***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: into the study because I thought we might do better to spend the time that way for the first day. But now I want to come in on a couple of things before we get into the lesson today and one is the study that I’m asking you to do. I am asking you to study. Please study. Please put your mind to things which are suggested or stated to read and please do the memorization. Please do the memorization. Now I know that perhaps your experience in Sunday school and so on makes you think that that’s kid stuff small stuff or all that. But if you will just do the memorization you will find it will be immensely helpful to you. Because I’m going to ask you to memorize verses which incorporate basic principles basic ideas which you really desperately need to get a hold of.
Just like the one for this Sunday, “Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. And he that loveth not knoweth not God because God is love.” Now if you just fix that in your head, you just fix that, it will help you a lot. And like the other one that I asked you to to memorize for last time it was – what is it Matthew 5:20, “For I say unto you that unless your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisee.” Now that’s a particular kind of righteousness which we’re going to be discussing. “You shall in no wise in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now the Gospels talk about entering about seeing the kingdom of heaven entering into it they lay these down. I’ll always state on the sheets that I hand out want you to memorize for the coming Sunday, what you’re to study. Like at the bottom of this one for two weeks from today we’re not having Sunday school class next Sunday. We’re having a marriage next Sunday. Praise the Lord. And so we’re not having this. So this is for July the 9th. On the bottom I’ve asked you to memorize Matthew 6 31 through 34. And I’ve asked you to study this outline and I want to ask you to compare it with the outline on the Xerox sheet that I handed out. I’ll give you something to compare here. On this Xerox sheet that I handed out, there is an outline of the sermon right here on the first column.
What I’d like for you to do is to take these two outlines, we’ve got two weeks to study, and I wish you’d take the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew and just tear these outlines apart, and just tear that sermon apart until you’re on the inside of it and you can give a better outline than either one of these two at least. Work with your mind on the Gospels. If you really put yourself to it, studying critically, thinking hard, trying to break this thing down, see whether or not the way I’ve got the material in that sermon arranged makes any sense, compare it to the way he’s got it arranged. I hope you’ll read this whole page here. This is the page that I was quoting last time, which says, the Sermon on the Mount is not a real discourse. The nature of its elements clearly demonstrates this. They are mostly individual sayings, the attitudes, the new commandments, and the parables of the builders and so on. Each group is complete in itself and has no visible connection with the other groups. Now I think that’s completely wrong, and I’m trying to show why by the way I’ve organized the sermon. And what I’d like you to do is just be as hard-nosed and critical as you can in studying that sermon over, turning it one way and then the other to see what the meaning is.
It is a difficult thing to follow because Jesus’ way of teaching was not the way which we’re inclined to teach today. And this is what I say in the method of the sermon here on this outline I handed out. Jesus preaches and teaches by paradox, illustration, simile, and metaphor. He doesn’t teach systematically. He doesn’t suppose he’s got to write a book for you and hand it to you so you’ll have all the rules and doctrines down rightly. He supposes rather that he will communicate to you a spirit and attitude which will rectify your mind. And he supposes that just as what he’s giving you is from the spirit, the spirit will be with you as you study, as you think about it.
So please put your minds to it as rigorously as with as much vigor as you can. And don’t assume, please don’t assume you know that we already know everything we need to know and that consequently all we do is just read it to sort of confirm what we already believe. As if you do that, you’ll get nothing out of it. Read it critically. Read it as if you’ve never seen it before. Read it as if you’d never heard of Christianity or of Christ. Read it that way. Just read like you’ve never heard of it before. It’s something new you picked up. Read it that way. Read it as if there were no such thing as a church. Yeah. Read it as if you were, you know, a Chinaman or someone who’d never heard of all this before and all of a sudden you find this. What does it mean? What’s being said here and probe and dig until you get something out of it that makes sense to you. Then organize it. Try to do it in some way the whole sermon so that you will have a grasp of that whole sermon.
