THE BOOK OF MATTHEW
Lesson 17, Chapter 5 Continued 5
We've been in Matthew chapter 5 long enough that a reminder of the setting and
background for the Sermon on the Mount is in order.
The setting is the Galilee. It is the serene rural agricultural and shepherding
center of the Holy Land. Above the Sea of Galilee, which was somewhat larger
then than it is today, are gentle rolling hills covered with mustard plants, poppies,
and a variety of grasses and small bushes. The trees are few and not large.
Somewhere in those hills a crowd of thousands of Jews gathered, mostly the
common folk, from places as far away as Syria. Why did they come? What drew
them there? It was to encounter Yeshua. Was it a religious encounter they
sought? Not in the sense we moderns think of it. In that era what we would call
"religion" was not separated and compartmentalized away from all other aspects
of their lives. A god or a spirit always was involved in whatever activity was
occurring. These thousands of Jews, however, did not come because they
thought they were going to meet their Messiah.
CJB
Matthew 4:23-5:2
23
Yeshua went all over the Galil teaching in their
synagogues, proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing
people from every kind of disease and sickness.
24
Word of him spread
throughout all Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill, suffering
from various diseases and pains, and those held in the power of demons,
and epileptics and paralytics; and he healed them.
25
Huge crowds followed
him from the Galil, the Ten Towns, Yerushalayim, Y'hudah, and 'Ever-
HaYarden.
CJB
Matthew 5:1 Seeing the crowds, Yeshua walked up the hill. After he sat
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down, his talmidim came to him,
2
and he began to speak. This is what he
taught them:
So the people came in the hope of healing of their physical ailments. The
teaching they would receive was a bonus.
Likely the place was near to Capernaum because that was where Yeshua was
currently residing. At this time the Jewish people looked upon Jesus as a Tzadik;
a Holy Man that was a miracle working healer. A Tzadik would come along every
now and then without warning. These men could indeed actually heal in the
name and power of the Lord God of Israel. So when a Holy Man appeared the
sick and the lame would flock to him.
Christ had not yet publicly revealed His divine nature nor His mission as the
Messiah that had been foretold in the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh. I use the term
"Bible" in a loose way. Jews did not own or carry around a neatly bound holy
book as we do in our time. For one reason, the various books of the Old
Testament were written down on rather bulky scrolls. Since each precious word
had to be copied and re-copied by hand, there were few Jews that had such
ability or authority to do so, and it was rare that even a well-to-do person might
possess much more than a single book of the Bible. Therefore actual Scripture
teaching occurred only at the local Synagogue (where many could hear it at one
time), and even then Scripture teaching took a backseat to the teachings of the
Traditions of the Elders that the Pharisees who dominated the Synagogues
advocated and insisted upon.
As His speech to the crowd began, Yeshua first acknowledged who was present
in a series of blessings. Next He paused and made a crucial statement.... a sort
of preamble.... prior to the remainder of His teaching. There He cautioned in a
kind of pre-emptive strike that in no way should anyone think that what He would
say abolished, changed, added to or subtracted from the Law and the Prophets
(that term was shorthand for the entire Tanakh..... what we call the Old
Testament). In wanting to be certain that He was not going to be misunderstood
or misrepresented, He elaborated by saying that not even one letter in one word
of the Scriptures would be abolished or changed until the present heavens and
earth passed away. And further that anyone who disobeyed any part of the Holy
Scriptures (the Law, specifically), and taught others to do so, would be eternally
relegated to the lowest possible rung of society and status in the Kingdom of
Heaven. Afterwards He began to teach, often by stating one or another of the 10
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Commandments and explaining that while doing them was still required, the
intent and mental attitude that a worshipper approached in observing the
commandment was every bit as important as the action itself.
Reconciliation rather than revenge or even a lawsuit was Christ's instruction in
various situations from having anger towards someone to the matter of collecting
an unpaid debt. We left off at verse 26, so open your Bibles to verse 27.
