In the sermon 'Adultery of the Heart' by Scott Brown, the focus is on Jesus' teachings from Matthew 5:27-32, where He expands the definition of adultery to include lustful thoughts, thereby emphasizing the heart's role in sin. The sermon highlights how societal traditions often distort the understanding of adultery and marriage, leading to destructive philosophies and practices. Brown underscores the importance of treasuring God's laws for both eternal and earthly prosperity, arguing that neglecting these principles leads to material and relational poverty. He emphasizes the inseparable connection between the eyes and the heart, warning against the dangers of allowing lustful thoughts to take root. The sermon advocates for a proactive approach to purity, involving radical measures to avoid sin, such as avoiding content that can lead to lust. Brown draws parallels between personal discipline and church discipline, stressing that both are necessary to prevent the spread of sin. He concludes by illustrating how the law reveals the depth of human sinfulness and the necessity of Christ's righteousness, which offers forgiveness and sanctification.

The reading today is from Matthew chapter 5 verses 27 to 32. You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you.

For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery." Well, this passage of scripture is a passage of scripture that is like every other word of the Bible, and that is that it is designed for your profit. It is designed for your prosperity. There's something that Jesus speaks here that's more profitable than anything else.

And so we have the privilege again of letting our eyes rest on things for our eternal profit, but not only our eternal profit, but also for our earthly prosperity. Because when this principle is missed, prosperity is lost. The results of fornication and adultery have a direct effect on one's material prosperity as any social observer can tell. But here we have a passage that can be so helpful for our prosperity. You know, I always marvel at this quality of scripture, of how it constantly increases prosperity to God's people.

And in a lot of ways, it's like the recent run up in the price of silver. Some of you were watching that and benefited from it significantly. But what happened was people were, they placed a high value on something and it raised in value. The more you treasure something, the more it makes you rich. And that's what happened in this run-up and it happens often.

But the same thing happens with the Word of God. The more you treasure it, the richer it makes you. And here before us is a passage that will make you so rich in a number of ways that we'll identify. My prayer for today is that we would see this, that we would somehow see more clearly than ever before the sweetness of the laws of God and how they might not only sweeten your marriage, but they would increase your joy. They would flourish your love because That's what this principle is all about.

That we would, by first of all being corrected by it, convicted by it, and then have a new course. My suspicion here is, if you're anything like I am, that this passage of Scripture will be helpful to you. It's been very helpful to me. There are many things that happen in the world today because of the traditions of men. This passage is about the traditions of men also.

And whatever society you live in, there are traditions, there are false ideas, there are false doctrines. And there are ways of living that are wrong. And this passage identifies ways of living that are very, very destructive. This really hit home to Deborah and Claudia and I last week as we walked into a maternity ward in the town of Paisley, Scotland. My daughter Kelly had lost a significant amount of her blood, needed a transfusion, and God so kindly spared her life.

But when we finally arrived at the hospital that she was being cared for in this maternity ward, we recognized that there was not a single baby in this maternity ward. It was the eeriest thing. I've never been in a maternity ward that wasn't full of crying babies and and and oogling parents and things like that. None of it. It was as sterile as you could possibly imagine.

And when we saw that we recognized this was a result of philosophy. This is a result of false doctrine. This is a result of traditions of men that have gripped the society, that false ideas about manhood and womanhood, about marriage, about motherhood, about adultery, about this very issue that we're speaking of today. That sterile maternity ward was created by many of the traditions and philosophies that Jesus is identifying here in this passage of Scripture regarding morality and regarding manhood and womanhood. God has such better things.

He has for His people maternity wards that are full of crying babies and the population rising and more motherhood, more fatherhood. You know, this is the wisdom of God. This is why the Bible says, be fruitful and multiply. What we saw that day was a direct result of the traditions of men. And so in our text today, we're confronted with the traditions of men.

All of us have been affected by this profoundly. I hope we see that you and I are affected by this more profoundly than we thought before we walked in today. And in Jesus' day, men had been led to believe certain things were not adultery. And as in our day, we have many wrong ideas about adultery. This passage is about adultery.

It's a single subject that Jesus is dealing with here. And we like to put nice names on things here in our Urbane advanced culture. But there are many things that are part of our everyday lives that Jesus uses a different name for. And so I hope we can see that today. And I hope we can see the prophet that there is in it.

Now Jesus is giving six examples of how he has not abolished the law. And the first two examples come from the Ten Commandments. Last week, we dealt with the Sixth Commandment, you shall not murder. And now Jesus moves to the seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery, and then the following four laws he takes from various other places in the law of God. So he uses a mix of the laws of God.

This should help us to understand the way that Jesus thinks about the Old Testament. We've said many times, I don't care what you call the way you think about the Old Testament, think the way that Jesus did about it. And here's one thing that we should just recognize. Jesus wasn't just fixated on the Ten Commandments, but on all the commandments. He had something to say in order to interpret them so that they might be properly applied by us.

