Matthew 5:31-37 - The Heart of the Law
Tom Shrader continues through the Sermon on the Mount, examining Jesus's teaching on divorce and oaths in Matthew 5:31-37. He explains how Jesus contrasts His teaching with the scribes and Pharisees who had watered down God's law, showing that righteousness involves both the letter and spirit of the law. Shrader addresses practical questions about divorce and remarriage while emphasizing that God's commands protect marriage and promote truthfulness for our good and society's stability.
“God gives us these principles for our own good - when God gives us this law, when God gives us these principles, He's not trying to hurt us, He's trying to show us here's what's best for you as an individual and for us as a society.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Sermon on the Mount
Recorded: March 21, 2002
Duration: 41 min
Themes: marriage, divorce, truthfulness, righteousness, obedience, holiness, integrity, commitment, considering divorce, struggling in marriage, married couples, dealing with dishonesty, making vows, church leaders, new believers, seeking biblical guidance
Scripture: Matthew 5:31-37, Matthew 5:16, Matthew 5:20, Genesis 2:21, Malachi 2:16, Leviticus 19:12, Numbers 30:2, Deuteronomy 23:21, 1 Corinthians 7, James 5:12, Matthew 19
Theological Themes: sermon on the mount, biblical law, pharisees, fulfillment of law, righteousness, biblical ethics, christian living, scriptural interpretation
Full Transcript
Here we go. We look this morning at week number seven in our study on the Sermon on the Mount. My observation is this: this is a much more somber study than really we're accustomed to. It really is a chapter by chapter, verse by verse study of the Sermon on the Mount. My intention, if you remember, at the beginning was to spend five or six weeks on it. We're in week seven, and we'll be a third of the way through after today. So it's taking a little more time than we thought, and just kind of getting into it a little bit.
Let me summarize it for you. Jesus delivers here what is arguably the greatest sermon that's ever been preached. Jesus preaches this Himself. He begins by talking about what's in a person's heart. He talks about the inner-thinking, and the works, and the emotions of men and women, and He said blessed are, and that's that section that's the Beatitudes.
Then He says, because there's an internal change that's taken place, now there's an external change. He said, so you are to be the salt of the earth, and you're to be the light of the world. There's to be in your life a change, and apparently a change that's so radical that Jesus says that the people, let your light shine in such a way before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who's in heaven, Matthew 5:16. In other words, our life is so distinguished as people look at us that they see something different about us.
Jesus and the Law
Jesus then begins to talk a little bit about Himself, and this is technical, especially for us who have virtually no background in this. This is technical stuff, so it takes some work. Jesus said this, do not think I came to abolish the law of the prophets. I didn't come to abolish them, but I came to fulfill them.
That Old Testament law had been given, and it had been given to us, not with the idea that we could keep it. Nobody can keep the Ten Commandments. We see instance after instance where people come to Jesus and say, what do I have to do to go to heaven? And Jesus said, keep the Ten Commandments, and at least the rich young ruler said, well I did all that, and Jesus said, well then sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me. And he says he walked away because he was very rich. He's saying, I've kept the Ten Commandments. Jesus said, you haven't kept the first one. You've got something between you and me.
We cannot keep these Ten Commandments. They weren't given to us to keep. They were given to us as a tutor to show, in fact, for us to show how far short we fall. So He says, I didn't come to abolish that. I came to fulfill it.
The Bombshell
And again, that would be confusing to them, but Matthew chapter 5 verse 20, here's the bombshell. When Jesus drops this into the midst of these people, this place explodes. Here's what He says, for I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. What do I have to do to go to heaven? He said, well you got to be more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees.
And when we say bombshell, we mean bombshell in this sense. The Jews had a saying, if only two people could go to heaven, one would be a scribe and one would be a Pharisee. All of a sudden, these common people are listening to Jesus, and in their mind, Jesus has just told them, heaven's beyond your reach. There's no way for you to get there. They had, in that culture, developed an inflated view of the scribes and the Pharisees, and what the rest of this chapter, and chapter 6 and chapter 7, are all about, is Jesus expanding on this one idea, that my righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees.
