Is that time for us to grab our Bibles? To open up to the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, continuing in our series in the Gospel of Matthew, but here in the Sermon on the Mount, we're going to open up to Matthew 5, and we're going to look at verses 27 through 30. Matthew 5, 27 through 30. We've entitled this Real Adultery, but we could also just say, quite simply, the Seventh Commandment. Because this is where Jesus is looking at. quoting directly from the Seventh Commandment. Let us read together starting in verse 27 and stopping in verse 30. Hear now the word of God. 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. Thus far the reading of God's holy and inspired word. And may he add his blessing to it now as it is preached. Notice 31 and 32 deal with divorce. That's where we're going to be next Sunday. The passage is simply, the sermon is going to simply be entitled, very cleverly, Divorce. And so that's where we're going to be next Sunday. 31 and 32, because it's the next one. And so if you've had any questions about divorce, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to answer them, but I think Christ has got some answers there in that passage. And so that's where we're going to be next Sunday. Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're now in the second part of the law that Jesus is looking at, that Jesus takes up, that Jesus sharpens for us so that our attention will be grabbed by his very word. And this, again, is a very familiar passage. We've heard it several times probably, which has been understood rightly by many saints of old, but also extremely misunderstood by many other saints as well. So it's one of those passages where people give and take, particularly with 29 and 30, as we'll see. But we'll strive to understand this passage according to Christ's word, according to Christ's day, and then we'll see how it's applied to ours as well. But this is the theme for the sermon. Jesus continues to sharpen his law, notice in parentheses his word, by revealing in our wicked hearts the reality of adultery contained in our lusts of the flesh. Contained in the lusts of the flesh. We'll divide this sermon up into these two points. First, the reality of our hearts, seen in 27 and 28. And then second, the reality of our shame, in 29 and 30. Reality of our hearts, 27 and 28. And the reality of our shame, 29 and 30. Let's begin by looking at verses 27 and 28. Again, keeping your Bibles out, let's look again at, as we noticed the last Lord's Day, the concern of our hearts, which only continues in this sermon. And remember that it is God who peers deeply into the hearts of man and thus finding the perpetual sin of man. There is, however, a promise concerning the heart of man who fear God and find themselves in covenant with God. And we find these promises in each passage. The promises namely, write this down for those who are taking notes, Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah 31 33 we find this promise But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it and I will be their God and they shall be my people This again is that great covenantal promise which finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ for Jesus is the head of the new covenant of which we stand as members of engrafted in through the work of Christ. Therefore, as the Spirit of God write the law upon our hearts, it is our responsibility to listen to Christ's words concerning the law, which He has authored. Listen to Jesus in verse 27 again here, as we consider it this morning. Verse 27, You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. Now again, we have that familiar phrase going all the way back to verse 21. You have heard that it was said, yet notice what's missing in verse 27, basically that phrase saying, from the ancients of old, from the ancients. This, however, is intended in this verse, it's intended, in fact, some manuscripts of old had that included in there, the saints of old, the ancients of old. It's intended, so let's consider again what the Pharisees and the scribes, the religious leaders of the day of Christ, were teaching concerning this commandment. We did this last week, we're doing it again. First, again, they were only speaking of physical adultery. Physical adultery. Without recognizing the inward reality of sin. So we said that about murder, we're saying it again about adultery. You had definitely several types of Pharisees, at least seven types of Pharisees, and we thought they were all lumped into one. No. Paul was a Pharisee, continued to be a Pharisee to the day he died. I mean, there was good ones. Yeah. And so there were at least seven. We'll talk about two. Talk about two. And the first group we'll look at here, we'll call them the bloody-nosed Pharisees. the Bloody Nose Pharisees. Now, I don't get this on my own. I'm not creating it. I got this from somebody else. We'll meet him in our Wednesday night studies. But these Pharisees were also so scared, you see, they were terrified of looking at a woman lustfully, that when a beautiful woman did walk by, they tried to look the other way. They would not look in lust until they walked into a wall breaking their nose. Bloody Nose Pharisees. That's the idea. All right, so that's one group. Okay, yet there are the others. that would heap up this command so high that it would be so severe that even they could not keep themselves out of adultery. Even they could not keep themselves out of adultery. I see the second group, namely here, we'll look at this passage and also in another passage, John chapter 8. By the way, this was St. Augustine's favorite passage. John chapter 8, starting in verses 3 through 5. You don't have to go there, just mark it down and look at it later. But notice this. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery. She's caught in adultery. And having set her in the center of the court, they said to him, him being Jesus, Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery in the very act. Now the law of Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. What then do you say? Notice, again, this passage, just a reading of it, that only the woman is there. If she was caught in the act, where's the man? So as far as I remember, it took two to have physical adultery. It takes two to dance, and it takes two here. So where's the man? Where's the man? Probably in the crowd. That's the answer. Probably in the crowd. And this brings this second group, who are much like the first from the bloody nose, They were the hypocrites that Jesus would call them. That's a whole different group of Pharisees, the hypocritical group. And we see their results here. Again, these are those who would make the law of God so steep that no one could keep it, even themselves. In fact, the Pharisees themselves cannot even keep these commands. Remember, the Pharisee who invites Jesus for dinner in Luke chapter 7, verses 36 through 39, and even some other verses, he invites Jesus. His name is Simon. He invites Jesus for dinner, and he says, come on in, we'll have dinner together. We're sitting at the dining room table. Much like in our houses, sometimes the dining room is not the first thing that you see. So it's kind of a maze to find out where this dining room is. And all of a sudden, this woman just walks in the house like she's got a key, walks in, finds the dining room, bows at Jesus' feet. With her tears, she anoints her feet. With her hair, she wipes his feet dry. Simon gets all up. Does he not know that this woman is a sinner known around town for what she does? Simon knows. So does Jesus. And the idea here is, how did she know how to get into Simon's house, where Simon eats? She knew his house intimately. Intimately. And Jesus ends up saying this woman's story will be told until the day he returns. Again, just looking at that story, how does this woman know how to get around? You see this. According to these groups, they claim to be pious. But in the light of God's law shining upon them, one finds only sinner, sinner, and wretched sinner. That's all we find according to God's law. And this is why Jesus opens our hearts door in verses 28, chiseling away, yet again, another piece of our flesh that is filled with lust, passions. Verse 28, let's look again at 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. Now just a couple of comments at this moment for our day and age. Notice first that Jesus uses the word for woman that it could also be used, it translated wife. And so this brings a whole other command. We've read it this morning. Thou shalt not covet or lust after your neighbor's wife. There it is. He's opening up a whole nother command just with this opening phrase. Looking at a wife with lust for her has already committed adultery. Again, we see the purity of God's law that when you break one, you're in fact breaking them all. You're breaking them all. And second, the word for lust here is that heartfelt desire. which would blind all things around you except for the object that you're longing for. And this is why upon completion of such lust, when it is finished, the person only desires to get rid of his or her object, to get rid of the person. This is why in 2 Samuel 13, Amnon doesn't want anything to do with Tamar after he has assaulted her. Third, even though adultery is technically the physical act, Jesus reveals, much like he did with murder, that there is a premeditated attitude or thoughts concerning adultery. And this he calls lust. This he calls lust. What then should we do? What's left for us then? We see the impossibility of this. What then should we do? All one needs to do in our society to fill their lustful passions is turn on the television, whether you're watching women or wives who are desperate, daily operas that you could watch from your couch or even viewing what should have been left hidden in the first place through pornography and the such. What should we do? Magazines, television, movies, it is rampant. What then should we do? I like what C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity. In the copy that I have, it's found on page 96. C.S. Lewis says, And I quote, you can get a large audience together with a striptease act that is watching a girl take her clothes off. Now, suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theater by simply bringing a covered plate onto stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let everyone see just before the lights get turned off that there was just contained a piece of a mutton chop or a bit of bacon. Would you not think that that country, something had gone wrong with their appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think that there was something equally weird about the state of sex instinct among us? C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Again, the question remains, what then should we do when it's so prevalent in our society. Well, brothers and sisters, I say we should look at Jesus' words in verse 29 and 30, noticing the reality of our shame. In our culture, the reality of which Lewis spoke about some 70 years ago is still true today. You know, the golden age of our mom and dads wasn't so golden. True then, true today, nothing new under the sun. And so, We see the economics of today, the law of business, the motto of advertisement is in fact sex sales. So what should we do? It is a shame that when you're watching commercial towards the end, you have no idea what they're even trying to sell you. And so either you're looking away from it or you're embarrassed by what you're seeing or you're changing the channel. It is ridiculous what's happening. And we ought to be embarrassed. Yet, it is our culture's shame. But on every corner, one can find what their heart covets. And this is the same today in the days of Jesus. But during the days of Christ, this was done so religiously. Prostitutes were temple priests and priestesses. This is the reason why Paul in his epistles, particularly 1st and 2nd Corinthians, says so much about sexual morality and the temple. They were connected. They were connected. Yet we must this idea of coveting after what God has not given to us is seen here. Look at verse twenty nine. 