As we make our way through the Sermon on the Mount, I would remind you again that our scripture readings function as Jesus interacts, particularly with the Ten Commandments. Our scripture reading functions as our hearing of God's will for our lives, our reading of the law. So this morning, we hear God's word and we hear his will revealed to us in Matthew 5, verses 27 through 32. I encourage you to take your Bibles out and turn there. And if you're using a Pew Bible, you'll find it on page five of the New Testament section. Let's pray as we prepare to hear God's word. Our Father in heaven, through your word and by the power of your Holy Spirit, we pray that you would bring us ever closer to our Savior. By this reading of your word, we ask you to prompt our hearts to offer you sincere thanks in both word and deed for the gift of our salvation. And we ask that you would prompt us to live out our salvation in grateful obedience. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus, our Savior and Lord. Amen. So again, this morning we hear from Matthew's Gospel, chapter five, beginning at verse 27. 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 has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We don't need to look out at the world. in order to feel that the world is broken in regard to lust, adultery, and divorce. At some level, nearly every one of us has felt the pain and the brokenness that accompanies lust or marital infidelity or divorce. Some of us keenly and acutely, and others of us here this morning at a more muted distance. Perhaps one of your parents was unfaithful to his or her spouse. Perhaps your spouse has been unfaithful to you. Perhaps you were a child caught in the crossfire of a broken marriage that ended in divorce. Or you had friends who were. Perhaps you feel the pain of guilt and regret for your own infidelity. Or the shame of your own struggle with lust. This morning, we and Jesus in this teaching from this passage, we start east of Eden. We begin in a world fallen from its original glory and design. A world in which the nakedness of a man and woman has turned from innocent gratitude to God for the beauty of the other, and from appropriate sexual attraction, and healthy desire, it's turned from that into shame and lust. We begin east of Eden, in a world fallen from its original glory and design. A world in which cooperative partners, male and female, two beings who image God in creation, have instead become competitors. Not cooperative partners, but now competitors in a power struggle. We begin in a world in which men and women objectify and manipulate one another. The world in which they selfishly turn the other into objects that gratify their various disordered sexual desires. Unholy, unrighteous desires that grate against the grain of God's creation. Unholy and unrighteous desires that mar, spoil, and soil God's good design and intent for creation. That's where Jesus begins. He begins by stating the tragic facts of life East of Eden. You've heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. That's life East of Eden. And yes, Jesus disciples sitting on the hill had certainly heard that it's again. It's this this last week we heard the 6th commandment. Now he's the 7th commandment. But I say to you, and once again, in a bold move like we heard last week, Jesus places his statement alongside the law in its authority and power. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. It's a simple statement of the tragic facts of life east of Eden. Adultery arises out of the disordered, sinful desires of our rebellious hearts. And like we saw last week with anger and murder, the person is guilty whether the lust ever becomes adultery or not. Likewise, Jesus is stating the tragic facts of life east of Eden as he quotes from Deuteronomy 24 and then gives his authoritative interpretation of it. It was also said, and that's Deuteronomy 24 there, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of unchastity causes her to commit adultery. and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Tragic statements of the facts of life east of Eden in which sin begets sin and pain and brokenness beget pain and brokenness. Tragic statements of the facts of life east of Eden that uncover the pain of a very broken and very hurt world. A world of pain and guilt and grief. Jesus spoke these words about divorce into a context in which divorce was easily granted to husbands who wished to be divorced from their wives. So in the first century Jewish world, the power to divorce always belonged to the husband and never to the wife. According to one of the ancient schools of rabbinical interpretation, when Deuteronomy 24 spoke of a husband giving his wife a certificate of divorce for some indecency found in her, that indecency could be, and I quote from the ancient rabbis here, even if she spoiled a dish for him. In other words, if she burnt the toast, or if she put too much salt in the soup. A later but still ancient rabbi, Rabbi Akiba, of the same rabbinical school that said the former, went farther, saying that a husband could divorce his wife, and I quote, even if he found another fairer than she. So this is, in short, a version of first century no-fault divorce. I mean, what's the fault here? Burning the toast? First century no-fault divorce in which the husband has all the power, The wife has none. So we must remember, when we hear Jesus speak these words, that he is the king, he's the king who has come, accomplishing for us a new and greater exodus. King Jesus has set us and all creation free, not just from slavery to a tyrannical pharaoh, and not even only from the consequences of sin, and thankfully he has done, but not just that, but even from the power of sin itself. So Jesus paints again the portrait of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, the citizens of a redeemed creation. He paints for us a picture of people set free to live flourishing lives according to creation's original intent that was revealed to us in the moral law. Set us free to live lives that go with the grain of creation as God intends and upholds it. In Matthew 19 beginning at verse 4. And Jesus is pressed. More by the Pharisees on the question of divorce and Jesus reveals his real concern in his response to them. He answered. Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female? And said for this reason. A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Jesus' real concern in his fulfillment of the law, particularly as it is written on his people's hearts, is to set his kingdom people free to live according to God's original design and intent for creation. That's why he goes back to the creation account. In Christ, we have been set free from slavery to sin. In Christ, we have been set free for lives that bring into the present the creation's original design back in the Garden of Eden. and so also bring into the present the world's renewed and redeemed future. Jesus is painting the picture of the citizens of God's kingdom who rather than reducing other people to objects who gratify their disordered desires, sexual and otherwise, he's talking about painting a picture of people who instead of that rightly relate, who righteously relate to other people, from an orientation, from remember the attitude indicator in the airplane, from an attitude of humility of spirit, purity of heart, meekness, mercy, selflessness, reconciliation, all of these things that we've seen already in the Sermon on the Mount. God's people who are given new life in Christ see the other, male and female, and behold, they see not an object for their consumption, but rather they see a person who uniquely, wonderfully, and beautifully bears the image of the holy God who made that person. As the poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, quoted this before, the citizens of God's kingdom see Christ playing in 10,000 places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men's and women's faces. Like in Jesus' authoritative interpretation of the sixth commandment that we heard last Sunday, the point isn't really to ask what is and what isn't lust. The point is not to make up a new list of rules and sub-rules to compete with the Pharisees and beat them at their own game. The point rather is that the citizen of the kingdom has been given a new heart, set free to hunger and thirst for righteousness. A new heart set free to pursue God with such a single-minded purity of heart, a new heart that will do whatever is necessary to cast out the old, rock-hard, sinful heart's slavery to lust in any and all of its forms, no matter how drastic. Gouging out the eyes, chopping off the limbs is an intentional exaggeration. It's hyperbole. But it gets Jesus' point across. The citizen of God's kingdom will stop at nothing to eradicate the impurity of lust from their lives. even if it means giving up their smartphones, their computers, their internet connections, their romance novels, their romantic comedies, whatever it takes. It means they will stop at nothing in order to be rightly related to their God and to their neighbors. to live salvation lives in Christ both now and forever. It's better to lose that stuff now than the whole body to be thrown into hell. And if you are in the midst of a struggle with the lust, I'm not here this morning to proclaim to you a cheap and easy grace. God's grace is costly. It costs nothing less than the son's own precious blood. And as God's costly grace sanctifies us, though it is given to us freely by God's grace, it will likely feel costly to us as well. It very well could feel like gouging out eyes and chopping off limbs. It might even feel like a death to self. If you're in the midst of a struggle with lust, I'm not here to proclaim a cheap and easy grace to you, but I am here to proclaim grace to you. The Father loves you. The Spirit indwells and empowers you for purity. And the darkness of this world east of Eden did not and cannot overcome the light of he who is our life and light, our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, let us remember that God has placed us in the world to be the embodied proclamations of the good news of the new exodus Jesus has accomplished for his people, setting us free to be who and what God designed humans to be as sexual creatures. So even in this particular case, When we're talking about lust and we're talking about divorce, we are the light of the world. That itself is a proclamation of grace, that's who you are. And likewise, moving on to the next section, as Jesus speaks of divorce, he is painting a picture of the kingdom in which its citizens, the men and the women of God's new Eden, righteously relate to one another. rather than walking through their marriages selflessly pursuing their own ends and ending it, ending the marriage when things don't go their way or they find a new and better model. In their marriages, the citizens of God's kingdom selflessly seek the good of the