Tackling Temptation
Matthew 5:27-30
Thomas Costain’s history, The Three Edwards, describes the life of Raynald III, a fourteenth-century duke in what is now Belgium. Grossly overweight, Raynald was commonly called by his Latin nickname, Crassus, which means "fat." After a violent quarrel, Raynald’s younger brother Edward led a successful revolt against him. Edward captured Raynald but did not kill him. Instead, he built a room around Raynald in the Nieuwkerk castle and promised him he could regain his title and property as soon as he was able to leave the room. This would not have been difficult for most people since the room had several windows and a door of near-normal size, and none was locked or barred. The problem was Raynald’s size he couldn’t fit through the door. To regain his freedom, he needed to lose weight. But Edward knew his older brother, and each day he sent a variety of delicious foods. Everyday he wheeled before Raynald on a cart, the tastiest foods. But instead of dieting his way out of prison, Raynald grew fatter from the food. When Duke Edward was accused of cruelty, he had a ready answer: "My brother is not a prisoner. He may leave when he so wills." Raynald stayed in that room for ten years and wasn’t released until after Edward died in battle. By then his health was so ruined he died within a year, a prisoner of his own appetite.
There are many of us who are like Raynald, trapped by our own sinful desires. We wish we didn’t have these desires but often the delicious temptations that are wheeled before us are too hard for our flesh to resist. We each have an appetite for a certain sinful pleasure that whenever we are tempted with it we give in. And it is a cycle of feast and famine. Pleasure than guilt. Perhaps that temptation is gossip, or pornography. Maybe alcohol or drugs. Maybe your irresistible temptation is fatty foods or overspending on your credit card. But whatever it is, you know you lack the willpower to overcome it. The temptation is just too strong.
Well in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus addresses the issue of sin, temptation and how to battle it. It is Jesus’ hope that we learn how to tackle temptation and sin. And so in Matthew 5 Jesus talks about the root causes of sin. In this passage Jesus speaks candidly about the issue of adultery. By studying these four verses we can learn some general lessons about how to battle the sinful desires we all have. If you have your Bibles please open them to Matthew chapter 5 starting with verse 27. Matthew 5:27. And here we will see what Jesus says is the root cause of sin.
Matt. 5:27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27). Jesus is referring here to the Old Testament command in Exodus 20:14. One of the ten commandments it forbids the sin of adultery. Adultery is extramarital sex that willfully and maliciously interferes with marriage relations. Adultery is cheating on your spouse. Leviticus 20:10 stated the punishment for committing adultery, “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.” (Lev. 20:10). God had set a harsh penalty aside for the persons who were engaged in destroying the holy union of marriage. And Jesus brings to mind this OT image of condemnation when he says, “You have heard it said, “Don’t commit adultery.”
Adultery was a huge problem even in Jesus’ day. Roman men were especially notorious for having mistresses. Demosthenes a Roman wrote about the widespread sin of adultery in those times. He wrote, "Men kept prostitutes for pleasure; men kept mistresses for the day to day needs of the body; men kept wives for the begetting of children and for the faithful guardianship of their homes. So long as a man supports his wife and family there is no shame whatsoever in extra- marital affairs." That was the prevailing sentiment in those days about cheating on your wife. Adultery was no big deal. And so Jesus mentions that it is still a grave sin in God’s eyes. It doesn’t matter what your culture says about adultery God still hates it, Jesus says.
But in this verse Jesus is dealing with a deeper issue than just the act of adultery. His aim is to get at the root of adultery and frankly the root of all sin, which is the spiritual condition of one’s heart or mind. He says, “if anyone looks at a woman lustfully he has already committed adultery in his heart.” A lustful wicked heart is the real sin, Jesus says, not just the physical act of adultery itself. The word lustful here simply means “deep desire.” And throughout the Bible lust not only refers to sexual desire but to any insatiable hunger for pleasure, profit, power, or prestige. Lust is a desire for anything God forbids.
And lust is usually a problem that begins with the thought life. The word heart in the Bible refers also to the mind. And here Jesus talks about a man looking at a woman. It is not that the man just glances at her but that he fantasizes about having sex with her. His eyes see, his mind focuses, his body responds and his thoughts go to gutter. He lusts. He has allowed his mind to wonder and his heart to sin. He does not need to commit the physical act of adultery. He has done something worse, he has sinned in his heart. His heart is tainted. William Barclay says, “To the pure all things are pure. But the man whose heart is defiled can look at any scene and find something in it to titillate and excite the wrong desire.”
