Matthew 5 - Righteousness Exceeding the Pharisees
Tom Shrader examines Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, focusing on His declaration that righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. Through six illustrations beginning with 'You have heard it said... but I say to you,' Jesus reveals that God is as concerned with heart attitudes as with outward behavior, addressing issues like anger, lust, and the spirit behind the law versus mere external compliance.
“Jesus' main point here, and through the rest of this chapter, is that even the best people in their hearts are sinful.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Sermon on the Mount
Recorded: March 14, 2002
Duration: 39 min
Themes: righteousness, heart, anger, lust, obedience, holiness, integrity, transformation, struggling with anger, dealing with temptation, new believer, feeling religious, pastor, parent, mentor, young adult
Scripture: Matthew 5:17-48, Matthew 5:21-48, Matthew 6, Matthew 7, 1 John 3:15, Numbers 35:30-31, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Proverbs 16:2, 1 Kings 8:39, Jeremiah 17:10, Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, Ephesians 4
Theological Themes: sanctification, biblical law, sermon on the mount, pharisees, spiritual maturity, heart attitudes, fulfillment of law, inward change
Full Transcript
Six weeks into our discussion and sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. If you have your Bibles, open them please to Matthew chapter 5.
If you're with us for the first time, you picked probably an important day to be here, but it's also a little bit of a tedious day. This is the day where we're going to do a little bit of work and not a lot of yucks. To be real candid with you, it's going to be that way. It's pretty serious sledding, especially this week and next, and then we head into some very practical things including a discussion on what we identify as the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6—really the disciples' prayer when Jesus said "pray this way: our Father who art in heaven." So that's what's ahead of us. But some technical stuff today, and we'll try to keep it so hopefully I can understand it, and if I can then I know you can.
Setting the Stage
Let me just try to set the table again. Sermon on the Mount: Jesus is speaking. If you have a red-lettered Bible, almost all of the words are in red. Jesus is speaking. He is talking about the characteristics of the Christian life in verses 1 through 12. That's what we call the Beatitudes: "Blessed are, blessed are," and then you see them in there. Those are the characteristics that ought to be present in the life of a Christian.
Then He talks about how that internal presence must transform itself. In other words, He says you're the salt of the earth and the light of the world because you have in your life a pure, poor in spirit, and you mourn and you're gentle and all of those things, pure in heart. Because of those things in your life, your life is transformed and changed, and you're here to infect and affect the world. That's your point. That's your purpose. That's what God uses—a visible manifestation of an inward change.
Jesus and the Law
In verse 17, Jesus said, "Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets." By the way, this is my first official week with a large print Bible. Not good. "Do not think I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." And He talks about the permanency of God's Word: "For truly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, the smallest letter, the slightest stroke will not pass away from the law until it's all accomplished."
When Jesus talked about the law, He used that word in a variety of ways—the ceremonial law, the moral law. What we're talking about here is the fulfillment specifically of those Old Testament requirements as it relates to salvation. Jesus said, "I didn't come to abolish this. I didn't come to do away with this law. I came to fulfill it. I came to accomplish it. That was My task."
The Bombshell Declaration
Verse 20 becomes the bombshell, and really the rest of chapters 5, 6, and 7 are in response to verse 20: "For I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."
That's a constant question any thinking person has ever had: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? If there's a heaven, how do I get there? What do I have to do? And Jesus says, "Well, let me give you this: your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees."
When I say it's a bombshell, it's a bombshell in this perspective. The Jews had a saying that went like this: "If only two people can go to heaven, one is a scribe and one is a Pharisee." Now you're talking to these people and they're hearing that and they're saying, "I haven't got a chance. I have no chance at all."
Six Illustrations of True Righteousness
We're going to look at at least one discussion that Jesus had today with the young man about what you have to do to go to heaven. Jesus says, "Listen, your righteousness has to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees," and now He begins to really talk about that righteousness.
