JESUS TEACHES US

A great cholera epidemic sweep through London in the 19th century.� John Snow observed that those who pumped water from the Broad Street pump tended to get cholera, but those who took their water from other pumps did not get it.� He knew nothing about germs, bacteria, and polluted water, but he removed the handle from the Broad Street pump, and because he did many did not die.� He used the logic of prevention.� If you stop people from doing what leads to cholera, you will stop cholera, and it worked.

Prevention is one of the great powers of life.� Some things cannot be cured, so they have to be prevented.� All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put Humpty together again.� He couldn't be cured, but with a little forethought they could have prevented him from falling in the first place.� Just a little sign saying no eggheads on the wall could have done it.

You cannot cure murder or suicide, but you can prevent them.� You cannot make any sin you commit not to be.� You can forgive it and even forget it, but the fact is it will leave some scar or blot on life that cannot be eliminated.� That is why prevention is even superior to forgiveness.� The Proverb that says, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is not in the Bible, but it is as biblical as any Proverb you can utter, for it is one of the primary themes of the Sermon on the Mount.� If this greatest sermon of all time were titled it could very well be called, The Power Of Preventative Thinking.� Some examples we see are‑

1.� Christians are to be the salt and light of the world to prevent the world from decaying and being dominated by the forces of darkness.

2.� Christians are to prevent violence, murder, and breakdowns in human relationships by learning to deal wisely with anger.

3.� Christians are to prevent all of the sorrows of immorality by learning how to deal with lust.

4.� Jesus goes on and on trying to help the believer prevent divorce, revenge, hypocricy, greed, worry, judging, and folly in general.

Prevention is where its at in living the effective Christian life.� That is why Christians are strong supporters of the prevention movements of even the secular society of our day.� Christians are a strong force in the health movement.� Good food, good exercise, good rest, and balanced living all prevent unnecessary suffering, and Christians are all for it, and rightly so, for it fits God's ideal for wise living.� Christians are all for crime prevention, fire prevention, disease prevention, or the prevention of any form of evil.

To prevent a war is far superior to the winning of one.� That is why Jesus is primarily concerned with Christians learning to practice preventative thinking and action.� The foolish man who built his house on the sand may� have built a solid and lovely a home as the wise man.� His folly was due to the fact that he did not think ahead to the consequences of the rainy season, and the result is he did not prevent his home from being destroyed.� The wise man did prevent this foolish loss by his choice of foundations.� The difference between the fool and the wise man is in preventative thinking.� Almost every foolish and sinful thing we do that robs us of God's best could have been prevented by obedience to the principles Jesus lays down for us in this marvelous sermon.

Jesus is teaching us to be realistic about sin and the weakness of our human nature.� You do not wait until your anger is ready to explode and then try to deal with it.� You don't wait until lust is at a fever pitch to grapple with it.� You think ahead, and you know when the first signs of irritability or temptation arise in you.� That is the time to act and gain control of your inner nature before sin gets strong enough to take over.

David brought down the giant Goliath, and that was great, but Jesus says there is a better way, and that is to never let the giant grow up.� Defeat your sins while they are scrawny weaklings just beginning to develop. Prevent them from ever getting to be giant forces in your life.� In other words, get them before they get you.� This is done by exercising the power of preventative thinking.� It involves being honest about your sinful nature.� It is not wise but foolish to hide from yourself, and pretend you are not tempted to do evil.� Wise is the Christian who says, if I get into such and such a situation I am likely to fall.

The power of prevention is based on being honest with yourself.� The Christian who refuses to admit to himself that he could even murder or commit adultery is the Christian most likely to fall.� It is the Christian who knows he is capable of such evil who prevents it, because he avoids those circumstances that would lead to a fall.� The wise Christian is the aware Christian.� He knows his weakness, and he is in touch with his feelings.� If he senses he is in a very negative mood, and some old resentments begin to surface in relationship to someone in his life, he will go out of his way to avoid a confrontation with that person, and so prevent his anger from dominating his life.

If he feels strong sexual energy he will recognize it is no time for dropping off papers at his secretaries apartment, or developing any intimate relationship apart from his mate.� These same actions on other occasions may be perfectly harmless.� It is all a matter of knowing who you are, and what your potential is for being tempted.� That is what preventative thinking is all about.� Preventative thinking is a balance to the popular theme of our day which is possibility thinking.� The possibility thinker is always positive about his potential, and his ability to move ahead, and achieve higher and higher goals.� This is a good and biblical way of thinking.� We all need it to press on to what God wants us to achieve.� The danger is pride.� We become so sure of ourselves that we can keep climbing that we forget the reality of our sinful nature.� We climb alright, but cease to care that we step on others as we do.� We use people and abuse them, and cease to be Christlike in our attitudes and actions.

Christians locked into their possibility thinking become cold and calculating Christian Pharisees.� They justify all of their sin as necessary to keep marching toward their goal.� They are in a class by themselves, and they say with the Pharisee of old, "I thank God I am not as other men."� Christians in this state of mind are capable of doing any evil, and considering it as legitimate.� Preventative thinking keeps the possibility thinker in a state of balance.� It keeps him honest about his capability for sinful attitudes and actions.� It prevents his pride from blinding him to the reality that he is as other men.� He can still press on toward his goals, but not at any price.� He sees his tendency to use people, and will chose to move slower rather than damage the life of a brother.

Preventative thinking is simply being honest about yourself; about your feelings, motives, desires, and then choosing to so live that you prevent your evil tendencies from determining the path you travel.� Preventative thinking is just the other side of possibility thinking.� Yes, I can succeed and climb, but it is also possible I can fail and fall, and this negative possibility can spoil the positive, and, therefore, I can only achieve the positive by being aware of the negative, and preventing it from becoming a reality.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is saying that the key to the victorious Christian life is prevention.� This sermon has no cross in it; no resurrection,� and there is no call to repentance.� It is not a doctrinal sermon, nor an evangelistic sermon.� It is not a message to the lost.� It is a message to the saved, and to those already in the kingdom of God who are part of the family of God by faith in Christ.� Jesus is not preaching the Gospel in this sermon.� The Gospel deals with the first step of salvation which is justification.� This is an event in which the sinner becomes a child of God by faith.� When a lost person prays, "God be merciful to me a sinner.� I trust Jesus as my Savior," that person is saved, or justified.

Then comes the second stage of salvation which is not an event, but a process, and it is called sanctification.� This is what the Sermon on the Mount is all about.� It is the process by which we become more and more Christlike as we become stronger and wiser in overcoming the power of sin.� The third stage of salvation is glorification, and it is both an act and a process, for when Jesus comes again we will be transformed to be like him, and then for all eternity be able to advance in holiness as we move closer and closer to the infinite holiness of God.� Each of the three Persons of the Trinity are closely associated with one of these stages.� It is Jesus and justification; the spirit and sanctification, and God the Father and glorification.� We are now in the second stage, and this is the stage of Christian living, and that is what the Sermon on the Mount deals with.� Prevention is the name of the game.� Sanctification is the outwitting of sin by preventing it from ever happening.� To prevent sin is to do the will of God on earth as it is in heaven where all sin is prevented.

God is the great Preventer.� Most of us never realize how blessed we are, for the providence of God in history is so often preventative.�� By this I mean, many of our greatest blessings we never even know about.� It is because they are things that never happen.� That sounds crazy maybe, but think about it.� If your life is a gift you treasure, you only have it because you have been prevented from losing it by disease or accident, even though you have lived in the same evironment that has taken the lives of many others.

You have your life, your health, and your resources all because of things that never happen.� Because they were prevented from happening.� There is not a one of us who was not prevented from serious injury.� I have prevented my children and grandchildren from taking terrible falls, and so have you.� The life of a parent is a life of prevention.� You spend a good portion of your life preventing all kinds of things to save the life of your child.� God, as our heavenly Father, has the same task in our lives.� Unfortunately, God has the same problem we have as parents.� We cannot prevent our children from taking foolish chances, and God cannot prevent us from doing this either.� If I want to risk going 90 miles per hour on a gravel road, I have no claim to God's protection, for I have chosen to reject the rules of precaution and prevention.

When we cooperate with God, and seek his providential protection, then we experience the blessings of that which never happens.� What a paradox!� The blessings of the non‑existent.� It is the preciousness of what isn't.� History is full of this kind of preventative action of God.� The history of America is not just a history of what happened, but of what never did happen, and those things which never happened are some of the greatest of our blessings.� If you read the history of the Revolutionary War, you will be impressed at how often the British could have won that war had they attacked at the right time.� For various reasons they did nothing when the victory was within their grasp.� It is these numerous nothings and non‑battles that prevented them from winning.� These things that never happened lead to the preservation of all the freedoms we cherish.

For example:� The British General Howe, with 15,000 trained troops, reinforced by 5,000 Hessians from Germany had General Washington with his 8,000 men, half of them untrained, trapped in the Northern tip of Brooklyn.� Washington was in despair.� They were almost out of powder and were out numbered almost 3 to 1.� The British had ships in the river to pound them to pieces with their big guns.

They waited for the inevitable attack, but it never came.� General Howe had craved out a brilliant and flawlessly executed maneuver to trap the Americans. He could have given the signal and the war would have soon been over, but he did nothing.� Washington praising God for the miracle planned a daring escape.� He was able to deceive the British into thinking they were still trapped, while by laboring all night he was able to get nearly 8,000 men out of that death trap, and across the river to safety.� The non‑attack of the British enabled Washington to prevent them from winning the war.

Remember, it is not just what happens, but what does not happen that makes life victorious.� God's providential prevention is a part of every life that is truly blessed.� The point is, prevention plays a major role in history and in our lives, and we should all be aware that God wants us to join in the effort to prevent those things that rob us and others of the abundant life.

As we meet around the Lord's table again, let us remember the cross is God's ultimate weapon in His plan of prevention.� On the cross Jesus accomplished that which prevents Satan from taking the whole human race into the pit of hell with him.� It is the cross which prevents evil from being victorious over the good.� It is the cross which prevents our sin from having the final word before the judgment seat of God.� Thanks to the cross the eternal loss of all that God planned for men has been prevented.

Praise God for the power of prevention, and let us commit ourselves to cooperate with God in His plan of prevention.� We will either be part of the problem or part of the answer.� If we are part of the answer it will be because we prevent what otherwise would be.� Is there less sin and less evil in the world because you live in it?� That is not likely, for all of us sin, and so all of us contribute to the total amount of sin in the world.� But is there less sin in your life because you practice the power of prevention?� This is possible, and it is the will of God for all His children.� It is possible to prevent most of the damaging sins of life if we give heed to this message of the Master from the Mount.� Thank Christ for what He has prevented, and pray for guidance as we learn together how to practice the power of prevention.

2.� �THE LUMINOUS LIFE� Based on� Matt. 5:13‑16

William Sangster, the great British preacher, tells of one of the strangest taxes ever imposed.� He asked his father one day why so many of the homes in London had blocked up windows.� His father explained that back in 1695 every house that had more the 6 windows was taxed for the extra ones.� Many people blocked up those extra windows to avoid the tax.� Imagine that, the government put a tax on sunshine, and by so doing they shut out the quantity of light in many homes.

Man does some strange things with God's gift of light.� John tells us that the life of Jesus was the light of men.� He was the true light that enlightens every man, yet when he came into the world men loved darkness rather than light, and so though he came unto his own, his own received him not, but they shut out the light.

Man in his folly resists the light and rejects it, but John says the light goes on shining in the darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out.� The sun does not cease to shine because of the dark clouds that cover it, and Jesus does not stop being the light of the world because of the dark valley of man's fallen nature that covers the world with a blanket of blackness that blocks men from seeing the glory of the Gospel.

Jesus has a plan to penetrate this world's night of ignorance with the light of knowledge.� The plan is very simple.� It is to advertise.� Every Christian is to be a living commercial for the Producer of the program of life. Most everybody watches TV, but absolutely everybody watches the program of life, and this is where the Christian has a chance to shine and be advertising for the Sponsor of history.

The church is the biggest business in the world, and long before Coke and Pepsi, and hamburger businesses ever dreamed of going into all the world, Jesus made his church international.� Go into all the world Jesus told His disciples.� There is no exception.� The Gospel is to be taken to every tribe, tongue, and nation.�� Christianity is to be universal, and like any big enterprise Jesus knew there had to be a program with advertising of the product.� That is why Jesus said to His disciples, and says to all of us we have joined His company of the committed:� "You are the light of the world."

If men are to come to God out of the world of darkness, they have to see the light.� They have to have before them the evidence that the Gospel is real and valid.� They need to see lives that have been touched by Christ, and now radiate the love which He expressed in, coming into the world, caring for the world, and being crucified for the sins of the world.

Jesus saw the power of video long before TV was even a dream.� He knew the best advertising was not just audio; just the preaching of the good news.� He knew men would want to see the Gospel in motion.� Jesus, therefore, launches His world wide campaign by making every believer an advertisement for His kingdom.� Your life is to be an audio‑visual appeal to the world so that by the power of sound and sight men in darkness might see the light, and turn to God with a spirit of praise.

Without radio, TV, computers, satellites, or any other modern technology, Jesus launched the first truly world wide advertising campaign to bring light to all who are in darkness.� The goal of Jesus is the same goal that all of your large businesses have today in their advertising plans.� The whole idea of a commercial is to portray people enjoying the values and benefits of a product so that others desire is to experience those benefits for themselves.� I see a miserable sufferer of sinus congestion who is smiling and breathing freely after taking a certain product.� Naturally, I want in on that experience as a sinus sufferer, and so I go to get the product, and when it works for me, I praise the maker of this product, and bear testimony to others of what it can do for them.� This is the power of advertising, for it enlightens and spreads the word.

Jesus says we are commercials for God.� Men see the goodness of our lives, and the benefits of the Christian life, and our good deeds, and they are impressed with the Gospel, and desire to be in on it.� What a challenge for every Christian to recognize that they are a key part of the world's most universal business.� You and I are into advertising for the Universal Power Company, better known as the kingdom of God.� To better understand our job we want to focus on two aspects of light that can enlighten us as lights of the world.� A salesman, or actor, or anyone dealing with a product will do a better job if they are sold on the product, and are convinced of the value of it.� Let us, therefore, focus on‑

I.� THE NEED FOR LIGHT.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was the last of the so‑called "Universal men.''He was knowledgeable in every major area of human learning.� When he laid dying in 1832 he suddenly sat up in bed and cried out, "Light, light, more light!" Then he fell back dead.� His last words were a cry for more light.� He was one of the most learned of men, yet he longed for more light.� The cliche is true that the more you know the more you realize how little you know.� All geniuses know that their knowledge is a puddle, and their ignorance is a Pacific.� All men who really know cry out for more light.� There is a desperate need for answers in a world plagued with problems.

Jesus is saying to his followers that they help meet this need for light.� Be part of the answer, and not part of the problem.� The world has enough problems, so don't add to them.� Reveal instead that there is an answer in Christ who is the source of all light.� You reveal this by your own luminous life.� That is, by a life that shines and radiates a love for people.� The luminous life is the life that advertises the love and goodness of God.� It is easy to say, God is love, but people must see it to believe it.� Does God care?� Does anybody care about all of the desperate needs of this world?�� These are the questions that come to every mind at sometime or another.� The Christian is to be the evidence that the answer is yes, God does care, and He has provided� a way to show it.� The question all of us need to ask ourselves is, are we convincing evidence to the world that God cares? Are we good advertising, or are we so poor that we add to the darkness?

Jesus says the Christian who is a good ad is the Christian whose life benefits others through good deeds.� In other words, the world is not impressed with a Christian vocabulary as much as with their visual display of love and caring.� It is so easy to learn to talk of love, but not show it.� We can do it in relation to our family and to the world.� We see so many commercials where a celebrity says a product is great, but in the back of our minds we wonder, do they really use it themselves, or do they just say these nice things for a fee?� We are skeptical and rightly so.

The world looks to the Christian life with the same skepticism.� The Christian faith sounds pretty good, but do these people just say all this good stuff to please their Sponsor, who is God; in hopes of a reward, or do they really mean it, and live by the love they so eloquently speak of?� Jesus says the world has the right to expect the Christian to reveal the depths of his commitment by good deeds.� It is doing good that penetrates the skeptical darkness of the world.� As with Sarah Lee, nobody doesn't like doing good.� I have read of Mafia leaders who use money they steal from others to do good.� Everybody can appreciate good deeds.� They may not understand theology, but they can see the difference between doing good deeds and doing harmful deeds.

Even the non‑Christian wants to see his children be good and not bad.� Everybody can be reached by the message of good deeds.� That is a frequency all men can pick up, and that is why the Christian must operate on that frequency if they expect to reach the world.� The world is not tuned in to which Bible translation is best; which denomination has the best missionary program; or which Christian college is the best.� The world can only judge the value of Christian life by what they see, and if they do not see good deeds, they do not see anything for their needs.