So Jesus is not just fixated on the ten, although all of the other commandments we believe are subsets of the ten commandments. But I just want us to notice that Jesus is drawing from more than just those ten words that God has given us. And what we see here in this passage, as we will see all along here in this section, is how God's laws in the Old Testament apply. And what we learn here is that the laws in the Old Testament of God are actually not less applicable to us, but they are more profoundly applicable, more deeply applicable, and more broadly applicable. And so what we find here is that they're actually, instead of smaller to us, they're bigger and they touch on more issues than we thought they did.

And that's what Jesus is teaching his disciples. Remember what Jesus is doing. He's a good Father, He's a good Shepherd, and He's teaching his disciples how they ought to think about everything. And He is sitting with them there on this mountain, and He's teaching them. And he is just like what every father ought to do in teaching their disciples, to sit there and help them to understand how everything fits together.

And so like a good father, like a good shepherd, he's showing his disciples how to handle the laws of the Old Testament, because they've been misinterpreted by many religious leaders in his day. And Jesus is trying to correct that. And he's showing them what it means to have your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. The righteousness in the scribes and Pharisees had to do with whether you obey this one thing or not very narrowly. And Jesus is saying, no, that is not my kind of righteousness.

My kind of righteousness covers everything. It touches every area of life. And it goes deeper and broader and higher than you think it does. So what he's saying is that the treasure is bigger. There's more to it than you think.

And there's more riches in it. There's more value. There's more prosperity in it than you ever dreamed. You thought the law against adultery would just help you in this one area. No.

It helps you in dozens of areas. And it adds more treasure to your account than you ever dreamed that could be added. So here Christ shows himself as the embodiment of the law, and He is teaching his disciples how it is that their righteousness can exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. And then, finally, I just want to say this lastly by way of introduction to this section. This law regarding adultery, the way that Jesus explains it, makes it so clear how every law of God is a law of love.

Because when you think about this law here and how it unleashes love and how it destroys alienation and sorrow and broken relationships and husbands and wives at odds with one another, How it promotes love is so clear here. And so I love this law. So let's move into the text. First of all, if you have an outline in front of you, you'll see the first point in the outline is that Jesus both affirms the Old Testament law by quoting it verbatim, but he's not affirming the teaching about that law that has been common in his day. And so he's quoting the seventh commandment, word for word, which is found in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus chapter 20.

But Then he refers to something else. You have heard. So there were things that they have heard about this law. And that's what he's going after. He's saying there are things that you've heard about this law that are not true.

And I'm going to tell you about them now. Now, they had their Bibles, they had the Torah, but they were listening to the traditions of men. They were, as we might say, in this New Covenant era, They were not very good Bereans. They were just hearing the things that were being said, rather than carefully examining them. This is the beauty of Christianity.

God gives His people a word, a testimony, and He gives them His Spirit, and they can actually read it and understand it and it can become true treasure for them and make them richer than they ever dreamed they possibly could be by personally looking at it and so Jesus is saying you have heard these things these are just secondhand traditions and he's actually he actually is exposing what it means to be a wicked and adulterous generation. Because this generation that so valued the Torah, its wooden interpretation, was a wicked and adulterous generation even though it embraced the basic structure of it. The heart of it was not embraced. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." So Jesus is coming against this whole thing that they've been hearing. They were suggesting, the Pharisees, that they were righteous.

Jesus is suggesting that's not true because they did not understand the law of God. And then Jesus, in verse 28, after saying what he has said to them, verse 27, he begins to illustrate the true nature of adultery. And he says, but I say unto you. So he's saying you've heard them, now hear me. This is my beloved son whom I'm well pleased.

Let's listen to him now. God has already placed his hand of approval upon his son, and now his son is saying, but I say unto you. And this is the common reality that we all grapple with. There are the words of our own minds and our own hearts, and they're the words of Jesus Christ. And so he's positioning himself as antithetical to the words of his day.

You know people you know somehow come become Christians and they hope to have a nice peaceful religion. God does not give you that. He gives you a religion of antithesis. There are the things that are said in the world, but Jesus says, no, but I say unto you. And he says, but the things that I say to you are spirit and our life.

And so he's contrasting this, but I say to you, I love those words because in those words, we find such rescue, such help from the wicked propositions of the world that we've all grown up in. We have so many, I was going to say, we have so many tapes playing in our minds, but nobody knows what tapes are anymore. So we have all these recordings that we replay about the way that we think life ought to be. And so many of them are wrong but our rescue is found in this but I say unto you there are no sweeter words than that but oh but I say let me rescue you from the dross let me rescue you from the garbage the poison I have for you treasure treasure in heaven and if you desire the treasure I will make you rich. And so here he says, but I say unto you.

So there's such meaning in those words. Wouldn't you have loved to be sitting with Jesus and hearing Him say that? But we have actually an added privilege. We can read it and just soak in it. We can read it and just let it percolate into our souls and say, ah, Lord, you've rescued me from so much.

