Fight For Peace | Jud Wilhite

Wow, let's give it up for what an amazing time of worship we just had. Yes. I just want to give a big shout out to anybody watching through our partnership with God Behind Bars, anybody watching through the Pando app, we are so glad to have you here with us today. Yes, we are so glad, but now is the perfect time to pull out your Central Church app, download it if you haven't already, and under our experience tab, you can follow along with our teaching notes. But let's welcome up Pastor Judd as he kicks off our brand new series, Five Relationship Rules. All right. Well, welcome, everybody. Great to have you here today. I want to say a big shout out to our Central family locations. We want to welcome the Central Summerlin family, Central Aliante, Central Sunrise Mountain, Central Kingman. Let's give it up for them. Good to have you guys with us today. Hey, how many of you are like me and you struggle every now and then with anger? Anybody know that feeling? How many of you on the way to church today struggled with some anger? You know, yeah. Anger is a very real emotion. It's an emotion I've struggled with a lot over the years. And you know, there's different ways that we express anger in social media and texting and things like that. For instance, we have some different emojis for when you get frustrated, like kind of the low level here is like the scowling face. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you're kind of annoyed, you're frustrated.

Then if you get even more annoyed or frustrated, you could put some color on it, make it red. Let's go to the next one here. You get the red scowling face. If you're even more annoyed, well, you have other options, right? Then you can go with this one, the red scowling face with words coming out that you can't say in church, right? You know what I mean? And I found one more emoji just to throw up. This is the Hulk emoji. This is when you've absolutely lost your mind and you are now doing things that you won't even remember doing that you will completely regret. You know, like everybody had a Hulk moment where you're just like, I can't believe I just, the switch got flipped and I lost myself in that moment. I think we all know what it is to wrestle with anger. I read an article this week and it started this way. It said, everyone is 10 bad decisions away from killing someone. It sounds extreme, it's shocking, but the point is, it's trying to help us wake up to what can happen when we don't deal with our anger. And so the article mentioned some examples. One was like road rage, a guy cuts you off in traffic and so you wave it in without all your fingers. And then he breaks hard and then you follow and then he stops and then you both get out and then tempers explode and then a punch is thrown and then someone falls and hits their head or someone pulls a weapon and what started as a split second insult, 10 bad decisions later can change your entire life. And when you think about it that way, it doesn't sound so shocking when it says everyone is 10 bad decisions away from killing someone. You realize anger can get a foothold in our life and anger can take us places that we don't want to go, a place where ultimately everybody loses, right? You lose joy, you lose time, you lose years off your life.

And so we've been looking at Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, we've been looking at Jesus teaching about the blessed life, the happy life as he begins that Sermon on the Mount. But what's interesting is after that, he then turns to relationships and Jesus starts to break down some principles for how we relate to one another. And that's very important because all the studies show that so much of the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our relationships, how we relate to other people in our life. In fact, studies show that up to 50% of our emotional and social interpersonal problems are related to unresolved and undealt with anger. So it affects our lives in tremendous ways. And Jesus in Matthew chapter five is going to challenge us this week in how we deal with one another as it relates to anger, but he's also going to challenge us in the coming weeks. We're doing this teaching series called Five Relationship Rules, and the first one this week is simply this, fight for peace. Fight for peace in your life. But we're going to look at how we relate to one another, Jesus is going to talk about marriage and divorce, he's going to talk about physical intimacy, he's going to talk about being a truth teller, the words that we speak, why they're important, why they matter, he's going to talk about forgiveness. So put your seatbelt on because Jesus, I mean right out of the gate he talks about happiness and joy and then he turns right into the issues that many of us wrestle with on a day-to-day basis in our life. So this week we're in Matthew chapter five, we're going to begin in verse 21, and as we always do here at Central we're going to read this scripture, when we get to the red word just shout it out here. the way we interact with God's word. But Jesus continues, and this is what he says. You have heard that our ancestors were told you must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.

