kingdom

“But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:32).   Read Matthew 5:31-32. At this point in Jewish history, there was a debate raging between Pharisees and other teachers of the law. It concerned a foundational issue from God’s Law: marriage and divorce. You see, Deuteronomy 24:1 describes a certain situation in which a man divorces his wife because she becomes “displeasing to him” because “he finds something indecent about her.”   One group of rabbis said that this “something indecent” was adultery and only adultery. Another group said that it could be anything that offended the husband—from burning the dinner to embarrassing him in public. In other words, this more liberal school of thought believed that a husband could divorce his wife for any reason at all. That sounds a lot like our culture today, doesn’t it? […]

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28).   Read Matthew 5:27-30. Though sin is at the root of the problems in our world today, God is most concerned with the source of that sin—for He knows that true holiness means stopping sin at its source: within the heart. Take, for example, sexual sin. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “[A]nyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). As Bible-believing Christians, we are not against sex. Rather, we believe that sexuality is a gift from God. We believe that God created sex as a beautiful gift to be shared by a husband and wife within the bounds of marriage. And yet, man perverted the good gift of sex, just as he […]