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Thou shalt not commit adultery.
This is what your tradition taught you.
And you have been told that this is God's standard.
If you just don't commit adultery, you're righteous.
But God never was really concerned about the act only,
but more so about the attitude behind the act.
Welcome to Grace To You, featuring the Bible Teaching Ministry of John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
There's a good reason for hiring an inspector when you're buying a house.
You don't want to be surprised by problems that are hard to spot.
You want to see through the cosmetic touches and find out what really needs to be fixed.
And deal with those issues sooner rather than later.
That's really what John MacArthur's current study at Grace To You is all about.
It's called the sinfulness of sin.
And in it, John is helping you take a penetrating look at your spiritual condition.
Write down to the heart attitudes no one can see.
The place where sin takes root.
Every Christian needs to regularly inspect those attitudes.
And John's study will help you do that.
So follow along now.
Here's today's lesson.
We're looking at Matthew chapter 5 in our study, going to look at the passage in verses
27 through 30, Matthew chapter 5 verses 27 to 30.
While you're turning to it and getting ready for our study, let me say that in the fifth
chapter of Matthew, our Lord answered the question in the forefront of the minds of
the people who had seen His miracles, the people who had heard some of what He had said,
and were really wondering whether He was the Messiah.
They were curious about whether this miracle worker was, in fact, the one who would bring
God's kingdom.
There were certain elements in the teaching and the life and ministry of Jesus that made
them think He might be the Messiah, and so they were quizzical.
They wanted to know if He was.
They wanted also to know what His standards were for His kingdom.
They were curious to know that if He was the Messiah, He should pretty well square with
what Moses said, and so they were curious about how He viewed the things of the law of
God, the things of Moses.
Now Jesus summarized His message to them in verses 17 through 20 of chapter 5.
He said, think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets, I am not come to
destroy but to fulfill.
For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in
no way pass from the law till all be fulfilled, whosoever therefore shall break one of these
least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom
of heaven, but whosoever shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in the
kingdom of heaven.
In other words, what He was saying was this, I am the Messiah and my message is the same
message that Moses gave you, not any different.
I would not change it, I would not destroy it, I would not alter it, I came to fulfill it.
And He went a step further.
He said, the standards for my kingdom must exceed the standards that you are now living
by, verse 20, I say unto you that accept your righteousness exceed the righteousness of
the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.
Now there was the basic standard that Jesus gave, that He required for His kingdom a righteousness
beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, and by the way, they were the most righteous
people in the Jewish society.
And so He's saying, what I ask is more than they asked, but not more than Moses asked
and not different than Moses.
I have not come to alter the law or to change the law, but to fulfill the law and the
law in itself demands more than you are now giving.
It is a higher standard.
As far as the people knew, the scribes and the Pharisees were the most righteous, so
this was a very hard saying for them to understand.
They did not understand how He could require a higher righteousness than that of the scribes
and Pharisees, and still accept mosaic law, because they thought the scribes and the Pharisees
lived the law of Moses to the hilt.
And so their question is, if you believe in Moses, the question in their minds, and you
believe in the law of Moses, how can you require a greater standard than the scribes and
Pharisees who teach us the law of Moses?
The fact is, though the scribes and the Pharisees sat in the seat of Moses, and though they claimed
to be the proponents of the law of Moses, the truth was they themselves had lowered the
law of Moses to their own design, and were not even keeping that which God originally
intended.
And so Jesus comes to lift the standard back where it was in the beginning.
Now, this is hard for the people to understand, and so, point by point, the Lord goes through
verses 21 to 48, giving them illustrations of how the scribes and the Pharisees and the
people as well fell short on every aspect of God's absolute standard.
He wants them to see that the people who were not living up to God's standard, they had
lowered the standard, and he wants to raise it back to where it really should be.
And in effect, what he does here is destroy any system of self-righteousness.
You see, what man tends to do is this.
If he doesn't want to come God's way, he creates his own God.
