Week 4 | Divorce, Purity, & the Heart Behind the Rules

We're gonna continue a series that we started a few weeks ago that we're calling The Jesus Way. And maybe more than ever before, we need to learn, understand what it looks like to live the Jesus Way. And so if you've been with us, you know this is a journey through the sermon that Jesus delivered, a sermon that we now call The Sermon on the Mount. It's this really powerful sermon, but honestly, it's a really challenging sermon at the same time. And so Jesus goes after some things, and he really challenges us. He wants to open our eyes. He wants us to open our hearts to understand like what is God's perspective on things? And oftentimes, The Jesus Way stands in direct contradiction to the way of our world, and so Jesus compels us to understand it, to see it, but more importantly, to learn how to live it so our lives are lived in direct contrast to the world in which we see. But let me think about it this way. In the 1970s, there was a law that was passed that forced pharmaceutical companies to put the child protective caps to the top of medication. You know what I'm talking about? And it was met with incredible resistance because the elderly community was now having a hard time

getting into the containers that contained the medicine that they needed for their own life health. Parents resisted it. They felt like it was patronizing. It was just more difficult. I don't want some outside group telling me what to do. And so it was inconvenient. It was frustrating, but yet in the coming years, child-related poisoning deaths dropped by 50%. There was another law that was passed in a similar time. It was a law that was designed to, spoken into building codes that every building built had to have smoke detectors in them. Initially, that was actually met with resistance as well because this alarm went off when you burnt toast. And if your house is anything like me, I burn toast. Or it goes off when a battery is low, and that's actually quite annoying. And I don't know about you, but that's never happened to me at 3 p.m. Why does the battery always die at 3 a.m., right? And so there's this resistance, like it's inconvenient. We don't like it. It doesn't really make sense. But again, in the coming years, those who were sleeping became survivors when a fire hit their homes. And again, fatalities related to home fires dropped by 50%. And so it kind of causes us to pause and now look back and reflect.

Maybe those laws weren't put into place to control us. Maybe they were there to actually care for us. I think it's that in mind that it's helpful to have that framework as we go to Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount because he says some hard things, some challenging things, some difficult things. If we're not careful, we'll reduce Jesus' teaching to just a list of rules that we have to obey. And we'll have some sort of resistance. We won't want to be controlled. But what if Jesus' teaching wasn't about control? What if it was actually about his care for you and his care for me? And so as we jump into really what is some challenging teaching, I wanna remind us what he said last week. So as we dive into the sermon, I wanna take us back to Matthew 5, verse 20. We talked about this last week. Here it is again. Jesus says, "'For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses "'that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, "'you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.'" Now we talked about this last week. That's a crazy statement. If you heard Jesus say this in the first century, your jaw would have dropped to the dirt. You're like, what?

I mean, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, they were professional religious people. I mean, they had righteousness all figured out. I mean, if you put this statement in a modern context, it would be like Jesus saying, unless you can hit more three-pointers than Steph Curry, unless you have a better vocal range than Adele, unless you're a better investor than Warren Buffett, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. You're like, Jesus, I don't know that that's possible. I think that's a bar that I can't clear. Now what Jesus was doing is he was using some shocking language to help us realize he is redefining what righteousness is all about. See, because the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, they married, they defined, that's the word I was looking for, they defined righteousness by their behavior, by what they did with their hands, by their experience, by the outward expression of what's right. And Jesus says, I want righteousness not just to be defined by what you do, I want your righteousness to be defined by who you are. That is not just about external behavior. It's about who you are and who you become. It's not about what you do with your hands, it's about what God does with your heart. And if we redefine righteousness from that perspective, we can enter the kingdom of heaven because God's given us a new heart in Christ.