But I say, if you are even, what, angry with someone, you are subject to judgment. What? So Jesus says, look, you've heard that our ancestors were told you must not commit murder. Now, everybody in the original audience would have understood that he's referring to the sixth commandment of the Old Testament. You shall not murder. But I think what Jesus is getting at, not only here, but throughout his message, is that we often reduce our behavior to just external things, right? How many times have you heard somebody or seen, hey man, at least I didn't kill anybody, you know? Like, it's like, as long as I'm not murdering anybody, it's okay. And Jesus is gonna move it from the external to say, no, there's another issue here that comes back to the internal, to our heart. Because when you hate someone, when you slander them, when you are always insulting them and tearing them down, you are in very dangerous waters. He's gonna challenge us to step back and realize anger is a heart issue, and anger will take you places you don't want to go. So the first challenge from Jesus' teaching is simply this, you gotta face your anger. You gotta face your anger. Now psychologists, about 40 years ago,

started to popularize the idea that one way to deal with your anger is to just express it and let it out. Instead of just keeping it in, you should yell, scream, throw something, hit something, just get it all out so you're not like a volcano waiting to explode, right? You know, you just get it all out there. And what later research has shown pretty conclusively is the problem with that approach is that that behavior tends to reinforce itself, right? So you yell, you scream, you hit something, you throw something. The next time you get angry, you're gonna be tempted to do that again and again. Why? Because anger kind of feels good. Let's just do a little example here. I'm gonna say the word yes, and then I'm gonna ask you to scream back at me the word no. And I'm gonna ask you to do it with all the rage and anger that you, I mean, think about your least favorite political candidate. Think about your least favorite, I don't know, celebrity, whatever. Like, just let me have it, give it to me. You can shake your fist, you can point, but use your first finger. You know, like, all right, cross our locations. All right, I'm gonna do this like three or four times.

Okay, you ready, ready? Everybody ready, okay. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Man, give it to me, everything you got. Yes. No. You guys are scary, man. You're scary right now. You know, it feels kind of good, doesn't it? Just get it out. I set myself up for that. I set myself up for that. Well, Jesus is gonna challenge us to not just vent our anger, but to instead to try and deal with our anger at the heart level before it grows. And so here's what he's gonna continue on in his teaching. Matthew chapter 5, 22. Help me on the red words here. He says, if you call someone an idiot, you are in what? Danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in what? Danger of the fires of hell. What? Now, interesting, that phrase, the fires of hell, in the original language, it's the Greek word Gehenna,

which referred to a valley, a literal valley, a place outside of Jerusalem that was basically, in Jesus' day, like the landfill, was where all the trash would be thrown and it would be burning day and night, you know, as the trash is burning and being destroyed. But historically, it was a place where some evil kings had encouraged their people to sacrifice their children to foreign gods, right? And God allowed the city to be, to come under judgment. He allowed it to be conquered and destroyed. And many of those very people that sacrificed their kids to foreign gods themselves ended up in Gehenna. And I think Jesus is saying, look, the idea is you allow anger to grow, you allow anger to develop and thrive in your heart. What you'll find is eventually what you dish out to others could be dished out back to you. You don't wanna be in this situation. And so he's gonna challenge us to take it back to the heart level. Now let's, I'm gonna go to the TV here and let me just break down. It's fascinating when you look at Jesus' teaching because there's kind of like three levels of anger that he talks about and three levels of danger that he talks about, okay? So the first level, the first level of anger, he says, you know, anger and murder. We looked at that passage.