The Pattern of Six Illustrations
So let's see a little bit of an introduction. We get back here into verses 21 through 48. Jesus gives us six illustrations, making this point, and you should have them there in front of you. It's a pattern, and the pattern that He uses is this pattern where He says, you've heard this, but I say to you. Jesus uses this phrase, I say to you, several times. I say to you. He's painting a contrast here.
He is not saying, this is what the law said. In other places, we see Jesus quote Isaiah, and He'll say, the Prophet Isaiah says, or He'll read and quote the Old Testament, and He'll say, it is written. Here He says, you have heard, it was said, or it was said to the ancients.
Here's what had happened. The Hebrews, since then the Jews, since they had left in captivity Babylon, when they returned, they no longer knew that Hebrew language. They weren't fluent in it any longer, kind of like we are with the original manuscripts here in the Greek and in the Hebrew. So they needed somebody to interpret for them, somebody to tell them what the law said, and that was the job of the scribes and the Pharisees. That's what a scribe did. A scribe lived just to transfer this information, the Pharisee, to teach. They loved worship. They loved to show.
The Problem with Human Interpretation
And here's what Jesus does six times. You have heard it said, but I say to you. You have heard it said, but I say to you. This is what these guys say, and what had happened was, over the years, the scribes and the Pharisees had taken the law and begun to interpret the law. So no longer were the Jews getting the idea of what God had to say, they're getting the idea what a bunch of guys had to say. It was the same thing that was prevalent during the time of the Protestant Reformation, the same idea that was going on there.
So Jesus develops this pattern. He puts Himself in contrast, not to the law, He puts Himself in contrast to the scribes and the Pharisees. Now when we left last week, we had looked at the first two of these illustrations. Verse 21, you've heard it said you shouldn't commit murder, but I say to you, everybody who gets angry or calls his brother a knucklehead or a fool, any of those, they've committed, in a sense, murder. They're guilty of the law. They've committed murder in the sense that they would never kill somebody.
That's what the scribes and the Pharisees were doing. "You shall not commit murder," and they're saying, "No problem, we've never done that." Jesus says, "Yeah, but look at what you do to people." Same principle of verse 27: you shouldn't commit adultery. They said, "Absolutely, we're with you 100% of the way. We're tracking with you everywhere we can. Don't you worry about us, because we've never, ever, ever, ever slept with somebody other than our wives. Don't you worry about us."
Jesus said, "If you've even looked on a woman, you've committed adultery with her." Here's what Jesus is saying: It's not just the letter of the law, though the letter of the law is very important. It's the spirit of the law. It's the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Jesus is saying, "Don't be bringing that stuff in here where you said, 'I haven't committed adultery because I don't sleep with anybody,' but you're looking around and your eyes are committing adultery all over."
Six Facts About Sin
We talked about last week when we left off with this thing, and we were talking about sin. I said, let me give you some thoughts on sin, some facts about sin. I've got six of them here for those of you that are Christians.
**Number one: sin has consequences.** It's so important for us to understand that the principle of sowing and reaping - we cannot think that we're going to sin, and sin, and sin, and sin, and sin, and we're going to get away with it. If you're involved in ongoing sin in your life, you've got one or two possibilities coming at you. Number one, if God's not moving yet, get ready and duck because discipline is coming. He isn't going to let you mess around. He's not going to let you.
You don't do this with your kids. That's the perfect principle. You don't do that with your kids. In fact, don't you get them out back and when they mess up, don't you say to them, "Listen, I got to do this to you. I'm going to take you to the woodshed here, because this is going to hurt me more than it does you." I remember one time I had Sarah, I had her right by this hand, and I was about here, and I said, "Honey, you know, I really don't want to do this. This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you." She was about five, and she just looked up, and the tears were coming. She said, "I don't think so, Dad. I don't think that's going to happen, Dad." I said, "Well, maybe not."
Sin has consequences. If you're a Christian, God's going to discipline you. Now, if you're involved in sin and nothing's happened, there's no discipline, I got something worse for you. Then you're probably not His kid at all, because He disciplines His kids. Sin has consequences. It's silly for you to think you're going to be able to sin and have it have no effect on you and those around you.
