Pluck Out and Cut Off

Introduction: The Sobering Command to Pluck Out and Cut Off

0:06 And our text this morning, verses 29 and 30.

0:19 And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out. That's the literal meaning of the word offend thee. If it causes thee to stumble, if it becomes the occasion of sin unto thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not thy whole body be cast into hell.

0:47 And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not thy whole body go into hell. Then we ask God to help us as we consider this, which is perhaps the most sobering, sobering portion in all of the Sermon on the Mount. May we pray together for a moment, asking God's help.

1:23 Lord, again we are conscious as we take divine truth into our hands and set it before our eyes, and as we expose our ears to the precepts of Him who said, My word shall never pass away. We are filled with a sense of holy awe, and a sense of our own inadequacy. Oh, Spirit of God, be our teacher. Give us to understand what our Lord Jesus meant when He spoke these sobering words.

2:00 And may we never forget what the Spirit said to our hearts today. We ask in His name. Amen. We are well into this section, verses 21 to 48, in which our Lord Jesus, is taking the law of Moses, and seeking to release it from the shackles of Phariseeism.

Context: Christ's Reinterpretation of the Law

2:28 They had taken the law of God, which is exceeding broad, and had chained that law with traditional interpretations, which basically, and in reality, nullified the true meaning of that law. And our Lord Jesus does this simply upon the authority of who He, He is. Every passage is introduced with the words ye have heard, but I say unto you. And I love that.

2:58 I thrill every time we come to one of these portions, for this is the greatest kind of apologetic. The authoritative proclamation of divine truth carries with it an argument that is overpowering when that truth comes in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord is dealt with the, the sixth commandment. Thou shalt not murder.

3:21 And it has shown us that it forbids not only the act of killing, but it forbids all unjust anger in the heart, all abusive speech with the lips, and all condemning speech. And it commands us to be right with our brother, and to be right with those about us in terms of legal responsibility. Last week, we began our consideration of the law of Moses, and our consideration of our Lord's dealing with the seventh commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery. And we saw that though the prevailing understanding was very limited, if a man did not take another woman's wife, he felt he was living in obedience to this command.

4:06 But our Lord Jesus said that the look of lust, the gaze which receives the consent of the will in desire, has already broken the seventh commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery. And we tried to lay hold of those principles which Christ enunciated here, that sin is basically the consent of the will to the suggestion of evil. I trust that thing has gotten through to us. God's preached that back to me many times this week.

4:38 Sin is the consent of my will to the suggestion of evil. Whether I'm able to carry out the design of evil in my experience, matters not in the sight of God. And the source of sin is the human heart. He hath committed adultery already in his heart.

4:57 And then our true character is revealed by the state of our hearts, not primarily by the deeds of the life. And then we saw last of all that the law which condemns the overt act of sin, also condemns everything which leads to that sin. And if the taking of another man's wife, is sin, then anything leading to that act is also sin. The lust of the eye, the dress or demeanor of the one who provokes the lust, all that leads to the sin of adultery in thought and in deed, is condemned by the holy law of God.

The Relationship of the Passage to the Nature of Sin

5:38 Now, right on the heels of that exposition of the true meaning of the seventh commandment, our Lord utters, these strange and almost terrifying words. You can't live with these words for the greater part of several days, as I have done this week, without coming away with the sense that these are strange and terrible words. For our Lord says, And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, it's as though someone said to him, But Lord, if adultery is simply looking with lust, how can we ever live free of adultery? We've got eyes that see and appreciate beauty. How can we help but desire? And it's as though our Lord answers and says, If you must go to the extent of even plucking out the eye, adultery must be judged at any cost.

6:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee, for it is profitable to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands to go into hell. Now, as we seek to understand this passage, how can we approach it? Well, may I take just two minutes to show its relationship to what preceded. In verses 27 and 28, Christ has shown us the terrible nature of sin, the horribleness of sin, that it is this attitude of the heart consenting to evil.

7:19 Having shown us the awful nature of sin, now in verses 29 and 30, our Lord is showing us the importance of dealing with sin at any cost and the terrible danger if we don't. He's shown us the awfulness of sin, verses 27 and 8. Now in 29 and 30, He's going to show us the consequences of sin and the fact that we must deal with it at any cost. That will help you in seeing the relationship of these things.

