Well, I invite you to turn this morning to Matthew chapter 5 as we continue our study in the Sermon on the Mount, and we come today really to the seventh commandment that Jesus is treating here, and I'll be reading verses 27 through 32 of Matthew chapter 5. Let's give our attention this morning to the Lord's wonderful word to us, his holy word. 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 lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body 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 everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. And there we'll end this morning the reading of God's Word. Well, as I've already pointed out throughout this study in Matthew's Gospel, and particularly now the Sermon on the Mount, that Matthew is dealing with false religion. This book is confronting that head on. And I think that's why it's so uncomfortable for people is because it's designed in the very inspiration by the Spirit to take away from us a mere external approach in our relationship with the Lord. As important as outward obedience is, it's designed to take us internal to the heart. And that's why it's so uncomfortable for people. But I think we know this in daily interactions. We know this in daily interactions. You never really get anywhere in a relationship with someone until you have reached a point in which you have moved from superficialities externally in the relationship to something that connects with them that's true on the inside. Those relationships that remain shallow and superficial will stay there until you get to the most important matters of the human heart with them and sometimes that's why conflict conflict can produce an absolute great path forward we don't like conflict but it can because now it draws out they say you never really build a relationship with somebody till you have some kind of conflict with them to talk about no longer mere external things you know food and weather and to get to somebody who they are what jesus is doing here is just that if you will he's willing to take on the conflict he's greatly concerned to draw out sincerity of heart to draw out faith to call people to faith in this and to accomplish this jesus had to first address heart religion true religion sincere love from a pure heart and he had to address what had happened in israel with the religion that had been created and propagated in advance by the religious leaders so now what he has done in chapter five is to begin the sermon on the mount is to dive dive deep into the moral law of god to in chapter five with the fulfillment of love And then in chapter 6, what we're going to look at is what constitutes true and sincere devotion. He'll go through all the devotional stuff of the scribes and the Pharisees. That was all done externally. And so we'll look at fasting and prayer. We saw what they did. He exposes all that. But when it comes to chapter 5, and he's addressing the moral law of God, they had taken the law of God, they had taken the moral commandments of God, and made their entire approach one outward. And they did that with the goal of establishing their own righteousness before God. Everything became outward for the Pharisees. And this is what they taught the people to be like before God. To look good in front of everyone. But they never accomplished, as the pastors in Israel, taking people to the true inward requirements of the law that searches the whole man. With the goal that the law would have the right effect. That's why Jesus constantly said, you've made the law of no effect. He was greatly concerned of what the law was designed to do and to accomplish. That it would draw out, as he began his ministry, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Believe. as He then would make us new creatures in Him, a new creation. Well, this is the great question I want to ask this morning as we open up this section. If Jesus says that we must have a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees, I hope you're getting some understanding of what that is by now. It seems to me the question that has to be is, do you desire this righteousness? Do you want a sincere faith? Or do you just want to be kept far from it all, at a distance? Do we want to have a sincere religion that pleases God, or do we want to stay on the superficial surface of it all? To get here, we have to experience some discomfort, don't we? Admittedly, we have to go deep into the human heart and to see what God's law requires of us and to see what the human heart truly is before God. And that's tough business. This is why it's difficult in ministry because, as I said last time, true ministry takes one here. It has to. So that we might have a pure and undefiled religion before God. Well, today we're looking at the righteous requirements of the seventh commandment. And the purpose here is to consider what had happened in the realm of human sexuality if you will how they had boxed out the law of god preventing people from seeing internally and knowing what the great standard was and jesus here corrects this and shows the goal of the commandments especially the seventh commandment which is love last time we looked at the sixth commandment thou shall not murder addressing the problem that the religious leaders had made the law of no effect by running around saying that command is honored simply when we do not commit the outward act of murder of killing somebody jesus took us deep into that commandment and said do you realize that um do you realize that even anger in the heart and that as it moves to despising somebody and that as it moves to you gossiping and speaking against somebody is worthy of eternal hell do you do you know that that's the righteous demand of the law jesus has mentioned hell a lot in the sermon on the mount so far so if we didn't get that message as he is selectively choosing commandments here from verse 16 to say the pharisees had lessened the