When I was growing up, we just had the one phone and it wasn't a cell phone. We didn't have a cordless phone for the longest time. We had the standard landline with the cord attached to the wall and the tape recorded answering machine. And we could only use it so much. And there were two teenagers, three teenagers in the house at times. But my sister and I, in particular, we were kind of rivals over the phone because we both had, you know, crushes that we needed to check in on and gossip that we needed to participate in. Because, you know, we're teenagers. So we had these rules that mom and dad handed down about how things needed to be. And if mom and dad were at the house, they could manage it and keep us from being complete idiots about the phone. But if they weren't there, we tended to get after each other a little bit and it tended to turn really, really ugly. And so they had this rule, which was you can't touch the phone physically if somebody else is on it. Even if they've been on it too long and broken rules, because we were starting to do this thing where we'd reach up and like jam our fingers in there and be like, hang it up. You're four minutes over the time, and I need to talk to my crush. And so they made this rule. They went away one time, and and my sister, she saved up some money to buy this crazy extra long, like 80-foot phone cord so she could stretch it all the way through the house and into her bedroom, and then shut the door in there, and then she could talk about super secret private things. Well, it was my turn to call my girlfriend, and she wasn't getting off the phone, and there was no mom and dad to make her do it, and she was hiding under the protection of her room and the law of I physically can't touch the phone. I'm like, well, that thing is attached to a cord, and I know one way to interrupt this call. So I went back to the source and I warned her a couple times, she did not budge. So I unplugged the phone from the wall. And wow, what came out of that door was all it was all red and angry and sweaty and super mad and like ready to physically fight. And I thought that was kind of funny at first. And I was like, no, she wants to kill me. Okay, this has gone too far. And so she was mad and I was mad, and then mom and dad got home, things escalated a little bit, and they're like, and they start sorting through the whole thing, and my sister's this emotional angry wreck, and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna win this by demonstrating my superior composure. And so I laid out, as the great orators of your might do, a perfect defense of my behavior, one hand in the air, looking toward God in heaven before whom I felt no guilt whatsoever. I explained my sister's erratic behavior, demonstrated my own wisdom and how I honored the law of not touching the phone. And my parents were so not impressed. The whole thing flipped in that moment from my sister behaved badly to, all right, son, clearly you are the problem here. And I'm like, but I honored the rule, come on. And mom and dad clearly explained that I had not in any way honored the spirit or the point of the rule, and that I was smart enough to know it. And as a result, I got in trouble. She got in trouble too. So don't worry, it's spread around perfectly evenly between everyone. This is kind of the thing that we're looking at in the next chunk of Sermon on the Mount with Jesus. Jesus has just finished setting up this impossible conundrum. Everybody knows they need atonement, but because of the laws of time and space and the linear nature of time, you can't go back and unmake things. You can only mitigate the damage from things. Atonement isn't real, and if atonement were to happen, it would have to come from an outside source. That's a bummer, because once again, everybody super needs it. But it sounds like there's atonement in this kingdom of heaven that Jesus is describing. But unfortunately, he then went on to say that, oh, anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Ah, bummer. But whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Okay, so I just got to do everything right. But then he says, For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. And those guys were the most maximum righteous possible. So what he's really saying is, your hope is in this kingdom, and nobody's good enough to get into this kingdom. Well, there were probably some people who were very indignant, much like me, who raised a hand to the sky in their brain and looked with no shame toward God, ignoring their accusers and offering their defense of how they've never done anything wrong. I've never done this, I've never done that, I didn't technically touch the phone. And before they can even start into their orations of their innocence, Jesus is going to go point by point through several things that the religious elite and anybody who imagined that they were super great at everything would be able to point to, saying, I've never done that bad thing and I've never done that bad thing. And Jesus is going to cleverly take them down one at a time, demonstrating that even if these very, very well-behaved people had technically never done the naughty thing, they had still violated the spirit of God's command and got it wrong at the level of the heart, which is akin to getting it wrong physically. You've definitely heard this stuff before, whether you're around the Bible a lot or not. All of these statements are framed with the same kind of formula. You have heard it said, but I tell you, and this is one of those places in the New Testament where we're getting paraphrase of what we call the Old Testament, as opposed to some of the direct quotes that we've seen from the Old Testament in other parts of the Gospel of Matthew thus far. So here's how the first one goes. You've heard that it was said to 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, is answerable to the Sanhedrin, but anyone who says, You fool, will be in danger of the fire of hell. So Jesus starts with one that's like the universal basic moral rule that pretty much all cultures ever in all parts of the world agree on. We can reason to this totally apart from God, theoretically, that being you shouldn't murder people. And so Jesus alludes to the one not only that is very, very obvious to everybody, but he also starts with the one that pretty much everybody should be able to say, Well, I can tick that box. That's one naughty I've never committed. And so I think it's funny that Jesus starts with the one that would be like the security blanket of the Ten Commandments, like the one you can go to where you're like, well, yeah, maybe that one. I mean uh that one's kind of tough for me. I suppose maybe that one, but I've never murdered anybody. And he cuts that out from under everyone who would have imagined that they're very well behaved. And so when he says, You've heard this was said long ago, he's acknowledging that it was in the law. Don't murder, okay, obviously. And of course, anybody who does that is going to be subject to judgment, both spiritually before God, but also obviously in the community. There were biblical standards for what you do if somebody murders, as well as just legal standards in all cultures for what you do. But I tell you, huh? What? There's more. I thought this one was just a really simple don't do the bad thing thing, and I don't do the bad thing. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. I guess I can think of a recently discussed example of me failing this one. And for that matter, I can think of a recently discussed example of my sister failing this one. Everybody's been mad at their either metaphorical brother or sister or literal brother or sister. I mean, isn't some degree of anger okay? Wasn't Jesus mad when he was flipping over tables and yelling about his father's house and den of thieves and money changers and all of that business? But he expands on it to clarify here. Anyone who says to his brother raca, now my understanding has always been that this term, I think it's got to be an Aramaic term. I guess I don't even know that for sure. I assume the Aramaic term Raqqa, I have heard refers to like a the insult empty-headed, you're stupid, you're an idiot, I don't know, something like that. It seems actually relatively harmless in the grand cosmos of insults that could be conjured, but okay. Anyone who says that is answerable to the Sanhedrin. Oh, okay. So maybe there was some kind of rule or law that said if you know, if you insult someone in a certain way, that's maybe like the first century equivalent of hate speech, and you might have to talk to the speech police about that for going too far. But anyone who says you fool will be in danger of the fires of hell. So if I'm reading this right, though hate is not the equivalent of murder in terms of world system consequences, and I don't think it should be in terms of world system consequences, because who can properly adjudicate it who has hated another person enough to be punished? But if there's a perfect judge who resides or presides rather over a perfect kingdom, he would know everything about the motives of the heart and the level of hatred, and he would be able to rightly judge that. And in such a system, it would be appropriate for such a king to adjudicate that. Uh-oh. Well, that means that everyone is effectively guilty in the spiritual sense of this most heinous of things that would be unthinkable in a physical sense. First John 2 9 says, Anybody who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. So you can't claim God and hate your brother or sister. You can't. It's incompatible in the kingdom. You might be able to get away with that in a world system where you can do religious things and still be a complete jackwagon, but that doesn't work in the kingdom system because the king knows better and his standards are higher, and the kingdom values are so clearly articulated, and you can't want those kingdom values and kingdom blessings for yourself while giving the gigantic double middle finger to somebody you don't like. To put it another way, hating people and withholding grace from them while simultaneously depending on God to love you and extend his grace to you is sawing off the branch of grace on which we sit. It seems real clever until that thing starts to break, and then you realize that that hypocrisy is absolutely unsustainable. Jesus' point is that sin at its most genuine level, failure to meet up to the standards of perfection of God, is something that comes from the innermost parts of a person. I mean, it's not literally from the heart, but from the essence, from the depths of a person, which also means that conversely, true obedience in this kingdom, Jesus is describing, is also from the heart. So a couple things are happening here. One, Jesus is clearly finishing his or it's a trap. He's pointing out to people that whatever you imagine yourself to be or others to be in terms of righteousness, it's a farce. No one is righteous, not even one. He's rounding out that thought, but he's also doing something proactive here. And what he's doing that's proactive is that he's advocating for proactivity. True obedience to God, true participation in the values of his kingdom, then would not be just not doing bad things. It would not be just reacting against temptation and not doing it. It's proactive. So there's a flip that's happening here that is an absolute sea change in the whole big picture of religion in this moment. Maybe people are catching it. Maybe that's why Jesus hits like six of these things, because maybe it takes a minute for people to get it through their heads. It certainly took me a long time, cost me my faith for a while, and maybe it continues to take me a long time. This is a hard concept. But to obey God according to Jesus is not to not do bad things, it is to proactively be a kingdom citizen and do kingdom value things. And so at first glance, this passage seems like, ah, that's an even bigger burden. Come on, how can I possibly get that right? But at second glance, dang, this is actually sustainable. Okay. So the whole point of what I do religiously and as a person is not not do things. There's actually a calling here, there's an objective, there's a responsibility, there's a purpose. And we start to get a little bit bigger sense of what was hinted at in that language about salt and light and the responsibility that the kingdom citizen has. We start to get a little bigger sense of what this new orientation toward religion and God might look like, this proactive approach to eyes wide open, grace-centered faith. And I think it's way better than the alternative. In fact, I'm not at all interested in the alternative, but this intrigues me. And no joking, this intrigues me to the point that I came back from not being a Christian and decided that this is probably something I need to see through because it makes a ton of sense in light of this. Something else that makes a ton of sense is me saying thank you to a whole bunch of people who have signed up to support the podcast lately. And I just pulled up the little list as some people who jumped on. Kyrillian Thiessen, thank you for jumping on. Also, your name is awesome. Drax, holy cow, these names are spectacular. Drax Cumini, awesome name, and thank you. Richard Moss, Joshua Columbus, Isaac Stovell, Jason Kisser, another awesome name. Brian Armitage, Mark DeGroot, Dusty Haig, Melissa Perkins, Mark Bierink, another awesome name. David Crowder, an Austin, I control the ice cream in this town, Brummer, Brett Unbenhagen, and my friend Noah Wilhelm. I know there are more of you signed up a ways back, but I don't know I just want to shout out a few people. Thanks for doing that. Also, I heard from some people who need toilet paper. And as you know, I have six rolls to spare. So those are going out today. Thank you for letting me help you with your situation. Last thing, my buddy Shane Heilman, who does the Psalms Project that we talked about last month or whenever it was. This isn't a sponsored episode or anything like that, but he's doing a Facebook Live concert with Psalms Project music on Saturday. So there's a link to that down below. It's 7 p.m. mountain time. I don't know how that projects out for you. That math is too confusing for me. But hey, we're all cooped up anyway. I think we might really enjoy it. I'm gonna be there. Maybe I'll see you on the internet. I don't know how that exactly works, but whatever the case, link below. Looks like a cool thing to do with your Saturday night. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again tomorrow.