What the Passage Does NOT Mean: Avoiding Misinterpretation

7:57 Now, as we actually approach the passage, what are we going to do with it? It means something. Well, first of all, let's consider what it does not mean. What this passage cannot mean.

8:10 This is absolutely necessary in the study of the Bible. We read in Peter, 2 Peter 3 and verse 16, that the unstable and the ignorant wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. And there are some who would say, well, it's obvious what it means. Christ says, cut off a right hand, cut off a right eye.

8:31 Why twist it? Why make it say anything else? But we don't deal with the Bible this way. We never deal with one passage of Scripture in such a way that it nullifies the simple meaning of a dozen other passages of Scripture.

8:45 You see? This is one of the great fallacies of the Roman Church. Almost every Roman Catholic will know just three verses. Whosoever sins you remit, they are remitted.

8:55 Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. And what's the third one I generally encounter? It's left me right now. And they will interpret those verses in such a way that they completely nullify the rest of the Bible.

9:11 Now we must never, in dealing with any given passage of Scripture, deal with it in that way. We must allow Scripture to throw light upon Scripture. So what can this passage not mean? Well, first of all, it cannot mean that our Lord is teaching salvation by works.

9:30 It would seem to teach that on the surface, for Christ says, if you'll cut off the right hand and the right eye and thereby cease from sin, you'll miss hell. All right? Jesus is teaching then, if we'll make ourselves holy enough, we'll miss hell and we'll go to heaven. Therefore, we're saved by works.

9:49 Now this can't be His meaning, for that would contradict everything else He taught. He said, I am come to seek and to save that which is lost, Luke 19.10. He said, I came to do the saving.

10:03 He said in another place, I came to give my life for the sheep. He came to provide a free salvation for the fallen sons of men. So we cannot interpret this in such a way as to make our Lord contradict everything else He taught concerning salvation. It would contradict not only His words, but it would contradict His works.

10:30 For if we can be saved by self-help, then He died in vain. And all the agonies and the sufferings and the gory baptism of Golgotha is utterly meaningless if we can be saved by self-effort. So I can't interpret it in such a way as to nullify the other words of Christ and the very works of Christ, or to nullify the rest of the words of the apostles, for they clearly teach, as we read in Romans 4, 4 and 5, a man is justified not by works, but by faith. To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

11:15 Well that helps me then in my interpretation of the passage. It cannot mean salvation by works. There's a second thing it can't mean. It cannot mean sanctification by the abuse of my body.

11:32 On the surface it seems as though Christ is saying if you want to be a holy man, then you must abuse your body. Pluck out the right eye and cut off the right hand. Now why do we know that this cannot be taken literally? Well, Jesus supported the sixth commandment which said thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not destroy human life.

11:56 And that command touches every phase of human life. God gave us our bodies, and God forbade even his people in the Old Testament to mark and tattoo their bodies like the heathen did, seeking to demonstrate that the God who made us made us with a body that is also reflective of his wisdom, and God does not want us to mutilate the body he's given. It would also be contrary to the teaching that sin is not in the muscles, but in the heart. For you remember that verse we considered last week in Mark 7, 21?

12:31 For from within, out of the heart proceed adultery. Adultery doesn't lie in the eye and in the hand. They may be involved in the act of adultery, but the sin is in the pollution of the human heart. So Christ cannot be teaching that we are sanctified by abusing and flagellating the human body.

12:56 Now again, not to pick on any system, but to show the error. There have been people down through the centuries and especially during the time of the Dark Ages who took this literally and thought that holiness was to be attained by wearing a hair shirt and sleeping upon a bed, and whipping the body and flagellating the body. Martin Luther went through this for years and found that it did nothing to touch the terrible fountain of corruption, the human heart. God cannot be speaking of a sanctification to be attained by mutilating the body, for it would contradict again the rest of his teaching that for from within, out of the heart proceeds evil, and it would also be contrary to the dignity of the human body. Now this is the era of monasticism, those who would go behind cloistered walls to get away from sin and they find to their dismay that they took their own wicked hearts with them. And as long as you've got your wicked heart with you, you're going to have a fountain of corruption to deal with. Martin Lloyd-Jones in his wonderful two books on the Sermon on the Mount made this statement that has been very helpful to me and I quote, Any teaching that makes us live an unnatural life

14:22 is not New Testament holiness. Now that's good, you ought to memorize that. Any teaching that makes us live an unnatural life is not New Testament holiness. I didn't say unpopular.