READ MATTHEW 5:27 - end
I want to remind you of something I said from an earlier lesson. Yes, we are
crawling through these verses at a pace that would make a snail seem like
Secretariat. The reason is that the Jewish cultural understanding that goes
without saying of those in attendance, an understanding that is embedded within
Yeshua's words, is not usually known to us in the West in the 21
st
century. That
cultural understanding provides the needed context for extracting correct
meaning from Christ's statements. Therefore for us to grasp the meaning and
intent, and to apply it properly to our lives, we must be open minded and willing to
invest our time to be instructed in the ways and customs of that ancient and
foreign civilization.
Yeshua quotes Exodus 20:14, the 7
th
Commandment: thou shall not commit
adultery. This commandment is the proverbial "can of worms" since its giving at
Mt. Sinai. It is a direct commandment concerning sexual behavior, and the
operation of morality within it. And since the command is brief, later Moses will
give further instruction on it. Today, in a time when even the fundamental concept
of morality is questioned (even angrily rejected by some), sexual behavior has
become little more than a playground of pleasure seeking with nearly no
boundaries whatsoever. It is not unusual for those who seek such pleasures to
argue about what the Bible says regarding it, and they enjoy reminding Christians
that the Church long ago threw away the laws of God and replaced it with Jesus
and love. So the conclusion is that this 7
th
Commandment, and all the offshoots
that stem from it, no longer matters because Jesus did away with those ancient
sexual limitations. If you want to know why sexual immorality is now the norm in
the West, simply look to the pulpit. It is Christian leaders and commentators who
are responsible for creating this avalanche of sex sin due to their tolerance of
anything and everything, false doctrines and denials of plain biblical truth.
Understanding what this 7
th
commandment means and entails requires some
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explanation before we get into how Yeshua dealt with it. So before we get to the
second part of Christ's instruction about it, I want to draw heavily from the
teaching I did on Exodus 20:14 some years ago.
The 7
th
Commandment is that a married person should not commit adultery. The
first thing to understand is that the entire concept of adultery, by definition, ONLY
occurs within the institution of a marriage; outside of a marriage, adultery has no
meaning. Marriage is not only an important element of God’s plan for mankind,
but it plays a role in God’s relationship with mankind.
The fundamental concept of a marriage is that a “union” occurs; as concerns
human-to-human relationships, scripturally speaking, this marriage union is
between a man and a woman. Let me say that again: there is no provision for
same sex marriage in the Bible. In fact, such a notion is an oxymoron. While we
too often think of marriage as a physical or sexual matter, or in our American
society as a financial or legal matter, in fact the union God is dealing with in the
7th Commandment is first and foremost a spiritual union. Certainly in the present
world the physical aspects of marriage exist, and not the least of reasons for it is
the propagation of our species. From Yehoveh’s perspective, the sin of adultery
is less about a husband or a wife having a physical sexual union outside of their
marriage than it is about our spirits entering into an unauthorized union with
another. God has authorized that a man and a woman, before Him, may be
joined in every level of union between themselves; but ONLY between
themselves. The only other union allowed within that marriage is with God.
You’ve probably noticed that our union with Christ is often spoken of in the Bible
using marriage terminology; and its use is both metaphorical and real. That fact
should help us to be more aware of how we are to consider the essence of
marriage from Yehoveh’s point of view, and how we are to consider the nature of
our relationship with Christ. Just as earthly marriage is meant to be a man and a
woman coming into union with one another, Salvation is humanity's union with
Christ.
We who are Christ’s are, figuratively speaking, currently in a state of betrothal to
Him. We are in the marriage PROCESS. Right now, Christ is with us in Spirit,
and so we are in union with Him in spirit. But there will be a time in the future
when we will be in union with him in a much more tangible and complete way. So
even during our current earthly time of betrothal to Christ for us to come into
union with something or someone that is forbidden is to place us into a state of
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unfaithfulness to Christ. This, therefore, puts us in a state of adultery in our
relationship with Christ.
