Who Is an Adulterer, Part 2
Matthew 5:27-30
Again tonight we have the privilege of looking at the 5th chapter of Matthew in our study, and in our last study together we began an examination of verses 27 through 30 and we're going to continue that tonight as we prepare for the Lord's Table at the conclusion of our fellowship.
Matthew chapter 5 verses 27 through 30 let me read them as you follow. "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery; But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
Obviously our Lord is talking here about sin. And this is really the topic of His message from verse 21 through verse 48 of chapter 5. It is a message on the divine definition of sin. In Numbers 32 and 23 it says, "Be sure your sin will find you out." Sometime back the New York Times ran the following article: "The thief was sure that the church was a safe hideout. Just inside he spied a rope up to the garret. Up he climbed only to hear the church bell ringing his whereabouts. A Mexico City man snatched a woman's purse and ran into a doorway to hide. It turned out to be the doorway of the police station where he was questioned and later identified by his victim. Shoplifting in a department store in Rochester, New York, a man picked up an alarm clock and headed for the nearest exit. The clock concealed under his coat went off before he could get out of the store and brought the detectives running. A Canadian who had a custom built radio stolen from his automobile advertised in the local paper for a custom built radio. The first person to contact him about the advertisement was the thief. A Glasgow pickpocket got a 60-day prison term after trying his luck on an excursion boat carrying 20 police officers and their wives. Police in Palo Alto seized a suspect as he stood in a post office admiring his wanted poster." "Be sure your sin will find you out." Sin devastates life.
In this particular place in Matthew chapter 5 the sin of the Jewish leaders and the sin of the people listening to Christ finds them out. Jesus unmasks their hypocrisy, they're caught, they're trapped, they're unmasked, they're revealed, they're shown to be exactly what they are, sinful people. And precisely what our Lord is doing in this passage is giving them a true picture of their sinfulness. The things that they had so well concealed He reveals. The righteousness which they had felt was theirs He tears down and leaves them stark naked and sinful. In fact what He does is to reveal the truth about the sinful heart of man, going deep inside to the real problem.
As we've been seeing in our study of Matthew men inevitably and invariably try to invent religions of human achievement. Men try to invent self‑righteous systems based on their own standards. They try to invent systems that justify themselves, and that is precisely what the Judaism of Jesus' time had done. They had substituted their own system for the truth of God's revelation, and their own system was a system of external rules ah, a system of external ritual, a system of behavior with no thought for attitude or motive or the heart. And because they kept certain external rules, because they managed to fulfill certain external ritual they convinced themselves that thereby they were righteous. But this was inadequate and that's why chapter 5, verse 20 is the key: unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom. True righteousness is beyond anything you now have.
And so Jesus in, in verses 21 through 48 of the Sermon on the Mount destroys the self-righteous system by tearing down their supposed holiness and revealing the fact that in their hearts they were wretched, vile, evil sinners and the heart is the issue with God. No matter how religious they looked on the outside the fact is they were sinful on the inside. He presents a standard they can't keep, and thus faces them with a sin problem for which they have no remedy.
At the end of chapter 5 in verse 48 He says, "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father, who is in heaven, is perfect." That is the righteousness My kingdom demands. And obviously they couldn't keep it, therein lies the frustration--there is no remedy for their sin situation. And of course from there they are driven to a righteousness not their own, a righteousness in fact offered to them in Jesus Christ. And so what He's really doing here as He presents a definition of sin is forcing them to see the need of a Savior, knowing full well He will offer Himself as that Savior. They must recognize that in themselves there is no resource to solve the sin problem; they are desperately in need of someone who can and He is just that someone.
Now the key to the way He handles this is in the twofold phrase that He uses, "Ye have heard, but I say." And in that He is contrasting their system with truth, He is contrasting their definition of sin with God's definition of sin--He is contrasting their standard with a divine standard. The traditional rabbinic system said only the external matters. If you don't murder and you don't commit adultery you're alright. Jesus said, but I say unto you, if you're angry or if you even think about it you're just as guilty because God is interested in the inside. And thus does He contrast Himself and the view that God laid down with the system that existed in their minds.
