. What is going on? I said it a couple days ago and I'll say it again. This is a sea change in religious thought for them, for us, for everybody in between. How much of religion gets just mingled in with basic naughty and nice morality? I mean, really, come on. Tons of it? How much of religion as it's been constructed throughout the ages, including tons of expressions of Christianity, I do not deny this, have been really little more than some sort of reference to a space wizard, a sky ghost that sees what you're doing, like Santa Claus. And if you're naughty, there's going to be some kind of karma payback for that. And if you're nice, there's going to be some kind of payoff for that. I mean, really, come on. That's a lot of how it works. It's it's uh, what if some people call it a moralistic deism, right? There's this vague, uninterested God who's kind of keeping score on who does the naughty things and do the nice things. So do the nice things, it's a good way to condition kids into behaving better. But certainly Christianity, certainly the Bible, certainly Jesus, with what you and I are looking at together, with this whole kingdom manifesto, surely that is much more complex than naughty and nice. And in fact, Jesus is saying stuff here that's much more complex than naughty and nice. True, most morality, especially in a religious context, is just don't do bad thing. But Jesus, he gets right into it here and is like, no, the fulfillment of the law is not just don't do bad thing. It is conceive of the values of the kingdom and go proactively do good thing. But he gets there in two steps. So the first is to expand guilt. Congrats, you've never murdered anybody, big deal. Have you hated anybody? Have you been vitriolic toward anybody else? Have you wanted to murder anybody else? I think about that ring thing yesterday. What if you had it? Do you think you ever would have murdered somebody if you had a ring that would make all the accountability for that just vanish into thin air? I think I might have. I hope not. I would rather that I would just say no unequivocally, like eighteen-year-old righteous, pure, blonde-headed, everything is true and noble and right, and I am a white knight who fights for goodness and justice. I wish that version of me were rooted in reality, but the truth is I've felt some pretty dark stuff at times. I wonder if I carried a ring like that around in my pocket if I would have done something horrible to someone. Would you? I suspect you might have been awfully tempted to do the same as well. Because I've hated people. And what is it to hate someone? Is it to really, really, really, really dislike them? Or is it to wish ill on them? Or is it even further to think that things would be better off if there was no them? I've felt horrible things toward other people, and the moral restraint that I would like to give myself credit for was not moral restraint at all, it was consequence restraint. What if the ring existed? That's what Jesus is pushing back on. Do you hate people? Do you despise them? Do you wish them ill? Do you wish them death? Would you condemn them with your words? Well, if so, you are guilty of the thing that murder is nothing more than a manifestation of. The violation of the values of the kingdom is something in this situation that Jesus is saying happens at the invisible level of the soul. It's unmeasurable. Nobody can know that you did it, nobody can know that you thought it. So it's very difficult to check because it's only occasionally that there'll be an outburst or some kind of manifestation of the zick that might exist inside you or me or anybody else. And so anybody sitting on that hill who would have said, I am good because I have not done bad thing X, is now having to consider very honestly whether they would have done bad thing X if they could have, whether they wanted to do bad thing X? Now, what is Jesus really saying here? Is he saying that if you have murdered someone, you can't ever be in the kingdom? The rest of the Bible would seem to indicate that even something so heinous is forgivable by the work of Christ on the cross. We'll have to break that down more later. Is Jesus saying that if you ever hated somebody or said a mean insult or a really mean insult, that then you're out of the kingdom forever? I don't think that's what he's driving at either. I think what he's driving at is that anybody who thinks they're righteous enough to gain access to this perfect kingdom of God is wrong. And any standard of righteousness you were using that might cause you to think you were good enough is a bad standard of righteousness. So here, let me redefine your standard of righteousness by pointing out the level of the heart. See, now that's a kingdom standard of righteousness, and now everybody fails the test. So what we have is a tension that's being developed. We got a problem. Oh, we thought we had a problem in the last passage with we need atonement, time moves forward, we can't atone for our own stuff because we can't go back in time. I guess we need God to solve that, but oh no, can't get into the kingdom because we'd have to be even better and more righteous than the Pharisees. Now the problem is even expanded by saying that even the Pharisees aren't good enough or even close. There's no even roadmap left here because anybody with a soul, anybody with even a modicum of self-honesty, has to admit that they've done all the