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***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: Alright, let’s leave it like that then. How did you do with the memorization? Matthew 6, 31, 234. Anyone memorize that? Beth, can you say that one? No, I just memorized it. Well, alright. I did do it though. Good. It’s a good one to have tucked away, isn’t it? Yes, it’s a good one.

Therefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we eat, Lord? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. Now, the Gentiles mean those who aren’t with God. For your Heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. So, now then, the next verse tells us how we’re to handle it. It isn’t that these things aren’t important, right? They’re all very important. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then what? All things shall be added unto you. All these things shall be added unto you, right? Take therefore no thought for the morrow. For the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Right? In other words, you handle those things tomorrow. And then Jesus, in a humorous way, takes a saying and says, Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. In other words, you don’t need to borrow evil from tomorrow in order to have enough for today, right? That’s what he’s saying. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We have enough for today without borrowing for tomorrow. So just leave that alone. Lay it down.

Now, please try to memorize these passages. Please do. And you’ll see that I’ve given you one for next time from the seven chapters of Matthew. It’s on the bottom of page two of this thing I handed out today. You’re to study Matthew 6, 7, and 25, verses 14 through 46, and memorize Matthew 7, 21 through 25. Now, please, please, make an effort to memorize them.

Now, if you fail to memorize them, or if you are the sort of person, and there are people like this, who can memorize them, but if you were to stand them up and ask them to say them, they could never say them. The important thing is not to be able to say them as a performance, but to have them in your heart. And have them in your heart. And as you have them in your heart, then they’re there to guide you at times when you need them. What does the psalmist say? Thy word have I hid in my heart. Why? That I might not sin against thee. And he also said, Thy word is a light unto my feet, a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. His word is truth, and that truth acts like a light where we are. And it shows us how to avoid the things that are evil, wrong, hurtful. And that’s why he says, Thy word have I hid in my heart. How do you hide the word in your heart? How do you hide the word in your heart by looking at it, thinking about it, memorizing it?

How do you do that? How do you memorize it? Well, first you get this glue. Reading it repeatedly. Reading it repeatedly. Okay. You get this glue and you put it on the seat of your pants and you sit down on the chair. All right? You just say it. It might help, seriously, if you add a little bit.

Now, there are three parts of memorization, and I won’t say them to you, and I hope you remember them, because anyone can memorize these with more or less difficulty, depending on the habits that you have or don’t have, if you’ll just attend to them. And the first and most important one is concentration. You have to be able to fix your mind. Actually, the secret of all learning is concentration. If you can get someone’s concentration, you can teach them anything. Concentration.

So if you concentrate, and the second is repetition, just repeat it with concentration. If you just repeat with concentration, you will eventually memorize it. You don’t even have to understand it. If you just concentrate and repeat, you will memorize it.

Now, the third thing is, however, understanding, because if you understand it or even think you understand it, you will be able to memorize it with much less repetition. Much less repetition. And you will remember it after you become unable to repeat the words. You will remember it in a fashion because you understood it. Just like Matthew 6.33 is one which is very easy to remember. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. I’m glad it didn’t say unto it. Add it unto you. They’ll be given right directly to you. And as you understand that, that’ll stay with you.

Those three things, if you’ll keep them in mind and let them guide you as you attempt to memorize, you’ll find that there’s a great blessing in hiding the word of God in your heart or in your mind. So please make the effort, and don’t be discouraged if you have not been able to memorize the verses for today. We’ll try the ones for next time. And I assure you that if you will follow those three guidelines of concentration, repetition, and understanding, you’ll be able to memorize the verses which I’m asking you to memorize.

Now, there are lots of verses to memorize, and there isn’t usually, you could find better verses somewhere than the ones I would suggest. I try to suggest ones which go along somewhat with the content of the lesson. If you will hide these in your heart, then you have a chance to really believe God or not. For example, if you really believe that if you seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all of these things will be added unto you. That’ll totally transform the way you approach the Word. Then you accept on trust the provisions which are to be made.

