Matthew 5:23–24
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
All right. When's the last time you got mad? Real mad. For me, it's usually the last time that someone cut me off in traffic. Or just bad general, bad driving in general just makes me mad. Or when someone zooms past me on the interstate going like a hundred miles per hour. I always think to myself right then, please let there be a cop right around the corner. Justice. I want justice, baby. But of course, I don't deserve to be pulled over ever. Just going along with the flow of traffic, just 10 miles over the speed limit. See those lights behind you. Get the sinking gut feeling. Pull over. License and registration. Cop walks back to his car. Comes back. Do you know why I pulled you over? Speeding. Cop walks up to my window, and he says, if you can guess the most
popular song in the world, I will let you off with a warning. Thought to myself, is it a Beatles song? Maybe it's Michael Jackson. And then it came to me, happy birthday. It was January 24th, my birthday. He saw that on my license, and he let me go. Justice for thee, but mercy for me. Our passage tonight is Matthew 5, 23 and 24.
It's on page 810 in the Pew Bible, if you want to turn there. Jesus says, So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. These verses come right in the middle of a section where Jesus is teaching about the sin of anger. And here's our main point for tonight.
Main idea. Be reconciled to God and be reconciled to others. Be reconciled to God and be reconciled to others. If you look back at the verses, you might think I'm messing up the logic of these verses. One way I could have preached this passage would be to say, you need to be reconciled to others before you're reconciled to God. But I don't think that's what Jesus is saying here.
Jesus is not saying first you need to be reconciled to others before you are reconciled to God. The altar there in verse 23, that's the one in the temple, in the inner court. And the context here in this passage is there's a person coming to worship God at the temple. So the idea is you're coming to worship, and on that day, you remember there's a relationship I have that's unreconciled, then you need to go first to reconcile that relationship. By the way, that's why when we take the Lord's Supper together in advance, like usually the week before, and then especially on the day of the Lord's Supper, you are reminded regularly to reconcile any relationships before taking the Lord's Supper. Because here's the point. This whole idea presupposes that you've already been reconciled to God. You don't go to worship God if you haven't been reconciled to Him.
Being reconciled to God is a prerequisite for worshiping Him. So point one, be reconciled to God. You need to be reconciled to God. You need forgiveness, not primarily from others, but from God. You need the forgiveness that God offers because it's God that you have offended. You have offended other people, but primarily you have offended God, and you need forgiveness from Him. You are a sinner. Deep down, you know that you are a sinner. You have sinned against a holy God, And it's not merely about avoiding the big sins.
It's not about I'm better than the person to my right or the person to my left. Jesus teaches that right here in Matthew 5, the two verses right before our verses. You've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Let's be clear. Jesus is not here equating murder with hatred. No, murder is obviously worse.
But what he is saying is that murder and hatred are both sinful and both liable to judgment. Harboring hatred in your heart against another human is sinful and deserves judgment. So maybe you're here tonight and you're not fully convinced yet that you're a sinner. Maybe you're visiting, you're a guest, you came with somebody. Please, just continue the conversation. Keep talking with your friend. Get coffee. Get to know the members of this church.
We're not better than you. We don't claim to be better than you. We know that we are sinners, but we've been reconciled to God. That's the difference. You're a sinner, I'm a sinner, but I've been reconciled to God, and now I want to follow Jesus, the one who saved me by living a perfect life, by dying in my place, taking the punishment that I deserve, and then rising again on the third day. That's the foundation of our faith as Christians. We have been forgiven. We've been reconciled to God.
And if that's the case, then point two, point two, we must be reconciled to others. We must be reconciled to others. Simply put, if you have been forgiven, then you must forgive. Jesus actually commands you to forgive others at multiple points in the scriptures. And he tells us the motivation for why we need to forgive others. It's because if you're a Christian, God has forgiven you.
You know what reconcile means, right? It's not a common word anymore. It's not something that we use in regular language. It's mostly used in financial accounting. And I know we have some accountants in here. Where are they at? Accountants? You guys will understand this. You're trying to balance the books, right? You go into QuickBooks or whatever you're using, and you hit the reconcile button. You're trying to find out the money that came in, does that match up with the money that goes out?