He talks about, you know, you've heard that it was said, do not murder, and he says, if you do, you'll be subject, the danger is you'll have, you'll face the local court, right? This won't be good for you. But then he goes along and then he talks about anger in insult, which the actual word is raka. It's an Aramaic term of derision. It's kind of like good for nothing or whatever, you know, like it's an insult. It's kind of tearing somebody down and saying they're worthless, they're nothing. And here's what's interesting is as the anger tends to go down in severity as we would perceive it, the danger goes up. He says here, you're not just in danger at the local court, you're in danger to the higher court. In the original language, it's the word Sanhedrin, which was the religious court of the day. It would almost be like saying the Supreme Court, right? Then he goes further and he says, you could show anger in a curse towards somebody. The actual term is like, you could call somebody, you know, a fool or an empty head. We get the word moron from that word. And then he says, you're in danger of the fires of hell. In other words, the divine court. Now, I break this down because this would have been surprising to Jesus' original hearers and it's kind of shocking to us.

Why is it that as the anger goes down, right? Murder, come on, that's the worst. Goes down to insult, then it goes down to curse. Why does it, as the anger goes down, the danger goes up? From local court to higher court to divine court. And I think it's because Jesus wants to shock us. He wants to grab our attention. He wants to make us think like, what? And he wants us to realize that what starts here in cursing and insulting is not as far as we think from here in seeing that anger rise up to something where it destroys somebody else's life and destroys your life. And so Jesus wants to take it back down even to the level of the curse and to say, hey, even there, we need to pause and reflect on what's going on in our heart. And I think he's challenging us with a couple ways that we can live. One way, you can take the rage bait that's out there in our culture because our culture has learned and research has shown if you want to keep people engaged on social media, if you want to boost your algorithm, enrage them. It's more powerful than sex. It's more powerful than money. It's more powerful than any other human emotion to get people to come back again and again and again. So you get people angry, right? That's the strategy.

And they come back again and again and again for more content. You gotta keep everybody enraged to keep them engaged. And so Jesus comes along and what's he challenging us to do? He's challenging us to step back and think, look, there are two ways you can live your life. You can live your life enraged and angry all the time. You can live your life tearing others down and insulting others and cursing others and going down that road. Or you could stop and realize God has more for you than that because when you're always tearing others down, you know who else gets torn down in that process? You do. You do. You build a better life when you build others up. You build a better life when you build others up. And so one of the first ways we can deal with anger is to just step back and remember all that God has done in our lives. Remember the forgiveness and grace we've received. Remember the kindness God has shown us. Remember that he's allowed us to sit at the table of his blessing. He's allowed us to participate in his goodness. And that can take some of the edge off the anger that we feel towards those around us. I mean, Jesus has forgiven us of all of our shortcomings. The Bible says in Romans chapter eight, verse one, that there is now no condemnation

for those who belong to Christ Jesus. That means there's no condemnation for that time that you lost your cool. Come on, somebody, there's no condemnation for that time that you lied to cover your tracks or for that time that you let it go, or for that time you went into Hulk mode. You know what I'm saying? For that time that you flipped out. There's no condemnation when you let jealousy get the better of you. There's no condemnation when you weren't there for a friend. There's no condemnation for when the relationship fell apart or for when you weren't there as a parent, or for, you know, there's no condemnation from when you hid the credit card from your spouse. It's getting real up in here now, right? There's no condemnation for when the prescription pills became a habit. There's no condemnation for that time you told God you would never do it again, and then you did it again. There's no condemnation for that time you promised God you would do something, but then you didn't. didn't do it. There's no condemnation because Jesus sets us free from the past. And he sets us free from the past. Not so that we can abuse the past, right? But so that we can learn from the past. Thank you. You guys tired of hearing me choke out up here? Pastor Nick always to the rescue. He sets us free from the past so that we don't have to be stuck in the past in our lives, we can move forward. And I think for me, when I think

