REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Repeat the verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” (Heb. 10:14) HAVE SOMEONE COME FORWARD AND EXPLAIN THE CHART.)
FLIP CHART: Go over John Stott’s outline of SOM. Show that 5:17-20 was an introduction to a Christian’s righteousness.
INTRODUCTION:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is 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 sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell (Mt. 5:27-30).
A Christianity Today survey said that 33 percent of the clergy and 36 percent of the laity admit to having purposely visited sexually explicit web sites. … these are the subscribers to Christianity Today. And this is not just about men. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of women hooked on pornography. If those statistics are correct, a third of us in this class have purposely visited a pornographic website.
And adultery has affected pastors too. Charles Swindoll is quoted as saying, “If I hear of one more pastor who has fallen, I think I’m going to get sick.” (Hughes, 105).
ILL: And now Ted Haggard, the President of the National Association of Evangelicals. Did Chuck Swindoll get sick? Certainly sick at heart? Rich said he wept when he heard this news? John Wood said that it troubled him deeply. Of course non-evangelicals are gloating.
ILL: We are fools if we think we cannot fall. Howard Hendricks tells of hearing C.I. Scofield, the author of the Scofield Bible, when he was in his eighties, pray, “Lord, keep me from becoming a vile, wicked old man.”
So this problem of lust is HUGE. We need to talk about it, wrestle with it and trust God to show us how to deal with it and overcome lust in our sex-crazed world.
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
1. Jesus’ Use of Hyperbolic Language
2. Drastic Action Required to Combat Heart Adultery
EXTREME MEASURES NEEDED
JESUS’S USE OF HYPERBOLIC LANGUAGE
I. WHAT IS HYPERBOLE?
Hyper (excess), e.g. hyper-ventilate, hyper-active
Ballein – to throw. ….. throwing out something that is excessive.
Hyperbole is a conscious exaggeration that expresses truth in a non-literal manner; An exaggeration or amplification for effect; an exaggeration beyond the bounds of normality.
ROLE PLAY: Hyperbole …. Me and Brandon
QUESTION: What are some other examples of hyperboles?
It is raining cats and dogs; He was driving faster than the speed of light; It was hotter than hades. Half of Tempe was there. I am so hungry I could eat a horse. I called you a hundred times to come to supper. Swear on a stack of Bibles. I wouldn’t do that in a million years.
II. WHY DO WE USE HYPERBOLES?
We exaggerate something beyond the bounds of normalcy to catch the reader’s or listener’s attention.
Whenever truth is in danger of becoming a cliché a hyperbole can rescue it from triteness and familiarity.
III. HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN SOMETHING IS HYPERBOLE?
“We know that a statement is an exaggeration when the literal interpretation violates our common sense, logic and observation of how things generally operate.” (Leland Ryken)
We know there is no mile-high ice-cream cone, it doesn’t rain cats and dogs, no one drives faster than the speed of light and that Erik won’t skin Brandon alive.
To get to the literal principle of truth hidden in hyperbole “we need to scale back the element of exaggeration and then infer the principle that remains.” (Leland Ryken)
IV. JESUS’ USE OF HYPERBOLIC LANGUANGE?
The Bible is a book. It is literature. “The Bible is full of over 200 different types of figures of speech which require non-literal reading to gain true meaning.” (Gary Amirault).
What are some types of figures of speech? Allegory, antithesis, chiasmus, double entendre, irony, idiom, metaphor, simile, oxymoron, pun, understatement…and hyperbole.
“Even Christ had a literary style of his own … The diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1959).
“Elton Trueblood shows in his book The Humor of Christ that the most distinctive feature of Jesus’ discourses is their use of exaggeration – the preposterous overstatement in the mode of “our conventional Texas story, which no one believes literally but everyone remembers.” (Elton Trueblood, The Humor of Christ (New York:Harper and Row, 1964), 47-48.
V. THE USE OF HYPERBOLE IN THE SIX ANTI-THESES
1. 5:22 – Call a person a fool; in danger of hell fire.
2. 5:23 – Leave your gift at the altar; be reconciled.
3. 5:25 – Settle matters with your adversary on the way to court.
4. 5:29-30 – Gouge out eye, cut off hand.
