Sermon on the Mount #16- Adulterers! Tear Out Your Right Eye and Cut Off Your Right Hand! (II)
Matthew 5:27-32
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. 31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
I will explain about this in detail by next week. Today is the second session about this. We had an overview about what adultery and divorce as spoken by Jesus are. We began with marriage. As you confirmed enough, the story of marriage, divorce, and adultery the Bible talks about, is a story about the union between God and the church, which is God’s bride, right? However, the union between God and His creatures is not a union which is made by both sides bringing out something they have but it is made by the mechanism of the cross in which God, who penetrates and enters into the creatures who are nothing and creates them into a being same as God. It is Union Christ. Therefore, the church, which will marry God, must go down to a place of nothingness and be reconstructed only by the grace of the Creator. And this process takes place during the historical life of the saints, during their journey of faith. Those who do not understand or admit ‘the immersion into grace’ are separated from one body and thus divorced from God, and they are called adulterers because they are fallen apart from God when they should be in one body with Him. Those who should love God are separated from Him and love something else and that something else is ultimately themselves. As such, the marriage between God and the church is begun by God and completed by what is His and by Him.
There is nothing the bride can bring out in the wedding banquet. Well, if we were to be scrutinizing, what the bride should prepare is her robe and the wedding jewelry since it is said she cannot enter without wearing the robe and the groom identifies the bride by the wedding jewelry that is on her. In the old days, the groom betroths without seeing the bride’s face and finds her among the girls waiting outside with a lamp, usually about ten girls, by the wedding gift he has sent earlier. The one who has the wedding gift is his bride. So we can say the bride has to prepare things like the wedding gift and the lamp but even these are given to her for free by God as the Holy Spirit and as faith. God sent them to her first. Thus, there is nothing the bride has to bring out on their own. The bride is totally depraved. It is called total depravity. The bride is unqualified. God proposes to the unqualified bride. So it is unconditional election. God chooses unconditionally. God is proposing to the unqualified bride. Not everyone can become His bride but God proposes only to those He has chosen before the creation. So it is limited atonement. God prepares everything needed for the wedding Himself. It is irresistible grace, God preparing all that is needed for the marriage. And His proposal will definitely be concluded in a marriage. The marriage cannot be called off in the middle or there cannot be a divorce after getting married. And this is called perseverance of the saints. All these put together is called TULIP.
This marriage is already completed in the revelation of infinity. You are already completed as the church of heaven, aren’t you? Moses went up and saw, John went up and saw, and the Apostle Paul went up and saw. “I am there!” And once they came back down, they no longer feared even death. This church of heaven is already completed in a different dimension. The brides of the revelation of infinity come down into history and get to live out the meaning and the content of this marriage. When that happens, they become those who have the word, and they understand the scriptures. “Ah~ this is what it means!” They come to understand what “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth” means. “Kingdom of God is created by God.” These people are called the ones who have the word since the Son is what the word is about. Such a person is called the one who has the Son and who has the seed since the Son is ‘gera’ or offspring. There is another word for ‘having the seed’ in the Bible. What is it? The word for hip socket means a vessel that holds the seed of a man. Jacob’s hip socket becomes broken and he comes to life as Israel. Then, what is the vessel that holds the seed of a man? It is Jesus. That is why He is called the Son, the Man. So, as a bride of God, if you know the bride’s original place or that you are not even a living being without Jesus the Son, you will have the Son, the seed, and this bride will become a manly and strong son. That is why phrases like ‘be strong and show yourself to be a man’ or ‘you are chosen as a son’ come out in the Bible. So women felt bad reading these, didn’t you? ‘What do you mean be strong like a man?” This is what that means, people. It does not mean you should become manly.
Strictly speaking, this history can be said to be in the middle of drawing the process of the creation as in “in the beginning, God created the heaven and earth” in various pictures. So the brides of God come into history as a divorcee, adulterer, and someone who has fallen off from being one body with God. What do you call someone who has fallen off from God, the fountain of life? He is called nothingness, the dead. For this reason, the Bible says all humanity is dead in sin and transgressions. Before receiving the Holy Spirit, you too come in as the dead. However, you are already saved before the creation. But you are coming down as someone who is nothing, dead, separated, a divorcee, and an adulterer. Those who fall away from life, the breath of life, ‘nefesh’, are simply nothing. They are ‘aphar’, or ‘adama’ which means dust, or dry earth. By the help of the Holy Spirit, you, in this condition, are learning how you are becoming a bride through the scriptures and through your life in this history.
