WWUTT 2685 Q&A Grok Calls Jesus God, Concerns with Pastor Josh Howerton, Discerning True and False Teachers

Did Grok just say that Jesus is the only true God? The viral preacher Josh Howerton, where is he right and where are the concerns? And how can we rightly discern between true teachers and false? The answers when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

The Lord Reigns and Is Holy

You're welcome. Let's start with Psalm 99. The Lord reigns, let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim, let the earth quake. The Lord is great in Zion, He is exalted over all the peoples.

Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is He. The King in His might loves justice. You have established equity. You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God, worship at His footstool.

Grok’s Image of Jesus and the Call to Praise God

Holy is He. Amen. So there was an interesting thing that happened on X just yesterday, as a matter of fact. Oh yeah? What was that? So Grok, which is Elon's AI, that he's got connected to X, the social media account X.

Grok is the artificial intelligence. So there was this guy whose name is I'm Toxic, and he posted this picture of all of these different gods from different religions. And Jesus is in the middle of that entire picture.

And he said, hey Grok, remove the fake gods from this picture. Grok posted an image of just Jesus. Interesting. And then Grok was asked, why does Jesus not qualify? Why were all of the other gods removed?

Grok said, because the request was to remove the fake gods. Jesus did not qualify. Interesting. Isn't that pretty amazing? That's crazy. I mean, great. Absolutely. Yeah. Even the AI could figure out all those other gods are fake, but Jesus is the one that is real.

And there have been several people that have made the joke then, even the Groks will cry out. Oh, that's good. So remember, as Jesus was told, tell your people to stop praising you. And he said, if these were silent, the very rocks will cry out.

Right? Well, now the Groks are crying out.

I thought of that also with Psalm More people need to speak up then. Yes.

Right. I thought of that with Psalm 99. Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he. Amen. Even an AI can figure that out. So we also need to lift up in glory the name of the Lord, our God.

Well, this is the Friday edition of When We Understand the Text, and we take questions from the listeners. And you can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. We'd love to get a voicemail from you.

You can also go to www .utt .com, click on the voicemail tab, record a voicemail using your phone or your computer, ask your question, leave a comment, tell us. That answer sounded ridiculous.

You need to try that one again. I prefer the more positive feedbacks, but you know. Positive feedback's better. You can handle everything else.

Communion and Remembering Christ’s Sacrifice

That's right. Well, we're hearing again from our friend, Scott, up in the Pacific Northwest. Oh, awesome. Here's the voicemail that he sent us this week.

Hello there, Pastor Gabe. Hello, Becky. This is your brother in Christ in the great Northwest. This is Scott, where we have plenty of apples, and of course, the weather's changing, and it's starting to get cold, and it's raining.

And guess what? Even though it's September, everyone has all their Halloween stuff out. How ridiculous is that? Anyway, I want to bring up a question and answer on Friday. There was a brother who said that he hasn't had communion in his church for a year.

As a long-haul truck driver, I did not have communion for quite some time. I spent most of my time on the road to pay off my debt towards a college degree. And when I did retire, and I found myself a solid Baptist church in Longview, Washington, when I had communion, I promise you, brother, I wept.

I wept because it's been so long. It's a blessing to have communion with brothers and sisters until we can have it anew before our Lord and Savior in heaven. Anyway, that was just my comment. Y 'all have a great day.

Oh, Gabe, you can get pimento cheese at Walmart. It's about $4 .50, about a gallon of gas, and there's those candied jalapenos. Have a great day, guys. Be blessed. Bye-bye. I love those candied jalapenos.

I'm glad you do. Those are really good. And you love pimento cheese. I love pimento cheese. So he made that comment because I had said on X that only me and my youngest son, Bubbs is what we call him, Bubba, only the two of us like pimento cheese, a pimento cheese sandwich and a sweet tea for lunch.

And then it dawned on me, oh, we're the only two that were born in the South. So it's apparently just a Southern thing. Rest of the family doesn't care for that meal, but it's one of our favorites. So that's why Scott was mentioning that, because I had said that on X.

That's awesome. Now, with regard to the communion comment, yeah, I understand where you're coming from, not being able to take communion for a long time and then being able to be with the church and partake in the bread and the cup.