I said it's a little technical. I think if you look at Matthew 5:21 through the end of the chapter, verse 48, this is one of those things that you can have some fun with. And when I say fun, I mean it can be extraordinarily rewarding because you can see patterns here. Jesus said, "Listen, your righteousness has to exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees," and then He gives us six illustrations.
At the risk of being tedious, I just want to stay on this because I know some of you—this is really important to you—and I want you to see it. If you mark in your Bible or circle, you may want to make some notes or marks. Just circle verse 21, verse 27, verse 31, verse 33, verse 38, verse 43. So it's verses 21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43. Each one of them begins an illustration, and now you see a pattern.
The Pattern Jesus Uses
See what He says in verse 21: "You have heard that the ancients were told." Verse 22: "But I say to you." And that pattern follows all through these six illustrations.
Verse 27: "You have heard it was said." Verse 28: "But I say to you." Verse 31: "And it was said." Verse 32: "But I say to you." Verse 33: "Again, you have heard it said that the ancients were told." Verse 34: "But I say to you." Verse 38: "You have heard that it was said." Verse 39: "But I say to you." Verse 43: "You have heard that it was said." Verse 44: "But I say to you."
Now Jesus clearly is pitting Himself against something or someone. And again, I know this can be a little technical, but the payoff here is huge if you hang in there.
Understanding the Source of Teaching
He says in verse 21, "You have heard that the ancients were told." Well, a casual reading of that produces a couple of options or interpretations. And maybe even a better rendering or translation would be, "You were told by the ancients." It's not speaking of the law and the prophets. In speaking of them, He's not talking about them.
Jesus isn't going to pit Himself against the law. He didn't do that, did He? He said, "I didn't come to abolish the law. I didn't come to change the law." That's what He meant as well: "I didn't come to alter the law. I came to fulfill it." So Jesus isn't going to say Moses said...
The True Context of Jesus' Teaching
What Jesus is talking about here are the scribes and Pharisees themselves. The condition of the Jews in our Lord's day was remarkably like that of the people in England before the Protestant Reformation. In those days, the scriptures weren't translated into English and were read Sunday by Sunday in Latin to people who didn't understand Latin. The result was that the people were entirely dependent for their knowledge of the scriptures on the priests who read the Bible to them and claimed to be expounding it. They were not able to read the scriptures for themselves or to verify or confirm what they were hearing from the various pulpits on Sundays and weekdays.
What the Protestant Reformation did in a sense was to give the Bible to the people. It enabled them to read the scriptures for themselves, to see the false teaching and the false representation of the gospel which had been given to them. The position when our Lord was speaking is very similar to that, and this is really important.
The children of the nation of Israel during their captivity in Babylon had ceased to know the Hebrew language. Their language when they came back at that time was Aramaic. They were unfamiliar with Hebrew, so they couldn't read the law of Moses as it was in their own Hebrew scripture. The result was they were dependent for any knowledge of the law upon the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees.
Jesus Confronts the Pharisees' Interpretation
Here's what Jesus is saying: "This is what you've heard the scribes and Pharisees say. This is what they've told you about the law. This is their interpretation of the law." You know how lengthy it was - we talked about it a couple weeks ago. They had an extra 500, almost 600 other sub-laws or commands. I think 250 of them were negative and 265 of them positive. They'd taken this law and they changed it, and by changing it, they'd taken the teeth out of it. Jesus is clearly saying what they'd done was change the intent of it.
Let me give you a warning: what we don't want to do is to come back and do what the Pharisees did. These are really illustrations, and what Jesus is saying in each of these, I think, is He's giving you principles - principles by which you make decisions, principles by which you live. But more importantly, what He's giving you is one overriding principle, and that is: God is concerned as much, maybe more, about your heart than He is your action, because your actions are a reveal of your heart.
Jesus Versus the Religious Leaders
Again, let me just make sure you get this: He's not pitting Himself against the law. When Jesus frequently speaks, He'll say, "The prophet Isaiah says," or "It is written." That's not what He says here. Do you see it? He's saying, "You have heard," or "It was said." He's speaking of the scribes and the Pharisees. He is, in a sense, pitting Himself against them.