Here and there, many talk about the substance of the life of saints besides this, but they are all not true. You are just to understand, recognize, learn, and sincerely praise with all your heart what God has done and that’s all. Because we come into earth as nothing, a divorcee, and an adulterer, the Bible calls this as being imprisoned under sin or imprisoned in disobedience. It says we are imprisoned under sin in the Bible. It says God imprisoned us, that God consigned us to disobedience. God imprisoned us. For this reason, we get to experience not being able to obey no matter how hard you try to obey. You may mimic obedience but you are to experience much more of not being able to give pure obedience that God speaks about. By being so, the saints in failure get to recognize, accept, and admit their original place of being nothing. You must experience first that you are nothing but dead garbage unless the breath of life is poured on you. You will definitely experience that you cannot be anything else other than dust without the proposal of grace of God or unless the groom puts the wedding robe on you. This experience can be renamed as ‘realization of being a sinner’. What did Jesus say would happen first to those who received the Holy Spirit? He will convict concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. So the conviction of sin comes first when receiving the Holy Spirit. “All this time I thought it was not sin but I have sinned like this.” And as we count all the sins coming out of us one by one, we come to learn that even our breathing is sin. That is why we come into earth as someone separated from the groom, an adulterer, and a divorcee. Let’s go to Romans 11:31.
Romans 11:31-32
So they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now[a] receive mercy. 32 For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.
It says so, right? Who are these people who say they can obey when God says He consigned all to disobedience? For sure there is obedience but it is the obedience of Jesus who lives in us. Therefore those who obey and say this is my obedience are all counterfeits. It says the reason why God sends us into this history, being consigned to disobedience, is to teach us His mercy or grace in another word.
In Hebrew, the word ‘obedience’ is not just about a servant listening well to his master but a state of the inferior completely dominated by and belonging to the authority of the superior. Obeying a few things and not obeying a few other things is not called obedience. Obedience is being seized of one’s existence, dominated by the superior. In another word, it is called union. Who can do such obedience? That is why obedience is better than sacrifice. Men offer a sacrifice as a means to obedience. Don’t men offer a sacrifice to obey the word of God? But God says obedience is better than sacrifice. Here ‘better’ does not mean better as we know of. It means it is not it. Here, it means sacrifice is not it. It means you are to come inside of me and be completely immersed into me and dominated by me and not to do a few things I tell you to and ask for reward.
Therefore, what is disobedience? Being an individual part separated from the union of being one body is called being disobedient. Falling away from the one body, which is divorce and adultery, is called disobedience. But what does ‘God consigned us to disobedience’ mean? It means God is temporarily making us a divorcee in this history. He has cut us off. Why? He has done so to not divorce us forever. God the groom will not divorce us who are sluts dirtier than Gomer the prostitute. In order for it to be this way, we must first admit that we are Gomer and that we are the worst of all sinners. But men are busy hiding it and will not acknowledge it. And they come here to church and put up a show pretending like they lived a very holy life today, going around carrying a Bible tightly under their arms. The primary self-recognition of the brides who received the Holy Spirit must be ‘I am the one who divorced God and who is committing adultery with the world’. The Bible is telling you to look at yourself and not for you to look at other adulterers and say, “How can you live like that?” You are to say, “I am a divorcee and an adulterer!” How can such a person say to other divorcees and adulterers like a Pharisee, “It is fortunate that I do not live like that”? That is why those who believe in Jesus well become less talkative and their understanding increases in width. What do you call this? It is called forgiveness. How can you praise the mercy and grace of God without such self-recognition? They are lying. Praising without such recognition is a lie. For this reason, God put the process of salvation (of Him making Israel enter into Egypt and bringing them out) in history and in the Bible. Did Israel go into Egypt because they wanted to? No, it wasn’t like that. God told Abraham that He would put his descendents into Egypt. Let’s go to Genesis. Please look at Genesis 15:13.
