Sunday Sermon: You Have Heard That It Was Said (Matthew 5:20-31)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.

First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison.

Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

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 lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that we would be convicted in heart over these words that we are reading today.

Let there be no sinful way in us, no hidden faults, but that through your word we are convicted in heart of the wrongs that we have done and that we would desire to be cleansed of all unrighteousness so that we may walk in your ways.

In the book of Hebrews, we are told that your word is sharper than any double -edged sword piercing through bone and marrow to the very heart of a person.

And may that word be working in such a way in us today that we might be convicted of our sin in pursuit of the holiness and the righteous perfection of God.

Lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

I was reading a story this past week of a Russian diplomat who came to the

United States to do some political work on behalf of his government. And when he came to the

U .S., he was assigned a chauffeur, somebody who would help drive him around or fetch anything for him as he needed it.

When he came over and stayed in Washington, D .C., he was still kind of struggling with the time change and was still on Russian time.

So he was in his hotel room late at night, couldn't sleep, and decided that he was hungry.

So he called up this chauffeur that had been assigned to him and said, you know what, I can't sleep. I'd like to get a bite to eat.

Do you know of any restaurants that would be open this late? And the chauffeur said, certainly, I think I could find something for you.

Meet me out front. So the diplomat came downstairs and out front of the hotel, sure enough, the chauffeur was there with the car.

The diplomat sat in the back seat while the chauffeur drove him to a place where he might be able to find something to eat.

Now this was pretty late at night. It was after midnight, could have been like two o 'clock in the morning or something. They're driving down streets that are mostly bare, hardly any cars out there at all.

And there's one intersection that they come to, the light was red, and the chauffeur stopped. They're the only car there at the intersection.

Looking left and right, there was nobody, no one coming from the other direction. And the diplomat sitting in the back leaned forward and he said to the chauffeur, why don't you go?

The chauffeur said, well, because the light is red. And the diplomat said, but there's nobody around.

I didn't see anybody out here tonight. No one's going to know if you run this red light. Why even bother stopping?

And the chauffeur said, well, because I'm an American citizen and I love our laws.

And if I want other people to obey these laws, then I should probably be obeying them too.

And the diplomat sat back and laughed and he said, you know what, that kind of patriotism you would never find in my country, in Russia.

That kind of commitment and dedication to a nation's laws. Different people in different countries have different attitudes about their laws.

And the way we are supposed to be concerning the law of God is we are to love his law.

Last week, when I came to the close of the sermon, I read from Psalm 119, which was David's love song to God for his law.

And it's there in Psalm 119 that David says, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day.

It's from Psalm 119. We also have one of those famous Sunday school passages that we teach to our kids, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

It is God's law that guides us. And so we love it and desire to keep it.

Jesus even said to his own disciples in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you keep my commandments.

And so we as followers of our Lord Christ, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, we should love our kingdom's laws.

And we love them so much that it looks strange to the people around us. Just like this

Russian diplomat thought it was weird that this American would stop at a stoplight when there's not even a cop around to give him a ticket, should he decide that he just wants to go through it.

So the rest of the world might even think us strange because we desire to keep the law of God.

Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 4 that when people see you acting this way, when you don't join them in their debauchery, they're going to malign you, but they're going to have to give an account to him who judges the living and the dead,

Peter goes on to say. We know that and we understand that, but we rejoice in knowing that in Christ Jesus, we do not face that judgment of God.

In fact, we receive the eternal reward of God as fellow heirs of that kingdom.

But again, it's as citizens of the kingdom that we would desire to keep its laws and even show ourselves to be strangers in this world of a kingdom that is not of this world, but a kingdom that is heavenly, a kingdom that is above.

Jesus came, the king has come and he has proclaimed, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Regarding this kingdom that Christ proclaimed, he did not come to establish any new law.

For it says in Matthew 5, 17, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And as we talked about this last week, we understood this accomplished in two ways.

