Amputation 101 - Matthew 5:29-30 (Contd) Series

Matthew 5:27-30 "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

How to gouge, amputate, and throw (How to Kill Sin)

Now I would like to zero in on that one little word that appears in v.29 and again in v.30. It is the word better.

Jesus is telling us to do three things in this text – gouge out the eye, amputate the hand, and fling both of them away from us. But how is that done? We found last week that it is not our physical eyes that cause us to look in order to lust (or look in a way that results in coveting). You physical eye isn’t the part of you that looks. We use our physical eyes to look, but the act of looking – the act of turning our attention toward something to observe it and think about it – there is something in your inner man that does that. And so the thing that needs to be gouged out, amputated and flung away is that thing in your soul that wants to look the wrong way at a woman – or a man or anyone or anything.

We need to kill the part of us that does that because that part of us is like cancer – if you do not kill it, it will kill you. But how is it done? The part of the soul that wants to look with greedy eyes is incredibly hard to kill. How do you do it?

Preferring

Well, as I said – the key is that word better. We want to keep our lustful eye because it promises to satisfy our desires. The lustful eye promises to satisfy a craving or appetite, and there is a fear in us that if we gouge that out and throw it away then we will have to just go with our desires unsatisfied. And so we want to keep our lustful eye. But Jesus said there was something better than keeping your lustful eye. He offers us something better because He knows the only way to really have success in resisting an appetite is to have a greater appetite for the alternative.

If you are hungry, and you go to a restaurant and see something on the menu that seems like it would satisfy your craving, is it hard to say no to that thing? It depends. If all you do is say no, then yes, it is very hard. But if you say no because there is something else on the menu that sounds much more satisfying to you, then it is easy to say no to that lesser thing. No matter how pleasurable something is and no matter how powerful your desire for that thing is – you can easily pass it up if the alternative seems to your soul like it would be more satisfying.

But as long as your soul thinks the sin will be more satisfying, there will never be much victory. This is why we have so much failure when we try to kick a habit. Temptation hits, you say no, it pops up again, you say no again, and you fight and struggle and resist and war, and you resist the temptation 99 times in a single day, but it is not enough because you are tempted 100 times that day, and that last one gets you. And it seems hopeless. “How can I ever have victory? I resist 99 times a day and still fall most every day. I am doing all this fighting and resisting and it is getting me nowhere.” That is how it is as long as your soul sees that sin as most satisfying.

Think of some sin that you never fall into. Why do you have such success in that area? Is it because you are able to win 100 battles every day? No, it is because you do not have 100 battles every day. There is no real battle, because your soul prefers God’s way above that sin. We will never have victory until we can say with the psalmist,

Psalm 84:2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. .. 10 Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.