Transcript

Shelby Abbott [00:00:00]: Welcome to The Connecting Podcast with Paul Tripp. My name is Shelby Abbott and this podcast exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life, right here, right now.

Paul Tripp [00:00:11]: That's right.

Shelby [00:00:12]: Hey, Paul.

Paul [00:00:13]: Hey!

Shelby [00:00:13]: Good to see you.

Paul [00:00:16]: Good to see you, too. I am thankful that we're doing this. This particular podcast and the three that will follow it have really left me humbled and convicted. It's left me concerned for the state of the spiritual health of the Christian community.

Paul [00:00:47]: It's made me want to cry out for God's rescuing grace, but one of the things I want to emphasize is how timely this is, how current. I was doing an interview recently and they asked me to speak to how does this ancient book speak to anything that we're dealing with today; and I thought of this passage and it just speaks to the craziness and insanity of our culture.

Paul [00:01:27]: And remember, we're using the Sermon on the Mount as a way of talking about how can I live well a godly, hopeful, joyful, courageous, productive Christian life in this world that has gone insane, and it hit me that human beings of every generation are the same.

Paul [00:01:50]: They struggle with the same things. The setting's different because locations are different. There are cultural things that are different. Technology is different, but the level of human heart, we're just the same and one of the things that's true, if you look around and you pay attention, we live in an angry culture, growingly angry and that's not just outside of us. That's us, too.

Paul [00:02:25]: I mean, could there be a day when we could say that there wasn't any moment of anger in a day, whether it's a flash of irritation or somebody's in your way or somebody said something you don't like or you go to the store and what you're looking for isn't there or all those... it's like anger is just below the surface and doesn't take much for it to explode outside of us. So, why don't you read for us Matthew 5:21-26?

Shelby [00:03:02]: Sure.

²¹“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ ²²But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. ²³So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. ²⁵Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. ²⁶Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Paul [00:04:02]: Wow!

Shelby [00:04:03]: That's a lot there.

Paul [00:04:04]: There's a contrast that this passage sets up for us that I think is really important to recognize. I would argue that one of the sins that we don't take as seriously as we should is anger. We're really good at minimizing and excusing and rationalizing and shifting the blame.

Paul [00:04:34]: Luella will say to me, "Why'd you answer me that way?" and my initial response is, "But you..." It's right away to diminish the significance, the wrong of what I did. When I'm in a right mood, in a right attitude, thinking biblically, I'll say to her, "Doesn't matter what you've done. I should never ever speak to you harshly."

Shelby [00:05:04]: Shouldn't talk to you like that, yes.

Paul [00:05:06]: But often, that's not my first instinct, and one of the things you recognize in this passage is that God takes anger very seriously. This is serious language in this passage, about as serious as you get in Scripture and the thing that I want to notice that's a theme throughout these verses that we're going to spend four podcasts looking at is God gives the thoughts and intentions of our heart the moral value of behavior.

Paul [00:05:52]: It's really important because we excuse sins of the heart and we focus on behavior, and that's not the way God looks at it. So here, that means He says anger, hatred of your brother has the moral value of actual physical murder.

Paul [00:06:18]: Now, you might think, "What are you talking about?" Because He understands that sin always has its roots, its genesis, in our hearts, and if we give away our hearts, we're going to end up giving away our behavior.

Shelby [00:06:38]: Yes, yes. I think you said this multiple times. Your actions follow wherever your heart has first gone. You probably put it more eloquently than that, and that's really helped me in this process of unpacking pieces of scripture like this, where I don't maybe know how to articulate this or understand it well, but you will always follow wherever your heart leads.

Paul [00:07:03]: Yes, really, really, really important. Well, to understand the gravity of the language in this passage that Jesus uses, it's really important to understand what the Bible says about murder, and the initial place where we see that is in Genesis 9:6.

⁶Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
[Now listen to this] for God made man in His own image.