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. Many people have taken this passage and answered it. Well, it's spiritually speaking. Others have said, no, no, no. He means literally. And so we're going to consider both. spiritual understanding of this and then the literal understanding of this, literal means by the word, literally what Jesus is saying, word for word, grammatically, historically, understanding it that way. And so, let's ask this question first of all. Does Jesus mean to say, or is he meaning to teach that we should mutilate our bodies? Mutilate. Ripping an eye out of its socket. The answer to that is no. No. He uses a different language. This is what you call hyperbole, using it extreme to get a point across. Instead, what he's teaching is what we typically call dying of the flesh. We'll agree with that. Mutilating the flesh, meaning dying to sin, being brought back to life in Christ. It is true. It is true that it would be better for us to enter glory missing an eye than to enter hell with both of them. That is a true statement. It would be better for us. The flesh is one of our enemies, one that we must conquer, do battle with, and that is what Jesus is talking about. These are military terms. fighting against your eyes. So how does this work? Well, it works several ways. First, use the Word of God to guard your eyes. Use the very Word of God to guard your eyes. In guarding your eyes, one must keep watch over what they see. And this means that there are some things, pay attention closely to what I'm about to say, there are some things the Christian just simply should not see. Simple point. There are some things the Christians should just not see, look upon. Yet, many people at this time would want to quote Philippians 4a. Brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good repute, if there is any excellence, anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. But they're misusing this passage. They're misusing this passage so that they can then shelter themselves, hide from a world, with the reality of sin. They want to keep the Christian from reading certain good literature and watching certain good movies and film. These two passages don't go together and guarding your eye and then thinking of things that are lovely and pure. The second passage has to do with worship. The first passage has to do with everyday life. And so we must understand our limitations. That's the key here, understanding limitations. Concerning the Word of God, which we'll go to in just a moment here, but the second, second, can you or can your eyes cause you to stumble? Considering again verse 29, can your eyes cause you to stumble? The answer is yes, they can. Does this mean that we have to pluck out our eyes, whatever we look at, whenever we look upon someone or something lustfully? Lewis was talking about food. That's called gluttony. That's also lust. The answer, you know, I would suggest that if that was the case, none of us in here would have eyes. It's the truth of the matter. None of us in here would have eyes. If this is what Jesus truly meant, then over the years the apostles would be cloaking out eyes, including their own, and we would be a bunch of people walking around blind and handless. But that's not the point of the passage. Again, it's talking about that repenting, that literally dying to sin every day, almost falling out of your way not to lust. Not like the bloody nose Pharisee, but like Paul, who told Timothy, flee from lust. Have nothing to do with it. And so we see it here. I want to illustrate this passage with two people in my history, short history. But I know these two people. I'm not going to name any names, but I've met both of them and I've heard both of them. So the first person took this passage literally, pluck out your eye. He took it literally. The second one didn't take it at all. So let's consider this first one, the literal person. When he caught himself lusting after a woman, he did pull out his own eye. And he walked around with an eye patch. I was always curious what happened with the other one. Didn't you have another eye that also looked? I mean, your eyes can't do like, you know, this little weird little thing where one's looking but the other one's not. You see? But he plucked his own eyeball out. The second man, however, would walk down the street with his second wife. He was divorced. He walked down the street with his second wife and their two daughters. And as he was doing so, he would be checking out other women. And then he would tell. Tell us. Boys, it's okay to look, but just not touch. It's okay to look, just as long as you don't touch. Now notice the problem with both. The one did not understand the forgiveness of Christ for his sins. You see, he didn't understand that he was forgiven. The other didn't take his sins seriously. That's what we have to guard against. that we don't take the forgiveness that Christ offers seriously and we then don't take our sin seriously. We must take both seriously because then you put what Christ did on the cross and you make it in vain. That sin he died was a mutilating death. So is our sin. And so we have to understand both. We must have a good mixture of both law and gospel. understanding our sins, taking it seriously, but understanding the forgiveness of Christ, taking it seriously. Notice, though, the second man. He says it's okay to look, but don't touch. He forgot to read verse 30. Look at verse 30 again. 