You see, Jesus preached a sermon which is cumulative. If you look at the sermon, you will see that it is cumulative in the sense that when Jesus comes to the end, he refers back to the whole thing and hopes to have gained a result from that whole discourse. That’s what he supposes regardless of what the man in the interpreter’s Bible or I suppose is. He supposes, apparently, from the way that’s written, a previous whole discourse which has a cumulative result. So try to look especially at those last verses and see, well, now why does he think this gets us here?
Now another thing I’d like for us to do as we go through these weeks during the summer is to pray for one another and I wish during today you would look around at the group and take some people who are here as your special subjects of prayer. Say especially that our minds will be able to receive the truth of God. That’s where our salvation lies. Only the truth will set us free. Only the truth will deliver us. It doesn’t matter an awful lot how we’re feeling or what we’re trying. What matters is what we have opened ourselves to and what has been implanted in our minds in the way of truth. You can feel all you want to and try all you want to, but if you don’t know how an internal combustion engine works, you’re going to be in bondage when it breaks down. Believe me, you’re going to be in bondage. You can have all sorts of good feelings or bad feelings, good efforts or bad efforts. It won’t make the least bit of difference. What you need is to know what makes that thing go and it’s the same way with the spiritual life. It’s the same way in living with God, living with our brothers and sisters. We need to know the truth. That’s why we want to use our minds in this way. That’s why we want to pray for one another, that we will really be able to receive the truth into our minds.
I’ll probably show up around here about 930 each Sunday morning in case anyone wants to come and take that time to talk or visit or whatever. If you want to talk at other times, don’t hesitate to call me and we’ll try to have more time than just this one hour to discuss, think, be together and see what will happen to us. So don’t hesitate to call me. I’m thinking also maybe of having some, setting some nights during the week in which we could, those who wish to get together and work over some of the material in a little less formal context than we have here on Sunday morning. So keep that in mind please.
I was in a most moving ceremony the other night. I’m easily moved by these rites of passage which we have, even in our culture where rites of passage have become small cheats, that I went to my family to watch my long-haired hippie type son graduate from junior high school. I was very moved by that, very moved, broken almost, because I watched between six and seven hundred young men and women as they walked to their places and I watched them and saw how desperately they wanted to be interesting, how desperately they wanted to be attractive and happy, how desperately they wanted to be able to give something to others and I thought, God help them. God help them because they’re walking into the jaws of a system of this world which is going to make most of them miserable and wreck their lives and their health and make them hate themselves and make them fear others.
I realized that the only person, the only teaching, the only group of persons that could save those children are people who really understand and have in their lives the way which Jesus taught. I remembered that he said, I am come that your joy might be full, that your lives might be good, that you might be happy, that you might not drive your families crazy, that you might not ruin your children’s lives, that you might not worry your neighbors to death and all of these other things which lead through various complications to miserable lives, unhappy people, desperate situations of all kinds and I’m very much concerned that we try to understand what he was saying.
People who heard him had an immense sense of joy at what they heard. They realized that what he had to say was indeed good news and they watched him and realized that what he did was a manifestation of kingdom of God that they could live in, that they could walk in, that they could be a part of.
And then I turned and I realized that the very words of Jesus are among the things which are most used to bring people into bondage. This very fifth chapter of Matthew, which we’ve been studying last time and this time, are among the very things which are used to beat people down, make them think God does not love them, that God is not good, to rob them of the elemental faith which would save them. Everything from this first beatitude which we talked about last time sung, which has sent people out trying to get themselves into some position of false modesty where they can call themselves blessed, make themselves humble, beat themselves down, blessed are the mousy for theirs is the kingdom of God, that sort of thing. These beatitudes have been twisted and turned and how people have used these as a curse.
This is especially true when we go on and come into the things we’re going to be discussing today. I’m so concerned that we look at these things that Jesus said to understand what they mean and not to interpret them just in terms of how we somehow have them handed on to us to make us miserable. I was telling, I guess, Bob Harrison the other day when we were working together, or Steve Wan, that it often seems to me that many people have a vested interest in others being miserable. If the world were a genuinely happy place filled with joyous people, it would be a different kind of place not just because the people would be happy but because those who attempt to manipulate others in their misery would not be able to do so anymore.