First of all, Jesus pointing out that all of the Old Testament was about him. Everything that the law and the prophets, everything that was written there, it was all about Jesus.

The law was pointing to one who was the giver of the law and would keep the law perfectly.

And the prophets, everything that they proclaimed is fulfilled in Christ. Jesus saying all of this was about me.

But a second way that we understand this particular statement is Jesus saying that he did not come to create new laws.

This kingdom that he was proclaiming was not the abolishment of an old law and now the establishment of a new one, but rather that the righteousness of God that was revealed in the law is still the righteousness of God that was being proclaimed in Christ.

So there was not a reason for a new law, but where sin had transgressed the law,

Christ had come to die and forgive those who had broken

God's law. And in this, even the law of God and everything that was spoken by the prophets is fulfilled in our

Lord Jesus Christ. So as we considered this last week, Jesus proclaiming the law of God here in the

Sermon on the Mount, we continue on where Jesus singles out two of the

Ten Commandments. Now the majority of these commandments are going to be covered, but here we have two in particular, and those are the commandments you shall not murder, which is the sixth commandment, and you shall not commit adultery, which is the seventh commandment.

Now there's a reason why Jesus singles these two out, and there's a reason why I decided to do both of these together in one sermon.

I very easily could have broken this up into two different sermons. Today we're going to talk about thou shalt not murder.

Next week we're going to talk about thou shalt not commit adultery. You could even do series of sermons on just these particular sections.

We'll do a whole series on verses 21 through 26, then we'll do a whole series on verses 27 through 30.

But there's a reason why I wanted to keep these two together, and you'll probably notice that reason as we go on.

One of the things that Jesus is doing here in singling out these two commandments is pointing out that you have heard it said this, but I say to you this.

And what Jesus says you have heard it said is, sure enough, a direct quote of the commandment itself.

The problem was, it was going on in Israel at that particular time, is it wasn't being taught properly.

The Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the teachers of the law, when they were teaching these things to Israel, they were essentially saying to the

Jews, to Judea, that all you have to do is not murder anybody.

And guess what? You're righteous. All you have to do is not sleep with another man's wife, and guess what?

You are a righteous person. They were reading the law and treating it as something external and completely missing that the law was directly meant to confront something internal.

Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, which that name again means second law, it was the second giving of the law after it was proclaimed at Mount Sinai.

Here it's being given to the children of Israel again before they are going into the promised land. And it's there in the book of Deuteronomy that Moses says to the children of Israel, you must be circumcised.

Of course, that was the law, that a man had to be circumcised.

But more specifically than that, Moses said, you need to be circumcised in heart. For even this outward keeping of the law is meant to demonstrate something inwardly that has occurred, that you have cut yourself off from the ways of the world and united yourself with God.

So Moses says this circumcision that happens, you're not a keeper of the law because it was done externally. You're a keeper of the law because it is the attitude of your heart.

This was even talked about in the Old Testament. So it's not like Jesus is coming up with anything new even here in the

Sermon on the Mount by going to the heart of the matter. The law always went to the heart of the matter.

What's the 10th commandment? You shall not covet. And that very commandment itself is only a matter of the heart.

That's not something that you do externally. The 10th commandment directly confronts an attitude of what's going on internally, that we would desire things that don't belong to us, that we would be unsatisfied with the things that God has given us.

And I have to have this other thing in order to truly be satisfied. So the law always went to the heart of the matter, but the

Pharisees and the Sadducees were not teaching it in such ways. This problem had been going on in Israel for a long time.

Exactly how long? Well, over 700 years before this, the prophet

Isaiah said, This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.

Now when we read here in Matthew 5 where Jesus is quoting directly the 6th commandment and the 7th commandment, just as it was given at Mount Sinai, how is it then that the children of Israel would be following these commandments as commandments taught by men if that is exactly what

God said in the giving of those commandments? It's because the way they were being understood was being misinterpreted.