The NT Greek word “moichos” (moy-kos), which is typically correctly translated
“adultery”, must be understood in its OT Hebrew sense in order for us to fully
understand what God is telling us about adultery. When the Hebrews spoke of
adultery they meant unfaithfulness to your union partner. It did NOT have to be
an overt act of having sex with another person to be considered adultery,
although most often that is what occurred. What constituted adultery, and the
proper proofs and punishments for it, changed considerably over time. During the
time of the Patriarchs, adultery required the wife to have had sex with another
man. No proof other than the husband’s suspicions were needed, and he himself
could put her to death. The Laws of Moses brought the requirement for conviction
to a minimum of two witnesses. By the time of Christ much more proof was
needed, a court of law would rule on the matter, and death was still one of a
range of possible punishments. Not long AFTER Christ, the death penalty was
removed for the sin of adultery because it had become so rampant within Jewish
society that it was almost impossible to police; and the number of women that
would have been executed was so large as to make carrying out the death
sentence unthinkable. During all biblical times, adultery was considered primarily
a female crime and sin….men were usually not subject to it.
There are certain unions available to mankind that we are prohibited from
entering into, especially if we wish to also be in union with Christ. In other words
there are some unions that are mutually exclusive. An extreme example would be
that if we come into spiritual union with Satan, we can not also be in spiritual
union with Christ….those two unions being mutually exclusive. There are other
forbidden unions, all of them destructive. So we need to understand the serious
nature of this particular sin in a much broader context than we typically think of it.
In Matthew 5:27 and 28, Yeshua essentially explains how adultery comes about.
It is that it always begins in the mind as the product of our evil inclination. If one
first doesn't fantasize about it and embrace the idea, it doesn't happen. Therefore
when married men eye other women in a lustful way, then Yeshua says that from
God's perspective the act of adultery has already occurred (the thought being
that embracing the idea inevitably leads to the doing of it). The God-principle is
that just as anger is the initiating cause of murder, so is lust the initiating cause of
adultery. Especially in the 21
st
century pornography is perhaps the number one
expression of lust in the lives of males; married or otherwise. There can be no
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intellectually honest defense of the use of pornography as anything other than
immoral lusting and therefore it is sin. And there is no doubt that the widespread
use of pornography has ignited the epidemic of adultery in our society. Yet I want
to be clear: the notion being spoken by Christ that the intention is to be
considered as the deed was nothing new or novel among Jews. The Academy of
Shammai, which represents the source of doctrine for one of the two greatest
factions of the Pharisees at the time of Jesus, also taught this same principle.
Although Yeshua quoted from, and is discussing, the 7
th
Commandment His
instruction about adultery actually approaches the matter through the worldview
of the 10
th
Commandment: do not covet. That is, coveting is a sinful state of
mind. Coveting is a sinful intention. It is the desire to obtain something forbidden.
Coveting is not the action itself. Thus it is the disobedience to the
10
th
Commandment (when the intent occurs) that ushers in the disobedience to
the 7
th
Commandment (when the actual physical deed of adultery occurs).
Yeshua continues to expand on this matter of intention leading to the doing of the
sin in verses 29 and 30. So verse 28 speaks of "looking upon a woman"
(coveting), and verse 29 says that even if it is your right eye that you are using to
"look", then you should gouge it out and get rid of it. In Jewish thought the right
side of anything is the best side, or the strongest side, so it is the most valuable
side. Therefore it is not only that you lose your eye, you lose your best eye.
Naturally this is an expression because unless you have damaged eyes, for most
people our two eyes see equally well. And why should someone who is prone to
lusting after women gouge out their best eye? Because it is better to lose that
eye than it is to have our entire body thrown into Gei-Hinnom and destroyed.
Even if one doesn't know what Gei-Hinnom is, it sounds like a really bad thing
that nobody wants to have happen to them. Many translations will use the word
"hell". That isn't exactly wrong, but it certainly isn't right. Gei-Hinnom is a valley
that runs through the south of Jerusalem; today it is simply called the Hinnom
Valley. In Yeshua's era it was Jerusalem's municipal garbage dump. Jerusalem
was a city with several thousand people living there. As you might imagine, they
generated tons of trash: animal carcasses, human waste, items that became
unclean through contact with blood or other body fluids that saturated them, and
so on. Every filthy and disgusting thing you can think of was thrown into this
valley. The refuse was then lit on fire and the fires burned continually, night and
day, while sulfur was thrown onto it to try and disguise the nauseating odors.