stuff that Jesus says is akin to the worst crime of all the crimes and the worst sin of all the sins, which is murder. Yikes. But positively, there's also something that's taking shape here that we're going to get more of a sense of as we see this pattern play out over the next six chunks of Matthew 5 that we look at. And the pattern that we see playing out is an unspoken inverse that becomes spoken in some of these moving ahead, which is that true obedience to God, true embracing of the values of the kingdom, true honoring of the law, true fulfillment of the law, is not just to not do the negative once again, but to proactively go out and do the values of the kingdom because you feel like it, not because somebody made you. So the opposite then of hating people and despising people and wishing death on them is loving people. The value of the kingdom is loving people, is serving people, is caring about people. And as we read on, we're going to see that Jesus very clearly does not just mean love and serve people who vote like you and think like you and complain about the same stuff as you and like the same entertainment as you and speak the same language as you and make the same amount of money as you, and hate the same rock bands as you and hate the same stuff as you hate. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. It's everybody. It's your enemy. You're supposed to love and serve and care for the person who would treat you horribly, the person who lives with values that are the opposite of the values of the kingdom. That doesn't exempt you from this. So we're now like four levels deep into this thing where Jesus is saying that he didn't come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. We considered the prophetic fulfillment, we considered the practical legal fulfillment, we considered the sacrificial legal fulfillment, but now we're seeing that Jesus is even fulfilling the very notions of the rules. The rule says don't kill people. Well, here's how we're going to fulfill that. Not only don't kill people, don't hate people, don't wish people dead, don't despise people, and not only implicitly don't despise people and wish them dead, but do quite the opposite. Love them no matter what. Care about them no matter what. Well, where does he get off telling people to act like that? I mean, has Jesus ever had anybody do anything to him? Oh, oh, that's where he gets off. Because more than anybody else, he is the victim of the greatest injustice in all of history ever. He is the purest being to have ever suffered the worstest injustice. So nobody is positioned better to call us out on this and to say love your enemy than Jesus himself, who literally, in the process of saying on these words on the hill, is loving his enemy. Big picture here to give you a sense of the rhythm of how this is gonna play out. We're not gonna spend this much time on each and every one of these, you have heard it said long ago, but I tell you that statements that we're gonna get here over the next chunk of Matthew chapter five. I'm lingering on this one because it's the one that there's no shame in all of us admitting that we, you know, yep, yep, we're against murder. And I think we can all just honest up and be like, yep, sometimes I've thought some pretty bad things about other people and haven't been loving and gracious, and I've maybe even been hateful. I think we can just own it. Whereas some of the other ones, it's gonna get a little bit weird or even a little bit distant to where we're like, I don't know, that's not really my thing. I could uh that one, uh yeah, I think I'm actually getting that one right at the level of the heart. This is the one that's a great test case to dwell on because it really pushes down deep into stuff. So what we're gonna do tomorrow is rather than just leaving this open-ended, I kind of want to put a bit of a bow on it in terms of what does it actually look like to respond to this and get it right if you want to. And I'm not saying you have to. Again, I'm not the knower of things or the teller of people how to do stuff. But if you decide Jesus is compelling, the Sermon on the Mount is compelling, I think that makes sense. And yeah, if I want the love of God, even though, you know, I I guess suppose I'm technically his enemy as one who's imperfect and he's perfect, if I want that love of God, I guess I need to give it away to other people. So if you're sitting there doing that math equation and you want to do it, I'm gonna process a few things about how to respond to it tomorrow. And then we're gonna start pushing on into the rest of these. You've heard it said that, but I tell you statements moving forward. Hey, some of you support me on Patreon. I've told you before that the people who do that, I think that's really cool. I've told you before that the people who don't, I'm super glad you're here and you do not have to support me there. And so I'm gonna mention again that patreon.com slash the TMBH podcast really is the engine that makes this thing go. And I'm so grateful for the help there. But bigger than that, I'm just grateful that we get to do this together and that you make it so I get to do this every single day. It's good for me. I'm growing because of it. It's affecting my brain in good ways, and I hope it's affecting you in good ways as well. All right, I'm Matt. This is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do it again soon,