Murdered Anyone Lately?

Father God, we thank you for today, and we are so grateful for your word that explains everything we need to know pertaining to life and godliness, and you have been so good to give it to us that we might be able to see the greatness and the glory of our God. Tonight, as we study your word, we pray that you'd open our eyes to see only the things that will allow us to be the kind of people you want us to be, and get us to know who you are, even all the more. We thank you, Father, that you give this opportunity to us in the middle of the week, and pray that, Lord, we will grow deep in our understanding of you, that we might follow you fully, not partially, but totally committed to serving our God.

So we thank you, in the precious name of Christ. Amen. I am so glad that you're here with us this evening, and I trust that the things that you learn will help you grow in your walk with the Lord.

I think that, as we study through the Sermon on the Mount, I think that there'll be so many things that God will use to draw you closer to him. So tonight, I just wanna ask and answer a very simple question. That's it.

I'm gonna ask you one question, then answer that question. The question is this, have you murdered anybody lately? That's the question. Have you murdered anyone lately? You would say, well, why would you ask that question? We're in church.

We come to church. We're not murderers. Why would you ask that question? Well, that's because murders are happening in great numbers every single day.

And I'm afraid that most of us don't understand the essence of that. For instance, there are 55 murders that occur in our country every day, at least 55. That's on the low-end scale.

In other words, there's around 20,000 murders every year in America. Every 31 minutes, somebody's murdered. So by the time we're done tonight, two people are going to die by murder.

Hopefully, it's none of you this evening. But that's the reality of murder. But on the other hand, suicide is also murder.

And there are 134 suicides take place every single day in America, 134, meaning that there are 49,000 suicides every year in our country. And suicide is a form of murder.

On top of that, abortion is murder. And there are somewhere between 2,200 and 2,800 abortions every day, meaning that there's somewhere between 800,000 and a million babies aborted every year or murdered every single year. Now, just think about that. And we live in Southern California.

And unless the murder is out of the ordinary or in multiples or bizarre, we usually don't hear about them. But because we live in California, most of the murders are bizarre, and so we do hear a lot about them. So I ask you again, have you murdered anyone lately? That's a fair question to ask.

Now, I would probably guess that none of you would murder like Ted Bundy murdered when he killed over 30 different young women across seven different states. I'm gonna presume that's none of you this evening. And I will also presume that none of you are like Jeffrey Dahmer, who between 1978 and 1991 murdered 17 young men and boys, dismembering them. He was called the Milwaukee Cannibal.

I would also assume that none of you are murderers like John Wayne Gacy, who was called the Killer Clown and in the 70s, he murdered 33 young men, wrapped them in plastic bags and buried them under his house.

And then I would also assume that none of you are anywhere related to Charles Manson, whose the Charles Manson family murders consisted of the actor Sharon Tate and six other members in 1969.

I would hope that none of you are the Zodiac Killer because he has never been caught and he killed several people in Northern California during the 60s and 70s. Also, I'm certain that none of you are of the persuasion of Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people with the Oklahoma City bombing. Those are famous murderers for lack of a better title.

We can even think of the trial of the century with O.J. Simpson. Although he was found not guilty, that doesn't mean he didn't kill his ex-wife and her boyfriend. All that being said is that murders happen all the time and Christ would ask a question about murder in the Sermon on the Mount.

And so it's important for us to realize that the Bible makes it very clear in the Decalogue, the 10 Commandments, that, Exodus chapter 20, the Sixth Commandment, thou shalt not kill. Better translated, murder, because there are some killings that God has divinely appointed. Thou shalt not murder.

In fact, in Genesis 9, verse number 6, our Lord said, who so sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man. So God, under divine order, made a way for murderers to be dealt with.

God instituted capital punishment. Genesis 9, verse number 6, Romans chapter 13, verse number 4. So when the Bible says thou shalt not murder, that does not include capital punishment.

It does not include wars, because God has designed wars throughout his sovereign plan, a lot of it to discipline and judge certain nations. It also doesn't include self-defense. In Deuteronomy 19, there is a prohibition against killing those who, out of self-defense, defend themselves, because after all, you are made in the image of God, and you are to protect that image.

And so in protecting others or yourself in self-defense, then you are not subject to be killed, nor are you labeled a murderer. Murder is something that's planned, that's plotted to enact some kind of violence upon someone else. And the question would come, why are there murders? Well, we know that murders are authored by Satan.