Good works do not save the person who does them, but they are a vital part of saving the world, for they attract the world to Christ who alone can save them by faith.� They will seldom come to Christ, however, if they never see the light in Christians.� Advertising a car does not get people to travel, but it gets them to buy the car in which they can travel.� Advertising a cough medicine does not stop anybody from coughing, but it gets them to buy the cough medicine that can stop coughing.� So advertising of the Gospel does not save anybody, but it brings people to Christ where they can be saved.� Good deeds are, therefore, a vital part of God's plan to save the world.

Seeing is believing to the world, and so Jesus says to let your light shine so the world can see.� You cannot convey the beauty of a flower show over the radio, because beauty is not verbal, it is visual.� So you cannot convey the love and goodness of God by the verbal means only.� There must be� a visible demonstration that men can see.� The world cannot grasp the reality of the unseen realm of the spirit.� But they have the capacity to see tangible works of good.� Not all Christians can speak effectively, but all Christians can be loving, kind, and do good deeds.

Has someone seen Christ in you today?

Christian, look to your life, I pray;

There are aching hearts and blighted souls

Being lost in sin's destructive shoals,

And perhaps of Christ there only view

May be what they see of Him in you.

Will they see enough to bring hope and cheer?

Look to your light!� Does it shine out clear?

Robert Louis Stevenson remembered how, as a boy, he would look out of the window of his home and see that lamp lighter going down the dark street lighting the lamp posts.� His nurse called one day as he was doing so, and asked, "What are you doing?"� He responded, "I am watching a man make holes in the darkness." �That is the job of all Christians in this world.� They are to be lamplighters making holes in life's darkness.� People need to see these holes to be aware that life is not all dark.� The only way to make people aware of hope is by means of light.

Light gives people a choice.� If you had to go into a dark store and pick out a suit or dress, you would not have much of a choice.� You might be able to feel the kind of material and the style in which it is made, but there is not much of a choice in the dark.� It is light that gives you a meaningful choice.� The world needs to see that there is a choice between the life style of darkness and the life style of light.� If there is no example of light before them, they really don't have a choice.� They live in the dark and follow the ways of darkness.� It is only the light that can give them a choice.

In 1944 Switzerland did not want the allied bombers to bomb their territory, and so they marked the boundaries of their land with lights.� The pilots could see the boundaries clearly, and they had a choice as to where they let their bombs fall.� The world needs to see clearly where the boundaries are between the life that will bring down the judgment of God, and the life that will bring down His blessings and peace.� The Christian is to give the world the benefit of this choice by their luminous life, that is, the life that is pleasing to God, and of benefit to man.

The only way the lost can become aware that they are in darkness is by seeing the light.� The contrast of their life with the Christian life can make them aware, and can give them the choice they never had without the light.� The need for light is the world's greatest need, and the answer of Christ to this need is His disciples. He said to them, "You are the light of the world."

The question is not, does anyone use a certain medium because you use it?� Does anyone wash with a certain product because you do?� Does anyone go to a certain doctor or dentist because you do?� Does anyone drive a certain car because you do?� We all become a part of the advertising process for those things we like and enjoy, and which feed our affections.� The real question for the Christian is, does anyone praise God and love Jesus because you do?� Is anyone sold on the love and goodness of God because they see in you the luminous life?

The need is there, are you part of the answer?� The second aspect we want to focus on is‑

II.� THE NATURE OF LIGHT.

Light is very complex and paradoxical.� Scientists do not understand the nature of light.� There's nothing quite like it in the universe.� It is both a wave and a particle.� It is supposed to be one or the other, but it won't cooperate.� It keeps acting like both, and so science must accept light as it is.� Light seems quite simple to us as we look at it, but it is very complex.� Light has all different degrees of strength.� The reason you can have a red light on in a dark room is because the photons coming from red light are so weak they do not set the chemicals in motion.� If only red light came from the sun you could look straight at it.� In fact, that is about the only time you can look at the sun, when it is large and red, and about to go down.� The ultraviolet rays that come from the sun are very strong, and they can damage your eyes.� They are the rays that cause sunburn.� Other rays, like x‑rays, and gamma‑rays are stronger yet.

The point is, light is complex and full of variety, and this has important implications for both science and the Christian life.� God made light visible, and He also made His children visible.� We are not all alike just as light rays are not all alike.� This is important to grasp because we can lose our sense of self‑esteem and feel guilty if we try to be something we are not, and strive to shine the same as another Christian we admire.� The study of light leads us to the same conclusion as the study of gifts.� God loves variety, and each of His children need to discover their gifts accordingly, and not try to conform to gifts they do not have.� They also should not try to force others to conform to theirs.

As lights of the world Christians will differ.� Some will radiate with such strength they will produce warmth as well as light.� Others will be more subdued and not have that kind of impact.� There will be variety even in the same life.� The radiant Christian will sometimes not shine very brightly.� They will be tired and run down, even as Jesus was. And they may be angry even as Jesus was.� Jesus, as the light of the world with a capital L could become angry and create a storm in the temple as He expressed judgment on the injustice of man.� Even Jesus did not radiate love 100% of the time.� Love was behind His anger, but it was not love for those doing what was unjust.

The reason I point this out is so we can keep balance as we look at the ideals of this great sermon.� If we strive to live on a level of absolute radiance, we will only fail, and end in a state of despair.� This is not the goal of Jesus in this sermon.� The goal of the Christian is the same as the goal of the scientist.� Keep working with light, and learn of its nature, and develop it for higher ends.� Science has done marvels with light in recent years.�� They have learned how to use the power of light that has always been there, and this is the challenge for the Christian to understand light so as to use its power more effectively.� In the realm of science man has discovered the laser beam.� It is simply light developed to a higher power.

Ordinary light comes off the light bulbs with all the different wave links mixed together.� It is just a mass of variety all mixed up.� Laser light is different.� There is no mixture.� It is light waves all on the same frequency.� It is pure light not mixed up with all the others in degrees and colors.� It's oneness is the source of its power.� It is concentrated light.� Regular light goes off in all directions, but laser light all goes the same direction.� Regular light is more like a mob, but laser light is like a column of soldiers marching with precision.� It sticks together, and with the power and unity it strikes its object.� Because of the oneness and unity of the laser beam it can be focused with such precision that man has been able use it to heat a cup of coffee a 1000 miles away.

There are many marvelous things men can do with this form of light in medicine, industry, and in the military.� The so‑called death‑ray is a reality. The point is, what is true in the natural realm is also true in the realm of the spirit.� Jesus said that He is the light of the world.� Then He tells His disciples that they are the light of the world.� Does this mean Christians are equal to Christ?� Not at all.� No more than general light is equal to laser light.� Jesus is pure light.� He is one and consistent, and thus, powerful light.� God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.� In us there is still the shadow, if not the night.� We are visible and inconsistent, and thus, we cannot penetrate as the light of Jesus does. The Lord is the laser, and we are the regular light.� But regular light is all that is necessary for the primary task of the Christian in the world.� All regular light needs to do is help people see the Laser in Christ.

Jesus is the light people must come to for laser power.� He alone can cut out the sin of their lives.� He alone can heal their blindness.� He alone can penetrate to their innermost soul and bring healing.� Our task is to help the world see what Jesus can do.� Advertising does not do the job of the product.� It just points to the product.� Christians are not the saving and healing light.� They are the light that points the world to Him.� Jesus does not say that when the world sees your good works they will praise you and honor you.� They will praise God and glorify Him, for if you do your job right, the glory will go to Him.� Your light is to point to Him, and not yourself.� You are not the answer to the world's darkness, but Jesus is, and only as you point men to Him are you part of the answer.

The light from a lighthouse does not save the drowning sailors.� That light just shows the way to go to be saved.� If they do not get to land they will drown in spite of the light.� So the Christian cannot save the lost sinner.� He can only point to the one who can.� The poet wrote,

The world is in a crisis today.

The powers of hell are set in stern array.

Men are blind and cannot find the way.

Christ, our Lord, will help us in our plight.

Christ, for the Crisis!� He is the Source of Light.

You and I are like Andrew coming to Peter his brother, and saying, "We have found the Messiah.� Come and see."� We point to Jesus, but the only reason they have to listen to us is because we reflect His light and enable them to see there is power in Him.� There is a lot to complain about in the world, for the power of darkness is great, but let's remember the only reason there is need for light is because of the darkness.� If the world was not a rotten place, there would be no need for Christians to be the salt of the earth.� If the world was not a place of darkness, there would be no need for Christians to be the light of the world.� So the point is, don't wine, but shine.

His lamps are we

To shine where He shall say;

And lamps are not for sunny rooms,

Nor for the light of day,

But for dark places of the earth,

Where shame and wrong and crime have birth;

Or for the murky twilight gray,

Where wondering sheep have gone astray;

Or where the light of faith grows dim,

And souls are groping after Him;

And as sometimes a flame we find,

Clear shining through the night‑

So bright we do not see the lamp,

But only see the light,

So we may shine‑His light the flame,

That men may glorify His name.�� Author unknown.

You are the light of the world.� The question� we all have to ask ourselves is, are we hidden light, or are we helping light?� Does anyone in the world love Christ and praise God because of our life?

3. ��THE LAW AND THE LORD� Based on Matt. 5:17‑20

Misunderstanding is a part of life, and much of the laughter of life is due to it.� One little guy surprised his whole family one evening at the supper table by asking which virgin was Jesus' mother?� Was it the Mary virgin, or the King James Virgin?� He had misunderstood one word and was confused.� Much humor is based on misunderstanding another's meaning.� The judge, for example, asked the accused:� "Have you ever been up before me?"� The accused responded, "I don't know judge.� When do you usually get up?"

If misunderstanding is limited to jokes, it would be an enjoyable aspect of life.� Unfortunately, it is not limited to jokes.� Even when it leads to something funny it can be terribly embarrassing for the one who misunderstands.� Like the newly elected secretary of the youth group, who was told it was her duty to keep a record of the minutes of the meetings.� The next time they met she announced the last meeting had been 20 minutes and 36 seconds.� She had misunderstood the meaning of minutes.

This is a major problem in communication, because words can have more than one meaning.� It is so easy to take words literally that are not meant that way.� A mother asked her little boy if he thanked the neighbor lady for the party.� "I was going to," he said, "But when the little girl ahead of me did, the lady said not to mention it.� So I didn't."� He took her words literally.� One of the major problems of marriage is mates who do not grasp what the other is really saying.� One of the major problems of any organization is communication breakdown that leads to misunderstanding.� During World War I American soldiers whistled when the French Premiere came on the screen.� The French soldiers rushed at them in anger, but before they came to blows, someone was able to explain the American behavior.� To whistle in our culture was to express approval, but to the French it expressed disapproval.� It was all a matter of misunderstanding.

One of the major problems that Jesus had in living the life of a man was in being misunderstood.� His own disciples did not understand He was going through agony in His final hours, and they slept while He wept in Gethsemane. They did not grasp much of what He tried to teach them, and in their misunderstanding they even tried to stop Him from going to the cross.�� The Pharisees misunderstood Him completely.� They thought He was a law breaker, and one who was defying the God of Israel.� They did not see His love and compassion for the sinner as good news.� They saw His association with sinners, and His violation of the Sabbath by healing then, as the action of a rebel rather than a redeemer.� They totally misunderstood Jesus and His mission.

Amiel in his journal says it was one of the greatest wounds men inflicted upon Jesus.� He was the great misunderstood, and the least comprehended.� Jesus says to His disciples, "Beware the leaven of the Pharisees," and they debate about bread.� He says, "I have meat to eat ye know not of," and again they wonder where He got bread.� "Destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up," He said, and the leaders of Israel wondered how He could build what took decades to construct in only 3 days.� On and on it goes, and even the intelligent leader Nicodemus asked, "How can I go back into my mother's womb and be born again?"

Everybody kept misunderstanding Jesus, and taking His word so literally they came to strange conclusions.� This is still a major problem today, and it will be one of the struggles we face in going through the Sermon on the Mount.�� We will have to spend a great deal of time and effort in explaining what Jesus did not mean.� So many take the words of Jesus in a literal sense that leads to deep misunderstanding, and some have even cut off their hands to try and prevent sinning. �It bothered me as I studied this sermon, that so much of what Jesus says has to be explained again and again to prevent wrong conceptions.� But as I focused on verse 17, I realized this was the very thing Jesus had to do Himself in giving the sermon.

"Think not I have come to destroy the law," Jesus said.� In so saying, He acknowledges that He knows He has already been misunderstood, or that He will be.� He is trying to clarify His position and avoid misunderstanding.� I realize that if Jesus had to do this, then it is just an inevitable part of life, and the process of communication.� There is no way to be effective in communicating if you do not remain constantly aware of the reality of misunderstanding.� Rudyard Kipling said, "We are like islands and we shout to each other across seas of misunderstanding."

Not understood.� How many breasts are aching

For lack of sympathy.� Ah, day by day,

How many cheerless, lonely hearts are breaking,

How many noble spirits pass away‑not understood.

O God!� That men would see a little clearer,

Or judge less harshly when they cannot see!

O God!� That men would draw a little nearer

To one another!� They'd be nearer Thee,

And understood.

It is one of life's biggest battles to be understood, and one of life's greatest virtues is to be one who strives to understand.� Misunderstanding, and being misunderstood, is one of life's greatest trials, and Jesus experienced it to its depths.� In our text we are focusing on one of His attempts to overcome misunderstanding.

"Think not," he says, and some go no further than this, and think they obey because they think not.� What Jesus is saying is, do not jump to conclusions and end up with a false impression of my goals.� Jesus knew that His opposition to the leaders of Israel, and His violation of their interpretation of the law, would cause many to assume He was anti‑law, and that His goal would be to overthrow the old and begin a whole new system.� This is how the Pharisees saw Jesus.� He was a threat to Judaism, and a rebel who sought to overthrow the law of Moses.� In fact, Jesus wanted just the reverse.� He wanted to restore Judaism from its flat and tasteless state to what God intended it to be.� He was the salt to bring out the fullness of its flavor, and bring it to its full potential, and fulfill it.

Let us learn from� this conflict of Jesus and the Pharisees never to judge a person's motives on the basis of what seems, or on the testimony of their enemies.� The only way you can avoid misunderstanding and bad judgments is to listen to the clear statements of the person in question.� It is not what you think, or what the critics think, but what does the person say himself.� Jesus gives us His own clear statement on a major issue of conflict, and He doubles the certainty of our not misunderstanding Him by dispelling a negative, and declaring a positive in verse 17.

I.� A NEGATIVE DISPELLED.

Only twice did Jesus use these words to try and dispel misconceptions.� Here and in Matt. 10:35 where He says, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on the earth, I have come not to bring peace but a sword."� Jesus was so loving, and such a peacemaker that people could easily jump to the conclusion that following Him would lead to a life free from all conflict.� Unfortunately, Jesus had to drive this misconception from people's minds, or they would not be prepared for the shock of conflict and persecution that was ahead for those who followed Him.

One of the major tasks of Christian teaching is to set the record straight, and scatter the misconceptions that people have about God and Christ, and the Christian life.� Will Rogers was right, all of us are ignorant just in different subjects.� All of us have misconceptions and misunderstandings that need to be dispelled by clearer light.� Christian education is the process of pushing back the darkness of misunderstanding with the light of true conception.� One of the biggest issues of Christian history is the one Jesus deals with in this verse.� It is the issue of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament, or to Christianity.� This is a complex issue that has led to much misunderstanding through history.

Jesus first makes it clear that the negative idea that He came to destroy the law and the prophets is to be cast to the wind.� It is false view of His mission, and is not to be a part of Christian thinking.� Jesus abolishes the idea that He has come to abolish the law.� Jesus does not come to build a kingdom from scratch.� He builds on what has been the plan of God in history.� There is clear continuity of the old and the new.� Jesus is no superficial revolutionary who assumes all values start today, and so the past can be rejected. �There are always permanent values of the past, and no future can be bright without preserving these values.

The idea that Jesus came to overthrow the law is based on a misunderstanding of His opposition to the leaders of Israel.� Jesus was opposed to their perversion of the law, and not the god ordained purpose of the law.� They made the Sabbath a curse rather than a blessing.� Jesus violated their conception of the law, but not its purpose.� The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, and so Jesus used the Sabbath to heal, help, lift, and minister to people's needs.� The Pharisees hated Him for this.� They considered Him a law breaker, for their legalistic minds saw the rules and regulations as of more value than the people.� Jesus came to destroy this perversion of values.

There is a valuable lesson in this for us all.� It is possible to be against� what you are for when what you are for is being abused.� It is possible for a Christian to oppose his church or denomination and be in the will of God if the reason is, not to hurt the cause, but to overcome abuse.� The Christian can be opposed to his government, and not be opposed to democracy, or to any of the principles for which the nation stands, but because he is opposed to the perversion of those principles.� Prophets were opposed to Judaism because it was going astray.