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It is well documented that in prior times this same valley was used for the same
purposes, but it was also used by the Canaanites for human sacrifice; often
children. The dead bodies of the murdered were simply thrown into the burning
waste. So it is easily seen that the threat of sinning a sin that could cause you to
be thrown into Gei-Hinnom was about the worst punishment imaginable. It is
true that the idea of Hell, a place of fire and torment for the dead, was associated
with Gei-Hinnom. But Hell was viewed as an underworld place where the wicked
dead lived; Judeo-Christianity would say it is a spiritual place of
evil. Gei-Hinnom in the 1st century was as real and tangible as it gets. In Christ's
day it wasn't evil; but it was unclean and frighteningly disgusting.
I suppose Christ's instruction that plucking your eye out and discarding it as a
good solution to lust can only be labeled in modern Western terms as
exaggeration and hyperbole because He certainly wasn't suggesting self
mutilation. The point was to illustrate just how serious of a sin adultery is, and
that since the fuel of adultery is lust (coveting), and the source of that fuel was
what was taken in through the portal of the eye, then one should make every
effort to avoid it even if it means destroying that portal.
Notice that Yeshua is talking to the men. Remember: in His day adultery was
seen in Jewish society as primarily a crime committed by women; men were
largely exempt. So this teaching was a battering ram to challenge and to smash
this false doctrine that so favored males. Ironically it is men who are really
tempted the most by lust because men are visually oriented creatures. This is
why pornography is such a great and destructive temptation for men. It will never
stop being a temptation as long as it exists. And men, don't ever think you'll be
the one who can use pornography for whatever your reason, but that it won't
inevitably lead you to wrong sexual behavior because you are uniquely able to
resist it. It is no different than the person who believes they can use cocaine or
crack and they'll be the one who will avoid becoming addicted. Is using
pornography a sin? Of course it is because it is lusting (coveting) after women
who are not your wife. And yes, single men, it is similar for you. It is lust and the
fantasizing it produces that leads to wrong sexual behavior. Once again: lust is
coveting. And it is exactly what Jesus is warning about.
In verse 30 Christ adds to the dramatic hyperbole by saying that if your right hand
makes you sin, cut it off (just as it is with a lustful eye). Once again the meaning
of "right" is "best" hand. While the eye is the portal to the invisible mind, the hand
is representative of the visible physical part of us that carries out what the mind
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instructs the body to do. In another setting, while with His disciples, Yeshua
repeats this same principle using similar illustrations in Matthew chapter 18.
CJB
Matt. 18:9
9
And if your eye is a snare for you, gouge it out and fling it
away! Better that you should be one-eyed and obtain eternal life than keep
both eyes and be thrown into the fire of Gei-Hinnom.
Christ moves on to the next subject in verse 31 but it is not altogether detached
from the subject of verses 27-30. The subject is divorce, but it includes the
possibility that under certain circumstances divorce can cause the woman to
become an adulteress; and anyone who marries her then becomes a participant
in her adultery, which makes them an adulterer as well. I want to pause here to
comment that in the Bible, especially so in the Old Testament but it is also the
case in the New Testament, it is men who divorce their wives (not the other way
around), and it is the women who generally bear the blame and any punishment
involved. We must take this in the context of that era. It was a society that was
male dominated to a degree that Western women in the 21st century have not
experienced. Jewish women at that time were not chattel; but they also had little
power. By custom the lives of women were in the hands of men. Therefore when
Yeshua speaks of divorce it is of course a man divorcing his wife. And, says
Jesus, the only reason a man could legitimately, and without consequence,
divorce his wife is if she has been unfaithful to him (notice there is no thought of
the man being unfaithful to his wife, which in reality had a much higher probability
of happening).
Yeshua's entire treatment of divorce finds its original source in the Torah in
Deuteronomy 24.
CJB
Deuteronomy 24:1 "Suppose a man marries a woman and
consummates the marriage but later finds her displeasing, because he has
found her offensive in some respect. He writes her a divorce document,
gives it to her and sends her away from his house.
