Steering Clear of Murder, Part 1

Sometimes we tend to think of our personal flaws is harmless character trait of little consequence. Bending the truth. For instance, doesn't make us a liar. We just have a penchant for telling little white lies today on Insight for living. Chuck Swindoll continues our study of the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus famous sermon on the Mount in his radical message Jesus at the standard that's impossibly high for anyone to attain the process you showed us that even our little sins have fatal consequences to title today's message steering clear of murder received your worship for this morning. You found an outline that is in it. Unlike you to place that at the third chapter of the book of James over toward the end of your New Testament's place it there in chapter 3 will begin the message there shortly and then once you've done that, please turn to Matthew chapter 5 were going through the gospel by Matthew and we have come to the immortal sermon on the Mount, which Jesus delivered there most likely on the northern shore of slope leading up from the sea of Galilee, and there was a crowd that gathered his disciples and others as well and there he delivered a countercultural kingdom life message for those whose ears had never heard such teaching may have been used to the traditional humdrum monotonous kind of delivery that they have been raised with and suddenly they find someone passionate about a transforming message that would change the entire direction of their lives what you find.

Matthew chapter 5 locate verse 21. I will read from there through 26. As we stand together for the reading of Scripture Matthew 521 you have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not commit murder and whoever commits murder shall be allowable 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 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 their before the altar, and go first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you were with him on the way so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer in you be thrown into prison.

Truly I say to you, you will not come out of their until you have paid up the last sent penetrating words that are of interest to all of us who often struggle with anger, study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll. Be sure to download his searching the Scriptures. Studies by going to inside world.org/studies and now Chuck's message titled steering clear of murder. I have several shocking questions to ask you to hold on tight. Are you a murderer you do it so often that you don't even remember the last time you took another's life. What is your preferred method of killing poisoning your victim burning him or her beating, stabbing that individual hello is your record.

Truth be told, some of you would qualify as a serial killer. If those questions offend you. If those statements make you defensive you are a self-righteous Pharisee. Those are the kind of questions Jesus would ask his audience, knowing that they would shatter all vestiges of self righteousness and hypocrisy if you're a follower of Jesus. If you submit to his teaching, you would quickly acknowledge the truth he speaks, and rather than saying how dear you ask me that you would answer guilty as charged.

Before we look at some of the things he taught.

I would like for us to see what James writes in the third chapter of his letter over here in the New Testament, and when I do that I want to show you where you been hiding your weapon out cut to the chase and say the weapon is hidden behind her teeth going down to your throat all the way to your heart. It is your tongue but kills that poisons that beats and stabs others look please add change. Three. In verse five the tongue is a small part of the body. And yet it boasts of great thing see how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire. The tongue is a fire, that's why say you might burn your victim is the very world of iniquity. The tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life and is set on fire by hell itself. The next statement every species of beasts and birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race, but no one that includes you and me.

No one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil fool of deadly poison with it we bless our Lord and father, and with it we curse men and women who have been made in the likeness of God from the same now come both blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters. These things ought not to be this way. The next chapter chapter 4 verses one into equally convicting. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you, is it not the source is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members. It means your desires translated pleasures, is it not your desire that wages war in your members you lost and do not add that's a picture of covetousness as a result, you commit murder that you covet because you cannot have you commit murder to make it happen. You're envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel the picture of not only the human race.

I'm going to go ahead and say it.

Many a group of Christians if we are known by criticism of one thing, it is our inability to solve our own quarrels to restrain our tongues from saying things that make a sound exactly like the world around us. We shrug it off. Must say, well that is the way I was raised that heard it all my life. You get over it will be so since it wait a minute, and some of you have come from volatile homes acknowledge that I happen not to have been from home but yelled at each other, but some of you knew yelling all the way through your growing up years. My heart goes out to because you not only hear it. You pick up a habit and you're not shocked by this. What you doing you heard cursing. I don't believe I heard a curse word in my home well throughout my growing up years. Some of you heard cursing frequently use you you you witnessed tongue lashing. We call it your setting groups where other people are spoken in such ugly ways. It is like they are verbally assassinated and they're not even there to defend themselves and you participated in that how easy to do that. It is so accepting. In this day and age. Tragically, even in Christian circles, you might think.