Jesus was essentially killed because he cut free the way of blessedness from a system which had marked that out as its prerogative. He was essentially killed because the people realized, the people who were responsible for the religion of Israel realized that what he was saying was their undoing and so they killed him. Jesus whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light, taught the truth which would set us free.
As I said last time, these first verses are a kind of shock technique to invert in the minds of the people who were listening to him, the order of blessedness, to show that being well off is something which is in reach of the ordinary person by the grace of God. Now if you will look at this outline on the white sheet that I’ve given you, you’ll see I have put what we attempted to cover last time under Roman numeral one. I won’t go back into what was said at that time, though I know that there are a number of you who weren’t here. I urge you to be sure and get a sheet from this first lesson and look it over and perhaps we can discuss about it.
What I want to do today is come into the second heading there, Roman numeral two, where Jesus begins to contrast the way to blessedness which man would devise and which was most fully represented by the Jewish law and the system of institutions and doctrines and rules. He wants to contrast that with the way of the child of the kingdom of God, way of living. Now he wants to do this in a number of different principle life situations and this is what the main body of the Sermon on the Mount is given to. It takes different types of life situations and gives illustrations of how it is for one who’s going man’s way and how it is for one who’s going God’s way.
But before he gets in that, he’s very careful to do something, very careful to do something which must be done in order to keep those who are in the kingdom of God from despising those who aren’t. This is why he says, I have not come to do away with the law. The law is a good thing, it itself is an instrument of God. God ordained it in the hand of a mediator or interpreter or go-between for the good of people and the person who is not in the kingdom of God had better spend his days on his knees thanking God for some kind of law because to be without law is to be in the worst of conditions unless you live by grace. To be without law is a terrible thing.
So what Jesus does is he says, instead of doing away with the law, I’m come to fulfill it. Now what does that mean to you? I’m come to complete it. Here’s what it means to a lot of people. That means he gets all these little rules and regulations and does every single one of them and does not do the ones you know which prohibits why he does that. That’s what a lot of people think that means.
There’s a very key phrase in Paul where he says, the letter kills but the spirit gives life. The letter kills but the spirit gives life. What is the spirit of the law? Now please try to hang onto this because this will help us in all of the cases which follow. The spirit of the law is the good which the law was given with the intention of realizing. The spirit of the law is the good which the law was given with the intention of realizing. There is a larger good around any set of rules. You can never bottle a human activity up into a set of rules. You can’t even do that with something like basketball or baseball. All you have in baseball and basketball for example are a set of rules which lie down parameters within which that game may be played. But you can’t capture an activity in a set of rules and you can’t capture life in a set of rules. There is a larger good incorporated in the activity which the rules are set down to regulate. Now what Jesus means when he says I’ve come to fulfill the law is I have come to realize that larger good. I have come to realize it and to bring others into it.
Now after having made secure the relationship between the child of the kingdom with his liberty and his way of grace and the way of law, he’s made that secure. After having done that he turns and says now if your righteousness is not more than the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven. So you see he puts it very sharply in both directions. On the one hand he just says don’t look down on the law, don’t try to destroy it, don’t try to do away with it, it’s good and then he turns right around and says it’s not enough and he puts it in such sharp turns that you can’t miss the point if you look at it carefully.
Now may I just stop and go aside here a moment to say I would suggest that for someone in your position or mine about the most important thing we can do is try to find out exactly what the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees is and exactly how we’re to go beyond it. Look at the verse, unless your righteousness exceeds, if you don’t go beyond Fallbrook you will never get to Taping Canyon, right? Now if you don’t know where Fallbrook is, forget it because all you can do is wander around and perhaps you’ll get there but if you have directions like this you must go beyond something, you must know where that mark is.
Now I ask you to please put as a main question in your mind until you answer it, what is the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees? What was the righteousness they had? Now of course I’m going to answer that for you but my answers are always answers which I hope you will argue with, which you will take with a question mark after them because that’s the only way that you will really learn is not by accepting what I say, perhaps by listening to it but by always questioning it, listening to it critically, trying to find out whether or not there is any justification for it.