What this means is that being opposed to something does not mean you are the enemy.� The fact is, you may be the best friend of what you oppose because you are the one most concerned about its purity of purpose.� So it was with Jesus.� He was opposed to Judaism, not because He was antisemitic, but because He was anti‑pollution and perversion.� He wanted to see Judaism cleansed of its man made burdens, and lifted to the level where it was meant to be, as a light to all the world, that through the seed of Abraham all the families of the earth would be blest.� Jesus did not destroy Judaism or the law.� He fulfilled them and accomplished the purpose for their being in God's plan.

Get the idea out of your head that He came to destroy or downgrade the law and render it obsolete.� It is true that the New Testament is superior and holds first place in the Christian heart, but it is folly to despise the foundation because you enjoy the walls and ceiling better.� It is foolish to despise the baby because you admire the mature man, or reject the sapling because you prefer the fruit bearing tree.� The Old Testament was God's best for the time, and just because Jesus has come to be God's final word, and finished work, does not mean we should have any negative attitudes toward the bud from which the full flower has opened to our view.

If you cut a flower from its root, you will have a flower that soon wilts.� Christianity grows out of the roots of the Old Testament.� Those root principles that God gave His Old Testament people are not passing but permanent truths. Jesus did not come to eliminate them, but to incorporate them into the Christian system.� That is why it is called the Judeo‑Christian tradition; the Judeo‑Christian ethics, the Judeo‑Christian morality.� Judaism and Christianity have so much in common because they both build on the revelation of God in the Old Testament.� Those who reject the Old Testament reject the mind of Christ, for He came not to destroy the Old Testament, but to fulfill it, and preserve all of its permanent values.

The meaning of the whole is greater than the meaning of any part.� The Old Testament gives us insight into the whole sacrificial system, and the New Testament sees it fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ.� The covenant with Noah is not abolished by the New Covenant in Christ.� God put the bow in the clouds that we might ever remember that God's method of dealing with sin will never again be all out destruction of the world.� The covenant with Abraham, that through his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed, is not abolished, but fulfilled.� The covenant with Moses was, obey and do the will of God, and you will inherit the promises of God.� The specifics have changed, but the principles are the same in the New Covenant.� God always expects obedience from His children as a prerequisite for His blessing.� So the idea of rejecting the Old Testament is absurd. It is like picturing the Godhead as divided rather than one.� Robert Capon illustrates the folly of this picture.

God the Father plays the first half of the game all by himself.� The Son and Holy Spirit are on the sidelines from the dawn of creation to the end of the Old Testament.� Then in the fullness of time God the Father puts himself on the heavenly bench, and sends in the Son for the third quarter.� By the end of that quarter He feels he has a good enough lead to risk using the rookies, and so He sends in the Holy Spirit and the Church to finish the game.� This compartmentalizing conception of God's working in history causes us to lose the sense of oneness in the Godhead, and the awareness that all three Persons of the Godhead have been working together from creation.� Each is highlighted, to be sure, for their special role, but there is a unity and continuity in all they do.� For Jesus to abolish the Old Testament would be for Him to write off His own work, for the law and the prophets were as much His doing as that of the Father.� The Old Testament covenants are not promises from some other deity.� They are His promises, and He intends to keep them.� The New Testament is just the completing of all He has been doing all along.� Next we look at‑

II.� A POSITIVE DECLARED.

Jesus says, "I did not come to destroy or abolish the law and prophets, but to fulfill them."� Progress does not mean abandonment of the old.� Progress uses the old to climb higher.� When you go from high school to college they do not tell you to abandon all you learned in high school.� They build on it.� College may be a radical change from high school, but it is not opposed to high school.� Jesus is not saying He did not come to make radical change, for He did, but none of the changes are a forsaking of the old, but rather, a fulfilling of the old.

There can be change, and yet stability when the change has continuity with what has been.� A river is constantly changing, and yet it is always the same river.� The ancient philosopher was right when he said, you can't step into the same river twice, for the water is ever flowing, and so the second time you are really stepping into new water you never touched before.� It is ever new, and yet always the same because it maintains its identity.� So it is with us.� We have all new molecules from what we had 7 years ago, but we are still the same.� That is what Jesus did with the law and prophets.� He did not say He will leave them as they are to be always what they have been.� He changes them, but the changes do not destroy or abolish, but bring forth the fullness of the potential of the Old Testament principles.

Jesus says, nothing of value that God intended to convey to man in the Old Testament will be lost in the New Testament.� It will, in fact, be made more clear and available than it was in the Old Testament.� Just as college will hopefully make what we learned in high school more clear and more applicable, so Christians will do for the Old Testament.� Jesus puts His full stamp of approval on the Old Testament as the Word of God, and that is why the Christian Bible includes the Bible of Judaism.� It did not cease to be God's Word when God gave His full and final word in His Son.� It is still a vital part of God's revelation to man.� "The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed."� You need both to have the root and fruit.

Christianity is an Old Testament and New Testament faith, and without this combination you do not have what Jesus came to give.� Any theology that focuses on the one to the neglect of the other becomes a perversion.� We can't get into this now, but if you examine the cults in detail you will discover that they all have something in common.� They take either the Old or the New Testament and build their doctrine on one or the other.� If you take the Old Testament without the New, you build on what is just a partial view of God's light.� If you take the New without the Old, you build without a foundation.� Jesus made the Old a permanent treasure for God's people by these positive words.� His mission was not destructive but constructive.� He did not come to abolish Judaism, but to fulfill it.

The purpose of Jesus was always to be positive and not negative.� God is not willing that any shall perish, but all come to repentance, and, therefore, all that He does in history is for the positive purpose of making progress toward that goal.� Judgment must fall, but that is never the goal.� That is the consequence of man's not cooperating with God in reaching the goal.� Jesus is the perfect combination of the conservative and progressive.� He preserves all that is good of the past, but is ever pressing on and improving it for the benefit of the future.� The stairway Jesus climbs is always up from good, to better, to the best.� The Old Testament kingdom was good, the New Testament kingdom is better, the eternal kingdom is best.

As we go on to study the Sermon on the Mount, we will hear Jesus say, "You have heard it said of old, but now I say this."� He changes the old way of seeing things, and this sounds like He is abolishing the old, but not so, He is improving the old.� The old Ford Model A was never abolished even though you seldom to never see one.� Nobody destroyed it, but they did improve it, and kept changing it until there is no comparison of the old and the new.�� Yet, the new has direct continuity with the old.� In this Sermon on the Mount we see Jesus making changes in the Old Testament law, but change does not mean to abolish, or make of none effect.� Change can mean to add to, to improve, and to bring out the best in.� This is what Jesus does with the Old Testament law.� He lifts it to a level where it will be compatible with grace, and be a tool for prevention rather than punishment.

With Jesus love became the fulfilling of the law.� The law in the hands of the Pharisees was a tool of legalistic pride.� Their main purpose was to punish violations of the law.� This gave them a sense of pride and self‑righteousness because they did not violate the law.� The main motive toward the sinner was to make them pay.� Jesus says that the law is good in spite of their sadistic application of it, for law is vital to all order and freedom.� However, with Jesus the primary purpose of the law is not to punish and make the sinner pay, but to help the� sinner escape the need to pay.

Love's motive is to help people understand the intention of the law, and that it is designed to be a warning of where we are weak.� It points out where we are most likely to fall in order to prepare us so we can take evasive action to prevent the fall.� The goal of love is deliverance, and not damnation.� The Pharisees gloried in imposing the penalty of the law.� Jesus gloried� in preventing the penalty.� The Pharisees wanted to pounce on the man who got angry and killed his neighbor.� Jesus instructs the man on how to avoid the murder by controlling it at the point of anger, and so preventing the need for judgment.

Love fulfills the law because it helps to achieve the primary purpose of the law which is, not to punish, but to prevent.� Love is into prevention, rescue, deliverance, and escape.� These are all forms of salvation, and that is what Jesus came to do.� He came to save men by His death on the cross, but He also came to teach us how to prevent sin from dominating our lives in this Sermon on the Mount.� He fulfills the law in His own life, and teaches us how to fulfill it in ours.� The choice for the Christian is not the law or the Lord, but the law and the Lord.

Wilhelm Vischer says, for the Christian to abandon the Old Testament is to abandon the Christian faith, for we can only know what it means to be the Christ, or the Messiah, by the Old Testament.� He writes, "The two main words of the Christian confession "Jesus is the Christ"...correspond to the two parts of the Holy Scriptures:� The New and the Old Testament.� The Old Testament tells us what Christ is; the New, who He is."

Christ was the event toward which the whole history of the Old Testament moved.� Without the Old Testament we cannot know what it was that He fulfilled, and, therefore, the Old Testament is a vital part of the Christian faith.� To ignore it is to cease to be Christian, for a Savior not seen as a fulfiller of the Old Testament� promise and hope is not the New Testament Savior.

4. ��THE TRIVIAL AND THE TREMENDOUS� Based on Matt. 5:18‑19

On April 18, 1906 San Francisco went through the worst catastrophe of California history.� An earthquake devastated the city, and a fire broke out that left that once thriving metropolis a heap of smoldering ruins.� The cost in lives and property was beyond calculation.� Yet, in the midst of all this destruction and death people were preoccupied with the trivia of life.� A mortician sat on the front steps of his office and polished coffin handles, like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.� You want to get angry at this man for giving himself to trifles in the midst of such a major disaster, but the question is, if the handles needed polishing, why not do it?� It is a trivial task, but coffins would be needed, and people would demand that they be clean and shiny.� The trivial cannot be evaded or avoided, for it is a perpetual part of life.

It is a crazy world where you cannot get life set up like a furniture store.� All of the chairs in one place, and all of the beds in another, and the lamps and dressers in still another.� And all the nuts and bolts and plastic and packing materials are isolated out of sight so as not to detract from the beauty.� In life all of this stuff is mixed together with the trivial and the tremendous in the same room.� No matter what tragedies people go through, they still have to pay the light bill, dust the end tables, put twisties back on the bread, and dozens of other trivial duties to maintain order.� The trivial is inseparable from the tremendous in every day life.� We sometimes feel guilty about it if we go on doing trivial things when there is a tremendous crisis going on.� You are not always involved in what is a major issue, but you are always involved in what is minor, and so the trivial is a perpetual part of all of our lives.� You get rest from the tremendous, but the trivial is ever with you.� Gamaliel Bradford wrote‑

I think about God, yet I talk of small matters.

Now isn't it odd how my idle tongue chatters,

Of quarrelsome� neighbors,

Fine weather and rain,

Indifferent labors,

Indifferent pain.

Some trivial style,

Fashion shifts with a nod

And yet all the while

I am thinking of God.

What Jesus is saying to us in this paragraph is that we must take the trivial seriously, for how we deal with a value, even the least of God's commands, will determine our status in the kingdom of heaven.� In other words,� the trivial can be tremendous.� Jesus goes so far as to say, not a jot or tittle is insignificant.� Not the smallest letter, or the least stroke of the pen is really trivial.� In our system, not the dotting of an i, or the crossing of a t, is so trivial that God will neglect it, or ignore it in His plan.� Every detail of value, however trivial, will be fulfilled, therefore, nothing of God's law and revelation is so trivial that we can ignore it without loss.� The silly poet wrote‑

One day I sat upon a chair,

Of course the bottom wasn't there;

Nor legs, nor back, but I just sat,

Ignoring little things like that.

But little though they be, you cannot ignore them and prevent a fall, and so it is with the least of God's laws.

Jesus says, if you want to be a nobody in the kingdom, just ignore the trivial, and violate its purpose, and teach others the same, and you've got it.� But if you want to be somebody in the kingdom, you have got to see the trivial can be tremendous.� One of the major problems of Christians all through history is the promoting of their own gifts and activities to the detriment of others.� The hand says to the foot, I have no need of you.� The Christian in evangelism says, the Christian in social service is wasting his time.� What good is a cup of cold water if a man is going to hell?� The social service Christian says, what good is the Gospel to a man who is starving and thirsty?� Christians fight each other saying, I am the greatest.� Jesus says, not so, for they are both least in the kingdom if they teach that the least commandment is unimportant.� The greatest are those who know obedience to all of God's will is important, and they teach and do it, for the trivial cup of cold water, and the tremendous message of the cross are both part of God's plan.

We get an insight here into the way God works.� God is into the big, for He created the whole vast universe, but the fact is, He built all the bigness of creation out of the small.� The whole of everything is built upon the trivial. �The trivial little atom which is so small and insignificant in itself, that I can rub millions of them off my hands and not see any difference, are the basis for all that is tremendous.�� The poet wrote‑

Little drops of water, little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean, and the pleasant land.

Time has many aspects to it, and goes from seconds to minutes; to hours; to days; to weeks; to months; to years; to decades; to generations; to centuries; to millenniums; to eons.� But if you really want to see when time is important, watch the Olympics where victory and defeat depend on 1,000's of a second.�� All that makes it such tremendous competition is in those trivial moments of time.� In daily life we do not waste years, months and weeks, but we waste minutes and hours, and here is where the real battle with time is.� It is not on the upper level, but on the lower level of the trivial, and how we do on this level can make a tremendous difference in life.� The same is true with money.� We don't waste millions and thousands, but we do waste pennies to dollars, and what we do with the trivial always makes a tremendous difference.

God builds your life into what is tremendous by what, in itself, is trivial.� The seemingly insignificant events in life are the stepping stones to what is significant.� Some boys brought an injured shepherd dog to Florence Nightingale.� She agreed to help heal the dog, and as she ministered to it she became infatuated with the idea of ministering to suffering humanity.� Her compassion for a dog led her to become the Angel of the Crimean War, and mother of modern nursing.� The trivial led to the tremendous.� This is the way God has worked in millions of lives.

Most of us would agree, it is a rather trivial choice as to which pair of socks you wear.� President James Garfield had his whole life changed by his choice of socks.� The day he was to leave home for a long trip he injured his foot chopping wood.� The blue dye in the home‑made sock he wore poisoned the wound, and he had to cancel his trip. While he was home recovering, a revival broke out in his community, and he was converted.� He wrote, "New desires and new purposes then took possession of me, and I was determined to seek an education that I might live more usefully for Christ."� His choice of socks led to his choosing the Savior.� The trivial led to the tremendous.

One of the lessons Jesus most often sought to teach us is the lesson on the largeness of the little; the significance of the small; the mightiness of the minute, and the tremendousness of the trivial.� Michaelangelo labored on detail, and someone asked him why he would bother with details that no one would notice.� He replied, "Trifles make for perfection, and perfection is no trifle."� Jesus said that those who are faithful in a very little are faithful also in much.� If� you give a money manager $500.00, and he loses some of it, you will not trust him with $5,000.00.� If he does well with a little, then you will trust him with a lot.

One sheep is a trivial percentage of a flock, but when that one is lost, it becomes a major issue, and the 99 are left in order to focus on finding the one.� The trivial becomes the priority.� The trivial mite of the widow was like the pennies of the little child in the Sunday School offering.� Truly trivial in the over all budget of the church, but Jesus exalted her gift to the level of the greatest gift of all, because it represented her all.� Others gave far more, but it was far from their all.� Because it was her all, her trivial became tremendous.� People often think if they are not gifted it is okay to do nothing, not realizing that if they give what little they have it can lead to tremendous reward.� The one talent man missed the whole point of Jesus, and he did not use his one trivial talent wisely.� He buried it, for it was nothing compared to the others.� He neglected his trivial, and lost the tremendous reward that could have been his by being faithful with his little.� Jesus said, "As ye did it unto the least of these my brethren you did it unto me."� The slightest expression of love can be a tremendous act of love.� Even a cup of cold water given in His name will not go unrewarded.

In this Sermon on the Mount Jesus is concerned with prevention, and the key to prevention is in awareness of the value of the trivial.� Most all tragedies could be prevented by attention to the trivial.� People make their biggest mistakes by thinking that their righteousness is established on the major issues of life.� If they do not murder

and commit adultery, and some other super sin, they are really on top of things.� Jesus says, not so!� He looks at the track record on the level of the trivial.� You can keep all of the major laws of God, and still live a life that has no love for people.� You do not respect them, or trust them as persons made in the image of God.� You degrade their personality by your language.� You call them names, curse them, and treat them like things.� You evaluate people's value by whether they are on your side, your race, your church, your school, etc., rather than their value to God.