Think of what it was like when you heard the voice of Jesus. And he said, but I say to you, unless you're born again, but I say to you, Those who believe in me out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. Do you remember when you first heard Jesus speak? These are the sweetest words mankind can ever hear. So he says, but I say to you, And then he says that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

And so the focus that Jesus is bringing to his disciples is the heart. He's helping them see that there's something greater than just the wooden interpretation of the law of adultery. That as we've said so many times ad nauseam adultery is not just sleeping with somebody who's not your wife. Yet there's something greater here. Jesus is saying that no, it applies more deeply, more broadly than you ever thought.

And so there is this thing that you do with your eyes. And there is a connection between the heart and the eyes. No one can ever disconnect this hardwiring that God has established. We are, this is why it's so important what we look at because God has built us in such a way that there is an inseparable connection between the eyes and the heart. That's why he said the lamp of the body is the eye.

Well, there's something that you do with your eyes. When you look at a woman to lust for her, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart. So there's this whole matter of the feeding of the eyes. Peter talked about those whose eyes were full of adultery. And there are two kinds of eyes that you can have.

Eyes attracted to adultery or eyes that are attracted to fidelity and faithfulness. These are two kinds of eyes that we look in. And since there's this hard wiring between eyes and heart, it matters what you look at and how you look at it. And so this matter of feeding of the eyes, this is a, what kind of look is this? Is this, are you committing adultery in your heart with a confrontation or something else?

I argue that it's not just being confronted with it like you might on the street, but it's the second look. It's the meditating on it. It's the entering into it. It's the oogling. It's the continuing on.

When you're confronted with something through your eyes and you stay there, that's adultery. When you are confronted with something and your eyes move from adultery to fidelity that you've been rescued. God has provided a way of an escape. There's always a way of an escape because there's always somewhere else to look, there's always somewhere else to run. God always provides a way of an escape for sexual sin.

Whether it's the way that Joseph was delivered from the sin by running, or whether it's just the simple turn of the eye and the change of the heart and the recognition of the work of the devil to come and devour you. So it's not the confrontation that's the sin, but it's the nourishing of it and settling into it is where we find the trouble. It's the approving of the look. It's the double take. It's the lingering.

You know, James said in James 1, 14, he said, but each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. And when desire is conceived, It gives birth to sin, and when it is full-grown, brings forth death. That's the kind of thing that Jesus is speaking about here. And so there's This critical issue in the hearts of men and women that they do something with their eyes and because the eyes are never satisfied. Proverbs 27.20 says, hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied.

The eyes of man are never ever satisfied. If the eyes of man are looking on treasure, true treasure, those eyes will not be satisfied with just a little bit more. They'll want more. Like if you desire godly things and you look upon godly things, it will make you desire more godly things. And that won't even be enough.

And you'll desire more. And you'll desire more. If you saturate your mind with the Word of God, you'll want more of the Word of God. And then when you want more, you get more. And then when you get more, you want more.

And when you get more of that, you want more. And it's an endless cycle. But it also plays the other way, because the eyes and the heart are hardwired. So if the eyes look on something defiling, you'll want something more defiling, and you'll get it, and you'll never be satisfied with that. And then you'll want a little bit more, and you'll get that.

And then you'll want a little bit more, because the eyes of man are never satisfied. This is how God has wired us. And so we have this, the important work of life to keep our eyes out of harm's way. To identify the sin there is in wanting something that God has not given to us. This happens to both men and women.

Men see something that God has not given them in the form or the personality or the mind of someone else. And they're not satisfied with God, with the sovereign hand of God, to provide what He has provided. If you're a single person, you're in the exact same situation. You want something that God has not provided for you. God has not provided a wife for you yet.

And so you desire the fruits of it, and you try to go get it. But all you get is gravel and poison in your soul. Because you wanted something that God was not providing for you. And this is true about everything in life. When we desire something God has not provided, often it leads to sin.

And that's the kind of sin that is spoken of here. When a man looks at another woman to lust for her, he's committed adultery with her in his heart. He's wanted something that God has not given. The same thing happens with women. When they see a flaw in their husband, when they see something that's wrong with him, some sin, some thing he keeps repeating, something that he did a long time ago or maybe even over and over again.

And she looks at him and she says, I would rather have somebody like that. I want that man. And so she lusts and commits adultery in her heart. When a woman does that, She ought to ask herself if she's committing adultery in her heart. If indeed, when a man looks at a woman to lust after her, he's committed adultery in her heart, is it possible that when a woman is covetous of another woman's husband, has she committed adultery in her heart as well?

Because we have to understand that the law is deeper and broader, and it goes to more things than are on the surface. And Jesus is just giving us one thing on the surface that's so practical, that's so everyday in our lives. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life are the things that Jesus is dealing with here in this one issue. He's drawing together much of what the Bible says about adultery and fornication and various other sexual sins. And so here we see that the death of the seventh commandment, that It was given to stop more than just a physical act.