It doesn’t mean that you don’t go to the stove and cook some supper. It doesn’t mean that you don’t go to work. You just sort of sit there or lie there in the hasock and say, pour it in, Lord, pour it in. That’s not what it means. It means not to be anxious, not to be concerned, overly concerned about these things, but to take the simple steps of provision for the daily needs and to take them one at a time. Remember, we are told to pray, give us this day our daily bread, not give us this day tomorrow’s bread. It is enough for today. And that fits right in with the admonition to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of these things will be added day by day, day by day provision. That’s true in the spiritual realm as well as in the physical realm, day by day provision.

We don’t know how we’re going to face things that happen to us in the future, the loss of a family or the loss of a loved one in debt or some big bruja that’s stirring, you know, in business or church or school or wherever. And we don’t know how we’re going to be able to do this. And I’m reminded of the story about the man who came up to D.L. Moody and said, Have you got dying grace? He said, No, I’m not a dying idiot. And that’s exactly, you don’t need dying grace until you die. And the provision is for moment by moment, day by day. We seek first the kingdom of God. That’s where we’re concentrating. Seeking to live in union with Him and with others of His children, His righteousness, and then all of the things that we need are added as we go through to the time.

Now, in the concept of seeking the highest kingdom of Christ, if you say, Well, I’m going to seek the kingdom of God, and as soon as I get that demonstrated, all these other things are going to happen for me. My preacher comforts and all the other things I need with it might pay. But what he’s saying is that in everything I do throughout the period of the day, the concept of righteousness of God’s kingdom is in that. I see it. I see it with him. And that will be even more better.

Oh, yes, that’s exactly right. It doesn’t mean we’ve got to have it all straight. That’s one of the beauties of this verse. We just have to seek it. Everything. We just have to seek it. That’s right. And that means we don’t lie. We don’t try to use other people. We don’t hurt other people. Wherever there’s a choice, and we have these choices almost hourly at least, we choose what is right and what is good. We choose the truth. We choose to live honestly. We choose to live in a helpful way with others, and we trust God for the consequences of that. If we do that, then instead of thinking, Well, I’d better tell this little lie, or I won’t have enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month, the promise is simply that we just do what’s right. We just go ahead. And all the things we need will be provided. All the things we need. Not necessarily all the things we want. There’s a distinction between our wanter and our needer, isn’t there? Sometimes our wanter kind of outruns our needer, and that takes some straightening out. But that’s one of the things which is promised as we live in the kingdom of heaven.

Well, if there are no more preliminaries now, let’s just have a moment of meditation and prayer and open ourselves to the Spirit of God. Ask to be taught the things that we need as we go into this hour.

Lord, it’s true we don’t always know what we need, and it may be this morning. I need some things that I don’t want. And so in this moment of silence, I pray that you will give me what I need, and that you will bless all of our brothers and sisters here in this room with the same distribution to their needs. Out of the record which has been left by your disciples, I pray that you will instruct us and build us up so that our joy may be full as your joy is full. Bring us the purity, the cleanliness, the light, the openness, the tenderheartedness so that we can live with one another and have fellowship because we walk in the light as you were in the light. Oh, do use these moments this morning for that purpose. If you do, your kingdom will be advanced, and that’s what we want to see. It will be advanced in our hearts, and it will reach out and take in those who are around us, and our joy and your joy will be increased. On behalf of Jesus, our Father, we pray this. Amen.

Now, we’re concentrating in these weeks on the theme of Jesus’s good news of God’s kingdom, and we’ve been dealing, or at any rate, we spent last time especially, which was two weeks ago now, dealing with some things in the Sermon on the Mount, which have been used to make what Jesus had to say look like anything but good news, and indeed have been used to depress and oppress people because they’ve been taken as a new set of laws instead of illustrations of the liberty that is in Christ Jesus through subordination to the simple principle of love.

Now, the way of Christ is a way of liberty. It is a way of liberty, and this is why Jesus invited us to come and take his yoke and learn that his yoke was easy, that his burdens lie. This is why Jesus bawled out the lawyers of his day because they would pile these intolerable burdens upon people. And it is a way of liberty because there is a release from the letters of the law plus the strength to do the loving and good thing to those around us. There is freedom. There is liberty in this way. And that’s why we must be very careful when we read Jesus’s words not to turn them into another source of bondage, for they have been turned into that.