John 8:44, he was a murderer from the beginning, Christ says. So Satan is the author of murders. You also need to know that murder is an abomination to God.

Proverbs 6 tells us that, that those who shed innocent blood are an abomination to God. You also need to know that murder arises from the heart. Matthew 15, Mark 7, from the heart proceeds murders, adulteries, slandering, gossip.

But murder arises from the heart. Murder is authored by Satan. Murder is an abomination to God.

And murder is the act of the reprobate, according to Romans chapter 1, verses 28 and 29. But I ask you just another time, have you murdered anyone lately? And that is a fair question, and you will see why it's a fair question before the evening is over.

Christ is preaching on the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee. There are scores of people that are listening to him. I was marveled at the fact that the Lord never needed a microphone. He was able to speak, and everybody was able to hear what he said.

Now whether they gathered closely around him, I have no idea, I wasn't there. But the scores of people on the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee numbered in the hundreds maybe, and probably in the thousands. And he begins this sermon by interpreting the identity of kingdom children in verses 1 to 12 with the Beatitudes.

Once he interprets the identity of children of the kingdom, he articulates their authority. That's in verses 13 down through 20. He articulates their authority, one, as salt and light in the world, and he articulates their authority because of the authority of Scripture that they follow.

Having said all that, Christ says the children in my kingdom manifest a certain morality, a morality that stems from the inside of them, not the outside of them. And in so doing, he gives six illustrations whereby the children of the king manifest their morality.

Number one is murder. Number two, adultery. Number three, divorce. Number four, swearing. Number five, revenge. And number six, love.

He gives six illustrations that are so pertinent to today, that are so relevant to our everyday life that it's almost amazing to us how he articulates it.

But after all, these are the children of the king. And the morality that they manifest on a daily basis, he articulates very clearly. And he begins with the same phrase all six times.

You have heard that it was said by the ancients of old. He doesn't say that you have heard that it was said in the law of Moses. He doesn't say you have heard that it was said in the Pentateuch.

You haven't heard that it was said by the prophets. He doesn't say that. He simply says that you have heard that it was said by the ancients of old, by the rabbis of old.

Because what they would do is that they would add to the scriptures. They would add their oral tradition to the word of God. And then they would then teach the people about their oral traditions as if they were as authoritative as God's word was authoritative.

So Christ comes along, and having interpreted the identity of the people of his kingdom, having articulated the authority of his people in that kingdom, he's now gonna manifest the morality of the people that live in that kingdom. And he does it in such a powerful way because he knows that within the audience there are many Pharisees, there are many scribes. And that's why the theme verse is verse 20 of chapter 5.

Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God. And that had to shock everybody on the mountainside. For they're thinking, how can that ever be possible? They are so holy.

They are so pure. They have such authority. People lived in awe of the Pharisees.

They lived in awe of the scribes. They were keepers of the law. They were interpreters of the law.

And they were high on worship. And people would be taken back by just the presence of these religious leaders. But Christ condemned them.

Christ spoke against them because they were hypocritical. And so he makes it very clear in verse 20, which is the theme verse of the three chapters, that your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees because theirs was a self-righteousness. There was a self-induced righteousness.

And Christ says, you must obtain my righteousness or you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. With that in mind, let me read to you the section on murder. Verse 21, you have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not commit murder.

And whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. And whoever says to his brother, you good for nothing, or “raca”, shall be guilty before the Supreme Court.

And whoever says “you fool” shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar. Go first be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering, make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent.

Over the next several weeks, I'm gonna give you three points.

The first point will always be the rabbinical tradition. The second point will always be the biblical teaching. The third point will always be your personal transformation. That's how we will look at each of these topics that our Lord brings to the people there on the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Our Lord is very purposeful. He's very strategic. He knows exactly what to say and how to say it.

And so he begins by always attacking the rabbinical tradition. It's not the biblical teaching he attacks because he came to fulfill the law, not abolish the law, but it is the rabbinical tradition that he does attack because they had raised their tradition higher than the law of God. And so he came to tear that down.

He came to destroy it. And so let's begin with the rabbinical tradition when he says these words, you have heard that the ancients were told, or you have heard, you have heard from the ancients of old, you've heard from them, you shall not commit murder. And you can hear the people in the crowd.

Amen. Amen. You got it right, Jesus.

You shall not commit murder. And all of us would say amen to that as well. We know the Decalogue.

