Matthew 5:17-30, Is It Worth It?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Today, we're just looking at Matthew chapter 5, verses 17 to 30. Hear the word of the

Lord. 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.

For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the

Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 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 whoever 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 were 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.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Well, is it worth it?

That's the question you ask about every decision you make, every dollar you spend, every second of attention that you give to anything like this.

You got up this morning and you decided, you know, all things considered, coming here was worth it.

Others got up and made different decisions. They decided it's more worth it to make a few more dollars on Sunday morning or to sleep in or to watch something on TV or play golf or whatever.

Each of us weighs the benefits against the costs. There's the pluses, there's the minuses. And if you're deciding whether to come to church on Sunday morning, when you could instead make a few more dollars, then you ask yourself, is it worth it?

Is it worth losing the dollars that I could get just to sing and pray and listen to a scripture read and a sermon?

Is that really worth it? And if you say, no, I'd rather have the cash or the

TV time or stay in bed or a round of golf, then you do that. Now, some church folk respond to that by appealing to what people think is worth it.

If you think entertainment or money -making is worth more than hearing from God or being right with God, then what some churches do, they figure, okay, what we'll do is we'll put on a show that rivals anything that's on television or at the movies.

So we'll be slick, we'll be engaging, we'll make you laugh and cry and entertain you.

Or maybe we'll promise that, hey, we're going to give you tips for success. Now, we know you want money, so we're going to give you tips for a successful life that you can then go out and make more money because you came here.

Or maybe they say, if you give to our offering or maybe if you do our rituals, then you'll be blessed and you'll make more money and you'll have a healthier, happier life.

You will be more successful because of this, because you came to church. And so they're getting you to think, hope you will calculate.

Then, yeah, it's worth it. I'm going to go to church. And if it's a plus, if we're out early enough, so you don't miss the kickoff or your tea times.

So if we do that, we might keep you. You'll keep coming to church, but we haven't dealt with the main problem.

What you think is worth it. What do you think is worth it? People often make lists when they're making some big decision.

What to study, maybe they decided what to study or whether to move somewhere, who to marry. Make the pluses, the minuses.

You can pursue a demanding career because of the pluses. The money you could make, maybe doing something you really love.

That's the plus side. But it comes with minuses. You have to spend a long time studying.

Maybe you'll go into student loan debt or you have to sacrifice being close to your family because that job is not close to them.

Maybe you have to move far away and you figure you're weighing that plus and minus. Is that worth it? Or you could choose to stay near home because you don't care that much about the extra money.

You don't have to have that career. So you'll take whatever you can get around your area. As long as you can keep your relationship, stay close to your family.

Even if it means sacrificing the job and the money, you really could have had. You probably can't have both.

One priority has to win out. You marry one person, then you have to give up the other.

You have to give up living like you're single. You list whether the gains, the money, the relationships, the feelings, the experiences, whether it outweighs the sacrifices, the money, the relationships, the feeling, the experiences.

You have to sacrifice. You have to give up. Each choice reveals your values so that we can see what you really love by what you choose, what you love most of all.

Now, I'd love to be impressively muscular like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.

Now, I know right now you're looking at me, you're thinking, wait, John, you are impressively muscular like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.

I know that's what you're thinking, but my standard is probably a little higher than yours. But I'd love to be like that.

But my choices show that I don't love that enough to actually lift the weights and do the dieting to make it happen.

I look at all the work that's required to be like that and the protein shakes and the dieting.

And then I look at the recliner and the TV and the ice cream and I decide, nah, it's not worth it.

Each choice, what we do, our actions, our verbs show who we are.

We see that here in three parts, three verbs. They show what we think is worth it. First, exceed.

Second, say. And finally, look. Well, first, exceed.

Your righteousness must exceed. That it describes in the Pharisees in verses 17 to 20.

The disciples, remember, the spectators, the crowds are flocking to hear Jesus. They notice that he sounds a lot different than the teaching that they are used to.

Does he mean by this? Apparently, not really new, but it'll show, but it sounds to them like it's new.

Does he mean by this apparently new teaching, new sounding teaching, that the law is done away?

Is he abolishing the law and the prophets? The Old Testament. Then, well, if so, is it worth it?

