Steering Clear of Murder, Part 1

Sometimes we tend to think of our personal flaws as harmless character traits that have little consequence. Bending the truth, for instance, doesn't make us a liar.

We just have a penchant for telling little white lies. Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll continues our study in the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount. In his radical message, Jesus set the standard that's impossibly high for anyone to attain. And in the process, he showed us that even our little sins have fatal consequences.

Chuck titled today's message, Steering Clear of Murder. When you received your worship folder this morning, you found an outline that is in it. I'd like you to place that at the third chapter of the book of James over toward the end of your New Testament. Just place it there at chapter 3.

We'll begin the message there shortly. And then once you've done that, please turn to Matthew chapter 5. We're 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.

They had been used to the traditional humdrum, monotonous kind of delivery that they had been raised with and suddenly they find someone passionate about a transforming message that would change the entire direction of their lives. Once 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 5 21. 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 there 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 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. Penetrating words that are of interest to all of us who often struggle with anger. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scripture studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now Chuck's message titled Steering Clear of Murder. I have several shocking questions to ask you.

So hold on tight. Are you a murderer? Do 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?

How long 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 vistages 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 dare 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've been hiding your weapon. I'll cut to the chase and say the weapon is hidden behind your teeth, going down to your throat, all the way to your heart. It is your tongue that kills, that poisons, that beats and stabs others. Please, at James 3 and verse 5, the tongue is a small part of the body and yet it boasts of great things.

See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire? The tongue is a fire, that's why I say you may burn your victims. In 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.

Look at 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, full 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 mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, these things ought not to be this way.

Look at the next chapter, chapter 4 verses 1 and 2, 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 lust and do not have? That's a picture of covetousness and as a result you commit murder.

Look at that. You covet and because you cannot have, you commit murder to make it happen. You're envious and cannot obtain so you fight and you quarrel.

It's a 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 us sound exactly like the world around us. We shrug it off by saying, well that is the way I was raised, that's hurt it all my life, you know, get over it.

Don't be so sensitive, wait a minute. Some of you have come from volatile homes, I acknowledge that. I happen not to have been from a home that yelled at each other but some of you knew yelling all the way through your growing up years.

My heart goes out to you. Because you not only hear it, you pick up a habit and you're not shocked by it. That's why you do it. You heard cursing. I don't believe I heard a curse word in my home throughout my growing up years. Some of you heard cursing frequently. You witnessed tongue lashing, we call it. You've sat in groups where other people are spoken of 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 5. This is not James, this is now Paul doing a post-mortem 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 raw reality. Were it not for the power and work of Christ in any one of our lives, this is the lifestyle we would live.

And tragically, this is the habit many have formed. Look at Romans 3.10, there's none righteous, not even one, meaning righteous in yourself. Meaning self-righteous, what a deception. There is none who understands, there's none who on his own seeks after God. You have all turned aside, together they have become useless.

There is none who does good, no not one. Keep reading, it's more penetrating. Their throat is an open grave with their tongues, they keep deceiving.

Look at that. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Look all the way to the feet that are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace. They've not known there's no fear of God before their eyes. That and 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. Whereas you have in your old nature always the tendency to speak evil, to spread poison, to assault and attack, there can be restraint through the work of God deep within your heart so that the tongue, like a bucket going down into the well of the heart, can bring up that which is beautiful and good, encouraging and lovely and affirming.

But on its own it will not do that. That's with all of this in mind that 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 are 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 actions, whereas true religion, genuine Christianity, goes deeper than the mouth, than the fists, than the feet. It goes all the way to the inner man where 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 he lives there to control your emotions, to restrain your rage, to calm your tendency toward retaliation, and to give you genuine peace so that you're speaking peaceful terms, encouraging terms, loving words. You can't do it on your own. Try all 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 then, all of these who are listening to Jesus teach in his Sermon on the Mount have been reared under rabbis who learned their lessons from the Pharisees and the scribes. They read them, they listened to them, they were tutored and mentored by them, so they parroted what they had been taught and seen before their eyes.

Everything was about the act. So when they address murder, they address the act of murder, not the motive behind it, not the thoughts that lead to it, not the anger that stems from the heart and leads to assaulting others. They weren't taught about that. They were taught the act of murder because that's what 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. It isn't simply the act.

I want to address behind the scenes, the hidden motive of the heart. You see, the Pharisees dealt with the letter of the law. Jesus came and taught about the spirit of the law. I want you to pull 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'd just like you to mark them. You will see on the outline where I'm going because in this sermon, Jesus tells them what they've been hearing, and then he corrects that teaching with his words that are introduced by what I call a literary clue.

There are 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 had listened 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. See again, verse 27, verse 28, you can mark this with your pen or pencil. You have heard, but I say to you, and here he addresses adultery.

27, 28, 29, 30, adultery. They taught this, which was about the act of adultery. Jesus taught that, which is about lust that leads to adultery.

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 a third, verse 31, verse 32. It was said, verse 32, but I say, a little change in wording rather than you have heard, but it was said, same thing, but I say to you, and then he corrects the teaching regarding divorce. Verses 33 and 34 mark that. Again, you have heard, verse 34, but I say, here he talks about oaths. Look at 38 and 39. You have heard, verse 38, but I say to you, and here he talks about retaliation, an eye for an eye, a tooth for the tooth, and that's the way the Pharisees taught, but he said there's a better way. Let me tell you about it. Here'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 them? All six of them. We're looking at the first of six, where we learn how to steer clear of murder. Until you realize, and that was the purpose of my shocking questions, until you realize that you can commit verbal murder, you will never really take 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 in light of what my dad used to say, I'm a lot better. We're not comparing people with people. We're listening to the teaching of Jesus. So 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, the ancients were told, 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 does that mean? In small communities, the court consisted of about three people. Medium-sized communities, it grew to about seven.

And in larger cities, it was as many as 23 that filled the court. And you stood before the court and you suffered the consequences if you in fact took the life of another. The law says don't do it, and 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 exposed them in their self-righteousness. He shattered their self-righteousness, and they despised him for it. They, teaming up with the Romans, nailed him to 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 an act. 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. Let me 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.

He even goes into detail. Whoever says, you good for nothing, that's 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 isn't someone that just does something mischievous. A fool says in his heart there's no God.

You godless so-and-so. So it's a pronouncement of condemnation of another person. It's what we do in a burst of temper. It's what we do when we take off all the restraints.

This is road rage in action. Except it has to do with the tongue. Now you can begin to get the picture.

You see it. It's an inner attitude. It has to do with an anger which broods. Anger that won't forget.

This is a topic that truly convicts because most of us can recall moments we regret when something slipped out of our mouths and caused damage. You're listening to Insight for Living. Chuck Swindoll is teaching from Matthew chapter 5 entitled today's message Steering Clear of Murder.

To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. It's possible you've been listening to Chuck today and your mind has drifted back to a relationship in need of repair. Nothing will erase what you said that caused 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 plus year collection at Insight for Living. And to purchase a copy of Finding Healing Through Forgiveness, call us.

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