But it was given actually to stop something in the heart. It was given so that the mind and the heart wouldn't continue to run in a wrong direction, in a marriage-destroying, love-disheveling kind of direction. God gives us something that begins in a place where it can be dealt with well, in the heart, so that Those thoughts are not built up. I daresay, you women here who are married, this is something that I know about you. You have a husband who falls short in so many ways.

And my own dear wife is married to a husband like that. And sometimes her husband drives her to tears because of his stupidity, his insensitivity, and his lack of learning what he ought to learn. And I know you men well enough to know that you're not that much different than I am. And so your wives have a challenge. But you wives need to be very careful not to commit adultery in your hearts by coveting something that God has not given you.

The sin of covetousness runs also, like all these other laws, in ways far below the surface that exist in the hearts of men and women. So What we've seen here is that Jesus doesn't make less out of the law. He doesn't make it less important, less applicable. He makes it more important, more applicable, and more meaningful to us. The law is not wooden.

The law is spiritual. The law is meant to run everywhere. You think of people who have a wooden interpretation of the law. Those are the people who do not understand the law. That the law is given to convict of sin and to also to put someone on the road to prosperity.

Those are the reasons the law is given. To drive a person to his wits end to understand how sinful that he is, so that he runs to Christ, repents in his heart, and deals with the sins in his heart, not just the wooden thing that's out there, but there's a transformation that goes deep into his soul. This is why Paul said, the law is good if one uses it lawfully. This is what Paul meant when he said the law is holy, just, and good. But if you use it in a wooden way, it's not holy, just, and good, it's a curse.

If you just use it in its wooden fashion, not thinking of it as spiritual, running everywhere into the innermost being of your heart, then you've not understood the law of God. And so in this first section, there's so much help for us for understanding sin. And you could say that Jesus is instructing his disciples about sin. If you have a defective view of sin, you'll have a defective life. You'll be a defective father.

You'll be a defective husband. You'll be a defective wife. You'll be a defective worker. You'll be a defective church member. You'll be a defective friend if you do not understand sin.

And Jesus is exposing the true nature of sin that it's not just a wooden thing that, yes, I kept myself from stabbing my friend today, but there's more. I kept myself from hopping in the bed with someone. There's more." So these things are just very plain in this passage of Scripture. And then Jesus gives the remedy in verses 29 and 30. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.

Now, I want you to notice the patterning that is in this next section. There's the right eye, and there's the right hand. There's the plucking, and the cutting, and there's the casting. All these things are consistent. And then there's the whole issue of profit, of prosperity.

There's something profitable and something not very profitable. Jesus is using understatement. It's not profitable, but there's something that is more profitable. And then there's the whole matter of hell being cast into hell. So there are several common elements that Jesus uses as he gives these two illustrations of the right eye and the right hand.

And every single word is important to understand the depth of the meaning that is here. So if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. Now, Jesus is not asking all of his disciples to pluck out their eyes. He's giving them an illustration so that they understand the relative nature of these things. He's trying to tell us how bad it is.

And he's using an example that's more extreme than anything we would want to be able to come up with on our own. If we were trying to explain how extremely we ought to avoid sin, we wouldn't necessarily talk in language like this. People would say we were overstating our case. They would say we were too hotly being condemning, or something like that. But Jesus actually is giving us something that would never even enter into our minds.

Because he wants to help us to understand how deep hell is and how high heaven is, how deprived you are when this happens, and how rich you are when you do something different. He's showing you this vast gulf between two things. So, you know, no one here should go pluck out their right eye, but they ought to understand that there's a reason Jesus says this, because in reality there is such a great difference, it's that great of a difference. And then there's the right hand. And so I want to give you six things that you learn from this, Six things.

Number one, notice how proactive you must be. Notice how proactive you must be. Because you're dealing with the eye before the eye can see. You take it out so that it can't see it. You have to make preparations on the front end.

If you want to have the kind of purity that Jesus is talking about, you have to be enormously proactive. What you're going to look out, where you're going to go, what you're going to think, what you're going to feed. You have to be very strategic with your life so that you don't look or go or think the things that take you in this direction. And so that's why he gives us the illustration. It's better to pluck your eye out so that you can't even see it.

There's a proactive nature. There's something that you need to do in order to protect yourself. You can't just be a stupid person in this world and just flip along like a fish going down a river. You have to know where you're going and what is coming upon you, and stop it before it happens. Now many people that I encounter have no problem with doing certain things while they claim that they've never committed adultery.

And while they might say, they might feel free to look at a picture in a magazine or they might feel free to put in a film and watch it and say well there are only a couple bad parts in it. Or they might feel free to listen to music or read the stories of what I'm just going to call demon-possessed rock and roll stars in our experience. We have no problem with that, but we would never say, I'm going to go hop in bed with somebody who's not my wife or my husband. And so we take, we do not understand what Jesus is saying about adultery. And the reason that we're this way is our consciences are seared generally.

