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.
Notice those words better and rather. Those are words of preference. He is not saying sin has no pleasure associated with it. He is just saying that the alternative is more satisfying. Proverbs 9 describes two feasts – God’s and the world’s. Both are feasts. Both offer pleasure and satisfaction. And what God calls us to do is not to just stand there in front of the world’s feast saying, “I will not eat, I will not eat.” He wants us to see His feast and say, “That one looks better to me.”
Life
So what is this alternative that is so much better? What is this superior pleasure that will be so much more satisfying to my soul than the pleasure of sin? Jesus actually does not say explicitly, but He makes it obvious enough. What is it that is better than going to hell? Iam going to go way out on a limb and say…not going to hell. Or more to the point, the alternative that is better is whatever the opposite of hell is. What is the opposite of hell? Well, if hell is spiritual death, then the opposite is spiritual life. If you do not go to hell then what you get instead is eternal life – the life of God.
That is what is implied in Jesus’ words here. And what is implied here is actually stated explicitly in the parallel passage in Mt.18.
Matthew 18:9 if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
Sharing in the life of God is more satisfying to the human soul than the pleasure of sin.
There is a lot that comes in the package of spiritual life. Having life from God means more than just existing – it includes wellness. If someone is in the process of dying what does that mean? It means they are in the process of losing their wellness. Life includes wellness – things like strength, joy, hope, courage, understanding, love, etc. All that is spiritual life. And it comes from nearness to God’s presence. So really what Jesus is saying here and what the psalmist is saying in Ps.84 are pretty much the same – the psalmist says he prefers God’s presence above everything else (Better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere); and Jesus says better is spiritual life than the pleasures of sin. Those two statements are saying the same thing because spiritual life comes from nearness to God’s presence. The experience of God’s love that we enjoy when His presence is near is better than anything this earthly life can give us.
Psalm 63:3 your love is better than life
The experience of God’s love is better than life at its best – better, more satisfying than the greatest, most intense pleasures earthly life can produce. And that includes both sinful and non-sinful pleasures.
Glorifies God
So our fight against sin is all about preferring. It is all about passing up one thing on the menu because we found something better on the menu. In our fight against sin we need both Ps.141 and Ps.36.
Psalm 141:4 Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil … let me not eat of their delicacies.
Psalms 36:7 How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men … 8 They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.
God does not want us to just say no to their delicacies; He wants us to keep looking on the menu until we see His river of delights and say, “Oh that sounds a lot more satisfying to me.”
When we have to give up that which is precious to us for the sake of Jesus Christ, do you know what emotion helps us do that? What emotion did God design to be that which drives us to give up the things that are most precious to us? When the man the parable in Mt.13:44 found a treasure in a field, what part of him drove him to sell everything he owned? It was his joy.
Matthew 13:44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
The treasure was worth so much more than all his possessions were worth, he could not unload all that stuff fast enough.
God wants our victory over sin to come from preferring His river of delights – life and spiritual wellness from Him - God set up the Christian life that way because that bring us the greatest joy and it brings Him the greatest glory. If all you do is say no to a sin, how does that honor God? How does that show God to be great? It doesn’t. But if you say no to a sin because you prefer nearness to God – if you put the pleasure of that sin side-by-side with the joy of fellowship with God, and your soul decides fellowship with God is more desirable – that does honor God because it shows Him to be desirable and superior to any other treasure.
How to prefer
So how do you get to that point? I mean, this all sounds great on paper, or in theory, but what happens when you actually try to put it into practice? You try to tell your soul to prefer God over the pleasure of the sin and your soul says, “Are you kidding me? I have experienced the pleasure of that sin, and it’s intense pleasure. And frankly, the last several times I’ve read the Bible and prayed - I was bored out of my mind. You can’t tell me that nearness to God brings anywhere close to the kind of pleasure I get from sin.”
How is that possible? The Bible says the nearness of God is far more satisfying than the pleasure of sin, so how is it possible for me to have devotions that are not satisfying? There is only one explanation. If the Bible says that the experience of God’s presence always satisfies the soul, and my devotions were not satisfying to my soul on a particular day, then there is only possible explanation – I did not experience the nearness of God’s presence in my devotions (which means my devotions did not work that day). It is not that I experienced God’s presence and found it unsatisfying. It is that my devotions did not bring me to an experience of the nearness of God’s presence. If they had, then I would have walked away utterly satisfied and full of joy because it is part of God’s nature that His presence satisfies the cravings of the human soul. And the same goes for everything else we do in life – not just devotions. If going to church was not satisfying to me, if going to work or school was not satisfying, if spending time with my family or doing my ministry or mowing the lawn was not satisfying; then those things did not work. We do all those things for the same reason we have our devotions – they are supposed to be avenues for fellowship with God to such a degree that we experience His love and His presence. If I do not experience His presence then those things were failures. Anything you ever do that does not end up satisfying your soul is a failed attempt at fellowship with God.