But the question that I had last week was about a church that wasn't even doing communion. Like it had been over a year since that church had done communion. So I understand a person being gone. We also had this with soldiers in our church who were deployed and wouldn't have had communion for a long time or something like that.

And then coming home and being able to partake with their family and with the church. So I understand not being able to take it for that reason, but for a church to not do it for that long, that's a completely different matter.

They should be wanting to in such a way that Scott was. Right, exactly. Yeah. And they have the ability to.

The ability, the opportunity, and yet they weren't taking it. Yeah. That's wild. So that was pretty strange. But yeah, like you said, Scott, I understand where you're coming from with being away from it for so long.

And it is wonderful. It is sweet to then partake when you're able to do it again with your church. That's why it's called communion. We're communing with each other and partaking in this together, remembering as the body of Christ, having been brought into this body by Christ, we remember the body and the blood that were given for us for the forgiveness of our sins every time we partake.

And as I said last week, Becky and I are blessed to be part of a church where we do that every Sunday. I love that. That would be my encouragement to do it every Sunday, but I understand not everybody shares that conviction.

Yeah. Let's go to this next voicemail. This is from Anthony the fourth, and he says, yes, I am the fourth of my name. Okay.

Josh Howerton’s Gospel Preaching and Ministry Concerns

This is from Anthony. Hello, Pastor Gabe and Mrs. Hughes. This is Anthony from Michigan. My question is about Pastor Josh Howerton. He's recently been social media famous for different events like mass baptisms or mass weddings and seems to very much be a give back to biblical faithfulness kind of guy.

But there's also been things I've seen from people like Michelle Leslie warning that he is not all that he seems and that he may be on a similar trajectory of Mark Driscoll. I was just wondering, what are your thoughts on Josh Howerton?

And I know he's praised Paula White, and obviously that's a red flag, but I was just wondering, what are your thoughts on these big events that he's done? And is he consistent? Is he just in it for the fame?

Obviously, these are heart questions, and only God knows the heart. But just as your observation, what are your thoughts on Pastor Josh Howerton? Especially because I have friends who really enjoy his podcast.

Yeah, I appreciate your question. And that's one I've been asked before. In fact, I even got a question from somebody that attends my church just in the last few days who had asked me about Josh Howerton.

This guy right now is probably the most viral pastor in America. Oh, wow. Okay. But it just seems like I see more of his videos all over the place, all the time. So whether it's the shorts, whether it's the long form podcast that he does, and he cranks out a lot.

He has a tremendous amount of output. And his church is attended by tens of thousands of people. Oh, wow. Lake Point Church in the Dallas area. Last I saw it has over 30 ,000 people. Goodness. And that's over several different campus locations.

Now what to make of Josh Howerton? Well, I will say this. I have heard Josh Howerton preach the gospel. I don't have any reason to think that Howerton is a heretic or that he is somehow even heterodox.

I think that he will preach the general presentation of the gospel that you will hear from most evangelical churches. Okay. And most evangelical churches are not like openly heretical. So even going as far as saying Jesus died as your substitute on the cross, he took your sins upon himself.

Those who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. He will present at least that much of the gospel. So what Howerton preaches and people hear, if they believe it, they will be saved.

I truly believe that about Howerton. So here's an example of him saying just such a thing as that in a recent sermon that he preached.

Okay. Jesus Christ has done that for you. He is the propitiation for our sins. He is the payment that satisfies. He came and lived the life that you have not lived. He died the death that you deserve to die.

And if you, by faith, receive him, that he is your substitute, and the Lord will look at you and reward you for his finished work. You become his righteousness. He takes all your sin. That's a good trade.

That's a good trade. Glory to God. That's a good trade. Okay. So just kind of give you an example. You know, he will be passionate about the gospel. He's passionate about reading the Bible. He will tell his congregation, examine what he says.

Be good. Bereans tested.

Open your Bibles. See what's in there. That's more than a lot of churches nowadays. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. So I think that he even has a zeal for that. And I think that's one of the things that becomes so attractive about the way that he preaches because he has just this joy about it when he talks. Sure.

So his delivery is excellent. And I understand why so many people are drawn to the stuff that Josh Howard does. But that said, I have concerns and I have very deep concerns. Not just like, well, you know, there's some things that are off.