Is it worth it to follow him instead of what we think is the Old Testament, our traditions? Jesus first told them not to think that he's come to abolish the law and the prophets.

That's the Old Testament. Do not think that. He came to fulfill them. Fulfill means to make complete.

Passages in the Old Testament are often said to be fulfilled when they reach their final destination, when their meaning is complete and is completely revealed.

Out of Egypt, I called my son from Hosea. It was first about the nation of Israel being brought out of Egypt, like in the

Exodus. But that passage reaches its fulfillment, according to Matthew 2, verse 15, when the son,

Jesus, is brought out of Egypt as a child. Matthew quotes that. Out of Egypt, I call my son, said it was fulfilled when

Jesus came out of Egypt. Now, here, Jesus is not canceling the

Old Testament. He's fulfilling it. Now, some will say, okay, he fulfilled it for us, but now we've moved past it because he fulfilled it.

But then he immediately says, in verse 18, for as long as there is this creation, heaven and earth, this universe, not one iota, the

Greek word, the Greek letter, this looks like a small i, not even a dot, not even a dot on an i, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Now, they're wondering if Jesus is weakening or is he contradicting, replacing the law.

But he insists here he is not. And then soon he will start to show them how they are the ones who have been weakening and replacing, putting loopholes in the law.

Then in verse 19, Jesus says that we are not to relax even the least of these commands. You shall not boil a kid, a baby goat, in its mother's milk.

In Exodus chapter 23, verse 19. Maybe that is the least of the commands.

Ever think of that? You shall not boil a kid, nothing. Okay, I would never think to do such a thing. Apparently some people did, but there's a command.

Is it the least of the commands? Maybe so. Now, it doesn't mean don't eat cheeseburgers, believe it or not. According to a tradition, that's what some people apply it as.

Can't have dairy and beef together or meat together. As a dietary law, we saw that all foods are clean and so we can eat meat and dairy together, so don't worry about that.

But that least command didn't mean nothing. It was there for a purpose to be fulfilled.

And you think about that. It's somewhat perverse, isn't it? Why would you boil a baby goat, a kid, in its own mother's milk?

Why would you do that? It's kind of perverse, isn't it? To take the mother's milk.

I mean, it's not just any milk. It doesn't say just in milk. Doesn't say don't boil a kid in any milk. You can do that. Just don't boil it in his mother's milk.

Now, why would you even think to do such a thing? To take a baby goat and then you kill it and then you gotta prepare it by boiling in its own mother's milk.

It's just perverse to take a mother's milk and use it to boil the very offspring who would have been nourished by that milk.

And it adds nothing to the meat. Now, if you really wanted to boil the young mutton in goat milk, okay, go ahead.

But you go find other goat milk. Why don't you go out of your way to do it with the mother's milk?

And it suggests a kind of perverse delight in destroying life, a contempt for life.

And so the command, as least as it may appear, maybe it's the least command, but still it highlights

God's concern for life, even animal life, thus teaching us about compassion, to honor life.

It displays the distinction between life -giving and life -destroying so that we see that Christ's life -giving sacrifice is worth it.

There were supposedly 613 commands in the law and not one of them is abolished or loosened until they are all accomplished.

Now, today, some Christians use salvation by grace in an excuse just to loosen them, to claim that for us, they are abolished.

We can unhitch from them, talked about last week. But Jesus says, no, he accomplished them. He didn't abolish them.

For some laws, sure, like the food laws, the ceremonial laws about sacrifices and the temple and the feast, the practice of them might've been temporary for Israel back in those ancient days.

The practice of them might've been temporary, but their meaning is eternal.

The meaning is still for us. As John Calvin said, there is nothing in the law that is unimportant, nothing that was put there at random.

And so it is impossible that a single letter shall perish. Then in verse 19,

Jesus shows that it is worth us paying attention to the law and the prophets because if we don't, we don't pay attention to it, we don't care about it, we think it's for a prior era, and then we loosen it, we ignore it, we tell other people that it's fine to do what

God prohibited, we will be called least. Now, if you do it and you tell others to do it, you'll be called greatest.

But if you do the opposite, you loosen it and tell others, don't worry about it, you'll be ranked as least.