We have so seared our consciences with these films that just have a little bit that's unacceptable. We don't mind that. Lord, I fast forwarded through that. I had everyone leave the room. My children didn't see that.

But people who say that, when they say that to me, I'm going to tell you very frankly what I think in my mind. Their consciences have been seared and their souls are in danger because they do not understand what Jesus said, that it's better for you to pluck it out than for you to enter, than for your body to enter in hell. They do not understand how serious it is to commit adultery in the heart. They don't understand how serious it is to light the fires of passion by one little spark at a time until it becomes a raging fire. Because that's how it happens.

This means that to allow the eyes to see things that light the fires of passion, that this is what adultery is. When you look upon a woman, you've committed adultery with her in her heart. While you might not consider yourself an adulterous person, you have no problem going places you should not go and saying things like it only has a few bad parts in it. As if it's acceptable. Well how many bad parts are acceptable?

Would it be under 10? Or no, no, no, no, no, I'm more righteous than that. Only five. I would really only allow five. But no, no, no, I'm more righteous than that.

Because if there are only two, then that's too much for me. But Jesus says, if you look at a woman with adultery, to lust after her, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart that's one time but Lord it was only five there were only five bad parts in that film what's the big deal The big deal is that your eyes and your heart are hardwired, irrevocably, and no one can beat the system. You might think, well, I can read these romance novels. I can read this news story about this defiling situation that's all over the news, that makes me think about someone in a certain way. Now those of you who have been around our church long enough know that this isn't the first time I've said this.

And I'm pretty confident that you might not even be able to count on two or three or four or five hands. Maybe more hands than that. Two things I want you to know. I'm not going to stop until the day I die on this issue. On this issue.

And I pray that your hearts have not been hardened to hearing it over and over again. And ask yourself this question. Am I being harder or softer than Jesus on this matter? I mean, do you think that the things that I've said about it are more extreme or less extreme than what Jesus is saying? Because he says it's better for you to pluck your eye out or cut your hand off.

The only thing that I've said is just don't put that film in. Don't go to that website. Stop listening to those songs. That's all I've said. I mean how far is that from plucking your eye out.

And then there's the whole matter of profit. He says it is not profitable. It is not profitable, but it is more profitable. So he places these things here. Now, And this is the second, is about profit.

The first thing we learn is how proactive you must be. The second is how profitable it is to do this. And I want to tell you a story to try to illustrate how profitable this is. Deborah and Claudia and I just returned from Europe. And there we walked the streets of Rome and Paris and London and various other cities in Scotland.

And I'll have to confess to you, it was a great struggle for me to walk those streets. The immodesty, the public immorality is on a whole other level than we find here. I think it's very challenging here, but I found myself struggling tremendously and I found my eyes like magnets going in the wrong places. And this passage helped me so much. I was thinking about it, rolling it around in my mind, saying it over and over, trying to understand what it means for me.

And what happened at some point, I was walking down a street in one of these cities. I don't even remember what city it was. But there were all these people, and it came to me, it came to me that I either was going to have eyes of adultery, or I was going to have eyes of fidelity. And that hit me like a tsunami wave, that I could have eyes for fidelity. I said, oh God, give me eyes for fidelity to feed faithfulness with my eyes, with every look, to feed that well, that treasury of faithfulness and purity and love and adoration for my wife.

Lord, let this be that way." So what happened was, my eyes, my eyes would go to my wife. She was with me. I was so grateful she was with me. Because there was someone walking here and there were my eyes. And I said, and they were, I was filling up a treasury of love and tenderness and faithfulness toward my wife.

And what became sin and defilement and such a gravel in my soul became something totally different and the treasuries were being filled rather than than deprived and so Jesus is talking about profit. This is not profitable, but that is profitable. Fidelity. If you have been committing adultery, commit fidelity. Commit fidelity.

Set yourself on a course to every day when you open up your eyes, you'll be committing fidelity. There's more sweetness there. There's more happiness there. You know, when we got back from that trip, I would, I honestly, I've been married to this woman for a bunch of years, and I love her, but you know, I loved her more after we got back. I really did.

I was so thankful that God had given me eyes of fidelity, not adultery, and that He gave me help. He allowed a way of escape from the marriage-destroying, love hampering forces that were upon. This is why Job said, I've made a covenant with my eyes. We don't know what that was. Here's what I think it was.

I think it was exactly what happened to me on one of those streets in Europe. I've made a covenant. I've made a deal with my eyes that I'm going to go from adultery to fidelity. What a great covenant. Now, so make a covenant with your eyes because there's so much profit into it.

Now one more thing about that story. I was telling Deborah that story about what happened to me. I just told her this morning. And she said, oh, you know, It wasn't like that at all for me on the street. I just saw all this evil.

I saw such a fallen society. I didn't see any of that. OK? You got that, ladies? You get this?

There's a real difference between men and women. What you don't see, what's not hurting you, is hurting your husband. And you just need to know that, and you need to pray for him. Because he's going to get assaulted every day. And in his heart of hearts, he really does desire a heart of fidelity.