effect of the commandments by teaching not the full scope of the commandments we now move to the seventh in verse 27 you have heard that it was said you shall not murder it's interesting it's last time he said you have said to those of old we knew he was engaging what the religious leaders were teaching he's doing the same thing here but it's interesting how he how he captures this he directly quotes the commandment so this was something that wasn't just said it was something that was also inspired but it's interesting how jesus says this and what he's emphasizing in what follows he's continuing to address what the religious leaders did to the commandments of god now with regard to adultery so it really begins like this you have heard that the pharisees are always verbally saying this you shall not commit adultery you shall not commit adultery you shall not commit adultery everyone knew the religious leaders made a big deal of this one and by the way when you have someone who's always beating the same drum as to a moral precept of the law who's always condemning everyone on some moral precept of the law you can't drink you can't drink you can't drink it's probably their struggle it's probably their struggle it's usually what they're secretly dealing with they took the commandment and made it only apply to the outward act of adultery and we know their attitude toward anyone who committed it there's debate about john 8 but That attitude is right in John 8 where that woman caught in adultery. They were ready to stone. And the same is true when it came to the law of marriage. It was all external. So you have the issue with adultery, merely external. Then you have the law of marriage, which was merely external. And that's what he says in verse 31. whoever divorces his wife let him give her a certificate of divorce you have heard that it was said that the pharisees ran around saying this all the time anyone who divorces his wife the way to handle that is make sure she gets the certificate and they quoted deuteronomy 24 1 listen carefully to it when a man has taken a wife and married her and it comes to pass that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her then let her him write her a bill of divorcement and give it and give it in her hand and send her out of his house i'm gonna come back to that i'm going to come back to that seems like a really harsh commandment doesn't it on the outside why in the world would god allow that pharisees looked looked at that in the old testament see you can divorce just hand the paper for anything that you find that you dislike in your wife so such a person as long as it's done with the paper they drew the conclusion that they're that person is free to marry again and whoever they desire without any worry about committing adultery it's absolutely fine for another man to marry the former wife i'll come back to all this what happened is externally this is what we're focusing on for a minute the binding nature of marriage came down to a piece of paper is that what binds marriage i'm good i've i have i've signed the divorce papers well the first question i think we should ask here is why would they and why were they so okay with merely finding the letter of the law externally and justifying all their actions away while totally avoiding the heart. It seems like that's the fair question here. Why? It's not like the Old Testament didn't address this. It was always because the nation that was closest to God, Israel, Their great problem in their relationship with the Lord was that they had uncircumcised hearts. And what did the Lord say in the New Covenant He would have to do? Well, this is Deuteronomy. The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants. And you will love Him. With all your heart, with all your soul, so that you may live. You will love him. You'll stop doing this. You see why he's tackling it now. See what we have here? Jesus spoke of the righteousness of the Pharisees, and this is it. It was an approach to God that attempted to achieve outward obedience. Outward obedience actually kept them from a circumcised heart. it kept them from the law of love it kept them from coming to the lord in faith it kept them from repentance that's what i'm pressing with a lot of people think that if they just do enough and look good outwardly and lead an outwardly moral life so that they look righteous to people but it never moves to faith it never moves to actually loving and knowing god as long as they maintain the look they're okay they're so worried about what everyone thinks this was nicodemus nicodemus you need to be born from above you need my circumcised heart i told israel they need this is not about just looking good on the outside it's not about playing the game back to adultery you have heard that it was said they rehearsed this ad nauseum the seventh commandment thou shall not commit adultery but i say to you everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart the pharisees never got to the full orb scope of the law never got to the whole person here is the standard jesus does it right here here's the standard we're not saying here it's jesus is not saying just to look at a woman as sin notice what he says when we look at a woman with the intent to lust when those first motions of sin arise in our desires through the channel of the eye When you look with intent to lust, any lust as emotion of the heart that sets its desire, your desire on someone not whom God has given you, you are an open adulterer in God's sight. Anyone, not your spouse, at your work, your neighborhood, at the supermarket, in church. When you have engaged and lusted, you have committed the act of adultery. It starts there, through the window of the eye, really. Even though it's from the heart that all this proceeds. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. Well, that's in the next chapter. David did this when his idle eyes looked at Bathsheba, or Potiphar's wife did this when she looked on Joseph. This goes both ways. Any form of lust that arises in the heart, in the desire of the human heart, is sin. and even before it's fully acted upon is blatant sin and it's a Jesus says a breaking of the seventh commandment and that applies even to people not married we have to say since sexual purity is the will of God for your lives the proper place for such thing is such things are marriage is marriage that initial desire that makes you at all desire to look at anything that is impure pornography is adultery, he says. And we have all kinds of movements in our day that have tried to deny that those desires, they might say are fallen, are sin. Jesus categorically rejects any idea that that is not sin. Every man is tempted when he's drawn away of his own lust and entice, James 1. Now, that's the standard. That's how holy God is. And anything by way of dress that has a desire to incite is the same thing. Anyone who dresses in a way that desires to incite is the same thing. It's an unchaste heart. That's what that's exposing. You see, you have to feel this. My guess is people aren't real comfortable right now. The Pharisees ran around publicly saying, Oh, how great the sin of adultery is. It deserves death, they said. But Jesus is saying, well, the same standard applies to your inner lusts and your desires. When you look in lust, even though it doesn't even give way to action, on the inside of you, that will land you in hell. You hear him? That will land you in hell. He's just leveled the whole playing field, hasn't he? What are we looking at? Our heart's an open book before God. And at this point, everyone should be burdened because God punished this sin everywhere. William Perkins said, Adultery has destroyed the church, families, entire kingdoms. It breaks the covenant between the parties and God. It robs another of the precious ornament of chastity. It dishonors our bodies. It makes them temples of the devil. It makes our families a stew, slow-cooked meal, he means. God punishes adulterers partly in this life and partly after death. No one's getting away with it. Now, do you see why I said what a Pharisee does here? If he could merely keep the religion external, you'll never get here. And what good will that be? You've never come to deal with your God yet in your life. And his standard. I think of Harold Camping was a false teacher in so many ways, but there's one statement I used to hear him say on the open forum all the time that I thought was the most effective statement. He was, are you prepared to meet your God? Jesus uses hyperbole here. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out. if your right hand causes you to sin cut it off throw it away for it'd be better to lose your member than your whole body to be thrown into hell go to radical measures in life to cut this out now before i get to the gospel i think we have to consider the goal then of the commandment what is the goal of the commandment what's the positive dimension of the commandment why would this even matter well for one God has given you a spouse to love and he loves your spouse and he wants you to cherish your spouse he wants your eyes on her or him which for Christians represents the mystery of Christ and the church he loves your eyes are for your spouse you think we would have to talk about divorce in the next section if love drove our marriage you see the connection here that's the connection jesus knew what they were doing consider again now for a minute you've heard the dimension of the the seventh commandment consider now the law of marriage just for a second consider what they're saying about divorce they were saying you get the paper you're free deuteronomy 24 again when a man has taken a wife and married her and it comes to pass that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her then let him write her a bill of divorce and give it in her hand and send her out of the house, hand it over, just give it to her. The law says that if a husband finds no favor in her, something that's unclean, just hand the certificate. This was a civil law. This was not a moral law. This was a civil law. And here's why it was given. It was a law permitted because bad men were cruel to their wives. If a man, for some unjust reason, decided he didn't love his wife anymore and found some fault in her, maybe he wasn't even attracted to her anymore. Maybe her glory faded because beauty is fleeting, isn't it? The civil law of Israel allowed for a certificate to be given. You think, why? Because what an awful, tormented life that woman would have to lead if a man treated her that way. To be stuck to her with that kind of hate. Which would often lead in that culture to him murdering her. So due to the hardness of heart, God permitted this in civil law. a certificate would be allowed to protect the woman the Lord's the one that cares about protecting women so what happened in Israel is that the leaders took this and ran with it we've signed the divorce papers it's over that's not what binds marriage that's not what binds marriage piece of paper God does what God has joined together let no man separate that's the law that's in the moral dimension of the law God hates divorce so Jesus says the intent of the law is that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality. In other words, if there is adultery, then that's a legitimate breaking of the marriage bond. But listen to this. Whoever divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality, notice what he says, and such actions make her commit adultery. What? or whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. We've all been confused by this. I don't think it's very complicated at all. We might do as the Pharisees and come up with all the what-ifs at this moment, and that's not what Jesus is intending to do at all here. It is intended, that is not the intended