It was being wrongly taught by the teachers of the law. So therefore it had become no longer the commandment of God.

It was now a commandment taught by men. It was how men had interpreted it. It was how men said, here's how you are to keep this command in order to be righteous.

For a long time, the children of Israel had been following in their own way and doing things externally with no genuine internal change.

At the start of Isaiah, when a rebuke is coming against the children of Judah who are going to be turned over to their enemies because of the sin that they continue to walk in against God, the

Lord proclaimed through Isaiah, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom.

Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. This is an address to Sodom and Gomorrah, right?

No, those cities are gone. They are destroyed. That people had been wiped out by the judgment of God.

But Judah was repeating all of their ways. And so God even addresses them as being like the

Sodomites and being like Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices,

God says? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well -fed beasts.

I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who is required of you this trampling of my courts?

Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations, get this, this is Isaiah 113,

I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. So the

Lord's saying, you're obeying my commandments, sure, that's what it looks like on the outside. But on the inside, you're full of iniquity.

And I cannot, I can't bear it. I can't bear your assembly that you're doing in my name while you're cherishing sin in your heart and continuing to walk in wicked ways.

That's not a problem in the church today though, is it? Plenty of people attending solemn assemblies while in their hearts they cherish sin.

They acknowledge God with their lips, but their hearts are far from him.

The law as God had given it to us exposes in us the wickedness that is in our hearts, that sin and evil is first a heart issue before it's anything that we do with our hands.

We carry out with our bodies the desires of our minds, which is why

Paul says in Romans 12 too that we must have a new mind, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you will be able to test and approve what

God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. We must have a brand new heart that is given to us, and this also was prophesied through the prophets,

Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 31, where the Lord is saying that the law that you will keep and you will follow will no longer be written on tablets outside of yourself as something external, but it will be written upon the heart.

And as he says through Ezekiel, we would be careful to keep his statutes and walk in his ways because of the transformation that has happened in our heart by God, by the pouring of his

Holy Spirit into our hearts. So here Jesus comes to explaining the law, again, not giving any new laws, but repeating the laws that had already been given and pointing out that the people did not understand the law itself.

They were treating it as something external instead of understanding that this was going right to the heart of the matter.

Matthew 5 21, once again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

Now that's true. That's exactly what the commandment says, and Jesus is not abolishing this commandment here.

Oftentimes, whenever someone reads, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. They read that as exactly Jesus saying, I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.

And you will hear certain preachers say, we must cut ourselves off, unhitch from the

Old Testament is the term that's being used, but Jesus is directly quoting the Old Testament.

And even as he's quoting the commandment, as it's given in Exodus chapter 20, he's not abolishing this commandment, but merely confronting the people that they don't understand it.

You have heard that it was said to those of old. The Pharisees have even taught you this.

And anyone who murders will be liable to judgment. Yep. Deuteronomy chapter 18, where it says that in every town there needs to be appointed judges who are going to judge the people and determine who is guilty and who is innocent.

Sure enough, that's true. Verse 22, Jesus says, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.

Notice that the offense keeps getting more serious and the judge keeps getting higher and higher as well.

Like you're going to a higher person of authority the more Jesus goes through these things that you are guilty of.

First of all, I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother, now we must of course distinguish between a holy anger and an unholy anger.

For there are occasions in which anger can be righteous. David himself in Psalm 119 saying,

I abhor those who do evil, but I love your law. So it's perfectly fine in that instance to have a holy kind of anger.

Isaiah had a holy anger against the people of Israel because they disobeyed

God's law. The apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter five, be angry and do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger and thus give the devil a foothold.

So you can be so angry that the devil ends up using it to compromise your conscience and cause you to sin.

But there is also a holy and just kind of anger when we see God's law broken.

When we see people loving sin, especially when we see that kind of a thing happening in the church. It is right for us to have a holy anger against such things.

