A New Heart Attitude - Purity: Matthew 5:27-32 - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

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Have you not read that he has made them at the beginning made the male and female except for the degree that man should leave?

His father and mother, I think he's saying that in most cases you're going to leave your father and mother and be joined your wife and that you're going to become one question in America.

You're marriage conviction number one at the road.

Because if we do this well, in most cases we don't have to deal with the second half.

We believe deeply in biblical, healthy, joyful, victorious marriage.

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We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

We're at verse 27.

For you that are guests with us today, or you've just started coming to the road, we're going through the Sermon on the Mount, we're going through the book of Matthew right now.

And Jesus is really a revolutionary.

He's a kingdom revolutionary.

He's an outlier.

He's an activist of the heart.

That's what I would call him.

Jesus is an activist of the heart.

And there's a religious perspective at that time that he's going to challenge.

And then there's a Jesus perspective.

And here's the Jesus perspective.

The Jesus perspective is he's looking at the heart, not the externals.

So you see this especially even in 2 Chronicles, and you see this in 1 and 2 Samuel with David, where God calls out David because of his heart.

So guys, God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the calls.

And he qualifies them by the attitudes of their heart.

And God wants our affections.

You guys know that what idolatry is, is not necessarily bowing down to an idol.

We don't see that in America.

Idolatry, in its purest sense, is where you give the affections of your heart outside of God.

So anything in your life that gets more of the affections of your heart than God is an idol.

And we all struggle with idols sometimes, don't we?

All of us do.

So he's speaking of the affections of our heart.

And in verse 27, he comes to what is to be a very controversial subject at that time.

And that is related to adultery.

You have heard it that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery.

But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Guys, we are hardwired for relationship.

Every one of us, we're hardwired for relationship.

God made us for relationship.

We're hardwired for connection.

And most of us in this room will get married.

Most people do get married.

Not everybody gets married, but most of us will get married.

And so Jesus is about, first of all, he wants to set the heart issue straight, and then he's going to move into marriage.

And let me just say this is a really, really hard passage that I'm going to tackle today.

And there's way better theologians than me to communicate the details of it.

So I would just encourage you, you can go online if you have more questions about it.

There's a great, a great set of messages by John Piper on the issue of marriage, remarriage, and divorce.

So I'm not going to cover that as much in detail as they do.

But here's what he's saying in verse 27 and 28 is that lust is your issue.

Most of the Pharisees at that time were not committing adultery as it was defined at that time.

Many theologians believe that at that time it was okay for a Jewish man to have a concubine, that it was okay for a Jewish man to have a prostitute, as long as she wasn't a Jewish woman.

So Jesus is going to tackle that in just a second.

Do you guys realize that basically in America our advertising is totally built on lust?

I'm not going to be checking up on anybody.

But if you've given your son or daughter one of these that has full access to the internet, all the neuroplasticity, all the neuroscience that's been done would say you just handed them a bag of cocaine and heroin.

Because they're going to find internet sex.

They're going to find internet pornography.

And if you men and women are regularly entertaining yourself in that arena, you've actually opened up your whole house to lust.

Especially you men.

And the reason is because you are, according to scripture, the prince and the priest and the king over your house spiritually.

So you want to open yourself up to this, you're opening up all your kids to this.

Something is happening in the spiritual world.

Very, very dangerous.

And Jesus is saying, if you lust for a woman, I think it's interesting that he says here, you have heard that it was said of those of old, you shall not commit adultery.

Okay, that's what the Pharisees were saying at that time.

But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

It doesn't say man, it says woman.

Guess who he's addressing it to?

Men.

So all the research has shown that the dopamine dump that a child gets in the frontal cortex through looking at image lust, image sex, pornography builds channels that cause brain damage in a kid's mind, especially when they're young.

Now I will say this that if you're young and they say you're under 25, you can change that.

If you can get accountable relationships and you can stop that, you can change that activity and reroute these inroads that have been built into your frontal cortex.

Now it does say though that if after 25, if you've grown up with this stuff, it's super difficult for you to get set free.

It's almost on the level of cocaine and heroin addiction.

Do you really want to go there?

Do you guys really want to go there?

This is serious stuff, man.

And I know I'm I've gone from preaching to meddling, but I want a healthy church, man.

I want you guys to be healthy.