Now, if you look at the outline which I had given you, a suggested outline of the Sermon on the Mount, you will see we were down in the Roman numerals 2, under B. We were contrasting the two ways of righteousness, or blessedness, particularly with regard to the aggressiveness of the male, M-A-L-E, the aggressiveness of the male and how this is displayed toward other men and Jesus’s teaching of this to bring men to see that it isn’t enough. You aren’t right if you just don’t kill other people, run over them brutally as you go through life. That’s not enough. There has to be a yieldiness, a tenderness, a sympathy for the other man, which enables you to see him as someone who has a right to life, to pleasure, to a place in the sun, just as much as you do.

Jesus taught that when we are in an altercation with another man, we should be ready to yield. Yield. I often thought that highway sign, you know, where it says yield? Might be a good one to put up in front of the churches. Yield. Yield. When you’re in the way to the courthouse, he said, give in. Make up. Your world’s not going to end if someone takes something away from you, because I’m your father and I make provision.

Then we went on to the aggressiveness of the male in relation to woman. And Jesus here again taught that it was not enough, not just, not enough just to refrain from an adulterous act. There had to be a deeper righteousness of the heart. And he especially zeroed in upon certain people who, because of the teaching they had about the externality of sin, thought that as long as you just didn’t do it, anything else that happened in your heart was all right. And he didn’t leave them alone in that. And he brought us the good news that there is a deliverance and a righteousness which is far better than all of these externalities which people impose.

He really crams it down to the Pharisees’ tropes, because he says now, if you people actually believe that righteousness consists in what you do with your hands, your other bodily members, or your eyes, then all you’ve got to do to get in free is just punch out your eyes and cut off your hands and everything else that depends. Make yourself into a truncated human being, all punched out and cut off, and boy, you’ve got righteousness made. Because you couldn’t possibly do anything wrong, right?

Now don’t ever believe, don’t ever believe that Jesus is advising people to go punch their eyes. You see, or cut their hands off. That’s just the opposite of what he was teaching. Just the opposite of what he was teaching. And you have to always remember that when you hear Jesus teaching, and not just Jesus, but when you read the prophets and other people, they don’t always just stand up and sort of flat tone the voice, systematically spell out the truths. They teach by hyperbole and analogy. They teach by exaggerating things, by doing all kinds of funny things with their words. They don’t teach in the way that we are trained, that you ought to teach in our culture today. So when you see Jesus saying something like this, you put it into the total context of his teachings, and it is very clear that Jesus never taught, and indeed taught just the contrary, that you could do anything about righteousness by punching out your eyes and cutting off your hands. He never taught that. Never. Righteousness is a matter of something so deep that you can’t get it. He said on one occasion, righteousness is not what comes into the body, it’s what comes out of the heart. Unrighteousness is something which comes out of the heart. You can’t cut that off if you know. Because the heart he’s talking about isn’t even a physical organ. It’s something much deeper. The center of the personality is where unrighteousness and righteousness flows.

How does the eye offend you, then? And how do you do it? It doesn’t. The Pharisees taught that it did. Well, he says if the eye offended, he cut it out. I’ve never understood that. Yeah, well, he’s saying to the Pharisee, who would say, your hand, your eye, or other bodily member, and he really jams it down the throat because he doesn’t just say eye, he says right eye. Yeah. Or right hand. I mean, he really localizes it because that’s the point he’s making them eat, is that sin is somewhere, you know, just to the right of your nose or something like that. And he’s not saying that it does. He’s saying, now, if it does, in other words, he’s saying to the people sitting there, you believe it does. Now, if it does, be consistent and go punch it out. That’s all he’s saying. Is that what he’s saying? Yes, absolutely. He’s saying if it does. He never says it does. He says if it does, and that’s his way of just really grinding it into them, because they said it did.