The kind of anger that Jesus is confronting here exactly is an unjust anger.

It is an anger that has contempt for another person, that hates this other person.

And it would even manifest itself in insulting the other person and calling them names. Everyone who is angry with his brother, who has grudges against his brother, bitterness toward his brother, who refuses to be reconciled with another, who feels completely justified in whatever contempt they may have toward another person.

Your anger toward another, this hatred that you have for another human being, may be manifested in several ways.

It may be manifested in the gossip that you spread about another person. You don't have any value or respect for that other person, so you lie about them.

You slander them. You bear false witness against your neighbor. Maybe you even say some things to another person about this person that you hate.

You say things to others about them that would get other people to scowl at them as well.

I want to be able to twist the opinions that other people have of this person, and your hatred for that person is manifested in that way.

This is an unholy, an unrighteous sort of anger that Jesus is directly confronting and says that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

You shall not murder. Whoever murders will be liable to judgment. I say everybody who is angry with his brother, who hates his brother, who has malice, envy, any of these things toward his brother, they will be liable to judgment.

Now you've heard me say before that oftentimes when we see the word brother in the scriptures, it's talking about those who are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our fellow Christians, specifically, is who we're talking about. When we see the word neighbor, that's everybody. When we see the word brother, we're talking about our fellow brothers and sisters in the

Lord. But here in this particular case, in this context, we're talking about another flesh and blood human being.

Someone who bears the same image of God as the image that you bear. So the word that's actually being used here as we translated it and understood it, it would be another blood brother.

Somebody who has the same blood running through their veins as you have running through your veins.

And so we'd be talking about our fellow man here. We're not to have hatred toward anybody.

And anyone who has that unrighteous sort of anger, that malice, that contempt for another person, anybody who has that attitude of heart will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. See now we're even going up in judgment.

We're going up in the offense, we're going up in judgment. So this contempt that you have toward another person has now manifested itself in words that are coming out of your mouth and you have insulted your brother.

You will be liable to the council, to a whole body of judges who are now going to make judgment upon you.

This specifically would be translated as Sanhedrin. So that council of judges that were appointed over the

Jews. And whoever says, you fool, so now the offense is getting even greater, the name calling that is specifically being used here is you empty head, you who are stupid.

And once again, this word is, there are times in which it can be used in a righteous way to bring correction to a person that they would not go in a foolish way, but instead come back to the path of righteousness.

Hence why the apostle Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 15, when he's confronting the Corinthians for their wrong headed beliefs concerning the resurrection of Jesus and even the resurrection of the body unto eternal life.

When Paul is confronting their wrong doctrine there, he says, you fool. So is

Paul now liable to the hell of fire? Now he was using that in a right and a wise way to correct a person and bring them back to the wisdom of God.

In which case, that can be a proper use of the term. We certainly shouldn't use it freely or willy nilly or just be throwing it around.

And we certainly shouldn't use it to make a person feel bad, to gaslight them, to make them feel like that they are evil or wrong or because of the names that we call them that they would feel so small in themselves as to be reduced down to nothing.

That we would treat them as less than we are. A person who calls somebody else names will be liable to the hell of fire.

And here when we get to that judgment, we know that what Jesus is talking about here is a judgment that is higher than the judgment of man.

Because a man can't condemn anybody to hell. God is the one who does that. And God is the one who instructed

Moses to instruct the people of Israel to appoint judges in all the towns who can judge between right and wrong.

The existence of judges, of rulers in our land is supposed to be an earthly expression of God who reigns above and judges from his throne in heaven.

And so the way we judge here on earth should be according to the law of God. If we desire justice and we would judge justly.

So again, even our courts here on earth are supposed to be microcosm expressions of the cosmic expression of judgment that comes from the throne of heaven.

God is the only one who can judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart of man. We are not thought police.

If a person has hatred toward another brother, we don't drag them into court and give them a death sentence because they called somebody else names.