Genesis 15:13-14
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. (What does it mean they will be servants? It means God will make them servants. What does Apostle Paul call this? Servants of sin. God sends you into history and locks you up under sin.)14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
See. God wrote the scenario all by Himself and sent them to Egypt. And He saves them from there. How does He do this? He saves them by the blood of the lamb. This means He is exposing all of Israel as being powerless. It means ‘you cannot come out of there by your own strength’. For this reason God is drawing a picture of Israel coming out only by the help and power of the blood of the lamb. God sends drought in the time of Jacob, makes him broke, and sends him to Egypt. Israel is another name for Jacob. That’s why Israel is later coming out from Egypt. And this is called salvation. God calls this Israel being in Egypt an adulterer. Then, who made Israel an adulterer? God did. Why? He did so to teach them how precious and worthy the true groom is. The fact that Israel went to Egypt and spent 400 years there means God egyptized them. Do you know who the second and third generation Korean-American kids cheer for during the Olympics? They cheer for the USA. If their parents yell at them, “How can you cheer for the USA? You should cheer for Korea!”, then they say, “I am an American!” Let’s say I was born in the USA. I go to an American school and study what is taught in American. I live among Americans and my status is an American citizen. Then, why should I be cheering for Korea? Those kids will say this. There are plenty of people whose faces look white just five generations down even though they are documented to have a black heritage. How many generations is 400 years? They became Egyptians. They forgot all of the Hebrew language there. Moses on Mount Sinai was an Egyptian prince. In what language do you think God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses? He gave it in the Egyptian language. In the church of wilderness - Stephen calls it the church of wilderness - they lived with the things they brought out from Egypt, eating and setting up tents which they brought out with them. In this place called church, you are to learn of heaven with the things of this world.
God egyptized His people on purpose and let them live and become adapted to Egypt. And He says the reproach of Egypt rolled away when Israel was circumcised in Gilgal. It means they were Egypt. God says Israel disobeyed Him ten times. Did they disobey just ten times? No. Who is it that disobeyed God ten times? It was Pharaoh. The king of Egypt represents Egypt. It means Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and Israel were the same. That is why He is saying, “You are doing the same thing you did in Egypt in the church of wilderness. And that is why you disobeyed me.” It means Israel lived like they did in Egypt in the church of wilderness. You are the same way. You live like that. You live as an adulterer. You do not love God but you use God for loving yourself. That is how we are. Please do not say you are not. Are you not an adulterer? Loving yourself, which is another idol other than God the groom, is called adultery.
However, Israel was an Egypt that received the grace of God. We are sinners who received the grace of God. Living in Egypt, which symbolizes the humanistic world, depending only on the groom and marching into Canaan, the land of promise is called the life of faith. In the humanistic world, I can depend on myself. But in Canaan the land of promise, it is rainwater farming. In Egypt, it is farming in the delta. Being dragged into the land of rainwater farming, where you eat if it rains and starve when it does not, to a place of throwing my existence into the grace of God, from a place where you can harvest ten bales of rice if you water ten buckets of water, is called the life of faith.
The life of faith itself is a process in which the five points of your body are being nailed to the cross. All religions and the people of this world practice things like five-point prostration. People climb over the Himalayas performing prostration with their head, arms, and legs touching the ground. Like this, it is scary what men do to keep their pride. Why do they do this? They do this to bless the entire humanity and to receive a blessing for themselves and their families. Human beings do this. They do five-point prostration. This is called building the tower of Babel and climbing up. But only the saints are tied in five points of their body on the cross, with their arms and legs tightly tied and a crown of thorns put on their head. We are being severed, being quartered and even the head. It says the serpent went on its stomach after being cursed by God in Eden. Then, how did it move around before this? It means it moved around on its legs. Thus Eden was a place where Satan got its limbs cut off. In the kingdom of God called the church, the people of God experience passing through the process of their will, power, and attempt to rise up to heaven being cut off. That is how we become dismissed here. That is why our lives are called a life of the cross or a life of self-denial. What is the cross? It is the five-point prostration. It means a life of getting our body cut off in five points. In easy words, a saint’s life of faith is a painful but happy process of self-denial, correctly realizing oneself being divorced from the groom after leaving Him and committing adultery and being buried into the groom’s rib bone. We must clearly experience that separation from the groom as an immediate march to death. Please look at Ezekiel 23:27.
Ezekiel 23:27
Thus I will put an end to your lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.
What does God call the life of Israel in Egypt? He calls it lewdness, whoring, and adultery. But who sent them there? God did. And then, He is pulling them out. How? He is making them disappointed in themselves in the place of self-love so that they will never be able to love and trust themselves. “It could have been big trouble to trust and love someone like me.” We need to learn this. But we are so focused on how to make our self-ego of the flesh a lovable being through our life of faith. This is a very important thing, people. Like this, God is sending us into history as Gomer to teach us that our true existence is so dirty and evil like that unless the groom embraces us with His grace. We are Gomer before Hosea. I said Hosea is Jesus in Hebrew. And then, He pulls us out from there. How does He pull us out from Egypt? He does by the precious blood of the lamb, only by the cross. That is Passover, coming out of Egypt. Right? There was no other way except believing in the power of the precious blood of Jesus the lamb for Israel to come out of Egypt, the place of whoring and adultery. There was no other way than to believe. Do you think only the good people were inside the house that was covered by the blood? There could have been people who fought while smearing the blood, people who stole something, or various kinds of people inside the house. Salvation is when the Spirit of death just passes over because He sees the blood. By God having saved them by the blood of the lamb, He demonstrated their powerlessness, their total depravity. He showed that they cannot contribute even a little to their Exodus.