2
She leaves his house,
goes and becomes another man's wife;
3
but the second husband dislikes
her and writes her a get, gives it to her and sends her away from his house;
or the second husband whom she married dies.
4
In such a case her first
husband, who sent her away, may not take her again as his wife, because
she is now defiled. It would be detestable to ADONAI, and you are not to
bring about sin in the land ADONAI your God is giving you as your
inheritance.
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Deuteronomy deals with some nuances within a divorce situation, making divorce
an undesirable, but not illegal, occurrence. Yeshua doesn't overturn it or change
it. He merely makes the case that divorce shouldn't happen in the first place. But
if it does, the only legitimate reason for a man to divorce his wife is her
unfaithfulness to him. Matthew's description of Christ's words are (frankly) not
easy to interpret. I believe that there are two main reasons for this difficulty. First,
I suspect there is some kind of textual corruption of the Greek manuscripts that
are oldest ones we have. Second there are some unspoken cultural customs that
the people of that era went by, but we aren't familiar with. If we take what is said
perfectly literally, then basically we have Christ saying that a woman who is
divorced by her husband is automatically guilty of adultery. That she becomes
an adulteress is said to be caused by her husband. This hardly seems
reasonable if for no other reason it does not adhere to the basic God-principle
that we are each responsible only for our own sins and not those of others. In the
case of a divorce involving a woman who had remained faithful to her husband,
the wife had little to no say in the matter and certainly wasn't the party to cause
the divorce or to initiate it. This situation doesn't jibe with Deuteronomy. There a
divorced woman is not in any way labeled an adulteress simply because her
husband decides to divorce her.
Further Christ's words are that if the divorced woman gets remarried, then her
new husband also becomes guilty of adultery. Deuteronomy in no way puts such
a conviction of adultery upon a divorced woman's new husband. It is well known,
historically, that divorce ran rampant in the 1st century Jewish community. Men
would frivolously divorce their wives, go and have a quick affair with another
woman, and then come back and remarry the same woman...... sometimes in a
matter of a few days. This was because the way that the Law of Moses was
interpreted by many of the Rabbis was that the man could technically avoid the
sin of adultery (a sin within a marriage) by first divorcing his wife before he had
that brief tryst with another woman. And because a man divorcing his wife was
not labeled as sin for the husband in the Law, then he was home free. Could it be
that this was the background for Yeshua's words? I think it is a definite possibility.
Most everything we read in the Bible, including the New Testament and Christ's
words, were in the setting and circumstances of the times. The only other
possibility in my mind is that Yeshua was saying that divorce and remarriage
destroy the concept of lifelong monogamy. So no amount of rules about divorce,
no matter how fair, change the fact that the underlying meaning of marriage in
the first place is a permanent bond between a man and a woman. However I
think even that is a bit of a stretch and not something His audience would have
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taken from that instruction.
In verse 33 it seems as though Yeshua leaves the subject of the 10
Commandments and gets into some other standard rules of Jewish society.
However buried in it is a reference to another of the 10 Commandments. Nearly
every Bible version has its own unique translation of Christ's words because the
interpretation is a bit difficult. The CJB version, and few others, use both the
words vow and oath and so some commentators try to approach this verse on
the basis of distinguishing between the meaning of a vow versus an oath.
However in most settings in the Bible, the distinction between vow and oath is
paper thin. For all practical purposes the words are interchangeable. I think the
YLT is the best of the bunch.
YLT
Matthew 5:33 'Again, ye heard that it was said to the ancients: Thou
shalt not swear falsely, but thou shalt pay to the Lord thine oaths;
Whenever a person "swore" something meant that the person was certifying the
truthfulness and veracity of a statement or a transaction, but the swearing by
nature involved invoking the name of that person's god. Therefore among Jews
to swear something meant to invoke Yehoveh's name as the guarantor of
whatever the statement or transaction was. This was absolutely in line with a
command of God given in the Torah.
CJB
Leviticus 19:12 Do not swear by my name falsely, which would be
profaning the name of your God; I am ADONAI.