I'll tell you what we're seeing in epidemic proportion is this internet pornography stuff. What's happening is - and the guys tell me, one of the great things in my life is that I don't have to do any counseling anymore. There's now people to help with that, which is great. But what they tell me that they're seeing is that they're seeing marriages that are shared. I can't remember the number of how many guys they've counseled for internet pornography, but it's a boatload. Here's what they tell me: Only one has come in voluntarily. Every other guy, the wife's walked in with the guy on the computer. Amazing, isn't it? Or you get caught at work. Somebody just comes back and goes through a history, or somebody walks around the corner, and there you are. This is not good stuff. Sin has consequences.
Sin's Impact on Destiny and Journey
**Here's the second thing about sin: sin affects either your destiny or your journey.** We at church have been teaching lately, working our way through 1 Corinthians 15. We're teaching about the resurrection, and we're teaching that if there's no resurrection, then we spend eternity in hell. So we've been talking a little bit about hell. Not a lot, just a little bit about hell. When you begin to think about it, it's eternal separation from God. It's such a thought, and so despicable when you begin to contemplate it, that you try to get it out of your mind. That's what our culture's done. "Oh, a loving God would never send anybody to hell."
Well, sin affects our destiny, meaning we go to hell unless we repent. You come into the world a sinner. That's what the Bible teaches. We did a baby dedication, two baby dedications Sunday, and they had a little guy in here, a little tie-on, fella. He's about 11 months, he was really cute. The other one was little Abby. Abby was three and a half weeks. So I said, "Can I hold her?" They said, "All right," and they gave her to me. The minute I take - any time I take a kid, because they're so stunned that I would do this - any time that I take a little kid and I hold her, "Ah."
So I had to say to them, "Don't you be deceived for a second. This is a rotten little sinner we got right here. Cute as a bug in a rug, ain't any cuter than this. Look at her, but that's a sinner." How many sins do I have to commit to be a sinner? None. I come into the world a sinner. That's what the Bible teaches. That's the problem with man. You got all these studies going on, and we've got anthropology, and sociology, and psychology, trying to figure out what's wrong with man. It's real simple: Adam sinned. When Adam sinned, he plunged us into this abyss that we're in of sin, with no way out.
So sin affects my destiny, but it affects your journey. When you are in sin, as a Christian now, when you're a Christian, and you're sinning - either sins of commission, or sins of omission. You're not spending your time in the Word. You're not spending your time in prayer. You're not spending your time with other believers. It affects your journey.
The Need to Hate Sin
**Here's the third thing: we need to hate sin.** The psalmist writes this: "You that love the Lord, hate evil." I wrote that
down because I've become convinced that in most lives, mine included, we've got too casual a view of sin. Remember what we saw a couple weeks ago? Anything I do, anything I say, anything I think, or anything I imagine that's contrary to the will of God. You and I need to hate sin.
Here's the fourth thing: Don't feed the flesh. Don't make provision. We've got to avoid anything that's going to present for us an opportunity to sin, an occasion to sin, as well as those unexpected times. Some of you have, in the last couple of days, even spent some time planning your next big sin event. It's like when you check into a hotel—there's nothing embarrassing about saying, "Listen, turn those movies off." That's a stumbling block. Whatever it is, make no provision for the flesh.
Fifth thing: discipline yourself. We were just over on the coast for three days. We were in Coronado for three days, and it was great—60 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. It was absolutely perfect for three days over there. But everywhere we went, there were people running and jogging and just working out. You don't see a lot of really heavy people living on the coast. They seem to eat correctly and exercise, and they seem to have great discipline. Then I look at that, and I wish I had that discipline physically, and I'm trying. I'm getting better. But I'll tell you what, you really need spiritual discipline. This is hard work. It's hard work to study this Word, and it's hard work to pray.
Here's the last thing: You need God's help desperately, and He'll give it to you through the Holy Spirit. There's a tendency, I think, sometimes—at least the way I teach, and I apologize for it—the way I teach, sometimes it can be so hard, so hard, so hard that you're thinking, "I don't have any choice. I don't have any chance." Well, that's by design. I want you to end up thinking that, because in and of yourself, you don't, but He's there. Lives will change.
We at staff right now at church, I've got a thing where every Tuesday somebody's sharing their testimony, and I'm doing this because we see everybody as the finished product. You have the same thing in here. You walk, and you look around, and you say, "Oh man, everybody's got it all together." Well, you're looking at semi-finished products. But when you get to hear the stories, they're extraordinary stories, and you say, "How did that happen?" Well, God gave us that power.