And if it doesn't line up, well, something is not reconciled. You want everything to line up. And sometimes in relationships, things get out of alignment. That happens when we sin against one another. The relationship needs to be reconciled. There has to be forgiveness. Are you the kind of person who thinks more about being offended? Like, when your thoughts are to yourself, you're thinking about things, Are you thinking about how you have been offended?
Or are you kind of person who is more worried about how you have offended others? I know that there's people on both sides of that. And honestly, we should care about both. Jesus actually, in our passage tonight, highlights the kind of person who realizes that they have offended someone else. Which, at first, is counterintuitive because this is a section about anger. but Jesus doesn't address the angry person in the example. Did you notice that? He addresses the person who has offended someone else. So if you've been sinned against and harboring anger, you need to forgive the person before coming to worship. That's not what he says. He addresses the one who has made the offense, not the person who has been offended, right? That would make sense if he's in this section on anger, he's trying to root out anger in the person's heart, he would have
gone after the person who's been offended. I think what Jesus is trying to highlight here is that if we are truly concerned about anger in our own heart, then we should be concerned when we engender anger out of someone else. And that's true. If someone's mad at you, you should seek reconciliation with that person. Paul says, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Of course, you can't make someone forgive you, right? But you can apologize.
Well, more often than not, though, I think our mind goes to what other people have done to us, how other people have offended us. And there's a lot more application that we could say to the person who's been offended because when it comes to forgiveness for the person who's been offended, it always depends on you to reconcile the relationship. Do you understand what I mean by that? You always have the option to forgive the person who offended you.
So, multiple times in the scriptures, like I mentioned earlier, Jesus talks about reconciliation and forgiveness. We see it here in Matthew 5. We see it in Matthew 6, when Jesus teaches us how to pray. He says, we should pray and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And then he adds, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
What is this? What is Jesus saying here? That we somehow have to earn forgiveness by forgiving others? No, we know that's not true. It's by grace, God's pure grace alone that we are saved, not a result of works so that no one can boast. No, the point is this. You should not be harboring hatred in your heart. If you can't find it in your heart to forgive someone else, then maybe you didn't understand grace in the first place and you were never saved. A sinner who has received God's free grace and mercy understands that they need to forgive others because of the debt that they were in to God. They understand that God had every right to condemn them to hell for eternity, but instead of doing that, he sent his son, his only son, to die for you so that your sins could be forgiven.
Matthew 18 is a familiar passage to this church, probably because we practice church discipline. And if you've read Matthew 18, you know that the first part of Matthew 18 talks about if your brother has sinned against you, you go to your brother, tell him his sin, so on and so forth. And oftentimes I think we forget that it doesn't, that passage doesn't end right there. It actually goes on, and Jesus continues to talk about reconciliation. After Jesus explains about church discipline, what to do in the community if somebody sins against someone else, Peter, who likes to ask questions, has this question for Jesus. He's like, all right, Jesus, I get it. If someone sins against me, we have to forgive them, but there's like, there's a cap on the amount of times that we have to forgive, right? And at that time, in that day, it was well known that you have to forgive someone three times. After that, no more forgiveness. So Peter, he says, I'm going to up the
ante. He's like, is it seven times? Do we have to forgive seven times? And Jesus says, no, it's seven times 70. In other words, a lot of times, probably more than you'll be able to count. You have to forgive your brother always. And in response to Peter's question, since he didn't understand what Jesus is talking about, Jesus then tells this parable. The kingdom of heaven is like this, right? There's this servant, the wicked servant.
There's a king. The king wanted to settle all of his accounts with all of his servants. He's got all these servants. But there's this one servant who owed the king an enormous amount of money, 10,000 talents. That probably doesn't mean anything to you, but a talent is worth 20 years wages. Now that does make sense, right? 20 years of your wages, that's one talent. This guy owed 10,000 talents. That's over 100,000 bitcoins or billions of dollars.
Like, you're never gonna pay this debt back unless you're Elon Musk. The servant had no way to pay this debt. And so the king puts him in jail. He sells him into slavery along with his family. But right then the servant kneeled down and he begged the king for forgiveness. Please give me more time and I'll pay the debt as if he ever had a chance to pay this debt. And the king had mercy on him. He forgave him the entire debt and let him go free.