Now there's a sub-issue here. Here's what He's also saying: "I am God." The implication is, who can change the law but the giver of the law? "I didn't come to change it. I came to fulfill it. And to fulfill it perfectly." This is the Son of God presenting the truth of God. Jesus is not setting up a new way of salvation. He's pointing out to us the weakness of trying to fulfill the law because we simply can't do it. No one can live a perfect life. Christ came and lived the perfect life.
The Spirit of the Law
I'll give you five things by way of introduction. Number one: Jesus is as much concerned about the spirit of the law as the letter of the law. It's fine to have outward conformity, but if inwardly my heart is rebellious, that doesn't do me any good. There's no better illustration than in verse 27: "You've heard it said that you should not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart."
Here's what Jesus is saying: You've got these scribes and Pharisees - remember that context? We're going to come back to that again and again. He's talking about the scribes and the Pharisees and He's saying you've got to be more righteous than they were. These guys were a righteous group. They kept the law. So they're going around and they're saying, "You know what? I'm Simon Pure. I'm pure as can be. I've never been involved in adultery under any shape, way, or form." And Jesus said, "You missed the whole point. You're looking on a girl."
So the letter of the law is important, but just as important in that entire process is the whole idea of the spirit of the law. What's the law about? What's the law trying to say?
Positive and Negative Commands
Here's the second thing: our behavior that Jesus is looking for is expressed here both positively and negatively. Every once in a while, because of this in particular, you have people who come into church who are not Christians. If they've lived very long - if they're kids, they just kind of have some impressions - but if they've lived a while, they'll come in with baggage. One of the things is this: "I don't like that Christianity because it's a bunch of don'ts. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this." And I find a bunch of people who want to say, "Oh, but it's not." Well, listen, it is that. There's a whole bunch of don'ts.
Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. But Jesus comes along and says there's a flip side to that. It's not enough to say, "I don't do that. I don't do that. I don't do that. I don't do that."
That's what Paul writes about in Ephesians 4. Isn't that the illustration He uses? He talks about the Christian walk: put off the old and put on the new. So here's what He says: Stop lying. That's not enough. Tell the truth. Don't steal, but work and support yourself and others. Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but edify one another. That's the Christian walk.
Larry used to do this all the time, especially when I first met Him. He'd say the Christian walk isn't just put off, because if it's just don't do this, then all I'm doing is going in a circle. It isn't that. It's put off, put on, put off, put on. There are some positive things that He's saying here. We'll look at them.
External Compliance Is Not Enough
Here's the third thing: External compliance is good, but also needing to be compliant are our desires. God is concerned about our thoughts and intentions, our motives, our desires.
When we were at this conference last week, I was in the bookstore, and somebody had said to me, "Have you read Holiness by J.C. Ryle?" It's a book that's probably a hundred and ten years old, maybe a little more. And I said, "No. I know it's a classic. I've never read it." Others that I've talked to have said it's great. I'm in the bookstore, and there's a copy of Holiness by J.C. Ryle. So I thought, "You know what? I'll get it." This is Wednesday. Thursday, the free gift to everybody who attended the conference was a copy of Holiness by J.C. Ryle. So I had two copies.
As I'm reading this—we decided to fly back because we needed to be back for church Saturday. There were vans coming, but we flew back. We did not anticipate that we'd spend five hours in the Burbank airport, and both vans beat us back. Having said all of that, while we're in the airport, I'm looking at the book, and I go to this section on sin. Ryle says this—I'm paraphrasing, this is very close—He's defining sin, and He says it's anything that we do, say, think, or imagine that's contrary to the will of God.
Now, when we talk about the will of God, we don't mean should you be in a red house or a blue house. We mean God's moral will. You don't have to guess what His moral will is. It's right here. If you're dating right now, and you're trying to figure out what God's will is for you in the midst of dating, it's that you'd refrain from sexual immorality. You don't have to wonder about God's moral will. It's right here.
