[0:00] Hi, we're going to read together from the Bible from two places, Exodus chapter 20, verse 13, and then from Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 to 24.
[0:18] So Exodus 20, verse 13, very, very short, and then Matthew chapter 5, 21 to 24. And Exodus 20, verse 13 says, you shall not murder.
[0:34] And then Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 and following says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.
[0:47] But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother, or can also be translated, whoever says raka will be liable to the council.
[0:59] And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.
[1:12] First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. This is the word of the Lord. We are going to look at these two texts together.
[1:25] Why in the world would somebody that's visiting as a preacher read the Sixth Commandment, and then this passage in Matthew? Well, if I'm honest, it's because I am teaching through the Ten Commandments at St. Columbus.
[1:39] So this morning I invite you to join us in our series on the Ten Commandments at St. C's. So we're going to look together this morning at the Sixth Commandment, which is you shall not murder.
[1:51] One of the confessions that was written at the end of the Protestant Reformation, the Westminster Confession, gives a really helpful framework for looking at the Ten Commandments.
[2:02] So it asks two questions about every one of the Ten Commandments. It says, what does this commandment forbid? And then on the flip side it says, and what does this commandment require of you?
[2:12] And so the theologians, the readers of the Bible, the Christians for every century, have always looked, because of the Sermon on the Mount, and seen that when you read one of the Ten Commandments, you're not just being given a negative statement, do not, but also implicitly you're being given something very positive.
[2:33] Go and do this instead. And so it says, you shall not steal, and you need to go and be generous. You know, don't take, but the positive side is go and give.
[2:44] Be generous in spirit, right? And that's very, very true for the Sixth Commandment too. You know, you shall not murder. Okay, got it. Let us pray, right?
[2:55] We could be finished there. No, you shall not murder, but there's a positive side. And that's that ultimately this command is all about relationships. And it's all about the fact that every single one of us has so many relationships in life that have to be dealt with continuously, that have to be treated and focused on, or they will fall into disrepair.
[3:18] And that's the positive side of this command. So let's look at it together, and we'll just do what the Catechism does. It says, what does the command forbid, and then what does it require of you?
[3:30] And then lastly, how can you do it? So let's do that. First, what does this commandment forbid? Okay, the obvious, do not murder. Some translations say, do not kill.
[3:43] And that's a very unhelpful thing to say, because when you look at this word in Hebrew across the Old Testament, you see that every single instance of the very specific word that's used means only three things.
[3:55] Premeditated murder, murder and unjust killing in the act of passion, or killing in an act of extreme negligence of some kind. So it never uses the word in the Sixth Commandment for self-defense, for example, or something like just war.
[4:11] So it's different from killing. It's much more specific than that. Okay, fine. Now look, we as modern people, in the modern ethic, the modern world teaches us one main idea for how to live life.
[4:23] The modern West, for about 200 years now, has said one thing, do not harm anyone. So the ethic of the modern world is, do whatever you want to do, as long as you don't harm anybody.
[4:37] And that means that modern people in every nation are completely fine with the Sixth Commandment. When you look at the first five commandments, modern people are very upset about them.
[4:49] You shall have no other gods before me. Honor the Sabbath day, oh boy. But when you come to Commandment 6, everybody agrees. Because obviously, if the central ethic of the modern life is, do no harm, do whatever you want, as long as you don't harm anybody, as long as you don't infringe on other people's rights, and obviously, this is the right to life.
[5:11] You steal somebody's life when you act in such a way as this. That means that everybody's completely fine with this command. Now look, let me say that when you read this commandment in the light of the Bible, in the light of the whole Bible, there are three ways that this commandment pushes against and confronts the modern world, especially the modern Western world.
[5:32] And let me give those to you very quickly. One is that when you read just since the Enlightenment in the late 18th century into the time of the 19th century, we have people like Karl Marx.
[5:44] You remember Marx. Marx came, and he said that there is a possibility and a requirement for us modern people to seek progress until we realize utopia.