Adulterers must be stoned to death by the law. It says the entirety of Israel committed adultery. Then, all of Israel must be stoned to death. But instead of Israel dying, the innocent lamb died. That is the cross. Where their blood had to be shed, the blood of the lamb was smeared on. Instead of the adulterous brides, the groom was stoned to death. We will look into this next week but the groom became a harlot. He became an adulterer. That is why adulterous woman comes out a lot in Revelation. Those who read the Bible superficially could recognize Jesus only as an adulterous woman.
The death of a creature is the extinguishment of a being. The death of a creature is nothingness. It means everyone who falls off from God, who is the source of life, and attempts to pursue and confirm his independent existence in his own system and knowledge of good and evil is dead and nothing. That is why those who commit adultery are stoned to death, since that is being dead in itself. They do not even need to be killed. They are being stoned to death to show that is the state of being dead. Just like stoning those who do not know the meaning of the Sabbath to death, being in the state of not knowing that it is death to be living apart from God is called death. That is why they are being stoned to death. Those mobs that are castrated from life cannot help but to endlessly produce work to prove they are alive, not to be caught in the condition of being dead. They do this to hide their death. Their pride of having eaten the fruit of good and evil will never allow them to admit it. It is like roses that are castrated from life trying hard in their last strength to bloom even more splendidly by pumping out fragrance and showing off their petals. Did you know this, people? To show off their beauty their roots in the bottom are all tangled and messed up. People put them in a glass vase and try hard to ignore how it looks on the bottom. This is the attribute of sinners. They only look at the top part of them and say, “Let’s call these roses beautiful.” How does the bottom look? It is hell. Like this, men’s camouflage of themselves is so crafty.
It is the same for the saints. Even the saints are not willing to admit their condition of being abandoned, coming down in this world. God sent them down to earth as adulterers, divorcees, and servants of disobedience but they are diligently pretending to be alive. Pretending to be alive like that is being dead. People, this is called death. Then, what should God do to peel off that death? He kills their act of pretending to be alive. But everyone knows it as the opposite. They measure the maturity of their faith by how well they can pretend to be alive. And then they give a name to their act and call it ‘sanctification’. Dead men’s mimicry of being alive is just death. God kills that death. It is the death of death in the death of Christ. He kills it. He brings out a confession of surrender form them for sure. We are going to a place of “Yes, I am the worst of all sinners. Yes, God, I am dead. How can I live without your grace when I am like this, God?” To explain such a reality of the wedding banquet, the happening of the brides first having to leave the groom and enter into Egypt takes place in history. That is why Adam and Eve, the very first brides, are falling away from God to the cursed East of Eden. And from there, they are coming into the sanctuary in the West, where they are reunited with God. This is the story of the entire Bible. For this reason, there is no mention or a sign of men sinning until Genesis 2, but from chapter 3, the fruit of good and evil and the concept of sin appear. He is showing that He will explicate history like this. So history begins with Adam and Eve, the brides, leaving God. It’s the same for us.
What was the superficial reason why they were separated from the groom? It was to pursue life as God after eating the fruit of good and evil. I said this was legalism. It is humanism. “Let’s establish our autonomy instead of living dependent on God.” What is it when a creature pursues independence of his own existence? What is "I want to eat the fruit of good and evil and be the owner of my life like God? It is adultery. A certain psychologist, who is a bestseller author, came out on TV and said, “Be the owner of your life.” Give it a try. Saints cannot live that. (Ah~ I was told not to say things like this. I was severely criticized last week for saying something about the president. They said I am in Korea now. But I talked like this again, like a habit. Well, what can I do when it is not true?) Everyone is being deceived and applauding, but what on earth do they want to do once they become the owner of their life? Well then, ultimately, what is adultery? It is when a bride, who must love God and live dependent only on Him, lives as a person who ate the fruit of good and evil, loving herself and trusting her own power and wisdom. Legalism and humanism are adultery. So they fall away from God. What do you call living as the owner of your life? The Bible calls this idol worship. That is why the Bible calls idol worship adultery. This idol worship is none other than loving yourself and trusting yourself. Doesn’t Joel Osteen say this? “Trust yourself. You have an infinite potential. So think positively and accomplish all you want.” His church is the biggest church in the world. This is idol worship and adultery. Therefore, distorted reformed theology that only encourages and extracts men’s good works through the Bible, rather than explaining the cross and the grace of Jesus, is making the saints commit adultery. I am not saying reformed theology itself is bad. Why would it be bad? The real reformed theology is only grace, only Jesus, glory only to God, and only the Bible, isn’t it? Why is this bad? But suddenly it is blended with legalism and has become a distorted reformed theology which encourages only the works and doing of men. (I will say not all of it but a part of it… since I do not know if there are enemies here among you.) Anyways, adultery simply is an ideology that sums up a life of self-love in which one desires to live as the king of Egypt, to live a life of worshipping oneself trusting and serving “me”, Adam, the man. This is adultery.