But what Jesus is saying here is the attitude that you have toward another person in the hatred that you have for them, it comes from the same heart as a person who murders somebody else.

It is the same kind of contempt that you would look at a person who is made in the image of God and would think so little of them that it would be the same as if you murdered them in your heart.

And Jesus says that he is the one who searches heart and mind and he will render to each person according to their works.

So God as judge certainly has the authority to know the heart of a man and say that we will be judged by our thoughts and our intentions.

No one should think of themselves as being so righteous because they did not murder with their hands.

For Jesus is saying you are so sinful and wretched you have murdered in your heart.

And you will be liable to the hell of fire. Your desire should be

God and his righteousness. And you should love those creatures that have been made in his image.

And to have contempt and hatred for another man made in the image of God is to have hatred and contempt in your heart for God himself.

The apostle John said to us in 1 John that if we cannot love our brother whom we see then we cannot love

God whom we do not see. The love that we have for our fellow man is to be an expression of a love that we have for God.

For we are loving those who were made in his image. And understand this, my brothers and sisters, we are loving those who are made in the image of God with the image of God.

For you yourself were made in the image of God. When you who were made in God's image sin, you are proclaiming in your sin you who are made in God's image, you are proclaiming that God is unrighteous.

That God is unjust. That God is a sinful God. That's what you're proclaiming when you sin.

You who are an image bearer of God. And God is not going to allow himself to be blasphemed.

He will judge those who do so unrighteously, even from the very heart.

Jesus said, and we'll see this later on in the book of Matthew, that it's from the heart come all of these evil thoughts, the murder, the malice, the things, the sexual immorality that people do.

It comes from the heart first before it's manifested and acted out externally.

So Jesus says in verse 23, If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.

First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Now notice something about this.

This is not saying if you're offering something at the altar and you realize that you have something in your heart that you're holding against somebody else, you need to go take care of that first.

You already should know that you need to take care of that. This is talking about an offense that you've committed against somebody else and you know that your brother has something against you.

You need to go and be reconciled with your brother. I have seen this passage used so many times to justify a person in themselves and their own self -piousness not taking of the

Lord's table because of an unresolved conflict that is going on between them and another person.

And they will use that as if they're communicating through they're not taking the Lord's supper.

See, this is your fault that I'm not coming to the Lord's table and look at how much more righteous

I am than you are because I'm not partaking of the Lord's supper. That's not how that's supposed to work.

This Jesus is saying is if you realize that you have sinned against someone else and that remains unresolved between you and this other person, you need to go and make it right.

Not you sit there and look at how much more holy I can be until this other person comes to me and apologizes.

That's not what this means. This means that you need to realize what you have done wrong to another person has broken fellowship with you and those who have been made in the image of God.

You need to go and make it right. Or you have enmity with God. Your enmity with your fellow man is also going to be enmity with God.

And if you're going to have any fellowship with God, you must have love for those who are made in the image of God.

Verse 25, Now once again, we're not talking about earthly judgments here, are we?

We're talking about a heavenly judgment. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court.

Who is the one who presides over the court but God? And what does he have against us?

Everything. All of the sins, abominations, transgressions we have committed against God and broken his law and God in his judgments will be just.

And if we should perish under the judgment of God, we will be thrown into prison and we will not get out until we have paid the last penny.

Now, how possible is it for you to pay off your debts from prison? It's not.

You can't. The person who is condemned by God and cast into an eternal hell of fire, which we've already had talked about here, even those who proclaim you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.

A person who is condemned to an eternity in hell is condemned to hell until they can pay off the last penny and they will never get there.

A person who is cast into hell is there to pay off a debt and that debt will never be satisfied.

So that is why this is a very serious thing that Jesus has said here, driving straight to the heart of the person listening to his teaching that they would know,

I must confess my sins now before God lest I fall into judgment. The good news in this is that in our

Lord Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven for all eternity and they will never be held against us.

