Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Cost of Discipleship Pt 56 - Separated from God


Chapter 9 - The Brother… continued

Mat 5:21  Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
Mat 5:22  But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Mat 5:23  Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;
Mat 5:24  Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
Mat 5:25  Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
Mat 5:26  Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

Bonhoeffer- 'When a man gets angry with his brother and swears at him, when he publically insults or slanders him, he is guilty of murder and forfeits his relation to God. He erects a barrier not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God. He no longer has access to him: his sacrifice, worship, and prayer are not acceptable in his sight. For the Christian, worship cannot be divorced from the service of the brethren, as it was with the rabbis. If we despise our brother our worship is unreal, and it forfeits every divine promise. When we come before God with hearts full of contempt and unreconciled with our neighbors, we are, both individually and as a congregation, worshipping an idol. So long as we refuse to love and serve our brother and make him an object of contempt and let him harbor a grudge against me or the congregation, our worship and sacrifice will be unacceptable to God.   Not just the fact that I'm angry, but the fact that there is somebody who has been hurt, damaged and disgraced by me, who "has a cause against me," erects a barrier between me and God.'

My thoughts-

Guilty of murder- by merely getting angry.  We do NOT want to comprehend this fully because we LOVE to get angry. We thrive on our ability to get angry. We think NOTHING of being angry, it's expected of us. How often we get angry.  Satan sits back and laughs as his evil has become a way of life and so many are lost to the truth of our Savior. 

When was the last time you became angry at someone?

Be honest.

I'm not asking when was the last time you hated someone, I'm asking when the last time was you became angry at someone? I'm not asking when the last time you ranted and raged against someone. I just want to know when you became angry at someone, the last time it happened. Was it today? Was it yesterday? How about the day before?

I'm positive there are some people that won't remember when the last time was, but I'm also positive there are some who were angry at someone today, yesterday, and the day before that. Some people seem to live on the edge of anger, all the time and the least spark ignites their ire.

When we direct our anger at anyone- doesn't matter who- when we direct our anger at anyone and it's without cause (cause being what?)- they are being murdered by us! They are being wounded by us in  such a real way, Jesus could say the words of the verses above and mean them!

Judgment.
Council.
Fire that burns to ash in complete and utter destruction.
Prison.

These are the results of our unjustifiable anger. Anger that cuts and destroys another.  And if you think for a moment your anger has no power to wound, you're gravely mistaken. Anger destroys the spirit of people. 

Bonhoeffer is right when he says- ' He erects a barrier not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God. He no longer has access to him: his sacrifice, worship, and prayer are not acceptable in his sight.'

We no longer have access to our God when we STOP loving our brothers, our neighbors, each other! And when we let our anger rise up we STOP loving!  Oh, we might say that's not true. That we get angry because we love and care and so on and so forth, but it's not true. We've deceived ourselves, we've allowed ourselves to be deceived, and we don't realize that our anger is an extension of our SELFISHNESS.

Our selfishness keeps us from God.

Satan put Himself before God, before his Creator.
We do it all the time.
We put ourselves before God and when a creature puts itself before its Creator, the selfishness, the arrogance, the that rises up separates us from God.

The next time we get angry we need to stop and think about what's really going on. Why is the anger there? And if it has selfish roots we need to really comprehend what's happening- we are separating ourselves  from God.

Just the idea of us separating ourselves from God...our Hope, our Salvation, should cause us to shudder and so much more! The awfulness of that very idea should terrify us!  But we don't want to think of any of that, we'd so much rather indulge our self-delusion that our anger is miniscule and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It's so much more.

Please LORD help us with our anger! Please, teach us, love us, help us, forgive us!

All for YOUR GLORY! All for YOUR HONOR!


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