You Have Heard it Said
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 23 viewsNotes
Transcript
Adultery
Adultery
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Is desire sinful? Can we sill have lustful thoughts and not commit sin?
Revoice Conference, non-practicing homosexual christians would say its okay to be gay as long as you aren’t practicing.
No, Put to death … evil desire.
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming.
Here is what Christ is saying. to be kingdom dwellers, disciples of Christ, we have to recognize that our sin is a heart issue, not an action issue and we must take radical steps to put that sin to death.
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Sin, here in 29, is the greek word skand-ah-leezo σκανδαλίζω. It means to cause to stumble or cause to sin.
Christ employs an exaggerated1 form of speech to show, that whatever hinders us from yielding that obedience to God which he requires in his law, ought to be cut off. And he does so expressly, because men allow themselves too much liberty in that respect. If the mind were pure, the eyes and hands would be obedient to it; for it is certain, that they have no movement of their own. But here we are deeply to blame. We are so far from being as careful as we ought to be, to avoid allurements, that we rather provoke our senses to wickedness by allowing them unbounded liberty.
To be sure, this is hyperbole, and illustrates the extreme lengths that we should be willing to go to in order for us to maintain purity. Rest assured, there are much less radical steps that can, be taken, most of the time.
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming.
14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
sin (hamartia) has two senses in the NT.
Sinful deeds/actions
Every appearance of the word “sin” in James refers to sinful deeds.
Sinful inclinations (thoughts,
James uses desire.
In other words, Fallen desires lead to sinful actions.
So, is a fallen desire sin?
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Coveting is something that happens in the mind/heart.
Divorce
Divorce
31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 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.
7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
The scribes and Pharisees were referencing Deut 24 and as a proof text for divorce.
when you get a divorce for other than adultery, you proliferate more adultery. Jesus is saying the same thing that Moses said.
1 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
The passage does not condone divorce, mark it, the passage does not advocate divorce, the passage does not command divorce, the passage regulates remarriage. It is a passage designed to regulate remarriage.
God Hates divorce
God Hates divorce
Three Reasons
11 Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. 12 May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts! 13 And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. 14 But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. 16 “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”
God hates divorce because it impairs parents' opportunity to raise godly offspring. Notice vs. 15. Remember a central purpose of marriage is to produce godly offspring.
God is a covenant-keeping God who hates divorce because it is a breaking of a covenant. When a covenant is made, God’s desire is for it to be kept and for us to persevere in it; not to break it. Notice in vs. 14 the phrase - “you have broken faith with her.” Why the term “faith?” Because the covenant is formed by God, and so a breaking of it is not just a wrong against the spouse, but an offense against God who formed to covenant. In Malachi 2, the covenant is broken between God and Israel.
God hates divorce because it destroys the picture of covenant faithfulness.
4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Biblical Reasons for divorce.
Adultery
Mat 5:32; 19:9
Abandonment
1 Cor 7:15
Rather than asking “is ______ a grounds for divorce,” often the question should be “is _______ grounds for forgiveness, restoration, and/or counseling?”
God’s plan for marriage is for a married couple to stay married for a lifetime
Gen 2:24
Mat 19:6
To be Kingdom Dwellers, disciples of Christ, righteousness must be done, not just taught. The disciples’ righteousness really is righteousness, because they themselves now truly do the will of God and fulfill the law. (Dietrich Boenhoeffer, Discipleship, 120)
Oaths (Truthfulness)
Oaths (Truthfulness)
33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
Do you know what an oath is? It is a proof of the existence of lies in the world. If humans could not lie, oaths would not be necessary.
An oath is a barrier against lying, but in providing this, it also encourages lying, for whenver an oath claims final truthfulness for itself, then at the same time room is also given for lying to take place. Old Testamen law uses oaths to reject lying, but look what Jesus is doing here:
Jesus rejects lying by prohibiting oaths. Both are concerned with the same thing, namely destroying untruthfulness in the life of faithful persons.
Why should we not swear, because there is no such thing as speach not spoken before God. All of our words, as Kingdom Dwellers, as disciples of Christ should be true, without qualification.