And there were sects among the Pharisees who went around, actually went around, with their head down and their eyes closed so they wouldn’t see a woman. So much so that they got to be known, there’s a peculiar word which I’ve forgotten, for the knots on their head, which they got by running into walls and windows. And it sounds funny, but believe me, it was true they did it. And this is why he says, if you believe it, don’t just put your head down and close your eyes, punch it out. You’d be better off to go into the kingdom of God or into heaven named than to be thrown out, if it does. But, you see, he doesn’t say that it does. His teaching is the contrary. Righteousness is in the heart.

I wish that this kind of silliness had been limited to, you know, that time, but it wasn’t. Many of the so-called desert fathers of the church, if the mere thought of a woman came to their minds, not in any peculiarly compromising fashion, but just they thought of a woman, they would tear their clothes off and throw themselves in a bramble pouch. Yeah, that’s right. Because a woman was something essentially dirty. Now, I’m not making this up. I can show you records on this. The desert fathers, you can look it up for yourself. The desert fathers was one category of early adherence of the way in the first five or six centuries. They lived out in the desert. You know, some of the best-preserved scrolls have been preserved in the monasteries of the desert fathers in the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere. The best-preserved is so dry, and no one was going to bother them out there, no one wanted to go out there. You had to have something really after you to make you go out there and stay. But you can look it up for yourself, and I wish you’d do that with all these things I say, because I know I say some things which you probably don’t hear very often, and they sound quite outlandish, and I hope you will check on them.

And so Jesus is saying, now, if that’s true, punch it out. Cut it off. Be consistent. Don’t just bow your head and close your eyes and try to see a woman. I mean, just really fix it up. Then you won’t have to worry about it. You’ve got to free slide in. If thy right hand offends thee.

Now then we come to the other end of his teaching about the aggressiveness of the male in relationship to the woman in his day time, or his time of history. And this has to do with difficulty. There was a great hunt that was done in his day to women by the process of the woman. It was a tool for a man simply to dump a woman by a very simple measure, not involving even any law, not involving the religious of his day, involving only witnesses. They can be witnesses. There could be any charge brought. As far as the legality was concerned, it was simply a matter of a bill which said you are the woman. For certain reasons. And these could be everything. Burned biscuits to wipe my dogs, of that sort.

Now there was a serious debate between the various groups of rabbis as to what was right in this matter, and what was wrong with her fornication. That is, if the woman were to have previously had sex with a man before they were married, that itself could be taken as a cause for dismissal. And this, by the way, was not just if she had not been married before, but also if she was married. This is why we want to look fully into the case of the woman at the well, the woman in the well might as well then. Chapter 4. It was a tragic case. Jesus was talking about it. She had been thrown five times. And we see these words, thou hast been married five times, and thou hast is not thy husband. After so many times, men need to marry her to get her. Do you understand what I mean? The woman had been married once, thrown away easily. And this woman was, easily. She kept trying. No, no accusation whatsoever. She had no part in it. She couldn’t institute wars. She was thrown away by the mirror and thought.

One thing I want to say to you in seriousness, and I hope that you will listen to it. You don’t have to agree with it, if you think that. The New Testament does not discuss what we today call divorce. It doesn’t discuss that, except so far as what we today call divorce. So in science, we are the throwing away of one person. There are two main locations where divorce is discussed. One is in the Gospels, where Jesus is discovered. There is a discussion in Paul, in the first chapter, in the first Corinthians chapter, which isn’t even a discussion. Technically, the word for divorce, in the English translation, is wrong. It uses them. It talks about leaving, leaving, talking here about where there’s one mate that’s a girl, and one that’s not. And it does discuss one of them leaving, and he advises the other not to leave the earth. And says, if the other leaves, you’re under no bond. But he advises on the matter of leaving for a religious difference. But Jesus and Paul are dealing with the facts of their own time. And the fact that Jesus is really here is terrible abuse of women by men when those women get in the man’s glory.