14:40 New Testament holiness may make you unpopular, but it won't make you unnatural. You see, those who would set up a life of celibacy as the highest attainment in holiness run right into the Word of God, run into conflict with it, for God says the requirement of the spiritual leader is the husband of one wife, having his children in subjection with all gravity, ruling well his own household. The requirements for spiritual leadership are not some kind of an ascetic, withdrawn, abnormal, unnatural life of celibacy or some other form of physical abuse of the body. and its natural appetites. But the requirements for spiritual leadership in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1, I believe it is, or chapter 2, is the man or woman who lives that natural life in the power of the Spirit to such a degree that his use of normal, natural appetites and God-given gifts are a testimony to the grace of God. Now that's New Testament holiness. So if Christ were teaching that we can be holy by cutting off hands and plucking out eyes, this would contradict the rest of the teaching of the New Testament.

What the Passage DOES Mean: Cease Sin or Perish

16:03 All right, now so much for what Christ could not mean. Now what did he mean? He must have meant something. And I remind you again that what he meant is a sobering, sobering thing.

16:16 Two things. First of all, our Lord Jesus meant to teach us that we must either cease from the willful practice of sin or perish in hell. Now notice carefully his words. If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, if thine eye is the occasion of your willful indulgence in adultery, not the act, but just the thought of adultery.

16:51 Remember now, Christ is dealing here with sin as the consent of the heart to evil, not the actual deed, though that's included. If thy right eye causes thee to be guilty of the willful, deliberate practice of adulterous thoughts, our Lord said pluck out that eye. If the hand is the offending member, cut it off at any cost. Cease from sin or what?

17:21 It's profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body be cast into hell. In other words, he said you must deal with sin brutally and thoroughly or you must perish. And if this passage teaches anything, it teaches that which the whole Bible teaches, that any unrepentant, willful, deliberate practicer of sin must perish in the lake of fire. Beloved, don't let this be passed off as so much more preacher's talk.

18:00 The Bible teaches, 1 Corinthians 6, 9, that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. The Bible teaches, Galatians 5, 19 to 21, the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, anger, wrath, malice, all of these things. And then it says in verse 21, I warn you as I did forewarn you before that they who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And oh, how we need to have a re-preachment of this truth in our evangelical circles that those who willfully practice sin with an unrepentant heart are destined for the pit of burning. They're not kind old Christians. They're not backslidden Christians. They're lost with this big group of fuzzy gray in our day of people who profess faith in Christ but who willfully, deliberately practice sin.

19:12 Jesus said such people are destined for the pit, not for the loss of a few rewards. And to make our Lord mean anything less than that is to do violence to the plain sense of Scripture. Oh, but you say I'm not guilty of adultery. Remember what he's talking about now.

19:33 He's talking about the sin of the heart. And a man can perish, for the willful indulgence of heart adultery as much as the man who will perish for the willful act of adultery. Never forget it. Willful, unrepentant sinners are under the condemnation of God.

19:59 One of the old Puritans said that there are two kinds of peace that ought to be feared above all else. Peace with sin and peace in sin. Beloved, strike no plan of peaceful coexistence with sin. Either you're warring against sin or you're under the captivity of sin.

20:24 One or the other. No middle ground. For sin is out to destroy you. And the Son of God is out to destroy sin in you.

20:35 And you can't be neutral in this. Let me repeat. Sin is out to destroy you. The Son of God is out to destroy sin in you.

20:46 And if He is in you, carrying out this warfare, there will be a conscious resistance of sin. A conscious battle until the day you die. And if there's no conscious battle and conscious resistance, it's because you are under the power of sin. Beloved, that's a frightful thing.

21:09 And if you've got peace in that state, woe, woe, woe be unto you. For peace in sin and peace with sin are both evidences of an unregenerate heart. And our Lord meant to teach, first of all, that we must either cease the willful practice of sin or perish for our sin. And then the second thing our Lord taught in this passage, and it flows out of this, that we must take any steps necessary to remove the occasions of sin from our lives.

What the Passage DOES Mean: Remove Occasions of Sin at Any Cost

21:48 Is the hand an occasion for sin? The Lord Jesus said, far better to cut it off and enter into light main than to keep your hand as a precious thing and perish. Is the eye the occasion of sin? Well, if plucking out the eye will remove the occasion of sin at any cost.

