Raka – empty. Raka means one who is empty headed, or in Hebrew it’s idiot. What is it whenever you call someone stupid, empty headed or dumb? That guy hasn’t got any sense. You don’t want to do any business with him. You don’t want anything to do with him. What is that? That’s liable and slander. You know what happens to you today if you’re guilty of liable or slander? You can be sued in a court of law. Jesus said, “Whoever is angry with his brother without cause, that’s going to be brought before the congregation to be taken care of. But whoever libel’s or slanders his brother is going to be brought before the Sanhedrin. But whosoever shall say to his brother “Naval” is going to be in danger of hell fire.” What’s a naval? The naval has said in his heart there is no God. Wicked and corrupt is he and he mocks God all day long. Let me read something to you, p. 3, Everyman’s Talmud, under Doctrine of God…”Whether atheism (no God concept) in the sense of the dogmatic denial of God’s existence was accepted by anybody in Biblical and Rabbinic times is doubtful. (There wasn’t anybody that stupid) But both in Bible and Talmud the concern is with the practical atheist who conducted his life as though he would never be held to account for his deeds. In biblical literature the statement ‘there is no God’ is made by the naval. In other words, the morally corrupt person who, which acknowledging the existence of a creator refused to believe that he was at all interested in the actions of his creatures. His counterpart in the Talmud is the Epicurean who likewise denies the fundamental principle of religion by his abominable conduct. The Rabbis defined the atheist as one who affirmed that there is no judgment and no judge. In other words, one who lived his life in such a way morally corrupt they believed that they would never come into judgment.” Now Jesus says, the guy who is angry with his brother without cause is going to be brought before the Bet Din congregation. The one who liable or slanders his brother is going to be brought before the Sanhedrin. But the one who judges his brother and says that he is a morally corrupt person and by his words and actions condemns him essentially or assigns him to Hell, is himself going to be judged because this person is playing God. He’s a morally corrupt person who mocks God and scoffs God all day long and who knows the secret thoughts of the man but God himself.
- 27, “You’ve heard by them of old time thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say unto you that whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his own heart already. If you’re right eye offends you pluck it out, and if you’re right arm cut it off because it’s profitable for thee that one of your members should perish and not thy whole body should be cast into hell.” If we take that literally a lot of folks are going to be in trouble. Gloria and I teach around the country probably more on the subject of Marriage and the Family than any other subject. Because we teach around the country on this subject we’re always having people coming up to us: men and women and preachers. They’ll get us off to the side and confessing, pouring out their heart, that they’ve been burdened down for years and years with a spirit of lust. They’ve fought that thing and they’ve gone through deliverance and had it case out of them 40 times. They just keep fighting it. Lust. And their weighted down with guilt and condemnation and unfortunately they don’t even know what lust is. It’s never been defined and most of us male and female, if we’re honest, will admit that we have had guilt feelings or condemnation about it at one time or another in your life. Some to a greater degree than others. It just depends on whether they’ve got 20/20 vision. What does it mean to lust? Well, it doesn’t mean to look and it doesn’t mean to think and it doesn’t mean to fantasize. It doesn’t say he that looks upon a woman to lust after her. It says, He that looks upon a woman to lust her. What does it mean to lust her? Look it up in the dictionary. BDB – Hamad. What does hamad mean? Inordinate, ungoverned, selfish desire of idolatrous tendency. That is, lust carries with it the concept of worshipping at the feet of a false God. Idolatry, paganism. What does it mean? He that looks upon a woman to lust her…ungoverned, unselfish, idolatrous desire run wild. How do I do that? We’ve got a prime example in the Bible with David the King. By accident he walks out on his porch and he looked and he saw Bathsheba. The looking wasn’t lust. He probably thought and the thinking wasn’t lust. When he was moved by an ungoverned inordinate desire to possess that which did not belong to him and set Uriah, her husband, up to the front line in battle, he moved from a natural human sexual response into idolatry. There is part of our human nature because of the way that we’re constituted, that response is natural and normal. Looking is not lusting. Remember the story of a preacher preaching a sermon on the subject of thou shalt not look. He preached a sermon on adultery. He walked into his house and the telephone rung. He picked it up and it’s Elder Jones. Preaching I’m going to have to confess to you that I’m an adulterous man. I committed adultery over 200 times and the last time was when I was on the way home from church, and I saw Sister Brown walk across the parking lot. How often we’re brought into bondage by misinterpretation. There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. It’s not any sin to look or admire. But when you are possessed with an ungoverned, uncontrollable, inordinate desire of idolatrous nature then you’re in need of repentance and deliverance. What’s the difference? If you intentionally go to Bartholomew Park and look through the fence then you’re putting yourself into a position that’s dangerous. If you intentionally pick up some kind of pornographic magazine off of the bookshelf, or you intentionally put yourself into a situation that’s going to lead you into ungoverned and unlicensed thoughts you’re putting yourself into a dangerous situation. But simply looking and thinking is a part of normal, natural human sexual response. We know ourselves and we should know that if our motives are pure and we’re in Christ Jesus and those thoughts and those actions are under control and we’ve brought them under subjection that there is now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus.