The whole point of Jesus is, if Christians are to be the salt of the earth, and the light of the world, they have to break out of the mold of the Pharisees, and start recognizing that the law is fulfilled in love, and love is not just lifting up lofty ideals, but in little daily acts of lifting people, because you care about them as persons, and that care is expressed in the language you use, and in the attitudes you have toward them.� We all fail most right here at the point of not recognizing that the trivial is tremendous.� Like the Pharisees, we are proud if we get through a day and have not murdered, raped, or robbed someone, with no thought of whether or not we said a kind word to encourage, or went out of our way to do some trivial act to let others know we care about them as persons.

We think the great in the kingdom are those doing the wonders of world wide impact.� But the fact is, if they are great, it is not because of these things, but because they light a candle in someone's darkness, and� sprinkle a few grains of salt on someone's tasteless day.� It is the trail of trivial kindnesses that make a person great in the kingdom of God, and that trail is open to all of us to travel daily.� Jesus is saying, if you want to be in the major leagues of righteousness, don't focus on the big stuff, but on the little stuff.�� Alexander Maclaren, the great English preacher, wrote, "It is the very spirit of Christianity that the biggest thing is to regulate the smallest duties of life. Men's lives are made up of two or three big things, and a multitude of little ones, and the greater rule the lesser, and, my friends, unless we have got a religion and a morality that can and will keep the trifles of our lives right there will be nothing right."

Jesus goes on in this great sermon to make clear that all big sins start small.� Murder starts with anger and resentment, and name calling.� Adultery starts with lustful looks.� To prevent the big sins of life you need to deal with the trivial, and keep them under control.� Benjamin Franklin wrote, "For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost."� A man's life� was lost because of neglect of a tiny nail.� Neglect of the trivial in any area of life can lead to tremendous loss.

Let's not assume that Jesus is saying, there is no such thing as the insignificant.� The littleness and pickiness of the legalistic Pharisees was one of His biggest complaints.� It is possible to major on minors, and get so tangled up in the trivial you never get to the tremendous.� In Matt. 23:23‑24, Jesus blasts the Pharisees for this very thing.� "You hypocrites!� You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill, and cummin.� But you have neglected the more important matters of the law‑justice, mercy and faithfulness.� You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.� You blind guides!� You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."� Here is the perversion of what Jesus is teaching.� If the trivial is tremendous, then let us devote our lives to the trivial.� Such was the logic of the Pharisees, and it led to a petty pain of a religion, rather than to the great faith God intended for the world.

The Jews got into hot debates over trivial things.� The law said a man who was murdered on the highway was to have a sacrifice offered for him by the priest in the nearest town.� The issue was, where do you start the measuring to see which town he is closest too?� Rabbi Eliezer said, from the navel, and Rabbi Akiba said, from the nose.� It is true that trifles often have to be cared for, but when men devote their energies to these trifles, they lose sight of what is important.� It is possible for any of us to get caught up in trifles that are just that and no more.� Queen Victoria once said, "As I get older I cannot understand the world.� I cannot comprehend its littleness.� When I look at its frivolities and littlenesses, it seems to me as if people were all a little mad."

The church has often gotten caught up in legalistic littleness that has nothing to do with the least commands of God.� Charles Goff tells of a church that split over which street the new entrance to the church would face.� After the damage was done, the entrance was put on the corner where people could go either way, and the problem was solved. When people blow a minor matter all out of proportion, as if the universe and God's plan depended on their perspective, they have the mind of the Pharisee, and not the mind of Christ.

You can make a mountain out of a molehill, and be guilty of the sin of specializing in the secondary.� It can be a tremendous part of your life to give a cup of cold water to the thirsty, but if you devote your life to giving cold water, and start criticizing other Christians because they do not do it, you become a pain in the neck of the body of Christ.� You are trying to make the trivial tremendous by your own power, and this leads to folly.� It is blowing the issue out of proportion.� It is like the essay on the value of pins.� The author concluded that pins save millions of lives every year by not being swallowed.� All of us are here today because we did not swallow pins this week.� It can be made to sound like the issue of the century, for all of history is affected by whether or not people swallow pins.� It is true, but also truly trivial, for swallowing pins is not a temptation for the vast majority of people.� The point is, it is easy to get caught up in what sounds significant, but which is really trivial.� There is plenty of this, making tragedies of trifles, shooting butterflies with rifles.

As the light of the world, it is the Christians job to help the world see the difference between the truly trivial, and the trivial that can be tremendous.� That which is really trivial is that which does not fulfill anything in God's will for the benefit of man.� On the other hand, that which is least in fulfilling God's will is the trivial that can be tremendous.� Our prayer needs to be‑

O light eternal fall

Into this world of time,

That all things small

May small abide,

And all things great,

Be magnified.

Do not make your life frustrating by trying to do great things for God.� Just do the trivial things that He wants you to do in your daily life, and you will be doing the trivial that leads to the tremendous.

5. ��LEGALISM VERSUS LOVE� Based on Matt. 5:20

We live in a world where competition is a master motive.� When the news reach Russia in 1945 that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Stalin ordered secret scientists to find a way to catch up to the U.S.� Andrei Sakharov was only 24 years old then, but his brilliant mind was fired by the challenge of the competition.� So much so that he helped Russia leap frog ahead by developing the hydrogen bomb months before the United States.

Then when Russia surprised the world with Sputnik, and beat the U. S. into space, American scientists reacted with such a competitive spirit that they quickly thrust the U. S. into the lead, and on to be the first to reach the moon.� Is it really love, or is it competition that makes the world go round?� One of the reasons we look to the Olympics with anticipation is because man is a competitive creature.� Will Durant in The Lessons of History writes, "So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competitive."� Even cooperation, he goes on to say, is a tool of competition.� We cooperate with our group, be it family, club, church, nation, or race, in order to strengthen our group in its competition with others.� It is human nature to want their group to be the best.� Everybody enjoys the opportunity of saying, we are number one, top dog, high man on the totem, king of the hill, and champions.

I have been in enough church league sports to know that one of the things that being saved doesn't change is the competitive spirit.� Christians love competition as much as anyone, and they love to come out on top as often as they can.� Some of the largest Sunday Schools in our country got that way by well organized contests where the competitive spirit was used to motivate� people to come and bring others.� Christians are challenged by competition.� They love to win and set records.� They love to win prizes, and gain honor and status.� All of this carries some risk, of course, for one can get so caught up in competition that winning is everything, and other values are lost.

The story is told of three churches that sat on three of the four corners at one intersection.� It was a hot Sunday morning, and the windows were open in each church.� The Methodist began their service by singing Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?�� The Presbyterians then began to sing No Not One, No Not One.� Finally, the Baptist began with O That Will Be Glory For Me.� It is like the Pastor of a small church which was not growing.� He thanked God that none of the other churches were growing either.� The competitive spirit can be dangerous and divisive as well as delightful.

Dr. Milburn describes how people use to act in the days of river travel.� "If another boat came in sight, you find yourself becoming anxious that she shall not pass you.� If she gains upon your craft, all your fears about the danger of racing are laid aside.� And with your fellow passengers, male and female, you are urging the captain to do his best....Side by side the boats go thundering along, and so completely has the thought of winning taken possession of you, that you would almost as soon be blown up as beaten."� This is the same competitive spirit that leads so many youth to be killed or injured in racing.�� Competition can become so strong that it drives out all fear of danger, and this can be good or bad depending on the situation.

The fact is, there is no escape from� competition.� You might just as well try to eliminate the trivial from life as to try and eliminate� competition.� Jesus, in this great sermon to His followers, uses the language of� competition.� He begins this sermon with the beatitudes which are promises of prizes.� Christian life can be tough, but it is worth it, for there will be great rewards for those who take the risks and endure the rigors of it.� Then Jesus, like a coach before a big game, gives His team a pep talk to motivate them to do their best.� "There is a job to do, and you have got to do it.� The salt has got to be active, and the light has to shine.� The opponents are tough,� and Jesus says,� you can't afford fumbles and penalties.� Don't neglect the least of the rules of the game.� Go out there and be great."� Then in verse 20 He sets the standard for His team.� He says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of heaven."� Paraphrased, He is saying, "Unless you guys play better than your opponents you won't make it to the Super Bowl."

Now you may not like the football analogy, but choose your own sport or arena of� competition to illustrate what Jesus is saying.� You can't escape it.�� He is using competitive language like least, great, and exceed.� Jesus is saying that He wants His followers to be winners, and that means being better than the religious leaders of Israel.�� That is competition, and the whole thrust of this chapter is� competition.� Jesus says, here is the old standard, but you are to do better than that.� The Christian is to set new records, and leave the Old Testament saints in the dust when it comes to fulfilling the law.

The Old Testament saints loved their neighbors, but you are to go one better, and love your enemies.� The challenge of Jesus to Judaism is matched by another challenge by the Gentile world at the close of this chapter.� Jesus says, if you love those who love you, that is no better than what tax collectors can do, and even Gentiles can't compete on that low level of love.� Jesus says, the Christian is to do more, and rise above Judaism and the natural religions of the world.� It is, an anything you can do I can do better challenge, that the Christian is to rise to.

Now its not too much of a threat to Christians to compete with tax collectors and pagans.� It seems like this is a fairly easy challenge, but when Jesus says we are to exceed the Pharisees, and be better than them, and the Scribes, in righteousness, it is a scary challenge, because they are real pros and formidable foes.� The more you know of these guys the Christian team has to beat, the more you realize the story of David and Goliath is a never ending conflict.� Jesus is asking amateurs to be superior to the pros, and this sounds like more than any coach ought to expect. Competition can be demoralizing when the� non‑gifted are pitted against the gifted. Most Christian would feel inadequate compared with the Scribes and Pharisees.

One of Rossini's pupils composed a funeral march commemorating the death of Lundwig von Beethoven.� He took it to his master who listened attentively to the uninspired work played falteringly by the amateur.� He said, "The circumstances would have been more favorable if you had died, and Beethoven had composed the march."� The amateur can't be expected to compete with the pro.� Yet, Jesus does not just expect Christian to be in the race with the Scribes and Pharisees, He expects Christians to beat them.� In fact, He says you don't even qualify to enter the race unless you can beat them.� This is a very discouraging demand if we think Jesus is saying that we have to beat them at their own game.� This would be like expecting David to beat Goliath in Saul's armor.� It wouldn't work.� There is no way Christians could be more righteous than the Scribes and Pharisees on the level of what they called righteousness.� They obeyed more rules in a day than most Christians would in a year.

When Jesus says we must exceed them He is talking about a totally different quality of righteousness where even the amateur can surpass the pro.� It is not only possible, it is easy when we understand the difference between their righteousness and Christian righteousness.�� Not understanding this distinction could lead you to feel like the two cows standing in the field when a milk truck came down the road.� On the side of the truck it said, MILK‑PASTURIZED AND HOMOGENIZED.� The one cow looked at the other and said, "It's not use, we just can't compete with them trucks."

We know there is a radical distinction between the cows and the truck.� One is a creator of milk, and the other is only a carrier.� So it is with the righteousness that the Christian is to produce that exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees.� Christian righteousness is to fulfill the law, and, thus, the purpose of the creator of the law.� The competition does not do that.� They are only carriers of the law and tradition.� C. S. Lewis wrote, "Nothing gives one a more spuriously good conscience than keeping rules, even if there has been a total absence of all real charity and faith."� To better grasp this distinction we need to study the contrast between the two kinds of righteousness.� We need to grasp the strategy of our opponents if we expect to counter it with a superior strategy.� So let's examine first‑

I.� THE OPPOSITION GAME PLAN.

Their strategy is really quite simple.� It is the oldest and most popular strategy of history.� It is the religion of the rule book, also known as legalism.� All you have to do to be righteous is to keep the rules.� If you don't break any rules you can't suffer any penalties, and so you are bound to be a winner.� This is appealing to human nature.� It leads to a sense of security.� You know where you are at, and you are in control of your own destiny it seems, and once you get into the rut, life is predictable and carefree.� Legalism may get technical, but it is always cut and dried.� You always know what is right, for everything is regulated by the rules.� You don't have to bother with all the complexity of motives, for all that matters are deeds.

If you don't kill, that is all that matters.� The fact that you are full of hatred and resentment toward another is no issue, for as long as you keep the law by not killing you are righteous.� No matter how corrupt you are in your inner life, as long as you do not externally violate the rules you are alright.� Legalistic righteousness is all a matter of external conduct.� It has nothing to do with the inner life.�� This makes religion easy, for it means you don't have to be like God at all.� You can harbor all kinds of negative attitudes of prejudice, envy, and bitterness of all sorts, and yet be a religious leader.� All you have to do is keep the rules.

The beauty of it to human nature is that you don't have to change the inner man.� All you have to do is conform to external conduct that is in harmony with the rule book.� This is religion made easy, and it has been popular all though history.� Christianity has had plenty of this as well.� The most evil of men can be religious leaders with this strategy.� You can be a leader in the Mafia, and still be a good Catholic at the same time.� You can be a corrupt politician and still be a good Baptist in good standing at the same time.� All that matters is that you obey the rules of the game in public.� What you do when you are not playing at religion is your own business.� Then you can do what your real inner nature compels you to do. As long as you keep the rules when you are being religious you are acceptable. No sinner could ask for a better religion than one of legalistic righteousness.

You don't have to care about God, people, or anything but yourself.� You can have your cake and eat it too.� The Scribes and the Pharisees were the worst hypocrites that ever lived, but they were also the world's champion ruler keepers.� What other strategy but legalism could make this possible.� It is perfect for people who want to be super religious, but who don't want to be bothered with God's will and purpose in history.

Jesus came to blast the ship of legalism out of the water, but it persists in staying afloat, and competing for men's loyalty.� The spirit of legalism has been a part of Christian history.� People are led to believe they are super Christians because they keep all kinds of rules.� They may be obnoxious people full of bitterness and prejudice, and with little or no love, but they are champion rule keepers, and so are convinced that this is what Christianity is all about.� The problem with legalism is it locks one into a narrow rut, and it can feel so comfortable that one cannot change and get out of the rut.

Jewish Christians who were raised up under legalism had a hard time adjusting to their liberty in Christ.� They had a tendency to slip back into the security of legalism.� The Pharisees were so locked in that they could not see the value of what Jesus was doing in healing on the Sabbath.� Jesus put the value of the person above the law, and they refused to change, but would stick to their game plan no matter what.� It didn't matter who got hurt, even if it was God Himself, for they would stick to their game plan.� Jesus does not expect us to compete on that level and be better legalists than they were.� He has a totally different game plan which we want to look at.

II.� THE WINNING GAME PLAN.

In contrast to the righteousness based on legalism, Jesus promotes a righteousness based on love.� It is better than the rule book religion, not because it forsakes the rules, but because it fulfills the rules.� Legalism stops short of God's value system, and it makes precepts the highest value.� Love goes beyond this to make persons the highest value.� The legalist says that the law must be obeyed regardless of who gets hurt.� What really matters is the law and not people.�� You do what has to be done, and if people have to suffer its worth it, because this is the only way to win.

William Faulkner said, "If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies."� This is the value system of the legalist.� The Scribes and Pharisees did not care about old ladies, or sick ladies, or anybody.� Jesus healed a number of them on the Sabbath, and they hated Him for it.� It was great for the people healed, and there was much rejoicing, but Jesus was not following the rule book.�� Jesus loved people, and they loved the rule book.� This is the main distinction between their righteousness and the winning righteousness Jesus expects Christians to have. This is what exceeds their righteousness, for it is based on a superior value system.

Jesus did not come to abolish the rule book, but to fulfill it, and by that He meant that He came to rescue it from the ridiculous absurdity to which the Scribes and Pharisees had reduced it.� Jesus came to restore the law to the level of love where its original intent could be accomplished by aiding people to love God and their neighbor more effectively.� The law is not fulfilled just because you don't kill a man.� It is only fulfilled when you love and respect him as one made in the image of God, and as one who is loved of God the same as you are. Fulfilling the law and love are one and the same.

What this means is, God is not a legalistic person who sits in heaven with a celestial calculator keeping track of how many times a law is obeyed.� God does not get his kicks out of statistics saying this is a good day for commandment number 6, for two billion people kept this one today, but� number 4 is down, for only 480 million kept that one.� God is not infatuated with the law.� God so loved the world means that He loves the people of the world.� The purpose of the law is for man's benefit, and not for God's statistical tables.� What matters to God is that man's evil nature be controlled, and that he be restored to the image of God where love is the dominate motive in his life.

The righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees is the righteousness of Christ, which we partake of when we surrender to Christ as Lord.� When Jesus comes in, self‑righteousness goes out, and that is what conversion is all about.� You cannot be a Christian and enter the kingdom of heaven with a law dominated righteousness.� The only kind of righteousness acceptable in the kingdom of God is the righteousness of Christ, which is love righteousness.� This means that what is right is what is loving and best for persons.