Jesus Addresses Divorce
That's where He left off last week. Here we go, verse 31: "He continues this process, and it was said, 'Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
Jesus now turns. He's talked about two of the Ten Commandments. Now He begins to talk about something that was plaguing that society. Divorce, and the view of divorce, was more liberal among the Jews than it is even in our society. God had not stuttered, and they knew this full well. God had not stuttered in Malachi 2 or 3, when He says, "I hate divorce." They knew this.
What they had done is provide a system where a man could divorce a woman for virtually anything—and I mean literally anything. If a meal was burned, that was grounds for divorce. If you embarrassed your husband in public, that was grounds for divorce. Any of these things. So there were several possible biblical alternatives and views that you look at when you look at divorce. The Jews had taken the most liberal of all, and this is destructive.
I guess this has, for me anyway, great application in the system in which we live. God designed marriage. If we want to know what marriage is supposed to be, we go to Genesis 2:21.
God's Design for Marriage
"So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept, and He took one of his ribs, and He closed it up at this place, and the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and He brought her to the man, and he said, 'This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, you shall be called woman because she was taken out of a man.' God says this: 'For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they become one flesh.'"
That word "cleave" is one of those words that can have two possible meanings—and I don't know what they call them—that have exactly opposite meanings. We think of a cleaver where we sever, we cut things, the meat cleaver. We cleave things. Or cleave can mean to join together in such a way that it's inseparable—that's the way it's used there. A man should leave his father and mother, and the two become one flesh.
The idea there is not just physical. The idea there is in marriage there's a closeness—there's a spiritual, physical, mental closeness. You blend together two hearts, and two desires, and two sets of emotions. They come together in this magnificent institution called marriage.
The next wedding I do will be my daughter's, so the next wedding I do will be Haley's. When we get there I'm writing because I got some special things I want to say—some to her but a lot to him. But the idea is this: you two now are in a relationship that's designed to be the most intimate relationship on earth. By the way, it's a cornerstone for your civilization. You start to mess around with it, and you have very serious problems.
The Social Impact of Divorce
Years ago we were invited out to Washington DC, and speaking was a guy by the name of Dr. Nikolai. He is on staff at Harvard. He is the one who said—I'll never forget it—if you want to know how a society is doing, look at their junior high kids. That was his cause.
Here's what Dr. Nikolai said: he said, "By far the major cause of emotional problems, and the major determinant of the family is divorce. The trend toward quick, easy divorce, and ever-increasing divorce rate subject more and more children to physically, emotionally absent parents."
If the trend is not reversed, Nikolai says, "the quality of family life will continue to deteriorate, producing a society with a higher incident of mental illness more than ever before." Here's what else Dr. Nikolai wrote: "certain trend prevalent today, will incapacitate the family, destroy its integrity, and cause its members to suffer such crippling emotional conflicts that they will become intolerable. They will become an intolerable burden on society."
We've got that all around you. You've got kids with no mom, no dad, one mom, no dad. If any one factor influences the character development and emotional stability of an individual, it's the quality of relationship he experiences with both parents.
Two Practical Applications
So there's two practical things, and it has nothing to do with Jesus saying right now, but two very practical things for us. Number one, when you want to understand marriage, you look to the one who created it. It's not a human institution, it's created by God. God instituted marriage, so then when you say, should we marry homosexuals or lesbians, the Bible doesn't stutter. It's one man, one woman, leave and cleave, so the marriage is to be permanent, heterosexual.
The other thing, and I don't mean this in some antagonistic way, but it's what you saw last week with all the Rosie O'Donnell stuff. Hey, there's no question that you put a kid in a loving home, that's the best thing, but the best thing for a kid is a mom and a dad, not two moms, not two dads.
Let me come at this just again, maybe a little harder. There was a great interview a few years ago on Focus on the Family. George Gilder was on, and Gilder was talking about a man, and this is what a man should be, and a man should be this, and a man should be this, and a man should be this, and Dobson was clearly a little troubled by what he was saying, in the sense that he said, "Give me some definition here. You're not saying a man shouldn't be sensitive, and a man shouldn't be this, and a man shouldn't be that." Gilder said what he said to him, he said, "Jim, this is what I'm saying to you. A kid doesn't need two moms, a kid needs a mom and a dad. It needs to have, in marriage, mom in her role, and dad in his role. You take that away, you destroy the family, you destroy the family, you destroy the society."