Now I’m not going to go into much of a justification, I’m just going to state what I think the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees are or righteousness is and then we can work on it from there as we go along through the weeks. As a matter of fact I said that in writing, on that yellow sheet, what is the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees? It consisted in control over externals, often involving manipulative control of other people. The mark of the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees was externalism, externalism.
Now you will see this at every point as we go through the sermon on the map because every contrast will be what is external. For example, the scribes and Pharisees don’t kill someone, said don’t kill someone, right? That’s an external action but Jesus said that’s not enough. Scribes and Pharisees said don’t commit adultery, that’s an external action and Jesus said that’s not enough. Scribes and Pharisees said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As in the Pharisees when they did their righteousnesses, boy they blew a horn in front of them and said get ready everyone and watch because I’m going to do it now. And when they prayed they go stand on the street corner and really rattle it off, stand there for a long time just praying as loud as they could. See, externalism. The scribes and the Pharisees judged and condemned people, that’s an external action. Jesus just said don’t do it, judge not. Scribes and the Pharisees took their good things and tried to force them down people’s throats and Jesus said don’t take anything no matter how precious and try to feed it to something which can’t digest it.
Then after having said those two things about how we’re not to do external things to people, he says if you want to work with things like that, ask, knock, seek, God answers prayer. God will work in the inward route, if you want to straighten someone out, don’t straighten them out by condemning them, don’t straighten them out by stuffing things down their throat, straighten them out by praying the inward way. The mark of the righteousness of the scribe and the Pharisees is externalism. Big numbers, big buildings, big deals, a scribe or a Pharisee who could cast out a demon or heal someone was really on the way. Jesus said you can do all of that and miss the boat in time.
The righteousness of the scribe and the Pharisees was external, external, external. Remember it, remember it, that’s where Fallbrook is and you’ve got to know where it is if you’re going to get beyond it. And if you don’t get beyond it, you won’t walk in the kingdom of God because the kingdom of God is where? In the heart, right? The kingdom of God is within you, the kingdom of God is hidden. As Jesus said, the kingdom of God cometh not with observation. It’s inward. There’s a beautiful verse in, I think it’s 1 Samuel 16. Samuel says to Saul, man looketh on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. And we can decide whether or not we’re beyond Fallbrook by seeing how much of our religion and our righteousness is something which no one else but God can observe.
Now it will have external effects, but no one will understand us because it won’t have an external cause. The cause is inward, the effect is outward. That’s why Paul says, nobody can understand the spiritual man. They’re just completely bum-fuzzled by it. People jump on him, he says bless you, praise for him, they persecute him. What’s wrong with that guy? It must be something physiologically, psychologically, sociologically, theologically, something’s wrong with him. He doesn’t behave right. People bite him, he doesn’t bite back. People condemn him and he says, I wish the best for him, he means it. People who persecute him, he turns around and does good for them. That doesn’t make much sense. He’s out of this world, literally. As Paul was said, his citizenship is in heaven. He is in the kingdom of heaven. He is working with a realm of reality which other people simply don’t suspect or if they suspect it, they don’t know how to get hooked into it and consequently, he’s a bewilderment to everyone around him.
Now watch some of the things that this man is going to do and here I want to just turn to reading with comment, verses 21 and following in the fifth chapter of Matthew. I’ve grouped these first three incidents in terms you’ll see in the heading, heading B under Roman numeral two, contrast of the two ways in three types of situations where the aggressiveness of the male is usually displayed. Now, the male was the dominant factor in that society, whether or not he is in this one, we won’t get into that world, I hope, but in any case, he was in that one and they didn’t even have any women’s lib movements in that society. Not that they didn’t need them because they certainly did, but they weren’t even getting that far along in thinking about whether or not women were really human beings.
So this first set of illustrations, and they are only illustrations, they are not laws, they’re not systematic principles, they are illustrations of how the aggressiveness of the male is handled in these three situations.