What does it mean that if your eye offends you pluck it out? Your arm offends you cut it off? It means to remove yourself from that thing that would cause an offense. Take control over it and have control over it that you sin not.
Here’s another one…It’s been misapplied so many times. Whoever puts away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement. Who said that? Deut. 24:1 “But Jesus said, whosoever shall put away his wife, save for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.” What’s he saying? Whosever puts away his wife except for the cause of fornication causes her to commit adultery. What’s the difference between fornication and adultery? Fornication is sexual relationship between people that aren’t married. Adultery is sexual relationship between those that are married, so if fornication is sexual relationships between unmarried how can a married person commit it? We know exactly what’s going on here. All you have to do is to know something about the Jewish teaching on the subject of marriage and divorce and what’s going on in Jesus’ day. Under the law, the Talmud, (p. 166) if a husband and a wife wished to separate there was no difficulty in dissolving the marriage. As a matter of fact, the Talmud says a bad wife is like leprosy to her husband. What’s the remedy? Let him divorce her and be cured of his leprosy. It was even asserted that if one had a bad wife it was his religious duty to divorce her. In the first century the schools of Shammi and the schools of Hillel that were contemporary with Jesus, took opposite views of this passage in Deut. 24:1 that allowed a man to send away his wife if she find no favor in his eyes because he has found some unseeming thing in her. The phrase “unseeming thing” is literally in Hebrew the nakedness of a thing. The School of Shammai explained this to mean a man may not divorce his wife unless he discovered her to be unfaithful to him. But the school of Hillel, on the other hand, understood the phrase in the sense of anything unseeming and declared that he may divorce her even if she spoiled his cooking. From the word “If she find no favor in his eyes” Rabbi Akiva, also in the first century, said, “He may divorce her even if he found another woman more beautiful than he.” It was the lenient opinion of the Hillellites that prevailed in Jesus’ day. A man could divorce his wife and send her away for any reason at all. He had these two school, Shemmai on the one hand who says only for adultery, and Hillel on the other hand who said even if he doesn’t like her looks. Right in the midst of this Jesus comes along and he says, “You’ heard that it was said, (Deut. 24:1), to not put away your wife for any unseeming thing, I say unto you that a man will not divorce his wife except for the case of fornication and whoever does divorce his wife and puts her away causes her to commit adultery.” What’s he saying? If you don’t know Jewish law you don’t have the faintest idea. In Judaism the marriage was arranged between the bridegroom and the father of the bride. A marriage contract was signed and a price was paid for the bride. He bought her like he would a horse. That contract was called a Ketuvah, tubah (there’s a whole tractate in the Mishnah called tubah which talks all about the law of espousement). It’s so fantastic and tremendous.
Did you ever wonder why God chose Joseph to be the earthly father of Jesus? You only get a hint when you know Mishnah and the Ketuvah because a man who violated the espoused of another man was guilty of a crime punishable by death, by stoning. Joseph, you remember, when he found out Mary was pregnant didn’t know who the father was. He was willing to put her away privately. We think, well, he just loved Mary so much. Yes, he did but he also knew that if he brought this thing out in the open and the guilty party was exposed that person would also be put to death. I think that here you see something of the real character of Joseph. All of that is brought forth for us in Mishnah in Ketuvah. It also states, at the very beginning of Ketuvah, that there is just a contract there and all you have to do is fill in the blanks and it states four times that this man, the groom, is paying a certain price for the virgin daughter of so and so. Four times it states that this daughter is a virgin. He pays the price for her. He takes her home to his tent and the marriage is consummated on the wedding evening. The married couple sleep on a linen cloth that the next day is hung out in front of the tent, or the home, with blood on it and that is known in the O.T. as the tokens of her virginity. This indicated that the contract was a legal contract and a binding contract. There was even more implication than that because at any time later on in their marriage if the husband got made at his wife and accused her in a court of law of being unfaithful or not a virgin when they were married. All she had to do was bring out her tokens of virginity and show it to the Bet Din, or the court of law, and he could never ever put her away for any reason because she had been falsely accused. Jesus says in the midst of these two opposing schools of thoughts, one only for adultery and the other for any reason at all, Jesus said, “A man isn’t going to put away his wife for any reason unless the marriage contract was falsified which would render it null and void.” He doesn’t even allow adultery to be a cause for a man putting away his wife.