Creates his own religious system, says, this is what is required.
This is what I'll accomplish, therefore I'm justified when I do it.
He drags the law of God down to something he can do, does it, and then convinces himself,
he's okay.
And what we say to a person like that today is, you know, that's not the way it is.
The standard of God is too high.
You can't keep it, and that is exactly what Jesus is saying.
The scribes and the Pharisees invented a standard lower than the divine one, figured out how
they could keep it, kept it the best they could, therefore, convinced themselves they were
righteous.
And Jesus says not on your life, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes
and the Pharisees, you'll never enter into my kingdom.
And this is not a violation of Moses.
This is not adding to Moses.
This is not changing the law of Moses.
This is just reiterating where Moses put it in the beginning.
Let's get it back where it belongs.
And that is really what he's doing throughout the fifth chapter.
And as we come to verses 27 to 30, he is giving another illustration of how the people had
lowered the law of Moses and how he must lift it back up again in order to destroy their
self-righteousness.
And what he does throughout this chapter is contrast the righteousness they thought they
had with the true divine standard.
And thus, he literally strips all men and women, start naked, spiritually speaking before
God.
They have no claim of self-righteousness left.
Now, let's look at the illustration in verses 27 to 30, verse 27.
You have heard that it was said, the phrase there by them of old, which is in some of your
versions, is not in all the manuscripts, but it is probably picked up because it used
so frequently in the chapter.
It really reads, you have heard that it was said.
Right, of course, he has reference to their traditional teachers, them of old, the ancients
who had taught them, so you can put it in an italics, I guess, because he does have reference
to that.
But he says, you've heard that it was said, thou shalt not commit adultery.
This is what your tradition taught you.
This is what the rabbis have said.
This is what the scribes and the Pharisees have said.
And you have been told that this is God's standard.
If you just don't commit adultery, you're righteous.
But, verse 28, I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery with her already in his heart.
In other words, Jesus says, their standard is too low.
Let's put it back where God intended it.
God never was really concerned about the act only, but more so about the attitude behind
the act.
And in verse 29, he gives them a solution.
If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, cast it from thee, for it's profitable for
thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee, for it is profitable
for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast
into hell.
In other words, you're a lot better off to cut off your arm or to pluck out your eye if
it leads you to sin.
And sin is not simply what you do, it is what you feel and think in your heart.
And so the second example that our Lord uses is the example of adultery.
And He is really saying to a self-righteous person,
you can't say because you didn't do it, you're all right.
If you ever thought it, you're wrong.
If you ever lusted, if you ever desired to commit to sin, you're a sinner, and you
are not righteous, and you cannot claim righteousness, just as back in verses 21 and 22.
They said thou shalt not kill.
But Jesus said, whoever is angry with his brother is in danger of hell.
I'm telling you, it isn't just a matter of whether you do the murder, it's the issue
of what you feel in your heart, and here he is saying exactly the same thing only using
another illustration.
In verses 21 and 22, his illustration was the sixth commandment.
And here in verses 27 and 28, his illustration is the seventh commandment.
Now, the underlying principle of the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill, is the sacredness
of life.
The underlying principle of the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, is the sacredness
of the basic unit of life, marriage.
And so he picks out these two illustrations, thou shalt not kill, which speaks of the sanctity
of life, thou shalt not commit adultery, which speaks of the sanctity of marriage.
And he says, you are not righteous before God if you've ever been angry, or if you've
ever thought a thought of adultery.
And what he's trying to do is show them how really sinful they were, no matter what
the outside of their behavior.
And so his concern here is the sanctity of marriage.
In verses 27 to 30, he deals with the spirit of marriage.
And in verses 31 and 32, the law of marriage.
The spirit of marriage and the law of marriage, and we'll begin to look at the spirit of marriage,
as we see his comments on the sin of lusting and committing adultery in your heart.
Let me just say another word about the two illustrations he begins with.
Anger and sex are two very powerful things.