22:06 Remove the occasion of sin. Our Lord is teaching that we must take any steps necessary to remove the occasion of sin. Notice the strength of His words. Pluck out, and then He said, cast it away.

22:22 Lest you pick it up again and stick it back in the socket and go back to your sin. If you've cut off the hand, take the other hand and throw it away, cast it from you. These are words, strong verbs of action. Cut, pluck, cast.

22:37 What's our Lord trying to tell us? He's trying to tell us that we must take any steps necessary to remove every and any occasion of sin. Now the hand and the eye are very precious, and in the mind of the Jew, the right hand and the right eye were most precious. I don't know if they didn't.

22:57 Yeah, they had some left-handed people. Remember the seven left-handed warriors? Some of us, our left hand's a bit more precious to us. But this was accommodation to the people of His day who thought that the right eye and the right hand were more precious.

23:13 And our Lord said, take the most precious possession, and no matter what it cost, of personal pain, of loss, of suffering, no matter what hindrance it took, no matter what sin it brings to your life, no matter what gain you must forfeit, at any cost, deal with the occasions of sin. How beloved that strong teaching, isn't it? But here it is. Our Lord meant something.

Illustrations of Removing Occasions of Sin

23:42 And if He didn't mean the actual cutting off of the hand and the plucking out of the eye, and He couldn't mean that, for that would contradict too much of the Scripture, then He must have meant that we must take any measure, no matter how stringent it is, to remove the occasion of sin, even if that thing's as dear as the right hand and the right eye. Let me illustrate. Several months ago I was privileged to be in the group of godly laymen, men who know God and are doing far more than a lot of us preachers, and I include myself in the number. And I was talking with a man who'd had a tremendous influence upon the lives of some high school students.

24:22 He was a high school teacher. And he didn't have much opportunity of direct witness. He was under the school jurisdiction, and he taught English and literature and had most of the advanced students in the accelerated courses. But when he got into the realm of literature, he was able then to give out some little words of indirect witness.

24:44 And some of the youngsters would come up to him after class and say, Mr. So-and-so, what about this that you said? He said, well, I don't have time to discuss it fully here. If you'd like to know more, at such and such a night in my home, I have a Bible study.

24:58 You're welcome to come. Well, over the period of several years, now that he's been back in teaching, he's had contact, and he limited his contact to all juniors so he could have them for their junior and senior year. He's had 25 young men and women, the top students in that high school, that had been meeting with him in his Bible classes. Throughout the summer months, he had six young men that he met with an hour and a half every week going over the Scriptures with him.

25:24 That night, as we sat in this meeting, was a young man, a top student, an athlete in that school, who had either recently just come to faith in Christ or was right on the verge of committing himself to Jesus Christ. And I was interested, the tremendous ministry this man has had, and we got talking, and come to find out that just a few short years ago, he was a very successful salesman. I wouldn't begin to guess what the man was making a year. But he left selling, and you know why he did?

25:56 Now, I'm not saying you must do it. Now, see, somebody's going to go out and say, the pastor said, if you're a salesman, you can't be a Christian. I didn't say that. Didn't say that.

26:05 Now, don't you go out and quote me. It'll be a lie. Now, listen carefully. I'm saying this is how God dealt with him.

26:12 I'm illustrating a principle. Now, don't make the illustration a law. The illustration, he found that he could not continue to be perfectly honest as a Christian and go on in sales. Does any of you who are involved in sales know that most and much and the great majority of the sales pitches of modern salesmanship are based on pure, unmitigated deception?

26:38 And he found he couldn't be honest. And so that tremendous personal loss to himself, he left selling for a big company that probably, I imagine the man was probably making upwards of over $20,000 a year. He stepped down to be a high school teacher, and you know what that meant. He was cutting off the right hand and plucking out the right eye.

27:00 See it? For he found that selling was an occasion of sin and untruth. And rather than go on in sin and untruth, he cut off the right hand. He plucked out the right eye.

27:07 Oh, you say that's extreme. Not if you want to go to heaven. It isn't. If you go on in your sin, I don't care what you profess, Jesus says the lake of fire will be your portion.

