MATTHEW 5:27-30
You have heard that it was said, YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY; but I say
to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed
adultery with her in his heart.
If
your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better
for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown
into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you;
for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole
body to go into hell (NASB).
INTRODUCTION
A
third grade Sunday school teacher was uneasy about the lesson “Thou shall not
commit adultery.” By way of introduction she asked, “Would someone please
explain what adultery means?”
A
young sage answered as a matter of fact, “Adultery is when a kid lies about his
age.”
Returning
from Sunday school where the Ten Commandments had been the topic of the day, a
young boy asked his father, “Daddy, what does it mean when it says, ‘Thou shall
not commit agriculture’?” There was hardly a beat between the question and the
father’s reply: “Son, that just means that you’re not supposed to plow the
other man’s field,” an answer satisfactory to both of them.
If
there was a time when the followers of Jesus were to pay heed to Jesus’
teaching in this text it is today. Today we live in a sex exploited and a
sex-consumed society. We are inundated with sexual images on TV everyday.
Internet pornography is the order of the day. If believers are to be holy and
maintain a life of purity, if our righteousness is to exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and the Pharisees we are to pay attention to and apply Jesus’
instructions to us.
I. DISCIPLES WHO REFUSE TO YIELD TO LUST VV. 27-28
The
seventh commandment forbids adultery (Exodus 20:14). Like murder, the scribes
and Pharisees limited this concept to the overt act. But Jesus in 5:27-30
traces God’s law deeper and prohibits the lustful imagination. According to
Jesus, adultery can be committed in your heart and mind. Therefore, if you are
going to keep God’s law, you must deal with internal motives, desires, and
intents. This is where you and I win or lose the battle. When God created us He
gave us desire and passion. However, God puts parameters around our desire and
passion. When a personal desire goes beyond the God-given parameters, then it
results in sin.
To bring His message home to His
hearers, Jesus offers two illustrations to urge immediate and decisive action.
The first illustration is found in verse 28:”But I say to you that everyone who
looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in
his heart.” Adultery usually referred to sexual relations by a married
person with a partner other than his or her spouse, but verse 28 makes it clear
that Jesus is not limiting His commandments to married people but speaking of
sexual sin in general. Jesus is not saying that you are not to admire the
beauty of a woman and the handsomeness of a man. Jesus is not prohibiting you
from passing a glance at a person. His prohibition is rather against a believer
who continues to look at a person with lustful imagination. Jesus is condemning
lustful thoughts and actions. The Pharisees limited the sin to the act. But
Jesus goes further than that. He includes the motive and the desire of your
mind and heart. Could you tell me that anyone who committed adultery did not
begin with the thought or fantasy of the act? In Jesus’ day many of the Jews
would limit adultery to theft; that is the stealing of someone’s wife or
someone’s daughter and vice versa. But Jesus says that adultery, which is
prohibited by the seventh commandment, is more than theft. It also speaks of
purity of life that refuses to lust (v. 28). What Jesus is saying is that the
thought of having affair with another person of the opposite sex is mental
adultery and thus sin. Jesus is emphasizing that if the act is wrong so
is the intention. One of the problems we are facing in Christian
marriages is that a husband or wife can be faithful to the spouse with his/her
body but may be having affair with another person with the mind. When that
happens, the natural trust that is vital to the stability of marriage is
broken. The couple is married physically but divorced emotionally, because one
of them is having an emotional affair with another person.
As I said earlier, Jesus is not
condemning the natural interest in the opposite sex or even healthy sexual
desire, but the deliberate and repeated filling of one’s mind with fantasies
that would be sin if acted out. Sinful desires are just as damaging to
righteousness as the overt act. If you do not check your lustful desires or
wrong imaginations they would ruin your life and drive you away from the love
of Christ. Adultery among Christians today is a scandal, yet it almost never
occurs without precipitation. In other words, adultery begins with a thought
process or infatuation. If a person had an affair and was caught and began to
explain that it just happened within a twinkle of the eye don’t believe him
/her. There is a thought process that was formed before the act was carried
out. The adulterer or adulteress is not helpless; he or she is not a victim. He
or she had a choice. You can refuse to yield to sin. The Bible teaches us that
if you become a Christian sin and the desire to sin do not have dominion over
you. You can bring your emotions and desires under control through the help of
the person and power of the Holy Spirit (Philippians 4:8).