Now why do you think Jesus makes a point of bringing this all up? Why can’t he just say that adultery is wrong and be done with it. Does it really matter what one thinks about just as long as they don’t act on it. Isn’t he being a bit nitpicky? Well according to Jesus it does matter what is in a person’s mind. Because the mind is where all sin basically originates. In Matthew 15:18 Jesus says “But what comes out of the mouth, comes from the heart. This is what makes a person dirty. From the heart come all kinds of evil, wrong thoughts, murder, adultery, stealing, lying, and slander. These things make a person dirty.”
What Jesus is saying here is that sin starts in our mind. And when a person allows his mind to become corrupt he lays the groundwork for all other sins such as murder, adultery, stealing, lying and slander. John MacArthur says, “By engaging the inner faculties, sins of the mind work directly on the soul to bias it toward evil.” Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. But it all starts in the mind. James 1:15 says, “When evil desire is conceived in the mind it gives birth to sin.” And all sin Jesus says starts with a thought. And if you want to get to the root of sin, he says, you had better look within and examine the heart! It is not the physical act itself that is the root cause of sin, it is a person’s heart and mind and thought life that lead him to sin. He is a prisoner of his desires.
Now if that is the case how do we wage war against these sinful lustful desires? Or can we even do so? How do we clean up our thoughts and at the same time clean up our behavior? Well Jesus gives us some solid principles for tackling temptation in Matthew 5 that I would like us to see and apply to our life. And as you wage the war against sin it is my prayer that you will take these steps to tackle temptation and battle sin in your mind.
First he says, if you want to battle temptation don’t entertain sin. In verse 28 he says, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery.” The whole ordeal starts with a look. By choosing to look you are entertaining sin. You are inviting it in and allowing it take root. You are investigating. And pretty soon a not so innocent glance turns into a stare and ut oh! You are doing exactly what you don’t want to do. But it all started because you choose to first of all entertain the thought of sin. You dwelled on it. You created a setting for sin. An old Rabbinical saying said, “The eyes and the heart are the handmaids of sin.” And if you set your eyes and heart on sin you will most likely commit that sin.
I heard about a man who decided he was going to go on a diet and so he cut out sweets. He did pretty good until one day he arrived at his office with a huge coffee cake in his hand. It was not just any coffee cake, it was oozing with icing and nuts. “I thought you were on a diet,” one of his co-workers asked. “Oh this is different,” replied the man. “You see this morning, I was driving by the bakery and I said to God, ‘God if you want me to stop please allow there to be a parking spot in front of the bakery.’ And sure enough, my seventh time around there was a spot.” That man was entertaining temptation. And he gave in. He shouldn’t have even been near the bakery.
Imagine with me, if a friend called you up and said, “Man, I got this new pet snake, it’s really huge and it is known to eat small animals. I know you have a dog, but would mind keeping him at your house while I am on vacation?” Would you even think of bringing that snake into your home? No way. You wouldn’t even entertain that idea.
And let me say this to you, if you are entertaining sin. Playing around with it, toying with the idea of it, don’t be surprised if it bites you. Remember David. He entertained sin when he looked at a naked Bathsheba from his balcony. David should not have even been looking. But just that look led to a thought in his head and before you know Bathsheba was in his bedroom. He thought he could investigate from a distance, what’s the harm in looking at her, but he could not stop his evil desire. And neither can we. Paul wrote in Romans 13:14, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and do not even entertain the thought of gratifying the desires of the sinful nature.”
Kent Hughes has a book entitled Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome in which he gives a list of questions we can use to examine what kind of thoughts we are entertaining. Are we being desensitized by the present evil world? Do things that once shocked us now pass us by with little notice? Have our sexual ethics slackened? Where do our minds wander when we have no duties to perform? What are we reading? Are there books or magazines or computer files in our homes that we want no one else to see? What are we renting at the local video stores? How many hours do we spend watching TV? How many adulteries did we watch last week? How many murders? How many did we watch with our children? How many chapters of the Bible did we read last week? Good questions. Pretty convicting, I entertain a lot of sin, no wonder I slip up. How about you?
Secondly, Jesus says here, if you want to tackle temptation cut off the source of sin. He says in verse 29, “if your right eyes causes you to sin gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of the body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin cut if off and throw it away.” Jesus is not promoting body mutilation he is using a metaphor. He’s saying that whatever causes you temptation, you cut it off at its source. Get rid of it. Throw it away. The example of cutting off a hand is pretty extreme, and Jesus says, you might need to take some extreme action to get rid of sin. There are something’s you need to hack off.