[5:58] And he said utopia would be a time where there would be such social order and social harmony that there would be no more violence and no more conflict at all. And two world wars later, and a lot of failed dreams based on that idea happened.
[6:15] And you come to 1955. 1955 was the end of Stalin-era communism. And we're 10 years out of the Second World War ending.
[6:26] And even then, you know, people were saying, look, the age of ideology is over. We know that the utopian dream completely failed. We'll never progress based on Marx's ideas. But one writer in the U.S., a guy by the name of Raymond Aaron, wrote this.
[6:43] He wrote a book, and this is what he wrote. He said, Imperfect and unjust as Western society is in many respects, it has progressed sufficiently so that reform appears more promising than ever before.
[6:57] We can put away violence and unpredictable disorder under the theme of the modern West. Now listen, ever since the Enlightenment in every age, in every political race, every time a politician stands for office, every time there's a rebirth of a nation, every time there's a revolution, every time there's a war and an end of a war, someone comes out and says, now is the time.
[7:21] We will progress. We will get past the conflict. We will get past the violence. We will become people who don't harm each other anymore. And so no matter what, modern people are progressives.
[7:33] We are entrenched. We're enculturated into thinking that somehow we will achieve utopia. Now, the statistics say absolutely not and the Bible says absolutely not.
[7:45] And the current world average of known homicides, on average per year across the nations that report, and it's not all of them, are 475,000 per year.
[7:58] And these are the ones that come to the police. And there's so many more that are unknown. You see, that's 1,300 a day. And you see, we haven't progressed. We're not really.
[8:10] And the Bible actually tells us exactly why. Now, here's the second thing before we come to that. The second way this confronts modern people. Peter Singer is a bioethicist at Princeton.
[8:20] He's one of the most famous philosophers in the world right now. And he writes that, he says, he argues that there is no reason to say that humans have a right to life any more than animals do.
[8:31] And he argues that the reason for that is because human worth has got to be measured in the same way as the worth of any other creature. And that's in ability.
[8:43] So he says, you know, there are some animals that have more ability than some humans. And so that means we've got to say that the ultimate value of any creature is not in what they are, human or animal, but in what they can do.
[8:56] Now, the reason he says that, and lots and lots of people agree with him, is that he said, you know, he doesn't say, but here's why. He says, if there is no God, then anything goes.
[9:08] And if there is no God, if you really can't ground the idea of the right to life in something more transcendent than the creaturely domain, then, well, then he's right.
[9:20] If there is no God, then anything goes. And Peter Singer comes, one of the most famous philosophers in the world, and says that humans cannot claim to have a right to life, that that claim is invented.
[9:31] There is no such thing as a right to life because humans don't have inherent worth. If there is no God, then anything goes. And you can't really fundamentally say that. You see, in other words, secular humanism, which is the heartbeat of the modern West, does not have a reason, does not have a justification for talking about the right to life, even though we talk about it all the time.
[9:54] And because of that, that means that even though we talk about a culture of life, we actually live in a culture of death. And we see that from womb to tomb, from abortion to euthanasia, the fact that life is really not cared for.
[10:08] We don't really have that. Now, the third way, and this is probably the most important for all of us today, is that the way that this commandment, and Jesus picks up on it in Matthew 5, really confronts us as modern people, is that we are taught as modern people to think that there is such a thing as good people and bad people.
[10:28] And the difference is one of quality. You know, there are the good people out there that are basically decent citizens, and we make mistakes, sure, but we're good people fundamentally. And then there's bad people.
[10:40] And the bad people are the ones who are qualitatively different, and only they have the capacity to do such a thing as murder. You know, it's the reason the prison system exists, because of that qualitative distinction between good people and bad people.
[10:55] Now look, Jesus Christ comes in Matthew 5, and he picks up on this command, thou shall not murder. And he says something very, very clear and very searching, very searching.
