Matthew 5:22Plain English VersionBut now I’m telling you this. Don’t even get angry with anybody. That is bad too. If you are angry with somebody, God will be your judge, and he will punish you. Or if you call somebody bad names, you will end up in God’s court. And if you get really angry with somebody, and if you tell them, ‘You are a stupid fool,’ God will judge you for that, and he can send you into the big fire called hell.” See the chapter |
93 Cross References
Then Joseph’s brothers thought, “That dream that Joseph had, it shows that he wants to be boss over us.” So they said to him, “Do you think that you are going to be a big boss over us? Do you think that you are going to tell us what to do? No way.” Joseph’s brothers were really angry about Joseph’s dream, and they were angry about those things that he said to them. So then they hated him even more.
Then Jesus said, “It’s like that with you too. You have to be good to all my other followers. If they do something bad to you, don’t do payback to them. Just forget it. Then, in the same way, my father in heaven will not do payback to you.” (We have not yet translated chapter 19. You can read those stories and messages in Mark 10:1-31.)
Early in the morning, the men of the Jewish Leaders Council talked with each other about what they will do with Jesus. That council mob were the bosses of the Jewish ceremonies, and the law teachers, and the elders. They tied Jesus’s hands together, and they took him over to the big government boss. His name was Pilate. They asked him to judge Jesus.
Some of that Athens mob always thought about the best way to live, and they always talked to other people about it. Some of them were called Epicurians, and some of them were called Stoics. They talked to Paul, and he told them about Jesus. Paul said that Jesus died, and that God made him alive again. Some of that mob said, “This man is just talking rubbish.” Others said, “We think he is talking about gods from other countries.”
The big boss over the soldiers still wanted to know why the Jewish leaders were blaming Paul, so the next day he talked to the bosses of the Jewish ceremonies, and to the other Jewish Leaders Council men. He told them to have a meeting. Then he took Paul to that meeting, and he took off his chains, and he told Paul to stand up in front of them, to listen to what they say, and to tell his story to answer them.
One of the men at the Jewish Leaders Council meeting was the big boss of the Jewish ceremonies. His name was Ananias. Paul stood up in front of Ananias and all the men at the Jewish Leaders Council meeting, and he looked straight at them, and said, “My brothers, I have respected our God all my life, and I have always done whatever I reckoned was right.” As soon as Paul said that, Ananias told the men that were near Paul to hit him on the mouth.
So those men listened to that angel, and they went to God’s ceremony house very early in the morning, and they started teaching the people there. At the same time, the big boss of the Jewish ceremonies and his friends, they called together all the men of the Jewish Leaders Council, for a meeting. Then they sent the soldiers to the jail to get Jesus’s special workers.
and people that steal things, and greedy people that want a lot of money and things, they will not be in God’s family. And people that always get drunk, and people that yell at other people and swear at them, and people that trick other people to get their money, none of those people will be in God’s family.
None of you men can ever sleep with a woman that is not your own wife. If you do that, you are doing a bad thing to her husband. He is the only person that can sleep with her, so don’t cheat him out of that. Don’t do that bad thing to another Christian, or to anyone else. God is the one that will punish you if you do that. We told you about that when we were with you, and we mean it.
If you don’t do the things that Jesus says, it is no good to say that you believe in him. If you don’t know much, and if you want to argue with me, just think about the story of Abraham, our grand-father that lived a long time ago. God told Abraham to give him his son Isaac. To do that, Abraham had to kill Isaac, and burn his body on a table made of stones. Abraham believed that somehow God would make it end up all right, so he started to do that hard thing that God said. He was going to kill Isaac. But just then, God told him to stop. You see, God says this in his book, “Abraham believed what God said, so God was really happy with him, and told him, ‘You believe me, so now I’m saying you are properly good, like you never did anything wrong.’ ” And that is how it happened. In another place it says that Abraham not only believed God, but he also did that hard thing God told him to do, so Abraham was a friend of God.
In the same way each of us has a little tongue, and it is like a little spark of fire inside us. It can say really bad things, and tell lies, and then that can make the rest of our bodies bad. Our tongues can make everything in our lives go wrong, like a spark of fire can make a big bush fire. The devil, the boss over the bad spirits from hell, he makes us say those bad things. It is like he uses our tongues to start that fire, and it grows like a bush fire, and it gets us into a lot of trouble.
Michael is one of those angels. He is very powerful. But he didn’t say bad things about the devil, the boss over the bad spirits. A long time ago, Michael argued with the devil about which one of them can get Moses’s body. But Michael didn’t think that he was so important that he could say bad words to the devil. Instead, he said to the devil, “God will tell you that you are wrong.”
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