We know what it says. They knew what it said. And so Christ says, you have heard that it was said by the ancients of old that you shall not murder.

And they agreed. They would understand that. And then he would say this, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.

Very interesting how he states that, because he wants them to understand the rabbinical tradition. You see, the Pharisees would say, we are holy and we are righteous because we don't murder.

We're not like Jeffrey Dahmer. We're not like Ted Bundy. We're not like Charles Manson. Those are heinous people.

Those are murderers. Those are serial killers. Those are the nasty of the nasties.

We're not like that. Oh no. We are holy and righteous because we don't murder.

We are on our way to heaven because we don't murder. We haven't killed anybody. We don't even own a knife, a sword, or a gun, or a tank, or a hand grenade, or whatever.

We own nothing. We've never killed anyone because the Bible says, you shall not murder. And so they would see themselves as holy people.

They would see themselves as righteous before God because they never murdered anybody. And there are people today who would see themselves as righteous because they've never killed anybody. I'm not a murderer.

I'm not an adulterer. I'm not a liar. I'm not that kind of person.

Those kind of people are just nasty people. And we begin to compare ourselves among ourselves, and that's exactly what the Pharisees did. Did.

But Jesus says, your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. In other words, not murdering anyone is not enough to get you into heaven. So if you think that you don't murder someone and you are righteous because of that, and that's gonna get you to heaven, Jesus says, but I say unto you.

He is gonna give them the true teaching of the law of God. He's gonna help them understand exactly what the Lord was saying. Notice he said, the rabbinical teaching was, you should not commit murder, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.

In other words, if you murdered someone, then the courts would decide what would happen. But notice they left out what the Lord thought about murder and what the Lord would do to those who committed murder, according to Genesis chapter 9, verse number 6, which of course they would know very, very well. They did not take into account God's holy character.

God is a God of life, that's why you don't murder. God's a God of truth, that's why you don't lie. God's a God of purity and holiness, that's why you don't commit immorality.

Why? Because you're a child of the king, and you wanna live like a child of the king. You wanna honor the king. The point is, they didn't kill simply because if they did, they would get in trouble by the law of the land.

They didn't see themselves as being judged by the living God. You see, they emphasized the act of murder, and they excluded the attitude behind murder. That's very important.

They should know what God's attitude about man's heart is all about. They would know, 1 Samuel 16, that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart. God is into the heart, because whatever happened on the inside is gonna manifest itself on the outside.

Man is a murderer because of what happens on the inside, not because of what's happening on the outside. Man is a murderer because he's induced from the inside out, from a heart. Murders proceed from the hearts.

Murders come forth because of what's on the inside of a man, not what's on the outside of a man. That's what concerns our Lord. They would know, Psalm 51, verse number 6, that God desires truth in the inward parts.

They would know 1 Kings 8, verse number 39, which says, thou alone dost know the hearts of men. Of all the souls of men. They would know 1 Chronicles 28, verse number 9, the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of man's thoughts.

That's just amazing to me, that God understands every intent of man's thoughts. You can't disguise your motives to God. You can't deceive God.

God knows your heart. He knows every intent of the thoughts in your heart. He knows them all.

Well, you see, the Pharisees would know those kinds of verses, and Jesus would reinforce that when he said, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength, with everything on the inside of you, you should love him and your neighbor as yourself. And the Lord would emphasize that. So the Old Testament clearly taught that God was into man's heart more so than anything else.

But the Jews disregarded the internal attitude and emphasized the external act. For if they acted properly, they saw themselves as righteous and holy. If what they did on the outside was pleasing, then they were a holy people. They had forgotten about the inside.

So you move from the rabbinical tradition to the biblical teaching. And Jesus says, but I say unto you, but I say, I'm gonna give you the real intent of the law.

I'm gonna explain the law of God to you as you've never heard it before. I want you to understand what the law of God really is truly all about. He says, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court.

And whoever says to his brother “raca” shall be guilty before the Supreme Court. And whoever says “you fool” shall be guilty enough to go into Gehenna or into a fiery hell. What he does is he gives these illustrations.

He begins with an indictment. You've heard it this way, but I say unto you. And he's gonna give three illustrations.

And they're gonna build one upon the other. The first one deals with silent anger. The second one deals with spoken anger.

And then the next one deals with salacious anger. So he's gonna build one upon the other. And show them that their righteous standard fell way short of God's standard.