He says, it happened, whosoever shall blow away his will, let him give her a grinding divorcement. Which still means you were divorced for the first time. It’s a paper. The pink’s the rule, yeah. Yeah, she ran to heaven. Because there was a chance of another Marin, except that you were under certain circumstances. And look, she could show, though she was not married, that there wasn’t going to be another man who belonged to the club right after her, to beat the brains out of her who had anything to do with her. She needed that. And Moses, in the legislation in the open question, there was a provision that if you brought it, you would give her a piece of something so that she could say to anyone, look, I’m not married. Constantly, I can enter into restricted types of relationship within me. Or a relationship of some restricted power to me. It was a provision which, as long as, as Jesus professed, so here it is.

Yeah, well, through a wrong way, I’ve used that term because that would mean that in literal translation. The word, Appoluso, it’s being referred to as washing away, kind of. Washing it all. It’s a picture of a person getting rid of her, and it implies not only the people who are married, I mentioned, but I think, in the case of Joseph and Mary, before they were married. Now, the scripture is that Joseph was to put her away. That’s the real example. To put her away, really. And to put her away is exactly the same word that was translated to divorce in the time which is right now, in the picture of Matthew. And to put her away was simply a rejection of another person. And I think it’s important this view that what is being discovered here can and will not are getting a divorce, as we understand it today.

I’ll mention one, Italy, for example. For many centuries, I guess, now it’s been almost impossible to get a divorce. So what did they do? Well, when they got ready to put one another away, they just cut out, and you have these people living with other people, maybe having children by them, having no support for the woman, but they’re not divorced. And they sit around congratulating themselves that they are staying within the letter of the new law, which Jesus has given. Ridiculous. No such thing. And the truth of the matter is, people can be thrown away and still live in the same house. And in fact, that is what happens in many, many cases. And we must not fool ourselves by diddling around with these letters of the law and saying, well, but I haven’t gone to court and gotten a divorce, so that’s okay.

Jesus is not promulgating a new law. He is talking about a specific practice in his society, and he is condemning it because of the vicious way that it hurt women. It hurt women. Terror. Now look how he puts that.

Let me tie in before I go on to verse 32, because I won’t concentrate on that one. Let me tie in chapter 19 of Matthew. Jesus is teaching here about marriage. The Pharisees came unto him, tempting him, trying him, the third verse, and says, Is it lawful for man to put away his wife for every cause? Now that is it. When you see them coming to tempt Jesus and they put forward a question, I think without exception, in every case, the question is one which is hotly disputed between the various schools of rabbis. I’m not for sure. There may be an exception or two, but the one, for example, about should they pay tribute to Caesar, for example, the one about the one where the brother married a woman and the man died and the second brother married and he died and she was poisoned in the problem, and the seven brothers married her. No, I’m just kidding. The seven brothers married her and they all died. It looks suspicious. You’ve got to admit that. They all died and they want to know, Now whose wife is she going to be in the resurrection? That was a classic question which was debated by the rabbis. Likewise here, this was a classic question.

The school of Shammai, I believe, is the one who held that you could divorce a woman for any reason whatsoever. And I forget the name of the other school of rabbis who helped know that you couldn’t divorce a woman for every reason, that probably only fornication, or that is previous sex with another man, was a good reason for divorcing a woman. And so they asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And you see, a Pharisee would ask that because a Pharisee was a more strict school. They wanted him to say, they wanted to load the question where it would be an easy matter for him to say yes, because then they could really jump in. They all helped know it had to be only for fornication, certain other restricted. The Sadducees were of the more liberal perception.

And he answered and said unto them, Have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? Now why does he say that? He says he made them to go together. He made them complementaries. Male and female are meant to be together. And for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and leave to his wife, they claim, shall be one flesh. That is, the circumstances of their life is so to put them together that they are identified in their interest, in their intentions, in their feelings even. You’ve seen people like that. You say they even look like one. That’s not one flesh. Yes, that’s one flesh.