They really reach deep down into human experience.
They aptly illustrate the sinfulness of man.
In fact, I doubt whether there are any two illustrations that are more apt than these
two to really cut us to the very core.
They've all experienced the temptations of anger and lust, very common.
And they reach deep into the basic sinfulness of man.
And those Jews who were sitting on the hillside in Galilee, hearing the Lord Jesus Christ confronting
them about their anger and about their lust in their hearts, would have to admit by virtue
of their own consciences that they indeed were sinners.
And the fact that they never killed anybody, and the fact that they never actually did
the act of adultery didn't exonerate them from the sinfulness of sin which reigned in
their hearts.
Jesus wants to go right to the heart of man and show them that no matter what they've done,
they can't fit into his kingdom.
And so Jesus sets a high standard.
Just the fact that he says that anybody who looks on a woman to lust after hers committed
adultery with her already in his heart is a tremendous statement to somebody living
in our society today when the temptations are so vast.
The temptation has always been around.
It didn't matter whether a woman was covered from head to foot in a long robe such as in
the east in that time and had a veil over her face, the temptation would still be there
as Satan would move in.
And there would always be those things which the devil would use to generate lust and which
the flesh would pounce upon to initiate the temptation.
But it seems to me that in the society in which we live, the temptations are so much
more rampant and so much more visible and so much more common all around us because
of the virtuous society that we live in.
I believe that sex in marriage, in the beauty of which God has designed it, was meant to
be a very personal discovery.
Not something plastered all over billboards and taught in classes and presented in books.
I think it's something very private, something very special, something very unique.
And I think that the fact that we pander it and propagate it and sell it and teach it
and talk about it incessantly all over the place, all that does is just illicit evil responses
out of the heart of evil men and evil women.
It doesn't do anything to help the situation.
We find explicit sex seminars, explicit sex books running the gamut, people constantly
preaching on the subject and talking about the subject and advocating this and that.
And I've heard the most strange is kind of counseling supposedly coming from men of
God that I just boggles my mind.
I don't think ever in the history of the Western world since the death of Greek and Roman paganism,
have we seen the unbridled indulgence of sexual passion so encouraged and so elicited and
so praised as we do today?
Mass media lures with sex to sell its products and glamorizes illicit pleasure, sex crimes
are at an all-time high, divorce and fidelity and perversion are being praised, they're subjects
for humor in our society, pleasure, first philosophy is rampant, hedonism is in full force,
monogamous marriage is threatened, faithfulness is laughed and ridiculed and mocked, and we
could spend hour after hour just illustrating that, but it's not necessary.
You know it's all around you.
I have to avoid even looking at a magazine rack.
I don't even go in biomagazine anymore because I don't even want to bombard my mind with
what is there, just on the cover, let alone the stuff inside.
A new morality has been espoused with situation ethics saying that right is relative and whatever
feels good you ought to do as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else and our whole society
is literally sex mad.
It's just that we are so preoccupied with sex, it's beyond belief.
C.S. Lewis is a great illustration.
He says, you can get a large audience together for a strip T's act.
That is to watch a girl on dress on a stage.
And he says, if that doesn't indicate how warped our view of sex and our view of womanhood
is, imagine it this way, suppose you went to a country where you could fill a theater
by bringing in a covered plate on the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to
let everyone see.
And just before the lights went out there, it contained a mutton chap or a piece of bacon.
Wouldn't you think that something had gone wrong with their appetite for food?
Well, why should we think that it's any different in our society when we get all out
of shape because somebody takes off their clothes?
The Playboy philosophy is nothing but a mutton chap mentality.
It's a perversion.
There's something wrong with us.
There's something deep down inside that's wrong that's being pandered and played to in
our society.
Hugh Hefner comes along and says, why get all upset about sex?
It's only a biological necessity like eating, drinking and sleeping.
That's not new.
That kind of philosophy comes right out of the past, right out of Greek and Roman paganism
in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 13.