I've been a little hard on us. Look at Romans chapter 3 on your way back to Matthew five this is not James. This is not Paul doing a postmortem analysis of depraved humanity. It's an ugly picture as he works his way down from the head to the feet. He's describing humanity in its were all reality, were it not for the power and work of Christ in any one of our lives. This is the lifestyle we would live in. Tragically, this is the habit. Many informed Romans 310.

There is none righteous, not even one meaning righteous in yourself, meaning self-righteous.

What a deception there is none who understands, there is none who on his own, seeks after God. You have all turned aside, together they become useless. There was no does good, no, not one.

Keep reading. It's more penetrating their throat is an open grave, with their Thomas.

They keep deceiving. Look at that the poison of asps is under their lips whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness and all the way to the feet that are swift to shed blood destruction and misery are in their pads and the path of peace they not known. There's no fear of God. There that a thousand other reasons explains why I have the privilege every day of my life and certainly every week when Sunday comes to announce the good news that you don't have to live like you were born you are not a victim of your old nature. If you have Christ living within. He has come to deliver you by his grace from that kind of lifestyle. For as you have in your old nature always the tendency to speak evil to spread poison to assaultive attack. There can be restraint through the work of God in a deep within your heart so that the tongue like a bucket going down into the well of the hard can bring up that which is beautiful and good encouraging and lovely and affirming. But on its own.

It will not do that mess with all this in mind we go back to the sermon on the Mount chapter 5 of Matthew and if I may remind you of where we were last time religion has a strong foothold in most people's lives who were reared around churches and religious teaching. Much of the teaching is incorrect.

Rather than giving you a way to live. That is under the power of the spirit.

You and I were given lists things we should do things we should not do so that the doing of things characterized our lives. It was all about how we acted you don't do this because it doesn't look good. You don't say that because people will form opinions. It's all about the action for risk true religion genuine Christianity goes deeper than the mouth than the fitness than the feet was all the way to the inner man, for we have a chance to realize there can be a control and when you come to Christ.

Listen to me the spirit of God makes his residence in your life and the lives there to control your emotions to restrain your rage to calm your tendency toward retaliation and to give you genuine peace so that your speaking peaceful terms encouraging terms loving words you can't do it on your own trial you wish without Christ to live like Jesus teaches you will be one frustrated individual, you must have Jesus living in your life for there to be the kind of restraint that you need. Now that all of these who were listening to Jesus teaching his sermon on the Mount have been reared under rabbis who learned their lessons from the Pharisees and scribes. They read them. They listen to them. They were tutored and mentored by them so they parroted what they had been taught and seen before. There are everything was about the act. So when they address any over they address murder.

They address the act of murder, not the motive behind not the thoughts that lead to the anger that stands from the heart and leads to assaulting others. They were taught about that. They were taught. The act of murder because that's what the West with the law teaches. You shall not kill meaning you shall not murder and along comes Jesus and says but I say to you, you are to be different from that isn't simply the act alone. Address behind-the-scenes the hidden motive of the heart. You see the Pharisees dealt with the letter of the law.

Jesus came and talked about the spirit of the law force you to pull up a pen from your purse or your pocket and I want you to mark some things in this fifth chapter that I want you to remember when we get to them. In days to come. But now I just like you to Markham. You will see on the outline were ongoing because in this sermon. Jesus tells them what they been hearing and then he corrects that teaching with his words that are introduced by what I call a literary clue.

There were six of these clues that go together. Look at your Bible.

Chapter 5 verses 21 and 22 would be the first. I'll not read it all, but simply the first lines verse 21 you have heard. 22 but I say to you what they had heard was what they had grown up with what they listen to what they had witnessed among the Pharisees what the rabbis had taught them and along comes Jesus who says there's more to it than that. It's not an act. It's an attitude which he addresses look again.