I think in the way he’s talking about it. Now, you may, there is a narrow interpretation, for example, to the effect that he’s referring to the sexual act or to children which arise out of those. They say, well, here you have a child and it’s in, it’s two in one. But I think, I don’t know, Harry, this is interpretation that I’m just, I would just suggest that what he’s referring to is the intimate closure of the total life between people. Yeah, but Adam was one before Eve arrived, and I thought that’s what it meant to go back to. No, you have two here, and you’re going to make one flesh out of it. Two, you have two. Yeah, but the way it’s symbolic of the soul. The what? The way it’s symbolic of the soul. Well, that may be. Anyway, I’d pass this off just as an interpretation of my own and say that I think it’s referring here to the way we are melded together as we go through life. The way we really come together, we become a part of one another, and we even feel that way. Well, then where does God come in? Because if you’re wedded to God, then you’re one spirit, not one flesh. God comes in, I suppose, by our living together under his grace, experiencing his grace together. But now, I know you have a lot of things in mind which I probably can’t deal with, because the talk of spirit and soul, God is spirit, and I’m not sure of all the things you’re raising here. But maybe we can… I just think one flesh is one flesh, that’s all, and not… So then you’re saying that… Because it’s quoted from Genesis. I mean, he’s quoting Genesis here, because that’s what he said in the first place.

Yes, this is true, but now that doesn’t help us with the question of what one flesh means. Because there were two there, too, right, at the time he said this. This was after the creation. You had the two. Now the question is, how are we going to get them together? I think the use of the term flesh here is not a reference just to what we call meat on our body, bones, or whatever. It’s a reference as the term flesh is used throughout the Bible to refer to the natural human powers which people have as contrasted with the spirit, which is primarily God. I think he’s saying that these natural human powers are woven together in an intimate way. And he’s saying that this is the ordinance of God. Now this is an ideal, then, which is set up. And anything short of that, there’s something missing in anything that comes short of that.

So, well, he presents this idea to the disciples to say, why did Moses then command to give her writing and divorce him, to put her away? Now here’s the verse I want you to look at. Moses did this because of the hardness of your hearts, because of the hardness in your, and he’s talking to men, hard-hearted men who can just wipe out women who happened to be in a position at that time to not experience any opposition, to have hard hearts. And because your heart is so hard, there has to be an escape clause for the woman. And it’s better for a woman to have a writing enforcement and be put back on the street than to have her brains knocked out against this wall just so you can get rid of it. And that’s what happened to me now. It still happens, doesn’t it? Most murders happen within families, I understand.

Now, let me return to verse 32. You may think this wasn’t good news for men, but believe me, it was good news for women. It can’t help but be good news for men, too, when they begin to understand what the issues are. Whoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, and this exception is not listed in the 10th chapter of Mark where the same statement is given, causeth her to commit adultery.

Now, I want to ask you to think about that, that statement. Because you will be able to get into the context better by seeing what he is saying here. Now, what do you mean, cause of her to commit adultery? She doesn’t even have to have sexual intercourse. She can just go at, you know, dry hall, all the rest of the way. Nobody’s making her commit adultery. How could I make her commit adultery just by kicking her out? Do you know the answer to that question? Could a woman go and become somebody’s executive secretary in that day? Could a woman even work in an assembly line? What were a woman’s alternatives? If she had one thing to sell, that was it.

Now, Jesus is not saying there would be no exceptions to that rule. But in general, a woman had three alternatives. Either she could return as a kind of servant to one of her kinsmen’s houses, give up the hope of bearing children, which was to a woman in that day was a very precious thing. Almost every Jewish woman had the hope of bearing a son and justifying her existence by bearing a son. Now, you say, well, that’s silly. Okay, silly. We’re silly too, right? Things that are silly, hurt, terrible. And even Paul, you may have come across that rather embarrassing statement in Timothy, where he says, after laying it on the women, he says, they shall be saved in childbearing. Because he shared he was a Jew. And there are religions in the San Fernando Valley today which have the teaching to the effect that a woman is saved by bearing children. I will not mention their names, but they are not minor sects.

What are the alternatives? Give up the hope of a family, go be a grudge in your brother or your father’s household, take second-class citizenship with another man, marry him with the understanding that he may throw you away anytime you don’t please him because you’ve already had sex with another man, or become a prostitute. Now, you see, prostitution was respectable in a certain way. You could get killed for adultery. Fornication was bad news for various reasons, not nearly as bad as adultery. You couldn’t get stoned. But you could get in serious trouble. But prostitution was regarded as a kind of necessity. That doesn’t help the woman who’s calling, it doesn’t.