[11:08] And he says that murder is fundamentally, just like any other sin, a problem of the heart. He says it's a problem that begins in a broken heart. And you see what he says.
[11:19] He says, you know, you've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, picking up not only on the commandment, the sixth commandment, but also on the way it was interpreted in his own time period. So the rabbinic scholars of his day looked at this command and said, look, if you've never physically harmed somebody in this way, then you've never violated this commandment.
[11:38] And Jesus comes and he says, actually, I say to you that if you are angry with your brother or sister, with your neighbor, that you're liable to the judgment that the sixth commandment occupies.
[11:51] He says that if you've ever been unjustly angry with your brother or sister or your neighbor, that that, he says, quote, is hell fire. It's hell in the heart.
[12:02] It's deserving of hell. He takes it that deep. And you see, the reason that this commandment confronts modern people so acutely, it's so searching, is because Jesus comes and says that every single person actually has a murderous heart.
[12:18] That that's where it really begins, all the way down deep within us. And you've got to see how it happens. There's this moment in James chapter 1, verses 13 to 15, where James gives us a philosophy of sin.
[12:31] So he explains to us how exactly it takes place. And he says in James 1 that sin starts or a person is tempted when they are lured and enticed by their own desire.
[12:44] Now that word desire in the Greek text, the original text, is a word that actually means something more than desire. It means, it's a word that means deepest desire.
[12:55] So it says that when you look down at the deepest part of who you are, the deepest desires that you possibly have, the way sin works, James says, is that the deep desires, desires you might not even be aware of, they conceive.
[13:11] And then it says that eventually they can give birth to greater and greater and greater sins. And so James puts the metaphor of sin, the reality of sin, into the metaphor of giving birth.
[13:22] And he says the place of conception actually is not in the hands. It's not in what you do physically, outwardly to other people. That the place of the conception of the sin happens in the deepest part of your soul, the deepest part of your consciousness.
[13:37] He says that's where it actually begins. And here, we come back to Matthew 5 and we learn that this deep, deep desire, he says, that gives birth to something like violence is fundamentally unjust anger.
[13:51] Unjust anger. fear. And, you know, that can happen in all sorts of ways. There's lots of ways that this takes place. But Jesus, Jesus takes us so deep into this.
[14:03] He's saying to us that the sixth commandment tells us that we've got to be incredibly aware that in all of our relationships they are in constant need of deep repair.
[14:17] And he says, you know what, you want to know what murder of the heart is? It's when you fail to see that all the relationships around you are always going one of two directions. They're going up or down and the difference is in whether you see that they need deep treatment.
[14:32] They need deep treatment. Okay, now, all of us know this, right? If you're married today, you know that if you're not tending to your marriage, to the relationship, like tending to a garden, then weeds are always coming up and you're not growing together.
[14:50] You're growing apart. You're growing angry. You're getting more and more annoyed all the time. You know, the eyes of your heart are always rolling. And all of our relationships are like that to some degree.
[15:03] This is exactly what Jesus is talking about. And so he says this. He says, murder of the heart is an act of saying to your brother or sister or neighbor. And the original word here is raka. You can see it down in verse 22.
[15:15] Your Bible might have whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. The old way is just to translate it exactly as it says it. Whoever says raka. Now, that's important because raka is a word that's used in the first century not just to mean mere concern for your neighbor, your brother, your sister, your husband, your spouse, whoever it may be, over something they're doing, over their sin.
[15:39] It's not just anger, which is an important category. When you're justly angry at somebody's sin because you see that that sin is breaking them. It's ruining their life. That's just anger.
[15:51] He says, no, it's when you say raka. And what is that? And he tells us here, it's when you look at somebody, your brother, your sister, your neighbor, your spouse, whoever it may be, and you say, you don't say, you're being foolish.
[16:04] You say, you fool. See the difference? You don't say, I'm so concerned at your foolishness. It's instead when your heart says, you're a fool. You're a Cretan. There's a Greek word that's used here that's the origin for the word moron.