Verse 27 verse 28.

You can mark this with your with your pen or pencil you have heard but I say to you, and here he addresses adultery 2728 2930 adultery. They taught this which was about the act of adultery. Jesus taught that which is about lust. That leads to adult you don't control your lust. You are guilty of adultery, just as if you don't control your anger, you are guilty of murder until you see that you won't understand the seriousness of this teaching. There's 1/3 verse 31 verse 32. It was said verse 32 but I say little change in wording rather than you have heard, but it was said the same thing but I say to you, and then he corrects the teaching regarding divorce versus 33 and 34 mark that again you have heard verse 34 but I say here he talks about booths 38 and 39 you have heard verse 38 but I say to you in here he talks about retaliation and eye for an eye or two for the two and that's the way the Pharisees taught. But he said there's a better way to tell you about it. There's another you have heard it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say that's 43 and 44 got all successful were looking at the first of six relearn how to steer clear of murder, until you realize and that was the purpose of my shocking question until you realize that you can commit verbal murder. You will never really taken the tongue seriously you'll never really give attention to how it can be restrained. You'll pass it off with a shrug. You'll say, compared to so and so I'm under control or light of what my dad used to say, I'm a lot better that were not comparing people with people were listening to the teaching of Jesus. Okay let's deal with murder. Here the outward act is in verse 21 all your growing up years. All those times in the synagogue all those days in church we would say you have heard the ancients were told that you shall not commit murder. Murder is obviously the taking of the life of another. Don't do that.

Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. What is that mean in small communities. The court consisted of about three people medium-size communities. It grew to about seven and in larger cities. It was as many as 23 that fill the court and you stood before the court and you suffer the consequences.

If you would factor the life of another. The law says don't do it in the Pharisees taught the law, but they never went behind-the-scenes and dealt with anger. That's why many of them were filled with anger. You question that they're the ones who led to the crucifixion of Jesus.

They're the ones who hated the Messiah. They're the ones who found fault in what he taught because he expose them in their self-righteousness.

He shattered their self-righteousness and they despised him for it.

They teaming up with the Romans knew the cross, hopefully to silence him. On the contrary, they set the message free but now Jesus comes along and says there's more to it than it there's more to it than putting a gun in someone's chest and pulling the trigger. There's more to it than poisoning someone when you go further. Now it gets very convicting everyone who is angry with his brother, so let's keep this among the family.

Your brother would be your fellow Christian, your sister would be your fellow Christian everyone who is angry with his brother or sister in the family of God shall be guilty before the court even goes into detail. Whoever says you good for nothing as an insulting statement. We would call it airhead. It means an empty headed individual. That's an insulting statement shall be guilty. Whoever says you fool fool is someone that just does something mischievous of pool, says in his heart there is no God. You got so and so, so it's a it's a pronouncement of condemnation of another person is what we do in a burst of temper.

What we do when we take off all the restraints.

This is road rage and action except it has to do with the tongue. Now you can begin to get the picture you see it is an inner attitude has to do with an anger which grew an anger that we forget is a topic that truly can fix most of us can recall moments we regret.

When something slipped out of our mouths and cause damage your listening to Insight for living Chuck Swindoll's teaching from Matthew chapter 5 and he titled today's message steering clear of murder.

To learn more about this ministry. Visit us online@insightworld.org it's possible you been listening to Chuck today in your mind is drifted back to a relationship in need of repair.

Nothing will erase what you said the cause damage or perhaps it was an offense. Someone inflicted on you. Whatever the case, I'll draw your attention to a helpful message Chuck presented, along with his wife Cynthia. The CD is titled finding healing through forgiveness in this message Chuck presents a compelling case for restoration followed by a stirring testimony from Cynthia about her horrific bout with depression and her journey to recovery. In addition, she tells the touching story of restoring a broken relationship risking everything to make an apology.

This is the most highly requested CD in the 40+ year collection at Insight for living and to purchase a copy of finding healing through forgiveness. Call us if you're listening in the US dial 1-800-772-8888 or go to Insight.org/store.

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