about anger, and I wrestle with anger, you may not know this, but I'm a redhead. I don't know, I've been it's kind of turned my hair was bright red when I was a kid. And it got brown, like when I got in high school. And now I feel like it's like brownish red, you know, like depends on the day. But you know what they say about us? I can say this because I am a redhead. You know what they say about us redheads, right? Like, you know, we've got a little fire in us, you know, we can lose our cool. I was the kid that melted down at the grocery store and my parents didn't know what to do with me. So I've wrestled with anger my whole life. I have a short temper. Actually, it's I think God's just done a remarkable work in my life where it's much longer now. But it used to be very short. But sometimes I just have to step back when that anger comes. And I have to remember, man, all that God has done in my life, all that he's forgiven me for. I don't have to live in rage all the time. At those who may have hurt me. I can live in a different way. I can face my anger with faith. And then secondly, I can fight for peace, can fight for peace. You know, I read a book this last year that really shook me. It was by a guy named Brett Hanson. It's called Unaffendable. And he makes the case that as followers of Jesus, we should live our lives unoffendable towards other people. That what God has done for us is so tremendous that we should be able to walk in faith in that and not be offended at all the other things other people do. Now, that's interesting because I always was kind of of the mind that like, God's angry in the Bible. It's okay for us to be angry at righteous things. And you look at all the things going on in culture. And sometimes we just need to be angry, you know, in a righteous way. And one of the

things he said in this book that really kind of shook me, and it's made me think, and I can't tell you, I have all the answers on this, but I've been thinking about it for months. He said, you know, nowhere in the Bible is human anger portrayed as something that does good. He says nowhere. He says there are more than 300 references to anger in the Bible, and basically zero times human anger results in something positive. Interesting, right? He says, every mention of human anger is paired with things like, do not sin in your anger. Control your anger. Get rid of your anger. How anger marks you as foolish. Basically, the message of the Bible is this, God is the only one who can be trusted to act righteously in anger. And now we see Jesus, people say, what about Jesus? Jesus overturned the tables in the temple and threw people out of the temple that were exchanging money, and it turned it into just a profit center. But we're not Jesus, right? We're a long way from Jesus. And so it really, I think sometimes Christians can take this idea of we should be righteously angry, and they can twist it into basically a justification to be angry all the time at everybody and everything that they may do that doesn't align with God's principles. And I think there is a better way. And the better way is to stand back and remember all that God has done for us and surrender our anger to him and love people and realize it wasn't too long ago, where many of us were living just like the people we may be angry about. Right? Give them the time and the space and pray for them and ask God to move in their life, rather than enraging in your heart and in your mind towards them. So Matthew chapter five, Jesus is going to give us two examples of how to deal with anger in our lives. He says, so if you're presenting a sacrifice

at the altar in the temple, and you suddenly remember that somebody has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar, go and be what? Reconciled to that person, then come and offer your sacrifice to God. Now this is kind of a huge statement. And we often miss this, but people back then would travel like 80 miles to go to the temple to worship. This could be like a whole week's journey, right? You know, you're going to the temple, you're going to Jerusalem. And Jesus is like, yeah, if you have something against your brother, or if your brother has something against you, there's both sides of it. He says, you just leave your gift there, and before you offer it, go back and make it right with them and then come back. If any of you were ever looking for an excuse to leave church, this is your excuse. If you come in and you're standing here right now, if you're in the middle of this message and you're like, man, I hate that guy, you know, and you're just thinking about it the whole time and things are not right, Jesus is saying this, you have the clearing here, go and make it right with them and then come back, we have services all weekend, then come back and worship and present, he says, your gift to God, right, this is how important, he says, it is that we live at peace with one another as far as it depends on us. He's like, deal with it and deal with it immediately. Then he gives another illustration, Matthew chapter five, verse 25, he says, when you're on the way to court with your adversary,

settle your differences, what, quickly. He's like, otherwise, your accuser may hand you over to the judge who will hand you over to an officer and you'll be thrown into prison and if that happens, you surely won't be free again until you have paid the last penny. Again, Jesus is saying, look, try to get to peace as fast as you can with other people. Try to move forward and live at peace with others as far as it depends on you. Now, I know the world is complicated and people can be harsh and mean and frankly, it doesn't always depend on us, does it? But to the degree that it does depend on us, we wanna forgive, we wanna face our anger, we wanna fight for peace. So here's four simple things that I do in my life to try and fight for peace. These are just some things that works for me and one of them might seem a little counterintuitive but the first thing I thought of is I try to create margin in my life. What I mean is like, one of the quickest ways to anger and rage for me is traffic. Anybody feel me here? Like, just people and their driving abilities. And what I've noticed is if I'm always running late, I'm way more susceptible to getting angry when people don't get out of my way, right? Tracking with me?