Because God, he's gonna raise up the standard before the people. He's gonna raise it so high it's gonna be impossible for people to meet it. You see, the reason the Pharisees lowered the standard is because they couldn't meet God's standard.

So they lowered the standard so they could seem righteous. They lowered the standard so they could obtain in their mind a righteous standing before God. And God says, you have heard that it was said by the ancients of old, this is what they've told you, but I'm gonna tell you the real story.

Here is the real law. Here is the real righteous standard. And unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, that is, you must obtain my righteousness, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

So you can imagine what was going through the minds of the people there in the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. And all of a sudden, you read this and all of a sudden, you find yourself convicted, why? Because I'm gonna ask you the same question. Have you murdered anyone lately? That's the question.

Because we would all agree, the Pharisees, no, we haven't murdered anybody. Nobody's dead, we haven't shed any man's blood. Ah, but you see, that's not the intent of the law.

That's not what God was saying. He says, no, if you are angry, if there's a silent anger, or a spoken anger, or a salacious anger, you're bound for a fiery hell. In other words, your heart makes you more guilty than the heinous act of murder.

So the answer to the question, have you murdered anyone lately? The answer is yes. It's not no, it's yes. And therefore, you realize you can't meet the standard.

And this is where Christ is driving them. He will later say, next time we're together, you shall not commit adultery, that's what you've heard. And they will say, you're right, we don't do that.

We don't sleep with another man's wife. We only sleep with our own wives. Ah, but I say unto you, Christ says, deals with the heart of a man, not the acts of a man.

And again, he will blow them right off the North Shore, the Sea of Galilee, with those words that are so piercing to the depths of man's soul. Because he wants to bring them to a point of conviction. He's teaching them that at the root, the root of murder is the heart of a man that's angry, the heart of a man that's filled with hatred.

That's why you murder, because of what's on the inside. And God judges not based on what you do on the outside. He's based on what you do, he judges based on what you do on the inside, which is very important, why? Because in Revelation chapter 22, Christ says these words.

He says, blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city. But outside of the gates, outside of heaven, are the dogs and sorcerers, the immoral persons, and murderers, murderers can't get into the kingdom. And so Christ says, murder begins on the inside.

For instance, John would say in 1 John 3, verse number 15, these words: whoever hates his brother is a murderer. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. So John is on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, he hears the words of Jesus, and he begins to understand where murder begins.

Not to consider the state of the heart is not to consider that which the Lord holds to be the all-important measure of true guilt. That's why Solomon would say, guard your heart, for out of it flow all the issues of life. Guard your heart, it's the wellspring of all things that happen in life.

If you can't guard your heart, you're in big trouble. So Christ says, you have heard that it was said by the ancients of old, you shall not murder. But I want to let you know something.

If you are angry with your brother, it's from the root word orge, which means to brood, to smolder, to hold it in. This is why we call it silent anger. It's the rumblings on the inside where nothing happens, but the face gets more and more red with each passing day.

It's where bitterness wells up on the inside because man is so angry because of something that happened to him. You say, well, wait a minute, our Lord got angry. Yes, he did, John too.

At the end of Matthew, both he cleansed the temple. Overturned the tables, chased out the money changers. He was angry.

Yes, he was, but it was righteous indignation. Psalm 69 was fulfilled in John too. Zeal for thy father's house consumes me.

And he was zealous, he had a righteous indignation. That's why Paul would say, be ye angry and sin not, because there is a righteous indignation. And the more holy you are, the more angry you become at unholiness.

The more Christ-like you are, the more angry you are at those that are not Christ-like things. And so you could become angry at those things. And it's well-deserving.

It's called righteous indignation. He's not talking about righteous anger. He's not talking about righteous indignation.

He's talking about somebody who is angry because something has happened to them because of somebody else. Someone has caused this anger within you. Some offense, some attitude, some action, some situation that's caused you to be angry, which causes you to refuse to forgive.

It's that long-lived kind of anger. Orge is a unique word. It's the root of all bitterness.

And the writer of Hebrews says, be careful that a root of bitterness doesn't well up within you because it defiles many, many people. I've talked to people over the times, I've talked to fathers and mothers and sons and daughters about the bitterness in their family. And be careful about that because it's gonna defile the members of your family.

You gotta be careful about that. But they had this anger that's on the inside. The silent anger, nothing comes out.

It just wells up, it swells up, it gets huge. And all of a sudden, you are so incensed on the inside. Christ says those people are guilty before the court.

