Sermon Series: 

The Sermon on the Mount: Leveling the Field of Faith 

Forbidden Anger 

Matthew 5:21-26 

PSBC 2/20/99

In a nutshell: There are levels of anger that are increasingly distasteful to God, that He puts on par with murder. His advice is to keep it from affecting your worship and to reconcile quickly.

I. Introduction

This little story appeared in the Christian Reader magazine a while ago...

Fighting rush-hour traffic from suburban Maryland to Washington D.C., can cause its share of near misses and irritating moments. One morning, a young lady darted her compact car from a side street into the stream of traffic immediately in front of a driver just a few car lengths ahead of me, forcing him to brake sharply. He avoided hitting her by inches and was obviously furious. Within seconds, traffic stopped at a red light, and I watched him pull up behind the offender, leap from his car, and stride angrily toward hers. Clearly, he intended to give her a royal bawling out.

Seeing him coming, the very attractive young lady jumped from her car and ran to meet him–a big smile on her face! Before he could say one word or know what was happening, she had thrown her arms around him, hugged him tightly, and planted a passionate kiss on his lips! Then she was back in her car and driving away, leaving her antagonist standing in the middle of the street still speechless and looking somewhat confused and embarrassed--but no longer angry!

Anger is a subject that God addresses in several places in the New Testament. In the book of Ephesians we're told "in your anger, do not sin." And that seems to say that anger is O.K., as long as you don't let it get the better of you.

But in the book of James we're told that "the anger of man doesn't bring about righteousness." And that seems to say that Christians should avoid getting angry at all. So, what are we supposed to do regarding anger?

Well, a definitive help regarding anger can be found in the next group of verses that we are going to be looking at today from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In this section, He addresses this issue of anger, and identifies certain types of anger as being absolutely forbidden for His followers.

Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5:21 and following...

II. Degrees of hatred God has toward Anger Matthew 5:21-22 21 "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, `Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, `Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, `You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.

A. Anger defined

When Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago..." He was referring to passages in the Old Testament Law like is found in Exodus 20:13, that we know as the sixth commandment...

Exodus 20:13 13 "You shall not murder.

But because Jesus has established His authority as the "law fulfiller", in the preceding verses, that we looked at last week, He doesn't hesitate to give a new command, based on the old one, that He fully expects His followers to abide by. Instead of murder–which doesn't hold relevance to the vast majority of His followers–Jesus substitutes the concept of anger, which is common to everyone.

Now, in the Bible, there are two primary words used for anger.

One is the Greek word, THUMOS, which literally means "to burn like straw".

Illustration: When I was in high school, I remember one December day coming home on the school bus, and seeing a black cloud of smoke hovering over the horizon. As we got closer to my home, I realized that the smoke cloud was hovering over the warehouse my grandfather had built in the 1920's. Within two hours, the entire structure with all our crops from the fall harvest, had been consumed. The firemen said the reason it burned so fast and so hot was because the entire building was wrapped in tar-paper shingles, and it was insulated with straw and sawdust.

For some of us, anger can be that way. It can burn very hot and very fast. I can be this way. Something or someone gets my emotions to the boiling point, very quickly, then I get over it. And the next day, someone could ask me, "What were you so angry about yesterday?" And I honestly can't even remember. Maybe you can identify. That's THUMOS-type anger.

But the word used for anger in verse 22 is very different from THUMOS-type anger. The other Greek word for anger is OR-GIZ-ES-THAI. This anger is the kind that festers. It's the kind that a person dwells upon for long periods of time. It is the kind of anger that is always re-visited, never forgotten, and is very deep seeded.

This kind of anger is the type that keeps you from associating with someone else. It is the kind of anger that is behind feuds, grudges, anti-Semitism, racism and hatred of all kinds.

And what Jesus is saying is that not only is the obvious sin of murder wrong for His followers, but anger that conjures up murderous thoughts and attitudes is also not to be tolerated in His followers. This new command addresses the emotion and feelings that fester in our hearts–things that no one sees–things that no one except God, knows about.

