Love without an Exit Strategy: Be Still, O Wandering Eye (Matthew 5:27-32)

Here is the sermon I preached on August 23, 2020. Its “longer-than-normal length” and “thicker-than-normal exegesis” was required because the issues of lust and purity as well as divorce and marriage are often misunderstood scripturally and culturally.

As I said in the sermon, “If we have stopped being shocked at the teachings of Jesus, we have never fully understood them.” This is no more true, I believe, than in the Sermon on the Mount.

It’s often been said that a preacher’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. For preachers, Jesus is our plumb-line who was full of grace and truth (John 1:14). My prayer is that believers heard “truthful grace” and “graceful truth” even as we delved into one of the “more difficult” passages in the Sermon on the Mount.

Soli Deo Gloria.