Secrets Unsealed

What Jesus Said

Stephen Bohr

1. The Word of God

2. The Unconditional Love of God

3. How Jesus Understood His Self Identity

4. Good and Evil

5. Moses and Jesus

6. Overcoming Life’s Mistakes

7. How to Pray

8. Family Values

9. Relief From Stress

10. History’s Greatest Hoax

11. Holy Spirit Baptism

12. Life and Death

13. Peace in the Middle East

14. The Rapture of the Saints

15. The Final Judgment

16. The End of Evil

17. The Secrets of Health and Wealth

18. The Return of Elijah

19. Religion and Politics

20. The Abomination of Desolation

21. The Unpardonable Sin

22. Prophets and Psychics

As you read the Gospels, you find that Jesus is constantly in controversy with the religious leaders of his day.

And all of these sects that existed in that day also claimed to be Jews.

You know, you had the Pharisees, you had the scribes, you had the Herodians, you had the Essenes, you had the Sadducees, you had all these different denominations in the days of Christ.

And Christ was a Jew and he was always in conflict, in controversy with them.

You can hardly turn 1 page in the Gospels without finding Jesus in some controversy with these religious leaders, particularly.

And as we studied in 1 of our previous lectures, the whole controversy revolved around the issue of whether the law should be written on tablets of stone and you should try and measure up, or whether the law should be written on the heart in such a way that you naturally do, automatically do what the law requires.

In other words, the whole controversy had to do with the law written on tables of stone or the law written on the tablets of the heart.

And this is what Matthew chapter 5 and verse 20 is speaking about.

Here Jesus speaks and he says, For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, Notice that Jesus does not require less, Jesus requires what?

Does he require at least as much as what the Pharisees were giving?

Does he expect better fruits in our lives?

Yes, Jesus said, by their fruits ye shall know them.

But these things need to be produced by an internal motivation rather than imposed by a law written on tablets of stone.

And so Jesus says here, For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." And then Jesus is going to amplify what he's talking about.

First of all, as we've studied, He deals with the commandment that speaks about murder.

Now for the Pharisees, murder was to kill somebody physically.

But Jesus says no, murder is deeper than that.

So if you hate your brother, you've already committed murder, even if you have not committed the act.

Then Jesus goes a little bit further down, and he speaks about the seventh commandment.

And in a moment, we're going to return to this commandment.

We're going to go to another chapter in the Gospel of Matthew.

But Jesus speaks about the commandment that says, thou shall not commit adultery.

When he speaks, the Pharisees are very happy because they say, we've never slept with any woman other than our own wives.

But then Jesus says, whoever looks upon a woman to covet her or to desire her has already committed adultery in his heart.

So notice that Jesus goes beyond the external act.

He goes beyond just what we do outside and he says that unless our motivations for doing are internal, Unless the heart moves us to do it, it's worthless in the sight of God because it's legalism.

So what Jesus wanted was to have people live a religion of the heart, to live the commandments because the motivation came from inside rather than imposed by a law from outside.

Raise your hand if you understand what I'm saying and what I'm saying is making sense to you.

We had a whole lecture on what Jesus had to say about the rule of law.

Matthew chapter 19 and we're going to amplify this aspect of the seventh commandment.

Here Jesus is going to deal with the seventh commandment of the law of God, thou shalt not commit adultery.

And He's going to amplify what we've already noticed in Matthew chapter 5.

Now it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings that he departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

Great multitudes followed him and he healed them there.

Notice who was the controversy with again?

Same Pharisees that we read about in Matthew 5 and verse 20.

It says, once again, the Pharisees also came to him, testing him and saying to him, notice, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

It most certainly does, because it's speaking about marriage.

And so that question is, can you get a divorce for any reason?

Is it lawful to get a divorce for any reason in the sight of God.

Now I want you to notice what Jesus answers in verse 4.

And he answered and said to them, have you not read?

He does not direct them to the rabbis or to the traditions of the elders.

And notice he continues saying, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning, who is that who made them at the beginning?

But particularly there's 3 persons in the Godhead.

There's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Which 1 was the active agent in creation according to what we've studied.

In fact, in the Gospel of John, just reviewing, it says in verses 1 to 3 of chapter 1, in the beginning, notice, in the beginning was whom?

And the Word was with God and the Word was God.

So in the beginning was the Word who is God and then it says for through him all things were created.

Now doesn't that sound a lot like Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1?

It says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

So who was the creator according to scripture?

It was none other than Jesus Christ who established marriage at the beginning.

So notice once again verse 4, and he answered and said to them, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, who made the gender differences?

So is it God's plan that human beings blur the gender differences?

Is it acceptable for individuals to form homosexual marriages or lesbian marriages?

Not if you go by what the word of God says.

Now, let me say we need to love the homosexual without loving his homosexuality.

And we must love the lesbian without loving her lesbianism.

We need to love the sinner, but we can never love the sin.

And in fact, when we speak to people, we have to speak to them the truth in love because we want them to be saved in the kingdom of Christ.

And so he says he who made them in the beginning made them male and female and said.

This is interesting because when you go back to Genesis you discover something very peculiar.

The words that were given at the marriage ceremony in Genesis are simply written as if they were by Moses.

Now let's go back there, back to Genesis so that you can see the point that I'm trying to make.

It gives the impression that either Moses is writing this or perhaps even Adam is speaking this.

But we're going to notice in a minute that the 1 who spoke these words was Jesus himself.

Verse 24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become 1 flesh.

In Genesis it's just written as if Moses is writing it or maybe Adam is speaking these words But what does it say in Matthew?

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What Jesus Said

8. Family Values

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