Other words, they're deserving of death. Whoa. They're deserving of death? Anger merits divine execution because God is a judge who sits on the throne.

Anger is at the root of hatred and hatred is at the root of every murder. And God says, if you are angry at your brother, you are deserving of death. Even though you never said a word, even though you never shot a bullet, even though you never wield a knife, your anger is worthy of death.

Then he builds on that because he wants to take it from silent anger to spoken anger. He wants to move from an internal anger or internal, yeah, internal anger to a verbal abuse. He says, and whoever says to his brother, maybe your text says, raca.

The New American Standard says, you good for nothing. That's a little soft. Raca is a word that cannot be translated.

It's a word that they would know very, very well because there's no definition of it. There's no describing it, but they would know it well. It's a word that deals with the malicious intent to degrade someone, maybe because of their character, maybe because of the way they look, but you're gonna speak a word of raca against them.

And Christ says, if you move from internal anger to verbal abuse, if you move from silent anger to spoken anger, he says that you are guilty before the Supreme Court. That's a more intense court. Why? Because that was the Sanhedrin, 70 ruling elders of Jerusalem. Who were the ones who judged the most severe of all crimes. They pronounced judgment upon Stephen as to why he was stoned. Because of the words that Stephen used.

So Christ says, if you have this silent, smoldering anger, you're worthy of death. If that moves even further to spoken anger, you're still worthy of death. And then he says, he says, and whoever says you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

You fool, moros. It's from the Hebrew word marah, which means to live against God, to rebel against God. So if you say to someone, you fool.

Now, listen carefully. Jesus called the Pharisees fools because they didn't live against God. They didn't rebel against God.

So you can call someone a fool who lives against God and who rebels against God because that's the definition of marah, which is at the root of moron. But if you just go around calling people that, who are not that, in a malicious kind of way, this is what we call salacious anger. It moves from silent anger to spoken anger to salacious kind of anger to slamming kind of anger, to scathing kind of anger, a lashing out at someone.

Psalm 14 says that the fool has said in his heart, no. To God, that's the fool. That's the one who lives against God.

And Christ says, if you do that, you are guilty of a fiery hell. You're guilty of Gehenna, a word that Christ would use 11 times in the Gospels. Gehenna is the translation of the Valley of Hinnom.

The Valley of Hinnom is the valley on the south side of the old city of Jerusalem. It became a cursed place simply because of Ahaz, the king who convinced Israel to worship the fire god Molech and offer their children up as sacrifices. When Josiah became king, he transformed all that and reformed all that, but cursed the Valley of Hinnom.

It became the garbage dump in Jerusalem. And there was always this fire, this smoldering fire that would always be present in the Valley of Hinnom. It became the perfect illustration for a fiery hell because the fire would never go out.

It was always lit. It was always smoldering. It was always smelly.

It was a very cursed place. And that became the illustration that Christ would use of hell and call it Gehenna. Christ says, whether you have silent anger, spoken anger, or salacious anger, you're worthy of death.

So you think that if you just murder someone and they died physically, you were a murderer. He says, oh, no, no, no, no. That begins on the inside of a man.

And a man is guilty of murder if there's a silent anger, if there's a spoken anger, if there's a salacious anger where he is lashing out at other people and is bitter and resentful toward them. That man is just as worthy of death as Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, anybody else who has physically killed someone else. Why? Because Christ looks upon the heart, not the appearance of a man, not the acts of a man.

Why? Because all the appearance and acts of a man come from where? Inside of the man. So what do you do? How do you handle this? And Christ even deals with it to some degree. He says, therefore, based on what I just told you, based on your anger and your response toward somebody else, therefore, he says, if you are presenting your offering at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your offering.

He says this because the Pharisees were the symbol of worship in Israel. And they prided themselves on how they worshiped. And Christ says, I wanna let you know that you're living a life of hypocrisy.

Because listen, if you know of someone who is angry with you, if you know of someone who has something against you, and they would know about the procedure in worship, they would know, they would take the animal in for sacrifice and they would present it to the high priest and they would lay their hands on it and the priest would go in and sacrifice that animal for the forgiveness of sins. And that was just a symbolic act of the attitude of the heart. And he says, when you take that animal and you go into the priest and you offer that animal to the priest, if you know there's anybody who has something against you, stop.

Stop right there. Turn around and leave. And get it right with that person.

