It seems that everywhere we turn, we are inundated with sex – normally it’s used to try to sell us something. When I’m watching TV with my girls, even watching something fun and entertaining and clean, the commercials can go from racy to soft porn without a second’s notice. Why is that? It’s because the world has perverted the good gift that God has given us. Sex is powerful, and when used in the wrong contexts, it captures us and leads us down the wrong path.

Those in Hollywood or elsewhere who use sex in movies and pornography (and even commercials!) to make money are not representing what sex truly is or how it should be used. Those things are “acts designed to arouse the hardened heart, not the tender heart.” (Tim Challies, Sexual Detox) The experiences we take in feed us a wrong picture of how men and women should interact with each other.

That’s why Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:27-30 is so important for us today. Even after conversion, we are not free from or victorious over the sin we’ve been caught up in. We are all sinners. Our culture’s preoccupation with sex is still something that can preoccupy us. Jesus’ standard seems so hard and so difficult because we are so fallen. Just as Jesus linked murder to the attitudes that precede it, so here he stabs right through our façade to point to our heart’s desires: from external actions (adultery) to internal intentions (looking with lustful intent).

Jesus is also breaking down the artificial barriers we put up to say we have avoided this sin. “Adultery can only be accomplished if we’re already married” we might argue. Jesus says, “No!” A studied look with sexual intent is still sin – whether committed by a married man or a single woman. God’s law demands purity and integrity in our hearts and thoughts; our whole being must be devoted to God.

Purity in our hearts is so important that Jesus tells us to take violent, decisive action against anything that causes us to sin. We must remove temptation’s source – better to lose a little than to lose everything in hell. We must not pamper, flirt with, or nibble around the edges; we must hate it, crush it, and dig it out. (Carson) As my friend Bill pointed out, we are “experienced sinners”, like recovering alcoholics; we know our own weaknesses and must fight and claw our way free of them.

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.… Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:5-7, 12-14 ESV)

If murder, anger, and contempt are all liable to judgment, what does Jesus say is the way to deal with it? In the two examples he gives us, we see that personal reconciliation is the answer. The new kingdom community is about relationships.

Reconciliation is urgent. In the first example, Jesus tells his disciples that reconciliation is more important than fulfilling your religious duty. This could have been a big deal for folks who made their way to Jerusalem once or twice a year. That sacrifice was important, something they may have waited a while to be able to do. But Jesus steers them from performing their act of worship until after reconciliation had been accomplished. In the example, the animosity is between brothers and sisters, possibly within the church community. Grant Osborne points out that the fault between the two appears ambiguous, and the one who recognizes the matter between them should take the initiative to resolve it.

Judgment is imminent. In the second example, Jesus mentions an accuser, presumably someone external to the brothers and sisters. It is important to settle matters while we are still able. There is a time coming when we will be called to account for our thoughts, words, and actions. “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:18-21 ESV)

Jesus begins this section of the Sermon on the Mount (chapt. 5:21-48) by contrasting what the people have heard. “You have heard that it was said to those of old” implies the people have heard God’s law – sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly presented and interpreted for them by their teachers. Jesus brings a new authority into the mix – his own – to give the real meaning of the law. Jesus offers us a new depth to the commands, inherent in the law but missed in some cases by the religious tradition. Jesus is not contradicting the law; he is giving a necessary corrective to the tradition that has sprung up around the law.

Jesus first discusses murder, but he gets at the attitude and the center of what drives someone to murder: anger and contempt. Anger towards another person, hate enough to insult him or belittle another – those actions are as liable to judgment as murder. Every thought and word that seeks to destroy is forbidden. We cannot maintain only an external view of the law. It must also inform and pierce into our thoughts and motivations. “Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.” (James 3:10 NIV) “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (Ephesians 4:29 ESV)

Before adding a post about what Jesus says about anger and contempt, I thought I would reference two great links compiled by Todd Bolen, about the “myth” of the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) being used for burning trash in Jesus’ day. Many of the sources I’m using state that Gehenna was a garbage dump, burning day and night. Yet these two posts argue there’s no evidence for that claim.

http://blog.bibleplaces.com/2011/04/myth-of-burning-garbage-dump-of-gehenna.html

http://blog.bibleplaces.com/2011/04/fires-of-gehenna-views-of-scholars.html

It’s very interesting reading – like a mystery almost. After reading some of the primary sources referenced in these blog posts, I was convinced it was a myth. In my book, the images of child sacrifices in the valley and Jeremiah’s reference to the “Valley of Slaughter” make Gehenna worse than any thought of burning trash.

Grant Osborne gives us a picture of the scribes (or “teachers of the law”) and the Pharisees in his commentary on Matthew. The scribes were initially recorders of the law, but later became interpreters and legal experts of the law. The Pharisees were the lay leaders of religious observance, closely connected to the oral tradition. The group arose during the Maccabean period; their name comes from a Hebrew word meaning “separatist.”

If anyone was going to get into the kingdom of heaven, Jesus’ listeners might have pointed to the scribes and Pharisees as sure bets. Yet Jesus spends a lot of time in the Gospels addressing the religion of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus compared their lives to “whitewashed tombs” –“outwardly appear[ing] righteous to others, but within … full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:28 ESV) He also decried their setting aside the law to uphold a tradition. Their religion had been made external in many ways, which leads to hypocrisy and self-sufficiency.

What Jesus demands in verse 20 surpasses anything imagined by the scribes, Pharisees, or the disciples. In the verses that follow (5:21-48), Jesus will illustrate how challenging and demanding this righteousness is. It is a righteousness inside as well as outside; it is a righteousness based on the “heart of faith in Christ.” (Osborne)

Paul illustrates this well in Philippians 3. He pulls out his amazing natural credentials: a Jew by birth, raised as a Hebrew (not a Greek), from the tribe of Benjamin, of the people of Israel. He throws on top of that his moral qualifications: a Pharisee, zealous, and “blameless” under the law. He is at a pinnacle of moral and religious development. But he counts it all as loss for the sake of Christ – as “rubbish” in order that he may gain Christ. Paul wanted the righteousness from God that depended on faith. It was this righteousness from God that drove Paul to press on to attain the resurrection from the dead. Having the righteousness from God didn’t cause Paul to rest, but it spurred him on to greater holiness and sacrifice. Jesus had made Paul his own, and now Paul would not stop till he had made Jesus his own.

Are there laws of God that we rationalize away? Granted, we do believe there are items within the law that have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews teaches us that “when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God…. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:12, 14 ESV) We no longer offer regular sacrifices believing in the one sacrifice of Christ which cover all of our sins.

Yet, the law remains incredibly important for us as Christians. Jesus said that “until heaven and earth pass away” nothing will pass from the law until all of its purposes are finished. This point was so important to Jesus that he included an “amen” at the beginning of verse 18 to highlight it.

We might wonder what the law does for us, here and now. Sinclair Ferguson says the law does three things for us:

1. The law expresses God’s character and his will for people.
2. The law teaches the true character of his people.
3. The law teaches the character of salvation.

Don Carson reminds us that our attitude to the law of God is an index of our attitude to God himself. Seeing that law expresses God’s character and the character of his people, if we relax or ignore those commandments, then we are really ignoring God (in one sense). Jesus is teaching us that obedience and disobedience have their just rewards in the kingdom – we take into eternity what we have done for the Lord here.