Sermon on the Mount: Adultery and Lust

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry & Bluemont Churches
March 1, 2026
Matthew 5:27-32

With the world events of the past few days, I am including the outline of my pastoral prayer after the sermon in the hope it might bring comfort to a situation few, if any, understand, and that no one knows what will happen next..

At the beginning of worship: 
“The Hammer of God” is one of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. Set in a church, one of the curates no longer prays on the floor with his fellow clergy and parishioners. Instead, he climbs one of the church’s spires for prayer. There, high above everyone else, he begins to fantasize about how he might deal out justice upon a sinful brother. All it would take from such height would be to drop a hammer. Father Brown realizes something is up and confronts the man as he comes down from on high. 

“I think there is something rather dangerous about standing on these high places, even to pray,” said Father Brown. “Heights were made to be looked at, not to look from.”

“Do you mean you think I might fall over?” the man asks.

“I mean that one’s soul may fall if one’s body doesn’t.” 

Father Brown told of another man. In time, the man preferred to pray in high and lonely places such as the belfry or the spire. Looking out upon the world from such heights, he began to imagine himself as God. He committed a terrible crime. For he saw himself as the judge of the world and struck down a sinner. He would have never had such thoughts had he stayed with others upon the floor.^[1]

As Jesus reminds us, we’re not the judge and when dealing with the sin of others, we must be careful and graceful.^[2]

Before reading the scripture:
Last week, we moved into the heart of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and looked at the first commandment he deals with, “thou shalt not kill.” We saw how Jesus equates anger with murder. The second command Jesus deals with, adultery, parallels the first. In both cases, Jesus strives to get behind the commandment, to the root cause. While few of us have murdered anyone, we’ve all been guilty of letting our anger get the best of us, and we can see how harsh words spoken in anger can destroy another person. 

Last week I forgot to add into my sermon an old English proverb, but it can be applied to all these moral commands of Jesus.

He is a fool who cannot be angry; 
but he is wise who will not remain so.^[3]

We all get angry, but what do we do with our anger?  Do we stew on it? Likewise, we are created with desire, so when we see someone who is attractive to us, how do we handle it?  Do we let our desire turn to lust and consume us or do we maintain appropriate boundaries? The link between anger and lust is that both objectify other people. 

If you recall from last week, in this section Jesus expands the teaching on six different commands. In the past, many scholars refer to these as antithesis, but I suggested that’s a wrong way to look at them. Instead of presenting an opposite view of the law, Jesus takes us deeper, to the intention of the law. 

Today, we’ll look at the second and the third commands of Jesus, that of adultery and divorce. Again, Jesus employs hyperbole, as he did last week, to emphasize the seriousness of our sin: plucking an eye or cutting off an arm. 

Read Matthew 5:27-32

In Greek mythology, Ares, the god of war, and Aphrodite, the god of love, were lovers. We might think of war and love, anger and lust as opposite emotions. The Greeks were wise. Hate and desire become united within our ego. When we indulge such emotions, we create in our minds an object out of the other person. In this manner, both emotions put the other person down, visualizing them as less than they are.^[4]

Last week, we saw that Jesus strove to protect life. This week passage shows his intention to protect marriage.

As I have emphasized all along, Matthew focuses on Jesus’ goal to build a community which breaks through barriers of race and nationality. This also extends to sex. Paul sums up Jesus’ teaching when he says, 

There is no longer Jew or Greek; 

there is no longer slave or free; 
there is no longer male and female, 
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.^[5]

This new community envisioned by Jesus, in which men and women are equal, requires a new and stricter self-discipline for men or the male sex.^[6] No longer are men required to just keep their hands off women who are married, as adultery had been interpreted. For the peace of the community, men should no longer objectify women. 

Of course, the same goes for women but that may have been less of a problem in Jesus’ day. But today, we overly sexualized everything as we see in advertising—after all sex sells—we should dig at the heart of Jesus’ intention here. Jesus wants us to stop seeing other people as a means to our own pleasure. But it’s hard because we’re always surrounded with sexual images.

We’ve just gotten past the Superbowl. The half-time shows have become increasingly sexualized over the years. We’ve descended a long way since the first bowl in 1966, where a college marching band provided the entertainment. But the sexualization wasn’t really debated this year. Instead, the debate centered around a guy from Puerto Rico singing in his native language.  And then, there was the “family alternative” in which the headline act had, in his repertoire of songs, one praising pedophilia.^[7] Is there no shame? We can’t get away from sexual thoughts and images.

Think about this. You go into a casino, and you’re served by scantly clad women. And the rich gather in places like Mar-o-logo with such women dangling from chandeliers. Modesty is out of favor. 