First of all, in reference to other men, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, thou shalt not kill. Now that was the law. That was an external regulation of what you weren’t to do, right? Now a good Pharisee would not do that. He might wish somebody was dead. He might hope he would fall in a hole and disappear. He might hate him. He might eat his guts up with resentment and anger. He might call them all sorts of things. The spirit of that regulation is respect for the right of the other, before God and before men, to live and be what he is. That’s the spirit of that law.
Now watch how Jesus carries this truth. He immediately goes to the attitudes, whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment. And whoever shall say to his brother, you empty-headed, dumb ox, you feather-brained nitwit, vain fellow, vain means empty, doesn’t it, shall be in danger of the count, but whosoever shall save thou fool, shall be in danger of the fires of Hades, the fires of the underworld.
Therefore, because these attitudes are wrong and harmful and hurtful and bad, you want to be very careful with your brother. You have a run-in with your brother. Notice he doesn’t say, don’t ever get mad at your brother. That’s all right. Like Paul said, don’t let the sun go down on your wrath. Be angry and sin not. You can be angry without sinning. And we’re going to see the same application where in the next verse we must be very careful with it because many people have condemned themselves in the next passage where it’s talking about adultery, you can desire a woman or a man without sinning. It all comes in how you hold that anger, and if you hold it in a certain way, then you’re wrong. It will hurt you, and it will hurt others, and you oughtn’t to have it.
Now in order to correct these attitudes, Jesus does an interesting thing. He invokes the religious rituals. He says, when you bring your gift to the altar, the sacrifice to the loving God who loves all men equally and who doesn’t think any of them, is vain, idle, worthless. When you bring that gift, you remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift and go be reconciled to your brother. What does that mean? That means go give in, give up, let him have his way, stop fighting, then come and offer your gift.
Agree with thine adversary. Now Jesus turns to a context of a court of law. Agree with the person who is opposing you quickly while you’re walking down the road to the judge, because if you go this route, if you want justice and you go to the judge, the judge may deliver you to the officer and you’ll be cast in prison and you won’t get out until you pay everything. If you want justice, be careful, you may get it. That’s what he’s saying. If you want to live on the basis of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you’ll get the result that the scribes and the Pharisees get, and there will be no mercy, no grace. You won’t know what it means and you’ll receive no help. You will pay the full price.
Let me read you a little passage here out of 1 Corinthians, which I’ve referenced in the Roman numeral II, B.1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1-8. They had a situation here in Corinth where church members were suing one another before the law. Now we’ve advanced beyond that stage today, but we will illustrate this by the errors of antiquity, by looking at this passage. No Christians today would sue another Christian, especially if he was a member of the same church, would never do a thing like that. But they were doing it then, and Paul has a fascinating statement. Dare any of you having a matter against another go to the law before the unjust, that is before non-Christians, and not before the saints? That is, he’s saying, what do you mean going to a court of law to get an issue settled between two brothers, instead of bringing it to the church and getting it settled in? Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world, and if the world be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? That is, these sorts of things which they were suing one another about, which are usually the smallest matters. Perhaps they don’t even exist, except in someone’s imagination sometimes.
It goes on down, I speak to your shame. Is it so that there is not a wise man among you? Isn’t there anyone in the church who has enough sense to tell what’s right and wrong, what’s good and bad, and make a judgment on this? Brother goes to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore, this is utterly a fault among you, because you go to law with one another.
Now here’s the part I urge you to look at. Why do you not rather take wrong? Why don’t you just take it? Why do you not rather let yourselves be defrauded? Nay, in order to avoid that, you turn around and do wrong and defraud, and that your own brethren.
The answer to that question is, of course, the mind of the flesh. You do not take wrong because, after all, we have to take care of ourselves, don’t we? We have to look out for ourselves. You know, if you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will look out for you. Haven’t you heard that? That’s in the Bible, isn’t it? Hezekiah 3.8, I think that is. You don’t look out for yourself, no one else will look out for you. Can you imagine a Christian saying that? Now you just think, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. That’s what Peter said, look. Remember that. Remember that. Next time you hear someone say, if you don’t look out for yourself, no one will look out for you. If a person wants to look out for themselves, all you can say is, good luck, you’re going to need it.