Sins of Commission and Omission
Anything that I do, or say, or think, or imagine that's contrary to God's moral will. The flip side of that is anything that I don't do, or don't say, or don't think, or don't imagine, that is part of God's moral will. So I have sins of omission and sins of commission.
One of the things that's happened—I think it's happened in my life to some degree, and to many people I know—is that we've gotten somewhat of a cavalier view of sin. Now, not this cavalier. Somebody got ahold of me, and I wish I could remember who it was two or three weeks ago, and they said they had a friend who has pronounced to them that they have quit sinning. They don't sin anymore. They've given it up. Maybe for Lent, and then the rest of their life. I don't know. They quit sinning. Imagine!
Anything that you should do, or don't do, should say, or shouldn't say, should think, or shouldn't think, should imagine, or shouldn't imagine. Anything in your life, contrary to God's moral will revealed in this book, the Bible, is a sin. And I'm just going to ask you to examine your own life. Have you fallen into that trap of saying, "Oh yeah, I'm a sinner. Oh yeah, we all sin all day." But in your own mind when I say, "Well really, tell me about them," you're going, "Well, there aren't many."
See, that's what God's getting at here. Is He concerned about the outside? Sure He's concerned about the outside. But He's concerned about all of your life. Your thoughts. Their conformity—the scribes and the Pharisees are saying, "We're righteous, watch what we do." And Jesus is saying, "No, no, no, we're going to go deeper than that. I want to go to what you think, and what you imagine."
Great Freedom Produces Great Attention
Here's the fourth point: There's great freedom in this, which, by the way, ultimately produces great attention. There's great freedom. We have great freedom as Christians. There aren't a lot of rules and a lot of regulations. The great principle is the principle of love. There's great freedom to go to movies or not go to movies, or drink or not drink, or do this or don't do this. It's not just a rigid, sterile religion.
One of the things—and by the way, I think it's a great thing—but one of the things I hear about people that come to our church and they come in with baggage, is they'll say, "I can't believe how happy the people are here. They look like they enjoy being here." You know why? Because they're not under a bondage. They're not under bondage to sin, and they're not under bondage to the law. They're under freedom.
Now, interestingly enough, when they understand that freedom, they'll live even more restrictive than the law. But they do it out of freedom, not out of bondage.
Only God Can Judge the Heart
Here's the last point: Ultimately, only God can judge. Let me read you a phrase. I can here, just a couple of verses. "All the ways of man are clean in His own sight," Proverbs 16:2, "but the Lord weighs the motives."
1 Kings 8:39: "Hear thou in heaven Your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each according to His ways whose heart You know for You alone know the hearts of all of the sons of men."
Jeremiah 17:10: "I the Lord search the heart and I test the mind even to give to each man according to His ways according to His deeds."
What we see all through Scripture is God saying, "I'm the one."
You can bring in the biggest pagan in the world to one of our studies. You can bring in a guy or gal who's never opened the Bible, they don't know anything about the Bible, they don't even care about the Bible, yet they know one Bible verse. Here's the verse they know: "Judge not lest you be judged."
Make sure we understand what we're saying. Ultimately the judge is God because only He can look at the heart. By the same token, God is telling us that we have to judge. That's what Matthew 18 is all about, isn't it? It's church discipline.
We Must Judge External Actions
I don't discipline somebody unless I'm making a judgment on them. So if I've got a guy that's involved in sin, according to the Scripture, I go to this guy and I say, "Listen, would you agree that this is what you're doing?" "Yeah." "Would you agree it's wrong?" "Yeah." "Would you stop it?" "No." Well then the prescription is, then two of us go, then we tell the church.
Sometimes at church, and I have two or three cases right now, we have to do that. Where at communion on a Sunday we'll say, "Listen, you know Bob. Here's Bob. Bob's been in church. Bob's faithful. But you need to know that Bob's involved in adultery right now and you need to cut relationships." It's a very awkward time.
