Trinity Baptist Church

 

We're looking at Matthew chapter 5 in our study. For tonight we're going to look at the passage in verses 27 through 30, Matthew chapter 5 verses 27 to 30.

 

While you're turning to it and getting ready for our study let me say that in the 5th chapter of Matthew our Lord answered a question that was in the mind of his hearers, I think: Are you the Messiah?

 

They had seen His miracles, and heard some of what He had said and were really wondering whether He wag the Messiah.

 

They wanted also to know what His standards were for His kingdom. They were curious to know that if He was the Messiah He should pretty well square with what Moses said, and so they were curious about how He viewed the things of the law of God, the things of Moses.

 

And Jesus answers those questions in verses 17 through 20 of chapter 5.

 

What He was saying was “I am the Messiah and My message is the same message that Moses gave you, not any different. I would not change it, I would not destroy it, I would not alter it; I came to fulfill it.”

 

Then He went a step further. He said, in verse 20, the standards for My kingdom must exceed the standards that you are now living by. And if they don’t, you can’t be a part of it. 

 

Now this is hard for the people to understand and so point by point the Lord goes through verses 21 to 48 giving them illustrations of how the scribes and the Pharisees and the people as well fell short on every aspect of God's absolute standard. He wants them to see that the people were not living up to God's standard they had lowered the standard and He wants to raise it back to where it really should be.

 

And in effect as you know if you've been with us what He does here is destroy any system of self‑righteousness or salvation by works. 

 

And that, by the way, is the predominant conviction of the majority of people today in regard to being accepted by God. “Be good, don’t do bad, love your neighbor, etc. 

 

Well I'm a pretty good guy and after all if I've been pretty good all of my life, God will take me to heaven.

 

But Jesus says, that doesn’t work, because you’ve set the standard too low. And what He does throughout the 5th chapter is point-by-point, subject-by-subject, re-elevate the law of God, and God’s requirements. 

 

And as we come to verses 27 to 30 He is giving another illustration of how the people had lowered the law of Moses and how He must lift it back up again in order to destroy their self‑righteousness.

 

Now let's look at the illustration in verses 27 to 30. We've already seen the one on murder, here is the one on adultery.

Verse 27-30

 

In verses 21 and 22 His illustration was the 6th commandment, and here in verses 27 and 28 His illustration is the 7th commandment.

 

Now the underlying principle of the 6th commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is the sacredness of life. The underlying principle of the 7th commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," is the sacredness of the basic unit of life, marriage.

 

He begins with anger and sex; two very powerful things. They are great illustrations of the sinfulness of man. In fact I doubt whether there are any two illustrations that are more apt than these two to really cut us to the very core.

 

We've all experienced the temptations of anger and lust, very common and they reach deep into the basic sinfulness of man. And those Jews who were sitting on the hillside in Galilee just as we who are gathered here tonight, hearing the Lord Jesus Christ confronting them about their anger and about their lust, in their hearts would have to admit by virtue of their own consciences that they indeed were sinners, and the fact that they never killed anybody and the fact that they never actually did the act of adultery didn't exonerate them from the sinfulness of sin which reigned in their hearts.

 

Jesus wants to go right to the heart of man and show them that no matter what they've done they can't fit into His kingdom. And so Jesus sets a high standard.

 

 

And by the way, it is an extremely pertinent subject for a 21^st century audience, what with all the emphasis of sex and divorce and homosexuality and pornography, and we desperately need to see what Jesus is saying.

 

Now the Pharisees had their own viewpoint, verse 27, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." And because they didn't do that they thought they were righteous, they thought they'd go right into the kingdom and have the chief seats.

 

Once again, Jesus is more interested in the attitude than the act. The external system of law isn't going to cut it because God is after the attitude. And you see what Jesus wants to do is show them they can't, they can't help themselves. You see they could deal with the outside, sure. They could not commit adultery but they couldn't do anything with the inside.

 

And so Jesus hits them where they're helpless, hopeless, powerless, which should drive them in desperation to God, who alone can change the heart. They desperately wanted to believe they were okay, Jesus shows them they weren't.         

Let's see how He illustrates that in regard to adultery in verse 27.