The March Toward Family Breakdown
That's right on the march that we're on. That's the breakdown. Everybody's scratching their head, and they're trying to figure out how to make schools work, and how to make this work, and how to make all these things work, and everybody's out there trying to deal with symptoms rather than the core problem. You have a fundamental breakdown of the moral fiber of the country you live in.
Nicolai talked about trends. He said, here's six trends, six trends that are destructive to the family. Number one, mothers of young children working outside the home. Number two, frequent family moves. Number three, invasion of television. Number four, lack of moral control in society. Number five, lack of communication in the home. Number six, divorce. That's what's really impacting and destroying the family.
One of the leading feminists from the early 70s said this, and I quote, "the family unit must go, because it is the family that oppresses and enslaves women." Interestingly enough, yesterday in a bookstore, I saw a brand new book published, and the whole premise of the book was, marriage is destroying women. Well, we need to be careful about that.
God's Serious View of Marriage
God has always taken marriage seriously. Two of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery, and thou shalt not covet, both of those deal with this institution of marriage. Both of them provide that protection. Here's His, "but I say to you," you need to guard this relationship, you need to guard it closely.
The Jews had begun to see divorce as nothing more than a matter of paperwork, and Jesus sees this as a heart issue.
Addressing the Divorce Question
Now, here's what we get every time we talk about this in here, so hopefully we can deal with this in a preventative way. In a room like this, and in those that hear the tapes, there will be literally thousands of people who've been divorced. Many are now in a vibrant relationship with their Creator, they weren't then, or they were, and they were in an unhealthy marriage, meaning they had somebody married to them who wasn't a Christian. Maybe many are divorced, and it's got nothing to do with them, they didn't want this, they dreaded this.
So we get some questions in here. If God says, "I hate divorce," are there grounds upon which I can divorce? Is divorce ever permissible? And if so, talking about adultery, if I remarry, and all this, does the Bible speak at all about the idea of remarrying? Let's spend a second on it.
Biblical Grounds for Divorce
Jesus says here, "but I say to you, everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity." The word that we get there in the Greek is pornea, from which we get our English word pornography. It means, and it's got a very broad definition, it means sexual immorality. Incest, prostitution, homosexuality, bestiality, all of those, they're listed in Leviticus 21. For any of those reasons, a man or a woman may divorce their spouse.
Now Paul, in 1st Corinthians 7, adds to this one other reason, desertion of an unbeliever. If I'm married, and let's say in this case, I'm a guy, I'm married to a gal, I'm a Christian, she's not, forget how I got there, although that's significant maybe. That's why, for example, at our church, there's no way we would marry somebody who is a Christian and somebody who wasn't. We say no to that all the time.
What we wrestle with is, would we ever marry two non-Christians? Most churches will do that. They'll say, well, they're not. The problem with that is, you now set them up where if one's converted, you have them in a situation, we have a married, a believer married to an unbeliever. So that's very hard. So obviously we marry two believers, we never marry believer and unbeliever.
I personally wouldn't marry two unbelievers. There's no point. Why would you come to me? Go to Vegas - that's the place to go for that. I'm just kidding, just teasing. We're never that flippant, because this is so serious.
So if you've got a spouse who's involved in adultery, you've got, according to Jesus, grounds for divorce. If you've got a spouse who wants to leave and fights to leave, Paul says, and I think therefore God says, you have a right to divorce. Now let me explain this. This is very important. You have an option, but it's just that - it's an option.
I have seen God do some extraordinary things in marriages. You know, there's always this question of, if one spouse commits adultery, can you ever trust him again? I've seen extraordinary marriages that have really been birthed out of the ashes of adultery and all sorts of things. What Jesus was not trying to do here is to set up some way where you could look over here and find a loophole and move around here and move down there and somehow get out of this. What Jesus is saying is, listen, God hates divorce. In fact, He says it in Matthew 19 - the only reason we were talking about this is because of man's sin.