And so what Jesus was doing was he was using Jesus does, after making the statement, some shocking language to help us realize is he launches into six different examples he is redefining what righteousness is all about. of what it looks like to get our heart See, because the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, in tune with God's heart. And so if you remember last week, the first example that he talked about was the relationship between murder and anger. He said, it's not good enough to just say, I've never taken somebody's life, this external behavior. He says, I want you to actually take a look at where murder actually starts and take a look at anger in your own heart. He makes it a heart issue. And so last week, the example that he used again was about murder and anger. This week, we're gonna talk about the next three examples. Next week, we're gonna talk about the last two examples. So this week, we're gonna talk about the relationship between adultery and lust and also look at divorce and oaths. Aren't you glad you came to church today, right? And so there's just some hard topics and arguably very sensitive topics for many of us. And again, I don't want this to be some sort of moralization, some sort of just get your act cleaned up externally.

I want us to really lean into what Jesus is saying because he's actually trying to give us a new heart. He's trying to give us a new perspective. He's trying to help us understand what we need to do to protect ourselves that ultimately will transform who we are and ultimately how we live. And so the first principle that Jesus is gonna get to in this next example is he's gonna challenge us to be people who choose communion over consumption. In other words, like choose communion, like true relationship with people over using people for our own consumption. So here's what he says next. He says, you've heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I tell you, anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Have a nice day. That's a tough statement, isn't it? And so again, similar to what he talked about in our message last week when he says, it's not good enough just to say, I'm not gonna murder somebody like this more extreme, extreme thing that you do. I want you to go back and look at like, long before that moment happens, what's going on in your heart? Jesus is doing the same thing again. In other words, he's saying there's very few people

who just wake up one day and say, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna be unfaithful to my spouse today. Long before that moment, there was lust that entered somebody's heart that went unaddressed. And so it grew, it magnified, it led us to small compromises, to small compromises, to medium-sized compromises, to larger compromises. We don't just stumble on the extreme things. It all starts with something in our heart. Jesus says, I want you to look at your heart. I want you to look at the lust that sometimes exists within us. Now, it's very important for us to understand what lust is and what lust is not. Here's what lust is not. Lust is not being attracted to somebody. I think attraction, it's God-given. He put it in us. It's actually a beautiful thing. Like sexual desire is from God, and when honored well is actually a gift. It's an amazing thing that God allows us to steward. There's nothing wrong with finding another human being attractive. Again, probably similar to his example last week when we talked about anger. He would say there's nothing wrong with being angry. Angry in of itself is not the problem.

It's when we hold on to anger. It's when we stew in the anger. It's when we allow the anger to grow. We talked about last week that anger becomes lethal when it becomes luggage, like when you hold on to it. The same is true about lust. It's not a problem to find somebody else attractive. The challenge becomes is when we hold on to that, that we ruminate on it, that we obsess about it, that we fantasize about somebody, that we undress somebody with our eyes, that we can't stop thinking about it. When we obsess about it, that becomes the problem in our heart. And Jesus says, I want you to take a look at your heart. Do not let lust go unaddressed, because if you do, it will magnify, it will grow, it will lead to compromises. Ultimately, you'll find yourself in places that you never thought you would ever be. I want you to take a look at your heart. Now, I would say this. God is actually trying to build a community of his followers that are committed to look at what love is like. It's actually the greatest commandment to give is just to love God and to love people, right? And I would argue that love and lust cannot coexist. They're almost the antithesis of one another. Rich Valotas, he says it this way.

He says, lust is about consumption. It's about gratifying my own desire. Desires and needs. Love is about communion. It's about really focused on building a relationship with somebody in a meaningful way. Lust is about taking. It's very selfish. Love is about giving. Lust uses somebody for my own gain. Love honors somebody for their good. Lust diminishes the other. Love cherishes the other. Do you feel how antithetical these two things are? And the reason why Jesus is challenging us to not allow lust to kind of run rampant in our life, because where love, where lust runs rampant, love is hard to find. The challenge in our culture is our culture glorifies lust. Our culture glorifies and almost sexualizes almost everything. I mean, the stats are staggering. Did you know that 12% of all the websites in the world are actually pornographic websites? Did you know that the porn industry makes more revenue in a given year than the NBA, NFL, the Baseball League, and the NHL all combined? Did you know that 75% of boys and 70% of girls