I want you to have a you that are married, I want you to have a great sex life.

You're ruining, you're ruining your your intimacy.

You guys that are single, you're you'll struggle with it, take it from me.

You'll struggle with it just as much after you're married as you did before you were married.

So get it get it under control.

And the only way, most of the time, to get this under control is to admit it to some other men in your life who you guys can be blood stained allies and work on it together.

It'll set you free.

It's a good thing.

This is how serious it is.

Look at the next verse.

Guys, by the way, this is not my opinion.

This is neuroscience.

I mean, we the neuroscience stuff that's out there right now, even most secular companies have rules about this kind of activity with their workers in top-level companies because they realize how much it ruins their workers.

But this is Jesus speaking again in verse 29.

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you.

For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

So he's saying it's on that level of going to hell to keep lusting and lusting.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for the whole body to be cast into hell.

Okay, now there's certain aspects of the body of Christ in historical times mainly, but it's still true today, that literally cuts off parts of their body to set themselves free from lust based on this passage.

And I'd be willing to interview every one of those monks, uh nuns, whoever that falls into these particular orders of the church that do this, has it helped any?

I've had some friends that are blind, not because they made themselves blind, but because they were born blind and they struggle with lust just as much as anybody else.

So what's happening here?

This is called, jot this down if you're taking notes, graphic hyperbole.

Graphic hyperbole.

So Jesus is making an extreme statement to show the seriousness of the matter, but he's not to be taken literally.

He's not saying gouge out your eyes or cut off your hand.

He's saying it's that level of seriousness, though.

But he's using graphic hyperbole.

Does that make sense?

Here's where it gets controversial.

Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

So in verse 31, he's actually quoting from the Old Testament.

But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality, and the word sexual immorality is really important here, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

There's three, three major points of view, theologically and historically, on this passage.

I'm not going to go into that.

As I said, you can look it up if you're interested in hearing more.

There's much better communicators than me on these.

I would say that from my study of it, it would take an hour on each point to understand all the Jewish tradition that's behind this.

But let's just say this.

This is the passage that Jesus is speaking of is Deuteronomy 24, and I want to quote part of Deuteronomy 24.

So listen up.

This is the passage that different schools of thought had different perspectives on in relation to divorce.

If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him, might want to underline and circle that.

That's a key phrase.

Deuteronomy 24, 1 through 4.

If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him, because he finds something indecent about her.

I've got that underlined in my Bible too.

And he writes her certificate of divorce, gives it to her, and sends her from his house.

And after she leaves his house, she becomes the wife of another man.

And her second husband dislikes her and writes her certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house.

And then the passage goes on and actually talks about her coming back to the original husband.

The scribes and the Pharisees at that time had taken this Old Testament passage from Moses to regulate what had become kind of a no-fault divorce.

And the reason was there were two different schools of thought.

There was a Rabbi Shemai school, which took this particular part of the verse, something indecent about her to be immorality or fornication before they got married.

Matter of fact, they've been taught that if you found out that the woman was not a virgin right there at the tent, getting ready for the wedding, you could end it right there.

Well, that had been surpassed by the schools of Hallel and Akaba that took the first part of the verse.

Any displeasure to him to mean anything you didn't like about her, you could dismiss her.

You could just dismiss her for that.

She cooked ramen wrong, then she's out, you know.

Or maybe you didn't like her and you had your eyes on somebody else, and so you could go and maybe turn up the heat when she wasn't looking and she burns it, so she's out.

But any anything that displeased you, and this was actually the general thought at the time that Jesus is speaking, is that if she nagged you, she snored at night, you know, she didn't put in her teeth, you know, right after the Sabbath.

Um you could you could divorce her for that.

And the word here can be translated, put away, not just divorce, it could be put away.

So there's records of priests that had dozens of wives.

Because they would put them away, but they wouldn't divorce them.

So actually, this passage, in my opinion, and again, I'm not going to go into the details of why I believe this, but I but my opinion from a particular perspective of studying this is that this is actually written to protect women.

Because imagine if you had been put away by the man, but he hadn't officially divorced you, but so you're in this in-between.

You're not divorced, so you can't remarry, but you've been displaced.

So he's challenging that.

So what's happening here?

I want to go to Matthew 19.