So fear of that, fear either of being left out entirely of God's kingdom, you know, least as in not in, or least as in the lowest rank, you barely made it, you're in, but you're kind of the second class citizen there.

That should be enough to make us see that it is worth it to know and obey the whole counsel of God.

So as you're deciding, you're weighing the pluses and the minuses, what's worth it, remember that if you don't know

God's word, you don't know the whole counsel of God, you can't follow it. And if you don't follow it, even the least parts of it, you'll be ranked the least.

Then in verse 20, in case you're still having questions about whether this is worth it, Jesus says, for I tell you, that unless your righteousness exceeds, there's that key verb, that of the scribes and the

Pharisees, the scribes, they were the professors, the copyists, the scholars, and the Pharisees were the preachers, they were the religious people, they were renowned for being strict.

They would add hedges to the law, like you might add a hedge around your property, that keeps anyone from getting even close to trespassing it, sort of like a zone, you can't even get close to it.

They would add extra buffers to the law so that people couldn't get close to breaking it. So they're adding to the law what they think is protecting it.

If the law said, wash your hands, they would wash up to their elbows, just to be sure. You don't want to accidentally miss your hands.

I'm sure some people went for the whole arm and went out the whole body, but that's the way they thought. If the law said, don't work on the

Sabbath, they would then have to make up a rule. If you got to walk somewhere, how far do you walk until it becomes work?

Ever thought about that? Well, they did. It's about three quarters of a mile, okay? After you go over three quarters of a mile, you've done work, they said.

Well, here Jesus says that unless your rightness, that is your holy life, you're living before God, unless it exceeds, that is, it goes over and above, it overflows the limits of, it surpasses that kind of religious strictness, then you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

And there's only one other place to be besides the kingdom of heaven. You either enter that kingdom or you end up in the place he mentions in chapter, not in chapter, in verse 22 and 29 and 30.

At the conclusion of both the first two test cases that we read here on anger and lust,

Jesus tells us that we must exceed, go beyond their righteousness of the traditional religious people, or we go to that place, the place that's worth sacrificing everything to avoid.

So it's definitely worth it, both for the pluses, the blessings, the reward, the glory of love and joy, grace enveloping your soul, and for what you avoid, that this huge minus you get to miss.

But the problem is the only way in is by a righteousness that exceeds the most religious people.

It's definitely worth it, but how are you gonna do that? Second, say, the verb is say.

What do you say? And why do you say it? It's not just against murder, which is easy to avoid.

I don't know how many of you have murdered people here. No, you don't have to show your hands, but I found it fairly easy to avoid murdering people.

But it's not just against that, but what is in your mouth and so in your heart.

Now, notice that now the Lord Jesus raises the bar at every command. It's not, you've heard it said, some strict, hard to keep law.

But I say to you, Jesus says, well, then some easy thing that's easy to do. All you have to do is come forward at an invitation and say a repeat after me prayer, and you'll enter the kingdom of God.

No matter how many laws you loosen or break. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying you think the law is just against murder, but it's against hate.

You think it's just against adultery, but it's against lust. God's law is actually much harder to keep than they had thought.

It's not really primarily about what we do. It affects what we do. It describes what we do, but it's not really first about what we do.

It's about who we are and what we say. It shows who we are.

So Jesus begins in verse 21. You have heard that it was said to those of old. This is the way he begins each of the test cases of our righteousness.

Does our righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees? Well, you've heard you shall not murder and whoever murders will be liable to the judgment.

Then in verse 22, but I say to you, now this does not have to be a strong contrast.

It doesn't have to be read as a strong contrast and adversative. The Greek could just as well be translated and I also say to you, right?

There's different words in Greek for but, and this is the softer one. It could be translated as and.

So it could be and you've heard that you should not murder. I and I and sure. And I also say like, yeah, that's true.

Plus two. So he's not canceling and replacing. He's affirming you shall not murder.

Absolutely. And then showing what that means, what it has always meant. Everyone who was angry.

There's actually just one word there for is angry in Greek. That is who they are deep down.

He is angry with his brother and brother is not just a synonym for everyone.