The Apostle Paul reiterates that philosophy as he confronts the Corinthians about their
preoccupation with this evil sex thing.
And here is what they were saying, verse 13 of 1 Corinthians 6, foods for the body
and the body for foods.
Now, that was a little phrase they were saying.
Somebody come along and say, well, you know, you shouldn't do that.
That's evil and they'd say, well, foods for the body and the body for foods.
What they mean is it's only biology.
It's a kind of a little proverb they used.
Well sex is only a biological thing, that's all.
Foods for the body and the body for foods, it's just biology.
That's it.
Like eating, sleeping and drinking.
Well, it says, God shall destroy both it and them because the body is not for fornication
but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
The body is not just biological.
It is spiritual and it belongs to God, he says, to the Corinthians.
You just can't give your body over and say it's only biology.
That's the mutton shop philosophy.
That's the playboy philosophy.
You can't do it.
The body is not for fornication.
The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
What you know verse 15 says that your bodies are the members of Christ.
What I take the members of Christ and make them the members of a harlot or a prostitute
and that's anybody who has illicit sex.
What I do that, don't you know that one who is joined to a harlot becomes one body and
he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.
So if you go to a harlot, you enter in a duller situation, you join the Lord to that sin.
It isn't just food for the body and the body for food.
And in verse 18 he says, flee fornication, pornea, evil sexual behavior.
The view that sex is only a biological urge and God will live it up, enjoy it, situation
ethics, don't be restrained, don't be inhibited, live it up with whoever you want, it's just
biology anyway.
That philosophy has literally drowned our society in a sea of sexual perversion.
It is bombarded us with a barrage of propaganda that is shattering homes, destroying families,
ruining individual lives, destroying the capability of an individual to do what is right,
unless he has completely committed himself to Jesus Christ, which just debuts his society
at a rapid rate.
Relationships have been replaced with perversions.
One has been replaced by concupacence, love has been replaced by lechery.
That's the way it is in our society.
On the other hand, whenever you talk about sex, you not only have the people who lean
up in their chair because it's their favorite subject, but you also have the people who
grab their Bible and head for the door, they're rather prudish about it.
That's the Victorian view.
You know, they want to go so far the other way, they say sex is shameful, it's depraved,
less than holy, and by the way, this is done even today and it's been done in the past.
That's not the answer.
You can't go to the extreme that it's biology and you can't go to the other extreme that
the castration or whatever mutilation will solve the problem, it won't.
And one is just as much a perversion as the other because God has wonderfully designed
this as a part of human life.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 3, the Apostle Paul discusses something of it.
He says, let the husband render to the wife her due and he's talking about the physical
relationship.
Likewise also the wife under her husband, the wife hath not power of her own body, but
the husband and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife
stopped depriving one the other except it'd be with consent for a time that you may give
yourselves to prayer and then come together again that Satan tempts you not for your lack of
self-control.
In other words, he says you have every right and every responsibility to give your body to
each other in the fulfillment of sexual desire.
That's within marriage God's desire.
In the book of Proverbs, God deals with the same thing.
In chapter 5 and verse 15, drink waters out of thine own sister and running waters out
of thine own well.
In other words, enjoy the married situation.
Stay away from the harlot, the strange woman that he talked about earlier in chapter 5,
who will destroy you.
Drink out of your own sister and running waters out of your own well.
Let thy fountain be dispersed abroad in rivers of water in the streets.
Let them be only thine own and not for strangers with thee.
Don't give your seed to a stranger.
Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
Let her be as the loving hind or deer and pleasant roll.
Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times and be thou ravished always with her love.
Now, God has designed this, physical relationship, and he has sanctified it and blessed it.
And so it is that this is pure and right.
But our world has made a mutton chop out of it.
We've gone into some kind of a twisted, jaded, lecherous perversion.
And this, of course, appeals to the heart of sinful evil men.
And so as we come to this passage in verses 27 and following, it's a very fitting word
for the society in which we live, and we need to see what Jesus is saying.