And then he says something very peculiar. Whoever shall marry her that is divorced committed the double. What Jesus is doing here is he’s calling attention to the degraded relationship which existed between a man and a woman who had been previously married. And in his time, it was a degraded and degrading relationship. It was something which kept the woman in constant fear, constantly in a corner. And the man, therefore, had her in a power relationship which made it all the more easy to abuse her. And when Jesus uses the word adultery, he is referring simply to this type of relationship, sexual relationship, which is wrong and harmful. There were no other words to cover him. There were adultery and fornication, and that was it. And as when he speaks of adultery in the heart, although you cannot commit adultery in the heart, he speaks of adultery in the heart as a way of calling attention to something which is sexually bad. Likewise here, he uses the word adultery to refer to a relationship which is harmful and hurtful.

He’s saying to men, he’s calling attention to the fact that when men marry, excuse the language because I don’t mean to use it as it is used, men marry a second-hand woman. They have her in a vicious relationship, not because there’s anything essential to it, but because of the attitudes with which they live with that woman. And just in order to help us a little bit understand what’s going on here, I must say that that still persists and that many women live through hell right here because their man treats them as a second-hand woman.

Now I hope that you will think about these things. I hope you’ll think very hard about it. I hope that you will take this little two-page thing I’ve written out concerning a Christly basis for marriage and divorce. If you didn’t get one, I want to give you one. It’s because I’m telling you there is misery in this relationship of marriage because people have all kinds of misconceptions about how we are to live together as men and women. It is most important that we think about this and that we talk with our children about it and that we be open with them about how we live with one another and help them to try to understand how they can build a life together with another human being of the opposite sense that makes some sense. Because this is one of the main centers of pain and misery in human life today. It is almost impossible to believe that God is good when you’re in a marriage that is misery.

And we have to have our minds right and we have to understand the grace of God in the kingdom of God and not take these things and turn them into more soul-killing laws but understand the intent of the law as Jesus portrayed them. Now you see people will come and they will seize upon this word or that word and then they will turn it into something of their own, they will make some bit of legislation and they kill themselves and others with it. The letter killeth. It does indeed. The spirit gives life. And we must understand the spirit of Jesus’ teachings about how men are supposed to relate to women and how the aggressiveness which is in them is to be tempered.

Now he doesn’t cover everything that’s involved here, does he? He doesn’t cover how men are supposed to handle finances with their wives or how wives are supposed to handle their finances with their men or whatever. And this is typical of him. He takes important things and he uses those important things, usually things which are important especially in the contemporary context and he talks about them in order to communicate the kind of spirit, the kind of spirit which is to be in men as they relate to their women.

The next passage has to do with swearing. And in this passage you see men attempting to use God and use other majestic and great things for their purposes. Again, you have heard it hath been said of old times, thou shalt not forswear thyself, but thou shalt perform unto the Lord thy notes. The old man was, okay, swear, but when you swear, do. Do it. Don’t swear, not do. That’s the that. That’s the nothing.

Now, Jesus was conscious of the fact that men would use swearing to get their way in situations. Or they shouldn’t. They would use the aggressive driving force of the sin to overcome others by big oles. And he says, swear not. Swear not at all. Neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne, nor by the earth, nor his footstool, neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because, why, you can’t make one hair white or black. They didn’t have diet in, I guess. Can’t make one hair white or black. That’s the reason back of all this. None of these things are under your control. None of them. So don’t go out and get them and try to bring them in to prove that you’re right, to back you up, to make you sound impressive. Just say what is the case. Just say it’s this way or it’s not that way and leave it at that. Why? Because more than that, he says, comes from something evil that is in you. More than that comes from an evil desire to over impress people, to get your way.