27:14 Isn't that what the book teaches? I remember a woman that I met in a Bible conference down the street. She said, you know what? I don't want to go to heaven.

27:24 I don't want to go to hell. I don't want to go to heaven. I don't want to go to heaven. I don't want to go to hell.

27:28 Jesus said, you know what? I don't care what you profess, Jesus says the lake of fire will be your portion. Isn't that what the book teaches? I remember a woman that I met in a Bible conference down in Florida.

27:40 I'm illustrating again. In her early years found herself bound by the appeal and the slavery of the cocktail set, that set of people, and also by what went into the cocktail glasses until she became a respectable alcoholic. And they estimate that we might have upwards of several millions of such ladies in our society who aren't on skid row, they're living in respectable homes, but they're respectable alcoholics. She was one of them.

28:10 And the Lord wonderfully saved her. But He never took away the taste of certain forms of liquor. And if she smelled certain kinds of liquor to this day, her mouth would water. If she's walking down the street and happens to be passing a place where that particular smell drifts out of a home or out of a bar, she's got to immediately cross the street and walk on the other side or she knows she'll end up in there.

28:33 And what's she doing? She's cutting off the right hand and she's fucking out the right eye. She is removing the occasion of sin at any cost. You see?

28:46 Let people think her strange. Let people say to our friend there in Pennsylvania who's the school teacher, you're a fool. Look, you could give so much more to missions. Oh, the devil will always have some pious reasons for continuing on in sin.

29:01 Always. It wouldn't hook us if this were not so. But our Lord is teaching at any loss, physical,

29:13 financial, personal, at any cost, the occasions of sin must be removed. I'm going to apply this as we close a little bit later, but so much for the principle.

The Christian Duty of Mortifying Sin

29:25 To put it under one general heading, what our Lord is teaching here is the Christian duty of the mortifying of sin. Now this is a duty that the old Puritans talked about. We don't hear much about it anymore. But this duty is commanded to all Christians.

29:41 For I read in Colossians 3, verse 5, Put to death, therefore, your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, covetousness, which is idolatry. God commands us to engage in the duty of putting sin to death. Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth. The duty is not only commanded, it's illustrated in the Bible, and the best illustration I know is 1 Corinthians 9, 27, where Paul said, I buffet my body and keep it under, lest in preaching to others I myself should be rejected, cast away.

30:24 And my friends, it doesn't mean simply put on a shelf. You budding young Greek students, look it up in your lexicon and see how it's used in the rest of the New Testament. Paul says, I must either master myself, and my physical appetites by the grace of God, or I must be rejected. I believe Paul had reference to the words of Christ.

30:47 But thank God, power is provided for this duty. God not only commands the duty, illustrates it, but we read, and that's the most precious verse I know on the subject, Romans 8, 13, If ye by the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live. By whose power do I remove the occasions of sin? By whose power do I cease from the willful practice and deliberate practice of sin?

31:18 Beloved, it's not by Adam's power. But if ye by the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live. Adam doesn't have any power to fight Adam. He'll always sit down and strike up a truce.

31:34 But thank God, the second Adam, the Lord Jesus, by the power of God, by the power of His indwelling Spirit, can enable us to pluck out the right eye and cut off the right hand and to mortify sin. That's why this passage in Matthew 5 is only for Christians. I get a little bit tickled with some of my liberal friends who talk very glibly about, well, my only gospel is the Sermon on the Mount. I'd like to put this under their nose and say, all right, start doing that.

32:04 Start beginning to try to remove every occasion of sin in your life. Start trying to purify sin in the depths of your thought life. I'd say to him, try to do that. And if that wouldn't drive him to see his need of being born of the Spirit, nothing will.

32:25 Beloved, when you see that sin is an attitude of the heart and pollution of the heart, and you begin to try to live a holy life without being born again, you're going to come to the place where you say, I can't. Hallelujah. That's the best place you can come to. For then you're ready to throw yourself upon Christ and allow Him by the Holy Spirit to come into the life and begin to give you the power.

32:49 For it's by the presence of the Holy Spirit that we are able to mortify the deeds of the body. He came to make Christ real to us. That's why the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1.30, Christ is made unto us sanctification, for the Holy Spirit comes and by His indwelling gives us power to put to death the deeds of the flesh.

