Sermon Tone Analysis

December 1, 2021 WED

God desires a holy people.

This is NOT just an OT concept:

Our text tells us that this means not only being holy in our ACTIONS but also in our THOUGHTS.

Text:

Our hyper sexualized society has caused problems with being holy — NOT just amongst people outside of relationship with Jesus, but also within.

A few months ago I remarked with incredulity that, according to a Pew Research study completed in August 2020:

A majority of Christians (57%) say sex between unmarried adults in a committed relationship is sometimes or always acceptable.

How can WE say that in light of our text?

Indeed, how can we?

Did God stutter?

Does He only mean this for ancient people and not a modern society?

Why or why not?

5. What, according to Jesus, is the full meaning of the seventh commandment: "Do not commit adultery" (Matthew 5:27-28)?

Question 5.

There is not the slightest suggestion here that natural sexual relations within the commitment of marriage are anything but God-given and beautiful.

We may thank God that the Song of Solomon is contained in the canon of Scripture, for there is not Victorian prudery there but rather the uninhibited delight of lovers, of bride and bridegroom in each other.

No, the teaching of Jesus here refers to unlawful sex outside marriage, whether practiced by married or unmarried people.

Similarly, Jesus' allusion is to all forms of immorality.

To argue that the reference is only to a man lusting after a woman and not vice versa, or only to a married man and not an unmarried, since the offender is said to commit "adultery" not "fornication," is to be guilty of the very casuistry which Jesus was condemning in the Pharisees.

His emphasis is that any and every sexual practice which is immoral in deed is immoral also in look and thought.

Sam Storms:

… the principle underlying 5:21–48 is in order.

First, Jesus is revealing the inadequacy of the Mosaic law in that it could only legislate against the outward act.

Second, Jesus expands, intensifies, and heightens Moses by prohibiting the inward thought and intent of the heart of which the outward act is but an expression.

Third, by doing so he countered and corrected the Pharisaic distortion of the Law, namely, their belief that morality or “righteousness” consisted simply of external conformity irrespective of internal attitudes.

A. The Principles—5:27–28

Several comments are in order.

1. Evidently, the Pharisees had done with the 7th commandment (against adultery) the same thing they did with the 6th (against murder).

Thinking that they had behaved righteously simply by refraining from the act of actually spilling human blood, they ignored, indeed, may well have approved, that anger and malice of the heart which are the cause of murder.

Likewise with adultery, lust was irrelevant, for it was a matter of the heart over which the law courts of Moses had no jurisdiction.

Thus, as long as the deed itself was avoided, righteousness was maintained.

Just as Jesus countered in vv.

21–26 by pointing out that the prohibition of murder includes the angry thought and the insulting word, so also the prohibition of adultery now includes the lustful look and the covetous heart.

2. We must remember that there is no hint here of sexual relations within marriage being anything other than God-given and beautiful.

It is precisely because the gift of sex is God-given that Jesus seeks to protect it by stating this prohibition on both the act and attitude of adultery.

How was Jesus protecting God-given sexuality (within the bonds of marriage)?

The question is often asked: “Did Jesus have sexual desires?”

The issue was much in the news upon the release several years ago of the movie, “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

My belief is that Yes, Jesus did have sexual desires, but not sexual lust.

His sexuality was part of his humanity, but we can rest assured that he never once violated the prohibition on lust which he himself articulates in this passage.

How could he have:

3. Jesus is not forbidding men to “look” at women or women to “look” at men.

Rather, he forbids them looking in order to lust.

It isn’t his purpose to condemn the normal attraction that exists between men and women.

We admire beauty in God’s creation wherever it appears, even in the human body.

To recognize, acknowledge and compliment beauty is no sin (it may even be a duty).

But to look upon another human being with the express purpose of fantasizing illicit sexual activity or mentally and emotionally gratifying a sexual desire is out of biblical bounds.

Jesus has in mind using a woman’s “visual presence as a means of savoring the fantasized act” (Willard, 161).

He’s focusing on the look which longs to possess for expressly sexual purposes.

It would appear, then, that our Lord has deepened the 7th commandment, the prohibition of adultery, in terms of the 10th, the prohibition of covetousness.