Now you'll remember that last week we had a very important message, and I was thrilled with the response to it. But we showed you that always in the Old Testament, not just the New, God was concerned about a heart relationship, that the issue was always loving the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself, that there was always the relationship, and that the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic law was only a means for regulating a love relationship. God has always been concerned about the heart. And that is the case in this particular sermon as Jesus goes right to their hearts and unbares the evil, vile, sinfulness that is there behind the facade of their religious activity. Psalm 119:96 says, "Thy commandment is very broad." And the commandment of God was a lot broader than they thought; they had narrowed it down only to the external and our Lord drives it in to the internal.
Now let me remind you of this. Jesus in His sermon began with a message about blessedness, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed from verses 3 to 12. But in order for one to know that blessedness, and by the way this is a good format for presenting the Gospel, you start with the promise of blessedness. But in order to know that blessedness you must know the proper definition of sin, because sin stands in the way of blessing, and sin has to be dealt with and removed. And so from blessedness to a doctrine of sin, well the Lord makes a transition, and as I said in verse 21 He begins to talk about sin.
Now let me just say in general before we look at the passage itself that we learn from this that it's essential to deal with sin. You cannot preach Christ, you cannot present the Gospel unless you deal with sin, unless you give a definition of sin because that is the barrier, that is the issue. And if we do not properly understand sin, mark this, we will not understand anything else that God does.
For example, I'll give ya three illustrations of that, unless one understands the truth about sin he can never understand the truth about salvation. You cannot understand the meaning of salvation unless you understand the meaning of sin. You see the Pharisees and the scribes, now mark this, had such a superficial view of sin that they were able to accommodate it with a superficial view of salvation. They saw sin as simply a matter of what we do; therefore salvation was a matter of what we do. So in their minimal definition of sin they, they were left with a minimal requirement for salvation, which they then assumed they themselves could accomplish.
Now, had they seen sin as a deep down heart problem they would have known that that was far beyond theirs to change. They couldn't do it if they'd understood that. And so it is that the, the more we comprehend the heinousness of sin the more we understand the meaning of salvation. The deeper the disease the greater the remedy, that's the point. And as long as people think of sin superficially, as long as they think of sin minimally, as long as they make light of sin then salvation is a minor thing too. But when you understand as our Lord is saying that sin is something heinous, sin is something deep, sin is something so penetrating that it reaches down into the warp and woof of a mans being so deeply that it's absolutely unchangeable except by the miracle of God, then you'll understand that only God can bring salvation. And that is what our Lord wants them to understand.
You will never understand the meaning of the cross, you will never understand why Jesus had to die, you will never understand why when He had legions of angels who could have come to His aid, He never used them, you will never understand why He said, "I must fulfill all righteousness," you will never understand what His death means until you understand how evil sin is and how deeply stained is the heart of every man that He would have to go to that extreme to accomplish salvation. Someone has written, there was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in. Sin is so powerful and so deep that only Jesus Christ can change it, only Jesus Christ can alter it. That in fact is the message of Romans chapter 3 through chapter 6.
A second thought, unless you understand the truth about sin you will never understand the right approach to proclamation. Not only salvation but proclamation. Now what I mean by that is this, and this is a great concern to me and I've preached on this off and on, but if you do not understand the depth of sin then you do not know how to proclaim the Gospel. Now what we have in our Christian culture today is we have very superficial Gospel presentations. Ah, it's, it's almost methodological, it's almost uhm, pie in the sky, it's almost, how would you like to have a happy time? It's, it's so very shallow in many cases, not always but in many cases. Some call it easy-believism; others call it cheap grace--people running around saying, come to Jesus, get born again. Self‑centered appeals, emotional appeals, all kinds of superficial approaches to evangelism.
And I really feel that behind this is a failure to grapple with the reality of the heinousness of sin. Because if we know the power of sin then we know it isn't enough to tell somebody, well, why don't you just accept Jesus and He'll make your life happy? It isn't enough to say so...to somebody, wouldn't you like to go to heaven and wouldn't you like to be happy and have peace and joy and everything? Just sign on the dotted line and say you believe in Jesus and pray a little prayer, you see. If we really understood how deep and stained men's hearts are with sin, if we understood how powerful the hold of sin is, so powerful that it casts men into an eternal hell, if we understood that then our evangelism would be more directed at the damning character of sin, first of all before it comes to the point of inviting them to make a decision. They must understand the problem.