33:13 The Holy Spirit comes and imparts the opposite virtues to the sins that would plague us. In place of our hate, the fruit of the Spirit is love. In place of dejection, there is His fruit of joy. In place of sharpness, there is His grace of long-suffering.

33:32 All the virtues of Galatians 5.22 and 23, the Holy Spirit comes to impart, to enable us, to put to death the deeds of the flesh. And so our Lord Jesus, in commanding us to the duty of mortifying sin, has also made gracious provision by His own power that we might put to death the deeds of the flesh. Now, what are some of the principles that could be helpful to us in this passage?

Principle 1: Disciplining the Body's Appetites and Capacities

34:04 I've tried to give you the sense of what it cannot mean, the general sense of what it does mean. Now, what are some of the principles here that should stick with us as we leave this morning? Principle number one, and I want you to listen carefully, men and women, especially you young people. Listen carefully.

34:23 Jesus taught in this passage that though the body's appetites and capacities are not sinful, they become the occasion by which sin masters us. Sin has its roots in the heart, but Jesus here talked in terms, especially of sins of impurity, of the eye and the hand getting us into trouble. For sin in the heart, if it's going to capture the man, will capture him through the appetites of the body. Eve looked upon the fruit.

34:58 She saw that it was good for food. It was through her physical senses that sin entered into her life. Sin is not in the physical senses,

35:09 but sin which lies in the heart would capture us by sin. Our physical senses and the eye and the hand are those two members which particularly make us prone to sins of impurity. You men, I trust you have as a cardinal, unwritten rule of your life that you touch no woman but your own wife except to shake hands and that quickly, period.

35:41 For the touch of a hand can be the first step to a moral collapse and fall if not for sin. If not, in experience in the heart.

35:55 Have it as a written, unwritten rule of your life. You touch no woman but your own wife except to shake hands in a social way and that quickly.

36:06 For the hand becomes the instrument of impurity. That's why Christ talked about the hand in this context. I'm speaking to you adult men. I'm speaking to you ladies.

36:17 Be careful of your eyes.

36:20 You can say more with a glance than you can say sometimes with sentences.

36:28 Make sure that there's only one man in all the world that receives the kind of glance that leaves an open door for an advance and that be your own husband.

36:40 Many a man has fallen because someone has given him a glance. Jesus said, the eye and the hand. I'm speaking to you adults now. Oh, I'm exempt from that, are you?

36:53 David wasn't.

36:56 Solomon wasn't.

36:59 And many giants have fallen before the passions of impurity because of the hand. Because the hand and the eye were not disciplined by grace. May I speak to you young people?

37:15 You young fellows and girls? You're growing up in an age that makes mockery of God's standards of purity. And I plead with you fellows and you girls, make it a written law in your life that until God brings into your life your life partner, you will not touch any young woman or young girl. Period.

37:37 Anything. Hands off! God may keep that air of your life pure and sacred and holy.

37:50 For many a young person has lived to regret the day that he just innocently held hands on a date and awakened something that was normal and natural.

38:03 Any normal human being is not content to hold hands for the rest of his life.

38:08 You're playing with fire, young people. And I plead with you as your pastor so that none of you can ever say no one told me from the pulpit. I go to Christian camps and I speak to you for one whole session along this line of the Bible standard for Christian young people in the area of their social life. And I have dear young people come to me and say, Mr. Martin, no one's ever told me this!

38:32 No one's ever told me! Mother and Dad didn't! The preachers didn't! And I long and I cry to God this week that somehow He'll say something to you dear young people that you'll never forget.

38:46 That you'll never be able to say Pastor didn't tell us. Remember, fellows and girls, it's through the eye and the hand that impurity enters the life. You girls remember how you dress and be the occasion of the trouble with a fellow's eye. Don't forget it.

39:06 Don't forget it. What you watch on the TV, what you look at in the newspaper, what you read, if thy TV offends thee, you're going to junk eat.

39:23 If you can't discipline what you watch and govern what your children watch, put an end to it!

39:31 In God's name, don't help your children down the road of impurity by leaving an undisciplined television set blaring in your living room. I visited in a home just a short time ago and sat there facing the adults in that home while several of the young people had the TV on and I just glanced once or twice and what I saw made me sick. And here were young people being polluted while parents sat there. Christian parents countenancing the devil's attempt to damn their own children.

40:14 Beloved, the devil's got the world on his side. He's got much of society on his side. And if he even gets Christian parents on his side to damn and pollute our children, what hope is there that we in the church are going to do much?