Not everyone is your brother or sister. He means your fellow citizen in the kingdom of God, members of the church.

If you're murderously angry with them, even if you don't act on it, you're too afraid of the law to do what you want to do.

Too afraid you'll get caught or you don't want to have to clean up the mess and get rid of the body.

You know how hard it is to drag a body out in the middle of the woods and dig a grave. It's a lot of work, I assume.

So you don't go through with your rage yet. Still, you will be liable to judgment.

God's judgment. We'll know you're angry and hateful by what you say.

Twice in verse 22, Jesus says that you're liable. In other words, you're going to face judgment for what you say.

First, whoever insults, that's the way the ESV translates it, which in Greek is literally whoever says raka, which is an

Aramaic word. I mean, they translate it to find raka. Probably, I would assume it's a common insult in Jesus' day.

It means empty. Be like airhead. You airhead. You numbskull.

Whoever says that is liable. They will face, literally, the Sanhedrin, the tribunal trial, judgment.

God's judgment. Then whoever says, literally in great moros, that's where we get the word moron from.

You fool, stupid. What do you say? Well, here, the hateful would -be murderers, wannabe murderers, but they're not willing to go with it.

He says, he blurts out, you idiot. The scribes and the Pharisees thought the command stopped with literal killing, that they could not murder and then just congratulate themselves for having kept the law.

I didn't kill anybody. I was just shouting, you idiot, at people. Nevermind that they hated each other so much that they were hurling insults.

You fool, stupid. Nevermind that. As long as they hadn't acted on what they really wanted to do, it was just words, they were clean.

They thought. But Jesus says later in Matthew 12, verse 34, you brood of vipers.

How can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Now, that doesn't mean you can't say hard things to people about their sins. Jesus himself does that. We just quoted him.

You brood of vipers. Now, he wasn't contradicting himself. He wasn't just insulting them. He was describing their sins.

So you can truthfully describe people's sin and what that sin shows about them. You don't have to be an artificially sweet southerner always saying, bless your heart.

Aren't you special? No matter how evil they are. You can describe people's sin and what that shows them to be.

But you can't say just empty, hateful insults. You stupid moron. Those show your heart.

Today, people who call themselves Christians will act like what they say or what they think deep down, it isn't important.

And so they'll break Jesus's command here and with a wave of their magic theology, think it's all okay.

They'll spew hateful insults. You fool. And say, grace lets them get away with it.

I once had a so -called pastor call me up and began. This is how it began when I answered the vote. Hello?

You idiot. I told him, you need to examine yourself whether you're really converted because Jesus says you're liable to the hell of fire.

And he didn't think that applied to him because of his tradition, his theology, that he could make a confession, say the repeat after me prayer and claim to believe in Jesus.

And then in his life, he's effectively abolished the law. He just lives any way he feels like. It says anything that he feels like.

He just burts out insults and he thinks it doesn't apply to them. No, Jesus says you're liable to the hell of fire.

Jesus, by the way, is the original hellfire preacher. I think that got to surprise many people. Here in the

Sermon on the Mount, this is the first teaching of Jesus and Matthew. Matthew has five major blocks of Jesus's teaching.

And this is the first of them. He mentions hell and it is of fire.

It means hell is characterized by, it's like fire. You can debate, is it literal fire?

You write resurrected bodies, you're thrown into literal fire. Is it metaphorical fire? Here's the answer. Whichever is worse, that's what it is, okay?

In Matthew 10, verse 28, he says, don't worry about whatever or whoever can kill your body.

Instead, quote, fear him who can destroy both your soul and your body in hell.

So let the fact of hell change your calculations. You're doing these pluses and minuses.

And if on one side, you're making a decision whether to do something and on one side is, well, I'll go to hell if I do it.

That pretty much solves the question right there. So let the fact of hell change your calculations about what is worth what.

Then in the last teaching of Matthew, he said there's five teachings. This is the first Sermon on the Mountain. The very last one, at the end of the very last one in chapter 25, he says that the unrighteous go to eternal punishment, to hell.

Now, some imagine that being saved by grace means that they can choose not to do things that are hard for them, like not fighting to smoothen their sharp tongue or to restrain their explosive temper.