B. Degrees of hatred

Now, I want you to understand what I'm about to say. Sin is sin. Any form of sin separates us from God, keeps us from entering into a deeper relationship with God, and from enjoying the abundant life that God wants all His followers to enjoy in this life.

But what we find out from verse 22, is that there are degrees of hatred that God has toward the specific sin of anger. And anger toward another human being, is an example of this phenomenon. Look again, at what Jesus says in verse 22, and understand that He's speaking in word pictures that are common to his audience on the hillside, to explain the attitudes God has toward anger...

Matthew 5:22 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, `Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, `You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Jesus talks about three degrees of punishment in this verse. And each one is a word picture of the three degrees of anger that God feels toward us when we harbor anger toward another human being.

Look closely at verse 22a...

1. "But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment."

Like I said earlier, the word angry in this verse, is that idea of holding a grudge or hatred or feelings of ill-will over a long period of time. But focus on the word "judgment" for a moment. This phrase refers to the Jewish-Judgment-Court.

Explanation: Every Jewish village, town, or city had a judgment court. It was like our town councils today. In a small village of less than 150 people, the judgment court was made up three of the village elders. In towns, it was made up of 7 of the elders. And in cities it was comprised of 23 of the elders. So, the judgment court was something that everyone knew about, and probably had occasion to use. It was the place where minor acts of breaking the law and minor disputes were taken.

What Jesus is saying, is that no matter what your position in life is... No matter what your circumstances are... No matter how you might try to justify your feelings..., His followers are forbidden to hold the kind of anger that festers toward someone else.

Even if you don't do an outward action based on the anger, but simply hold it in your heart, and no one knows of that anger but you, you are still guilty of violating this law of Christ's Kingdom. The value system of Jesus Christ isn't compatible with even a secret anger against someone else. So, its judged by God, just like a dispute is judged in the Jewish Judgment court.

But how does God feel if we take that forbidden anger one step farther? Go back to verse 22b...

2. "Again, anyone who says to his brother, `Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin."

Raca is an almost untranslatable word, because it describes a tone of voice or a facial expression. It's whole accent is on a posture and a tone of contempt. It's like saying, "Eeeeeuw, yuck!"

By saying, "Raca," to someone, was to call him a brainless idiot, a worthless fool, and empty-headed lazy goof-off. Remember that this word picture. "Raca" is symbolic of the actions or words of someone who despises another person with arrogant contempt.

Illustration: Growing up, we called the Polish people who were moving into our traditionally Dutch town of South Holland from the city of Chicago, "Polacks". And we told Pollack jokes to put them down. The Poles called us Dutch people, "Wooden Shoes", and told "Wooden shoe jokes", to put us down. The funny thing was that they were the same jokes, with the same intentions, only a different ethnic group substituted as the subject. But the bottom line of those jokes were the same–whether they were told by a Polish person or a Dutch person... the intent was to devalue another group of people.

You pick the group–you pick the person–...the way we probably see this second level of deeper seeded hatred toward others in our society is in the form of racism. And this sentence in verse 22, gives us a glimpse into the mind of God regarding devaluing other human beings.... He hates it!

He hates it more than He hates the secret anger that is harbored toward someone else. I say that because of the judgment. It goes up a level. You see, if a dispute could not be settled in the "Judgment Court", it went to the next higher court–the Sanhedrin, which could be likened to our Supreme Court.

Do you know why God hates this sin of devaluing people so much? Because it devalues the mission of His Son, Jesus.

The commentator, William Barclay makes this statement...(front of bulletin)

"There is no sin quite so unchristian as the sin of contempt. There is a contempt which comes from pride of birth, and snobbery is in truth an ugly thing. There is a contempt which comes from position and from money, and pride in material things is also an ugly thing. There is a contempt which comes from knowledge, and of all snobberies intellectual snobbery is the hardest to understand, for no wise man was ever impressed with anything else than his own ignorance. We should never look with contempt on any man for whom Christ died."

Do you want to know God's anger on a deeper level? Show contempt toward someone different than you. This action de-values the saving work of Jesus Christ, because it de-values what God values most–people.