Paul [00:07:38]: The heinousness of murder is because you are ending the life of someone made in the image of God. Murder is an assault on the Creator Himself because the high point of His creation was the creation of human beings.

Paul [00:08:04]: That's why the Bible doesn't use murder language for the killing of animals. Our culture does, but that's an unbiblical way of using the word "murder". Murder is the ending of a life of someone made in the image of God. Maybe Psalm 19 that said, or Psalm 8[:5], He made us a little lower than the angels. All of that is pointing to the utter significance and dignity and importance of human beings in the plan of God.

Shelby [00:08:45]: Yes, there's infinite value to the soul of a human being.

Paul [00:08:48]: Yes, it's just... well, you could argue eternal value because we are in possession of never-dying souls. So that's why that murder language is Jesus saying, "Do you get what you're doing when you allow your heart to go here, when you allow your anger to go here, when you allow your hatred to go here? Do you get what you're doing?"

Paul [00:09:12]: Well, that means for us, you can't possibly live well as God's called us to live if you deny, minimize, rationalize, excuse, shift the blame for your anger because then, you become another part of the cultural problem.

Paul [00:09:35]: You cease being salt. You cease being light. You cease having that beautiful image you're supposed to have in culture. Wouldn't it be great if someone would say of you, Shelby, "What does it take to get this guy angry?"

Shelby [00:09:53]: If only, if only, yes.

Paul [00:09:56]: "He is just... he is so patient." Well, that gives you opportunities to talk about what your life is about.

Shelby [00:10:06]: Now, I'm convicted.

Paul [00:10:09]: Well, of course, we will be convicted because we do not take this as seriously as God does. I mean, when you're marching down the hallway, stomping your feet as you go, about to lace into your children because you're mad that they're sinners and they actually need to be parented (I mean, that's what's going on) and you're about to say things to them that you shouldn't say, you are so far away from where God wants you to be. That's neither biblical nor parenting. That's just sinful, unbridled murder of your children.

Shelby [00:10:50]: Yes, and that's a helpful example because it's such a practical one for everyday life. I think one, too, that you and I have talked about ad nauseam is how social media can ramp up the anger level in our lives as well, and we think because we're sitting alone in our living room or in the privacy of our own home, scrolling, it's no big deal; but when we get angry, we're murdering people through the internet in our hearts as well.

Paul [00:11:18]: Yes. Well, and so, I'm in my car. I'm pounding on my dash and saying things I shouldn't say. I want all those people in front of me gone. It's murderous thoughts. Or the lady in the line who's taking more time than I think she could take because she has a purse the size of Texas and she can't find her wallet in there.

Paul [00:11:45]: I mean, we just give example after example after example that we don't take this as seriously as God does, and maybe our whole purpose in this conversation for these twenty minutes should be that it would drive us to say, "God, help us! God, help us! God, help us!"

Shelby [00:12:07]: Yes, that's the perfect response to that. "Lord, I need You."

Paul [00:12:11]: "I just don't take my sin as seriously as You do, and because of that, in the culture You've placed me in, I become another example of the problem rather than part of Your great redemptive solution."

Shelby [00:12:25]: Yes, and I think that's also very accurate for not just the culture out there, but the Christian culture as well. Some people have built entire platforms off of making other Christians angry. As Christians, they're out there to make other Christians angry. It's just... we're not immune to it. We're not immune to it at all.

Paul [00:12:52]: And notice, Jesus doesn't amend this radical statement. He doesn't say you can be an angry creep as long as it's in the pursuit of truth or to defend your theology or because you're in front of a transgender person or something. He doesn't give those amendments. We do and in the name of defending the truth of our Savior, we do things that He says are murderous in their intent. How does that make any sense?

Shelby [00:13:40]: Yes, it does not at all.

Paul [00:13:41]: It doesn't.