I’d hate to have to look out for myself, but I just have to confess that in the measure to which I’ve been able to put that burden down, I’ve found great peace in facing my brothers and sisters as well as people who aren’t brothers and sisters. Let them do what they will. It’s all right, I’m in God’s hands. It has to do with reputation, with money, or whatever else.
One of the great medieval saints was once under attack for his reputation. He looked out the window and saw a dog shaking a carpet. You know how a dog would play with a carpet. He said as he watched that, the Lord seemed to say to him, that’s what I’m doing with your reputation. I’m just going to let him tear that up. You don’t need it. Reputation seldom does anyone much good, and so often we go around talking big about how we have got to preserve our witness for God’s sake. Well, I’m sure there is some degree of legitimate concern in that, but the truth of the matter is our witness and our reputation isn’t our business. It is our business to trust God and do right in the love of Him.
Why don’t you suffer it wrong? Well, Jesus is saying, in the way of the kingdom, people do. They suffer wrong, they take it, and they don’t even get bitter about it. Very often they don’t even notice it after a while. So the aggressiveness of the male in the world of business or property or whatever is handled in this simple way. Give in. Give in. Stop fighting. Stop taking care of yourself. Be careful for nothing but in everything with prayer and suffocation let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, that passive understanding, will keep your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
Then he goes on. You’ve heard it said that you shall not commit adultery. So we had a lot of people thinking, well, that was the mark of righteousness, that’s Paul Brook, we come up to there and we’re safe. But he says to us, no, you have to go beyond that if you want to be sexually righteous. And in order to get at this, he speaks to the Pharisee right where he is. He speaks to the man who believes that you’re sexually right if you just don’t do it right where he is because that man usually is the very sort of person who will break his neck looking at and lusting after another man’s wife, another man’s daughter.
Purposefully, now that word purposefully is the one I want to stress because this verse has done much harm by misguided teaching, by people who read it this way. Whoever looks at a woman and lusts after her has committed adultery with her in his heart. That’s Paul. That’s not what he’s saying. Now it’s difficult to get what it says because of the inability to translate a Greek preposition pros. The word that you have here in the King James Version that says, looks on a woman to lust after her just does not get over the point. Now if a Greek wants to say, looks at a woman and lust after her, there’s all sorts of material to say that word. But this is a very definite structure involving the preposition pros together with the accusative case, the accusative case, which means in a context where there is consciousness, purposive human action involved, like looking. It means, as Alfred Marshall translated in his interlinear version, it means looking at a woman with a view to lusting. Now that’s exactly what it says, looking at a woman with a view to lusting. It doesn’t even say lusting after her. The after her is supplied and if you look at your Greek text you’ll see that the pronoun there is supplied, they put it in brackets. The original text just simply says, whoever looks at a woman with a view to lusting and by that picks out very nicely a state of mind with which I think all of us are quite familiar, men and women alike.
It is that purposive stewing in lust which many people get involved in as a means of titillation and excitement short of the act, short of the act. And people who think that sin lies in the act are especially prone to that sort of thing. And if you will open your eyes and your ears and look around you, you will catch people involved in just this very thing which Jesus is talking about, purposively putting themselves in a sexual stew, purposively putting their imagination to work upon some flesh and blood creature which stands before them.
In these matters the imagination is the chief culprit when there is a culprit. The imagination tends to create objects in this sort of situation which aren’t real, which could never be found, which you wouldn’t know what to do with if you did find them. But this is an extremely bad state of mind for two reasons. One, well, I’ll put it in terms of a disjunction. This is an extremely bad state of mind because it’s going to do one of two things to you. It’s going to lead you to do something which is explicitly wrong, an overt action of wrong. Or it is going to lead you into a state of mind which will bring depression, dissatisfaction, and all sorts of other harmful attitudes towards yourself and towards others. I think one of the most harmful things this kind of state does is it leads us to make comparisons between this creature half perception and half imagination which we have placed before ourselves. And those who are placed in our lives as legitimate sexual partners. And consequently we may, and it often happens, that those who will do this kind of thing condemn their actual partners because they don’t match up to this critter of imagination which is flitting around in their minds. And all sorts of harm and hurt come from this.