They just kind of let it go and that's all right. God will cover that up with his grace, they think. But to choose to spew insults, to devent your hate, isn't to choose to get to heaven in a more easily way.

You know, depend on grace. I'm not gonna try hard, I'll just go on grace. No, remember, your righteousness must exceed that of the merely external.

So calculating, if you calculate that controlling your temper in words, you're calculating, should

I do this? Should I restrain myself? That isn't worth it, it's not worth the self -control.

That calculation may keep you out of heaven altogether. It shows that you don't think

God is worth it. So that affects your worship, starting verse 23, your church attendance, your church membership.

If you are offering your gift at the altar, you're giving your offering in the basket, you're taking the Lord's Supper, you're listening to a sermon, you're singing your worship song, and there, remember that your brother, again, your fellow church member, fellow

Christian has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, go out of church, put aside the religious ritual first.

In other words, before all the religion that the Pharisee's righteousness was all about, first be reconciled to your brother, and then come to church and offer your gift.

Come to church quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court, like our church covenant says, always ready for reconciliation.

Lest your accuser hang you over to the judge, who's God, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison, an illusion to hell.

Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. He's not just talking about paying debts and staying out of debtor's prison.

He's also talking about God as our judge. When you're calculating what is worth it, the pluses, the minuses, realize that you will face

God the judge over your anger, your bitterness, your insults, your hatred.

You might keep yourself from killing, but we'll know whether hatred is in your heart by what you say in person or online.

This is the gospel of the kingdom. The good news is that the rule of God reaches deeper than just what we do.

They thought the purpose of the law was just enforcing external obedience, controlling behavior.

As John Calvin said, by confining the law of God to our duties only, they train their disciples like apes to hypocrisy.

They thought it was like the Muslims today. You just say the prayer, say the confession, and you're in, enforce submission, and you're a

Muslim and you're in. The good news of the kingdom of God is that the rule of God extends beyond just our actions.

It sinks down to the very core of our heart. And if our hearts are filled with hatred, if beneath our smiles we are seething with resentment at each other, then we're just as much in rebellion against God as if we had killed each other.

And so we will be punished in the same way, liable to the hell of fire.

Third, look, starting in verse 27. You've heard, you shall not come into adultery.

And that's right, you should not. But they thought that stopped there. And as long as they weren't having sex with a woman other than their wife, then they were free and clear.

And so they could spend their free time sitting around with the guys, watching the girls go by, whistling at them, hooting at their figures, and then go home to their wives feeling good about their own righteousness because they were, after all, free.

They hadn't done anything. Had they? But first, the

Lord Jesus tells them that they had done something. They had committed adultery by looking in order to lust.

Whoever looks in order to lust, that is, looking at a woman for the purpose of that desire to lust, to fantasize.

Even if you never do what you're fantasizing, God sees you as if you had.

Now, if you can admire a beautiful woman or a handsome person without lust, there's nothing wrong with that. It specifically says,

Jesus says, looks in order to. That's the motivation behind your looking.

It's for the purpose of lusting. And that is as guilty as adultery.

Now, it's not as destructive to your marriage as adultery, or it's not as destructive to you as the actual act, but it is as alienating from God.

Dennis Prager, a conservative Jewish commentator, objected last year, like the scribes and the Pharisees, that adultery can be committed just with a look, with the eye, with the brain.

Quote, there is only one way to commit adultery in Judaism. It's with a different organ. But Jesus said, you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery.

And also I say to you, not something different that replaces that or something in addition to it that the original didn't mean, but that everyone who looks in order to lust has already committed adultery in his heart.

Jesus is restoring the original meaning because in the original Ten Commandments, there's not only the commandment, you shall not commit adultery.

Seventh Commandment, if I'm right, the Tenth Commandment says, you shall not covet, covet, desire, lust for your neighbors, among other things, wife.

So Prager is wrong, not just because he doesn't accept the teachings of Jesus, but because he doesn't understand the original commandment.

Whoever looks to desire, to lust, to fantasize, even if you never do it,

God looks at you as if you already have. And so today in a culture just overflowing in pornography or even mainstream shows have scenes in it that cause people to lust.