Well that's very judging. I thought He said don't judge. No. He's telling us that we have to deal with that external. That's what He said in 1 Corinthians 5. In 1 Corinthians 5, He chastises this church for not judging. First Corinthians 5, He says, "You got something going on that the Gentiles don't have. You got a guy sleeping with his stepmom. The Gentiles don't even do that. Judge it."
In fact, He said, "I told you not to be involved with immoral people." And then He clarifies it. He said if I meant the immoral people of the world, that'd be impossible. You'd have to leave the world. He's talking about in the church. So get this: we're to deal with sin as we see it.
That's why most sin that you see dealt with in a church discipline thing is immorality or adultery, because it's the easiest to see and judge. It's pretty hard to say, "You've got covetousness." I mean, that's a hard one for us to get up and discipline. Ultimately though, it's God who judges. And I think the warning is this: don't be going, "I got by those church guys, I fooled them. I kept the law and they never caught me." And He said, "No, we're going to look to the heart."
Jesus Goes Deeper Than Murder
Now, having said all of that, let's give it a go. Here we go, verse 21: "You have heard it said, the ancients were told, 'You should not commit murder. Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.' But I say to you..."
Well here's Jesus. At least if you're anything like me, and I hope that you weren't in some ways, if you're anything like me, I'm going, "Wait a minute, Jesus is going to overturn 'you shouldn't commit murder'? I mean, that's one of the Ten Commandments."
Remember what He said? This isn't Moses speaking here, this isn't God's law, this is the interpretation of it. Here's what they had done. Numbers 35:30-31 says if you commit murder, you should be killed. See what they did? They changed it already. "You're liable to court." They've already weakened it. They've already begun to change it.
Just a little side trip, only take about 30 seconds. So many people will come to me and say, "Do you believe that it's wrong to kill?" And I will say yes. And they'll say, "Are you for capital punishment?" Now I will give you my view, and I know it's contrary to some. My answer would be yes. They say, "Well how do you reconcile those positions? He says don't kill, how can you kill?"
What He's talking about here is innocent human life. Throughout Scripture, we're told it's all right to take life by the government in capital punishment. It's all right to fight a just war. It's all right to defend myself against somebody who's coming in to kill me, self-defense.
So here's what these scribes and Pharisees are saying: "Ah, be like us. We've never killed a soul. We've never killed anybody." Jesus said, "Wait a minute, but I say to you that everyone who's angry with his brother is guilty before the court. Everybody who shall say to his brother, 'Raka,' should go before the Supreme Court. And everybody who shall say, 'Fool,' shall be guilty enough to be thrown into fiery hell."
The Heart Condition Behind Murder
Here's what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying, "You guys are compliant, yes, externally, but it's deeper than that." First John 3:15: "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer." There's a progression here.
Jesus is making the point, and this is what He's trying to do. We grabbed this because there's about two or three key points today. This is one of them. Jesus' main point here, and through the rest of this chapter, is that even the best people in their hearts are sinful. So they're in the same boat as the worst people.
If we don't look at the condition of our heart, we're not looking at what God looks at. So when somebody says, "Oh, I know good people," and we look at the Scripture, and the Scripture says nobody's good, not one, what's the problem? It's really simple. We're looking at the outside. Jesus, or God, is looking at the inside. That's the difference. That's real simple. That's not hard to reconcile.
So He says, "Hey listen, if you are somebody who is angry with your brother, you're supposed to go before court." The idea of anger here is brooding, simmering anger, holding a grudge, there's bitterness. Oftentimes that will explode into killing, classic example: Cain and Abel. But He said, "Listen, if you're angry with your brother, you've got a problem, you ought to go before court."
If you call your brother "raka," it was a term that was common in Jesus' day, we have no real equivalent. It was a malicious term. The closest we could come was like "idiot," or "fool," or "empty-headed."
You go before the Supreme Court, that's the Sanhedrin, that's the court of 70 that judged the most severe crimes, and they alone could lay out the death penalty. If you call somebody a fool, the idea here of not just stupid, it's beyond that, it implies somebody who doesn't even see that there's a God, or it's foolishness to them, then you are fit for fiery hell.