effect. The effect is this. When a man disregards his wife this way, and apart from sexual immorality, divorces her. He doesn't at all consider God or her. For marriage is designed to be binding in love. And he, without any love for her, leads her into adultery who will want to be loved somewhere else. And his hard-hearted actions now even cause another man to commit adultery because the point is God united them and that divorce on his part was sinful with all kinds of sinful repercussions. In other words, he's saying to the Pharisees, you guys run around and say, give the certificate of divorce. Thou shall not commit adultery. By the way you treat your wives, you're committing adultery and causing adultery everywhere. See it? By your loveless disregard of your wife. Now you cause it everywhere. Because of all the sexual immorality we've seen in our culture, this is where it began. This general attitude towards marriage is everywhere. I was, think of how sad this is. I was at the barbershop the other day. I had just finished writing this sermon. Are you ready for this? Some guy sitting in the barber chair and he says, yeah, I got rid of my first wife and I found another and had to start over. Do you know how much work it's been to train her? I'm quoting. You know, in basketball, when somebody got dunked on, we would say, you don't want to get dunked on because you're going to be postered. That guy's getting sermoned right now. What an awful thing to say. That is the attitude to this day. He wants us to appreciate God's righteous standard of marriage and the intent is to love between spouses and that bond's intended for life. This is what the law requires. I trust you see why Jesus is concerned about a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees now? Someone who has felt the weight of all this, the first thing that should happen, which the Pharisees never did, when it comes to the seventh commandment, is drop his knee before God. And he should confess his sins. Because this commandment leveled everyone. The sin of adultery, of letting lust run rampant in our hearts as a way of life, not loving the spouse God gave us, where should this lead us? To the kind of broken and contrite heart for God loves your appointed spouse. And we all fail in many ways. This is why Christ came to forgive sins, but the Pharisees never could get anyone here. They never felt what you felt today. Conviction. You see? That's what the law is designed to do. And then it's designed, as we think about this, the Lord says, I will not cast out anyone who comes to me. They weren't coming. But then when we come, he justifies us by faith. And he washes us. He washes all that impurity. And then we begin to pursue a righteousness that's beyond this. And here's the fundamental difference. David was an adulterer. Remember? What did David begin to pursue after that? He asked the Lord, keep my eyes from vanity. Job said I'll make a covenant with my eyes That I'll look on no more worthless things The righteousness that follows Is that we love our spouses in marriage That's the design That's the heart of the law That we honor them That we keep ourselves pure for them that begins when we love the Lord because He circumcised our hearts to love Him first. And that spills over to our neighbor. That's what marriage should be. I've said it before. My favorite moment in a wedding is when, in a healthy scenario, not abused by the rampant sexual immorality of our day, but when beforehand a groom who's been waiting for this day forever and the bride is coming down and the father is walking in, it's just emotional because I see it all the time. And the father is walking his daughter in and that father has trained that daughter and he's giving her to that man. And as soon as the music, you know, everyone stands up and the music plays, no one ever looks at the groom. I do. He's usually shaking, crying. It's just a beautiful scene of just what God intended when he brought Eve to Adam. She's bone of my bone. She's flesh of my flesh. that's the love and the design of marriage and the pursuit of that love that God intends for the whole marriage. And that's what he wants us in a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees to pursue. As Paul said to the Thessalonians, may the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other. This is what Christ is after, faith in Him, and from that faith, the kind of love from God and neighbor. My question then is this to close today. Do we desire the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees? Well, you can say yes, and you can say today, I've come to the Lord and I love Him because He first loved me. You make that new beginning in your life. sometimes it's slow sometimes there are patterns of sin that take a long time to break but don't misunderstand me he gives you his grace and his holy spirit and we'll release you marriage is honored then love is honored purity is pursued will we stumble yeah you're going to come back to christ constantly that's what the christian life is, daily repentance, daily conversion. But we're no longer washing the outside of the cup, you see. We no longer have to put the white dress on in hypocrisy because you're washed on the inside. Love from a pure heart follows. Our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and from dead works. I'm thankful Christ takes us and shows us in all of his fullness what the righteous requirement of the law is. Isn't it beautiful? Can you say with the psalmist, I love your law, oh God. Now you know why we study it. We meditate upon it. When we're in sin, it's like our hearts are empty of it. And you have to fill back up that heart and mind with God's law, which is a hedge and a protection from all this stuff. And God offers us here His power to be His new creation. To have the righteous requirement of the law fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. May God bless you. Amen.