Shelby [00:13:41]: But it's become so normalized in our culture now that we think it's okay. We think, "Oh, yes, I'm just being honest. I'm just defending the truth of the gospel," or, "I'm just defending the Bible. This is real, and this is not, and so, I'd rather be on the side of truth than of lies," which, to a degree, that's right, but if you're going to be the kind of person who the world says, "Yes, you're exactly like us," in that whole process, that's not what God calls us to at all.

Paul [00:14:14]: Well, also think about the fruit. Let's go back to the parenting example. You're in there yelling at your children, saying, "Do you know what my day was like? I would never have thought of doing what you do," and you're a crazy person at that point.

Paul [00:14:37]: Do you think a child is saying, "My, this is wise. This is so helpful. I'm so glad this man is my father. I think I'm seeing my heart right now." Of course, they're not. You know what the child wants? You out of the room. That's what they want, and that's where anger goes. James says the anger of man cannot accomplish the righteousness that God desires.

Shelby [00:15:07]: Yes. Okay, so you're saying this, and it's actually incredibly convicting because, literally, yesterday, I was trying to get my daughter out the door to get to a place on time. She was late, late, late, late, and I was like, "Let's go! We've got to leave right now."

Shelby [00:15:25]: And she comes out and she grabs her shoes. She's in her socks and she kind of huffs out the front door. Doesn't even put her shoes on, and I yell at her, and I was like, "Get yourself back in this house right now!"

Shelby [00:15:38]: And she gets in and then, she just kind of stares at me with this like... and I'm like, "I'm trying to get here on time and you are..." And so, everything that you just described is something that I'm guilty of yesterday and I had to apologize. She apologized to me, and we thought we worked it out, but it's one of those things that's just so natural for us to just click right into anger mode even with the people we love the most.

Paul [00:16:04]: Yes. Well, that shows again how much it's there in our hearts. It's just under the surface. That's why we need God's rescuing grace.

Shelby [00:16:10]: Yes, yes, I need Him so bad.

Paul [00:16:13]: I want to do one other thing. Often, when you have this topic of anger, people say, "But you don't know who my boss is," or, "You don't know the neighborhood I live in. You don't know the husband or wife I live with. You don't know what my kids are like."

Paul [00:16:28]: That's where James 4 is helpful. He says, "^1aWhat causes quarrels and what causes fights among [us]?" There's the question and he says, "Don't they come from your desires that wage war within you?" You want something, but you can't get it; so you kill and you covet.

Shelby [00:16:49]: Yes, there it is.

Paul [00:16:51]: And so, James says the source of my anger is my self-sovereignty. I want what I want and I don't want anything in this world in the way of it; and so, I get angry. I want that thing in the store when I arrive there, and I don't want there to be lines, and I don't want there to be traffic, and I don't want to be disagreed with, and I want a patient boss, and I want, and I want, and I want, and I want.

Paul [00:17:27]: And that's where, for me, it was so incredibly convicting because that's me. I love me, and I have a wonderful plan for my life. It's just there, and maybe that means (and I think this is so important to say) that our anger is one of the clearest evidences of our need for God's grace. James 4:1-10 (I would recommend people to read that passage) is a treatise about anger. Right in the middle, James says, "⁶But He gives [us] more grace." Isn't that beautiful?

Shelby [00:18:19]: Yes, it's such a necessary little island in the middle of the storm.

Paul [00:18:24]: Because James gets it. He gets the fact that you begin to face how often you're angry. I'm not talking about hitting somebody or screaming at somebody, but just those angry thoughts, that impatience, that irritation. You'll be amazed at how much anger is in your life, but God doesn't leave us there.

Paul [00:18:52]: It's so beautiful that God doesn't get angry and intolerant and say, "I'm sorry I ever offered you My grace. You're just not what I thought you'd be, and I'm done." It's just never going to happen. His grace is inexhaustible, and so that's where we leave. This is a huge struggle for us. A struggle, if you're honest, you have to admit to, but there's help for us, and I just want to encourage all of us. I start with myself. Cry out for God's grace.

Shelby [00:19:28]: Yes, it's necessary.