Resolve and Affections
And the more often we experience sensations of satisfaction from fellowship with God the more success we will have in fighting sin. It is essential to have those experiences because there is more to your will than just resolve. When you resolve to wake up early, or stick to your diet, or exercise or read your Bible more or whatever – and you resolve to do it because you really, really, really want to be more disciplined in that area, why do you fail? How is it that you can be willing and unwilling at the same time?
The answer is the will is a complex thing – it involves not only resolve but also affections. (Your affections are the way you feel – your emotions and feelings and inclinations and attitudes.) 5:00 rolls around and my resolve says, “Get up out of bed” and my affections say, “Comfort is supremely valuable - stay right where you are.” My resolve says, “Exercise”; my affections say, “Stay on the couch.” And in our battle against sin we have all kinds of data in our brains that make us resolved to give up our sin. So the good desire is there in our resolve. We want to be free of our sin so bad sometimes we break down in tears over it. But very often we fail because the desire is not there in our affections.
And so we need to do more than just convince ourselves intellectually of the importance of giving up that sin. We need to do something about our affections. And the way you change those is by experiences. One reason why our affections are so powerfully inclined toward certain sins is because we have had so many pleasurable experiences with that sin. And so the more we actually experience delight from the presence of God, the more our affections will start to crave his presence. And then when some temptation comes along and threatens to spoil our ability to draw near to God for a time, it will not be worth it to us.
How to enjoy God’s presence/love
And at this point some of you are probably thinking, I have never experienced a sense of satisfaction or joy from God’s presence. Or if you have, it is so seldom that it cannot even begin to compete with the pleasurable experiences with sin that are so frequent. But actually, I think we experience God’s presence and love and grace more often than we realize.
God’s favor is the only source of life and wellness. When you have a sense of peace or contentment or courage or you have the ability to enjoy something good or your eyes are open to see which way you should go or you have a sense of being safe in Him so you do not have to fear anything or you have hope or any of the other aspects of life and wellness that come from God alone – anytime you have those things you are experiencing God’s love and favor and nearness. The reason it does not train our affections to prefer His presence over the pleasure of sin is because we so rarely attribute those things to His presence. We feel really good and we just assume it is because we got a good night’s sleep. We have peace in our hearts and we think it’s our doing. We have the ability to enjoy something good and we forget that other times we do not have that ability – and that ability is not a naturally occurring thing. We have a feeling of being safe and secure and we right it off as having to do with circumstances. We know what something in the Bible means, or we know which option to choose in some decision and we think it is just because we are so smart.
All those things come and go in relation to how much God is granting us an experience of His nearness and favor. If He withdraws His presence there is absolutely nothing you can do to get those things – to get that kind of wellness of soul. And if He grants a great experience of His nearness and favor you have all that life and wellness no matter what the circumstances. For me, so much of the battle is simply training myself to interpret all those things for what they are – delightful experiences of God’s favor and presence. And the more I do that the more urgent my affections are about not forfeiting that – because that kind of life and wellness of soul really is more desirable and more pleasurable than the pleasure of sin without those things. So we need to work on both our resolve and our affections.
All that is why loving God more will solve any sin problem. The more you love God the more you desire Him and delight in Him. The times when temptation is just overwhelming is when you have the feeling, “If I say no to this sin I’m missing out. I’m missing out on so much!” As long as your soul feels that way it will be impossible to sin this war. It is so important that we get to the point of not feeling that way – truly believing that God actually is both capable and willing to satisfy the craving of my soul in a greater way than that sin will. It takes faith – we need to actually believe that God’s presence is satisfying, and that it is available.
Benediction: 1Ki 8:56-61 Praise be to the LORD, who has given rest to his people …57 May the LORD our God be with us as he was with our fathers… 58 May he turn our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways… 60 so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other.
Summary
The best resolution between the tension of the threat of hell vs. promises of preservation are that those promises are not absolute in this life. The way to amputate is to prefer, attack before the little desire looks and turns big, and get grace from the Trinity