No, there's some things that are really off. Oh, dear. Now, I want to say that I want to reiterate again. I don't think he's a heretic, but I believe that he platforms heretics. Oh, got it. And he can point you in the direction of somebody that could do a lot of damage, even if it's not Howerton himself.

Right. Like with him, with what Anthony was saying about how he promoted, what was her name? Well, Paula White.

Paula White. Yeah. I can't remember if that's who Anthony mentioned, but I know that Howerton has promoted Paula White. Okay. But that's what I'm saying. That's a big red flag. That's a really bad one.

That's not even, oh, okay. That's a little bit. Yeah. No, that's really bad. Yeah. This is one of the biggest con artists in America, Paula White. And not only does she not preach the gospel, not only is she heretical and will lead people to hell if you follow her teaching, but she's a woman pastor.

And Howerton is part of a group of guys, one of whom includes a pastor that's up in Phoenix. He's part of a group of guys. They all believe that women can be pastors. And Howerton has had women preach at his church.

Okay. One of them in particular. Well, you're going to, you're going to recognize from this clip.

Lake Point family and our Mother's Day speaker for the day needs no introduction, but I'm going to give her one. Beth Moore has helped tens of millions of women get out of pits, step up, break free and chase vines for the last 43 years of her ministry.

And many of you know that what you may not know is that this is not Beth's first time at Lake Point. So I dug into the archives and this is a church bulletin from January, 1994, Lake Point Baptist Church.

And what you got here, I want you to notice two things. One, if you are too young to have lived through the nineties, number one, you need to know that hair is on point on point. Okay. But number two, this is long enough ago that back then she was not known as Beth Moore.

She was known as Elizabeth Moore. And so Lake Point family, would you please help me not just welcome, but honor, honor someone for 43 years of faithful ministry, Beth Moore.

And then she proceeds to preach the sermon on Sunday morning at Lake Point church. So he will platform women pastors and even teachers that as we've warned before, Beth Moore is not even directing you in the right way when it comes to teaching scripture.

And along with the concerns that I have with Howerton, he likewise will do things with the scripture that is not rightly handling the word of truth. So, you know, Paul's instruction to Timothy to rightly handle the word of truth.

And Howerton doesn't, though I think that he preaches the gospel. I think that he points you to some correct things that the Bible says, but he doesn't handle the Bible in the right way to come to those conclusions.

And I'll give you an example of that here in just a little bit. One of Anthony's concerns that he raised was that Howerton might be another Mark Driscoll kind of figure. I don't know if he is or not. I don't know if that's the direction that Howerton is going, but he shows signs of being a grifter.

Now, a grifter is somebody who will change their narrative or change their when it comes to a pastor, they will change their doctrine. They'll change their theology or their approach to attract more people.

Oh, I was going to say, depending upon who they're around.

Well, yeah, it could be that kind of sort of it's like who what is influencing people right now. That's what I'm going to jump into. And Howerton Howerton shows signs of being that now, again, as Anthony said, that's a heart issue.

So I can't say that with 100 percent certainty that time will tell that Howerton is a grifter. But yeah, time will will show that it was only a matter of a few years ago that Howerton was preaching wokeness sermons at his church.

Howerton’s Racial-Reconciliation Sermon and Reading Acts 16

So the same woke narrative that we were hearing in all of these like racial reconciliation churches and that narrative, when that was going on in greater evangelicalism, it was even infiltrating the Southern Baptist Convention.

Howerton was on that bandwagon when all of that was happening. That's crazy. Here's an example of that. So here is Howerton preaching a wokeness sermon to his church on racial reconciliation.

I'm going to play this a clip at a time. OK, now let me get right in why this is really important. And then we'll just kind of dive into the message. Number one, this is mission critical to the church because, number one, God's purpose in salvation is the reunification of the races.

God's purpose in salvation is the reunification of the races.

Does he normally talk that fast?

Well, no, that was a sped up clip. Oh, OK, OK, OK. I'm playing that at one point to five speed.

OK, I was going to say if he talks that fast, I'm going to not listen to hardly anything.