40:33 Ah, Cleveland, if thy television offends thee, chuck it out. For it's better than to enter into life with no TV than having a TV and enter into hell. Now somebody will go out and say the pastor said you're going to hell if you have TV, but I didn't say that. I didn't say that.

40:57 May I speak to some of you who have an intellectual thirst to read?

41:03 If the popular number one bestseller offends you and leads you to impurity of mind, far better to be considered an ignoramus and not a Christian. I'm not against the times than to read it and defile yourself. I'd rather be an ignoramus as I told the young people this morning and be in fellowship with my God than be well informed and have the heavens brass above me when I go to pray because I've read literature that's defiled my mind and polluted me.

41:40 That's why I don't read a lot of theological literature. I'm scared to death of some of it. I am. Some of these fellows who deny the essential truth of God, they're smarter than I am, and I know it.

41:53 And I'm scared to expose myself to some of it because greater men than I have been deceived by the subtlety of religious sophistry and have been led down the road of unbelief. A dear young man with whom I used to pray and he'd pray with tears as he'd cry to God for blessing upon our lives and our ministries when I used to stand in the pulpit there in Stanford, Connecticut in a little mission and preach when I would pause long enough to get a breath I could hear him in the next room groaning and crying to God for the Spirit of God to come upon me as I preached. And I get letters from him now and not a mention of Christ,

42:35 not a mention of anything spiritual. You know how it happened? He began to think he could lock horns with Tillich. He began to think he could lock horns with Barth and Brunner and the other liberal theologians and neo-orthodox theologians and he locked horns with Barth.

42:53 He locked horns and he came away with it. And he's lost much of his faith today.

43:00 All right, if I've got to be considered a theological obscurantist, hallelujah. As long as when I get on my knees to pray I know my Father hears me. And that when I stand to preach I know the Holy Ghost ministers through me.

43:18 And I put no premium on ignorance. You folk know that. I'm so thrilled to see the reading appetite that's come upon you as a congregation. It tickles me no end.

43:27 It makes me glad. But beloved, if thine eye offend thee, be careful what you take in by the eye gate. Be careful what you touch. That's the first principle.

43:42 And I love this quote, very quaint quote by Matthew Henry. I typed it out so I could share it with you. Matthew Henry said, The eye is both the inlet and the outlet of a great deal of wickedness of this kind. What need have we therefore with Job to make a covenant with our eyes?

44:00 Job 31.1. To make this bargain with our eyes. Now this is beautiful.

44:06 Listen. Here's the bargain we're going to make with our eyes. That they should have the pleasure of beholding the light of the sun and the works of God, provided that they would never fasten or dwell upon anything that might occasion impure imaginations or desires. And under this penalty, that if they ever did, if the eyes ever become the instruments of impurity, they must smart for it impeccably.

44:32 Penitential tears.

44:35 What have we the covering of our eyes for but to restrain corrupt glances and to keep out defiling impressions? Isn't that beautiful? I make a covenant with my eyes that they shall have the privilege of beholding everything that's beautiful in the creation of God. But if these eyes become the occasion of impurity, they must pay the penalty by smarting with salty tears of repentance.

45:05 And then that beautiful sentence with which he closes, what have we covering for our eyes for but the moment that which would come by the eye gate to defile. We don't need to run for a coat. We don't need to pull for a shade. We can shut the eyes and turn the head.

45:23 Beloved, this is practical teaching, I know. It's not talking about how to get holiness in an experience. It's talking about a discipline of mortifying sin. Romans 6.13 says, Neither present ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. So there's that principle that the eye and the hand are the peculiar agents or faculty by which impurity would enter the life. So let us be careful in disciplining the eyes and in governing the hand. And then the second principle that I've mentioned briefly.

Principle 2: The Soul's Greater Importance than the Body

46:03 Jesus teaches in this passage that the soul of man is of much power. It's greater importance than the body of man. Jesus said it's profitable to enter heaven maimed than going into hell whole in body. Suppose a group of madmen should break into this assembly today and at gunpoint force all of us to line up along all the walls.

46:30 And then while someone held us at gunpoint, someone came along and decapitated or took off. You don't decapitate a hand, do you? That's the head. But severed the hand, the right hand from every one of us.