[16:19] And that's what it is. That's raka. It's when you say deep down. It's when the eyes of the heart roll and you begin a cycle of disdain for another person.
[16:30] And it begins to become a grudge, something that you hold on to. And one of the great metaphors that people use for this is that the heart, the whole body, the soul is like a tree.
[16:45] And the sixth commandment, murder or stealing or adultery or covetousness, all of it, in whatever way it takes shape, are like the branches of that tree. You know, they're the things that you see, the sins that you see.
[16:56] But if you want to find where it really happens, you got to go all the way down under the ground into the roots. And that's what Jesus, he's saying this is a heart issue fundamentally. How does it start? He says, well look, maybe your brother has something against you.
[17:10] Your sister has something against you. Meaning, here he's saying, it may be that it started because you did something. You did something to put a relationship into deep disrepair.
[17:21] Or you go to Matthew 18 where he addresses this again and he says, maybe it's that you were sinned against fundamentally. Almost always, it's some combination of both. Somebody does more sinning than the other, but almost always, it's a combination of both.
[17:34] And he's saying, either direction this can take place. You see he's saying, whether you're primarily sinned against or you're primarily the sinner. And then that starts a cycle of sin against one another.
[17:47] The eyes of the heart begin to roll. You begin to develop a pattern of disdain. Disdain becomes something outwardly like gossip.
[17:57] You love to carry forward slight undermining of the person's reputation. Right? It leads to silence. It leads to awkwardness. It leads to separation.
[18:09] It leads to a longstanding grudge. Jesus says, it's a murderous heart. It's the roots that our relationships are in deep, deep need of repair all the time.
[18:21] And you say, you know, we read something like this when Jesus says to the Pharisees and the rabbinic tradition around him, you think that you're free from violating the sixth commandment just because you haven't been violent towards someone?
[18:32] Oh boy, let me tell you, you haven't looked at the roots. And you know, you hear that today and you say, that is extreme. That is extreme. 1 John 3, 15 takes it all the way there.
[18:45] It says this, quote, everyone who hates their brother or sister is a murderer. That's 1 John 3, 15 in exact words. That's where the Bible takes it.
[18:55] And when we say, you know, this looks extreme, part of the extremity of it is to ask the question, you know, how often does this happen to you? Unjust anger, unjust annoyance, disdain for a person in your life.
[19:11] And if we're honest, maybe it happens to me all the time. It happens to me all the time. I'm sort of always in this condition, struggling and fighting against murderous thoughts, disdain in the heart against somebody else in my life.
[19:26] And that's exactly Jesus' point. See, he's trying to uncover and unveil the condition of the human heart, how we really are, what we really are. The Westminster larger catechism, when it treats it, it says, be warned in this command against sinful anger, hatred, envy, envy for somebody else's life that produces a desire for vengeance, provoking words, oppressing others, fighting, striking, wounding, and anything else that tends towards the destruction of a life.
[19:57] He says, they're all, the confession says, they're all encapsulated here in this command. Jesus says, it's hellfire, and he doesn't just mean it leads to hell, it's when you have a longstanding grudge, a deep disdain for another person, he says, it's like a living hell.
[20:14] It's hellfire in the heart. deep down in the heart. And so, Jesus Christ is inviting us this morning to realize something very important, and we'll move on to the second and final thing. Here it is, very important, that the line, the line between some of the most outwardly visible, harmful deeds that a human being can do and unjust anger and disdain that happens in the heart is not one of qualitative distinction, but only one of degree.
[20:49] You see, the modern person says, there's good people and there's bad people, and the Bible comes and says, oh no, no, no. The difference between the most visible outward act, something that's so obviously wrong, and the invisible context of the heart, the roots, is not a qualitative distinction, it's only one of degree.
