Sermon on the Mount

Heart Problems:

Matthew 5:27-30 ““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 is 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 is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

This is the 7th Commandment

Ex 20:14 ““You shall not commit adultery.”

The rabbis in Jesus’ day tended to look at adultery as wrong because it involved stealing another man’s wife. They viewed it as an external act. Jesus, on the other hand, saw it as wrong because it made the lustful individual impure morally, an internal condition.

The Source

James 4:1 “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?”

James identified, with a rhetorical question, the source of both kinds of conflict as pleasures. “Pleasures” are satisfied desires

Luke 8:14 “And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.”

Titus 3:3 “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.”

Notice the orientation of the battle

at war “within you”

James did not say they war against each other in the believer but that, as a besieging army, they inevitably assail him or her.

The satisfaction of desire, which is what pleasure is, is something people spend vast quantities of time, money, and energy to obtain.

Am I spending them to satisfy my personal desires or God’s desires primarily? Our personal desires are part of our human nature, and we will never escape their pull as long as we live in our present bodies.

James 4:2 “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.”

“Unsatisfied desire leads to murder . . .; disappointed ambition leads to quarrelling and fighting.”

The only way to obtain satisfaction is to ask God to give it. We do not have what God wants us to have because we do not ask Him for these things.[178] This is one of the most important verses in the Bible concerning prayer. There are some things we can have from God that we will not have unless we ask Him for them.

James 4:3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

However, we often ask God for things to enable us to satisfy our own selfish desires. For example, we request more time, more money, more energy so we can do things that we desire but that God does not desire for us. What we need to ask Him to give us is more desire for what He promises and commands. We also need less desire for what is contrary to His will for us

“If prayer is no more than a formula (saying the right words, believe hard enough, confess; it will happen), then Christians are back to a type of magic: They can manipulate God or impose their will on God, for he has to answer. In contrast, New Testament prayer grows out of a trusting relationship with a father whose will is supreme.”

James 4:4 “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

The real issue is whom will I love, God or the world?

- I can tell you what I do, but I’d rather tell you what I’m passionate about. Stop talking about my vocation and talk about my invitation. Mike Fox

- “May God always keep you where either He shows up, or you fail.”

James 4:5 “Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”?”

It is very difficult to translate this statement, but the best rendering seems to be something such as the following. “God jealously longs for the spirit that He made to live in us.” Another translations is, “the Spirit which he made to dwell in us jealously yearns for the entire devotion of the heart

The Solution

James 4:6 “But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.””

God has set a high standard of wholehearted love and devotion for His people, but He gives grace that is greater than His rigorous demand. Proverbs 3:34, quoted here, reminds us that God opposes the proud: those who pursue their own pleasures. However, He gives grace to the humble: those who put God’s desires first in their lives. He gives grace (help) to withstand the onslaughts of the flesh within and the world without.

Proverbs 3:34 “Toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he gives favor.”