How is this better than legalistic righteousness?� Just look at the life of Jesus. He is the model of His message.� When He encountered a need He let love, and not the law, determine His response.� The law said do not work on the Sabbath, but when Jesus saw a need crying out for action, He responded in love and compassion, and He healed on the Sabbath.� He was hated by the ruler keepers, for they said that keeping the rules is more important than helping the people.� Love says just the opposite.� You help the people, and let the law wait.

But isn't this anti‑law?� Does it not set a dangerous precedent?� Not at all.� Love is not thoughtless.� Love asks, what is the purpose of the law?� The answer is, that man might be benefited.� God's intention in giving the Sabbath is that man might not be a slave to materialism.� God demanded that men leave their labor and learn to rest and relax.� They are to develop the higher values of life in the mental and spiritual realm.� God's whole motive in the law was to lift people to a higher spiritual level.� This being the case, love does not violate the law by doing anything that lifts and blesses man, for that is its very purpose.� The letter of the law may be broken, but it is broken for the sake of fulfilling its intent.� If that is the case, then let it be broken, for the goal is not to keep a law, but to be a blessing to people.

Those who follow legalistic righteousness are bound by the law, for the law is the absolute.� Those who follow loving righteousness are free to make decisions about the law, for the law is not the absolute, but persons are.� There is flexibility in love to chose that which is best for the persons.� Jesus says that this is the winning game plan.� This is the value system that makes the Christian superior to the best of the Scribes and Pharisees.� Jesus goes on in this sermon to give specific ways in which loving righteousness is superior to the legalistic righteousness.� We will be looking at these in coming weeks.� For now, let me share with you some examples of how we need to struggle to follow the winning game plan, and avoid the losing one of legalistic righteousness.

When I became a Pastor in rural South Dakota one of the first things I observed was that farmers do not obey the law the same way as city people do. Stop signs in the country do not possess the same authority that they do in the city.� I was shocked as I watched Christian farmers go through stop signs like they were not there.� They gave them about as little thought as they gave to their guardian angel.� I was a law abiding citizen, however, and legalistically stopped at� every stop sign.� I even stopped at the one a mile from the church where you could see if anyone was coming for at least half a mile in either direction.� I must admit I felt sort of strange stopping when I knew there was no one in sight, but the law is the law.� When it came to stop signs I was a confirmed legalist.

I have to confess I felt somewhat superior to those Christians who felt free to not stop.� It took time for me to see from their perspective.� I never did feel free to ignore a stop sign, but I did learn to slow down and proceed with caution without stopping.� Did those Christians make me a law breaker by their influence?� No they didn't.� They just help me see on a trivial level how easy it is to be legalistic.� The purpose of the stop sign in the country is to prevent accidents by giving one roadway the right of way over another.� Naturally, if a car is coming, everyone stops to let them have that right of way.� That is the law.� But if nobody is coming you can safely ignore the stop sign, and the law is still fulfilled.

This may sound like rationalizing and situation ethics, and that is exactly what it is, for that is what makes Christian ethics different from legalistic ethics. It is the freedom to think and act in a loving way depending on the changing situations.� The city drivers have found a way to break the old law too so as to be more loving to drivers.� The rule for many years was always to stop for red, and do not go until it is green.� But then the law was changed so that it all depended on the situation.� If you were at a red light waiting to turn right you could now proceed through the red light if there was no on coming traffic.� People had to go through a lot of guilt feelings to get over going through a red light.� I was already prepared by having learned to go through stop signs in the country.

This change in the law was anti‑legalistic, and in favor of love, for it permits greater freedom of choice, and prevents unnecessary waste of time that serves no useful purpose.� People do abuse this freedom, and there are risks that go with it as in all freedom, but unless studies show that the risks outweigh the value, this freedom to go through red lights under certain conditions will remain a part of our lives.�� The purpose of lights and stop signs is not to get people stopped who desire to get somewhere.� The purpose is to protect and keep people moving toward their goal as safe and fast as possible.� Since that is the purpose, you can then fulfill the purpose of the light by violating its basic meaning which is to stop. That is what red has always meant in a traffic light.� But now we violate that meaning and break it, but do so in order to fulfill the purpose of it.

This should help us see what Jesus was doing with the Old Testament law.� He was fine tuning it, and making it more useful to the end for which it was given, which was to lift man to a higher level of love for God and man.� All of God's rules are for man's good, and they are to be for man's blessings and not to be burdens.� Jesus calls us to rise above mere legalism, and to get in on the purpose of God which is to love and to lift.

Paul was once locked into legalistic righteousness.� He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees.� Jesus set Paul free from that prison, and Paul became a great champion of the loving righteousness of Christ.� He went on to save Christianity from the Judaisers.� Had the Judaisers won the battle Christianity would have been a mere rerun of Judaism.� They said every Christian must be circumcised according to the law of Moses, and they tried to coerce the Gentiles to conform to this conviction.� Paul fought hard against this legalism, and he won the battle, and set Christians free from bondage to the law, which was no longer relevant to those who were made righteous in Christ.

We are in a world of great religious competition.� We will all tend to follow one of these two strategies:� The legalistic or the loving, the rule book power, or relationship power. Tom Garrett and his family were held prisoners by two prison escapees for 24 hours. A few days later he went to pick up his unemployment check and he was denied. The law clearly states an unemployed worker must be available for work every day of a normal work week. He was not available the day he was held captive and so did not qualify. This is the folly of legalism which sees the law as the ultimate rather than persons.� If you want to be a winner, keep checking your Christian life to see which strategy you follow.� The petition in the Lord's Prayer, thy kingdom come, is only answered in the lives of Christians who choose love over legalism.� The dynamics of the distinction between the two kinds of righteousness is seen in the effects on the world of people they touch.� One drags people down, and is a burden that makes life hard.� The other gives life a lift, and adds beauty to life.� Is it legalism or love that motivates your life?

6.� �RESPECT VERSUS CONTEMPT� Based on Matt. 5:21‑26

Alexander the Great conquered the world, but anger conquered him, and turned� him into a murderer.� Like so many of the murders of history, it was not intended or designed.� It happened because men do not understand that anger is the beginning of murder.� Clitus, his best friend, was teasing Alexander at a banquet.� Both of them were filling up with wine, and they began to lose control.� Clitus became quite nasty in his remarks, and Alexander lost his temper, and he hit him with his fist.� His officers restrained him, and led him out of the banquet hall.� Clitus, in anger, followed and continued to taunt Alexander.� Quick as a flash, Alexander snatched a spear from one of his guards and hurled it at his friend, and killed him.

Remorse followed his fury, and he drew out the spear, and would have fallen on it in grief had his officers not prevented it.� Clitus had been his friend from childhood.� He did not want him dead.� All that night and for several days Alexander lay in remorse piteously calling for Clitus.� It was an awful price to pay to indulge in anger.

Anger is no tame pet you can let roam free.�� It is a wild beast, and it is a killer.� Most murders happen within families because this is where anger is permitted to roam freely.� People kill their friends and relatives, not because they want to, but because they underestimate the danger of anger.� People think that because their anger is over in a minute or so, they are in control, but that is all it takes to throw a spear, or pull a trigger.

This is why Jesus tells us that thou shalt not murder is not enough.� It is a good law, for it is a law of God, but He came to refine the law and improve it, and make it more effective.� Therefore, He says that the way to prevent murder is to recognize where it begins, and to deal with the seed which is anger.� The rest of this Sermon on the Mount is an elaboration of how Christian righteousness is to exceed the legalistic righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees.� From the emphasis of Jesus on bad human relations we can assume that Jesus is saying to us, God considers man's inhumanity to man as one of the world's greatest problems.

We like to think, like the Pharisee, that if we get right with God, and worship Him properly with all the right rituals, it doesn't much matter how we relate to people.� It is at this very point that religion can be the greatest enemy of Christ and true godliness.� Christians are not immune to this perversion anymore than were the Pharisees.� They actually got so caught up in their legalistic religion that they developed a contempt for man.� Man in his sinful nature was forever� violating the law of God, and so they hated and despised man, and they lost the whole purpose of God in trying to save man.� Anger, hostility, and contempt dominated their feelings, in contrast to the love for man that Jesus brought into the world to fulfill the law.

I had an experience as a teenager that came back to me as I studied these verses.� It revealed to me how we can be tempted to follow the same path as the Pharisees.� I was working at a theater, and was outside putting up plastic letters announcing the next attraction.� The theater was right next to the sports bowl which was a hang out for youth.� The police stopped and grabbed a couple of guys and put them up against the store front and frisked them.� One got smart and got a slap across the head.� I was an innocent bystander, but I got angry at what I saw.� I made some smart remark.� One of the cops came over and grabbed me by the arm, twisted it behind me, and marched me to his car.� All I remember is that I started shouting, "I am a Christian!"� It must have made quite an impression because he let me go.� As I look back on it I can see that my thinking was that because I was a Christian he had no right to touch me for my bad attitude.� I was right with God, and, therefore, my anger at men was not to be an issue.�� All that mattered is that I loved God.

This kind of thinking is what makes religion so hateful to people with a humanitarian heart.� Religious people often try to combine love of God with hate of man, and are really convinced it can be a workable plan.� Love God with all your heart, and hate your neighbor.� This kind of religion has been the curse of human history, and will be until the end of time.� Jesus in this Sermon attacks this kind of religion, and declares it unfit for the kingdom of God.� It sounds good because it magnifies God and obedience to His law, but it is really evil because it forsakes the purpose of God, which is to save man, and not condemn him.� God is not content with you for not killing men.� He is not satisfied until you love men as He does, and want to see them saved.

Jesus deals with human relationships as the key to being truly righteous.� According to this Sermon on the Mount man's biggest problem is not, how can I worship God properly, but how can I love my neighbor properly?� The first issue that we are focusing on is really basic to our developing a Christian value system in our thinking about man.� The overall issue here goes far beyond the law, and whether or not we ever murder anyone.� The issue is respect versus contempt.� One or the other of these attitudes will dominate our life, and which one it is will determine whether or not we are capable of being salt and light.

The point is, you do not have to be Christlike to obey rules.� The Pharisees proved this.� They did not murder, commit adultery, and all kinds of negative things.� They kept the law, but they did not love and respect people.� The goal of God is not to get people to conform to rules like a scientist training mice in a lab.� The goal is to get people to relate to others in love, and be channels of His Spirit in the world.� This means that not murdering people is just not enough to fulfill the law and the purpose of God.� His purpose can only be fulfilled when you develop an attitude of respect and love for persons.� If you kept everyone of God's laws, but did not love people, you would not have a righteousness fit for the kingdom of God.

In order to achieve this noble goal you have to identify and destroy three enemies that will block your path, and they are anger, hatred, and contempt.� All three of these negatives seem so much alike that they are obviously in the same family, but Jesus implies that each brother is meaner than the other, and so they are dealt with as representing different degrees of evil and judgment.� We have heard of the James brothers and the Dolton brothers, but here are the hostility brothers who, once they take over the town of your life, make you a murderer.� Even if you don't kill anyone, Jesus says you violate the whole purpose of God in giving the law, and so for all practical purposes, as far as the kingdom of God goes, you are in the same category with the murderer.� Like a sheriff out to protect the town from this trio of cut throats, we need to examine their profile and learn to identify them so we can run them out of town before they can set up shop in our territory.� We can imagine three wanted posters in the post office with three ugly pictures of these enemies of the soul, and descriptions of their dastardly deeds.

The first ugly mug is‑

I.� AWFUL ANGER.

He is just as deadly as his two brothers, Hideous Hatred and Callous Contempt, but he has some redeeming values. �We can't deal with the values here because Jesus is looking only at the negative of anger in this context.� It is hostility toward another, not because they are terrible and worthy of wrath, but because you are in a rotten mood, and evil thoughts control your emotions.� The best we can say for anger here is that it is the mildest form of murder in the heart, and, therefore, receives the least judgment.� It is mild murder in the sense that it leaves the other person alive, but it still makes you a murderer at heart.

Anger toward another is a beginning sign that you are on the borderline of homicide.� When you spot anger creeping into your town you know trouble is brewing, and its time to take action before things come to a boil.� Anger is an enemy of the kingdom of God because as long as anger controls the heart the heart cannot fulfill the purpose of God, which is to be a channel of love.� When you are angry with a person you are not open to the spirit of God, and so the chances of you being a channel of love and respect are very slim.� More than likely you will subtract from others self‑esteem, and degrade their dignity, and reduce the respect they have a right to receive as persons made in the image of God.

Anger blinds us to values, and that is why it is a killer.� Alexander killed is best friend because anger covered over all the good he knew of his friend, and it made the present evil of his nature so blown out of proportion that was all he could see.� Anger makes murder so easy because by the time it is boiling all that is visible to the angry man or woman is a picture of evil that ought to be mashed.� It is the elder brother wishing that little louse of a brother of his would have been killed in the far country, and gotten what he deserved.� This was the attitude of the Pharisees toward the sinners Jesus was saving.� The people who broke the laws that they were so laboriously keeping were being saved, and being invited to banquets where they were happy, and they were being set free from their bondage by Christ's forgiveness.

The Pharisees were angry at the love and mercy of Christ, for it seemed so wrong to them, and so they murdered Jesus, convinced that they were doing what was right.� Anger can so distort one's perspective that they can do the greatest evils and feel they serve God in doing so.� Paul was convinced his anger was good and righteous as he went from town to town killing and imprisoning Christians.� Jonah was even convinced he had a right to be angry at God, for God promised to destroy the Ninevites, and then, just because they repented, God showed mercy and ruined the whole thing.� Had he the power he would have murdered the whole city and felt more righteous than God.

James and John, the sons of thunder, would have murdered the people of Samaria by calling down fire from heaven, but Jesus rebuked them and prevented such folly.� Peter almost murdered Malchus with the sword, but Jesus prevented that and healed the ear that was cut off.� The point is, anger is so close to being a force for good that it is hard to recognize when it is being a force for evil.� The result is, it is a very subtle enemy of the soul, and can have us serving the kingdom of darkness before we even realize we have been deceived.

This means that when dealing with anger you can't afford to shoot first and ask questions later.� It might turn out to be justifiable homicide, but Jesus warns that the chances are more likely it will be murder.� Anger has its place, and can be a valid virtue, but Jesus says, look at the company it keeps.� If it hangs around with hatred and contempt, you can be sure your anger is an outlaw, and it will lead you out of the will of God.

So what do I do if I put my anger in the lineup and discover it really is the criminal type?� Jesus says, if that is the case, you make choices that rid you of the varmint.� You run him out of town.� In verses 23‑24 Jesus gives an example of the choice you make.� If you have a bad relationship with a brother, you don't let it burn and boil while you devote yourself to the higher values of life, like worship of God, and offering of gifts.� This sounds very spiritual, but it is escapism.� You are trying to use God to run from God.� The most pleasing thing you can do for God is to forget your worship for a while, and go and deal with your anger on the human level.� Be reconciled with your brother.� Get the anger out of your system whatever it takes, be it apology, restitution, crying, or whatever helps you get rid of it before it does damage.

Jesus is saying, awful anger can only ruin your life to the degree that you let him.� He is a tough hombre, to be sure, but Jesus says every man has in the city of his soul a sheriff that can control this outlaw, and that is the will.� We like to pretend that we are at the mercy of our anger because that lets us off the hook. I just blew up, and I can't help it.� How can we blame anybody for what they can't help?� It 's like blaming them for having blue eyes or brown hair.� It sounds like a good defense, but the judge don't buy it.

Jesus says if you let anger take over, you are subject to the same judgment as the murderer.� If you come to the point that you are at the mercy of anger and cannot control it, it is because you chose to invite it into your life.� You let this outlaw set up his saloon and gambling casino.� You permit him to grow and become a major influence in the community of your soul, and then when a showdown comes you blame awful anger for the bloodshed.� Jesus says, not so.

You will be held accountable for letting this criminal element take over.

It is the choices we make all along that determine whether we follow the kingdom of light or the kingdom of darkness, and not just what we do in a crisis. You are not a good guy right up to the point when you pull the trigger.� That is the folly of legalism, for it says, as long as you haven't murdered anyone you are still on God's side.� In reality, you have permitted awful anger to gain such power that you are like a sheriff who protects an outlaw element rather than the citizens.� You are already on the side of darkness whether you ever pull the trigger or not.� It is not just murder that is evil.� It is all that leads up to murder that is evil, and so even if you never get there, you are still on the road that leads there, and so you are traveling in the kingdom of darkness.

Legalism only looks at the destination, but love looks at the journey, and recognizes all sin goes through a process.� Love spots the process at the beginning so it can prevent the process from ever developing to the point of sin.� Jesus does not say it is easy, but He says, when anger is in your life you are a potential murderer, and you have an obligation to make choices that rid your life of that risk.� Dad can be angry at mom and really be chewing her out, but when the phone rings he does not pick it up and continue in his anger by saying "hello you knucklehead."� He very politely says "hello" and deals with the caller on a level of respect.� It is matter of choice.

