Who Is an Adulterer? Part 1

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. What'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 what needs to be fixed, and deal with those issues sooner rather than later. That's really what John MacArthur's current study on Grace to You is all about. In his series called The Sinfulness of Sin, John is helping you take a penetrating look at your spiritual condition, right down to those heart attitudes that no one else can see, the place where sin can take root. Every Christian needs to inspect those attitudes regularly. John's study will help you do that.

So follow along now, and here's today's lesson. We're looking at Matthew chapter 5 in our study. We're 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, 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. Then 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 except 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 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. He 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 stark 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, Ye 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's used so frequently in the chapter. It really reads, ye have heard that it was said. But of course he has reference to their traditional teachers, them of old, the ancients who had taught them.

So you can put it in italics, I guess, because he does have reference to that. But he says, you have 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. We'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 her has 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. 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 elicit 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 strangest kind of counseling supposedly coming from men of God that 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, infidelity 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 and buy a magazine 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 has a great illustration. He says you can get a large audience together for a striptease act. That is to watch a girl undress 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 chop or a piece of bacon. Wouldn't you think that something had gone wrong with their appetite for food? 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 chop 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 would 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 chop philosophy. That's the playboy philosophy.

Can't do it. The body is not for fornication. The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body. Don't you know verse 15 says that your bodies are the members of Christ? Would 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.

Would 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 an adulterous 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, porneia, 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 has 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 debauches the society at a rapid rate. Relationships have been replaced with perversions. Concern has been replaced by concupiscence.

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 and that's the Victorian view. You know, they want to go so far the other way, they say sex is shameful, it's depraved, it's 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 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 unto 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. Stop depriving one the other, except it be with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to prayer. And then come together again that Satan tempt 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. Chapter 5 and verse 15, Drink waters out of thine own cistern 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 cistern, running waters out of your own well. Let thy fountain be dispersed abroad and 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 roe.

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 have 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. 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 on 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 weren't. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary here in Los Angeles. And he's titled our current study, The Sinfulness of Sin. John, you talked about the philosophy that drives our society, that you just should do whatever feels good, and how that conflicts with the Bible's clear teaching on sin.

It's one of the symbols of the meltdown of our society. Concern over sin and doing what's right, it's a foreign concept in today's culture, like you're speaking a different language. 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, wow, 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 I think, and I think others who know me well, 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-mell, 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, all of that. You need a copy of a 250-page book. For those of you who've never contacted us before, we'll send you a copy of The Vanishing Conscience free of charge. One of my all-time favorite John MacArthur books, The Vanishing Conscience, to make sure your conscience aligns with God's word, pick up a copy of The Vanishing Conscience. Again, it's our gift to you if you've never contacted us before.

Just call or go to our website and request your book today. Our number here, 855-GRACE, and our web address, gty.org. The Vanishing Conscience will show you how to fight habitual sins, overcome temptation, and maintain a pure thought life. And it's an ideal gift for a young believer or someone you're discipling. And as John said, we'll send you The Vanishing Conscience for free if you've never contacted us before.

You can also buy extra copies to give to your friends or the people in your Bible study. Here's our number again, 855-GRACE, and our website, gty.org. And thank you for telling us what these daily broadcasts mean to you, and thanks especially for praying for us.

We rely on that more than you know. To let us know how God is using this listener-supported ministry in your life, write us at Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412, or email us at letters at gty.org. That's our email address. One more time, letters at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Keep in mind, you can watch Grace To You television this Sunday on DIRECTV Channel 378, or check your local listings for Channel and Times. And then join us Monday for another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.