Why? Because, if you don't, it's worthy of death. It's worthy of death. This is so important.

Think about it this way. People say, okay, how do we make the worship at Christ Community Church the best it can possibly be? Maybe we should remove the pews and put in chairs. Or maybe we should repaint the auditorium and make it aesthetically pleasing.

Or maybe we should have a whole full orchestra pit. Or maybe we should have different kind of music. Or maybe we should have shorter sermons.

Or maybe we should have this or have that. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You want better worship? Here it is.

Christ tells you. If you come to church to worship the Lord and you know of someone in the auditorium who has something against you, leave. Leave the auditorium and get it right.

Because that's the only way you're gonna have meaningful, true, pure worship. Everything else is hypocritical.

Coming in here thinking that you can worship the Lord knowing that you just had a knock down, drag out fight with your wife on the way to church and you're yelling and screaming at each other and you get out of the car and you say, praise the Lord, I'm at church today.

I'm glad to be here. Hallelujah, brother. Let's sing some praises to Jesus.

Never gotten right with your wife or with your husband? You're a hypocrite. And the Pharisees were extremely hypocritical. It grieves me when there are children who fight with their parents and then they wanna come to church and worship the Lord as if there's nothing wrong.

But there's everything wrong. You can't worship the Lord hypocritically. You can't worship the Lord knowing that you have this offense or this anger or this attitude toward a friend of yours or your mother or your father or a husband or a wife or someone who sits across on the other side of the auditorium.

You cannot worship effectively. You cannot worship meaningfully. You can't worship Christ-like if you have that kind of attitude.

You cannot. So you must leave, get it right, then come back. That's why he says this.

He says, make friends quickly. Leave and do it quickly. Don't wait.

Ah, well, you know, there's next week. Ah, there's next month. Ah, well, they will see him today.

No, no, no, do it quickly. Do it now. If you know, he who knows that which is right to do, he needs to do it extremely quickly and efficiently.

Make friends quickly with your opponent in law while you are with them on the way so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer and you'd be thrown into prison. Truly, I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent. In other words, you can't pay it up.

You're in prison. It'll never be paid back. It's too late.

It's done. It's over. And if God is the judge, it's too late.

Nothing you can do. Christ is helping them understand that they are such hypocrites in the way they deal with their relationships with people.

And they would know this. They should know this. This was not new to them.

God said it this way, Isaiah 1. What are your multiplied sacrifices to me, says the Lord? I have had enough of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle, and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats. When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies. I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

Christ is saying to Israel, look, you're coming and you have all these sacrifices, you have all these rituals, you have all these ceremonies.

It's like saying to us today, you know which way to go to church, you know how to dress for church, you know where to sit in church, you know how to sing in church, you know how to say the right things in church, and the Lord says, I don't want any of that. It means nothing to me. And then he says this.

Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from my sight.

Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice.

Reprove the ruthless. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow.

In other words, make sure you're right with the people around you. Make sure your attitude is right with the people you live with. Because that's what matters.

Sacrifice to me means nothing. Obedience to me means everything. Think about what he says in the book of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 7. Behold, you are trusting in deceptive words to no avail, God says. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, offer sacrifices to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known? Then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, we are delivered that you may do all these abominations.

The Lord says, are you gonna live a life of immorality? Are you gonna live a life that's abominable to me? Are you gonna live a life of anger and murder and all kinds of things that I am against? Come into my house and say, I'm here to worship you. He says, get out of here. I don't want any of that.

I don't need that. Get it right before you come to me. See, the Pharisees should have known all that.

And that's just a sampling of a couple of verses the Old Testament's filled with them. Why? It's all about the heart. It's all about the inside of a man and his relationship he has with other people.

You can't get God-man, right until you get man-man, right. If man-man is wrong, man-God, it will always be wrong. That's why in the Sermon on the Mount, he talks about prayer.

He has one explanation of the disciples' prayer. It deals with forgiveness. He says, unless you forgive your brother, his trespasses, I will not forgive you your trespasses.

Why? Because if you can't deal with your brother, don't even think of coming to me and dealing with me. It doesn't work that way. And that's the whole point.

Christ is driving them to a place of desperation. Wait a minute. The Bible says we're not to murder.

We don't kill anybody. Ah, no, no, no. It goes way deeper than that.

It goes to the inside of a man, the heart of a man. Because murders happen because of anger in the heart. Anger happens because hatred spurs it on.