When we cease to respect another life we no longer choose to control anger, and we become potential killers, and we cease to be channels of love.� A mother can be blowing her stack at her children when the doorbell rings, and it�s the friendly Avon lady.� Mt. Vesuvius immediately ceases to erupt. She smiles, and invites her in.� They have a lovely visit.� By her will she chooses to stop being angry.� She chooses instead to be kind and friendly.� She didn't need a psychiatrist or therapist. All she needed was a strong enough motivation to chose a different emotion to express.� We need to be motivated to chase awful anger out of the town of our life.� The next ugly mug is‑

II.� HIDEOUS HATRED.

The second brother in the terrible trinity of hostility is just a little worse than awful anger.� Anger is an inner attitude, and it may remain quiet and unseen, but hatred comes out into the open and expresses hostility in name calling.� Here is one sin most of us can't feel comfortable about, for it is not likely any of us have ever called another Raca.� As a matter of fact, with all of the swearing so common in our culture, I have never heard anyone call anyone else Raca.� It sounds like we have found a sin that has become extinct.� Not so!� A number of English words convey its meaning.� If you have ever referred to another as an empty headed brainless idiot, or a stupid numskull of a blockhead, you have committed this sin.

Now, of course, these terms are used in fun also, and not as serious expressions of how you feel.� Jesus is dealing here with the spirit of murder, and this is referring to those who call others this name in bitter hatred.� They mean by this that they judge the person to be worthless, and of no value.� Insults are a part of our culture.� Most of the humor in sitcoms would be gone without insults.� They seem so funny as we watch and hear.� One woman asked another woman whose husband was being so loud at a party, "What does your husband want to be when he grows up?"� That can be innocent fun, but if you really call a man a brainless idiot before his friends, that can kill his spirit and injure his soul, and you are guilty of the spirit of murder.� Pharisees can rip a man to ribbons, and destroy his reputation, and break his heart with lies and slander, but they feel okay because they do not kill him.� This is the kind of respectable sinner Jesus came to judge by this sermon.

Such a spirit eliminates love, for you cannot respect and love what you despise as worthless.� This attitude toward a man who is made in the image of God is a spirit equal to murder.� The law forbids you to kill a man, but Jesus goes beyond that, and He forbids you to hate a man, for if you never hate him, you will never kill him.� Prevent hatred and you prevent murder, and thereby you fulfill the law as God intended.

Hideous hatred, even if he does not murder anyone, is still a product of darkness, for he despises the goal of God to love and redeem man.� Hatred says he is not worth redeeming, and so as far as the kingdom of God goes he must be brought to judgment.� Anger goes before the local court, but hatred has to go before the Sanhedrin, the supreme court, for he is a more serious offender of the spirit of the law.

Hatred can feel very self‑righteous because it keeps the letter of the law, and it does not murder anyone.� The Pharisees hated the Romans, and they hated the sinners, and the hated Jesus, and yet they felt they were God's representatives on earth because they kept the letter of the law.� Jesus is saying if you keep the letter but forsake the spirit, you do not represent God, or the kingdom of God.� Only those who have respect for the dignity and worth of all men, even though they disagree with you, represent the kingdom of God.� This is the righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees.

The legalistic Pharisees said, it is only if you kill that you are liable to judgment.� Jesus says, if you hate you are already in the same category with the murderer. Even if you don't murder, you are guilty of forsaking the purpose of God.� Hideous hatred is all the more hideous because he pretends to represent God, when in fact, he represents the enemy of God.� There is no salt and no light in hatred.

Look at the great hatred of the Jews and Arabs.� Both are convinced they represent God, but it is a great deception.� Hatred is their king, and they murder each other every chance they get.� The whole world is kept under tension by their hatred.� Both reject the love of Christ, and they are condemned to dwell under the reign of hideous hatred.� Either you run this bad dude out of your town, or your town will no longer be included on God's map.� The third mug we want to look at is‑

III. CALLOUS CONTEMPT.

Here is the blackest villain of them all, and Jesus says he is in danger of hell fire.� This sounds a little radical to us, for fool does not seem to be that terrible a term to us.� Fool is a frequent term in the book of Proverbs and we hear it all the time in our culture.� It makes us wonder if Jesus is being fair, and making the punishment fit the crime.� It is not nice to insult people, but hell fire for this seems out of line with justice.� It is like capital punishment for putting a mustache on a public picture of a movie star, or life imprisonment for suggesting that some politician made a stupid decision.

This whole context is a mystery if we do not get below the surface.� On the face of it, it makes Jesus look like a hanging judge who has no concept of the value of life.� It seems the opposite of loving which is the very thing that Jesus is most anxious to convey.� If everyone who calls someone else a fool is in danger of hell fire than hell is going to be fuller than most ever dreamed, and the plan of God will be pretty much of a dud program.�� Obviously we need to get an understanding of this that makes good sense, and that fits the whole value system of Jesus.

First of all, we need to understand the word hell.� It is a term that refers to the valley of Hinnom, which was the garbage dump and incinerator for the city of Jerusalem.� The fire burned there perpetually, and this is where the corpse of a criminal who died by capital punishment was thrown.� This became the picture of the ultimate destiny of the lost sinner.� It was the worse possible destiny for the Jew.� Nothing could be more degrading then to be thrown like a worthless rag into the fire of Hinnom.� What this means is that Jesus is giving us an example of reaping what is sown.� If you treat people like garbage, you will be treated likewise.� If� you degrade people, and talk to them with contempt, as if they were refuse, that will be how� you are treated.� You will be like refuse thrown into the garbage dump.� If you push others into the sewer, you will be flushed down the sewer yourself.� You will sink to the level on which you treat others.� You see, the punishment does fit the crime, just like a glove.

Jesus is implying that the man with this callous contempt will more than likely follow through with his value system and murder someone.� If their life is as worthless as garbage, why not get rid of it?� Hitler was no mere murderer.� A murderer is often motivated by rage, but Hitler set about very methodically to exterminate the Jews.� It was a cold and callous contempt for human life that treated man as less than an animal.� Hitler treated man like garbage, and that is the way history treats him.

Jesus is saying that the man who thinks and acts on this level will be judged on this level, and will be tossed like a bag of garbage into the fires of Hinnom.� This is not the judgment for saying someone is a fool.� This is where the saying that� someone is fool leads to because it makes you a potential murderer if you really feel that level of contempt for another human being.� The lower your feelings fall toward another, the more likely becomes the act of murder.� When you reach the level of contempt, you are, for all practical purposes, a murderer.� The only things that saves you at this level is lack of opportunity or means.� If you had these, you would become a killer.

The level of your love, or lack of it, determines the level of mercy you receive, or lack of it.� If I hold my finger on a hot stove for one tenth of a second, I just get a burn I can live with.� If I hold it there for a second I will suffer deep pain.� If I hold it there longer, I will have severe consequences, even to the point of losing the finger.� The degree of my folly will determine the degree of the consequences.�� That is why Jesus portrays this descending scale where the lowest level, the level of contempt, leads to the worst possible punishment.� The eternal hell enters the picture too, for anyone so devoid of love that they have only contempt for human life cannot be saved.� They can repent and be changed, but if they die in that state of contempt, they are lost.� That is what Jesus is trying to convey here:� The terrible danger and destiny of those who do not become channels of love.

The legalist deceives himself.� He thinks he can keep the letter of the law and please God.� Not so!� If� you do not fulfill the spirit of the law and love people as God does you do not please God at all.� I John 4:20 puts it clearly, "If anyone says I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar.� For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen."� There is no separation of loving God and loving man.� They are one, and if you do not love both, you love neither.� Legalistic righteousness tries to get around this, but loving righteousness accepts this reality, and that is why it alone represents the kingdom of God.

All that is hateful and unloving is to some degree evil.� Jesus says we need to be aware of this, and deal with it in its early stages, and so prevent all the serious consequences of thinking that negative attitudes are alright as long as you don't murder anyone.� It is not alright.� It is awful, hideous, and callous.� The wise and loving Christian deals with the roots and not just the branches; the motives and not just the actions; the causes and not just the effects.� This is Jesus' head start program.� You catch sin in its early stages and prevent it from becoming active. Why do you do this?� Because, if you love Jesus, and His Spirit dwells in you, you live a life where respect for others� has won out over contempt for others in this heavy weight fight of respect versus contempt.

7. ��THE NOW LIFE� Based on Matt. 5:21‑26

Marguerite Higgins, Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting, stood by a marine during the Korean War.� It was 42 below zero, and the soldier was weary and covered with frozen mud.� She asked him, " If I were God and could grant you anything you wished, what would you most like?"� He stood motionless for a moment and then raised his head and replied, "Give me tomorrow."� In a fear‑filled world of uncertainty where there is a big question mark about whether or not man has the sanity to prevent a nuclear holocaust, this is a common choice‑give me tomorrow.

On the other hand, Peter Bagdanovich, the well‑known director of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, was asked why he makes all his movies of the past.� He replied,� "I like any time better than now.� I just don't like what is happening today.� The music bores me, the cars are ugly, the people are dull.� So I retreat to the past."� In a decaying world where so much of what was once good is being lost by the modern mania for the new at any cost, this is the choice of millions‑give me yesterday.

Each of us can identify with both choices, for they are the only two directions anybody can go to escape today.� Retreat to the past, or march forward into the future.� Each choice has its values that can be defended, but Jesus in the Sermon On The Mount rejects them both.� Instead, Jesus chooses to third alternative, the one the other two are trying avoid. He says, don't escape to yesterday or tomorrow, but stand fast, and live for today.� Now is where its at.

The Lord's Prayer in chapter 6 is a now prayer.� Give us this day our daily bread.� All of its petitions are for now.� Hallowed be your name‑now.� Thy kingdom come now.� Thy will be done on earth‑now.� Forgive us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, not eventually, but now, today.� The Christian life is a now life.� Jesus began this sermon with the beatitudes, and you will notice they are not past or future, they are present.� Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful, etc.� All of them deal with the now and not the some day.� Not, blessed will be, but blessed are.� The Christian life is to be a blessed life now.

The whole emphasis in this sermon on prevention is based on the now principle.� You do not wait until your anger becomes murderous hatred to deal with it.� You control it when it is developing right now.� You don't wait until lust is boiling passion to deal with it.� It is not, get them while they are hot when it comes to emotions, but get them while there warm, or even cool.� You don't give the germs of evil a chance to develop and create infection, but you go after them now.� Catch the disease in its early stages, and stop it before it progresses.� Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country, and their souls as well.� Now is always the best time when it comes to prevention.� The best time to do anything is between yesterday and tomorrow.

In this passage Jesus gives some specific examples of how the now principle is applied. The gist of them is this:� Little problems don't tend to fade away, but tend to grow and become bigger, and so deal with them now when they are small, and not later.� If you have a bad relationship developing with someone, you don't wait until resentment has time to fester and make healing hard.� You don't say after I worship God on Sunday, I'll try to patch it up on Monday.� That is the give me tomorrow choice, and Jesus says don't make that choice.� Drop what� you were doing, and settle the matter today.� Now is always the best time to do what prevents evil from building a stronger wall.� "Don't let the sun go down upon your wrath."� Why not?� Because you are choosing procrastination as a method of dealing with sin, and it is not a wise choice.� Deal with your anger today, and prevent all of the sorrow it can produce when you let it go another day.

In verse 25 Jesus says, don't wait until� you get to court to settle a conflict.� This is obviously a case where the accused knows he is guilty.� Do the right thing now says Jesus. Quickly agree with your accuser, and settle the issue out of court.� If you procrastinate and let the thing drag on into tomorrow, you will suffer the consequences tomorrow.� Get your punishment over today by settling the issue today.� This is the only wise choice.� There are endless court cases that waste years and millions of dollars, and magnify the miseries of everybody involved, that could have been settled in an hour if people were wise enough to choose the now way.

The whole point of Jesus in the radical statements of verses 29 and 30 about gouging out your eye, and cutting off your hand, is not to promote mutilation of the body, but to give emphasis to the importance of the now and prevention.� Don't wait for the future day of judgment to let God deal with your rebellious body.� Deal with it yourself, and do it now. Bring it under your control, and choose to regulate its activities now.� It is folly to wait.� The wise are into the discipline of today.� In chapter 6 Jesus deals with all of the anxieties of life, and He says in verse 34, summing it all up, "Don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.� Each day has enough troubles of its own."� Just seek God's kingdom and His righteousness today, and life will be okay.

One last illustration of this theme is in 7:12.� Jesus gives us the Golden Rule that sums up the Law and the Prophets.� "Do unto others what you would have them do to you."� That is the essence of the victorious life.� You live in the here and now, and you do today

in your relationships with others what you want them to do to you.� The Golden Rule is golden because it is a rule as relevant as the golden sun that shines today, and each day. It is a rule for living, not in the past, or in the future, but today.

The priest and the Levite, who walked by the wounded man on the road said, give me tomorrow.� Maybe tomorrow I will not be so busy, and I can get involved in such an inconvenience, but not today.� The Good Samaritan was good, and what Jesus expects the Christian to be, because he was a now man.� He responded in love now, because the need was now, and tomorrow would too late.� Jesus is not saying we can do everything at once, but He is saying we can do something at once, and it is this strategy of living in the now that will fulfill the past and enrich the future.

If the new year is to be a year of growth and progress, and a year of pleasing God by doing His will on earth as it is done in heaven, then it will have to be a year in which we grasp the importance of the now life.� When does a decaying world most need salt?� Now! When does a dark world most need light?� Now!� The popular song of the 70's said, "What the world needs now is love sweet love."� If now is when I have lost my keys in the dark, now is when I need the light.� Tomorrow's light is of no value.� If now is when the road is icy, now is when we need the salt.� The point is, the need is always now, therefore, the solution, to be relevant, must also be always now, and so the Christian life must be a now life.

Christians fall into the same traps everybody else does.� The trap of the good old days, or of the glorious days of the future.� Both can rob us of the real, which is the now.� We tend to think of teaching and learning as preparation for the future.� It is that, to be sure,

but we miss the best of what education is unless we see its value for the now.� All we can know of God and His will is for today.� It is like our daily bread.� It is not for the future only, it is for living today.� It is now food so we can live for God today, and enjoy our relationship to Him, and the more abundant life.

Yes, it is all good for the future, but it is also good for today, and it is only by redeeming the now that we can prepare for the future.� The great French General, Marshall Lyoutey, asked his gardener to plant a tree in Algeria.� The gardener objected that it was a slow growing tree and would not mature for a 100 years.� In that case the General said, there is no time to lose‑plant it now.� Waiting is not the solution, for now it the time to get moving. Robert Browning was right when he wrote, "Put in the plow and plant the great hereafter in the now."� Not all of us get into the mating game, but rare as the dodo bird are those who escape the waiting game, the putting off of life until tomorrow.

A New York psychologist sent out letters to 3,000 men and women picked by random from the phone book.� The letter asked only one brief question, "What have you to live for?"� The answer was to be very brief.� He was shocked that 2,000 of them responded with an answer.� More shocking was the nature of the answers.� Over 90% of them were just enduring the present while they waited for the future.

They were waiting for their marriage to improve.

They were waiting for their children to grow up.

They were waiting to become grandparents.

They were waiting to retire.

They were waiting to take their dream trip.

They were waiting always for something good and exciting to happen. Practically everyone was giving up today, waiting for the golden tomorrow, and never stopping to recognize that today is the tomorrow they waited for yesterday.

It is not wrong and foolish to hope and dream, but when this becomes the dominate focus of life, it is a foolish choice that robs people of God's best.� We all have many things we must wait for, and it is legitimate to do so, and necessary, but to neglect the now in our hand for the tomorrow in our heart is to have a short in our head.� Jesus is saying, get wired right and recognize that today is the day of salvation, and today is the day of sanctification and service, and today is the day to enter into all the blessings that God wants us to experience.� Must we wait for everything?� Is life all in the future?� Not so, says Jesus.� He came that we might have abundant life; not just hope for it in the future, but have it now, in this life, today.

The future is bright with God's promises, but the present can be made bright with the fulfillment of His promises.� The poet asks a good question‑why not now?

There's a song that faith can sing,

Why not now?

There's a hope a friend may bring,

Why not now?

Hoarding the sunshine does not pay,

Joy was meant to give away,

Why not share your gifts today?

Why not now?

There are burdens love may lift,

Why not now?

Kindness bears a golden gift,

Why not now?

Earth has never known a creed

Like a pure unselfish deed,

Hearts are aching, give a heed,

Why not now?

Alfred Grant Walton

The list could go on and on.� Each of us could add specifics for the coming year.� If I am ever going to read the Bible through‑Why not now?� If I am ever going to share my faith with my friends or neighbors‑Why not now?� If I am ever going to obey Christ in some area of my life‑Why not now?� Now is always the best time to do what is good and right and pleasing to Christ.� There is no better time than now.