Why do people swear? To be impressive, right? Isn’t that why young people start swearing? You will hear a young person, girl or boy, rip off some big oath. You know? Boy, that ought to convince them. And we all know that feeling. We ask, what’s revolving there? We want to really lay it on them and impress them. That’s the evil, which is the source of oath-taking.

Quakers have made a witness against oath-taking. Perhaps it is not as impressive now as it was one time. I think it is one of the really fine things in the Quaker tradition. It’s standing against oath-taking. But let me say, oath-taking is not something you do in a courtroom on a Bible. The oath-taking which Jesus is speaking against here is against all false enthusiasms. All attempts to sell someone something more than there is there to sell. All attempts to impress people, get them in a position by some means other than the simple statement of the truth. The simple statement of the truth.

Bob Harrison was sharing with me some time ago about the people in his new work, and how very often, as I remember, Bob, you will correct me, I’m sure it went wrong. You were talking about how many of them just felt like their whole lives had been transformed with this. And insofar as that is a true statement, that is a good thing. That is a good thing. But many times in situations where sales are involved, false enthusiasms take over. It can happen in a church house where people are, as we say, giving testimonies. And if you go into meetings where they are having testimonies, you may begin to notice that there are certain little string-pulling, button-pushing words which show up over and over and over and over and over, and there gets to be a boring conformity to that. Because there is a desire to zow, you know, just smack them real good, and they’ve heard that there are these and those buttons and strings. So instead of just standing up and telling the truth about it, in a simple way, and letting that be it, there works into our lives the desire to impress. And so we invoke Jerusalem and God and the King and our head. Or whatever.

But you see here, Jesus once again says, in the Kingdom of Heaven, you men, you don’t need to do that. You don’t need to run over other men, and you don’t need to abuse women. And you don’t need to take this route of over-impressing people. Why? Because God wants to be your God. And if you just live in the Kingdom of God, all the provisions will be made. Of course, this is very hard on pride, isn’t it? Because then when I receive a blessing, I can’t attribute it to me. It’s just been added unto me. Just added unto me.

Now Jesus goes ahead to rework some other commandments, and on the sheet here I’ve put them under. Contrasting ways, this is capital C under Roman numeral two. Contrast of the two ways in response to the actions and status of others. And I put the verses by there. Jesus here is dealing with the response of the flesh to now an offensive action towards us. He’s been talking about how men are to temper their aggressiveness towards others. Now he turns it around and says, what about the case where someone is laying it upon us?

Well, he says, you’ve heard that there’s a law of reciprocity. You punch my eye out, I’ll take your eye. You knock my tooth out, I’ll take your tooth. Right? In other words, even for even. It’s a kind of balanced law, an equality law. You go to my office, I’ll take your office. Or your office gores my office. You grow my office. That would indeed be exciting. I’ll take your office if your office gores my office.

And so, now Jesus says, but I say to you, resist not evil. Whosoever shall smite you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And whoever sues you at the law and takes away your coat, give him your cloak. Whosoever shall compel you to go a mile, justly compel you to go a mile. There’s a story like this which I won’t go into because of the time. Go within two miles. Give to him that asketh thee, and him that would borrow the thee, turn thou away.

I hope that you will look at that during this coming week now. And I expect to spend only one more, one more week, one more Sunday on the Sermon on the Mountain. But I’d like to take it all from this next time, some remarks about how this changes.

Notice that the next one has to do with people called our enemy. Neighbors and enemy, that contrast here is a social contrast, neighbors and enemy. It may strike you funny that neighbor would be contrasted with enemy. You might think about why you put it that way. Neighbor contrasted with enemy. Love your neighbor, hate your enemy. So look at these two and see how they redefine us now in response to others. In response to the hateful, aggressive action of others in the kingdom of God.

Because I’ll tell you, this is one of the greatest burdens you’ll ever lay down. Is the burden of responding to people in the way they treated you. What Jesus is teaching is we don’t have to bear that burden, thank goodness. You look at me cross-eyed, I don’t have to spit in your face. I don’t have to strike back, I don’t have to do anything at all. In fact, the better way is to just drop and return love. Return blessing.

Well, that’s all for today. See you next week. Thank you.