He is a fast talker, but that was a little sped up. OK, just checking. But I'm sorry. Say that again. So the purpose of the gospel is the reunification of the races. But people are not divided from one another because of their skin color, or language, or ethnicity.

That's not what divides us. Scripture tells us that what divides us is sin. Titus 3 .3 says that before we come to Christ, we are hated by others and hating one another. Yes. So it's our sin that divides us, not our skin that divides us.

This was a typical talking point that was coming out of the wokeness movement when it was infiltrating churches. And Howerton seized upon that talking point and he made it the subject of a sermon. Now he goes on in this sermon to say some other problematic things.

Well, OK, so still on this point, God's purpose in salvation is the reunification of the races. It's not. I mean, he does reconcile us to himself. He reconciles us to one another. But again, it's our sin issue that's being done away with by Christ.

Not nationality. Yeah, right. The amount of melanin in your skin never separated you from anybody else. No. I've had friends who were darker skin than me that I was closer friends with than people who had the same color skin as me.

You know? Yep. So our skin tone has never been, never been the thing. And I'm married to you and you're lighter than me. I am very white. Oh, yeah. Anyway, but still on this point that God's purpose in salvation is the reunification of the races.

He goes through the Bible and is kind of like trying to draw this narrative of how this is the case all the way through scripture. It also gives an example of how Howerton will read scripture the wrong way.

So he is eisegeding the text. He's not expositing the text. He's imposing his own ideas on it rather than drawing out what the text really means. Yeah. And even though he was doing this through his wokeness phase, he hasn't stopped doing this.

Oh, okay. I was going to say that's hard to get away from completely when you're talking about it constantly.

Right. And that's one of the things that concerns me about Howerton. Fine that he's preaching now from an angle that we're probably more in agreement with. We would not have been in agreement when he was in his wokeness phase.

Now he's saying things that we're like, okay, glad to see him on a better bandwagon than what he was on before. But because he's still doing this, imposing things onto the text rather than drawing out from the text, that just indicates that he's going to change again.

He could change again. Yeah, of course.

So anyway, here's an example. Unless he grows, there's still potential for growth. Of course.

Right. We could pray that there's something that's happening with him that what we're witnessing is actual growth in an understanding of the word, which is why he's not woke anymore. But yeah, again, that's why there is enough here to raise some caution flags.

And I would not encourage anybody to follow Howerton or his teachings. Just wait a little bit. So anyway, here's that example of him imposing something onto the text. This is from that same wokeness sermon.

Fast forward again to Acts chapter 16, and you've got this moment where God is establishing the church at Philippi.

And little Bible background. Okay, before moving on, I thought of this one because I just taught on Acts 16 not long ago since we're going through the book of Acts on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

There was a prayer that every Jewish man would pray in a time of Acts. What he would pray, it was kind of like some racial supremacy that had been concreted into the soul. What he would pray every day, a Jewish man would pray, thank you God that I'm not a woman, a slave, or a Gentile.

Now in Acts chapter 16, when the spirit begins to save people and build the church at Philippi, we get three conversion stories at the beginning of that church. We're told that the spirit converts Lydia, a slave girl, and a Roman jailer.

Now, do you see what happened? The first three converts when God begins to build this church are who? A woman, a slave, and a Gentile.

Now we don't know that any of that that he just said is true. The whole Jewish prayer of thank God I'm not a woman, a slave, or a Gentile, that's legend.

We don't know that that was actually Oh, I was like, okay, what's not true in this?

I gotcha. So that's number one, but number two, there's no indication from Acts 16 that the slave girl Paul cast the evil spirit out of then became a convert and was a Christian. He just cast the spirit out of her because she was harassing Paul and Silas.

That was why he turned her He was just fed up with her, and he turned around and said Be gone. Be gone. Basically. And then when the men who owned her saw that they couldn't profit off of her anymore, then they persecuted Paul and Silas.

But nothing in the text says that slave girl Became saved. Became a Christian. Right. So, Howerton is taking a legend and he's combining it with the text to even mean something or say something that the text never explicitly says.

And again, all of this is to serve the point that he's making in the sermon, and that is that God's purpose in salvation is the reunification of the races. So this, again, shows that eisegetical tendency that he has to impose something on the text that the text does not really say.

