What Should the Adulterer Do?

As always, I enjoy that worship. Now when I say enjoy that worship, I don't mean just musically. We can't enjoy things musically. There's nothing wrong with that. But I enjoyed the words, the phrases, the spiritual aspect of it. And that's why we've seen what we've seen. We work hard in the life of the church to choose solid, Christ-centered, doctrinal music, theologically rich music that goes along with where we're going. I'll point out to you one phrase that really struck me earlier. My righteousness is Jesus' blood. And that's the type of righteousness we're dealing with here in this extraordinary Christian life.

So if you would take your Bible and turn back with me to Matthew chapter 5. I said earlier that we are in a series through the Sermon on the Mount. And I have titled this series The Extraordinary Christian Life, because this is the Christian life. There's not two. There's not this ordinary Christian life. And then over here, this extraordinary Christian life. Christ is illustrating and teaching and explaining the Christian life. And it is an extraordinary, extraordinary life. Now like I said earlier in our scripture reading, we'll be specifically in verse 29 and 30.

And this is part of this greater portion of scripture that we began to study the week before Easter. We started off with verse 27. Now this morning we're going to finish up this second lesson. This second lesson in those scriptures, verse 27 to 30. Now this second lesson centers around one subject, and that is lust and adultery, or adultery and lust. Now remember that we have six lessons in these verses. Verses 21 down to the end of the chapter, which would be verse 48. And these six lessons are really an explanation of what Jesus had said in verse 20, or excuse me, verse 17 to verse 20. Really specifically it's an explanation of verse 20.

In verse 20, Jesus says that a man must possess a righteousness above and beyond the righteousness of the Jewish standard of the day. Now this above and beyond means a righteousness which is completely different than the scribes and the Pharisees. This was an inner righteousness that he is talking about. Now their righteousness, the religious leaders of the day, it was an external righteousness. It was religion. I have said over and over, it was rules and rules and more rules. But we have been learning that Jesus comes along here in the Sermon on the Mount, and he gives them a new standard.

It was above and beyond, completely different than their standard. He was God's standard. Bible scholars, both alive and dead, would agree to what I'm about to say. It is safe for us to say that most all of the Jewish religion in Israel in that day was nothing more than externals, outward performance, religion. And like I said, Jesus comes along and he gives God's standard and really it torpedoes all of their religion. Jesus didn't just rock the boat, really he flipped the boat over. And that's not an overstatement. Now before we get into our verses, verses 29 and 30, I want us to take a step back and see something that Jesus is doing here.

This is really, really relevant for us. We have studied two lessons so far. Think about it. We studied anger and murder, murder and anger, and we began to study lust and adultery, adultery and lust. And we learned that according to God, all mankind, all are murderers and all mankind are adulterers. We see that in the Scripture. Jesus comes along in verse 22 and 28, "But I say to you," and what he is doing is he is explaining, "is that all mankind are guilty." Now question, what is Jesus doing here? In establishing God's standard that is required of a man, Jesus is putting man in a totally impossible situation. No one can attain this standard.

No, all are guilty and no one can attain God's standard. And you see there is a twofold purpose here. First, Jesus wants to make men see their hopeless condition. He is wanting mankind to see the sinfulness of their man-made righteousness. And second, he is wanting man to desire a righteousness that can only come from God. He is wanting man to hunger, to be made right with God. And of course, this can only happen. Man can only hunger and thirst for God's righteousness if the Holy Spirit of God is drawing him there. Now, what is the answer? What is the solution? What is the solution to this terrible predicament for man? It is a new heart.

A man must be a new creation in Christ. Man must be born again or born from above. John 3, man must be born of God, not of heredity, not of a decision, not of the will of a man. Man must be born of God. Bible scholars call this regeneration. You see, folks, all of the world's religions are religions. And all of the world's religions are nothing more than religions of works. There is only one whereby a man is made a new creation. That's Bible Christianity. And lesson one, anger and murder, murder and anger. All of mankind are murderers. Lesson two, lust and adultery, adultery and lust. All mankind are adulterous.

And these lessons show us that we must have Christ's righteousness. So I'll pause right here before we continue. And I ask you, where are you in all of this, my friend? Where are you? Do you fall short? Or do you have Christ's righteousness because of the new birth? There's only two kind of people. You're either the one who needs this righteousness because you fall short or you're the one who has been born of God, born again, and you have Christ's righteousness. Well, this morning we're going to finish up with this second lesson. In verses 27, on down, we learned that all men and all women are guilty of adultery. We learned that all.

Well, we also learned that the consequences of adultery is hell. Now we went back into the Old Covenant.