And that's why biblically speaking, and mark this, biblically speaking evangelism always begins by presenting the law before grace. You must preach law, you must preach judgment, you must preach condemnation. And so Romans begins this way, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men." Paul starts out by condemning. Chapter 2 condemns again, chapter 3 condemns again so that every mouth is stopped. And then he says, the righteousness of Christ is available to you. And so there must be a preaching of the divine standard, there must be preaching of a holy law, there must be preaching of that which God says is right, and then there can be the message of how we come to know the relationship that makes that possible.
And I believe our evangelism must confront people with the holiness of God, it must reveal His demands for an inner heart righteousness. I believe our evangelism must focus on mans inability to meet God's standard, and we must make men desperate like Jesus wanted to make the Pharisees, the scribes and the multitude desperate so that they stand in fear of the doom of judgment ready to be cast into hell and they cry out for a Savior who can deliver them from a problem too deep for them to handle.
Now that was Jesus' approach. And as I said it was basically designed to drive men to desperation. More than anybody else in the whole Bible Jesus preached hell. He preached hell. People don't like to even talk about it. He preached that sin sends people to an eternal hell, where the worm never dies and the fire is not quenched, where there is gnashing of teeth and weeping and wailing. Jesus preached it because that's where it all had to begin. And so evangelism and proclamation must start with the holiness of God, as over against the sinfulness of man, and then the demands of that holy God. And the hopeless and helpless man who can't fulfill them is then driven to the inevitability of punishment, the ultimate reality of hell. And the only escape is someone else to come along and change his vile heart, and at that point Jesus Christ moves in to offer the deliverance that He alone can give.
Martyn Lloyd‑Jones, the great preacher of England said, "You can have a psychological belief in the Lord Jesus Christ but a true belief sees hin...in Him one who delivers us from the curse of the law. True evangelism starts like that and obviously is primarily a call to repentance." End quote. The Apostle Paul said that we are to call men to repentance toward God and then faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And what Jesus is saying to these people is, you may not have killed anybody and you may not have commit adultery but in your hearts you have been angry and in your hearts you have hated and in your hearts you have lusted and you are as vile as a murderer and as an adulterer. And in desperation they are driven to the need of an outside Savior who can change their evil hearts. Men can modify their behavior, believe it, they can. Peer pressure, pride, all of those things, piosity, a fear of rejection can force people to behave in a certain way, but only God can change a heart.
There's a third thought I had on this. Unless we understand the truth about sin we can never really understand salvation, we can never really understand proclamation, and we can never really understand sanctification. Unless we understand the meaning of sin we don't know what it is to be made holy in Christ, do we? We don't understand the magnanimity of the change. You don't understand what God has made you in Christ unless you know what you were. You can't be thanking and praising Him for the glory of the transformation unless you know what it involved.
And we've not only suffered from superficial evangelism and such, but we've suffered from very, very shallow concepts of holiness and sanctification. Usually it goes like this, we think we're holy because of the things we do or don't do. So we don't go to certain places, we don't say certain things, we don't do the things the world does. And we feel that because we don't say or do things or go places that we're alright. And really it's the ugly head of self‑righteousness. Because God is always concerned not so much with what we do and what we say and where we go, though He is concerned with that, but He's more concerned with what's behind it, what we think in our minds and hearts. There are the pious and the self‑satisfied and the smug who think that because they don't do certain things and they do other things that they are justified, and that's because they never really examine the evil of their hearts. And that's what the Lord Jesus is forcing men to do as He preaches this great sermon.
Holiness, listen, for God is always a matter of the heart. Proverbs 23:7, "As a man thinketh in his heart," what? "so is he." That's where the divine evaluation takes place. In Matthew's Gospel further on, in chapter 15 and verse 16 we read this, "And Jesus said, Are you also yet without understanding?" You haven't figured it out; you don't know God's standard yet? You don't know where the real problem is?
"Do not ye yet understand," Matthew 15:17, "that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the stomach, and is cast out into the draught?" In other words it goes through the process of elimination. "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the man." In other words it isn't what you take in that defiles you it's what comes up and goes out. "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies." Where do those all originate? In the heart.
Listen, before you ever murder you think it in your heart, before you ever commit adultery you think it in your heart, before you ever fornicate you think it in your heart, before you ever steal you think it in your heart. It is the heart that spews out the garbage that defiles man because "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; and who can know it?" said Jeremiah. And so it isn't the external, our Lord is saying, it's the heart, and He unbares the heart, He rips off the facade of the super‑religious who would glorify themselves as if they stand absolved, and shows that the only thing that He's concerned about is the heart.