Would you guys turn with me to Matthew 19?

And I'm gonna look at this from the perspective of marriage.

Matthew 19, Jesus is speaking about it again.

In this case, he goes into a lot more detail.

Look at verse 3 of Matthew 19.

The Pharisees also came to him, testing him and saying to him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

See why they're asking that?

Because he had he had really stirred up the controversy earlier on the Sermon on the Mount.

And he answered and said to them, Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning, this is really important, he made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So then they're no longer two but one flesh.

Therefore, what God is joined together, let no man separate.

Now that's really important.

And and what's what's fun is that in a lot of weddings that I get to do, the bride and groom oftentimes want me to read this.

And so I love reading this passage because it's really, it's really the the prescript to understanding the next part.

Verse 7.

They said to him, Well, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and put her away?

And then he said to them, Moses did this because of the hardness of your hearts.

He permitted you to divorce your wives.

But from the beginning it was not so.

And I say to you, whoever divorced his wife, except for sexual immorality, that means any form of sexual immorality, fornication.

Because again, the Jews at that time didn't see it as an adulterous affair unless a legitimate Jewish man was having a relationship with a legitimate Jewish woman and in most cases married.

So you could have a concubine, you could have a prostitute, you say, no, all of it.

If you're just lusting, you've committed adultery.

But if you're involved in fornication in any form, that's wrong.

And that's how we redefine adultery according to Christ.

And he marries another, commits adultery, and whoever marries, her who is divorced, commits adultery.

I thought about opening this up for questions this morning.

There's just so much here.

But here's what I like to do.

I want to give you five convictions.

I'm going to look at this from a positive perspective.

Five convictions about marriage at the road.

Five convictions about marriage at the road.

Starting at verse four.

So here's my here's marriage conviction number one at the road.

Because if we do this well, in most cases, we won't have to deal with the second half.

We believe deeply in biblical, healthy, joyful, victorious marriages.

Amen.

We believe in deep, deeply in biblical, healthy, joyful, victorious marriages.

I would just say this as a size, a postscript to that, is we believe in biblical, healthy, joyful, victorious singleness too.

Fantastic.

Some are called to be single.

And by the way, some of you have been through divorces and miserable divorces.

Man, God doesn't love you any less.

I think most of the time God uses trauma and hurt and pain like that to make us better people.

So, announcing for the first time.

We're doing a marriage conference.

Vince and Cindy and Liz and I are doing a marriage conference on Valentine's Weekend in February.

And uh we're really excited about it.

It's gonna be a Friday night, half day Saturday, and then we'll actually we'll probably do a panel on Sunday morning.

It's gonna be really fun.

So that's February 14th, 15th, 16th.

You might jot that down.

We're gonna use the facility here to keep the cost low.

We're looking at maybe doing a banquet and a dance on Valentine's night.

So it's gonna be super fun.

So we believe in that.

We believe in that.

And I would say this for you that are not married, but you hope to be, you're invited too.

So it's for it's for connection, it's about relationships.

It's not just that are for those that are already married.

Okay, conviction number two, marriage, conviction number two.

Marriage, marriage, is why we are here.

No, mowage is why we have gathered together.

No, marriage is always between a man and a woman.

Marriage is always between a man and a woman.

This is a hotbed issue, no pun intended, but we're choosing as a church to stick to the Bible.

So those that have same-sex attraction, we we love you, we bless you, but we only do, and the reason I say bless you is because you're creating God's image too, and you need to come to know Jesus too.

And some of you in this room have same-sex attraction, there's no doubt about it.

The percentages would say that.

And we would love to disciple you and guide you into what God's got and intended for you, but we're gonna do marriages here, according to what we just read.

Have you not read?

And this is where Jesus is affirming the Old Testament scriptures, that he who made them from the beginning, he made them male and female.

Has nothing to do with devaluing anyone, it has everything to lifting up God's standard.

It's our convictions in the Bible that that's how we will do weddings.

That clear?

Okay.

Marriage conviction number three a man and woman should leave their home and become one with each other.

A man and a woman should leave their home and become one with each other.

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Now, here's what I mean by that.

You guys that are just getting married and you're young, work hard at having your own home.

Work hard at building the values of your home.

Appreciate, love, and respect your mom and dad.

But build your own home.

Okay?