The word used for “lust” here is epithumeo.

Only used this way in 2x in NT.

Here in

(a) thumos = quick burst of temper; the anger that surges and then subsides (as, for example, when we experience an explosive loss of temper);

It is used in the LXX of Ex. 20:17 and Dt.

5:21 to translate the Hebrew of the 10th commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.”

The word “lust” in English connotes sensual and sexual overtones but lacks the thought of possessing inherent in the prohibition.

This may be why Jesus refers to the “hand” in v. 30 in connection with “lust,” i.e., to lust after another’s wife is in a real sense to steal.

Adultery, either in act or attitude is theft: it is taking to yourself, either physically or emotionally, a person who has not been given to you in marriage.

One more point: the distinction between “looking” and “lusting” is not a great chasm but a razor’s edge!

4. Let us not miss the connection our Lord draws between sight and sin.

This isn’t to deny that our other senses can be turned into instruments of sin.

We must carefully monitor what we hear as much as what we see.

But there can be little doubt, as Stott has said, that “deeds of shame are preceded by fantasies of shame, and the inflaming of the imagination by the indiscipline of the eyes” (88).

Very little sin makes its way into actuality without having passed first through the eyes of the sinner.

5.

The problem which lust posed in the first century is nothing compared with today.

We live in a world where there is a concerted assault on our senses by the mass media: magazines (even respectable ones such as Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated [whose best-selling issue each year is the swimsuit issue], movies, billboards, TV, commercials, etc.

We can’t legislate fashion, but both men and women know the difference between dressing attractively and dressing seductively.

6.

Some Christians have taken Matthew 5:29-30 literally and have mutilated their bodies.

How do you think Jesus intends us to understand his warnings?

Question 6.

On the surface it is a startling command to pluck out an offending eye, to cut off an offending hand or foot.

A few Christians, whose zeal greatly exceeded their wisdom, have taken Jesus literally.

The best known example is the third-century scholar, Origen of Alexandria, who actually made himself a eunuch.

Not long after, in A.D. 325, the Council of Nicea was right to forbid this barbarous practice.

The command to get rid of troublesome eyes, hands and feet is an example of our Lord's use of dramatic figures of speech.

What he was advocating was not a literal physical self-maiming, but a ruthless moral self-denial.

Not mutilation but mortification is the path of holiness he taught, and mortification or "taking up the cross" to follow Christ means to reject sinful practices so resolutely that we die to them or put them to death (see Mark 8:34; Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:24; Col. 3:5).

mortification.

An ecclesiastical term used to describe the action of ‘killing’ or ‘deadening’ the lusts of the flesh through spiritual self-denial and the infliction of bodily discomfort.

Fasting and abstention from pleasure are among the many means of mortification.

It is because Christians have died with Christ in Baptism that they are bidden to mortify the works of the flesh (Rom.

8:13, Col. 3:3–5).

Though M. *Luther protested that works were of no avail in putting the old nature to death, both he and other 16th-cent.

Reformers insisted on a discipline of mortification as a consequence of the righteousness that comes through faith.

Temptation and Sin, by John Owen (Sovereign Grace Book Club, 1958

The publishers are to be thanked for this reprint of three of John Owen’s writings: Mortification of Sin, Temptation, and Indwelling Sin.

The first work is based on Romans 8:13.

After expounding this verse, Owen affirms, “Mortification is the duty of the best believers” (p.

9), and, “The Spirit [is] the only author of this work” (p.

16).

He then shows what mortification of sin is (pp.

24–33), and points out that mortification will be accomplished only in the believer who desires the mortification of every sin (pp.

33–43).

He then gives nine preparatory instructions (pp.

43–78), such as, “Get a clear and abiding sense … of the guilt, danger, and evil of that sin wherewith thou art perplexed” (p.

50).

Owen concludes (pp.

78–86) by showing how active faith in Christ, under the blessing of the Holy Spirit, results in mortification.

7.

In what situations might we need to "gouge out an eye" or "cut off a hand"?

We need to sift what we watch and hear.

How might this spiritual surgery differ from person to person?