[21:13] It's that this is where we give birth to things that can become outwardly much, much more. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who is one of the famous Russian victims of the gulags, the Russian gulags during Soviet communism, pre-Soviet communism, I should say, he wrote his book, The Gulag Archipelago, about his experience in the gulags, in the concentration camps, and he opens it in the introduction with something very important.
[21:45] He says, he says in the introduction, he was a Christian, you know, and he says, don't think I'm going to say in this book that the architects and the actors of the communist gulag are the epitome of evil, and then the rest of us are completely qualitatively different.
[22:02] That's how he started the introduction. He said, instead, I know, he said, as a believer, as a Christian, he said, I know that the line between good and evil passes through every single human heart. And Jesus says that really clearly, I think, right here in Matthew 5.
[22:17] Now, secondly, finally, what is required of us? That's what we want to run from. What do we want to run to? And oh boy, how are we going to, what are we going to do about this? How are we going to solve this problem?
[22:29] First, think, just a few things here. First, think about the why. Why is the Sixth Commandment such a big deal and why does Jesus say actually unjust anger and disdain and grudge holding is such a big deal?
[22:46] And the reason we're given comes to us not in Exodus 20 or in Matthew 5, but long before that in Genesis chapter 9. Right after the flood took place, God says, as he's reestablishing the order of the world, he says in Genesis 9, 5, and 6, you shall not shed another person's blood because they are in the image of God.
[23:07] So he gives us the reason really clearly. He says the reason for not committing violence or even having unjust anger in the heart, he says, is because of the image of God that other people around you are made in God's image like you are.
[23:22] And so it's saying there that life is the gift of God and it's not up to humans to decide when that life is removed or taken away. Only God gets to decide when he gives life and when he takes it away because of the imago dei, the image of God.
[23:38] And that means, he's suggesting, that a dismissive attitude, unrepentant anger, consistently rolling the eyes of the heart at somebody in your life is wrong because they were made in the image of God.
[23:51] That's the same idea. And that means anytime we do this, here's the why, anytime we do this, anytime we live in this context, a murderous heart, it means that we are regarding someone around us as less than the image of God.
[24:06] And that's the beginning of all sorts of problems. Regarding other people around us as less than the image of God. Now, you see, this is why Peter Singer can come and say, you can't really say in modern secular humanism that human beings are inherently worth more than any animal.
[24:23] And why does Peter argue for that? He argues for that because he doesn't believe that human beings were made in the image of God. And you see, that's why modern Western secular humanism can't justify this command.
[24:35] They believe it, but they can't justify it. Because the reason for this is because humans are made in the image of God. And that's why Jesus is calling us to this. Now, secondly, of three here, what is required of us then?
[24:48] Positively. Now, Jesus tells us here, he says, what do we do about this problem? He says, stop. Verse 23, he says, stop. If you are offering your gift at the altar and you remember that someone has something against you, leave.
[25:03] Leave the temple and go be reconciled and then come back. Now, you've got to think about this in the context. There's only one temple. It's in Jerusalem.
[25:14] So, most people didn't live in Jerusalem. They would go to the temple periodically throughout the year to make sacrifices before the Lord as required of them to worship. If you live 50 miles away in the first century and you prepare your sacrifice, you hitch your wagon, you go all the way to Jerusalem, it's a month's journey, you get there by the time you've got all your family there.
[25:36] It's a week long celebration preparing for the sacrifice and then you go to the temple and Jesus says, if you've done all that and you get there and you realize that there is deep, deep irrepair, a broken relationship in your life, stop right there.
[25:52] What is required of you is not to continue in the act of worship but to leave. That is extreme. Travel 50 miles back home again, find the person. And he says, if somebody's got something against you, go.
[26:05] If you've got something against somebody else, Matthew 18, go. And here's the extremity of it. He says, either way, if you're primarily the perpetrator or primarily the victim, you go.
[26:16] You take action. You go. It's so extreme. You've got to see what he's saying to us in context. In other words, remember the Old Testament several times. God reminds us, I desire mercy and justice, not sacrifice.