II. DISCIPLES WHO DEAL DRASTICALLY WITH
TEMPTATION TO SIN VV. 29-30
The second illustration that Jesus
provides has to do with the eye that causes you to sin. There is a link between
the eyes and the heart. The eyes, which should keep us from stumbling, can also
“trip us up.” Sexual sins begin with the eyes. In fact, many temptations to sin
begin with the eyes. For instance the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden
began with the eyes (Genesis 3:6). The adultery of David that got him into
trouble started with the eyes when the king was taking it easy at the time of
war. The eyes were given to us to see. We cannot help it but to see with our
eyes. But we can make a covenant with our eyes not to see certain things. Job
said, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl” (Job
31:1). Sexual appeal and temptations are rampant in our society today. One of
my early cultural shocks in Germany and the United States is the explicit
sexual appeals and images in these countries. What has a half naked woman to do
with car sales? I would not forget what one of my professors in College did
after he ordered a perfume or cologne from a certain company. He told us the
story. He said that when he was ordering the perfume, there was no human
portrait on it, but when it arrived it had a picture of a woman who was semi-dressed.
He became offended and wrote to the company and after his letter they removed
the picture from the perfume.
I don’t know about you, but almost
every week when I check my email there is a pornographic email sent through AOL
or Yahoo Mail. I have already made a decision not to open any email that I do
not know the sender. So guess what! I delete it without opening it. I may be
old-fashioned but that works for me. I will not allow these promiscuous and
ungodly people to ruin my intimacy with Christ by succumbing to their notorious
enterprise. Now the sexual promiscuity and its promotion have taken over
national television stations such as NBC, ABC, and CBS. But you can refuse to
be ensnared by these sexual images. All those who are promoting pornography and
sexual promiscuity have a hidden agenda. They have a corrupt worldview and they
are trying to lead decent people away from godly morals and teachings of the
Bible. It is part of the cultural warfare in which we are engaged. We cannot
afford to lose the cultural warfare if we are to preserve the purity of Christ
in our lives.
Now before you go out from here and
gouge out your eye, let me explain what Jesus is saying and not saying. You
should not take this admonishment literally like what Origen did. He was one of
the early Catholic Church fathers who literally castrated himself because of
what Jesus said here in this verse. Jesus is using what we call hyperbole. A
hyperbole is an exaggerated speech. Even if you castrate yourself or gouge out
your eye it is not radical enough, because that would not remove the lust that
is welling up inside your mind and heart. Jesus is not talking about
self-mutilation as some of the Latinos do on Easter. It is possible to be blind
or crippled and still lust. Rather what Jesus is saying is that you and I are
to take drastic and radical measures to avoid temptation to sexual sin. The eye
is a part of the body that is commonly blamed for leading us astray, especially
in sexual sins. In fact, the Bible has much to say about the eyes (cf. Num
15:39; Prov. 21:4; Ezek 6:9; 18:12; 20:8; cf. Eccl. 11:9). You see imagination
is a God-given gift; but if it is fed with dirt by the eye, it will be dirty.
All sin, not least sexual sin, begins with the imagination.
Therefore, what feeds your imagination
is of maximum importance in the pursuit of kingdom righteousness. In the Old
Testament when Portiphar’s wife was seducing Joseph day in and day out, Joseph
made a radical decision that no matter how hard Mrs. Portiphar tried he would
not yield to the temptation. He was more willing to lose his coat than his
character. He was more determined to face the consequences of his decision to
reject her advances than to sin against God and defile his heart. You and I
have the right to say no to anything that will cause us to sin. If you have a
friend who is determined to destroy your Christian life by taking you to places
you shouldn’t go, sever your relationship with such a person. You don’t need
such a person. If you have a friend who is a bite biter, gossip, or slanderer
and anytime you are with him/her you feel dirty on the inside, keep your
distance from him/her.