He desires to build faithfulness and tenderness and love. This is what he desires. But he's assaulted greatly, and you need to pray for him. So how profitable it is to do this, that's the second thing we learn. Number three, how countercultural it is.

He's saying it's better to get rid of something good than to commit adultery. Think of all the good that's in that film. The 300 scenes and there are only five bad ones. He's saying, let me tell you something, it's better to get rid of something good than to have any of it at all. You think there's so much profit in it?

That is a lie of the devil. You think you could advance your mind, think more clearly about things by watching defiling things? That's a word from the devil himself. Jesus says that it's better to get rid of something good than to commit adultery in the midst of dealing with it. That's the third, how countercultural it is.

Number four, how important this is to prepare for eternity. Now, this passage is one that strikes fear. Some sins are terrifying. They have warnings that are very hard to swallow. Here, Jesus has warning of the wrath to come.

And so just like, you know, God placed the cherubim with a flaming sword to protect the tree of life, he's trying to protect marriage and love in the same way. And he's talking about the whole issue of hell. It is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Now Solomon says that the way of the adulteress and the adulterer is the way to hell. He says the dead are there.

So this has eschatological implications because there's a hell out there And you may be bound for it. So how important this is to prepare for eternity. As we prepare ourselves to enter into eternal and heavenly glory, The issue of adultery is important. And then number five, how adultery is a killing spirit. You see the path that it leads to isolation, regret, to broken relationships.

Now until you realize that this is a killing spirit, I'm not sure you'll ever be able to turn your eyes towards fidelity until you understand how poisonous it is, until you understand that it's a monster, until you understand that it's a dragon that will devour you, until you understand that you'll never turn away. Unless you understand sin and the consequences of it, you can't turn away. If you're continuing to go back to the well of adultery in your computer or in your songs or in your movies, if you continue to go back to that well, you need to understand you will not be able to get out of that well until you understand there's a dragon in that well. And he wants to kill you and steal from you and destroy you. And he'll lie to you all the way until you get there.

You'll never quit until you see how poisonous it is. You'll never quit when you think it's small. You'll never quit when you keep saying it only has a little bit in it. You will never quit that way. And you will go out into this world and you will wonder where God is.

And you'll wonder why you're so far from God. And you'll come into this place and your soul is dry. But it's dry because of what you watched last night and what you watched the day before and what you listened to. And you wonder why you're so dead spiritually. And you wonder why there's so little happiness in your home.

It's because you don't understand There's a dragon in this who wants to kill you. Until you understand what is at stake, you will never stop drinking from that poison well. Proverbs 5, 8 says, her steps go down to hell. Number 6, how Christ is our example. How Christ is our example in this.

There's a messianic Psalm, Psalm 101, And Jesus says, I will walk in my house with a perfect heart. I will set nothing wicked before my eyes. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall depart from me.

I will not know wickedness." This is Jesus Christ. He says, I will not see it. I will not know it. If there, I will hate the wicked. I will hate it until you hate those four things that are in that film You will never be delivered from this Please hate them.

Jesus says I hate the work of those who fall away. But know you love them. That you don't have to love them your whole life long. And I pray that you walk out of here hating things that you loved before. And that you would think like Jesus, it's better to pluck out your eye, it's better to cut off your hand Than to have any good from any of these things.

You know, Jesus was the happiest of all the disciples. We know that from Hebrews 1, verse 9, where it says, you have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions. It's the happiness of the soul that's at stake here. If you want to be happy, hate those things that will cause you to commit adultery in your heart.

There's treasure. There's an abounding treasure. The more you want, the more you get. The more you get, the more you want. The more you want, the more you get.

And it never ends. That's the upward call of God. That's the brightness that just continues to go from noonday on. It just continues to get brighter and brighter. That's what happens with the sons of God.

But with those who drink from the poison well, it's not that way at all. I will set nothing impure before my eyes. I will look for purity. I'll have eyes for faithfulness, for fidelity, for love, for nourishing and cherishing that one whom God gave me. That's why Solomon said, Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet, and Let your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left. Remove your foot from evil." One of the most important things that a man has ever said was John Owen, when he said, Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work?

Be killing sin or it will be killing you. Paul said, for if you live after the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, you will live. You know what mortify means? Kill.

Put it to death. Lest your whole body be cast into hell. Now, I talked to Jason yesterday about this passage. He had a very interesting insight that one of the men brought to him from their discussion about it. And he said, Consider that there is personal self-discipline and there's church discipline.

In personal discipline, if your eye causes you to sin, you pluck it out. Because of the members of your body. You don't want the rest of your members to be cast into hell. So you do something for the body. Church discipline is like that.

You deal with sin in your life. The church deals with sin so that it doesn't infect the whole body. It's better to deal with, in church discipline, than for the whole body to just run licentiously. So Perhaps there's some kind of application with church discipline here, or some kind of loose connection. It's not the same thing, but there's a very similar principle in it.