Reality therapy is a new concept which says, so what if you had a rotten past that conditioned you to all kinds of negative behavior and thinking.� Right now you are a free and responsible person able to choose what you want to be.� You do not have to be bound by the past.� That is what the message of the Bible is about too.� God has given us the ability to choose an alternate path.� Our grandfather and father may have walked in a certain path, but we are free to choose a different path.� That is what Jesus is saying over and over in this sermon.� You have heard that it was said by men of old, but now I say to you.� Jesus says, there is a new and a now way to go that fulfills the old, and is superior to it.

Christians are to be realistic and recognize that now has the greatest potential for life. I can't change the past, and I can't claim the future, but I can choose the now, and in the now reap the harvest of the past, and sow the seeds for the future.� God wants us, not wishing for the past, nor waiting for the future, but working in the now.

In the name of God advancing,

Plow, and sow, and labor now;

Let there be when evening cometh,

Honest sweat upon the brow.

And the master shall come smiling

When work stops at set of sun,

Saying as He pays the wages,

Good and faithful man‑well done.

Author unknown

Victories do not come to those who will someday conquer, but to those who conquer now.� The alcoholic who wins the battle is not the one who says, "I will stop someday," but the one who says, "I will stop now‑not forever, but today, and thus, day by day, victory in the now will be the way to go into the future."� Someone said, "If you want to know what you were in the past, look at yourself now.� If you want to know what you will be in the future, look at yourself now."� Now is the only time you can deal with realistically, for now is all you really have.� Wise is the man who recognizes this, and Jesus expects His followers to be wise now people.

When is the best time to do what is right?� Jesus says, the answer is now.� The Pharisees said, not so, for there is a time for everything, and they legalistically ruled out doing what is right and good if the now was not convenient.� Wait till tomorrow was their advice to Jesus when He healed people on the Sabbath.� Don't do it now, for now is to be devoted to keeping other rules and regulations.� They wanted to keep life all compartmentalized, but life will not cooperate.� Just as children today won't always get sick between 9 and 5, so problems in life never confine themselves to the convenient time

for solution. �Jesus said, you deal with the now problems with now solutions, and He healed people on the Sabbath, because they needed healing on the Sabbath.� He was a now healer, and not a later healer.

One of the reasons grandfathers are often more loving than fathers is because grandfathers are more often now people, and fathers are more often later people.� Loving people are now people.� I have been in both roles, and I know that now is better than later. Parents just do not realize how fast their children grow up.� Grandparents do, for they have been there, and that is why they tend to be now people, for they know it is so true, its now or never.

Jesus is trying to help us learn this lesson before we waste a good chunk of our life. If we will just believe Him, and become people who focus on the now, we will be more effective Christians.� The way you live with eternity's values in view is by recognizing that anything that is a good goal to achieve in life, is a goal you must strive for now.� And unknown author wrote,

If you have hard work to do, do it now.

Today the skies are clear and blue,

Tomorrow clouds may come into view,

Yesterday is not for you; do it now.

If you have a song to sing, sing it now.

Let the notes of gladness ring

Clear as song of bird in Spring,

Let every day some music bring; sing it now.

If you have kind words to say, say them now.

Tomorrow may not come your way.

Do a kindness while you may,

Loved ones will not always stay; say them now.

If you have a smile to show, show it now,

Make hearts happy, roses grow,

Let friends around you know

The love you have before they go; show it now.

Jesus practiced what He preached, and refused to even wait a day to meet needs that were now needs.� Many whom Jesus healed could have waited another day.� Some of them had already suffered for years, but Jesus said, when it is in your power to meet a need now and do good, love demands that you do it now.� To wait for the sake of a law, a tradition, a ceremony, or custom, is to say that all of these things are of more value than a person. Jesus rejects that value system.� Nothing is Christlike that treats persons as secondary to anything, or to anyone, but God Himself.� With this kind of value system, where you put people first, you become a now person living the now life.

This being the case, Satan's most successful strategy is to get the Christian to miss God's best by procrastination.� It is not only the thief of time,� it is the thief of every good value God has for your life.� If you wait until it is convenient to do the will of God, you will seldom get it done.� The most persistent temptation of life is to wait for a more convenient time.� Satan well knows that time may never come.

William Wilberforce played a major role in destroying the slave trade in England.� Many of his closest friends came to him suggesting that he shelve the matter until the Napoleonic wars were over.� He was wise enough to see the folly of waiting.� If it's God's will to fight this evil, then it has to be fought now, was his attitude, and he tackled it, and got the job done.� He may not have done so had he waited.

It is faith in the ultimate victory that enables the Christian to be an optimist in the now, even when the now is negative.� Ralph Waldo Emerson had this kind of faith.� When fire was destroying his priceless library of rare books, many of them autographed by world‑famous authors, he stood and calmly watched it perish.� His friend, Luisa May Alcott, came to his side to console him, but he responded, "Never mind Luisa, what a beautiful blaze it makes!� We'll enjoy that now."

The now life makes the past and the future relevant and practical, for it takes the values of these two zones we cannot touch, and applies them in the only zone we can touch‑the now.� The now life reaches back into the past, and takes all that God has done, and reaches out into the future, and takes all that God promises to do, and with all of this faith and hope, builds a foundation on which one can stand with a sense of security and optimism knowing that nothing can change what God has done, and nothing can alter what God will do.�� Charles Elliot spoke with the mind of Christ when he said, "The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.� Today is a precious gift. Use it well."

The question is often asked, "Why are there so many unfinished saints?"� Why is it nearly 2000 years after grace has been merited to sanctify tens of thousand of worlds like ours, so few have become mature in Christ, able to live the victorious Christian life?� The answer is, because we do not listen to Christ in this Sermon On The Mount.� Nor do we listen to Paul who makes it clear in II Cor. 6:2, "Now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation."� People tend to live too much in the past, which can never return, or in the future which may not even be, and so they miss the only place they can live for Christ‑the now.

C. S. Lewis in Christian Behavior points out that good and evil both increase at compound interest.� That is why the things you do in the now, and everyday little things, are of great importance.� He writes, "The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed up.� And apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible."� This is what Jesus is saying in our text.� The victorious life is the now life. It is the life where you don't just drift, but take decisive action to prevent evil in all of its forms from gaining power in your life.� The only way you can promote a good harvest is to prevent the weeds and bugs that will hinder the harvest.� The only way you can promote your own happy future is to prevent� now those evils that can rob you of that future.

It is of interest that modern psychiatry is catching up with Jesus, and recognizing that the solution to the messed up mind is not in the past, but in the now.� Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist, said, there is a difference between the psychology of Freud and myself.� He finds the basis for neurosis in the past, in childhood.� I find it in the present.� I ask, what is the responsibility from which this patient is retreating?� Why is he dodging out of life into illness?"� Modern psychiatry is leading people right back to the Sermon On The Mount. Live the now life that Jesus describes.� Act now to deal with your inner sins, and prevent external acts of evil, and you will not get your life messed up.� It is simply a matter of recognizing what even the pagan poet that Paul quotes recognized, which is, "In Him we live and move and have our being."� The Eternal Now‑The Triune God is our ever present context of living.� In God all is now, for there is no past or future in eternity.� It is always now, and if we could only be aware of this, and deal with all of our problems and weaknesses now, we could prevent so much of life's sin and sorrow.

Jesus ends the Sermon On The Mount with a story about a wise and foolish man.� The future held the same thing in store for both of them.� It was rain, wind, and the flood.� The difference between them was what they did in the present.� The wise man built on the rock, and the foolish man on the sand.� It is the choices you make now that determines how you will fare in the future.� The only way to prepare for the future is to choose to do what is wise in the now.� Jesus practiced this, and if you read Matt. 8 you will see He was no arm chair philosopher.� He left the mountain on which He preached this sermon, and that very day he lived the now life.� He healed a leper, and a paralyzed servant of a Centurion.� He raised up Peter's mother‑in‑law, and then that evening he ministered to a host of sick and demon possessed people.

Joseph Wood Krutch wrote, "All postponements are potentially dangerous, and to postpone life itself is the most stupendous of follies.� One can no more live in the future than one can live in some good old days of the past.� One must live now or not at all, and not to live at all is the greatest of mistakes."� Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the famous pastor imprisoned by Hitler, did not know he would be executed by the Nazi's in 1945, but he knew it was a real possibility.� Yet, shortly before he died he wrote this poem to God‑

"With every power for good to stay and guide me.

Comforted and inspired beyond all fear,

I'll live these days with you in thought beside me,

And pass with you, into the coming year.

That is the way Christ wants us all to move into the coming year.� It is with the attitude that whatever the future holds, be it good or ill, I choose not to escape into the past or the future, but to live the now life.

8.�� THE LURE AND CURE OF LUST� Based on Matt. 5:27‑30

Show me the man who has never looked at a woman with lust, and I'll show you a man with a white cane who was blind from birth.� None but a blind man could get through life and not be captivated by God's crowning work of creation‑woman.� Anyone with an ounce of artistic appreciation knows there are few, if any, more appealing sites than a well formed female.� This is not the conviction of dirty old men only, but it represents the mind of men of every age, place, and race; godly and ungodly alike.

Art Buchwald, the popular secular newspaper columnist, told of his experience at a Washington dinner party.� He had every intention of being a perfect gentleman at this party, but the woman to his right wore a black net pajama top with a neckline that plunged down, he says, to heaven knows where, and the blouse was held up by only two tiny strings that looked like they would break any minute.� He writes, "God knows we've been sinners and most men are trying to change their attitudes toward women.� But when you have nothing but bare backs and cleavage to stare at during dinner, how on earth can any man keep his mind on Henry Kissinger?"

We could dismiss that as the struggle of the secular man, but it won't work.� The testimony of godly men through the ages is that the female body stimulates their lust. Many women resent David for his lust after Bathsheba when he saw her bathing, and for his foolish and sinful behavior that led him into adultery and murder.� Despicable as it was, most men do not despise David, for they know in their hearts that in that same situation they may have done the same stupid thing under the lure of lust.� Many godly men have done the same thing, and many who haven't know it is an ever present possibility.

Charles Swindoll, one of the most popular preachers today, always makes sure there is a desk between him and the women he counsels, for he writes, "I simply recognize that being a man, temptation is always on the back burner waiting to singe me."� In his little booklet on Resisting The Lure Of Lust, he writes, "Non‑Christians and Christians alike wrestle with its pressure and its persistence throughout their lives.� Some think that getting married will cause temptation to flee.� It doesn't.� Others have tried isolation.� But sensual imagination goes with them, fighting and clawing for attention and gratification.� Not even being called into Christian service helps.� Ask any whose career is in the Lord's work.� Temptation is there relentlessly pleading for satisfaction."� Swindoll is saying, there is no escape from lust.� There is no place to go, and no something to become, that will take you out of the range of the arrows of forbidden desire.

This goes for women as well.�� Jesus does not mention women lusting for men, for at that point in history women did not have the power and freedom.� They were dominated by men.� But whenever women have had the power and freedom to be sexual aggressors� they have exhibited the same lust as men.� One of the strongest examples of a lust led person in the Bible is that of Potipher's wife.� She admired the handsome servant her husband had brought into the home, and one day when Joseph was home alone with her she said in Gen. 39:7, "Come to bed with me."� That is what you call the direct approach, and only by the grace of God did Joseph escape her clutches.

We live in a period� of time when the female is nearly, if not clearly, equal with the male in sexual lust.� This is no proof it is the end of hope for the human race, however, for it has happened before.� Martin Luther wrote of what was going on at the University of Wittenberg in 1544.� "The race of girls is getting bold, and run after the fellows into their rooms and chambers and wherever they can, and offer them their free love."� Sex was not discovered in the 20th century.� It has been a major problem throughout the history of mankind, and nobody escapes the power and influence of lust.� Not everybody idolizes it and make it a god, but everybody must reckon with its presence.

L. Nelson Bell, father‑in‑law of Billy Graham, and a great preacher and author for many years in Christianity Today, wrote on the imagination and its potential for lust.� He wrote, "It is, even for the true Christian the last frontier to surrender to the cleansing and redemptive work of the living Christ."�� This is equivalent to saying, it is a never ending battle for the Christian.� Sometimes sickness, psychological handicaps, and old age set people free from this conflict, but for the majority there is no discharge from the war of the spirit with the flesh.� Martin Luther said, "If no other work was commanded than chasteness, we would all have enough to do, so dangerous and raging a vice is unchasteness."

The facts of life an history force us to recognize there is no moral majority when it comes to lust.� Before Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount there was a chance for a moral majority to exist on this issue.� As long as adultery was limited to an act of sex with a woman not your mate, the majority of men could be innocent.� That is still true today even in our sexual revolution.� The majority of mates are faithful, but Jesus changed the rules in this passage.� He thrusts the majority of the human race into the camp of the guilty.

Jesus says that to look at a woman with lust, that is with a strong desire, is to be guilty of adultery.� That means the millions of men and women who have overcome temptation, and have never been unfaithful to their mates, but who have looked at others with lust are guilty of adultery.� This is not a pleasant message, and the result is, out of many thousands of indexed sermons, there is not one that deals with this text.� Jesus is being too radical here.� He apparently never read the book How To Win Friends And Influence People.� It is no wonder the Pharisees wanted Him out of the picture.� He just made the majority of the human race murderers by making anger equivalent to murder, and now He makes the majority adulterers by making lust equivalent to adultery.

Teachings like this totally shatter the whole foundation for legalistic righteousness.� You may be able to avoid a lot of sins by legalism, but Jesus is saying you can't avoid sin.� You can pretend you are really righteous because you have never murdered, or gone to bed with another man's wife, but Jesus takes away the facade and says, but look at the anger and hatred for men that thrives in your breast; look at the lust that rages there.� You have cleaned the outside of the cup, but inside it is still filthy.� You can plead not guilty on the basis of the external evidence, but let the jury see the movies of your mind, and you are hung.� The law does not go deep enough, for it only deals with acts.� Jesus goes deeper, for He deals with attitudes.

The whole point of Jesus is, that external legalistic righteousness just won't cut it.� The Pharisees were destroying true religion by their hypocrisy and external show.� True religion, and a relationship to God that pleases Him is one where men are honest about their sin, and seek His help to conquer it.� Jesus knew what He was doing when He destroyed all ground to stand on for legalistic righteousness.� He knew by these statements He was making murder and adultery, for all practical purposes, universal.� Jesus had just described a stubborn man who refused to agree with his accuser.� He could only insist on his innocence.� Now Jesus accuses practically everyone of being guilty of adultery.� The question is, will we be stubborn and fight this accusation all the way to the judgment, or will we submit, and admit our guilt?� Jesus wants us to escape the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and be honest about our inner sinful nature.

A child misunderstood the seventh commandment, and recited it, "Thou shalt not admit adultery."� This was the problem with the Pharisees.� They would not admit to their guilt.� This was David's problem.� He refused to admit his guilt.� This is the problem with almost everyone.� We refuse to admit that our lust makes us guilty.� When Jimmy Carter was president he confessed publicly that he had lust.� This was no surprise, but the fact that he admitted it was the surprise.� We do not like to admit that all of us are guilty.� But that is precisely what Jesus is forcing us to do.� He knew that everybody gets angry at sometime.� He knew that everybody struggles with lust at times.� We know He knew this by the way He handled the situation with the woman brought to Him who had been taken in the very act of adultery.

He said to all of those religious leaders, who in self‑righteousness were ready to stone her, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."� Then instead of leaping out of the way to avoid the flying rocks, He knelt to write on the ground before the accused.� He knew it was not a risky gamble, for He knew they were men, and men do not live that long and escape lust.� Everyone of them walked away, and Jesus knew they would.� For He knew they were guilty, and He knew they knew they were guilty.� Christopher Sykes was right when he said, "Of the seven deadly sins, lust is the only one about which all mankind (with very few exceptions), knows something from experience."

Most everyone has had the experience of going to a restaurant with others, and when they get their order, it looks better than you ordered, and you often wish you had what they have.� It is the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence feeling.� It is just a part of our human nature to desire what we do not have.� Lust is one of these desires.� It starts at puberty, and that is when most boys begin their battle with lust.� The girl next door, the attractive teacher, the objects of lust are everywhere.� And now in our culture there is the added temptation of movies, magazines, and the computer.� It is at this stage of the battle that boys see the female, not as a person, but as a thing.� If they do not control their sex drive, and girls do not help them control it by resisting their advances, they may never learn what love is, but spend the rest of their lives under the dominion of lust.