Now He comes right back. Again, there's no way, and if this is encouraging to you at all, I hope it is. When I read this, like verse 23, I don't get this unless I study and work. He's coming right back at the Pharisees.
Reconciliation Before Worship
He says this, "If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. Make friends quickly with your opponent at the law, while you are with him on the way, in order that your opponent may not deliver you to judge, or to judge the officer, or you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you shall not have come out of there until you have paid the last cent."
Here's what He's saying. He's saying to these scribes and Pharisees, if there was one thing, you know, you're into something, so-and-so's into golf, so-and-so's into whatever. Here's what the Pharisees were into. The Pharisees were into worship. Worship was their thing. They loved to hang out at the synagogue, if possible the temple, they made sacrifice, they made prayers, they were into worship.
Here's what He's saying. You guys are all into this. We're going to see in a little bit the way they prayed, and the way they fasted, and the way they drew attention to themselves. He said, you guys are all excited, because you're all clean, you think, on the outside, but your heart is wrong. You're at war with this person, you've got a view of raka on this person, you're angry with this person. Don't you be messing around with worship until you've made every attempt to reconcile this thing. Reconciliation precedes worship.
John MacArthur writes this paragraph, it's a good one. "Regardless of who's responsible for breaking a relationship, most often both parties are guilty. We should determine to make reconciliation before we come before God to worship. True worship is not enhanced by better music, better prayer, better architecture, or better preaching. True worship is enhanced by better relationships between those who come to worship. Worship may be improved by our staying away from church until we have made things right with those with whom our relation is strained or broke."
Every Jew understood that sin caused a breach in a person's relationship with God. That's why they offered sacrifice. They're coming to worship, and He's saying, listen, you've got to resolve these other things to the best of your ability. You ought to have your relationships with other people in the best order you can have them, as much as it depends on you.
Now don't run out and say, you know what, I was on my way to church and I remembered a thing with my brother, and I'm not going to church till I take care of it. I'm not sure that that's complying with what He's saying here. I think He's saying it needs to get taken care of, and there's immediacy to it. Get it taken care of. He's not breaking down one legalistic system to set up another one. And He's saying, don't miss the point. The point is, these guys say they're righteous because they do these great things. I haven't murdered, and He said you missed it.
The Sanctity of Marriage
The same thing. We've got about five minutes. We can do it here. We can do one more. He talks about, thou shalt not murder, so a sanctity of life. Now He talks about, thou shalt not commit adultery. It's the sanctity of marriage. Two of those most powerful influences on our life, anger and sexual lust. Again, it's a sin in the Old Testament that was judged, punishable by death. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:9, adulterers shall not inherit the kingdom of God. God will judge them.
Verse 27, "You have certainly said, you should not commit adultery." That's pretty clear. Let me give you the technical definition of adultery, the one they would be familiar with. It would be sexual intercourse between a man and a woman when one or both were married to somebody else. You got adultery, we don't need to define.
But here you go. This is classic. That's the technical term. I have no reason to think this is what's going on then, but this is what goes on in our day and age. I got people come to me, some of them even get elected president United States. I didn't have sex, she did. Now what I heard, that's what I heard him say. I didn't have sex, she did. I didn't commit adultery, this is oral sex. She had sex, I didn't have sex. I'm just standing here. That's what he said.
See, so if we take this technical sense, and we get it, and if you don't think this happens, then you aren't dealing with many lost people. They'll say, we're not having adultery. We did everything but penetration, so we're not adultery here. We're naked and we're doing all this other stuff, but we're not having adultery.
Jesus is saying, my friend, you've missed the whole point. The whole point isn't just the climax of the physical act. Can we at least get some agreement that if a guy is having sex with another guy, that's probably adultery, or a gal with another gal, or they're doing all sorts of things.