And then, the last, How radical amputation is necessary. This is the last thing we learned. How radical amputation is necessary. What we've been saying many years in this church to our men are three things. Run, starve, Amputate.

That's how you deal with this sin. Run, starve, amputate. Hey, men don't need psychoanalysts to come and help them figure out how to deal with their morality problem. I don't even think men need accountability groups. Well, I think it's helpful for men to confess their sins to one another and say, brother, pray for me.

Accountability groups are not the answer. The answer is right here in the text, and it's so clear. And I'm just going to capitalize it by run, amputate, starve. Run, amputate, starve. You flee from it, you amputate it, and you starve it.

If you ever want to kill this dragon, you have to starve him. Now, I don't think anybody can kill the dragon, but you can really weaken him. And you weaken him by starvation. And you starve him by your eyes. Starve that dragon, brothers.

Lest you be devoured by that dragon. He will devour you if you do not weaken him. So Jesus gives us something very practical here. Okay, then we come to verses 31 and 32, adultery through divorce. Now The first category was adultery through looking upon a woman.

And now this is adultery through divorce. Now, this passage, Jesus is not bringing this up in order to deal in detail with the issue of divorce. This is not a divorce passage. It's an ancillary passage to refer to. When we get to Matthew 19, we're going to talk about divorce and remarriage.

Jesus is not in this groove right now. He's talking about adultery. When I first started studying this, I wondered, why do we break it up like this? Now we're going to have this whole thing about divorce, and actually, I was thinking wrongly about it. This is not about divorce.

It's about adultery. And Jesus is saying something here about the way that the Pharisees were handling the issue of adultery. It does teach us something about divorce. But this is not the primary divorce text. So we're not going to unpack everything about divorce here.

We're hardly going to talk about it. We are going to talk, though, about adultery. So these verses here give us insight into three things. What the Old Testament law taught about adultery because they're quoting Deuteronomy 24. Number two, what the Pharisees taught about it.

And number three, what Jesus is teaching about and how he's correcting them. Now go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 24. What the Pharisees were doing is that they were they were taking one statement out of Deuteronomy 24 and exploding it and isolating it rather than taking the whole context. And the Pharisees were saying that you can get a divorce by simply writing a certificate of divorce, because that's what's brought up here. Here this passage exists in the section where you're talking about stealing and how adultery steals from a marriage relationship and that spouses own one another's bodies, that it's theft to destroy the marriage covenant unlawfully, and it brings sin on the land by depriving society of the blessings of fidelity.

That's what is here. And so in Deuteronomy 24, Moses brings out a real life situation. It's a complex situation that involves actually two different marriages by one woman. And so let's just read it. When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house.

So here's the situation. A man gets married and he finds uncleanness and he writes her certificate of divorce. Now, what is this uncleanness all about? Well, first of all, it has to be verified by witnesses. A formal bill of divorce needs to be given.

And then the one who divorces cannot marry her again. So there are a number of things here. But what the Pharisees had done is they had reduced adultery to being identified by just writing a certificate of divorce. And so the Pharisees were saying, they're saying that you could get out of your marriage really easily. The school of Hillel and the school of Shammai.

The school of Hillel among the Jews was saying that if your wife was mean to you, she burnt your food, you don't like her anymore, she doesn't fulfill her obligations, then you can divorce her. Just write her a certificate of divorce. And Jesus is saying, look it, you're taking one thing here and calling it adultery, but you're calling adultery something that's not. And so, he's saying that there must be uncleanness. Jesus is going back to Deuteronomy 24 and saying, unless there is uncleanness, unless there is adultery, then you cannot divorce.

While the Pharisees had reduced it down to just writing a certificate, Jesus is saying, no, it's uncleanness. That's the only grounds for divorce is uncleanness. Now there's not a command for divorce. And in most cases, when there is uncleanness, there should not be a divorce. There should be faithfulness.

But there is a reason for divorce that Jesus is giving that is perfectly consistent with Moses. And many people read this and say Jesus was throwing out Moses. Not true. The words that are used in Deuteronomy 24 have to do with adultery, uncleanness, nakedness. The words are used for those kinds of situations.

And so what Jesus is saying here is that you're using an excuse to get out of your marriage. You're calling it adultery and you're writing a certificate of divorce, but it's not adultery Because there was no uncleanness there. And they're just taking one part, certificate of divorce, and not the rest of it. And Jesus is going back and saying, no, They're wrong. They've left out what is true grounds for divorce.

And he's saying that there's no other reason to put her away except uncleanness. That's what Deuteronomy is saying. And that's what Jesus says consistently in Matthew chapter 5. There's only one reason, and that is adultery. Now, there are so many reasons that people give for their divorce today.

You can list them if you've ever been to a divorce court or seen the divorce cases. You know that there are many, many reasons for divorce not according to adultery. Now, I want to talk about the spirit of adultery that exists in us in the same way that it did in the Pharisees. The Pharisees were saying that adultery is not the only reason that one can get a divorce. All you have to do is give a certificate.