There were reasons, later on, why a person could get a divorce. But Jesus didn’t talk about it. There are a lot of things that Jesus didn’t talk about. In order to understand what’s going on here in Matthew 5-7 you have to understand this one thing that I’m getting ready to tell you. Jesus never deals with relationships to any degree between those that are a part of the family of God and those who aren’t. What he’s talking about in Matthew 5-7 is attitudes of kingdom people. Attitudes of brother to brother. Whoever is angry with his brother without cause. He’s not talking about relationships between those who not a part of the family of God and those who are a part of the family of God. He doesn’t even consider it. He doesn’t talk about marriage and divorce between one who is a part of the family and another who isn’t a part of the family, because in Judaism such is unthinkable. The fact of the matter is there is no way that a believer and an unbeliever can be united together in matrimony in Judaism even though the marriage is blessed by a hundred Rabbis. There is no way that if they live together or are joined together in a religious ceremony, or any other kind of ceremony, that they can ever get a divorce because there isn’t any. That’s why the apostle Paul says if there are any believers is unequally yoked together with an unbeliever and the unbeliever wants to leave let them leave. Because in God’s eyes their not married in the first place. He doesn’t deal with those kind of relationships and you remember when Paul comes to that he says, “I say, I not the Lord” because the Lord didn’t discuss this. Why not? Because he’s dealing with relationships between those that are part of the family of God. Paul does deal with it a little later on and he tells of the reasons why that a man can put away his wife or vice versa, the wife could put away her husband. All of this is specified in the law. Did you know that it’s specified in law the reasons why a man can legitimately put away his wife or a wife can legitimately put away her husband? The wife had right too…she could put away her husband. Some of this is very interesting. If you do not know this, you don’t understand a lot of the things that Paul is getting across to his people. Do you remember when he write to them and he tells them don’t withhold from your wife her rightful conjugal dues? According to law, a man was required by law to have sexual relationships with his wife so many times per week based on his profession specified in law. If he didn’t the wife could appeal to a Rabbinical court and would be granted not only a bill of divorcement but alimony. Just a few months ago in Israel a woman took her husband to a rabbinical court for that very thing and was awarded a divorce and alimony. That’s the reason Paul says that a man and a wife are not to withhold themselves from one another except they decide to do so to set themselves aside for a period of pray and fasting. When it’s specifies in the law that the longest period of time that they can do that (p. 169). If a man vows that he will not have intercourse with his wife the school of Shammai allows his two weeks, the school of Hillel one week and if they the end of that period he does not annul his vow and resume cohabitation he’s compelled to divorce her. Not only that, but a woman had other grounds for divorce too. These are all specified in law. If he had a pedunculated tumor of the nasal membranes which would cause him to snore inordinately. If he is a collector of dog manure. What in the world is that? Or a copper smelter or a tanner. All of this is important. You can’t understand a lot of things in the Biblical text if you don’t know this stuff. Why a collector of dog manure? Why? Because of the tannic acid. They used it in the tanning of animal hides. That’s the reason she could get a divorce if he was a tanner because it was such an obnoxious odor. She would go before a rabbinic court and say, I’ve got to get out of here. My husband is a tanner and the Rabbis said yes, but you knew that when you married him. Yes, I thought that I could stand it but I can’t. She’d be given a bill of divorcement. That’s important to know that. Why? Because when you read in the N.T. if you don’t know all of this you don’t catch the full humor when the big evangelist Peter is over at Lydda, and poor Dorcas died at Joppa, and they sent for him and when he came where did they put him up? At the house of Simon the tanner. No wonder he was up on the roof top in the middle of the day. Man I bet he thanked God when those boys from Caesarea showed up to get him out of that place. You just can’t appreciate that if you don’t know Mishnah.