There was a breaking news that a certain Korean Chinese man kidnapped and raped a woman and cut her up into 128 pieces. Saints should not look at that and say, “He is an evil bastard!” You should put your name there. Didn’t God say it? If God said, “Even having an adulterous thought looking at a woman passing by is adultery”, it means He will consider us the same as that man. If so, can there be anyone among us who has nothing to do with the adultery Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount? Can’t there be? Everyone here is an adulterer, right? Seriously, if the adultery Jesus talked about means loving myself instead of loving God and trusting myself can there be anyone among us who has nothing to do with adultery? Can there be? Can’t there be? (I learned a lot after coming to Korea.) There cannot be, right? We all have committed adultery and are still committing adultery. We love “me” who wants to live like God more than Jesus the groom. Please look at Ezekiel 23:48.
Ezekiel 23:48-49
Thus will I put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not commit lewdness as you have done. 49 And they shall return your lewdness upon you, and you shall bear the penalty for your sinful idolatry, and you shall know that I am the Lord God.”
He says idolatry or the sin of loving idols is lewdness and adultery. Who is this idol? Ultimately it is “me”. Things like money, Baal, or Ashera, are ultimately all ‘me’. That is idolatry and adultery. If so, who can be free from it? There is no one. Therefore, when we read the news like this, we have to accept it as a story of our own instead of saying, “That evil man. That evil Korean Chinese man.” If so, what does it mean when He said He will annihilate such lewdness? It means He will kill our self-ego of the flesh in this history. It means He will do this and exalt only the blood of the lamb. It means He is not interested in our own sweat and blood. I am not saying it is useless to do anything but it means not to bring our work and say, “Isn’t it the basis of life?,” because that is a necessary directive that comes out of everyone who knows grace in the presence of God’s grace. But when a pastor is preaching, we ask, “Did the pastor say today to work hard or not? Did he say not to do anything again?” We are only interested in this. You should not be interested in those kinds of things. I can encourage you to live that kind of life and still expose you as sinners. And I can talk of grace saying, “No! It is all by the grace of God” and as I talk of grace I can expose you being a sinner again. But all that you write on the internet is about what I told you to do and not to do, not having listened to anything about Jesus and the cross that I explained before. Please write there “do as you please.” It’s not like you will live as I tell you to anyways… Well, God is saying that He will make only the blood of His Son the basis of life. Please look at Jeremiah 5:7.
Jeremiah 5:7
“How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me and have sworn by those who are no gods. When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the houses of whores.
They have forsaken God and it means separation. “Have sworn by those who are no gods” means they loved them and served them. This is adultery, adultery committed in the houses of whores. Please look at Hosea 2:4.
Hosea 2:4-9
Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of whoredom. 5 For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ 6 Therefore I will hedge up her[a] way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. 7 She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’ 8 And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. 9 Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness.
See, everything is given by the grace of God, but she goes to the wrong god and gives thanks. Who is that wrong god? It is “me”. We praise ourselves after doing something. Even though we pray, “All is given by God,” we think, “I am earning this much because I came out and worked really hard, giving up a good night’s sleep.” All this is called being a whore and adultery. So God says He will expose her shame by stripping her naked. He is stripping down our pretense and camouflage. You came here in a disguise wearing make-up. He is taking that off to a bare face. You all run away in shame when I try to see your face in the morning prayer time. God is peeling it off to a bare face. God is making you unable to disguise before Him. He says by doing so, she will come to her true husband.