The Question of Remarriage
Are you free to remarry? Here's what I think the Scripture says about remarrying. If you are the innocent party, if your spouse has committed adultery and you have ended up in divorce, you as the innocent party are free to remarry. If you have been abandoned by an unbeliever, you're free to remarry. That's what He's saying. Other than that, He's saying no, you're not free to remarry.
This raises yet one more problem because now you'll come in and say, well, now I'm in this relationship and I'm not even supposed to be here because I was divorced over there illegitimately. Now I'm in this relationship. Should I get out of that? And the answer is no. You should stay where God's got you right now. Very hard stuff, very practical stuff.
But you know, what He's not trying to do here is give us this long dissertation on marriage. Do you remember the context? All He's talking about here is the heart. He's talking about the law.
The Teaching on Oaths
Look at verse 33: "Again, you have heard that the ancients were told" - the ancients are told, the scribes and the Pharisees passed this down. This isn't God speaking to them. "The ancients were told that you should not make false vows but should fulfill the vows to the Lord." Well, that's indeed true. There was kind of a composite idea here. I'll give you these verses because I know some of you care about this stuff: Leviticus 19:12, Numbers 32, and Deuteronomy 23:21. That's kind of a composite idea here of this teaching.
Here's what the Jews had done. The Jews had been instructed in this ability and this privilege of taking an oath. It was a very serious matter. It was always taken on the name of the Lord. They were very serious vows. What the Jews had done is watered all this down. So you had people taking vows on all sorts of things.
In fact, look at Jesus: "But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or earth, for it is the footstool of His, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the king. Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be yes, yes, or no, no. Anything beyond this is evil."
The Problem with Casual Oaths
Here's what was happening. They were swearing on everything. "I swear on my mother's grave." Here's His point. Listen, you're swearing by the heavens, you're swearing by the earth, you're swearing by Jerusalem, you're swearing by all this. God created it all. These oaths, what they've done is to say, well, some things aren't really as serious as others. We won't take them quite as seriously as some things.
The oath was a serious issue. God knew man was sinful. Man's heart was to deceive. Man's tendency was to not tell the truth. So when I swore an oath, it was saying, I'm standing here before God, and I swear to you.
Jesus Himself, in a sense, took an oath. Now, there's a dilemma. Who do you swear to? "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, none but the truth, so help me myself." I mean, I swear to myself. That's what He said. When He said, "Truly, truly, I say to you," there's a sense in which He was taking an oath here.
Understanding the True Meaning
Jesus is not saying here, don't take any oaths. There are serious oaths, or serious vows that we can take. One of them we just talked about - it's marriage. We know people who have taken this to a distortion, who would say, "I won't take an oath in the court of law." Raise your right hand. "Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, none but the truth, so help you God," and they say, "I can't do that. I can't make any oath. It's a religious thing." Jesus isn't talking about that.
He's saying, do you understand here? He's setting up this system where you've got truths and half-truths, and oaths that are serious, and you'd swear on different things of varying importance. You're playing fast and loose.
Here's how James says it, James chapter 5, verse 12: "But above all, my brethren, do not swear either by heaven or earth or any other oath, but let your yes be a yes, and your no be a no, so that you may not fall under judgment."
The Call to Simple Integrity
Here's what He's saying. He's saying, if you say yes, you mean yes. If you say no, you mean no. As Christians, here you go, here's a great example. As Christians, when we say we're going to be somewhere, we ought to be there. When we say we're going to do something, we ought to do it. That's what He's saying. We're to tell the truth. As Christians, there's no shades of gray.
I mentioned I was at Coronado at this convention speaking, and one of the speakers ahead of me was George Mitchell. George Mitchell was a senator from Maine for 14 years. He was the minority leader in the Senate, actually majority leader when he was there, majority leader in the
The Dangerous Game of Political Compromise
I want to share something from a few years ago when I had the opportunity to speak after Senator George Mitchell in the Senate. He ended up working with Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Peace Plan and moving into the Middle East and spending time there, author of the Mitchell Plan. I found him to be, because I went in with a lot of preconceived notions about him, the opposite of what I expected in many ways. He was very good.