[26:33] In other words, he's saying, I care more about your heart than obeying the outward forms of religion. And so if you're in the midst of an outward form of religion and you realize you've got to deal with a relationship, you've got to deal with your heart, go and do it.
[26:47] Now, how do we do it then? Tim Keller's recent book on forgiveness is really helpful to me on this and I recommend it. I can only give you two minutes on it, but it has so much more about how to go and do this.
[27:02] He says there, first, Jesus is calling us here to inner repentance. And inner repentance is when we're willing to look at the deep, deep depths of our heart and realize who we really are, what we really struggle with, and look at our heart and turn and say, I did it.
[27:23] I did it. I am that person. I'm wrong. And there's no qualifications about it. That's real repentance. Just say, look, there's no excuses. There are no ifs. You know, it's no, you know, if I offended you, if I broke this relationship, if I did this, then I'm sorry.
[27:40] No, that's not repentance. It's not if, if then at all. There's no conditions. It's I know who I am. I'm a sinner. It goes all the way down to my roots.
[27:52] Now, he says, he points out that even if it's a Matthew 18 situation and the other person is the one who has been primarily responsible for breaking the relationship, for hurting you, he says even then you have to have an attitude of repentance.
[28:06] And an attitude of repentance is when you're willing to at least say, look, I know I'm not the primary issue here. I don't think I am truly. However, I'm willing to look at my heart and say, I know the depths of my sin, even if it's not this particular moment.
[28:23] And when you're, when you do that, you know, it's the kind of heart that says, if, if God decided to replay all of my thoughts and all of my misdeeds dark on a recorder in front of everybody, if, if God was, if God holds me judgment for every single one of my thoughts and my attitudes and every single moment of my life, oh boy.
[28:49] You see, that's the, even if there's nothing for you specifically to repent of in the relationship, that's the attitude of repentance. It goes forward, in other words, and says, I'm willing to have enough sympathy to see how somebody got to the misdeed they got to.
[29:03] You see, he said, well, I know, I also know what I'm capable of. So even though they're primarily the wrongdoer, I still have some sympathy because I'm willing to see that I'm capable of the exact same thing.
[29:16] Right? The attitude of repentance. Repentance and the attitude of repentance. Then he says, then internal forgiveness can take place. Forgiveness, internal forgiveness is modeled after the cross.
[29:27] And when you look at the cross of Jesus Christ, you see the one who came to serve us in the most ultimate way, an ultimate act of justice, that said, he said, I'm willing to take the pain of the offense committed against me and swallow it, to eat it, to drink the dregs of the wrath of God that somebody else deserves and to let it die deep down inside of me.
[29:53] In his own death, you see, we're called, in other words, Jesus is saying here to look at the cross and see that forgiveness is cruciform after the pattern of the cross, that we swallow it and we let it die and we cast it away as far as the east is from the west.
[30:11] Now, we'll move on to the final close, the final thing, but Keller points out that that may be enough, that most of the time to repair our relationships, actually, all we need is internal repentance and forgiveness of one another.
[30:30] That's all we actually need, because most of the time, most of the things we do towards each other don't need to be externally dealt with. In other words, he suggests we don't have to nitpick about every little action that happens against us.
[30:43] Most of the time, we can repent and forgive and never even talk about it, and we can just move on. If you have that internal action of repentance and forgiveness, you become a person who can really bear a lot and be okay.
[30:57] But sometimes, it has to become external. internal. Sometimes, a relationship is in such need of repair that you realize, I need to go, as the confession says, as Jesus says, more importantly, be a peacemaker.
[31:12] And so, if you read, what is the one thing, John Calvin says, what's the one thing that's required of us in the Sixth Commandment, the active duty of the Sixth Commandment, he says, it is go and be a peacemaker.
[31:24] Go be a reconciler. Go and make peace internally and then externally if necessary. Now, here's the close, the condition.
[31:35] How are you going to get power for this? You know, when you look down, how can we even face who we are? If you look down into the depths of your heart and you think about that recorder, how can I face it?