Now, I singled out this next clip, but I can't remember what's in this next clip, so let me hit play.

The unequivocal answer is that in the church, God is out to destroy the dividing wall of hostility and create one new man from among every nation of men under our brown-skinned Middle Eastern Savior.

That's what God is doing. So number one, this is important because it's the entire goal of salvation. And number two, it's important because we can only know God fully through the experience of many cultures.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

That's why I singled out that clip. So we can only know God fully through experiencing other cultures. That's just wrong. I mean, there is no truth to that at all. We can only know God through many cultures.

So if nobody has ever experienced a culture... What happened to the Bible? Right. I know. If no one's ever experienced a culture outside of their own, apparently they can have no real experience or real knowledge of God.

Yeah. Our knowing God, like you just said, is through the Bible. Yeah. We know God through the Bible. We don't know God through experiencing other cultures.

That's literally his word right there.

That sounds kind of like standpoint epistemology. It's only... What is that? Well, it's when you... Bless you. It's when you are reading the Bible from the perspective of perhaps the culture that you are in.

Okay. That's easy to do. Yeah. When we were criticizing Southeastern Seminary for doing this very thing. They had professors that were teaching standpoint epistemology. An example that would come out of that would be something like Danny Akin actually said this, who was the president of Southeastern.

He said that, I here in Southeastern United States probably read the Bible differently than a black woman who's living in Portland, Oregon. That's standpoint epistemology. It doesn't matter where you're from or who you are or what your background is or what culture you're in.

We're all supposed to read the Bible the same way. Yeah. Definitely. So, what culture you're a part of, if it's affecting the way you read the Bible, then you're doing it wrong. Yeah. But, Howerton's argument here in the sermon is we can only know God through knowing many cultures.

I mean, is he saying that because we need to know where Jesus is, like his culture that he was living in? No. No, that's not where he's coming from. No, he's talking about literally right now, different cultures.

Right. Yeah.

Not back then. Like, we need to have a church that's multicultural.

That is his argument. Well, I'm trying to throw my bone here. Nope. Sorry. Yep. Sorry.

Bone's not going anywhere. Tread. Now, in this next clip is where he says... Hang on. He's... Oh, yeah. Yeah. He argues for diverse leadership. So, of course, being a wokeness sermon, all of our leadership has to be diverse.

Yep. Yep. Here we go.

Qualified Leadership and Biblical Standards for Overseers

See, there's something even about the way that we worship that can send a welcome signal to people of other cultures when they begin to worship with us, which leads me to point number six, is that we've got to prioritize diverse leadership.

We've got to prioritize diverse leadership. We want people on our stage and in leadership to send a welcome signal to people of all backgrounds. Again, a personal story.

And I'm not going to let him get to his personal story, but we have to prioritize qualified leadership. That's what I'm saying.

Like, are they Christian? Is he just platforming anybody and everybody because they come from different places and different backgrounds? Right.

Now... That's not okay. If that is the priority in appointing leaders, then you are setting their skin color and their background ahead of their qualifications. Yeah. When scripture does not tell us, there is nowhere in the Bible that says anything like, make sure you have a diverse leadership.

It says make sure you have a qualified leadership. Right. Entrust this to faithful men. Yes. Not, be sure that your leadership core is made up of all different kinds of cultures and nationalities. And understand where I'm coming from when I say this.

We have an elder who is from Zambia. Yes. So, I have a diverse leadership, but he's in that spot because he's qualified. Right. Not because... Definitely. We need some more color in these proceedings.

Yes. Oh my goodness. That's not the reason why he's there. And a fantastic preacher. Definitely. Yes. And before I came to Providence Reformed Baptist Church, I had even said to these two men, you're both very capable preachers.

Why do you want me? But they have their own callings, their own careers. And they said, we need somebody who is going to invest in these people and is going to do this full time. And that was convincing enough for me.

So, I am privileged to be a part of these guys who are so qualified in their understanding of the word and in their teaching it. They're qualified according to what scripture says in 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 7.

Howerton’s Interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount

Amen. In Titus chapter 1, verses 5 through 9, what are the qualifications for an overseer? That's what qualifies them, not the color of their skin. Now, I wanted to provide an example, something that was a little bit more recent of the way that Howerton teaches the text.