Let me give you an illustration that
will help you to understand what Jesus is saying. Maybe before you became a
Christian you had a problem with alcohol. Now that you have been saved you
should not be passing through a liquor or drinking bar. If you continue to pass
through a drinking bar the temptation to go inside is great. Temptation is like
a magnet; it can pull you to sin. When you have a problem with gluttony maybe
it would be better not to work in a Restaurant. You should not become a slave
to anybody or anything that would cause you to sin against Christ. You should
make up your mind to remove yourself from anyone or anything that could lead
you to scandal. You must know yourself. You must know your heart. You are to
take drastic measures to resist sin. The reason some Christians fall into sin
and ruin their testimony and the name of Christ is that they trust themselves too
much. Sometimes your strength becomes your weakness. Sampson’s strength became
his weakness when he refused to make a covenant with his eyes. Young people,
you better listen to your parents if you are going the wrong direction. When
Sampson was chasing after pagan women his parents advised him, but he did not
listen to their advice. They asked him aren’t many single women in Israel that
you want to marry a Philistine, a foreigner and a pagan. The parents knew what
they were saying because God had commanded in the OT that His people were not
to intermarry with foreigners who worshiped a different god. Sampson did not
take his parents objection for his answer. He followed his lust and finally he
paid with his life. The woman he thought he could not live without betrayed him
and lost his life.
Many people who have ruined their
lives can tell you story upon story how it all began, but they followed their
lust more than the word of God and the promptings of the Holy Spirit and now
their lives are ruined.
It is better to sever a cherished
relationship than to allow sin to bring judgment and condemnation. Some people
say in their heart and mind it will never happen to me, but before they finish
that thought they are already defeated. Examine your life for anything that
causes you to sin and take every necessary action to remove it.
So often we say “Maybe” to sin instead
of “NO,” leaving the option open for us to say, “Yes.” This is not resisting
Satan or the temptations placed before us. We are like the person trying to get
rid of a salesman on his doorstep without saying a firm “No” and closing the
door. Though we say we are not interested in buying Satan’s product—sin—we
leave the door ajar and continue to discuss the tempting wares. We leave open
the possibility for the devil to make a sale. To resist temptation we must say
a firm “No” and shut the door.
Does this mean that one strike and you
are completely out of the game? Not at all. Jesus is not teaching that if you
have lusted or even committed adultery you are a candidate of hell. What He is
saying is that you cannot be a Kingdom seeker and at the same time live a life
that is dictated by lust or sexual sin. He is saying that if you are to pursue
true righteousness, then you are to live a life of purity. I believe that the
disciples of Jesus felt inadequate when Jesus was preaching the Sermon on the
Mount. Someone has said that it is impossible to live the Christian life. That
is absolutely true. Jesus has to live the Christian life through you. The reason
many of us become casualties of moral failure and temptation to sin is that we
are trying to live the Christian life by our own efforts. Rather, we are to
trust Christ to live the Christian life through us. The Apostle Paul sates, “I
have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives
in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son
of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). To be able to
overcome any form of sin, you must surrender completely to the Holy Spirit.
However, if you have been caught up in the web of sexual sin, there is hope for
forgiveness when there is true repentance. What you should do then, is to
acknowledge the sin, confess it, ask for forgiveness, and God will forgive you
and restore you. He is merciful and gracious to His children. He is the God of
a second and multiple chances.
*If the messages from this blog have been a blessing to you and you want to give to support this ministry, you can write your check to:
KENADARKWA LLC
Kennedy A. Adarkwa, PhD
6402 Redding Court
Arlington, TX 76001
*If the messages from this blog have been a blessing to you and you want to give to support this ministry, you can write your check to:
KENADARKWA LLC
Kennedy A. Adarkwa, PhD
6402 Redding Court
Arlington, TX 76001
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