And then you commit the act of murder. It's all on the inside. You're guilty because of what's on the inside, not because of what you do on the outside.

And they're like, whoa. Whoa. What do we do? How do you fix that? That's the point.

See, he's driving them to the foot of the cross. He's driving them to him to plead and to cry out for mercy. That's where your personal transformation comes in.

And we gotta go fast. And that is, number one, there needs to be a recognition, a recognition of anger. Where does it come from? Our adversary, he's the author of it.

Our depravity, Romans 1:28 and 29, Mark chapter 7, speak of how everything comes from the inside of a man. It comes from jealousy.

Read about the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15, where the prodigal's brother, the older brother, is so jealous and so angry that his father would forgive his prodigal son and grant him a place of blessing in the house.

He was so resentful because of jealousy. Jealousy happens and animosity happens inside of a man. There's this recognition of where all this comes from.

It comes from the inside of you. It comes from your heart. Unless you guard your heart, unless you protect your heart, unless your heart is truly committed to Christ, there is no hope.

It all comes from the inside. There needs to be this recognition. That recognition leads then to a rejection of those things that are evil.

That's why the Bible says over in Colossians chapter 3, these words, but now also you put them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth and do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices. You need to lay those things aside. You need to discard those like you would dirty clothes at the end of a day.

That's what it means to put off and put on. At the end of the day, you take off your dirty clothes and you put them in the hamper. They need to be cleaned.

You need to get rid of a malice and abusive language and slander, get rid of all that stuff. Why? Because it's not fitting for a child of the king. That's why.

Well, how am I gonna do that? See, we need to look at Philippians 4:8 and think on the things that are true and pure and holy and lovely that are attractive, that are of good repute that we might think on things that are pure from above and not below, but we sit in our homes and we sit resenting someone who has said something to us and we sit there thinking all kinds of evil things against them instead of thinking on the things of scripture.

Wherewithal shall a man keep his way pure, but by taking heed to the word of God, thy word I've treasured in my heart that I might not sin against thee. It's all about thinking about the things of scripture and the things of our Lord, having our minds focused on that which is above and not below.

There needs to be a rejection of all that stuff because we are totally engulfed in the truth of scripture. And then there needs to be a reconciliation, a reconciliation with our brother, a reconciliation with our sister or a family member or someone else. The Lord has turned the tables on the Pharisees.

He's revolutionized everything. And a holy God who is perfect wanted you and me to be reconciled to him. So he did everything to make that possible.

And if a holy God who is sinless and spotless and pure would do all he could to reconcile sinful, unholy, wretched man, why can't we do all we can to reconcile with our brother or sister in Christ, right? And that reconciliation can only come, that rejection can only come, that recognition can only come if there's a redemption.

That's the fourth point you can add to your outline. Redemption.

You gotta be redeemed. See, Christ is driving them to the cross. He's driving them to cry out for mercy.

Lord, we can't do this. If we're guilty of hell, the fiery hell, because of anger on the inside, what can we do? Christ says, you can't do anything. You can't.

Ah, but I can. Because you see, I can grant you my righteousness. I can grant you a standing with me.

I can grant you a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Because theirs is one of human achievement and it damns their soul. But I can give you one because of divine accomplishment and it will save your soul.

So, have you murdered anyone lately? The answer's yes. We all have. But the good news is this.

Jesus is the one who cleanses our soul. Jesus is the one that saves us from our sin. Jesus is our redeemer.

So, he says these words, come unto me. Come unto me, all you that are heavy laden or burdened, and I will give you rest. Come to me.

Though your sins be as scarlet, ah, they should be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they will be made as wool. You see, Pharisees knew that verse too.

They just refused to come to Christ. Us, well, the good news is, is that if you're here tonight and you're giving your life to Christ, then you've been cleansed. You've been washed in the blood of the lamb.

If you haven't, you can be. All you have to do is give your life to Christ. Let me pray with you.

Father, we thank you for tonight. We realize, Lord, that we're murderers. Don't wanna be, but we are.

We have sinful hearts. And yet, yet, you love us enough to die for us and to pave the way by taking our penalty. The wages of sin is death.

And all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But Christ, you're our substitute. You died in our place.

You bore the wrath of hell on Calvary's cross. So we wouldn't have to. We escaped Gehenna.

We escaped the fiery hell because of Christ and his righteousness imputed to us. For that, Lord, we are grateful. In Jesus' name, amen.