What? That is unbelievable. Why would he do that? So the story goes on. The servant went away completely free and in the clear. But later, that same servant who had just been forgiven, he found a fellow servant who owed him about $15,000 of today's money. It's not insignificant. It's not billions, though. It's $15,000. So what does he do? He takes the servant and begins to choke him and say, pay what you owe.
So that servant got down on his knees and began to beg for more time to pay the debt. But the servant who had been forgiven by the king refused to even give that servant more time to pay the debt and had him thrown into prison. The other servants hear about this and they told the king, and I'll just read this last bit of the parable. Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Do you see the point? It's not about earning God's forgiveness. It's about understanding how much you have been forgiven. How can you harbor hatred for another sinner
when you have been forgiven such a great debt? It makes no sense. Are you holding a grudge against someone right now? Are you withholding forgiveness from a brother or sister in Christ? I understand forgiveness is not easy. It's unnatural for us because we are born sinful, prideful, self-centered. But harboring hatred is wrong and it's harmful. not just to you but to your brothers and sisters refusing to forgive someone and holding a grudge is like sipping on poison every night before bed it's not going to kill you right away but it will eat away at your soul you think that by holding a grudge against someone that somehow you are keeping them hostage right but no you're actually putting shackles on your own hands Jesus wants our default to be forgiveness and reconciliation.
But if we're honest, it's still a struggle. So let's think about a few reasons. Why is forgiveness so difficult? I can't forgive them. You don't know what they did to me. You don't know the pain that I'm in right now. You're right. I don't know what they did to you. And even if you told me, I can't feel the pain that you're feeling right now. But God knows. God sees.
And yet he's still calling you to forgive that person. Are you going to do it? Okay, but they haven't even asked for forgiveness. Is it possible to forgive someone even if they don't ask for forgiveness? This is a crucial question. Because we often find ourselves in this place. And the answer is yes. You can forgive someone even if they don't ask for forgiveness. Even if the person never asks for forgiveness, you still need to forgive them for the sake of your own soul.
Going around with bitterness in your heart towards your brothers and sisters, it's like trying to run a marathon, which I've never done, but if you've done it, you know how hard that is. with a backpack, and then you're going to throw some bricks in there too, just to make it a little bit harder. Why would you do that? Get rid of the baggage. Forgive the person. Let your heart be free of that hatred. Okay, okay. But I already forgave them. Yes, you might have forgiven them.
Maybe you did forgive them, but here's the hard truth. Forgiveness is not a one-time thing. When someone has cut you deep, I mean really deep, and especially if it's someone that you know well, maybe it's a friend, a loved one, your spouse even, that wound is so deep and it takes time to heal. And you'll be reminded of that wound every time you see the person, Every time you watch a movie or listen to that song, the memory comes back, and then you have to forgive them all over again. Forgiveness is not a one-time event. When you're wounded deeply, and let me assure you, every one of you will be wounded deeply.
Satan will use every single opportunity to remind you of that wound, and he'll twist the knife every time. Imagine if God treated us the way that we treat people sometimes. Praise the Lord God does not treat people like we treat people. God didn't wait for us to come asking for forgiveness before acting to win our salvation. No, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Praise the Lord that even now God does not treat us how we treat other people.
If you were in Christ, God does not hold your sin against you. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sin from us. For us on this side of heaven, forgiveness toward others is hard. Sometimes it's a daily battle, but you must forgive others from your heart. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved. Our God is rich in mercy and eager to forgive. He made the first move towards us in reconciliation. And we are supposed to imitate him in this. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. May we be more and more like Christ as the day draws near. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we need help. We are weak and sinful and selfish creatures.
Help us to die to ourselves and to live for Christ. If there's anyone in here tonight who's currently struggling to forgive their brothers and sisters in Christ, please, Father, help them. Help them to seed not only their need of forgiveness from you, but their need to forgive others. We can't do this on our own. We need the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit to do this. So we ask, help us to follow Christ and make us more like him.
It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.