5. 5:32 — “Except for marital unfaithfulness” ….???
6. 5:33-37 – Yes or no; never take an oath.
7. 5:39 — Turn the cheek; never defend yourself.
8. 5:40 — If sued give everything to your opponent.
9. 5:41 – When forced to do something, do twice as much.
10. 5:42 – When someone wants to borrow, give it to him.
11. 5:48 – Be as perfect as God.
DRASTIC ACTION IS REQUIRED TO COMBAT ADULTERY OF THE HEART
If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is 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 sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one partof your body than for your whole body to go into hell (Mt. 5:27-30)
This is hyperbole. It is not rational or logical. So we need to strip away the exaggeration and seek to get to the point, the literal truth of the hyperbole.
QUESTION: What is Jesus trying to say with this hyperbole?
Drastic, severe, extreme action is needed if we are to overcome adultery of the heart, the imagination. Holiness in the area of the imagination demands such drastic and extreme action that it can be compared to cutting of a hand or gouging out an eye.
QUESTION/FLIPCHART: So, what drastic actions have Christians taken to deal with adultery of the heart? Write the answers on the flip chart as they are listed …. And discuss them:
I. HEDONISM
Hedonism says that pleasure is the chief goal of life. This philosophy has permeated the Christian community. The best definition we have and the easiest solution. Mental adultery, “If it feels good, do it.”
Sex like eating is just a biological function. “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food” (I Cor. 6:13a). It is neither moral nor immoral.
II. MUTILATION
Origin (187-254 AD), an influential Alexandrian Christian was so plagued by sexual temptations that he castrated himself. Later he regretted this self-mutilation and in 325AD the Council of Nicea forbade people from doing things like this to themselves.
Would we cut off our nose if Chanel #5 perfume stimulates us or cut off our ears if a woman’s voice arouses us.
Ray Charles though completely blind was infamous for his womanizing ways. One-eyed, even blind people, still lust.
III. AVOIDANCE / INSULATION
Which, basically means …. Don’t look!!!
ILL: “…because they wanted to avoid any kind of breach in the commandment against adultery, many Pharisees determined never even to glance at a woman. Of course, when out and about in the streets, this became a bit difficult. So some Pharisees consistently walked with their heads down. These folks eventually became known as “bleeding Pharisees” because they regularly walked right into buildings! You could always spy them walking around with hankies on some fresh wound on their foreheads!” (Scott Hoezee)
IV. ISOLATION
Saint Anthony, along with tens of thousands of other hermits, sought to escape the tempation of immorality and lust by separating themselves from the rest of society. He became a hermit in the Egyptian desert, where he lived in poverty and deprivation for thirty-five years. Yet by his own testimony he was never freed in all that time from the cares and temptations he sought to escape. (MacArthur, 305).
Saint Anthony said that no matter how much he isolated and tormented himself (for example laying on a bed of nails) the dancing girls were still in his mind?
V. ACCUSATION / BLAMING WOMEN
The Pharisees looked down on women. They were of the opinion that a man should never have a private conversation with a woman who is not his wife. They thought this to be dangerous because women are evil seducers. According to the Pharisees, women are to blame for the lustful thoughts and acts of men. The men involved are but helpless victims.
“Historically such a “solution” has been associated with regarding the woman as the problem, or as inherently evil” (The Divine Conquest, 167).
John Winthrop … as governor of the colony … worked … to prevent the implementation of more conservative practices such as veiling women, which many Puritans supported. (Wikipedia)
Of course the veil is prominent in Islam and even more so “purdah,” which means seclusion and happens when a girl becomes 9 or 10. She is secluded within the walls of her house and not allowed to go outside for the rest of her life. There is a proverb in Pakistani Islam that says that a woman needs only to go outside to be seen twice in her lifetime – once to get married and the second is to get buried.
It is interesting that Jesus places the need for drastic, severe and extreme action on men and says nothing at all about women when dealing with heart adultery.
VI. FLEE
Joseph fled. Was he feeling enticed? Were the words of this woman getting to him?
Whatever we do, we must flee. But how does the mind flee? First, you stop looking at what you are looking at. Paul in Romans says to make no provision for the flesh. We are to flee from lust and not flirt with it. When we turn sensual images over in our minds we are flirting with lust and not fleeing.