46:43 And then someone came and gouged out the right eye of every one of us. And then en masse we were hauled down after they left to some of the local hospitals. And we were all fixed up. And we came next week with a bandage over the stump of our right arm and a patch over the right eye.

47:02 Suppose a stranger were to come in and stand up to preach and look out and see everyone holding the right arm in a sling in a stump. And the patch over the right eye. And he were to say to me, Pastor Martin, what is this? And I were to explain what happened.

47:15 He'd say, what a tragedy. What a tragedy. This great body of people, every one of them losing the right hand and the right eye. Listen.

47:22 Listen now. Listen. Tragedy? If doing that could ensure that you would break off your sins, every one of you, and be born of the Spirit and begin to be holy men and women, it would be a blessing.

47:39 A blessing unto eternity to lose a right hand and a right eye. That's exactly what Christ said. He said, it's profitable for thee to lose a hand or an eye, if in so doing you'd miss hell. He's teaching that the soul is of much more importance than the body.

48:02 And again, my heart is bled as I thought of this message and cried to God. You precious young people are being brought up in the world that says there's only one thing important, your body. One of our people showed me a two-page color ad from one of the magazines. On one side, it had the little caption, if I only had one life to live.

48:25 And you know what it said on the next page? It showed some bleached blonde, and it said, let me live it as a blonde. And then the whole caption was this. Every woman in her heart wants the veracity, exotic feeling of knowing that she attracts the glances of men because she's got a blonde mop of straw on the top of her cranium.

48:50 I'm changing the wording. It was an advertisement for a certain form of hair dye. But beloved, you know what that advertisement reveals? You know what that ad cost in a magazine of that size, a full color spread?

49:10 I know back in the 1950s, my dad who works for Schick Electric Shaver said it cost him $25,000 for one edition in Life magazine of a full color spread. You think they're throwing that money away? Oh, no, not on your life. They know that that's striking to the very core of the appeal of the American way of life.

49:30 And you precious young people are being sucked into this, being made to believe there's nothing more important than pooping up your hair and painting your face and pooping your body. Beloved, there's something more important. You've got a never-dying soul that's going to be with God or with the devil. And there's angels forever.

49:52 And Jesus taught in this passage that the soul is more important than the body. Does that mean we become careless with the body? No. Why?

50:01 Because Christ brings all the facets of human dignity to their utmost expression when he saves us. And we'll want to be clean and neat and presentable. But oh, beloved, some of you who spent an hour this morning primping your body have not yet in your life spent one minute shedding a tear. You'll spend hours a week feeding that body, but you don't spend 10 minutes a week feeding the soul through the book of God.

50:36 You've spent hours with insurance salesmen and written out everything that's going to take care of wife and kiddies in their material way if you should die. But you haven't spent 10 minutes on your face crying to God for repentance for a new heart. Beloved, I don't know what to say but to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ to you today, which says the soul is more important than the body. And may God somehow give you eyes to see it, that you might be saved, that you might begin to seek the Lord for a new heart, begin to seek him that you might come to truly know him.

Principle 3: The Reality of Hell

51:16 And then last of all, our Lord in this passage made clear that he believed in warm men to flee from a conscious place of eternal torment called hell. Twice in these two days, you will be saved. Twice in these two verses, Jesus talks about being cast into hell. And again I say to my liberal friends who say, my only gospel is the Sermon on the Mount.

51:43 I say, all right, my friend, if that's true, then you better begin to preach old fashioned hell, fire, and brimstone because Jesus taught it. He taught it. And a Jesus who doesn't teach hell is a Jesus who's not pictured in the Bible. For Jesus said the very reason why it would be better to be maimed in life is because there's something far more terrible than the maiming of our body awaiting us if we don't come to repentance.

52:19 And that is the lake of fire. Beloved, this is a sobering passage. No man in his right mind takes pleasure in declaring its truth. And I say with Paul this morning, woe is me if I preach not what God's declared.

Call to Action: Flee to Christ and Mortify Sin

52:39 Are you mortifying sin? Are you at war with sin this morning by the grace of God? Or are you at peace with sin? Or better, or worse yet, peace in sin?

52:55 Beloved, may you flee to Christ today. Ask him to give you a new heart, to blot out your sins by his grace, and begin by his spirit to live a life of putting to death the deeds of the flesh. Shall we pray?