This gets fleshed out a bit further a little later in the Torah.
CJB
Numbers 30:2-3
2
Then Moshe spoke to the heads of the tribes of the
people of Isra'el. He said, "Here is what ADONAI has ordered:
3
when a man
makes a vow to ADONAI or formally obligates himself by swearing an oath,
he is not to break his word but is to do everything he said he would do.
But Yeshua says not to swear at all, not even if you are NOT using God's name.
That is, don't swear by anything..... not by Heaven, not by the earth, and not by
Jerusalem. Heaven is God's created place where His throne is located. Not by
the earth because it is God's created place and is said in Isaiah 66 that it is His
property.... His footstool to be specific. And not by Jerusalem because it is the
city of the great King (a reference to God's created earthly dwelling place). All this
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seems logical within the religious sphere, doesn't it? All these things (Heaven,
earth, Jerusalem) are part of God's realm and so they have a firm relationship to
God. But then Yeshua says not to swear also by your head. Clearly your head
isn't part of God's realm. In the Mishna, generally speaking the rule was that
oaths sworn by Heaven, earth, even the Temple are not valid.
Yeshua goes on to say rather than swearing an oath, just make your yes, yes...
and your no, no. In fact, He says that to do anything more has its origin in evil.
Those last few words, especially, are what have caused all sorts of various
opinions about exactly what Yeshua was instructing. Frankly, the main problem
for the many denominations in deciding what to do with this statement has to do
with the first and foremost doctrine of the Christian Church: the Old Testament,
along with its rules, laws, instructions, prohibitions, etc., are dead and gone so
there is no point in looking to it for answers. That false doctrine causes needless
confusion in understanding this matter.
First of all, there is no prohibition against making vows and oaths in the Torah or
anywhere in the Old Testament. And, at least the early Church that was
organized and operated out of synagogues, and administered mostly by Jewish
Believers, never understood Jesus as no longer allowing vows. Even the Apostle
Paul felt obligated to fulfill a vow such that he ventured to Jerusalem and the
Temple to do so. Since Yeshua made it abundantly clear in Matthew 5:17 - 19
that nothing He would say was in any way meant to be taken that He was
abolishing, changing, adding to or subtracting from not only the Torah but the
entire Tanakh (Old Testament) then that must always be our point of reference
when trying to interpret His statements.
Just as marriage and divorce had become frivolous within Jewish society during
Christ's era, so was making frivolous vows that the vow maker had no intent of
actually following through with. It had just become a manner of speech. We do
that in our time by saying things like "with God as my witness" or "the Lord
knows". This is using the Lord's name as the guarantor of what it is you are
claiming..... in other words you are making an oath or vow even if you didn't
realize it (that is the nature of frivolous). And that violates the 3rd Commandment:
thou shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. Again; is it wrong to make an
oath or vow in God's name? No. But God absolutely expects us to do what we
vowed or that we know our claim was true. Otherwise we have used His name in
a vain way.
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At the same time God doesn't command us to make an oath or vow to prove our
truthfulness or our intent. However as we learn when reading in Judges about the
tragedy of Jephthah's innocent daughter, making a frivolous or careless vow that
we can't or don't carry out can have disastrous unintended consequences or it
can remain as an Albatross around our neck. Christ's viewpoint is: don't make
vows and oaths at all. One more time: by nature, in the biblical era, vows and
oaths automatically included invoking a god's name. So we must understand
vows and oaths in that context. In a legitimate religious setting, such as a
marriage ceremony, of course it is proper to make a vow. But in a typical daily
social setting, or a business transaction.... stay clear. Don't back up your "yes" by
invoking God's name. Don't back up your "no" by invoking God's name. Being
truthful is enough...... especially for a follower of Christ.
This issue about Jesus saying that going any further than "yes" or "no" has its
origin in evil is clearly addressing a cultural and societal issue of that time (which
we've already discussed) because making a legitimate vow or oath in God's
name is in no way evil. But... it can be fraught with danger for the one making the
vow.
We'll stop here for today and finally conclude Matthew 5 next time.
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