And God is just in his judgments because Christ has justly paid the price for our sin with his sacrifice upon the cross.

So whoever believes in Jesus will not perish under the judgment of God, but will have everlasting life with him in his kingdom.

And then as followers of Jesus and as those who desire that kingdom, we walk according to his laws.

How is it that we as Christians keep the command, do not murder? We keep the commandment by loving our neighbor.

For as it says in Romans chapter 13, that loving your neighbor is the keeping of the law.

Consider what the apostle Paul says in Philippians chapter 2, beginning in verse 3,

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. You know what

Paul is proclaiming here to the Philippians and what the Spirit is saying to us Christians even here to this day?

Do not murder. And in keeping the sixth commandment, you do so when you love your neighbor and you consider their needs ahead of your own.

That you do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, you count others more significant than yourselves.

And in doing this, you are keeping the sixth commandment. Let's look at the seventh commandment.

Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 27, You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

That's easy enough to keep. All I have to do is not sleep with my neighbor's wife, right? Now I'm a righteous person.

Oh, but look at how Jesus confronts this one. Verse 28, But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Boy, that's huge. Because there are many of us who try to justify ourselves by saying, see,

I'm not doing this, so therefore I'm a righteous person. If we were to somehow have some sort of a mystical device where we could take your heart and hook it up to a projector and see all the thoughts that you have thought from your heart, would it look as good as you say that you are on the outside?

If you have even lusted in your heart, you have already committed adultery in your heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out, throw it away, it's better for you to lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

This is a fire and brimstone sermon here, folks. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better for you to lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Is Jesus saying here that we need to practice asceticism? And if you self -punish your body, well then that's all you need to do in order to become righteous?

Of course not. Because as Jesus has just confronted the heart of the matter, if you tear your right eye out, your left eye is still going to cause you to sin.

You tear your left eye out, you've still got a brain that's going to cause you to sin. So he's not saying that you need to self -punish yourself in order to be righteous, but rather you need to get rid of anything that may cause you to sin.

If there's even a group of people that you are a part of and that group of people is encouraging you to sin, you need to get far away from those friends.

They're not your friends. They would cause you to go to hell. Get as far away from them as possible. And you might say to me, well,

Brother Gabe, that would just be rude. I can't say to these people, hey, I can't hang out with you anymore because you're causing me to sin.

You'll cause me to go to hell. Well, that's fine. You can be polite all the way to hell. I'm sorry, ma 'am.

Excuse me. I'm on my way to hell. Oh, pardon me, sir. Didn't mean to offend you. I'm on my way to hell. Do whatever it takes to get away from the thing that would cause you to fall into temptation and therefore under the judgment of God.

The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6, flee from sexual immorality.

Flee from it. Get away from it. Don't be anywhere near it. The thing that is causing you to sin, don't be anywhere close to that thing.

Get it out of your life so that you may walk in righteousness and holiness toward God that even your thoughts before God would be righteous and pure.

It's in the book of Colossians 3 where the Apostle Paul says to the

Colossians, beginning in verse 5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, and evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Notice what all of those things have in common there. They all have to do with sexual immorality. They also have to do with the heart, what you desire with your heart.

Put to death what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Coveting those things that do not belong to you, that's idol worship. And then

Paul goes on to say in verse 6, on account of these things, the wrath of God is coming.

And we're even talking here about things that you desire in your heart, not even the things that you do with your hands or your body, what you want in your heart.

If it is a sin for you to do it, it is a sin for you to desire it.

If you desire anything contrary to the holiness of God, it's the same as if you were bowing down and worshiping an idol.

Now, the interesting thing about this, as Paul is giving it to the Colossians, when you go on to verse 7,

Paul says this, In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

And what's next? Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

Whoa! Where have we seen those two things side by side with one another? Lust and hatred in your heart, right here in Matthew chapter 5, where Jesus is confronting the heart of the matter behind the 6th and the 7th

Commandments. Why would Jesus single out these two? And as he goes on, he doesn't go on into the 8th

Commandment. That's not what follows, because next week we're talking about divorce. After that, we're talking about oaths.