But Jesus doesn’t deal with that. We have to wait for the epistles and the apostle Paul to tell us that if anyone is unequally yoked together with an unbeliever and the unbeliever wants to leave let them leave and their not in any bondage in such cases. It goes ahead and further spells out in Mishnah that a person can become an unbeliever by his actions, by what he does. It’s not what you say that makes you a believer, it’s what you do. Just because you live in a hen house is not sign that you’re a chicken. A man was bound by law to love his wife, to care for his wife, to protect his wife, to cherish his wife and to love God and to keep his commandments. If he didn’t, and he was an apostate, he moved from the realm of belief into unbelief and all she had to do was to appeal to a rabbinic court and would be granted a bill of divorcement.
You’ve heard that it’s been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Where? Lev. 24:20 which is known as lex talionous. But Jesus says, “I say unto you that you resist not evil.” Wait a minute. What do you mean do not resist evil? Aren’t we time and time again told to resist evil? What do you mean? “Whoever smites you on your right cheek turn to him the other. If any man sue thee at law take your coat and let him have you cloak also. Whoever compels you to go with him one mile go with him two. Give to him that asketh thee and from him that would borrow from thee turn not away.” That’s tough isn’t it? Give to him that asks thee and from him that would borrow turn now away. I was in Mississippi not long ago in a meeting and I wasn’t bringing this particular seminar, and one business man in the church came up to me and said, “I hope you can explain something to me that’s been troubling me for years. I’m fairly well to do, business man in the community, and people are always come to me and wanting to borrow this and that and borrow my pickup and my car and this and I feel obligated because of this passage here in Matthew that says that I’m not to turn away from those that would borrow from me. Yet, I’ve been taken over and over again. The last time I loaned my pickup they brought back part of it in the bed. They towed it and pieces of it were laying lose in the bed of it, and he said, It’s cost me thousands of dollars and I want to know to what extent am I obligated, according to the word of God, to keep that commandment? Well, I told you that before you can understand Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, you need to understand that he’s dealing with relationships between whom? Brothers. Those who are a part of the family of God. When he says resist not evil he’s not talking about the Devil. He means don’t resist that ungoverned, angry brother. If he comes over and dumps a pail of garbage on your year, don’t retaliate and go put two on his yard. If that brother, in a fit of anger, strikes you on the cheek you turn to him the other and say, Hit me on this one as well if it’s going to make you feel better spiritually. If your brother you to court, and of course the court is a congregational court, the Bet Din, and he brings you before the Bet Din you bow before the spiritual leaders and say, “listen I’m willing to give this guy not only my coat but also my cloak. You judge the matter.” What does it mean if someone asks of thee, or wants to borrow from thee, give and don’t turn away. He’s saying the same things two different ways. You remember we said parallelisms are used. He’s building one on top of the other about relationships, and how you deal with brothers in the family of God. He’s talking about, first of all, the Beatitudes, the attitudes for kingdom people to be in. The characteristics of those who are in the kingdom. How they relate to God vertically and now how they relate to the body horizontally. In Hebrew there are two different word for give. Shoel and Levot (give and borrow). The first means that you give with the understanding that what it is that you give is going to be returned back to you in kind. That is if your brother comes to you and asks for a loaf of bread you give to him a loaf of bread understanding that your brother being the honest, responsible man of integrity, pure in heart, that he is and will return to you a loaf of bread in kind. It’s not going to be the same loaf of bread but he’s going to return a loaf of bread that’s just as good if not better.
If your brother wants a cup of sugar give him a cup of sugar with the understanding that he’s going to return to you a cup of sugar in kind. The other word means that the person returns back to you exactly the thing that is borrowed from you. If your brother comes and he’s a responsible brother and he needs to borrow your car you return it to him with the understanding that he’s going to return the car back to you. It’s going to be the same car in the same condition that he borrowed it in. If not his insurance is going to pay for it. Let me tell you something. The whole question of stewardship enters into this subject at this point, and we are all commanded to be good stewards. After all, that we possess, has been given to us by God and we are simply his stewards over those things. Therefore, we have the responsibility of being a good steward over that which he has entrusted to our keeping. If we know that that individual that comes to borrow from us is not responsible, not mature, who is not an individual of integrity, who is not pure in heart, it’s our responsibility to say no.
