All That Jesus Taught : Bible Study Part 16 | Zac Poonen
We turn again to continue our study in ‘All that Jesus Taught’ to Matthew 28:20. A command which is I believe being obeyed by very, very few preachers and pastors. Jesus told us here in this passage to go in to all nations, make disciples and then baptize them, and then teach them to do every single thing that he commanded. The great commission is not complete until that is done and that can be more laborious than just bringing them to Christ which can be in a moment. This is a life long thing to lead people to the type of life that Jesus described in his teaching. This is not something independent of the ministry of evangelism and missionary work. It’s completing the job. One needs the other like in one of our earlier study I said it’s like the hand that takes the food who puts it in to the mouth is evangelism, picture of evangelism and then the rest of the process is to digest that food and make it part of the human body is a picture of other ministries that complete the work and make that new convert an effective member of the body of Christ. So we were looking at Matthew 5.
You have to see some of the things that Jesus taught and commanded that we are to bring every single believer in to this life. For example he spoke about putting away anger. In the old covenant the standard was to put away murder. Never murder anybody in Matthew 5:21 but in versus 22 Jesus said “My standard is don’t get angry”. I want to say a word of clarification there because there is an anger that is not sinful and there is an anger that is sinful. The difference we need to understand in Ephesians 4 we have a command. It is a command which says “Be angry (Ephesians 4:26) but don’t sin”. So if I would paraphrase that verse what it means in Ephesians 4:26 is the type of anger you should have in your life is an anger that is not sinful. So when Jesus raise the bar/raise the standard from the Old Testament standard of don’t murder to don’t get angry. We need to understand what is the right type of anger and what is the wrong type of anger. And like I said in an earlier study when ever we don’t understand a verse properly. Look at our spiritual dictionary ‘The word made flesh: The life of Jesus Christ’ and in the life of Christ he called himself “The light of the World” and in him was life and that life was the light of men we read in John 1:4. So it is in the life of Jesus Christ our Lord that we see the light that explains every verse in scripture. So when we read “Be angry but don’t sin” and we are trying to distinguish between anger that is sinful and anger that is not sinful. We got to look at the light that there is in the life of Jesus. When was he angry and when was he not angry?
For example we read in Mark 3:5 that when he was in a synagogue he looked around with anger at people who were trying to hinder a man with a withered hand/ paralyzed hand to be healed. He was angry when the Pharisees were more concerned about keeping the ritual of the Sabbath than healing a paralyzed man. So that is the right type of anger when you see a religious leaders and religious people who are more interested in ritual than in people, and are more interested in keeping certain rituals than delivering paralyzed people. Today the paralysis that is found among Christians is defeated by sin. When we have religious people who are more interested to make sure that the people pay their tights more than they are free from sin they are in the same category as these Pharisees who would not allow a man with a withered hand to be healed but they were more interested in these people paying their tights and keeping the Sabbath.
I agree with the distinction between Jesus’ righteous anger versus those who have sinful anger. I think in Mt. 5:22 Jesus goes on to give a good example of what he means by an anger that is the same as murder. He refers to an angry brother who calls his brother a fool. The word fool used here is used again at the end of Mt. 7 when Jesus contrasts the wise man who built his house on the rock versus the fool(ish) man who built his house on the sand. The fool was the one who heard Jesus’ words but did not ever obey them (7:24-27). And the word brother used in 5:22 is clarified later in Mt. 12:49-50, where Jesus points to his disciples and says they are his mother and brothers, for whoever does the will of his Father in heaven is his brother and sister and mother.
So to become angry against a brother (a fellow disciple), perhaps due to some specific sin, and call him a fool, is to condemn him as one who is not a true brother, who is not a member of the family of the Father in heaven. Such a strong judgment against a brother who is in fact a true brother is, according to Jesus, the same as murdering him.