And what Jesus is saying very simply is, if you think you are right merely because you don’t do it, think again. Think again. Because there can all sorts of harmful attitudes be present in the heart. And this is what he calls adultery in the heart. Of course, adultery in the heart is not adultery. It’s Jesus’ graphic way of saying there is something wrong in the person sexually, positively stated. The motive which is to govern our sexual life is a genuine love and concern for all of those involved with it. That includes our children, that includes our neighbors, but most importantly it includes the close relation of the two people who may be involved in the situation, whether it’s of act or of attitude.
And what Jesus is saying, among other things here, is simply that if I refrain from committing adultery with someone, and that motive is not my love for that person and those with whom they are involved, for that person’s husband, that person’s children, if my motive is not love. If it is simply I didn’t do it because I was scared or I couldn’t get them to cooperate or I lacked opportunity, that doesn’t mean anything. The meaning of Jesus is simply that sexual righteousness is a matter of the heart which is governed by love.
Now let’s please put out of our minds forever this idea that there are certain thoughts which are in themselves essentially dirty. Okay? Please, I beg you to do it. This is not only sexually, but for example, many people like to get mad at their father and they’d really like to kill him, you know, and then they get feeling very bad about that. Well, maybe they ought to if they hold that anger in a certain way, but just to get mad at someone, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just to think of a woman as a sexual partner or a man, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Now let me make two final points on this. I’ve got three minutes, so that will give me a minute and a half for each point, and they’re big points. Okay, let me make two final points.
Many people have read this verse and gotten themselves in a position to where you could not be tempted without sinning, because in order to be tempted sexually you have to think of sex, and if thinking of sex is a sin, you can’t be tempted sexually without sinning. Let me remind you that Jesus was tempted on all points like as we. Jesus knew what it was to be tempted is not to sin.
Now let’s turn it around and get the second point. Second point, this reading of this verse makes it out in such a way that the sexually virtuous person is the one who doesn’t even think about it, who has no inclination and no opportunity, at least no inclination. The good guy is the one who isn’t tempted. Now the scriptures say, blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life, James 1.12. And everyone knows that the virtuous person is the one who has been tried. If he could put his hand in the till and didn’t, that means something about that person. But if he didn’t have an opportunity, or if he didn’t want to, that means something different. If he wanted to and had the opportunity and refused to, that’s a virtuous man or woman. And it’s the same way in sex, it’s the same way everywhere else.
Now there are certainly times when we ought to run when we’re under temptation. But that is not the best way to handle it in general. If we feel like we’ve got to run in order to avoid a greater evil, for goodness sakes, pray for speed. Right. But while we’re running, at least, let us be praying that God will give us the grace next time to be still and to watch His deliverance. And let us above all understand that the general method of handling temptation is not running. It is rather to know the strength and goodness of the love of God in our hearts, which will keep us from hurting other people simply because we love them. That’s the fruition of temptation. That is the way of escape, and we must learn to take it. We must learn to receive it as a gift.
When we do, then what will happen? People who don’t understand may say, well, he must have some kind of hang-up, something happened to him in the oral stage, something like that, which doesn’t permit him to do these kinds of things. But we will know that it is the grace of God which brings salvation. We will know, very simply, that the power of God is able to keep us, and we will rest in that. And then those who understand will, as Matthew 5.16 says, they will see our good works and glorify who? Our Father, not us. Glorify our Father, because they will know that we are kept in His hands.
Lord, we’re thankful for this time to look at these words which you left us, and we pray for renewed ability to criticize and to think and to pray honestly about what they mean for our lives. Make us adventuresome in the way we read this book, and especially the words which have been left by your followers. Ask every mind, every person who is in this room, to go beyond the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees and walk into the kingdom of heaven, and the praise will certainly be yours. Amen.