In Jesus day, modesty was still in favor in Galilee, but not in the rest of the Roman empire where pagan temples often featured prostitution. And the sex desires of men ran rampant. In Greek culture, it was common for men of means to take on an underage boy lover in addition to a wife. Realizing this, Jesus wants his followers to hold themselves to a higher standard and stand out from the rest of the world. 

We can only imagine what Jesus would say in our world. We might think our fantasies are harmless, but Jesus shows otherwise. Jesus wants us to need honor one another and men do this not only by avoiding the bedrooms of married women, but by not sexualizing others. We are to see all people—men and women—as having been created in God’s image. 

Next, Jesus addresses divorce. We now know this was a big debate among rabbis of Jesus day. The Mosaic laws provided for divorce. In a way, the law was civilizing for that era, as a man couldn’t just abandon his wife. He had to set her free and allow her to remarry.  One school, led by Rabbi Hillel, took a rather liberal view of this law. He saw anything a woman did to displease her husband as a reason for divorce. You burned dinner, you’re out. The other, led by Rabbi Shammai, took a more conservative view and only allowed divorce for adultery. Here, Jesus aligns with the second school.^[8]

Matthew understands the seriousness of divorce. He records more about divorce than all the other gospels combined and almost as much as the entire New Testament.^[9] In Chapter 19, Matthew records Jesus’ acknowledgment that God didn’t intend for us to divorce but only allows it because our hearts are hardened.^[10]

It may be hard to hear Jesus’ teachings in our world today. Many of us, including me, have been divorced. I married in college and that ended a few years after graduation. 

One of the things Jesus does as he goes through the commandments in this section of the Sermon on the Mount is to make us all realize our guilt. And that’s one of the purposes of the law. 

The Second Helvetic Confession reminds us that we’re not given the law to be justified by keeping it. Instead, the law teaches us our “weakness, sin, and condemnation,” which leads us to grasp the grace offered by Christ.^[11] As we accept this love and are freed of our sin, we must treat all people created by God with respect and honor. And that’s essentially what Jesus teaches in this part of the sermon, whether is about murder and anger, adultery and lust, or divorce. 

We should all ask ourselves, whenever angry or lustful thoughts invade our brains if what we think glorifies God and honors others. Furthermore, we should remember that we’re not the judge. Like Father Brown in the story I told earlier, we must show grace to everyone. After all, God has shown us such grace. Accept God’s grace and be thankful. Amen.  

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^[1] G. K. Chesterton, “The Hammer of God,” as told by Malcom Guite, The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter (Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2014), 17-18. 

^[2] Matthew 7:1-5.

^[3] Fredrick Dale Bruner, The Christbook: Matthew 1-12 (1990, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 209.

^[4] Bruner, 219. 

^[5] Galatians 3:28.

^[6] Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew: Interpretation, A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: JKP, 1993), 53. 

^[7] See https://relevantmagazine.com/current/oped19/a-kid-rock-concert-is-airing-on-tbn-this-sunday-how-is-this-okay?

^[8] Bruner, 226-227.

^[9] Mark only deals with divorce where he repeats Matthew 19. See Mark 10:1-12.  Luke only has one reference to divorce 16:18). Paul, in First Corinthians (7:11-13) has three references to divorce, but only deals with those married to a non-believer and not divorce for any other reasons. 

^[10] Matthew 19:1-12, especially verse 8.

^[11] Presbyterian Church USA, The Book of Confessions, “The Second Helvetic Confession,” Chapter XII, 5.083.

A Pastoral Prayer outline for today in light of the recent world events

Almighty God, creator of all things and through your Son Jesus Christ, redeemer of our world, many of us woke yesterday to the reports of a distant war. As followers of Jesus, we don’t know what to make of it. We know Jesus said there will be wars and rumors of wars until history comes to an end, but we also know he especially blesses the peacemakers. Help us, O God, navigate these days, as we pray for those who are living through the nightmare in the Middle East. We especially pray for families of young girls killed at a school in Iran, and for all the civilians caught in this ongoing battle. We pray for the safety of our military who is engaged in the fighting.  And we long for all wars to cease, whether in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf and Asia, in Africa, or in Ukraine and Russia. 

You, O God, are our rock, give us the strength to stand faithfully with Jesus Christ. Help us to see his image in those who suffer in this world, whether from poverty, the fallout of war, or the trap of addictions. For we know you promise that we encounter Jesus with those struggling in life. Help us also to live our lives in a manner that will honor Jesus. May we be gracious as Jesus has been gracious to us. Give us the wisdom and the strength not to objectify other people, but to see your image in all people. 

O God, we pray for those in need in our midst. Remember those who grieve and those who need to experience healing….