So for Liz and I, I think it was a privilege.

We had the privilege of being way far away from our parents because we were in Japan when we got married.

And so mom came over a couple times.

Liz's mom came over a couple times.

It was great.

But we developed our own Christmas traditions.

We developed our own Thanksgiving traditions.

We developed our own kind of home altar of how we were going to worship and pray together as a family.

And sometimes young couples depend way too much, in my opinion, on the in-laws, and the in-laws intrude way too much on the young people.

So y'all got to work that out.

And I'm not going to say any more on that than that.

But I will say that it's really fun to be for us to be 2,000 miles away from both parents.

Nothing against our parents, and I really sincerely mean that.

You guys know my mom and dad.

You've met them, and man, my mom died two years ago, but you know my dad.

What a great guy.

I mean, he's a fantastic guy.

Dad never intruded in stuff, he never got involved with our marriage.

Everything was like cool with him.

And you're just gonna have differences, right?

We're gonna have different values.

I hope you do.

I hope you have different values than your parents.

In the sense that God's speaking to you.

Now, if you're getting your values from the culture and you're and you're dishing your Christian heritage, if that's what you come out of, that's not good.

But you some of you heard me say this.

My mom used to always say, look, we built a nest, your dad and I laid some eggs, I sat on them, I taught you how to fly, so fly.

Get out of here.

I want to spend some time with your dad.

So that's what the passage says.

So, all right, marriage conviction number four.

We are going to fight with you for your marriage.

Here at the road, we on the staff team and all of our small group leaders, we are gonna fight with you for your marriage.

Even when adultery is involved, we will do all we can to battle with you for your marriage, to keep it together.

With you.

If you don't want to salvage the marriage, then fine.

I mean, that's up to you.

But if you come to us, we're in the fight, you guys.

We're in the battle.

Even if it's a just grossly immoral situation, we still believe in second chances.

We still believe in third chances.

We believe we can work this out.

And I can tell you, there's almost a dozen people in this church today, we salvaged their marriage through adultery, and they're walking beautifully with God today.

And partly it's because we didn't give up.

And we kept saying, let's fight for this thing, let's battle for this thing.

And it took a while, it was hard, hard work.

But there's others, they've made up their mind.

That's what they're gonna do.

And so we just say, God bless you, but we're not gonna, we're not gonna overly intrude, believe me.

It's if you want to salvage the marriage.

It's interesting.

75% of divorced people say three years after their divorce, they wish they had stayed and made it work.

And many of you come out of divorced backgrounds, and one of the joys of my heart is to see in your cases that you're now living great.

You got great marriages in your second marriage, and in some cases, even a third marriage.

Praise God.

That's fantastic.

And I can tell you why I believe that, but again, I don't have time.

But there's some clear scriptural passage, especially the woman at the well, where it would appear that Jesus affirms us right where we're at and stay in that relationship.

And then fifthly, if I haven't been heavy enough, this is a little levity.

Marriage conviction number five, intimacy and sex should be a big part of your marriage relationship.

Let me repeat that.

Intimacy and sex should be a big part of your marriage relationship.

Marriage relationship.

Marriage relationship.

All right, does that make sense?

Two shall become one.

So the key to sex, in my opinion, is learning to grow and give together.

Learning to grow and give together.

There's givers and there's takers, right?

Some of you on the spectrum are more givers.

And some of you on the spectrum are more takers.

If you're on the taker side, try to become more of a giver.

And if you're on the giving side, give with discernment.

Okay?

But it's it's not 50-50.

It's a hundred percent, a hundred percent.

It's both people working on it.

And some of us come with, I'd say most of us in this room come with a bunch of baggage.

Some of you are recovering alcoholics, some of you are recovering from porn addiction, some of you are recording of coming out of um issues related to either alcoholism or abuse.

And you're turning it around.

Isn't that awesome?

God can do that.

And so that's exciting.

So that's what we're about here at the road.

And I'm excited.

I like this message.

I thought it was pretty good.

We could go into a ton of details.

I don't think that's the point.

I think the point is purity of heart and intimacy with Christ and intimacy with your spouse if you're married.

And if you're single, do it well.

Be the best, most godly, most powerful, most bold Christian single you can be.

You've got way more time than we that are married anyway, so go for it.

Absolutely go for it.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.