VII. MARRIAGE
“I do, though, tell the unmarried and widows that singleness might well be the best thing for them, as it has been for me. But if they can’t manage their desires and emotions, they should by all means go ahead and get married. The difficulties of marriage are preferable by far to a sexually tortured life as a single” (I Corinthians 7:8-9, The Message).
Good marriage relationships protect (don’t insure) us against sexual fantasies and adultery of the imagination and heart.
VIII. ACCOUNTABILITY
ILL: A friend told me a story. She and two other women were having coffee in the kitchen of another lady. The woman in whose home they were meeting was happily married, a strong Christian. Both she and her husband were mature, wise Christians, both teachers in the church. The women were sharing about how some things were going and the hostess said to them after a while, “I need your help. I find that I’m attracted to a man who is not my husband. He’s in my husband’s office. I see him all the time. We have so much in common. He’s a poet, an artist. He really understands me. He even seems to understand me better than my husband.”
She said, “He calls me often. We have long conversations. It’s just a deep friendship now, but I know I’m on dangerous ground. I’m afraid of where it’s heading. I know I have to end this, and I’ve got to do it before it develops into anything more. But I need you,” she said to her friends, “I need you to hold me accountable to do the right thing.” She didn’t want to end it, you see, but she knew she had to.
The conversation went on; they continued having coffee in the kitchen and eventually as they were talking the phone rang. The woman who had shared picked up the phone and when she answered it, it was obvious to the other women that her face went pale and she turned her back to them. She was quiet for a moment and then she spoke and this is what she said: “This is not a healthy relationship. We need to end it now. Please don’t ever call me again. Goodbye.” She turned around to the others and they were absolutely stunned as they marveled at the timing of that phone call and the goodness of God in allowing him to call right in the midst of the moment when she was asking for help. (John Yates)
IX. SELF-DISCIPLINE
Job made a covenant, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl” (Job. 31:1).
Paul tells us to “Put to death … whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires. . . . . (Col. 3:5). “If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live . . .” (Romans 8:13). So we are told to keep our body under and bring it into subjection (I Cor. 9:27).
X. CULTURAL AMPUTATION
Cut the cable programs that provide pornography, get rid of magazines, avoid certain books, certain videos, don’t go to R rated movies or even PG is that feeds your problem. For some it may mean cutting out TV completely, block all 900 number calls, stay away from Las Vegas etc.
There is probably no area in which Christians fail more than in what they allow to enter their minds through the media. There are times when we need to walk away from the screen. There are times to turn the dial. We are easily desensitized, and those impure things at which we laugh do not seem so bad the next time. ….” (Hughes, 109)
This runs counter to the norm of permissiveness in our society. But it is saying that eternity is more important than time. Depriving ourselves is the intent of Jesus’ hyperbole. …. Take drastic, severe, extreme action in order to keep your imagination from committing mental adultery.
Now, note, the verse says “if your eye causes you to sin.” This is not talking about your neighbor’s eye. All of us are stimulated differently. One might be able to see a movie without shifting into imaginative adultery whereas another person may not. The emphasis here is on “me” and not my neighbor.
READ: “To obey this command of Jesus will involve for many of us certain ‘maiming.’ We shall have to eliminate from our lives certain things which (though some may be innocent in themselves) either are, or could easily become, sources of temptation. That is, we shall deliberately decline to read certain literature, see certain films, visit certain exhibitions. If we do this, we shall be regarded by some of our contemporaries as narrow-minded, untaught Philistines. ‘What?’ they will say to us incredulously, ‘you’ve not read such and such a book? You’ve not seen such and such a film? Why, you’re not educated, man!’ They may be right. We may have had to become culturally ‘maimed’ in order to preserve our purity of mind. The only question is whether, for the sake of this gain, we are willing to bear that loss and endure that ridicule. (Stott, 91).
SO WHAT???
1. The Bible is literature loaded with a great variety of figures of speech. Be careful when interpreting these figures of speech.
2. Freedom from imaginative adultery is so important that we must take extreme measures to protect our minds.
3. Jesus does not put the blame on the opposite sex for our own sensual fantasies.
4. All of us in our sensual culture, need to practice some cultural amputation to protect our minds from impurity.