See, then we've got to, now here's what we have to do. We got to do what the Pharisees did. We got to draw a line. So the first question you're going to get, you sit down with a bunch of teenagers, you start talking about dating and kissing, first question they get, first question. I'll bet you know the question, because you probably asked it. How far can we go? How far can we go? Well see, now we're right back into all these rules and regulations. So then I'll give them my answer. Well, the same thing you do with your sister or
The Heart of the Matter
Your brother. I go, well that doesn't sound right. So then they'll run around until they can get a better answer. But see, that's what's going on here.
Here's what Jesus said. They said don't commit adultery. They said, no problem here. We got no problem with that. Any of you guys sleep with anybody? No. Okay, no problem. But I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
This is what, if you remember, this is the verse that got Jimmy Carter in all the trouble. He said in the Playboy interview, they asked him if he ever committed adultery, and he said, no, but I've lusted after women in her heart, and now he looks like a goof in the process, or they make him look that way, when all he was doing was saying what was here.
Understanding the Look
The word look is in the present participle. It refers to a continuous process of looking, not an accidental, involuntary, unintentional glance. The idea is to look with the idea of satisfying evil desires.
Let's make sure we understand what He's saying here. You live in a world, in a climate, in a culture, where it's absolutely impossible to not be distracted. I only talk from a guy's position, by women. Especially in the next month or two, because as the temperature goes up, layers of clothes start coming off. You walk through the mall in July, and you got these gals wearing next to nothing, and you're going, gee, why is he struggling?
By the way, gals, I think you have a giant burden in this thing. Never would I say to you, you're the reason, but you have some culpability here. And you know how you dress, and you know what it does to guys.
But He's talking here about the look. The look is not, you come around the corner in their shoes and go, oop. I mean, the look is a look, a gaze. That's what He's talking about. Now I gaze. The intention here is, I'm trying to satisfy desires. Whether I ever act on them physically, anything I do, or anything I say, or anything I think, or anything I imagine.
The Radical Solution
Now He gives us the solution, and you're sitting there saying, all right, all I want, God, you tell me what to do. God, I'm a man of God, tell me what to do.
"If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out. Throw it from you, for it's better that one of your parts perish than your whole body be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you, for it's better that one part of your body perish than your whole body go to hell."
Now, let's be, this is almost unfair, but let me go quickly here, because we're at the end. Give me another minute or two.
Taking Scripture Literally
I take the Bible literally. Many of you do. I take the Bible literally, where it's meant to be taken literally, and figuratively, where it's meant figuratively, and poetically, where it's meant to be used in a poetic fashion. When Jesus says, I am the gate, I don't run up to Him looking for a handle and hinges.
Now I don't think Jesus is saying here, look it, if your right eye's a problem, tear it out, literally. If your right hand's a problem, cut it off. That's not a solution. Why? Because I still got a left eye, and I still got a left hand. So now, He's going to the next level, cut those off. So it'd be very easy to go to the mall and pick out the Christians, because they'd have little stubs running into each other when they walked all around, because that would be us. That isn't what He's saying.
In that Jewish culture, the right eye, the right hand, they were the most precious of the facilities. Here's what He's saying, this is so serious that you've got to get control of these. Job said, I've made a covenant with my eyes.
The True Solution
This is so serious that if need be, you take those facilities, and every once in a while, you'll read about somebody who mutilates themselves because they think this is the answer. Jesus is saying, look it, this is serious business. The point here is not to start chopping off body parts. The point here is to get control of your heart.
I wrote this sentence, I think it's very good. Watch out for those things that are unexpected. All of a sudden, you're on a trip, you go to the restaurant, you're by yourself, you have no intention of anything, and there she is, boom, or there he is, boom. Watch out for the unexpected, but for goodness sakes, avoid the things that you know will trip you up. That's what He's saying. I've made a covenant with my eyes. I don't need to pluck them out, I need to get control of them.
I want to leave that right there. When we start next week, I want to pick up, I gave you six or seven things dealing with sin and the importance of sin as we start to unpack this, and we'll move through these illustrations, because the illustrations just make basically the same point six times. So we'll move through them next week.
Father, help us see this truth. God, let us live in a way that brings honor and glory to you. We ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. See you next week.