Matthew 5:27-32
You can trust the heart of Christ to tell you the truth about the law, about yourself, and about the world.
1. Cynical hearts receive law against sin as permission to do everything right up to it.
2. The cynic shall not enter the kingdom of heaven, because Jesus exposes and tenderly demands the keys to the private fortress of your heart.
To the rightly functioning heart, the laws are a minimum not maximum.
3. Outward acts, with their public penalties, like murder and adultery point to inward sins of anger and lust.
Lust is covetousness.
-Jesus shows that what plays out in the world has already been patterned in our hearts.
-The architecture of adultery is already laid out in the blueprint of lust.
-Lust seeks to extract from others what we should only get from God.
4. Take sin seriously!
Sins of the private heart flourish under the banner of “no big deal.”
“Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.” -Owen
5. The heart of hidden sin is glad for the possibility of divorce.
Deuteronomy 24:1; Malachi 2:14-16:
porneia
Commands against adultery and exceptions for divorce are not permission for lust and plans for divorce.
6. Come to the marriage supper as a new creation.
Will you be at the marriage supper?