3. "But anyone who says, `You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell."

The word, "HELL" here, is the word "GEHENNA".

Gehenna is a word with a history. It means the Valley of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom is a valley that is southwest of Jerusalem. It was notable because it was the place where King Ahaz, in the Old Testament, introduced the people of Israel to the worship of the heathen god, Molech, to whom little children were burned as sacrifices.

When Josiah became king after Ahaz, he led the nation of Israel back to worshiping Jehovah God. He decreed that the Valley of Hinnom should forever be cursed. And no one ever lived there. It became the place where garbage was dumped and burned, for the city of Jerusalem. Because of the constant fires from the garbage heaps, it became a public incinerator where a constant cloud of smoke hung.

Gehenna became, in people's minds, a synonym for the place that the Scriptures referred to as Hell.

So, this was a more serious punishment than the Judgment Court, and more serious than the Supreme Court. This most serious of offenses, in the realm of anger, was when someone said, "You Fool". Does this scare you?

Illustration: It scarred the "nerdly" out of my mom. When I called my brother a fool, when I was 12 years old, my mother screamed out loud. I thought she was going to faint. She was afraid that I was going to hell–as she understood this verse.

But mom didn't have to worry. The term "You fool" meant a person "playing the fool". In other words, a person who decides to act in ways that are morally foolish.

Psalm 14:1 says... 1 The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

A person who was called a fool was someone who threw away God's laws, and morality, and lived a life totally disregarding God.

To call a person a fool was not to criticize his mental capacity (as I did with my brother), but to take his name and reputation from him, and brand him as a loose-living and immoral person.

So what Jesus is saying, is that when a person destroys the name and reputation of another– that is an action which is most hated by God and deserving of the severest judgment of all–the judgment of the fires of Gehenna.

This 3rd part of the verse gives you a glimpse into the mind of God, regarding things like gossip, slander, and spreading lies that destroy another person's reputation.

So, to recap, these first two verses of this section on anger, Jesus talks against... –anger that festers and broods in our thoughts; –anger that devalues human beings, because that devalues the work of God's Son; –and anger that contributes to the destruction of another person's reputation, These are the things that are on God's mind, when He uses the term murder, in addition to taking another person's life..

But Jesus continues with some specific application...

III. Reconcile

Matthew 5:23-24 23 "Therefore, (OR since you now know what's in God's mind when He speaks of murder...) if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

Part of Jewish worship was that when a Jew committed a sin that violated one of the Commandments, he or she was required to make a sin offering as part of their worship practice. They brought a goat, or a sheep, or a dove, or another suitable animal to the priest in the temple. The person placed his hands on the head of the animal, signifying that he was transferring his sin onto that animal, and then the animal was sacrificed by the priest.

But Jesus is saying it's not enough, to just go through the motions of worship. To be able to really worship God and strengthen the relationship with Him, you must first be reconciled to the one against whom you have a problem, then worship. What's implied, is that, otherwise, the worship will not be accepted, and you're just going through the motions.

Illustration: In 1992, I accepted the position of Pastor of Evangelism at a church in Upland, California. I discovered, after I joined the staff, that the church had lost a lot of people over the period of the previous few years because... –they had gotten themselves obscenely in debt by building a building that was far beyond their means, –pastoral and lay leadership had treated volunteers with contempt, –and the theology of the pastor was moving far to the left of where most evangelical Christians would feel comfortable. The reason a board member later give me for hiring a person like me in an evangelism position was to help bring in more people to help pay for the building they had built.

At that time, this was a very dysfunctional church!

Six weeks after I was installed as Associate Pastor, the Senior Pastor was removed by the Denominational leadership because of sexual misconduct at his previous church and at this current one. The Superintendent asked me to take over as Senior Pastor, and heal the wounds of the church, and try to hold it together.

God worked through our four years there. It wasn't easy, and it just about killed us, but today the church is thriving, growing and impacting it's community like never before.