are exposed to pornography before the age of 13, before many have ever had a meaningful conversation about it? Did you know that 42% of young adults don't believe that pornography is actually a harmful thing or even morally wrong at all? And as I say that, we have to stop and recognize that our culture in some ways is built on this lust engine that our culture tells us, do whatever makes you feel good. And it leads us to all kinds of things like one night stands and relationships that become incredibly disposable and addictions related to this kinds of things. And we don't recognize the impact that that not only has on people around us, but the impact it has on our own heart and our own soul. What I would say about pornography, pornography doesn't just make you bad, it makes you hollow. It actually numbs things inside of us that God created you to experience in a beautiful, committed, faithful, godly relationship. The feelings aren't bad, but misguided. It's amazing the devastation that it has in our own lives in many ways. Many of us know this, that lust that's unaddressed, it eventually can lead to infidelity and betrayal, breaks up relationships and marriages. Sometimes kids no longer have both parents

in the same household. There's an erosion of intimacy. I've talked to guys that have had addictions with pornography that will say that they no longer have the ability to even be intimate with somebody that they love because it's numbed something in their heart. There's these shame cycles that we experience, like we feel guilty, we feel remorseful, we feel all kinds of shame and we beat ourselves up over and over and again. I would say that there's a sense of dulled spirituality or dulled sensitivity to spiritual things that we'd say, like, we really believe in God. But there's something about when lust runs rampant in my life, it actually dulls me to the things of God that I would say, I believe in God, I just don't feel Him any longer. Or we feel the ripple effects from it, that somebody else's indulgence is maybe the trauma that you've experienced. It's the part that our culture doesn't tell us is the dangers that Jesus is warning us about. It's almost like the boundaries that He gives us, it's that cap that goes on the medicine bottle. It's not there to control us, it's actually there to care for us. God's trying to do something special to protect our lives and our hearts. So that's why Jesus says this next.

It's very extreme, but here's His language. He says, so if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out, throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. He just doesn't make it easier, does He? I mean, Jesus is pretty extreme in His language here. Now, a couple things real quick. I highlighted the word hell, and here's why. Jesus does elsewhere in Scripture talk about this eternal reality called hell. That is not the reference here, though. The reference here that translated hell is actually a literal place called Gehenna. If you look at the original language. which the word that's used here is Gehenna. What Gehenna was was a real place. It was the trash dump on the south side of Jerusalem. Everybody knew about Gehenna. So think about the days before waste management would come by and pick up your bins on a Tuesday morning. They didn't have that kind of service in the first century. So what did you do? You took all your trash to Gehenna. You throw it over the wall and it was burning nonstop. So imagine a place that was constantly burning,

that smelled, it was garbage, it was sewage, it was just disgusting. And Jesus says, be careful because if left unaddressed, lust can take you to that kind of place. It's kind of like a hell on earth. And so everything that I described earlier, when it's left unaddressed, that it can lead us to infidelity and betrayal and spiritual numbing and personal trauma, that's the person, that's the type of hell on earth that Jesus is trying to prevent us from going. And so he uses this extreme language to kind of get our attention, to say, you gotta do something drastic. So he says, so if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out, if your right hand causes you to sin, gouge it out or cut it off. Now what's interesting is when he say that, he's not advocating for like body mutilization. He's using extreme language by saying, this is important enough that sometimes you have to make extreme decisions to protect yourself. And so I don't know fully what it means for all of us. For some of us, potentially, right now, lust is magnified and it's grown a little bit in our lives. And so now we're finding ourselves dropping into somebody else's DMs that are not our spouse. We're finding ourselves trying to get with a coworker at a work event, to have a glass of wine late hours after the meetings.