other, pour out their lives for the other. They love one another with the cross-shaped love of Christ. The husband and the wife in the kingdom relate to one another from an orientation, from that attitude of all of the things that we've heard in this Sermon on the Mount already. Humility, purity of heart, meekness, mercy, the reconciliation that follows from that. I don't need to tell you that our culture is very confused about marriage, and that's probably a kind way of putting it. It's confused about marriage. And not just like in the big ways, but it's just simply confused about marriage. But all too often, it probably believes that love and marriage, if there's gonna be a marriage, work like it works in the romantic comedies. And then when the feelings and the excitement wear off, what do you do? Even for the people of the New Eden, marriage east of Eden is hard work. Of course the feelings wear off. I remember hearing a number of years ago, and it has been a number of years ago, Al, I was actually in college when I heard this, that psychologists or sociologists or whoever it is that studies such things put the average amount of time it takes for the romantic feelings and the excitement of a romantic relationship to wear off at about 18 months. I don't know if that time frame has changed in this new sped up world or if it's about the same, but the romantic feels roughly 18 months for them to wear off. But then what? What do you do when the romantic buzz is gone? The citizens of God's kingdom are then presented with an opportunity. An opportunity to subject themselves to what one author has called the crucible of discipleship. He envisions marriage as a crucible. The crucible of, this is the thing, you're grinding stuff and getting it into its purest form. After the excitement and the feelings wear off, you get to, in humility, admit over and over again that you were wrong. You get to deny yourself. over and over again of your time, your energy, your whole self for the sake of your spouse. You get to confess. You get to serve, and then serve some more. You get to extend grace, patience, and mercy. you get to be Jesus to one another. You get to do that because our Lord has accomplished his new exodus and has redeemed you out of slavery to sinful selfishness and has reconciled you into his abundant life. Husband and wife get to be Jesus to one another. Friends, this world east of Eden is broken and it is dark. But friends, you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth in your marriages and in your singleness. I would argue that both marriage and singleness are crucibles of discipleship in their own unique ways. God will use them, whatever he calls us into, to shape us into the likeness of Jesus Christ. And as we look like Jesus in our singleness and in our marriage, we will be the light of the world. We will be the salt of the earth in unique ways. The world, though, friends, is parched and desperately needs to see the refreshing water of the righteous marriages of unfallen Eden restored. It needs to see marriage restored. The darkness deepens every day. And the world, without even knowing it, likewise cries out to see people who live out righteous singleness. The world needs to see the singleness of God's redeemed people too. So in your marriages and in your singleness, you are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth. And once again, we hear this, how do we do this? Like last week, Anger. Murder. Do we do it by sheer willpower? I will not lust. I will not lust. I will be patient with my wife. I will humbly admit that I was wrong. Is it not the fears and the insecurities of the fallen world east of Eden that cause us to believe the lies of the deceiver who whispers in our ears, this lust will bring you fulfillment and joy? Is it not the fears and insecurities of the fallen world east of Eden, we're naked fears and insecurities that cause us to cling to being right, to cling to being impatient, that cause us to listen to the lies of the deceiver. You deserve a new and better model. You'll be your truer, fuller self with someone else. He needs to serve you more. Hmm. You do not need to grant her one more ounce of patience or grace. So what do we do if not mutter with clenched teeth, I will not lust. I will love my spouse and be more patient, more gracious. Once again, we rest our whole being and our whole life in the wellspring from which Eden is restored. We rest in the one who is himself wholeness and holiness. We rest in Christ the King and we find that he casts away our fears and our insecurities. We rest in Christ the King and find that he destroys the power of lust, impurity, and immodesty over us. We rest in Christ the King and we find our value and our worth and our peace in him. And so we find ourselves made new. Given those new orientations, those new attitudes, the orientations, the attitudes of his kingdom, we rest. in the one whose spirit flows into and flows out of our hearts made new and who empowers us to take the next step into the story of God's faithfulness into which we've been written. We rest in the one who has made us citizens of his kingdom. We rest in Christ our King. And then we go forth in the newness of the life he has given us. With his fulfillment of his law written on our hearts, we go forth sexually pure, patient, forgiving, loving, and as sexual beings, male and female, in both singleness and in marriage. We go forth and we live as salt and light for God's world. Amen.