Youth Group Connect - Anger and Lust
Context for Verse
- Jesus has just said the kingdom needs a better righteousness than the Pharisees managed. This section is him showing exactly what he meant.
- He uses the same formula six times in this chapter: "You have heard… but I say." He's not correcting Moses, he's correcting a way of reading Moses that only counted what other people could see.
- His audience genuinely believed they had kept these commands.
- The talk about gouging out eyes and cutting off hands is a deliberate exaggeration, and Jewish rabbis taught like this constantly. It's not literal.
- Verses 31 and 32 drop into a current argument among the rabbis about whether a man could divorce his wife for any reason he liked.
- The tension: once the line moves from what you do to where it starts, nobody in the room comes out clean.
Verse
Try and get multiple people to read a few verses at a time.
21. "You have heard that our ancestors were told, 'You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.'
22. But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.
23. So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you,
24. leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.
25. When you are on the way to court with your adversary, settle your differences quickly. Otherwise, your accuser may hand you over to the judge, who will hand you over to an officer, and you will be thrown into prison.
26. And if that happens, you surely won't be free again until you have paid the last penny.
27. You have heard the commandment that says, 'You must not commit adultery.'
28. But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29. So if your eye-even your good eye-causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
30. And if your hand-even your stronger hand-causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
31. You have heard the law that says, 'A man can divorce his wife by merely giving her a written notice of divorce.'
32. But I say that a man who divorces his wife, unless she has been unfaithful, causes her to commit adultery. And anyone who marries a divorced woman also commits adultery."
Questions
Pick 3 or 4. Spend the most time on Q4.
Q1. Jesus pairs murder with anger, then pairs adultery with lust. What do you think those two pairs have in common? (Look for: the same root at a different stage.)
Q2. Most of us judge ourselves by what we have done, and judge everybody else by what they seem like. What happens to that habit if Jesus is right about where sin actually starts?
Q3. Jesus goes from anger straight to walking out of the temple mid-offering to sort things out with a person. Why is that so urgent, and what does it say about how God ranks unresolved conflict?
Q4. If the standard is this high, what is the point of telling anybody? Is Jesus trying to crush the room, or is he doing something else entirely?
Q5. Name one thing in your head this week that nobody else can see. You don't have to say it out loud. What would it look like to bring that to God instead of handling it alone?
Pray
- Pray for honesty about the things nobody else sees, and for confidence that God is not shocked by them
- Pray for anybody carrying an unresolved conflict, and for the courage verse 24 asks for
The heart of this passage is that Jesus moves righteousness from behaviour to the heart it grows out of. The Sermon on the Mount is an X-ray, not a new ladder.
The risk for this is shame. As in, a teenager hears that even looking is adultery and decides he is screwed, which is the opposite of what Jesus is doing. Nobody is clean, and that's exactly why Jesus went to the cross. Make sure the group leaves knowing where forgiveness sits.
If you can only highlight one thing: Jesus exposes everybody equally, so nobody gets to stand outside the group looking in. That is what makes grace possible.
Is being angry always sinful? No, because God is angry at evil and Jesus is angry in the temple. Jesus is targeting the contemptuous anger that writes a person off as worthless.
Does Jesus want people gouging their eyes out? No, it is exaggeration to say that sin is worth extreme measures, and the eye was never the real problem anyway.
Is noticing somebody is attractive the same as lust? No. Jesus describes looking in order to have, not the ordinary fact of beauty and attraction.
If thinking it is as bad as doing it, why not just do it? Jesus raises the weight of the thought rather than lowering the weight of the act, and actions still wreck real people.
Is divorce always sinful? Christian marriage is for all life, and divorce is indeed sinful because it's breaking that which God brought together. Jesus mentions an exception is divorce. However, we're also called to forgive as Jesus forgave us (he forgave us of sins), so the ideal is to stay together.
Am I unforgivable for what goes on in my head? No, because this passage puts everybody in the same position, and Christ died for exactly that.
The full divorce and remarriage debate: This can easily eat up time and every possible nuance and situation could be brought up. Try to redirect.
Ranking sins ("is lust worse than anger?"): Jesus lists them side by side deliberately. He doesn't rank them, we shouldn't. The only ranking could be affect (as in sexual sin affects you and the other person etc.)
Modesty and whose fault it is (as in, looking lustfully): Jesus puts the responsibility on the person looking. I get the whole "don't dress like that", but the point is self-control. Don't let it drift into blaming anybody else.