Sermon on the Mount
“Affairs of the heart”
This morning as we engage with Jesus’ words on lust, adultery and divorce – there will be a lot going on for a lot of people.
Your head and heart could become very noisy. Your mind will race to situations and memories. Defences will rise up. Shame will grip your heart. Anger will be stirred. Prejudice will drown out truth. Excuses will downplay the seriousness of what is addressed here. Some will suddenly feel very vulnerable. Pain will be very present.
Because of these kinds of emotions and issues - it is not easy for me to preach, and it will be even less easy for you to listen. Yet – here we are. We gather together to give our attention to the Word of God and we ask God for the grace for us to remain attentive to His instruction; and the courage to act upon it.
In the early 1990’s I was working in Human Resources for a government department. One day my manager says to me that I had to develop a policy and complaints procedure for sexual harassment for the 160 staff in our branch. In addition, a training and awareness programme had to be developed. The first thing I did was send a survey form around the branch to gauge people’s awareness, comments and concerns about sexual harassment. It soon became evident that we had a problem.
A senior manager was a serial offender. Women staff would take a day’s annual leave on their birthday so as to avoid the obligatory “birthday kiss” from this person. When we ran the training and when people broke into groups to define sexual harassment, they would come back with definitions by way of an acronym using this person’s name. And that was just one aspect of it. There were also the images, innuendos, jokes which for the person on the receiving end could be deeply offensive and threatening.
My manager was an exceptional person. She knew we had a problem and she knew what she was asking of me to conduct this project. She also knew I was not aware of the extent of the problem and naïve about it. What some staff had had to suffer was utterly unacceptable.Yet – there were others – who in their view, could see nothing wrong with it!
The church is not immune from such behaviour.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Here Jesus brings two of the 10 Commandments together.
The 10th one (Do not covet) and the 7th one (Do not commit adultery).
He places as much importance on the difficult one (Do not covet) as the one that ought to be possible to keep (Do not commit adultery). In doing so, He was cutting across a generally accepted value in Mediterranean at that time: “lust is healthy.” In addition to this motto of the times – it was generally accepted that the woman was responsible for minimising lust by covering her head. Essentially if a man lusted after a woman, it was the woman’s fault. Here Jesus shifts the responsibility to the man.
Is it any wonder they crucified Him?
Today His message is no less difficult, and no less unpopular. If the value of the day was “lust is healthy” – certainly today it is a value that is celebrated and advanced in any number of ways. In a society that puts much import of image and images – the senses can be assaulted and enticed in ways that are inappropriate.
We have annual lists by publications of who are, supposedly, the most beautiful people in the world today. Since 1990 People magazine have published their list of the 50 most beautiful people. And from last year they have expanded that to 100. With the advent of the internet, pornography has become such an immense and lucrative industry, some economists believe if it was outlawed it would have a measurable negative effect on national economies. One out of 8 websites is pornographic and in the past 8 years the number of sites has increased 30 fold. The most frequent viewers of Internet porn are young people aged 12-17 years old. The average age at which children are first exposed to online pornography today is 11 years old.
Billboards can be very provocative; movie censorship is more liberal; and music videos (especially hip hop and rap – but not only) are especially erotic. The world we live in, the “air we breathe” so to speak, is permeated with the sexual suggestion, invitation and enticement. In considering this issue, it is easy to make sweeping generalisations and even easier to just pile on the guilt. Into this scene Jesus speaks. As He did then; so He does now. Into this scene Jesus calls to a people who profess their allegiance to Him – and He challenges their ethic. He shifts the offence from the physical act to the prior decision of the heart. The lustful look that He calls attention to is more about intent than a momentary glance. One commentator translates this verse as “the one looking at a woman for the purpose of getting her to lust after him.” The offence is the savouring of the sinful prospect, not the initial temptation. As C.H. Spurgeon put it; “You are not responsible for birds flying overhead, but you are if you allow them to nest in your hair.” It’s the rehearsing of the act, the dwelling on the possibility and fantasy. The hunger intensifies.
Scripture records the chilling example of how full-blown lust can destroy. Herod makes a reckless promise to the daughter of his mistress, after the daughter danced for him. She could have anything she wanted. She asked for the head of John the Baptist on a plate. Literally. Honestly – I believe we know when our hearts are being enticed and entertaining thoughts and decisions that fall into the very category Jesus is describing. For some it is more of a problem than others. For some it is an addiction. The response?
In verses 29-30 Jesus uses graphic images to impress upon His disciples “Deal radically with this sin!”
He is not counselling literal mutilation of the body. He is advocating strong action. Action that strikes a death blow to this tendency of human nature. We could discuss different ways that you might guard your heart in this regard. We could talk about different guidelines and boundaries you might employ. But instead – I would like to highlight the underlying concern that Jesus is advancing. But not just yet. We need to consider the next topic first.
Divorce. (And not everything can be addressed on this issue in this sermon – such as physical abuse; or the other angles elsewhere in scripture)
Having redefined adultery, Jesus now moves onto the issue of divorce.