 

First of all,

 

1. The Deed. "

 

Now that's the deed, God's law said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. Deuteronomy where you have deutero nomos, the second law, it's repeated in 5:18, "Neither shalt thou commit adultery." It's very clear; the Bible leaves absolutely no question about this particular sin. The deed is condemned, it is an evil deed.

 

Now notice that in our passage, Jesus doesn’t say, Moses said, Or God said, but it was the leaders, the rabbinic tradition that said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." And by the way, they were right, they weren't wrong; we aren't implying that at all. We are only saying they never went far enough. They were right, it was evil, God did say, don't do it, it was a serious crime and still is.

 

A better understanding of the wor”adultery” itself illustrates that. The root means this: unlawful intercourse with the spouse of someone else. That's basically the technical meaning--a physical, sexual relationship with somebody else's spouse.

 

Most Bible scholars see it not only as a command not to engage in sexual activity with somebody else's spouse but see it in a general sense because the word is also used in a general way in some other sources.

 

For example in some places the word means to seduce or violate a woman, that's very general--a married or unmarried woman. Other places it is translated to commit harlotry. So that generally the word has been used to speak of anything illicit outside the bond of marriage. And so primarily it refers to a sexual relationship that violates a marriage.

 

But the spirit of it extends even farther to include any kind of illicit sexual behavior. And I think the wideness of it is indicated in what our Lord says in verse 28 where He says that anybody who looks on any woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. And the woman He speaks of here He doesn't say whether she's married or not, it's so broad that anybody who lusts after any woman has committed adultery in his heart. So the Lord is using the term in the broadest possible manner--anybody and any woman.

 

Now I know I don’t have to tell you that this is a sin that really waves the banner today. It's as if we've just completely turned our back on this. Somebody ought to read Proverbs 5, 6 and 7 before they ever engage in this. Proverbs 5, 6 and 7 just speaks so pointedly to the devastation caused by the sin of sexual adultery or fornication. It is a sin for fools.

 

Witness David, and the results.

 

Witness Shechem who defiled Dinah and was later slaughtered.

 

Witness Absalom who defiled others in the sexual sins and vi...wound up being hanged in a tree. It is a sin for fools. The Bible says you take fire into your bosom. Fornicators and adulterers (Hebrews 13:4) God will judge.

 

The New Testament reiterates with finality and firmness this prohibition. First Corinthians chapter 6 condemns it. Second Peter chapter 2 condemns it. Revelation chapter 2 condemns it.

The end of the Book of Revelation says that fornicators and adulterers won't even enter into God's kingdom. It is a serious, heinous, vile crime.

 

And Jesus is underlining the significance of that. You’ve heard it sai, but I’m telling you it’s even worse than you think. 

 

So we see, first of all, the deed. 

 

But Jesus isn't finished with the deed, He wants to talk about

 

 

verse 28

 

Now this is a fascinating verse, and there's much I want you to see. The Lord forces the self‑righteous to the fact that they're not holy. The Pharisees are saying we don't do that, we don't commit that sin. And Jesus drives them right down into their hearts as if Psalm 66:18 became a reality, "If I regard iniquity in my" what? "heart, the Lord will not hear me." God is always examining the sin of the heart. It is the internal that breaks the relationship. And so it is that Jesus says I am concerned about what's on the inside.

 

Let's look at the terms. "But I".

 

He is saying, I am the new authority, you have had for your authority the rabbinic tradition. Sometimes it was true to Moses, sometimes it was not. In this case it was true to Moses, but nonetheless He is referring to the rabbinic tradition.

You have had that, but if you are going to be a aprt of My kingdom, you must accept what I say as your authority.

 

Next phrase: whoever looks, present tense, is in the process of continuing to look. Now mark that, it's continuous action. Do you see the idea? It isn't the inadvertent, accidental glance, that's not what our Lord is talking about. It is the purposeful, repeated, lustful looking. It isn't the involuntary glance at all; it is that which is purposeful.

 

And by the way I'll show you an interesting thing about this verse. Listen to what He says, "Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her."

 

Now listen to this, He doesn't say, commits adultery, no He doesn't say that. Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her commits adultery, no.

 

He says, "Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart."

 

Why? Because it is the vile adulterous heart that sparks the desire to look. The sin has already happened in the heart, the adultery is conceived and thus the look is prompted.