So, both the Old Testament and the New Testament as we saw last week preach the same Good News. Man is a sinner; that sin is deep down in his heart, in his nature. Man is powerless to change that. God comes along and offers a relationship by which He and He alone will change that man's heart. In...it was clear back in Ezekiel wasn't it? That God said, "I will give you a new heart. I will take away the stony heart, and give you a heart of flesh." A new heart is what a man needs. That's what Jesus wants those who listen to hear. They thought as long as they cleaned the outside of the plate and the cup they were okay. Jesus says you have to clean the inside, that's the issue.
Let's see how He gets at it with the illustration of adultery in verse 27. On your outline you'll notice three points, the deed, the desire, and the deliverance. It's very simple, very clear.
First of all, the deed. "You have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery." The phrase "by them of old" isn't in all of the older manuscripts. It's certainly fitting that it's there in a sense because it's used elsewhere in this same section, but better manuscripts leave it out, so we'll omit it. "You have heard that it was said, thou shalt not commit adultery." Now that's the deed, God's law said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. Deuteronomy where you have deutero nomos, the second law, it's repeated in 5:18, "Neither shalt thou commit adultery." It's very clear; the Bible leaves absolutely no question about this particular sin. The deed is condemned, it is an evil deed.
In Job 31:9 it says, "If mine heart have been deceived by a woman, or if I have laid wait at my neighbor's door, Then let my wife grind unto another, and let others bow down upon her; For this is an heinous crime; yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges. For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, and would root out all mine increase." It is an heinous crime to commit adultery, it is a vile, evil, wretched manifestation of a vile heart. And the Bible is very clear about it in Exodus 18 and uh, rather in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 the penalty could be death. A very serious crime ending in death for the one who committed it. So we see the deed condemned by God.
Now you'll notice that in our passage in Matthew it was the leaders, the rabbinic tradition that said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." They were right, they weren't wrong; we aren't implying that at all. We are only saying they never went far enough. They were right, it was evil, God did say, don't do it, it was a serious crime and still is.
Now let me talk for a moment about the word itself; the word adultery, it's a very simple word. The root means this: unlawful intercourse with the spouse of someone else. That's basically the technical meaning--a physical, sexual relationship with somebody else's spouse.
Now the verb here in Matthew obviously is imperative--it is a command. But most Bible scholars see it not only as a command not to engage in sexual activity with somebody else's spouse but see it in a general sense because the word is also used in a general way in some other sources. For example in some places the word means to seduce or violate a woman, that's very general--a married or unmarried woman. Other places it is translated to commit harlotry. So that generally the word has been used to speak of any kind of illicit intercourse at all; and anything is illicit outside the bond of marriage. And so primarily it refers to a sexual relationship that violates a marriage.
But I believe it can...the spirit of it extends farther to include any kind of illicit sexual behavior. And I think the wideness of it is indicated in what our Lord says in verse 28 where He says that anybody who looks on any woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. And the woman He speaks of here He doesn't say whether she's married or not, it's so broad that anybody who lusts after any woman has committed adultery in his heart. So the Lord is using the term in the broadest possible manner--anybody and any woman.
Now let me tell ya people this is a sin that really way...it really waves the banner today. It's as if we've just completely turned our back on this. Somebody ought to read Proverbs 5, 6 and 7 before they ever engage in this. Proverbs 5, 6 and 7 just speaks so pointedly to the devastation caused by the sin of sexual adultery or fornication. It is a sin for fools. Witness David, and the results. Witness Shechem who defiled Dinah and was later slaughtered. Witness Absalom who defiled others in the sexual sins and vi...wound up being hanged in a tree. It is a sin for fools. The Bible says you take fire into your bosom. Fornicators and adulterers (Hebrews 13:4) God will judge.
The New Testament reiterates with finality and firmness this prohibition. First Corinthians chapter 6 condemns it. Second Peter chapter 2 condemns it. Revelation chapter 2 condemns it. The end of the Book of Revelation says that fornicators and adulterers won't even enter into God's kingdom. It is a serious, heinous, vile crime.