In what condition does Gomer return to Hosea? She comes back ragged. The world sucked out all the sweetness out of her and after she became useless, it sold her off to the slave market. She was hanging there like dead meat. After repeatedly running away each time she gave birth to her children and continuously playing harlotry, she became ragged and was hung like dead meat. And the husband goes looking for her, carrying with him thirty silvers, or one and a half of barley and fifteen silvers, which is the price for a person’s life. This is the love of God. We, of course, must first confess that we are Gomer alright but we sell out our entire life of faith to works to prove “I am better than others.” This is not it, people. The priority is reversed. The brides of God must be stripped naked in this world and realize their true existence as someone who cannot be qualified to be a bride without the help of the husband, but as those who are still living a life of the dead in Egypt, they push this aside and brag about how they will obtain the qualification of a bride on their own in that place. In the eyes of God, they are dead people. Why? It is because God sent them down as the dead. But they spring up like zombies and these zombies put make up on all over themselves. God is saying this is not it. He is saying we must know that we are the dead. “If you know this, I will bring you to new life. Then, why do you put make up on your dead body?” This is the Bible, people.
Becoming a new person is not done by us working on it but it is wearing what God gives. That is why Apostle Paul tells us to ‘wear a new man’ and not ‘become a new man.’ And Revelation says this is something God puts on us, in passive voice. Those who know this pursue the life of a new man. They change for real at that time. But people say that will become a new man even before knowing this. They claim they have become a new man after quitting smoking and drinking, something anyone can do. Some quit after just watching a no-smoking promotion video, where the smoke comes out from the hole in the body because they got scared. Is the Bible merely that kind of authority? How is doing that kind of trivial thing being a new man? They keep doing what is dirtier than that. But still, please quit since it is bad for your health. Only after the groom, who is the living water, is poured on the bride, the true church is born. That is why the picture of Jesus, who is the living water, being kneaded with the dust before the adulterous woman comes out, and by the writing of grace which represents the second stone plate, the adulterous woman is coming to life. That in itself is the cross and the gospel.
When the gospel of the cross is poured on to sinners, they are exposed as sinners, and only the people of God who are chosen before the creation will admit they are sinners. That is why only the adulterous woman remained before Jesus the groom. All others ran away saying, “Shoot, I am a sinner” to put make up on or to put on a disguise when Jesus said, “Whoever without sin, throw the stone!” Do you know what the story of adultery Jesus spoke of on the mountain means? The site of the very first adultery was the Garden of Eden. Right? Let’s go to Genesis 3:5 and see how they changed the direction of their life.
Genesis 3:5-7; 22
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (How?) 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,[a] she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
He reached out his hand and took and ate the fruit of good and evil. That is why the hand and the eye appear in the incident of the fruit of good and evil. This is the very first adultery in humanity. And Jesus is talking about the eye and the hand in the story of adultery. He says, “Cut it off and tear it out.” As for the dispensationalists, even though they interpret the entire Bible literally, when it comes to this kind of things, they try to interpret allegorically. There is no consistency. They should tear out and cut off then. But have you seen anyone doing this? Well, let’s go to verse 29 and 30 in today’s text of Matthew 5.
Matthew 5:29-30
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
It is not saying we must simply cut off our body parts that make us sin. If it were that kind of warning, we would have to cut off every part of our body including all the organs immediately, since we are just a lump of sin. Men leaving God and pursuing and insisting on their independence was the incident of the fruit of good and evil. This word is a promise of God that He will tear out and cut off that eye and hand of adultery. Why? It says we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven with those. Then, what? He is saying He will cut them out.
How are the eye and the hand cut out? The Holy Spirit came inside you and you now are the temple of God. The temple is the kingdom of God, right? You are the kingdom of heaven. Your eye and hand must be torn out and cut off for you to become the kingdom of God, but how did the Holy Spirit enter you and now is inside you? Please look at Isaiah 42:18.
Isaiah 42:18-19
Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see! 19 Who is blind but my servant, or deaf as my messenger whom I send? Who is blind as my dedicated one,[a] or blind as the servant of the Lord?
So, whose eyes are torn out? The eyes of the Son of God are torn out. That is why Jesus is called blind. If so, we obviously confess that we are sinners, but what are those who say they can see? They are the real blind. Jesus is talking about this. It means He will tear out the eyes of those who claim they can see. That is the true hell. And the hand of Jesus is cut off on the cross. It became useless. But those who are the fruit of good and evil insult the cross of Jesus. We become a bride of Jesus, having His eye torn out and His hand cut off. He became the adulterer and a harlot and had His eye torn out and His hand cut off. Isn’t that the cross? Jesus became a harlot and died. But men insult that cross. What is the one thing Satan must to do with his best in this world? It is to insult the cross. Satan makes the death of Jesus something in vain. That is the only thing Satan must do with all his life. Then, how would Satan come to you and instigate? He would say, “Tear out your eye. You must take the responsibility of your sin. How could you let someone else be responsible for it? Cut out your hand!” So everyone come here with their eyes torn out and hands cut off in guilt. You are killing that Jesus again. There was Satan, who took responsibility for his sin and cut off his own head. It was Judah. “I will take responsibility of my own sin.” That is Satan. Why do you think Jesus called him Satan?