Now the Pharisees had their own viewpoint, verse 27, thou shalt not commit adultery.
And because they didn't do that, they thought they were righteous.
They thought they'd go right into the kingdom and have the chief seats.
Maybe you're like that.
Maybe you say to yourself, I'm not so bad.
I've never actually gone out of my wife.
I've never committed adultery.
I've never done that kind of thing.
But Jesus says, if you ever look on a woman to lust after her, you've done it in your heart.
And that's enough to damn you to hell forever.
That's the implication of verses 29 and 30.
So your self-confidence is shattered here, see?
The external system of law isn't going to cut it, because God is after the attitude.
And you see what Jesus wants to do is show them they can't help themselves.
You see, they could deal with the outside, sure.
They could not commit adultery, but they couldn't do anything with the inside.
And so Jesus hits them where they're helpless, hopeless, powerless, which should drive
them in desperation to God who alone can change the heart.
They desperately wanted to believe they were okay.
Jesus shows them they were.
You're listening to Grace to You featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur.
The title of John's current study, The Sinfulness of Sin.
Now in today's lesson, John talked about society's philosophy to do whatever feels
good, which is contrary to the Bible's clear teaching on sin.
By and large, concern over sin and doing what's right is a foreign concept in today's
culture.
John had some comments on that, and I think you'll find them helpful.
Yeah, because responsibility is a foreign concept.
Everybody's trouble is caused by somebody else.
People don't want to take responsibility.
I'm a victim of these people or those people or this historical pattern or whatever it
is.
The hardest thing to get a sinner to do is to take responsibility for his behavior.
But that is absolutely critical to any kind of response to the gospel.
You're not in the problem you're in because of somebody else.
You're there because of you.
You are the problem.
And the problem that makes you the problem is the problem of sin in you.
But this culture has done everything possible to disassociate responsibility from the individual.
We all are victims.
Everybody should have at least one victim category as an excuse for what's wrong with you.
And if you have three or four victim categories while you're really empowered in this culture,
I did a series on this in the book of Ezekiel, and I said, it's so bad to let people think
they're victims because if you're a victim and you're not responsible, how do you get
them from there to the gospel, which says, you are responsible for your sin and you need
to repent of it.
I wrote a book that would have to be in maybe the top three books that I've ever done
called the vanishing conscience.
People often comment about it.
This culture has no conscience.
This society has no conscience.
They've been stripped of conscience.
And as a result of that, they're going pell-mel headlong in the streets right into hell.
And we see what a culture looks like when the conscience doesn't function because the
conscience is the personal restraint that keeps people from acting in sinful, overt, wretched,
rebellious ways.
The vanishing conscience would be a book for our time.
It would be a book for this week.
It deals with the victim mentality that dismisses personal responsibility, deals with treating
sin as a disease and the elevation of human pride and all of that.
250-page book, you need a copy of it.
Yes, you do.
To make sure your conscience aligns with God's Word, pick up a copy of the vanishing conscience.
If you've never contacted us before, we will send you a copy free of charge.
Call or go to our website and request the vanishing conscience today.
Our number here, 855 grace, and our web address, gty.org.
The vanishing conscience will show you how to fight habitual sins, how to overcome temptation,
how to maintain a pure thought life.
It's also an ideal gift for someone you are discipling.
And again, we'll send you the vanishing conscience for free.
If you've never contacted us before, our number again, 855 grace, and our website, gty.org.
If you've contacted us before, the vanishing conscience costs $11 and shipping is free.
To order call 855 grace, or go to gty.org.
And thank you for letting us know how God is using this ministry in your life.
That encourages us more than you know.
When you have a moment right to us at Grace to You, PO Box 4000, Panorama City, California,
91412, or you can email us at letters at gty.org.
That's our email address one more time, letters at gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson.
Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on Direct TV Channel 378.
And be back Monday for another half hour of unleashing God's truth through one verse
at a time, on Grace to You.