There were several turning points in that four years, but non as significant as the Sunday that the Holy spirit had me teach on the meaning of the term "unworthy manner" as Paul uses that term when he taught the Corinthians about Communion. Before I would let anyone come up and receive the elements of Communion, I told them that they must make sure that they were right with the other brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.

The Spirit of God moved that morning, in a powerful way. Several people got up and went to other people in the sanctuary and asked forgiveness, and they prayed with each other, forgiving and making things right over issues that had festered for years. Others went out and used the church office phone to call some people who used to attend the church and asked their forgiveness for past wrongs.

And what happened was, that church started to heal. New people started attending, and it began a journey on the road to health.

Friends, that's what Jesus is getting at. God will not bless any one of His children... He will deny giving His abundant life... and He will not accept the worship of a person... who is willfully harboring any of the 3 levels of anger he mentions in this section, toward anyone else in the family of God.

Friends, learn a lesson from that church in Upland. To ignore this teaching is to damage the testimony of a church for God. And God won't put up with that kind of disobedience, or disgracing of His name! Such a church will become useless in God's Kingdom building.

IV. Settle Matters Quickly

Matthew 5:25-26 25 "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

Explanation Illustration: Here's the picture Jesus is drawing. In Roman and Jewish law, during Jesus time, it was legal for a person who was owed a sum of money to arrest the borrower if the borrower failed to pay what was due. This was called a "Summary Arrest." It was common for the accuser to grab the back of the tunic of the accused, and walk with the borrower to the local magistrate.

In view of this custom, it was in the best interest of the one who owed money to settle things quickly with the one who was doing the accusing, otherwise the magistrate could hand out a stiff penalty of fines and possible jail time if the accused couldn't come up with the necessary payment.

Now, Jesus uses this word picture to give us all some advice in dealing with anger.

You see, it is a fact of human existence that if anger, a quarrel or a dispute is not healed immediately, it will go on growing worse and worse and worse in the human mind. Bitterness breeds bitterness.

Illustration: Take, for example, the notorious Hatfield-McCoy feud. I clipped this from the USA Today newspaper in March of 1988...

It hit newspaper front pages in the 1880's, when the Hatfield clan feuded with the McCoy clan from across the border in Kentucky. Historians disagree on the cause of the feud -- which captured the imagination of the nation during a 10-year run. Some cite Civil War tensions: McCoys sympathized with the Union, Hatfields with the Confederacy. Others say it began when the McCoys blamed the Hatfields for stealing hogs. As many as 100 men, women and children died. In May 1976, Jim McCoy and Willis Hatfield -- the last two survivors of the original families -- shook hands at a public ceremony dedicating a monument to six of the victims. McCoy died Feb. 11, 1984, at age 99. He bore no grudges -- and had his burial handled by the Hatfield Funeral Home in Toler, KY.

Verses 25 & 26 are just practical advice. Settle issues of anger quickly before they go too far.

Let me give you two points of practical application of this godly directive...

No. 1: Husbands and wives, let me give you some advice that Diane and I have followed from day one of our marriage. It is one of the things that has kept us together. We're two type "A" personalities. We have strong opinions. And each one of us believes that our opinions are right. At times these opinions come into conflict. But we made a Biblical Commitment to each other...

Ephesians 4:26b 26b ...Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,

There have been times when we didn't go to bed until 4:00 A.M., but we've never gone to sleep angry at each other.

No. 2: One other piece of advice was given to me by Darrel DelHousaye, my Senior Pastor at Scottsdale Bible Church, many years ago. "The stronger of the two will always pursue peace first." When you're in conflict, ask yourself, "Am I the stronger or the weaker person, here?"

V. Conclusion

Are you harboring any of the forbidden anger the Jesus puts on par with murder? -Anger that holds a grudge; -anger that shows contempt; -anger that attacks someone's character. In God's mind, it carries the same seriousness with it as if you murdered someone.

Friend, don't sacrifice an abundant and meaningful life by holding onto your anger.

Jesus' directive is simple–deal with it–deal with it God's way, and don't even consider any other way than that!

Amen.