20th September 2024

20th September 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Matthew 5:21-26)


Message (Alan Burke)


If you have been following the devotions this week you’ll have heard how Jesus here is expounding the extent of the sixth commandments teaching and in doing so strips all the pretence of our goodness away and leaves us knowing that it is not about what we have done or can do because even our best efforts are filthy rags before a holy God. Deserving of the hell of fire for anger and belittling our bother, insulting them might seem ridiculous but it is with a purpose and that is to drive us to look to the grace of God, not despairing and while if we are relying on our own righteousness then we have absolutely no hope whatsoever we have hope through Jesus Christ who while we were still sinners died for us (Rom 5:8).


As Jesus concludes this teaching on anger he adds a scenario that sees someone with their adversary on their way to court. Notice the change from brother to adversary. If someone is your brother or sister in Christ then this should never be happening as you will have done all that you can to be reconciled to them before it would ever get to this. The picture that is given of making your way to court with an adversary. There is a debt owed of some kind which we can deduce from how they will be thrown into prison until they have paid the last penny as v26 tells us. 


Now there is a precedent here that believers should follow, if there is someone that we have done something on, we should attempt to make redress if we can before it comes to court. Now of course there are some things that must be taken to court, things that we must face the temporal consequences of here in this life and the courts must decide the consequences, trying to sweep things under the carpet as has happened in the past is not an acceptable response in the church. 


This isn’t teaching us that if a believer has been accused of something that is without basis that that they seek to settle out of court, simply roll over. Rather what this is speaking of is if you are the guilty party, this is not speaking of a frivolous accusation. If that is a situation that you find yourself in then you do all that you can to address it, you don’t leave it, you try to sort it out as soon as possible. In the ancient world wasn’t an option, debt was a serious matter. So imagine you’ve borrowed some money, might be to buy a house, new car, holiday and something happens that you can’t pay it back, maybe you wreck the back and can’t work, or loose your job or there is another bill that comes your way and before you know it you’re sinking and the debt has to be paid back but you can’t. 


Well you’d be put in prison, and you would remain in prison for as long as it took you to pay the debt back. In prison how are you going to work to earn money to pay your debt? You can’t, you’d remain there until either you die or someone, a family member or friend pays the debt on your behalf. Look what Jesus says in v26; ‘I tell you the truth, literally the word that is used is “amen”, amen, truly, surly this will be the case, that you will not get out until you have paid the last penny’. 


Anger, belittling someone means that we are all deserving of the fire of hell, I am deserving of the fire of hell and so are you. We owe a debt that none of us can hope to pay, all of us have left the commandments in shatters even if we thought we were doing a pretty good job of keeping them. The law of God deals not only with the action but with the heart and one day we will all come before the Lord Jesus and he will be our judge, he will be our judge and he will be our accuser. We need to be reconciled to him otherwise we will be thrown into the hell of fire for all eternity with no hope of release. 


Colossians 2:14 reminds us what God has done for us, he canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross (Col 2:14). While there is none of us are good people, able to keep the commands, while we are deserving of the fire of hell if we repent and believe, if we are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ then that debt with its legal demand was nailed to the cross so that as we would come before the judge we would stand not in our own righteousness that are but filthy rags, but we would stand in Jesus’ righteousness. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q95. To whom is Baptism to be administered?
A. Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible Church, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him; but the infants of such as are members of the visible Church are to be baptized.
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