[31:50] How can I have the power to even face who I am to begin to heal and reconcile and repair and forgive to the depths that I see in the Gospels?
[32:02] When you do this exercise of looking deep down at the roots that Jesus calls us to in the Sermon on the Mount, we see that sin goes all the way to the bottom.
[32:16] We talk about total depravity. Sin goes all the way down to the depths of every aspect of who we are, all the parts of our soul. We're totally depraved. We're bent and broken.
[32:26] And the only possibility that we can have hope beyond that is to know, to see, to imagine that grace goes deeper than that.
[32:39] Sin is so pervasive, total depravity, that it goes to every part of who you are. The beauty of the gospel is that it is the pronouncement that grace goes deeper still. If you can find sin all the way to the bottom, you know that there's a pool underneath it that grace is filling.
[32:56] Grace goes that far. It goes that deep. It goes all the way to the bottom. Now, there is only one human being in all of human history that never had a murderous thought, that was never angry unjustly, that never harbored a grudge, that never did anything unjust at all.
[33:17] And at the same time, he is the ultimate image of God. Colossians 1, he is the image of God in full. We look at him and we see the image of God and exactly what the image of God was meant to be.
[33:28] And you see, we regarded him as less than the image. Murder of the heart is turning to somebody else and saying, I don't really regard you as the image of God. And the only person who ever deserved to not be called that, boy, did we look at him and say, you are not the image.
[33:46] And the only person who never had a murderous thought had the most murderous thoughts in all of history placed upon him. Jesus Christ, the creator of every single one of us, came and he was murdered.
[33:59] And when you come to Acts chapter 2, when you come to Acts chapter 2, Peter is preaching in Jerusalem. And he looks out to all these people that were not present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion and says, you put him on the cross.
[34:15] Y'all in the southern dot. Y'all put him on the cross. It's plural. You need a word like y'all. Use. You put him on the cross. All of us did. He came, the image of God, and that's the way we treated him.
[34:28] He came to show us peace. We became violent towards him. And how can we then talk about Easter and say the Friday before is good Friday when we look at it and see that it's actually horrible?
[34:42] And the reason is this, because God's grace in the act of the cross is so radical and so deep, it goes deeper than every murderous thought we've ever had.
[34:54] And it heals and it restores and it is the only path to forgiveness. And secondly, because his intention, the creator of the world, his intention was to come and be just that for us.
[35:08] The one killed, the one murdered, the one taken, the one taken at the hands of the violent. He came for that. He was the boy come to die. He came to do just that for us.
[35:19] He came to set us free from the roots, the wicked roots at the bottom of our desires. And he came to say there's a way out. Now look, that means, last word, there's a call here in Matthew 5 to today ask, who do I need to ask forgiveness of?
[35:39] What relationship do I need to go and at least internally repent and seek forgiveness? Or go have a conversation and seek to heal?
[35:51] But before you ever do that, Matthew 5 is actually suggesting something much more important, something prior and it's this, that our relationship with God needs to be healed before any of that happens.
[36:04] things. And you can hear Paul's commandment to you today, go and be reconciled to God. And you say, I can't. And so here's the word of the gospel, Jesus Christ has come and reconciled you to God.
[36:19] So be reconciled to God today. Repent. Internally and externally before the Lord. Be reconciled to God today. Today is the day. And then go and ask, now what relationships in my life need working on?
[36:33] Need healing? When you realize the extent to which Jesus swallowed, you know, he drank the cup of wrath and we filled that cup drip, drip, drip with every one of our deep, deep broken desires.
[36:50] And when you realize what he swallowed for you, it can turn you and make you into a person who is willing to take a lot and to forgive other people.
[37:03] It's cruciform. Be reconciled to God and go and reconcile, repair with the people in your life. That's the invitation of the sixth commandment.
[37:14] Let's pray together. Let's pray together. Let's pray together.