It's innocent. We haven't done anything yet. But you know where things are progressing. Or maybe somebody finds themselves in some sort of addiction to what you're watching online or on your phone. I think what Jesus was saying is, sometimes we have to take extreme measures to protect our heart. And so what that might mean is, not only do I need to stay away from my DMs, it may mean I gotta take social media off my phone. Because I'm not in a heart space to be able to manage that well. Maybe it means that not only do I need to not have the glass of wine with the person after hours, it may mean that I actually have to sever the relationship altogether because my heart can't continue to navigate it. It may mean that not only do I make sure that I've got some filtering software or whatever on my computer to protect myself, maybe I don't even go on the computer after a certain hour. I don't know what it is for you. I just am recognizing that Jesus' warning is to protect our hearts that left unaddressed, lust will make life a living hell for us. It is not the glorified picture that our culture creates. But yet, within the context by which God designed sexual desire, it is beautiful,

it is holy, it is good, it is connection, it is communion, it is worth fighting for. And so Jesus says, don't look at it as consumption. Choose communion, guard your heart, protect your heart, fight for your heart. Here's the second principle he gives us. I think he'd say pursue covenant over convenience. Pursue covenant over convenience. Here's what he says next. He says, it's been said that anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce. But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for sexual immorality makes her the victim of adultery. And anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. I mean, he's not backing down, right? And so he continues to push us, to drive us to awaken ourselves to our hearts. Now, let me be really clear about what Jesus is saying and what he's not saying here. What he's not saying is that if you are in an abusive or an unfaithful or a neglected marriage that you're just trapped in that marriage. But he's also challenging us not to see this covenant relationship as a disposable one. Instead, I think Jesus would challenge us, it's worth fighting for. A covenant relationship is always worth fighting for. Now, what he's specifically addressing is there was a couple of different rabbis back in his day

that were teaching things related to divorce. And so likely Jesus was actually addressing a counter perspective from this rabbi named Hillel. And what Hillel taught as his understanding of scripture is that a man could divorce his wife for any reason. Any reason, he could write her to get a divorce. She burns his toast. Done with you. You didn't fluff my pillow properly, done with you. If I find somebody else more attractive, done with you. And Jesus is going directly at that and says, that is not what God designed. This kind of flippant perspective about marriage. And here's why. Back in the ancient world, if a man were to divorce his wife in some sort of flippant way, it actually made her very vulnerable. Because in the ancient world, women oftentimes didn't have a lot of rights. They couldn't work, they couldn't earn income for themselves. And so for a man to flippantly divorce her wife, put her in a very vulnerable type of position. What's Jesus doing? He's taking care of the vulnerable. He's always looking after the people who are somewhat powerless. And he's saying to the men who had power at the time, do not leverage your power for the sake

of somebody else who's vulnerable. That's not the heart that God wants us to have. And so again, he's not suggesting in any way that somebody should get trapped in some sort of unfaithful or abusive type of marriage. There's other places in scripture that I think that there are biblical grounds for divorce. But what he is saying, is that sometimes the reasons that we have for stepping out of a relationship, they're not the right reasons. For somebody who just says, well, we just fell out of love. That's not the right reason. If somebody says, we just don't have chemistry anymore. That's not the right reason. If somebody just says, it's really hard and I just kind of want out. That's not the right reason. And that the reason is that God set apart marriage in particular as this covenant relationship that ultimately would mirror our relationship with God. I love how Dallas Willard talks about this. He says it this way. So Jesus isn't primarily writing a marriage law. He's calling disciples to the kind of heart that reflects God's own faithful, persevering love. Willard reminds us that our relationship with God is a covenant relationship. In other words, God will never break the relationship.

The God through Jesus invited us back into relationship. If our relationship with God is ever broken, it's because we were the unfaithful ones, not him. But even in our infidelity, God continues to pursue us, to reconcile, to restore, to make right. God still pursues the covenant because it's such a high value of the covenant. I think in the same way, what Jesus is getting at is I want you to reflect that same kind of heart. That we don't look at relationships as just disposal type of relationships. Instead, there's some relationships that are worth fighting for. And Jesus says, is it gonna be hard? Still worth fighting for. Are there gonna be rocky patches? For sure there is. It's still worth fighting for. It's still worth fighting for. It's still worth fighting for. This is hard for some of us because some of us here have been on the wrong side of divorce and you have experienced all the pain that gets attached to it. Others of us, our marriage is literally hanging in the balance right now. And I just want you to know God's heart for you. That I think God sees you, I think he's with you. I think that God can renew and God can ultimately restore.