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. Again, the same idea continues here with literal or spiritual. This time, however, Jesus is pointing to the reality of coveting, lusting, committing adultery, as in fact taking another man's wife for yourself, stealing another man's wife. And this is the person who is reaching out to take what is his, what is not his, but is his heart's desire. And whether it is in quiet, at your home, in front of a screen, or It is quite literal in public and it's a disgrace to your family and friends. This speaks here of the physical act of lusting. I trust you see that Jesus does not forget the physical sin. Notice again, he's not forgetting that. He's not saying, well, we're not considering this anymore. We're just considering the sin of the heart. He is condemning the internal reality of sin as well as the physical reality of sin. And we see this here in verse 30. This is why verse 30 is here. It's talking about the physical. And so now, to show how this verse speaks more so to our day as it did for Christ, what we see here is a very serious problem in our society. I'm not going to stand here as a judge. I'm going to let Christ do that. Christ is the judge here, and he does grieve over such lawless living. Children at a very early age are becoming involved in this. They're being addicted to pornography, being molested, and things that used to only happen around adults are now happening among our children. The decisions that adults used to have to make, children are not making. And we as a church must not stand and rebuke these children, but seek to reform them, seem to bring the gospel to them, to pray for them all the more. We must know that they are broken sinners who are in need of a Savior. We must reach out to these young people who have no idea because of youth the scars that they are bearing upon their very souls, that they are literally with their lust and with their actions ripping their eyeballs out and ripping their hands off. And so we must not forget where we have brought this generation to as a community, as a society, for we must bear responsibility of our past sins. Think about it this way, which are today's challenges. What I mean is this, that the generations of the 50s, 60s, and 70s with the free love movement, the sex revolution, the pill being produced so that you don't have to worry about the consequences of your actions, and even abortion on demand so that if you do make the mistake, you can get rid of it. We're now living with that, brothers and sisters. And these are the choices that our young ones are having to make. These are the decisions that they're having to make. It is that serious. And so we must repent as a culture, as a church. Repent of past sins. Face today with grace upon our lips, forgiveness in our words, and reconciliation in our hearts. That is what we must do. This is what we can bring to our city, our community, we must bring because it is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In closing, start with reaffirming what we can live, reaffirming how we can live out with these words. So just, you know, what does this seventh commandment then demand of us? Well, it demands this, that all unchastity is accursed of God and that we should therefore loathe it with our whole heart and live chastely and modestly, whether in holy wedlock or in single life. Well, does this only talk about the physical pleasure? Is this all that it's talking about? Absolutely not. Since both our body and soul are temples of the Holy Spirit, it is His will that we keep both pure and holy. Therefore, He forbids all unchaste actions, gestures, words, thoughts, desires, and whatever may entice thereto. Question and answer 108 and 109 on the Heidegger Catechism. preaching a gospel that finds the law of God written upon the hearts of its believers as we saw in Jeremiah 31. Because first the law was upon the heart of Christ, which is why the psalmist can say, Psalm 40, verse 8, I delight to do your will, O God. Your law is within my heart. In Psalm 37, 31, the law of God is in his heart. His steps do not slip. That is speaking of Christ. The moment Christ became a man, had those women fall at his feet, he knew who they were. Not one second did lust enter his heart. Yet we know that for those of us in Christ, we are forgiven. We have a man who lived the perfect life, did not sin, so that he could fulfill and then bring forth this covenant for us. And that's what we can offer to people as was offered to you and for me, the forgiveness of sins and the life eternal. That is where our hope is in Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us stand and pray. Father God, we do hear that you look at unchastity, whether it is action, gesture, word, thought, desire, and you see it as a curse. And so whether we are single or married, we do pray that we may live chastely and modestly and wholly living for our Savior Jesus Christ, for he is the model. He is the model of chastity, of modesty, of integrity. And we pray that we may, as Paul commands us, to mimic Christ in all lives. And so as the Spirit has opened up our hearts and convicted us of our sin, we pray that Christ would then, by His Spirit, apply the healing balm that only He can offer, so we may then grow in grace, live in grace, respond with grace. We pray these things in Jesus Christ's name, who has taught us how to pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us these days our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.