 

That's why you may find in this life that someone passes into your gaze involuntary and appears as a temptation from Satan, or maybe even trying to attract attention. And a involuntary glance means you just resist and turn away. But when you latch on and you cultivate and you pursue the desire, it's because your lustful, adulterous heart has been seeking an object, and you fulfill the fantasy that's already there in your heart.

Now notice the word "lust"-- "Whoever looks on a woman to lust."

 

It means a purpose, with the purpose of lusting. In other words it isn't an involuntary glance, it is a purposeful one. The heart is filled with adultery, wanting to find an object to which to attach the fantasy.

 

It literally translates like this: I say to you that whoever continues looking on a woman for the purpose of lusting gives evidence of already committing adultery in his heart.

 

What Jesus is saying is this: it's the heart that's the problem.

 

Understand the difference: If Jesus had said, “Whoever looks is committing adultery. . .”, then somebody would have said, well I was just minding my own business and here she came and she was very attractive and so forth and so on and it just kind of happened.

 

That isn't what the Lord's talking about. He saying, if that happens it's because already in your heart there is a lusting, adulterous attitude. And so you see it's the heart that is the problem, it's the heart that has to be transformed, that's what He's saying. It's out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications. He is condemning looking at a woman as an object to gratify an adulterous heart.

 

Let me just add this, temptation is not a sin. Satan may tempt you; Satan may draw something in to tempt you. The sin comes in what you do with it.

If you entertain the temptation, if you maintain the temptation, if you pander those evil thoughts, then it becomes the sin.

 

In Second Samuel chapter 11 David is walking on his roof and he looks over and here is Bath‑Sheba innocently enough, perhaps never dreaming that she could be seen from the king's porch, perhaps feeling very safe, up there is bathing and David, instead of turn­ing away and going back to where he should be, continues to look and look and look until his adulterous heart brings forth adultery and lust and it ultimately ended both in the act and the murder of her husband.

 

Somebody has said, sow a thought and reap an act, sow an act and reap a habit, sow a habit and reap a character, sow a character and reap a destiny. And it all starts when you sow a thought.

 

Arthur Pink said, "By clear and necessary implication Christ here also forbade the using of any other of our senses and members to stir up lust. If lustful looking is so grievous a sin then those who dress and expose themselves with desires to be looked at and lusted after as Jezebel who painted her face, tried her head and looked out of the window are not less but perhaps more guilty. In this matter it is not only too often the case that men sin but women tempt them so to do, how great then must be the guilt of the great majority of the modern misses who deliberately seek to arouse the sexual passions of our young men. And how much greater still is the guilt of most of their mothers for allowing them to become lascivious temptresses."

It goes both ways. And I think our Lord here is talking about a man lusting after a woman in His illustration but He's assuming that it goes the other way that women also lust after men. Both are wrong, and creating the lust by the way you dress.

 

And so what our Lord is saying is the, the heart has to be dealt with, cause the heart is the issue--that's the thrust of it.

 

Jesus is saying to these Pharisees, your problem is too deep for your self‑righteousness to handle.

 

How, then,  you do get out of this situation? From the deed, to the desire, to

 

Verses 29-30

 

Now when you first read that you say, well that's contradictory. If He's saying the issue is the heart, why does He say pluck out the eye? Don't blind people lust? You better believe it.

 

If you plucked out your right eye and had a lustful heart your left eye would go wild making up time for your lost right eye.

 

If you got rid of your right hand and you had an adulterous heart your left hand would be busier than the other two trying to make up for it. The point is, Jesus is not saying that there is a physical remedy for a heart problem; that would undermine the whole point.

 

I think this is what He is saying:  to a Jew, the right eye and the right arm and the right leg were symbols of the best facility that a man had. The right was always symbolic of the better of the two. And He is simply saying, there is nothing too precious to eliminate from your life if it's going to cause your heart to fulfill its adulterous desires. 

 

If it means getting rid of your most precious possession then get rid of it, even if it's your right eye or your right arm.

 

What our Lord is saying is that nothing is precious if it affects your eternal destiny. Sin must be dealt with radically. Jesus calls for immediate action. He diagnoses the problem and says, pluck it out, cut it off, eliminate it, whatever it is in your life, whatever it is.