Documentaries will have to have pornographic scenes in it. Okay, we don't need to have it illustrated what it means that Nero was sexually immoral.

We don't need to see that. But they'll do stuff like that. That pornography is just soaked in our entertainment now. And in this environment, we must not develop the attitude that, you know, well, come on, be adults.

Boys will be boys. It's just looking. It's just natural. Everybody does it.

It's no big deal. No, lust must be fought. And pornography, by definition, is entertainment whose purpose it is to induce lust.

And it must have no place in the Christian's life, right?

No porn. Is it worth it? Is the kingdom of God, that is your relationship with God, is it worth the titillation, the thrill that you could have by seeing an attractive person of the other sex nude?

Is it worth giving that up? Well, look at what Jesus says here. The sin can drag you down to hell.

And it comes with a huge minus. So you must fight it with everything you have.

It's worth whatever you have to do to stop sliding into sexual immorality.

That's why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, flee, that is run desperately away from sexual immorality.

The Lord Jesus tells us in verses 29 and 30 that if it takes you gouging out an eye or chopping off a hand, it'll be worth it.

Your right hand, your right -handed, your preferred hand, you'll chop that off if you have to, to stay out of being caught and destroyed by that sin.

Now, some people have relationships that tempt them to sin. They don't want to do the sin, maybe, but they want to keep the relationship.

And they calculate, they're doing the pluses and minuses. They calculate that cutting off the relationship is not worth avoiding the sin.

Jesus says, cut it off and have such a detestation for that sin, you throw it away.

You get it as far from you as you possibly can. You burn the bridges so you can't go back.

If you're single, that might mean a cold, hard breakup, or it might mean changing the relationship so it's not immoral anymore.

In other words, get married. Oh, but I have other plans first. Well, those will have to change if you want to enter the kingdom of God.

And if you're married, you absolutely cut off any kind of compromising relationship. Don't play with fire.

Don't have flirtatious conversations with someone you're not married to in person or online. Trying to keep little other relationships going that you fantasize about.

No, you cut it off and you throw it away. The gospel of the kingdom is that God rules more than just our bodies and that rule of our hearts and minds.

True righteousness is worth the greatest cost. It's worth you gouging out your eye if that's what it takes for you to stop sinning.

It's worth you chopping off your preferred hand if that's what it takes to live under the rule of God.

Now, I want to say that we shouldn't take those words in verses 29 and 30. Don't take them literally. This is kind of the common preacher's way of handling this.

Don't take them literally. It's metaphorical. Don't take it literally about tearing out your eye or cutting off your hand.

Don't take that literally, they say. Some say that because they're concerned that some people out there are out of zeal. Some of you will go home and actually with a cleaver or scoop out an eye, get the ax out if they thought that's what it took.

They're afraid some people might actually do that. We don't actually have many people who today that think the pluses of entering the kingdom of God are worth the minuses of gouging out an eye or being without a hand.

We actually should have more people like that. More people taking these words that seriously.

Even literally. Every word literally. Take it literally.

Every word literally. If your right eye causes you to sin, if your right hand causes you to sin, be so committed to righteousness, you would calculate that it's worth getting rid of that eye or that hand if that's what it takes to be in God's kingdom.

But take the word if literally too. Don't miss that one. If there's a condition there.

If that causes you to sin, is it really an eye or a hand that causes you to sin?

Or is it a heart that values a relationship with God less than money or success or comfort or sex or an eye or a hand?

Of course, it's not really the eye or the hand that causes us to sin. Eyes or hands do not cause us to sin.

So there's no use cutting them off. But if they did, then the gospel of the kingdom is that it is worth the sacrifice.

It's worth being rid of them if that's what it took to enter the kingdom of God. The reward you get, the plus you get for being in the kingdom of God would be worth the self -amputation of your hand, the gouging out your eye.

Now, do you count that kind of sacrifice is worth it?

Well, it's not your eye or your hand that leads you to sin. It's your heart, which comes evil from where you hate and covet, where you calculate that money or pleasure really is worth more than God.

That's where the problem is. And that hard, evil heart can only be gouged out by God himself and replaced with a soft, living, loving heart.

And when he does that for you, then you will know he's worth it.