After that, retaliation, and then loving your enemies. So he doesn't go on to the other commandments.

He just singles out 6 and 7. Why those two? There's other places where we see these two commandments side by side with one another.

James says in James 2, 4, You lust and do not have, so you murder. There we have adultery from the heart and murder from the heart side by side with one another there as well.

Because these two commandments in particular, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, have to do with your attitude about fellow image -bearers of God.

And how your attitude is toward other people is exactly your attitude toward God.

If you hate another person who is an image -bearer of God, you hate

God. If you lust for somebody who is a fellow image -bearer of God, you are treating them not as a human being, but as an object of your satisfaction.

You use another person and their body to bring you pleasure.

And that's the way you think about God. That He only exists for your pleasure rather than you exist to glorify and worship

God. That's what's so unique about these two commandments and why

Jesus singles them out as He is going through the laws of God that we must keep in righteousness and holiness.

When it comes to how we love each other, when we are contrary to humility and submission to one another, then we hate each other or we use each other.

But what is the commandment instead? That we would love one another, that we would honor each other, that we would have respect for another person and even the body in which they live for how we behave in our bodies is how we behave in our hearts.

For the Apostle Paul to say in Romans 12, 1, in view of God's mercies, present your bodies as a living sacrifice unto the

Lord and this is your spiritual act of worship. Do you love God from your heart?

Then demonstrate it even in your body. Jesus said, what is the greatest commandment?

The lawyer that asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus' response, to love the

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hinge all the law and the prophets. This is, again, not a new commandment because it is the summary of the

Ten Commandments. The first four commandments, love the Lord your God. The next six commandments, love your neighbor as yourself.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's with your mind, with your heart, with your body.

Love your neighbor as yourself. That's with your mind, with your heart, with your body.

That everything would be from the inside out, that we would be changed to the very heart of a person.

And again, as I said in the very beginning, this is otherworldly behavior, folks. This is not the way you see people in this world behaving, but it's the way that we, as kingdom people of God, who love

God and love His law, this is exactly the way that we should be behaving. Right now, our world, even people who claim to be

Christians, what they want from God right now is they want some sort of a miracle to heal them of COVID -19, of a coronavirus pandemic that is threatening our culture and our society.

They want a miracle of God to be manifested in that way. And the prayers that you hear being led all across the nation sound exactly like that.

From the president on down, him telling people, hey, let's have a national day of prayer. Let's pray that God would take this virus away.

And then you have various leaders in the church who are saying similar things. Let's pray that God would take this virus away.

I tell you, the miracle of God that we should be praying for right now is God, forgive me of my sin and give me a new heart.

That's the healing we need. And without that healing, we are all liable to the hell of fire.

The judgment of God is coming against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Like I said, this is a fire and brimstone sermon from our Lord Christ right here.

Turn from this sin, even in the heart, or you will be liable to the hell of fire.

To desire anything other than God is to sin against God and to fall under His judgment.

My friends, we all have things to be working on. There are always in our hearts that we know still need to be rooted out.

That human desire that's still there that needs to be put away. There's still more of Christ that I want.

May we understand the word of John the Baptist when he said, less of me and more of Christ. So be less and less about our desires and our wants and our needs.

And may we be totally submissive to the will and the desire of God in our lives, in this world.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. May this be the desire of our hearts.

Our first and foremost desire, be Christ and Him crucified for our sins.

Jesus paid a great price for us in His body, dying on the cross for our sins.

What we are being asked to do for Him is so, so much less than what

He did for us. Taking the wrath of God upon Himself so that we would not perish, but we would have everlasting life.

He calls me His, I call Him mine.

It is He who saveth me and freely pardoned his.

I was He, loved and was

He with me. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.