There is a word used here in verse 29 which meant in the Greek language, “bait stick.” A bait stick was a stick that was fixed to trap an animal. The animal would smell the bait on the stick and not be able to resist it and eventually it would lead to his destruction. If the animal could just resist the bait and run away from it, he would not die. And Jesus is saying here, if you have a sin that is baiting you, that is luring you, you need not stand around and let it bring you in. Do whatever it takes to get away from it. Run if you have to. The Bible says, “Flee from immorality.” Flee from that which causes your demise.
Back in November my wife and I were traveling home from a trip we had taken to Washington, D.C. And I was listening to the Bengals game and they were losing and the officials were bad and I was getting upset. And she just reached over and turned off the radio. “What are you doing,” I said to her with a mean glare. And she said, “I’m cutting off your source.” She knew that if I weren’t listening to the game I wouldn’t be getting so upset and so she cut off my source of temptation. And I told her well I’ve already sinned so why not let me just listen to rest of game, but she turned on the classical music station to calm me down.
And if there is a temptation that has trapped you, you need to cut off its source. If you struggle with lust, cancel the movie stations. If you struggle with gossip, don’t stay on the phone too long. If you struggle with alcohol don’t go to the Pirate’s Den for dinner. If you struggle with overeating, don’t drive past the bakery seven times. If you struggle with temper turn off the radio. Someone once said, “If you don’t want to fall, don’t walk where it’s slippery.” Cut off the source of your temptation.
Finally Jesus says, if you want to tackle temptation, remember the consequences of sin. In verse 30 he says, “It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” What are the consequences of giving into temptation, hell Jesus says. In fact the word here for hell is gehenna. A Greek word which referred to a smelly firery garbage dump that burned day in night in the Valley of Hinnom just outside the city of Jerusalem. This place stunk to high heaven and was a place at one time where children where brutally sacrificed in pagan worship rituals. Gehenna was a terrible place. And what Jesus is saying here is that sin has drastic long term consequences. A little pleasure now could result in a lot pain later.
And Jesus wasn’t beating around the bush here. He wasn’t politically correct. He wasn’t calling sin an addiction or a disease. He wasn’t blaming sin on hereditary or genetics. He was saying, listen, if you chose to disobey God deliberately you will be punished. The book of Numbers says, “you be sure your sin will find you out.” And so the next time you are entertaining sin you just remember that there are grave consequences for your sin. You may not go to hell, but you could ruin your marriage, lose your job, hamper your witness, damage your reputation. And it’s less painful, Jesus says to cut out sin now than to allow it to run its course. Someone once defined sin as, “Short term gain, with long term pain.”
And if you don’t believe that, ask someone with a drug addiction. A decision to smoke pot at age 14 led to much harder drugs and now they have to battle it every day and their thirty years old. A little pleasure at 14 led to a life long battle. They have reaped a destiny. Sin has long term consequences.
Do you know who understands the long term consequences of sin? Jesus does. Now Jesus never sinned, but he felt the consequence of our sin on the cross. Sin is what killed Jesus. He felt the pain of sin. And that is how he can say to us here in Matthew 5 I know how terrible sin is. I felt it, I felt sin as the crown of thorns was placed on my brow. I felt sin as that whip grazed my flesh and made me bleed. If felt sin when that cross was placed on shoulder and I forced to walk through the streets. I felt sin when the guards spit on me and called me names. I felt sin when they stripped me naked in public. I felt sin when they drove those nails through my hands and my feet. I felt sin when then gambled for my only garment. I felt sin when I asked for something to drink but all they gave me was vinegar. I felt sin when my Heavenly Father hid himself from me. I felt sin when they pierced my side with a sword. Believe me Jesus, says I know the consequences of sin.
And that should be our greatest deterrent to sin. Jesus. If we remember how Jesus took on our sin so that we wouldn’t suffer hell that should keep us from entertaining sin. Remembering that our sins were bore by him on that cross of Calvary.
Is there a sin or temptation in your life that is hurting you this morning? Is there something sinful that you’ve entertained and your appetite for it is strong but you know that its wrong? Would you give your life to Jesus Christ, he is the only one who can free you this morning. It does not matter what sin you’ve committed, or what you’ve done. He took the cross to pay for all the slip ups you’ve made. Would you accept him this morning and be freed from the power of sin. Come, confess Jesus as Lord, repent of your sins, be baptized into him and you will be saved from sin. Come as we sing!
