Dave Burke

Matthew 5:27-30

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The Sermon on the Mount is very clear: Jesus said that unless we obey God better than the Pharisees, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Then he gives us seven examples; each time he tells us what the law says, then he goes on to explain what it means to do better than the Pharisees. “You have heard that the law says… but I say to you”

Each time he makes us look inside, what is my life like under the surface?

Take murder as an example (21-26). The Pharisees could say, “I haven’t actually killed anyone”. Yet in their hearts they were happy to stay angry with someone, and call him all kinds of names. A Christian knows that kind of hypocrisy is poisonous; he chooses to work on his feelings because what happens in our hearts determines what we do:

See Proverbs 4:23 for this foundational spiritual principle – “Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life”

If our hearts are pure and we are obeying God inwardly, then our actions will follow. No doubt you can say, “I haven’t actually committed adultery with anyone this week”, no doubt that was true, but what is going on under the surface? (Matthew 5:27-30)

First, this is not about finding someone attractive.

“According to the literal meaning of the Greek, the man who is condemned is the man who deliberately uses his eyes to awaken his lust, the man who looks in such a way that passion is awakened and desire deliberately stimulated.”

William Barclay

Some years ago Cathie and I in were in Greece at a Christian conference.  One night she asked if she could confess something, I said yes.  She told me that for the last few days she had not been able to take her eyes of one of the Greek men at the conference.  "Oh! that's a relief", I said, "Because I have been umable to take my eyes off any of the girls since we got here"!  This was the moment both of us realised that we were not called to work in Greece!

But finding someone attractive is not what Jesus is friving at here.  This teaching is about someone who actually entertains the thought of sexual sin, imagines it, and enjoys it; someone who is outwardly obedient to God, but inwardly playing all kinds of mental games with sexual sin.

This is what drives the pornography industry – getting people to look at stuff purely for sexual gratification.

Jesus point is not that actual adultery, or ogling at someone else’s wife, or slobbering over pictures on the Internet is undesirable (though it is), his point is that such behaviour is dangerous and potentially fatal.

Look at verse 29 and 30 – the phrase, “causes you to sin” or “causes you to lust” means something far more menacing that it seems. The word we translate into those two phrases is skandalezei from the noun skandalethron – a bait stick in a trap.

It means something that causes your destruction, and it can destroy others too:

Sexual sin is a poison that hurts people:

First, it harms the person you are lusting after. Think of pornography… someone has to produce this stuff, what do you think it does to them?

Second, you are risking the relationships that matter most to you. The big risk is that you will destroy the trust between you and your partner. Trust is like a window in a relationship; it lets in the light. The glass is tough and keeps out the wind and rain. Yet the glass can be shattered by a single blow (adultery) or slowly covered by an accumulation of muck (pornography) cutting out the light.

Third, let’s be honest; Jesus is not talking here about the things we are really frightened of… discovery… public humiliation… loss of face. He is warning us of something worse – hell. So this is serious, and it requires radical surgery.

Well some people have tried this literally. Origen (195 to 254 AD) castrated himself in direct obedience to these verses. Strangely, it didn’t help!

We are always meant to take the Bible seriously; it is the word of God. We are not always meant to take the Bible literally, because God speaks to us using human forms of expression. This is a great example.

Another approach has been to withdraw from the world. We live in a temptation-rich environment – yesterday I saw an advert for a magazine, it claimed to have, “More gossip, more scandal, more adultery” than any other magazine. Our society is a godless and temptation rich place but getting out of it does not work:

Saint Anthony (born about AD 250) retreated to the desert to escape the temptations of the flesh. There he found exactly the opposite – by resolving not to think about sin he found that he could think of little else!  The famous 'Temptations of St Anthony", stories of his being assailed by temptation for 35 years, are evidence of this.  He would have been better staying put!

There is no harm in removing the temptation; Cathie and I will never work in Greece! But we cannot leave society – even though it is a temptation-rich environment.

There is a lovely moment in the movie “A time to kill” with Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock.  McConaughey plays a lawyer whose family have had to flee the city, Sandra Bullock is helping him with am important case and they grow very close.  One evening he gives her a lift home.  "Do you want to come in?" she says, hopefully.  "Yes", he replies, "So I had better go home!"

But denial is only part of the answer. Cast out a demon, something has to take its place. Turn your back on a desire and that longing has to be satisfied some other way. Psalm 103:5 tells us how, “Who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles”.

Gouging out an eye, cutting of a hand, is Jesus way of telling us to get serious with overcoming sexual impurity in our minds, be it internet pornography or someone we are attracted to at work.

You need to do four things:

• Pray

• Walk away

• Find the good things that will satisfy the longing for the bad stuff. Fill the space with service, the activity of the Holy Spirit.

• Accept God’s grace

Are you serious? God’s word is telling us to respond to his love, get out the knife and clean up our hearts.