They had a Q&A, and one of the questions was that Benjamin Netanyahu has said Yasser Arafat says one thing and does another, and that Netanyahu doesn't think the Israelis can deal with Yasser Arafat. Mitchell's comment was, "Here's what's interesting. The Palestinians don't think they can deal with Sharon. They would rather deal with anybody other than Netanyahu. The Israelis would rather deal with anybody other than Arafat." And he said, "Listen, let me just ask you this question. Is anybody in this room surprised that a politician would say one thing and do another?" They laughed. They clapped.
Well, I was after him, and I was talking, and one of my points was, do what's right. So my question to the group was not, is anybody shocked that a politician would say one thing and do another? How about this: Is anybody sickened by it?
The Most Offensive Statement I've Ever Heard
I wheel this out all the time, because I think it's the classic. I don't think he could get any more clear than this. This is President Clinton's statement on his last day of office. As he's trying to sort out his situation, finally he had to make a statement to reach an agreement with the independent counsel, Robert Ray.
Here's the sentence, and I quote - you've heard it, many of you. It's a direct quote, right off the internet, His statement. I don't make it up. It's not out of context: "I tried to walk a line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal."
That's what he said. And every time I read this, I find this more offensive. I'll say it again: "I tried to walk a line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now realize I did not fully accomplish this goal." It was His goal. If you said to him, "What's your goal for the day?" Here's what he'd say: "To act lawfully and testify falsely." Isn't that amazing?
I don't make that up. I don't take that out of context. This isn't politics. I'm sure I could find Republicans saying the same thing.
The Culture of Accepted Deception
Here's what we're saying. You live in a culture where that's accepted, where it's okay. It just is politics. It's just business. "Look, I really want to see you get the deal, but your price is just a little high. You need to come down." "How far do I need to come down?" "Well, you know it's a closed bid process, and I can't really show you that. I'd love to show it to you. It's right there in that folder. I got to go get a cup of coffee, and I'll be back in about five minutes."
Listen, you're a liar. "I don't steal. I don't steal anything." You look in the guy's desk, and there's paperclips and a pen from the office, and you're taking it home. You're Ivan Boesky with no imagination. That's your problem. You're stealing little things. Steal big stuff. You can't believe anybody for anything.
Do you see that? I'm right on the edge, and I don't want to get to the next point, because I don't think I can get through it.
God's Laws Are for Our Protection
I want to just say, do you see how when God gives us this law, when God gives us these principles, He's not trying to hurt us? He's trying to show us, here's what's best for you as an individual and for us as a society. That illicit relationship, that fling, no matter how good it is, do you understand that you're jeopardizing everything for it?
That exaggeration. I still think of the guy who was hired as the Notre Dame head coach for a week, that guy, because he falsified a resume 25 years ago. He lied about playing football at New Hampshire, and it kind of stuck in His resume. It didn't get Him the job. In fact, He got the job at Notre Dame - I don't know if you know this - before there ever was a resume. After they made the deal, they called Him and said, "We need a resume for the file." It didn't help Him get the job. It's just hanging on, 25 years ago.
God gives us these principles for our own good.
The Spirit vs. The Letter of the Law
We want to do what the Jews did. We want to take laws, and we want to fudge them over here and move them over here and pull back over here. And God says, "No, here's the deal. Even if you find the loophole, it's not about the letter of the law, it's about the spirit of the law. And you violate that, and you're living in rebellion with the Creator God of the universe." Very serious stuff.
We'll pick up right there next week - an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. We'll pick up there.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this. Help us understand these principles. Help us understand Your truth. God, help us see ourselves as we really are, our natural flinch to move away and to slide, let that scale move. God, we know, every one of us in our heart of hearts, know how vulnerable we are to sin. You know how hard it is, because our hearts are wicked and deceitful.
God, thank You for Jesus. Thank You for His life and His death. Thank You for that crucifixion that we celebrate just a week from tomorrow and the resurrection a week from Sunday, the new life that we find in You through Your son Jesus. God, thank You for loving us so much that You sent Him to die.
If there's anyone here today who is not a Christian, they don't know Your son, I pray that they would talk to the person that invited them. They would say, "What does it mean to be a Christian?" and that this teaching would be the basis for great conversation and that You might be in the middle of that. Bring us to salvation. God, that's our prayer. We offer it to You in Christ's name. Amen.
Have a great week. We'll see you next week.