Marlyn Monroe said, "I hate being a thing."� She was a sex symbol, and a symbol is a thing.� She never really felt loved as a person, but only used like a thing.� If only youth could see that lust controlled can lead to love.� But lust unleashed and freely expressed leads to becoming locked into an immature relationship of the sexes.� Some men never know love for the person of a woman because they are locked in on lust for women.� Women can never be equal to them, for women are things, and only objects of gratification.� Quick sex does not build love, it destroys it.� It is sex controlled that builds love.

Once a man has robbed himself of the power to relate to a woman as a person, he has robbed himself of the potential of love.� He will be reduced to a life on the level of lust where self‑centered pleasure is all that sex will ever mean.� I have read of preachers who have been locked in at this level, and it is tragic, for they cannot love over half the human race.� They can only lust, and life is so much tougher a battle without love for persons to help you in the fight against lust.� It is one of life's great paradoxes that those who let lust have its way, and have sex whenever, and with whomever, lose the highest value of sex.� Those who control lust, and prevent promiscuous expressions of it by keeping it exclusive, come to enjoy sex on the highest level as God intended.� Lust is the wrong use of that which rightly used is love.

It is important that we do not develop negative attitudes on sex because of our battle with lust.� The papers recently revealed that many of the sex offenders in our culture are not strange freakish people, but respectable professionals.� They are people like teachers, pastors, doctors, and policemen.� You can count on it, they are also people who repressed their lust, they refuse to admit the reality of it in their lives.� Had they been honest about their lust they may have been able to prevent its� dangers.� The same thing has happened all through history.� Many Christians leaders of the early Catholic Church did not want to admit that Mary had sex like any normal married woman, and so they developed the doctrine of her perpetual virginity.� The other children in the home were cousins and not hers they said.

If artificial insemination would have existed then, the church probably would have made it a sin not to have babies that way.� They could thereby eliminate sex even for marriage.� This suppression of sex, and glorification of the non‑sexual priest and nun led to lust overflowing its banks in a flood of immorality.� The hypocrisy of pretending to be non‑sexual beings has never been an effective weapon against lust.� The bleeding Pharisees were called that because they frequently ran into walls and fell down injuring themselves, because they tried to avoid looking at women.� This only made them more lust conscious then their non‑bleeding brothers.

If we go back to the Puritan leaders who burned so many witches at the stake, we see that it was a time of sexual suppression.� People were pretending sex did not exist.� They put cloth over the bare legs of the tables even, and a book written by a woman was not permitted to be set along side a book written by a man.� Witch burning became a popular pastime, for the respectable leaders of that society.� It was because the witches had to be examined nude, and then they were burned at the stake nude.� This was a motivation to find more and more witches to examine.� Their refusal to deal with their lust honestly produced very dishonest and cruel expressions of it.� Women are just as degraded when sex is suppressed as when it is too openly expressed.� Balance is the only way to wisdom.

What is lust?� It is a good thing gone to an extreme.� The word for lust is epithumeo.� It is a word used for all kinds of strong desire both good and bad. Desire is not evil in itself.� It is a normal part of life.� Lust is a desire to satisfy the sex drive outside of the boundaries that God has set.� He set boundaries, not because He is a killjoy, and does not want men to enjoy His gift, but because limitations is what gives value to His gift.� Sex without boundaries is like a river without boundaries.� It is no longer a beautiful and beneficial gift of nature, but it is a beastly judgment of nature that floods and destroys.� We all have cars and other things with engines that warn us about overfill.� Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and that is what lust is.� It is too much of a good thing.� Lust is to sex what gluttony is to the enjoyment of food.� It is the sex drive trying to go beyond its rightful limits, and when it does it destroys rather than build.

Love is willing to be limited, and become exclusive, and make a commitment for better or worse.� Lust wants no part of confinement, and it says for better only, and when the pleasure fades it moves on.� The self is all that matters in lust.� The other is only an object to be used.� Lust oriented sex is strictly a me me me affair, and not an us experience.� It is not true that everything you most enjoy in life is a sin.� It is the excess of what you enjoy that is sin.� Eating is no sin; sex is no sin, and anger is no sin.� It is the excess of these that become sin.� Few will argue about the lure of lust, and its power in our lives, but many question the cure, for it sounds like such bitter medicine.

Jesus takes a very radical approach to solving the problem of lust.� The fact that you seldom see a one eyed, one handed man is evidence that the solution is nowhere nearly as wide spread as the problem.� Only a few in history have considered that Jesus meant for us to literally gouge out our right eye and cut off our right hand.� If you took it literally, the whole world would become a center for the handicapped.� Normal people with both eyes and both hands would become freaks that we could only see in side shows.

The strongest Bible literalists do not take this solution literally, because it is obvious self‑mutilation.� This would not solve the problem at all.� The whole point of Jesus is that sin is an inner problem, and so an external solution would not touch it anymore than cleaning the outside of the cup would make the inside clean.� A literal obedience to Christ here would still leave you with a left eye, left handed man, and I have never read any study that even hinted that lefty's are not as lusty.

Origen, the great church father, realized the cutting off of a hand and gouging out of an eye was of no real value, and so he solved his lust problem by castration.� He remained a great preacher and theologian, but his solution� was not acceptable, and it was condemned by the church as out of the will of God.� As universal as lust is the universal agreement is that Jesus does not want us to fight lust by literal self‑surgery.� But because we are not to take Jesus literally, does not mean we are not to take Him seriously.� Jesus is using radical language to get our attention focused on the importance of being very serious with this matter of lust.

How do we deal with it?� The answer of Jesus in these radical words is in essence‑prevent it.� Not the lust, for that is inevitable, but the consequences of lust can be prevented.� It parallels the issue of anger and murder.� You can't avoid anger, for it is part of life, but you can control it and prevent it from destroying yourself, and your relationships to others.� So it is with lust.� You can't avoid lust, but you can prevent it from hurting your life, and the life of others.� Luther said, "You can't stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair."

That is what Jesus is saying here.� We have a choice, and we are to choose to control those things which cause lust to lead us into dangerous actions.� Whatever causes you to sin is the culprit you focus on, and you prevent that cause from having its effects.� You don't let life just happen to you.� You take control and chose what life is going to be.

If the eye gate is the gate that leads you to lose control, you have the responsibility to cut off that channel of temptation.� You will not be relieved of that responsibility just because the world is full of pornography, and sensual TV and movies.� You have a choice, and you are accountable for your choices.� If you choose to open that gate and let lust lead you into sin, you were just like the stubborn man in the previous paragraph, and like him you will have to pay the bitter price for your stubborn rejection of Christ's advice.

The same principle applies to the touch gate.� If your lust is stimulated by touch to the point of losing control, and yet you still touch members of the opposite sex in ways that promote it, you are deliberately toying with the fire that can consume you.� Jesus says to cut it out.� Cut off any activity that opens up the possibility of your lust to go out of control and do its deadly damage.� Seeing and touching are the two most common ways that people are led into acts of immorality, and that is why Jesus focuses on the eye and the hand.� People vary as to their sensitivity in these areas.� There are Christian men who can go into houses of prostitution and witness to the women.� This is rare, but the point is, some can do dangerous things without losing control.� This does not mean it is an activity that most can be involved in.� Each person must know what their limitations are when it comes to lust.

I am not responsible for you, nor you for me.� I must know where I face risk, and make choices that cut off those things which lead me to lose of control.� If a man gets turned on by taking his secretary out to lunch, he has a responsibility to cut it out.� If the secretary gets turned on by it, she is to cut it out.� The point is,� everybody knows when lust is being stirred up, and at that point one is responsible to sacrifice the lesser for the preservation of the greater.� That is the principle in Jesus' solution.� You lose an eye or a hand to save the whole body.

That is the principle behind surgery, and behind the prevention of sin.� It is a law of life.� The lizard, or the lobster, will lose a tail or a claw in order to escape with their life.� A part of the forest will be deliberately burned in order to save the whole forest.� The chess player will sacrifice, not only his pawn, but even more valuable pieces to save his king.� Jesus says pay the price necessary to escape the price you will have to pay if you let lust have its way.� Give up part of your life to preserve the whole.� Many a man has enjoyed his flirting with another woman, and so he refuses to give it up.� The price he pays is sometimes the last penny.� It cost him his family, his home, and his reputation.� All that he most treasured in life is lost because he would not sacrifice a part.� They refuse to give up the part, and ended up forced to give up the whole.� We are not talking about dirty old men, but about godly people.

The Bible makes it clear that those who stand must beware lest they fall.� There is nobody immune to the dangers of lust.� Charles Swindoll tells of his experience.

"I remember a conference I addressed.� I was getting on the

hotel elevator‑alone as usual‑and two women followed me on.

I smiled and said, "Hi," punched my floor, six, and said, "What

floor would you like?"� They said, "Oh, six would be fine." suddenly felt a little flattered. But it was remarkable what happened between the first floor and the sixth.� I had a momentary fantasy, but then God pulled a shade between the three of us, and on that shade I could read as clear as day‑"Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever

a man soweth, that shall he also reap."� If we let God protect us,

He will.� God pulled the shade right when I really needed it."

He chose to cut out a fraction of his life to preserve the whole.� He sacrificed the temporary for the sake of the permanent.� He gave up the shiny case, but kept the diamond.� Honestly about your lust is what Jesus demands of us.� It is because this gives us the edge over the enemy.� We know where we are, and we know our weakness, and so we know when we are under attack.� Honesty enables you to fight the enemy on your home field.� If you wait until your lust devises a plan, and you are involved with a forbidden partner, you may be at the point of no return.� You avoid this by recognizing your sin does not begin in the motel room, but in your heart.� If you fight it there, you can prevent the motel scene from every happening.

We do not know if Jesus had lust or not.� The Bible says He was tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin.� It is matter of debate, and there is� no certainty, but if He did, we know He conquered it in His mind, and prevented it from leading to any sin.

The Christian does not escape sin in his heart.� He is not innocent at all, for in his heart he hates, and he lusts, and he knows he is guilty of murder and adultery, but he keeps his sin on a level where the forgiveness of God covers it all, and no permanent damage is done.� Once the anger or lust is allowed to become acts of sin they can still be forgiven, but then even the grace of God and the blood of Christ cannot remove the scars, and all the evil consequences that may result.� David was forgiven, but he suffered the scars of his fall for the rest of his life.

Those who fall are not necessarily more lustful than those who do not.� Many who live a lifetime of faithfulness to their mates have a strong sex drive, and they face the battle of lust equally as strong as those who yield.� What makes the difference?� It is the wisdom of obeying their Lord.� They build on the rock, and so they are ready for the storm.� They are not better, but they are wiser. �They know Jesus is right, and so they heed His counsel, and they pay the price of obedience.� They know this is the best deal that can be made.

Only you can prevent forest fires the signs use to say.� Jesus is saying to us all: Only you can prevent the fires of lust from burning out of control.� Sex was designed by God to build lives, and not destroy them, and so cut off, and block out, and make the sacrifice necessary to limit lust to where you can control it.� The lure is real, but so is the cure, and when you keep them both in balance, sex can play a very positive role in your life, and not be a source of offense to God or man.

How was all this suppose to be helpful by being pronounced guilty?� It is good because it eliminates the basis for hypocritical righteousness.� You don't have to pretend you are not a sinner, and not affected by the sensual world.� You are guilty of lust, and you know it, and God knows it, and Jesus knows it.� Now we can get down to the serious business of preventing this acknowledged power from doing damage to lives and relationships.� Love says, because I have lust, and it can hurt people that I love, I must take serious the matter of keeping it under control.� Love make wise choices to cut out those things that are high risk.� The lure of lust will fail when we have our focus on the love that will prevail.

9.�� THE CAUSE AND CURE OF DIVORCE� Based on Matt. 5:31‑32

Jo Fleming in her book His Affair reveals that almost every sinful emotion and action known to man is kindled by lust that is not controlled.� Her husband of 26 years went to the apartment of a woman he worked with to return some books.� This was an action he could have avoided, but he chose not to.� They had an affair, and sometime later she discovered it, and was devastated.� She writes of that day she learned of his unfaithfulness.� "Nothing will ever be the same again.� Inside my head I am screaming, screaming, screaming.� Dear God let me die....give me oblivion.�� Please!� Please!� I can't stand the pain, I can't live, I want to die, now, this minute."

The book is a diary of her journey through the hell of grief and back.� It is a story of the human heart, and its capability of all the evil's Jesus deals with in the Sermon On The Mount, and especially this context of chapter 5.� She experienced anger, hatred, thoughts of murder and suicide, revenge, adultery and divorce.� Forbidden sex is so glamorized in our culture that people are blind to the terrible consequences, and the tremendous cost involved.� Her husband had to go through the pits of guilt as she went through the pits of grief.� Both suffered months of depression.� But finally healing began to take place, and they were able to talk about the cause of the affair.� They discovered true intimacy as they shared their self‑fears and doubts, and talked to each other as never before about their marriage.

There was much weeping, but she stopped praying for a fatal disease to remove her from the battle.� They made it without a divorce, but many do not.� In fact, the number one cause of divorce all through history has been lust.� When I think of the people I have counseled with about divorce, the common factor in all of them is lust for another partner, and my reading confirms my experience.�� This is not the only cause for divorce, but it is the primary cause.� It is no accident that Jesus deals with divorce immediately after the subject of lust.� They go together like love and marriage, the destructive duo‑lust and divorce, and the constructive duo‑love and marriage.� Which duo becomes the determining factor in your life largely depends on what you do with your sexual energy.

If someone tells you there is a fire in your house, you do not know if this is good or bad news until you know where the fire is.� If its in the furnace, the stove, or the fireplace, that is good and comforting news.� If it is on the roof, the floor, or the walls, that is bad news.� Fire in the right place provides the pleasure of warmth, but in the wrong place it destroys and brings pain.� The sex drive is� just like fire.� Fire is not evil, but it is a power that has potential for good or evil.� It can save life or destroy life.� Such also is the fire of sex.� There is so much love and warmth in the world because of sex, but there is also so much sorrow and heartache because of it. Sex controlled by love is one of life's greatest blessings.� Sex controlled by lust is one of life's greatest burdens.

Jesus, as the Creator of sex knows this better than anyone, and that is why the love versus lust issue is so vital to His whole teaching on divorce.� The Old Testament law allowed too much freedom to relate to women on the level of lust.� The law gave men a feeling that they were doing okay in their relationship to their wives if they treated them legally.� That is, if they divorced them, they gave them a certificate of divorce.� This was a great blessing to a divorced woman, for it gave her the freedom to go and remarry, and not be labeled as an adulteress.� Without that certificate the law demanded, she would become an outcast, and if not stoned, she likely would be forced to become a prostitute for survival.

This was a step up from the level where women were just sent packing when their husbands were tired of them.� Treating a wife legally was a higher level of righteousness than giving her no rights at all.� However, it was still far short from the ideal of treating her lovingly.� Jesus is calling men to a higher level of relating to their wives.� It is a level beyond the legal level to the level of love.� That is what this passage on divorce is all about, for you will observe that in these two verses Jesus condemns two men.� The man who divorces his wife for any cause other than being unfaithful, and the man who marries this innocent woman.� Here are two men not treating their women in love, but with lust and legalism.

This is a radical reversal of the Old Testament, and from the world perspective.� The focus of all condemnation before Christ came was not on the man, but on the woman.� In every nation the unfaithful wife was treated unmercifully, and almost always killed.� For men it was a different story.� Adultery did not mean the same thing for men.� If he took another wife or two, he was not being adulterous.� If he went to a prostitute, he was not being adulterous.� If he went into a single girl, he was not being adulterous.� The only way a man could be guilty was to violate the property rights of another man by laying with his wife.� You could not be guilty unless you hurt another man.� Violating any number of women was no problem.

Women were property and not persons of equality.� Their lives were regulated like property.� Cato the Roman wrote, "If you take your wife in adultery you may freely kill her without a trial.� But if you commit adultery, or if another commit adultery with you, she has no right to raise a finger against you."� The Jews were only slightly ahead of the pagan Gentiles in this respect.� Their wives were possessions.� They may have had to capture her in battle at the risk of their lives, or pay a large sum to acquire her.� She was his most costly possession.� Any threat to this prize was a great offense to men.� It was like someone throwing rocks at your new car.� The result was, the legal system developed almost entirely along the lines of protecting a man's rights and possessions.

The Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon decreed that a wife accused by her husband of being unfaithful had to take the water test.� She was thrown into the river, and if she drowned it proved she was guilty.� If she survived, she was innocent.� In reality all it proved was whether she could swim or not, but the point is, only a wife had to endure such a test.� The Old Testament has a test for accused wives as well.� In Num. 5 we read of how the priest was to mix dust from the floor of the sanctuary with water, and the accused woman was to drink it.� If she was innocent nothing would happen, but if she was guilty, her body would swell and give her away.� This test was based on well known psychosomatic facts that show that the guilty can produce the very effect that is feared.� Again, the test is only for wives.� There is no such test for men.� The double standard has been a part of both sacred and secular history.