 

Whatever it is that feeds that heart of lust, whatever it is that feeds that adulterous thought, get rid of it. If you go to a theater and you watch something that does that, don't go, get rid of it. If you have that problem with your television, get rid of it. if you read things like that get rid of 'em. If you've got magazine lying around with pictures like that, throw em in the trash, burn 'em, get rid of 'em.

 

Some people misunderstood this. There were men who wished to free themselves from the problem of lust and so they, they did strange things to their bodies.

 

One of them was Saint Anthony. He decided he'd get rid of the feelings of lust that he had in his heart, he'd go into the Egyptian desert and live all alone and think about nothing but God.

He lived like a hermit, he fasted, he would go days and days and days keeping himself awake to punish himself, as a righteous act. He would torture his body. For 35 years Saint Anthony lived in the desert. For 35 years he said he had a non-stop battle with temptation.

 

And this is what he wrote in his biography: first of all the devil tried to lead him away from discipline whispering to him to the remembrance of wealth, cares for his sister, claims of kindred, love of money, love of glory, various pleasures of the table, other relaxations of life, and last of all Satan tempted me in the area of virtue.

 

He said in the battle Satan would tempt him with foul thoughts that he would counter with prayers. Satan would tempt him with lust and he counter with, with more prayers and faith and fasting. He said the devil one night took on him the shape of a woman, and the devil imitated all the acts that a woman could do to beguile Saint Anthony.

 

And he said for 35 years I went through that. And the point of the story folks is this: you can be all alone in the Egyptian desert and not have anything going externally to feed the lust, and steal not escape the problem. The plain fact is if, if Anthony had really taken the resources available from God to have a changed heart he wouldn't have needed to leave town.

 

Notice the word "offend" just briefly. Verse 29, "offend," verse 30, "offend". It's used of a trap, in fact literally a baited trap.

 

. He says, if your right eye is a baited trap that catches so your adulterous lust is fulfilled, then pluck it out. If your right hand is the trap then cut it off. Whatever it is in your life that causes these vile, evil thoughts get rid of them.

 

Now there's a, a kind of a subtlety in this whole thing. Let me ask you this, could these scribes and Pharisees get rid of these problems, could they? The fact of the matter is they couldn't.

 

Jesus again is giving them an impossible standard--a frustration that's going to make them say. 

 

The Lord has said, boy you're better off to have no eye and no arm than to go into hell. And they're going to say, but we can't, we, we can't, we don't know how to get this deliverance.

 

And so they're going to come to the desperation of saying, we must have somebody do it for us, we must have a new heart and a new life, and that is precisely what the Lord offers. And so the Lord forces them to see that they need a new nature.

 

If Jesus Christ has come into your life you have that new nature, you have that new heart. And you don't have to follow the pandering of your own lust; you can know victory over that. I thank God for that.

 

I want to close by reading a poem to you.

 

The authorship of the poem is somewhat unknown. One source attributes the poem to Joseph Warren Watson, and ways it was published in the Ypsilanti Commercial on January 8, 1870.  

 

Another account says the poem is anonymous, and was discovered by Walt Whitman, and was made popular by his circulating it.

 

I rather like this one and thought iwas so powerful, listen to it.

 

"In the early part of the American War a young woman of 22 years died at the Commercial Hospital in Cincinnati in the dead of winter.

 

She had once possessed the enviable share of beauty that young woman have, she'd been greatly sought after for her charms, her face was a delight, but she had become a prostitute.

 

Highly educated and accomplished in manners she had spent her young life in shame and she died friendless as a broken hearted outcast of society.

 

The manuscript was found among her personal effects. As the story goes, the poem was written by the girl before she died to describe her life. It was taken to the editor of the National Union and appeared in print the morning after her death. When the poem appeared in the paper the girl's body had not been buried and the American poet Thomas Buchanan Reed was so impressed by the stirring pathos of the poem that he followed the corpse to its final resting place."

 

Regardless, it is a moving work, and I want to close with it tonight:

To be trampled in time by the crowd rushing by -
To be trampled and tracked by thousands of feet
Till it blends with the filth in the horrible street.

Too wicked for prayer, too weak for a moan
To be heard in the streets of the crazy town,
Gone mad in the joy of snow coming down:
To be and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow.

(The poem ended here in the Ypsilanti Commercial newspaper.  However, on the internet, there was an additional verse.)

Let's pray.