The death of Jesus on the cross covered all sin and that is how I have become His bride. The general pride of men will not understand and acknowledge this. That is their Satanic nature because they ate the fruit of good and evil. Do you realize what is going wrong with today’s Christianity? That is why Jesus calls the work of Satan a sheep’s clothing which is mimicking Jesus. Cross is carried by Jesus. But who are we that we make our own cross in this world and carry it ourselves to pay for our own sin? This is mimicking Jesus. Jesus is someone we must believe in and not someone we must mimic. Then, why does it have to be the right eye and right hand? It is still the same today but at the time of Jesus the concept of the right side had a meaning of a guide, a teacher, or a tutor to the Hebrews. That is why it is the right side. It means all those who are chosen as a teacher and a tutor by men’s desire to be like God are teachers of adultery. He is saying we must cut that off. There are many people in the 2,000 year history of Christianity who appeared as an angel of light in sheep’s clothing saying, “Let’s make a healthy and wholesome Christianity” and dragged all those people to hell. The true right hand must be the right hand of God, which lifted up Jesus. But the false right hand of this world wears sheep’s clothing and teaches absurd things and drags people into hell. God is telling us to cut that false right hand off and tear out the false right eye. He is telling us to tear out that eye which gives us a false illusion of being able to see. He is telling us to cut off the false right hand that says it can lift us up in this history. The right hand of God lifts us up in the revelation of infinity. In there, we experience victory. Let’s look at Habakuk 2:18.
Habakuk 2:18
“What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies (an idol is a false teacher)? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols!
It means an idol shaped by men or the teaching of exalting myself and worshipping myself for my own benefit is a false teacher. This is the right eye and the right hand. Cut it off! Why? It makes you commit adultery. True teachers must show you Jesus. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” A true teacher must show you Jesus and those who teach you how to live a life of an exemplary Christian in this word are not true teachers. That is a life led by the Holy Spirit and a teacher must be someone who shows, explains and teaches Jesus. But people like a sermon that encourages and exalts the general pride of men. They say they received grace and go out clenching their fists after the service saying, “I must fight till I bleed in this world.” And they say, “Our worship is alive like this.” It is like dead Zombies hopping out saying they are alive. But that is being dead. And then, they come back the next week and say, “Lord I indeed fought till I bled but I am in a bad shape like this.” They repeat this every day. What is up with that? If I listen to those who do the congregational prayer, this is all they say: “I will go out and fight.” And when I see them the following week they indeed fought during the week but so what… They think that is right. Don’t they do this?
You are not to clench your fists and go out after listening to a correct preaching but to go out saying, “God, how did you kill your Son for someone like me? Thank you!” This confession of surrender leads you to a victorious life. You go out clenching both your fists and fight in the parking lot, don’t you? What do you mean you will fight? Just fight with Satan. Why do you fight with other members of the church in the parking lot? “Why do you go out first when I came in first?” And some walk out switching their shoes with other persons’ good and new shoes. Please look at 2Timothy 4:3.
2Timothy 4:3-4
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound[a] teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
This is the general directivity of men. Do you think a mega church, where large crowds gather, is a church that is really going the right way? Heck no! People, Jesus is saying, “Cut off your right eye and your right hand! They are dragging you to hell. On this earth they keep and encourage your pride and plead to your emotions and please your ears, but you have to be aware of them.”
Honestly speaking, do you really try hard to be like that? Have you ever really fought with your life on the line saying, “My effort and labor for my own glory and enhancing my own worth and this life of idolizing myself must be cut off no matter what.” We may try fighting but even as we fight we are impressed by ourselves saying, “Wow, how are you able to do something others cannot?” As we try, we commit adultery again. That is how we are. We do give it a hard try but we praise ourselves with that. Isn’t that adultery? We are helpless like this.