But there's something about this covenant. When a godly marriage comes together, it gives our world a clear picture about what a relationship with God looks like because there's this relentless pursuit no matter what's going on. Willard goes on to say this. He says, because the real issue isn't whether people break covenants. It's whether their hearts have ever been healed enough to keep one. So what Jesus is getting at is for many of us, we actually need a new heart or we need to protect our heart. It's not just about external behavior or external obedience. In God's kingdom, through Jesus, he wants to actually give us a new heart. Here's the third principle. I think he'd go on to say this. He wants to be people who build character over compulsion. It's about character over compulsion. Here's the last example that he gives us. He says, again, you've heard that it was said to people long ago, do not break your oath but fulfill to the Lord the vows that you've made. But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all, either by heaven for it's God's throne or by earth which is his footstool or by Jerusalem for it's the city of the one great king.

And do not swear by your head. For you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply yes or no. Anything beyond this comes. from the evil one. Now what's Jesus getting at here? Because you and I likely, we don't say a lot of oaths maybe in the way that it's described here. We wouldn't say something like, man, I swear by Jerusalem, or I swear by the throne. Like we wouldn't say those types of things. But maybe you have this experience. I remember when I was a kid, there was always the kid on the playground who'd be like, I swear by my mama, or I swear by the Bible, right? Now what's interesting is the kid that would say that so consistently was the least trustworthy kid on the playground, right? Because the very fact that they had to double down to make this big promise to say, I swear by the whatever, it actually was an indication that their words themselves were not trustworthy. That's why they had to double down. R.T. France says it this way. He says, an oath is only needed if a person's word alone is unreliable. It's an admission of failure and truthfulness. And so that's why Jesus says, oftentimes for people, there's a gap between what we say and what we actually do.

The gap that exists there is the lack of integrity that exists in our lives, and Jesus says, I want you to take a close look at your heart because I wanna close that gap. I wanna want you to be people that you have to double down or make a super promise or make an oath or I swear by the whatever. I just want you to be people who do what you say. Now, candidly, I think we all need to look in the mirror at this one because maybe we're the type of person who tells our spouse we're 15 minutes away when we know we're a half hour away. Or maybe we're the person that embellished our resume a little bit or name dropped to make ourselves look a little bit better than we actually are. Or maybe we're somebody who only posts on social media in such a way to have, it's almost like we want social media to be a billboard and not a diary. We let people know some things about us but not really what's true about us. That if we're not careful, we paint this picture all around us that there's a gap between what we say and what we actually do. And that's why Jesus says, I just want you to be people that if you say yes, live the yes. If you say no, just live the no. Allow us to work in your heart in such a way that that gap closes. Now, candidly, there've been a lot of moments in my life that I've not gotten this right.

A lot of moments that I've missed constantly growing and working on my integrity. But I remember one moment, I was a young dad. My kids were probably in the two and four range. I remember it was 2010, because it was right after the recession. And you remember the recession back in 08 and 09. It hit all of us probably at some level. I was on a lead team at a church at the time. And as you would imagine, when people's pocketbooks get hit at home, it impacts their ability to give and even fuel the work of God through a local church. So our budgets were down. We were trying to figure out how to navigate it. I remember it was a season that we're gonna have to make some really hard decisions. So as a leadership team, we were gathering every single day, we were trying to get a sense of what the problem was fully and how we were gonna solve it. And I remember this particular week, I was gone almost every single night of the week trying to solve this problem. Now, as a dad of young kids, I was away from my kids. My kids kept asking, I was coming home after their bedtime. I was just, I was totally missing them, I hated it. And I remember one of my kids loved to play putt-putt golf. And so he's like, dad, putt-putt golf on Friday? Putt-putt golf on Friday? And I remember looking at him like, you got it, buddy.