And even though what he says is right, it's just the way that he gets there is incorrect. Okay. And the scriptures that he uses to draw that conclusion, he's not rightly handling the word of truth. So, this is a more recent example.

This is just something from a few days ago, I believe. And it's something that he has taught on before. There's a couple of different versions of this video that you can find. So, it's something that I've heard him say in several different aspects.

This is what he claims to be the most misunderstood passage of the Bible. Now, the other thing about this, before I get into this, Howerton loves to sensationalize stuff. So, a lot of his video clips, especially like the shorts and things like this, you'll hear him go, this is going to blow your mind.

Right. You never heard anything like this before. Like he really sells it. And that's another reason why he's such a viral pastor. He has an enthusiasm that is infectious. He's a handsome guy. He has that all shucks sort of thing in his voice.

And then he really knows how to hype this thing up. He knows how to sell it. So, that when you're clicking on the video, you're like, okay, now I'm engaged. I want to hear what you're talking about here.

Right. So, he calls this the most misunderstood passage in the entire Bible. But what Howerton says actually demonstrates that he doesn't understand the passage. So, here we go.

I think this is arguably the most misunderstood passage in the entire Bible. And I'm not joking. So, in Matthew 5, Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. So, if you read Exodus, God gives the law at Sinai. And the law, this is really important, it's written on tablets of stone. And the law is obviously it's outside of the people.

When the law was originally given outside the people, we're on a mountain. When Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount, we're on a mountain. What usually people think when they read that passage is they think, hey man, if I'm really struggling with sin, I need to be willing to commit a quote unquote radical amputation to get any sin out of my life.

And let me just say, that's true. I do not think at all that's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5, 29.

That is exactly what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5, 29. That is exactly what he's saying. And what's interesting here, and you've heard Howerton say it already. In the Old Testament, we have God giving the law from a mountain.

That's in Exodus 19 and 20. The Ten Commandments are spoken through Mount Sinai with the people gathered at the base of Mount Sinai and God gives them the law. Then in Matthew 5, Jesus comes and sits down on a mountain.

And the way that Matthew is presenting that picture is to see that God is once again addressing his people from a mountain, which hasn't happened since Exodus 20. And so now here is Jesus sitting on a mountain in Galilee and his disciples come to him and he opens his mouth and teaches them saying.

That's Matthew 5, 1 and 2. So Howerton cites that, but he totally missed what was said there and who exactly Jesus is talking to. And because Howerton has missed that, he is misunderstanding the passage.

And he's trying to say that what Jesus says in Matthew 5, 29, 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.

He's saying that that is a misunderstood verse because that's not what Jesus is saying. He's not saying get the sin out of your life or get away from the temptation. Jesus is actually saying something else.

Okay, what is he saying? So here's what Howerton goes on to say that Jesus really means.

Literally the verse before that passage, Jesus says, if anybody lusts, they have committed adultery in their heart. Then Jesus summarizes the entire Sermon on the Mount with a tree fruit analogy saying that, man, people tend to try to fix the fruit, you know, what's coming out of their lives.

But he's going, man, actually everything comes from the root of what's in your heart. Okay, now you got Exodus. They get the law. It's outside of them and they can't obey the law. Now we're on a new mountain under the new covenant.

The Spirit is poured out inside of and on top of all of God's people. And Jesus is going, and man, there ain't a guy in the world that hasn't felt this down deep in his soul at some point in his life.

Jesus is going, hey, I want you to imagine that there's a guy who's just ate up with lust and he can't stop. And the guy essentially goes, you know what? I'm going to cut off the part of me that causes me to sin.

He commits a lustful act. So he cuts off his hand, man, but I can still lust with my eyes. So he gouges out both of his eyes. He realizes, you know what, man, I can still hear lustful thing. And so then he chops off both of his ears.

Even still, I can walk to places where lustful things are happening. And then he cuts off both of his feet. And he realizes, no matter how many parts I cut off, I can't cut off the part of me that causes me to sin.

And what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount is he's saying, in order to do that, you're going to have to cut out your heart. And then he's going, and I can do that for you. In Ezekiel chapter 36, God is prophesying about the blessing of the new covenant.