Now, the spirit of adultery exists in our thinking, and I want to talk about that, Because the spirit of adultery has to be understood. When you say, when you say, I married the wrong person, I think that's the spirit of adultery. Because you're pretending that you can get out of this marriage by some other reason than adultery. When you say, I've fallen out of love, it's the spirit of adultery, because you're pretending that you can get out of this marriage because you've somehow fallen out of love. And ignore what the Bible says about how you get a divorce.

If you say I'm so unhappy, why would God want me in a destructive relationship? That's a spirit of adultery. Because you're pretending something that's not true. When you say, we're not compatible, that's a spirit of adultery, because you are trying to get out of your marriage by something that God has not given you. When you say, we're not married in God's eyes, that's a spirit of adultery.

When you say, I don't have peace about this marriage, that's a spirit of adultery. When you say, I'll divorce this person, God will forgive me. That's the spirit of adultery. When you say, he's committed emotional adultery and therefore I'm released, that's the spirit of adultery in your heart. When you say, we're under grace, not the law, I can get a divorce, that's the spirit of adultery.

When you say, I didn't mean my vows, that's the spirit of adultery. When you say, I love her, but I'm not in love with her, that's the spirit of adultery. Because you're pretending that there's another reason beyond the reason that Jesus gives here and Moses gave in Deuteronomy 24. And that's what the Pharisees were doing. You can divorce her for anything.

She burns your food, whatever. You don't like her. When you say it's much better for the children, that's the spirit of adultery. When you say we didn't know each other when we got married, that's a spirit of adultery. When you say, we had the same fight all the time, how long is this going to go on?

That's a spirit of adultery. When you say, I don't respect him. When you say, I would follow him if he would lead. That's the spirit of adultery. When your friends say, if you're not happy you need to move on.

That's the spirit of adultery. When you say, we were out of God's will When we got married, that's the spirit of adultery. When you say, I know God had in mind for you to marry somebody else, that's the spirit of adultery. Because you're pretending, just like the Pharisees did, that there's some other reason that it's lawful for you to turn away from your spouse. We didn't know what we were getting into when we got married.

That can be a spirit of adultery, if you let your mind go on those things. Because if you let your mind run on those things, There are conclusions. That's a path. That's a track you're on. You get on that track.

You need to know where it leads. It leads down. It leads down to where Jesus said it led. It leads to hell. Okay, applications.

Number one, let's learn how to apply every law this way. There's a spiritual application that goes beyond the surface of every law. It's not just about the physical that happens, but We need to think of the law in this way, that the law is spiritual. And take it more seriously rather than less seriously. Meditate on it more rather than just stopping at the wooden interpretation of it.

Number two, let's learn how to whittle away the things that we say to ourselves to make ourselves acceptable in these areas. When we say, I haven't committed adultery, Let's stop doing that. Let's look at this the way that Jesus is instructing us. Let's be good sons of our Lord Jesus Christ. Number three, what do you need to cut out?

If you keep these things on your plate, no one will condemn you. But it will cause you to commit adultery. Number four. Women. If you dress immodestly, you'll cause men to commit adultery in their hearts.

How tight, How brief will cause men to commit adultery in their hearts? You just need to know that. Just like when I was telling my wife, she was totally oblivious to this. Jim Elliott said something like this, if lust is spiritual adultery, then immodesty is spiritual seduction. And then lastly, let's apply the law correctly.

The law is good if we apply it lawfully. And what Jesus does is He actually makes us into bigger sinners than we thought we were. He makes the law bigger than we want to make it. He pierces us deeper. He makes us look worse than we want to say we are.

And we live in a culture, especially a Christian culture, which wants Christian culture which wants to make the law of no effect by the sake of traditions. Every commandment of God has an ultimate design and it's to, first of all, to show us our sins. The law kills. It puts us to death. It shows us that we deserve death.

Because none of us have ever been able to keep this law that Jesus is speaking about. And that would be enough to cast us into everlasting darkness. And so we see here the interplay of the law and the gospel. How the law comes to kill and the Gospel comes to heal us. When we realize how sinful we are, we repent and we enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that He has come to save sinners so terribly lost that they could not save themselves by their law keeping. No one could ever keep this law. And so our only hope is that we would have the righteousness of God applied to our account. That His riches would become our riches. That His perfections and keeping the law would be our perfection.

And that's what Jesus Christ has done. And that's why Paul could say, don't you know that no unrighteous will enter the kingdom of God? Either fornicators or idolaters or adulterers or homosexuals or sodomites or thieves or covetous or drunkards or revilers nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God." And so we find ourselves at the place where the law always leads to the gospel, to the refreshment that comes to the soul of man when he repents of his sins, and casts all of his hope on the righteousness of Jesus Christ and says, Oh how I love thy law, let it be my meditation all the day.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for giving us the law that would tell us who we really are and show us the treasure that really is treasure. Amen.