Like, I'll take you to play putt-putt golf on Friday, thinking there's no way we don't have this all solved before Friday. Challenge is, Friday rolls around and we still didn't have everything truly battened up. And so we were in this meeting and it kept going, it kept going, it kept going, and I knew if I stayed in the meeting any longer, I wasn't gonna be able to fulfill my promise to my kid. And so I told everybody in the room, kind of hard to imagine looking back at this, I told everybody in the room that I'm gonna dismiss myself from this meeting, I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna take my kids to play putt-putt golf. And if you're still here, I'll come back and we'll finish the meeting. Now, I'll tell you, when I did that, I lost a lot of leadership chips in that room that day. But I didn't wanna be the kind of dad that told my kids something that I wasn't willing to follow through with. And for me, that became this defining moment of the kind of person that I want to be. I don't always get it right, I haven't always succeeded, but I just wanna become more and more the person whose heart reflects this idea that whatever I say is whatever I will do. Do you see that each one of these teachings, as difficult as they are, they all get back to the heart. That Jesus is not just interested in our external behavior,

he's very interested in our heart transformation that comes by his power, ultimately through the Holy Spirit. So let me just kind of go back over these again. I would say this to us. Let's be people who choose communion over consumption. That we just see people as image bearers, not as objects. Maybe we'd be people who pursue covenant over convenience. We're people who choose faithfulness even when it's hard. That we're kind of the people who build character over compulsion. That we just let our lives speak instead of manipulating others with our words. Now my guess is this, maybe for all of us. All of us hear this teaching and we go, there have been moments, there are moments, and maybe right now that my life doesn't match what Jesus describes. And if we're not careful, we can feel pretty beat up. If we're not real careful, that we can kind of find ourselves under a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. And I just want you to know that's not my heart, and I don't think that's Jesus' heart. I actually think there's tremendous amount of hope, and I don't want you to walk out of here without some sense of hope. Because I think there's a big difference between what I would say conviction and condemnation. Condemnation's from the enemy, from the evil one. And he tried to convince you, because of the thing that you did,

because of your mistake, because of taking whatever it is too far, that you're condemned. What happens when we feel condemned, we actually distance ourselves from God. We distance ourselves from one another. It actually leads us to even greater hell on earth. But I know a God who sent his son Jesus into this world to pay the penalty for our sin. I know a God who sent his son Jesus to ultimately reconcile us to himself. Forgiveness is a real thing. That's why Romans tells us there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And I believe that. Do not walk out of here condemned. God does not condemn you. I do not condemn you. There's hope in Jesus. So I don't want you to experience condemnation, but I do want you to experience conviction. Because the Holy Spirit brings conviction where we recognize that my life does not match the pattern of what God desires for me. That conviction should not take me away from God. It actually drives me to God. Where I take my conviction to him and say, God, I'm struggling with this. I'm falling short with this. God, I need help with this.

Take your conviction, allow it to drive you to God, to the only one who can bring about the transformation that you and I desire. Maybe you find yourself in your own version of hell on earth. But I want you to know that when you give your life to him, you allow him to mold you from the inside out. He can take our hell on earth and renew it with a sense of hope and purpose and a new start and a new beginning. Because not only did Jesus go to a cross, my understanding of Jesus is he left that tomb empty. You know what that empty tomb means? It means there's new life. There's new hope. There's a new start. There's a new beginning. Conviction is a good thing. It should drive us to the one who paid the penalty to ultimately set us free. Find freedom in him. Find transformation in him. Let's just go to him in this moment. God, we come before you, truly as broken people. God, I don't know that there's a single one of us whose life is fully in alignment with yours in relation to what we talked about today. God, I think for all of us, there have been moments where lust has taken us too far.

God, maybe for all of us, there's moments that we've seen, maybe not just our marriage, but other relationships is just disposable. God, maybe for all of us, there's moments that the words that we speak and the lives that we live, there's just a gap between them. So God, would you bring conviction? Would you help us understand how the path that we're on is not the path that will bring life and hope and joy and purpose? And God, through that conviction, would you draw us closer to yourself where we can find hope, a new start, a new beginning? God, we need the power of your Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out. God, we love you. We say thanks in Jesus' name, amen.