So I literally have done, I have stepped back now and I've really tried to give myself plenty of time to get to places so that I'm not so stressed out on the way because I hate being late. My dad pounded that in me. I had a military dad and 10 minutes early was right on time, you know what I mean? So if I overschedule things in my life and everything's coming on top of everything else and I'm always running behind, for me, that stresses me out. Now, some of you are like, you know, kuna matata, you know, like, no problem and aloha, you know, mahalo. I love it. Island time, baby. I just don't have that gene, right? So I've gotta give myself margin to get there early, be prepared, it helps me stay calm. I try to create margin in my life. Another thing I do is I often say to myself this simple phrase, be the duck. Be the duck. You know that phrase they say about ducks, that ducks just let water roll off their back? And so I remind myself when somebody criticizes me or somebody kinda comes at me in a really forceful way or somebody's hurt in a way that seems just unreasonable and I just have to remind myself, like, just be the duck.

Be the duck. In other words, don't choose to be offended. Try to not be offended. Just let it roll off, just let it roll off. Just keep going, be the duck. Another thing I try to do, not always successfully, is believe the best. Believe the best. I think sometimes when we get hurt, when anger enters the picture, it's easy to connect dots in a very toxic way about what another person's motives are. You know, they're trying to destroy me. They're trying to hurt our family or whatever. And that may actually be true, but I try to believe the best until I'm absolutely proven otherwise. You know, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're just having a bad day. Maybe they're just frustrated. Maybe they're stressed out. Maybe their finances are flipped upside down and that's why they've lost their cool in this moment. Like, I just try to believe the best about other people and then every day I try to forgive freely. Try to forgive freely. And I go through a process where I just open my hand and I just, if I'm carrying anger or hurt towards someone, I just give it to God and just ask, I pray for them. Here's one of the most powerful things you can do

for people that you have a lot of anger towards is just start praying for them every day, right? Just asking God to work in their life. Jesus said, pray for your enemies. You start praying for people that you're angry with in your life. Over time, what I've seen in my life is you just get a little less, and it's hard to hate someone you keep praying for, right? They may hate me, but I don't hate them. And I feel like whenever God calls me home, I don't have any enemies because. I've made peace, as far as it depends on me, with everybody that I can. And I feel like that's how we wanna live our lives. I'm not gonna carry that stress and that pressure around, so forgive freely, because there's some interesting ways that we hang on to anger. I had a friend once, he had lost a son, and he had so much anger over his son's passing and the things surrounded with it. And finally it got so bad that he went and he got some therapy. And he told me, he said, I learned something in therapy that I never saw outside of that. He goes, what I learned is, my anger was actually my way of keeping my son alive. Like I was hanging on to that anger

as a way of keeping him alive. And he said, I had to realize that there are much healthier ways of keeping the memory of my son alive, and lean into those and let go of some of that anger. But forgiving freely is a big part of that, and it will set you free. The Bible says in Matthew 18, we as a church, you know, if somebody in the church offends us, if another fellow believer offends us, that we should go to them in person, sit down with them, have a conversation, try to work it out. If that doesn't work, it says grab a witness and go with two people and sit down. In other words, instead of just gossiping about them, or blogging about them, or throwing them under the bus and going after them, actually make an effort to be at peace with other people, to forgive and to move forward. There's a guy named Daniel that had been at odds with his brother for years. His brother had basically ripped him off in a business deal, and he was obviously enraged about it, and their father had passed away, but Daniel was like, he was big, he was strong, he was jacked, and he joked, if I ever saw my brother again,