“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.'” (Matthew 5:31)
At this point I want to acknowledge that this is a raw and painful issue for many people. For Ruth and myself, just within our family counting siblings we have six divorces. It is an emotive issue. Our own online poll to the question: “I believe it is wrong for Christians to divorce for any reason other than marital unfaithfulness.” 56% agreed; 44% disagreed. In the presence of your own experience, convictions and opinions, and pain – just stay with this. There is a very important issue at stake here. We come to this part of the SM bearing in mind the previous words concerning lust and adultery. Jesus is now expanding on that issue. In short – Jesus words are to the point. Jesus’ starting point is that divorce is prohibited. Divorce either makes the wife an adulteress, or marrying a divorced woman makes the man an adulterer. The language is strident, and the only exception for divorce is unfaithfulness. Literally porneia. The ideal from creation was for a man and woman to be together as one flesh for all their days. And I think it is fair to say that on a person’s wedding day, everyone goes there with that intent. It’s for life.
In now talking about this issue, Jesus refers back to the Law, which explained that if a woman was divorced, her husband had to issue her with a certificate of divorce. Such a certificate enabled her to remarry and to not be consigned to a life of destitution. By the time of Jesus there were two main schools of thought concerning this. Both ideas were represented by two rabbis’ and their disciples:
- Shammai, which was conservative and restricted divorce to adultery. Or for “indecency.”
- Hillel, which was liberal and advocated grounds for divorce for things such as a wife losing her beauty, burning a meal. Or for anything “displeasing.”
Now we come to the crux of the passage of scripture before us today. Be that looking at someone else with lust; or divorcing a marriage partner. Jesus’ fulfilment of the Law rested on qualities such as justice, mercy and love. In Jesus day, men could not legally commit adultery against his own wife (e.g. with a prostitute or a virgin), only with another man’s wife. Jesus’ words here are challenging the injustices committed against the wives. The Law was being mocked and wives and families were being destroyed as a result. The spirit of Jesus’ words here were protecting women from being divorced at the whim of her husband. The essence of Jesus’ words here is the promotion of marriage and renouncing anything which would undermine it.
The tendency then – and a tendency which can still be with us today – is that people approach the words of Jesus here with the thought of “How am I able to get out of this marriage? When it is it permissible to divorce?” Jesus is saying “Do God’s will for marriage and stop asking when it is permissible to do less.” “And don’t even begin to entertain an adulterous relationship in your heart. Don’t look at someone else with the intent of trying to start something.”And the exception clause? It is not a reason to obtain a divorce, it is a last resort when all else has failed, and to protect those who are victims of their spouse’s actions.
Jesus was advancing the Kingdom. And by equating divorce with adultery, he was treating both parties as equal. Jesus was shifting the weight from the traditional stronger to the weaker.
To take in the issues of lusting after someone else; of the whys and wherefores of divorce, adultery and remarriage – it is easy to begin working at ticking the boxes and manoeuvring and trying to do what you can to get away with whatever; yet all the while stay on-side with God. In these passages, Jesus is cutting through the games. He is saying;
Stop living with the mindset “What can I get away with?’”
Stop living in a way that says “Well I’ve never committed adultery!” when all the while you harbour the desire and rehearse it in your heart.
Stop living in a way that says “How can I get out of this marriage?”
Start living with this key question – how am I dealing with others with justice, mercy and love?
The crux of this passage is that the demands of the Kingdom:
- are radical
- are to prohibit sin
- are to protect the innocent
- are to advance justice, mercy and love
One reason why these words of Jesus can be so difficult to engage with is because we read them from the other side. That is to say – we interact with them having lusted after someone else and being guilty of adultery in our heart. We read them on the other side of divorce – either as a spouse who has gone through that trauma; or grown up in a family so fractured. Or we hold in our hearts the growing desire to somehow extract ourselves from a marriage from which we want release. Or our heart is captivated by someone else and we are heading rapidly towards sin. It can be overwhelming. We can be deceived that it’s just all out of reach. This is the moment to just stop. Literally. Just catch your breath. Be assured of this. You are in the presence of grace and forgiveness. You are in the presence of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom breaking in.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
Yet sometimes we have a plan. It is destructive. For all concerned. Philip Yancy tells the story of a friend who asked to see him. The friend was married and said “I have met another woman. If I have an affair with her will God forgive me?” They talked at length about the situation – and eventually Yancy answered the question. “The question is not whether God will forgive you if you go through with this. He will. The question is whether you’ll want His forgiveness.” The man went ahead and had the affair – and at the writing of the story the man had not sought God’s forgiveness.
All of us will be affected by the kinds of situations that emerge from Jesus teaching before us today. It proposes a vision of the kingdom among us. Imagine a place – this church – whereby we took these words to heart. What would that mean? What would that look like? It would mean being with people and in a place where women could come without fear of being leered at or feel they were the attention of sexual desire, or being the victims of unhealthy thoughts. It would mean being in a place and with people where men could come and be with women without the pressure of the temptation that is so rampant in the world. It would mean being in the presence of people who, if and when they felt an emotional attachment forming that was inappropriate, that it was stymied before it could spring into sin. It would mean being in a place whereby marriages were lived as if there was no out; and husbands and wives did not entertain the question “What can I do to get out of this marriage?” But instead took the words of Jesus to heart and said “What can I do to stay in this marriage?” It would be a place and a community of people whose heart would refuse to allow the question “What can I get away with?” to take root.
Presented By: Rev. Geoff New