Then, what should we do? We must be cut off. What happens when an impossibly dirty thing like me is attached to the body of Jesus? You have seen this in a war movie. A leg is rotting because it is wounded. Then what do they do during a war like the Korean war of 6.25? They cut it off with a saw. It has to be cut off to live. They cut this much of an arm because the person will die if it is left attached. When we see ourselves, we are still that dirty. “I feel like the body called the church of Jesus will die because of me.” You must have this realization and confession. We must be able to confess “Lord, I am a sinner. Please leave me” and not “I deserve being saved.” And then later we must go down to the point of saying, “God, I cannot say anything even if you send me to hell. It is true. I cannot dare say I deserve salvation before you.” The church will live if I am cut off. Isn’t that a truly sanctified person? Others should not die because of me. But how many among those who speak of sanctification truly make this confession? Aren’t all blood-shot-eyed to prove that they are a decent person? I should be cut out. I should be cut off. But Jesus was cut off from a tree called the cross when I should be cut off. That is the cross. That is how we are attached as a branch to a tree called Jesus, even though we are like that. And then, Jesus is bearing a fruit of life inside us. There is life inside you, right? That is the fruit. In the life of those who know this, the works and directivity of truly serving and loving others besides me are shown a little by little. As they do this, they may fall but every time they do, they will hold on the cross. Have we really become a great and decent person? No we haven’t. We are not qualified to be like that. What would the saints, who know that they should be the first ones to be cut off to keep the body of the healthy church and that they should be the first ones to be divorced from God, the lamb, think when they hear the word ‘perseverance of the saints’? “I deserve to be the first person to be divorced from God.” Why? “Even now, I live loving myself and committing adultery so it is right that I should be the first person to be divorced.” What would come out of a person who has this confession when they hear the doctrine of ‘perseverance of the saints’ in the Bible? Praises come out. But because we do not have such confession, we do not praise Him when we are told the husband will hold onto us till the end and never divorce and say, “Of course He won’t. I am pretty so I am okay.” We only praise ourselves. When the gospel is given to a person who has the confession that he deserves to be divorced from God, praise bursts out of him and when this happens it is called doxa, glorifying. This is the glory of God. Making a goal during a soccer game and praying is not glorifying God but praising the grace of the cross is glorifying God. Let’s look at Jeremiah 3:6.
Jeremiah 3:6-8
The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? 7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore.
It means the entire Northern Israel and Southern Judah is an adulterous woman. So did God kill them all? No. They are the brides of God. God exposes them like this. He even gave them a certificate of divorce. We will look into it next week but Jesus talks about a decree of divorce, doesn’t he? He is not saying you can divorce if you give a certificate of divorce. What is a certificate of divorce? “You deserve to be divorced. You are nothing. So the groom has to die and by that you must be born as a bride.” What is this? “You are cut off and divorced unless grace is poured on from the groom. Therefore, since you are nothing, you do not exist unless the grace and vitality of the groom is poured on.” What is this? This is the Bible. This is the decree of divorce. But God gives this decree of divorce to us. When it is given, we must return to the husband saying, “I must never be divorced from God” but He says that we commit adultery with it saying, “That’s right, I will become an excellent bride.”
People, Jesus on the cross says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He is being cut off and thrown away. Jesus is experiencing being divorced from God. Their union is being broken. There never was a time their union was broken but because of us, God cut off Jesus. He is making Him experience divorce. Why? Because of us who committed adultery and who are nothing, Jesus is going down to a place of being nothing. Us becoming a bride is called salvation and this is called the gospel. This is Christianity. Then, how can we carelessly say, “When did you get saved? I was saved on this day of this month. Do you still not have an assurance of salvation? As your life of faith matures, your assurance of salvation must get stronger”? No, it is not. More and more as years go on and your faith grows in depth, the confession of “God, I have nothing to say even if you send me to hell now” must come out. What do you mean by assurance? Assurance is not something we can have and privately own but is something God has. “I will make you my bride.” Assurance is what God has. Believing and trusting the covenant of God has to be our assurance. Generally, where do men obtain the assurance of salvation? They judge “I am worthy of salvation” by looking at their own actions and condition. That is why it changes more than twelve times a day morning and night. They feel like they are saved at nine o’clock and feel like they are not after getting into a fight fifteen minutes later. If so, how can someone say to someone else, “When did you get saved? How can you be so unsure of your salvation?” People, like this, we more than deserve to be divorced by God. But the reason why God says “Do not divorce” is to teach us that He will never divorce us and that is why He is showing us such laws.
But with this, we condemn those who are divorced and mob around and beat up those who make small mistakes. No, people. As we go on more and more, we must become the worst person. I am not saying you must turn bad like that but we must grow in depth with such self-realization. I will go to Revelation next week and end it.
Let’s pray. Thank you, God, for your grace. Father God, yes, we are nothing. We are the dust. We are adulterers and we were divorced from God. But God, it says God is inside us. And for some reason, we are able to believe it. Father, please let us praise this reality of salvation. Do not let us insult the cross of Jesus to keep our pride, but lower us even more before the cross of Jesus, and let the true zeal for the kingdom of God, which comes from such humbleness, spring out from us. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.