I'm gonna let him have it. And he became a follower of Jesus, but he couldn't forgive his brother. He couldn't let it go. And one day, that inevitable day came, and he saw his brother. And this is what he said about it. He said, I saw him, but he didn't see me. I felt my fists clench, I felt my face get hot, and my initial impulse was to grab him around the throat and choke the life out of him. He says, but as I looked into his face, my anger began to melt, for as I saw him, I saw the image of my father. He said, I saw my father's eyes. I saw my father's look. I saw my father's expression. And as I saw my father in his face, I saw my enemy again as my brother. And what happened is they ended up having a conversation. They ended with both of these two grown men in tears, hugging each other. And he said this, when I saw the image of my father in his face, my enemy became my brother. This week, my prayer for myself and for all of us is that we will see our heavenly father's face in the people that we encounter, at home, at work, as you go along in life,

the father who loves you, the father who forgives you, the father who accepts you, the father who met you where you were and has stood by you through the years, the father that promises to guide you and protect you and never leave you, the father who calls you his child and his friend, the father who calls you to great things and is preparing a great place for you, your heavenly father who made you and sustains you and hears you and knows you and gave the life of his one and only son to secure your salvation forever. Every person we lock eyes with is created in his image. He loves them. He calls us to love them too. And one thing we know is people are messy. And some of those people you're gonna lock eyes with, they're a hot mess. But can I just lovingly remind you? So are you. So am I. We're all a mess. But you'll be a happier mess and a less stressed out mess and a more joyful mess if you just let that stuff roll off your back, pray for them, ask God to bless them and work in their life and move on with your life. I know people can be frustrating. I know it may feel like,

man, you wanna use all the emojis before the day is done. But anger will just take us places we don't wanna go. So Jesus takes it right back to the heart level. And he says, deal with it at the heart level. Try to deal with your anger before it. grows into something else. Because what's going on in our heart really does matter. Fight for peace. God, forgiving others and forgiveness, it's gonna put you right where God wants you to be. For some of you here today, I believe that you're not here by accident, that God has brought you here, that he had a divine appointment with you, that you're here to meet him and experience him today. Some of you, you know that God has been working in your life, you know he's been orchestrating things, you know he's been calling you back to him. And I want you to know it's because he loves you, you're created in his image, he wants the best for you. And you've been carrying anger and rage and hate and unforgiveness in your heart. And I want you to know today, you can lay that burden down and you can take up grace and love and joy and peace and forgiveness. And it starts when we place our faith and our trust in Jesus Christ. When we believe in him, the Bible says, if we believe with our hearts that God raised Christ from the dead and we confess with our lips

that Jesus is Lord, we will be saved. And he wants to save you today and bring you home to him. So I'm gonna ask everybody to bow their heads and close their eyes. And if you'd like to become a follower of Jesus today, you can begin that journey by repeating this prayer after me, is say, dear God, I thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus into the world. I believe he died on the cross for my sins. I believe he rose again. Forgive me for my sins. Give me the gift of eternal life. Help me face the challenges I'm up against. God, I surrender my life to you. In Christ's name. Friends, with every head bowed and every eye closed, if that's your prayer today, if it's your commitment, I wanna ask you to just slip your hand in the air. It's wherever you're at. If you're watching at home, if you're one of our locations, just slip your hand in the air. Acknowledge you're gonna trust him, follow him in your life. God, I thank you for each person reaching out to you. I pray you'll move powerfully in their life. Heal, restore, forgive, replace anger with your peace and with your joy, we pray. In Christ's name, amen. Amen. Let's put our hands together for those

who made spiritual commitments in their life. And listen, if you've made a spiritual commitment, we would love to meet you. We'd love to connect with you. We have some free resources we'd love to give you to help you as you continue to grow in your faith. So right after our experience across our locations, I wanna encourage you just to head out to the lobby. Just go to the Next Step area or New to Central area and let them know you made a spiritual commitment. Well, let's put our hands together now for our location pastors, and they're gonna come out and close out their experience.