And Jesus is identifying with tha...their view of it, they had a very serious view. In John for example the 8th chapter the Jewish leaders had caught a woman in the act of adultery and "They said to him," in verse 4, "Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act." I don't know what happened to the man, that'll give you a little indication of their double standard. But they dragged this woman out of the very act of adultery. "And Moses, in the law, commanded us that she should be stoned; what do you say?" Boy, they were hard line legalists and they had Moses on their side they felt. Now they had a right to condemn. And Jesus would have had to agree with them and say, stone her, if He didn't have the power to forgive her. But when Jesus looked at her and said, "Go, and sin no more," He washed her as white as the driven snow. And in the whiteness and purity of His gift of salvation to that woman there was no sin for which she should be stoned remaining.
But apart from that they were right. Moses did say, Deuteronomy 22:22, if ya catch 'em doing it, stone 'em. So they were right, they saw the deed just the way God saw it. The law of God was very clear. And people I'm telling you it hasn't changed. Sexual immorality today, in any day, is just as vile, just as heinous, just as evil as it was then. And I don't care if you're engaged, don't care if you're going together, I don't care if you believe you love each other, I don't care whatever it is apart from the bond of monogamous marriage, an act of sexual relationship is a heinous crime. And we need to say it like that in our day because people don't believe that.
So the deed, but Jesus isn't finished with the deed, He wants to talk about the desire in verse 28. This is what He says, "But I say unto you." In other words you went as far as you went but you never went far enough--you stopped with the externals. "I say to you whosoever" anybody "looking on a woman" any woman "to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart."
Now this is a fascinating verse, and there's much I want you to see. The Lord forces the self‑righteous to the fact that they're not holy. The Pharisees are saying we don't do that, we don't commit that sin. And Jesus drives them right down into their hearts as if Psalm 66:18 became a reality, "If I regard iniquity in my" what? "heart, the Lord will not hear me." God is always examining the sin of the heart. It is the internal that breaks the relationship. And so it is that Jesus says I am concerned about what's on the inside.
Let's look at the terms. "But I," and it's emphatic, ego is there the pronoun is there because He is saying, I am the new authority, you have had your authority to the rabbinic tradition. Sometimes it was true to Moses, sometimes it was not. In this case it was true to Moses, but nonetheless He is referring to the rabbinic tradition. You have had that, but I am a new authority. And by the way He said this in such an authoritative way that when He was finished with the sermon they were shocked because He spoke with such authority.
I say that, pas ho, anybody whosoever looketh, present participle, is in the process of continuing to look. Now mark that, it's continuous action, blepōn, a continued state. Do you see the idea? It isn't the inadvertent, accidental glance, that's not what our Lord is talking about. It is the purposeful, repeated, lustful looking. It isn't the involuntary glance at all; it is that which is purposeful.
And by the way I'll show you an interesting thing about this verse. Listen to what He says, "Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her." Now listen to this, He doesn't say, commits adultery, no He doesn't say that. Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her commits adultery, no. He says, "Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart." Why? Because it is the vile adulterous heart that results in the wanton look, do you see? The sin has already happened in the heart, the adultery is conceived and thus the look is prompted. That's why you may find in this life that someone passes into your gaze involuntary and appears as a temptation from Satan, or maybe even trying to attract attention. And a involuntary glance means you just resist and turn away. But when you latch on and you cultivate and you pursue the desire, it's because your lustful, adulterous heart has been seeking an object, and you fulfill the fantasy that's already there in your heart.
Now notice the word "lust"--it's very helpful to see the Greek here. "Whoever looks on a woman to lust." And it uses a Greek form. For you Greek students, pros to, with the infinitive, and any time you see that it means a purpose, with the purpose of lusting. In other words it isn't an involuntary glance, it is a purposeful one. The heart is filled with adultery, wanting to find an object to which to attach the fantasy. It's when you, you're looking for the woman to lust after, when you, you, you go to the film because you know when you get there you will see what you desire in your heart to see, that which will meet your lust. It's when you go around the dial on the television to find the thing that panders your lust. It's when you seek the object, it's the purpose. So it would read this way, emphatically I say to you that whoever continues looking on a woman for the purpose of lusting gives evidence of already committing adultery in his heart. The continued look is the manifestation of the vile heart. The aorist infinitive here is an accomplished lusting, you've already done it, you've filled it up, this is just the last elemen