ok, I have several questions…blame my inquizzitive mind. Matt 5 lists Gods laws, are these laws to be taken literal? When it states do not make vows does that means promises like “I promise to God I will….?” Divorce, it states if a a man marries a divorced woman they are damned….in today’s age that would mean a whole lot lot of people would be damned. What if they are christians & asked God into their hearts are they still damned?Matt 6 says you shouldn’t pray in public but, should be done in private. What about praying in church or events like meet me at the flag or praying before your meal in a restraunt. Are we sinning? Lastly, it says to not worry about money or everyday life.Does this mean don’t worry if you have alot of bills due & your check is smaller then expected.
There are a lot of really good questions here, and I think a lot of people wonder about some of the language that Jesus uses in this famous sermon. For example, in 5:29 he says, “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.” That seems kind of harsh, doesn’t it? We have to remember that what this is a record of essentially a sermon which Jesus was preaching, and sometimes He uses devices like this to emphasize a point. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who actually believes that what Jesus wants us to do is disfigure ourselves as a punishment for our own sin. If we took that to the extreme, there would be a whole lot of blind and limbless people walking around, so to speak.
What we get from Jesus here is the idea that sin is serious. It seems like people in His day, and ours, did not seem to think that sin was any kind of a big deal. Take 5:27-28 for example. There was, and still is, an idea that lust is no biggie. Looking as fine, as long as you don’t touch, right? Wrong, Jesus says. He tells us that it would be better to not even have eyes to satisfy our lust than to live life that way.
From there, he proceeds directly to divorce. Now, divorce is a tougher issue, isn’t it? You are quite right that it affects a whole lot of people. It is so common and such a normal part of our lives that we don’t give it much notice anymore. It is hard to think of someone who is not personally affected by a divorce, either from a close friend or family member like parents or siblings. Let me also say at the outset that there are lot of different views on how specifically these verses should be applied, but let me see if we kind find some more general principles from this verse.
1 – Divorce is serious. In Jesus’ day, it seems like it had become a quick and easy fix to a marital problem, or as a means of satisfying someones lust. Another woman is more attractive than your wife? Divorce her and court the new woman. Just give her a certificate of divorce and you are on your way. That would be better than having an affair, right? It would be better than committing adultery, right?
But Jesus has a different take on it and shows how much more serious it is than the people thought. If people thought it was a shortcut around adultery, Jesus tells them that it is in fact the same thing. There aren’t shortcuts around God’s plans. There aren’t loopholes in His will. If God intends for a man and woman to become one forever, then that is exactly what he intends.
Practically for us, that means divorce is never a quick and easy option. Those who have been through it can probably describe how painful and devastating it really is. It is no shortcut, and there is nothing quick or easy about it. It is not a first, second, third, or fourth resort.
2 – There are times when the marriage covenant is in fact broken. Jesus talks about “marital unfaithfulness” as an instance when the “oneness” between a husband and wife is, in fact, broken. There are a lot of interpretations on what that unfaithfulness actually entails, but for now suffice it to say that the breaking of the covenant is possible, though it would be done through extreme pain and damage.
Now the text says that the sin caused by divorce is “adultery”, not that the people involved are necessarily “damned.” Those are two different discussions. There is sin, and then there is being lost. A Christian is not someone who never ever sins. If that were the case, I couldn’t think of a single person qualified to be called a Christian. We also have to remember scriptures like 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Whatever the particulars of a divorce may be, however sinful it may or may not be depending on the situation, no matter how ugly the details involved, a Christian has nothing to fear with regard to being “damned.”
We can’t really get into all the particular views on divorce and remarriage, as there are entire books written about that, and I’d be happy to recommend some, but hopefully this will help give the discussion just a little bit of perspective.
Now on to some of the other matters you mentioned specifically:
OATHS:
With regard to oaths, there are many instances of people taking oaths in the Bible. There are even texts which scholars call, “Oath Formulas” in which an author gets an oath idea across without saying it specifically. Some use this text to say you should not take an oath if testifying at a trial for example, but I think that may be a bit much. I would refer back to the discussion on gouging out eyes and other body parts. Jesus sums up what He is getting at in verse 37, we should be the kind of people who do what we say we will do. If we say yes, we should be trustworthy to follow through. If we say no, we should not do what we said we won’t. In that way, people won’t need us to swear to something to know that we will do what we say.
PRAYING:
As for praying in public, we have to look at the situation Jesus is addressing. In His culture, the religious leaders were the most important public figures. They were “rock stars,” if you will. People looked up to them and admired them for being so very holy. As a result, those leaders sometimes liked the attention they got for being so very holy, and made sure they got as much attention as possible. Praying loudly while standing on a street corner, for example, was likely to earn them respect and admiration from their peers. That’s why Jesus says, “They are receiving their reward.” The reward they got for this behavior was popularity, and Jesus is emphasizing that that is the ONLY reward they would get.
By contrast, the person who prays privately by himself receives a reward from God, not from people. Jesus uses this to show that it is better to pray sincerely and be heard by God than to pray publicly and be admired by people.
Now, how does that work today? Have you ever heard someone pray in a public service who seemed to go on and on, using all kinds of very impressive religious language? I remember a funeral I went to once where a pastor was slotted to do a prayer, and I’m not even kidding, the thing went on for a good 10 minutes. Now, I want to be careful here because I don’t want to judge the sincerity or insincerity of another person’s prayer, because he could very well have been out to honor God with every single word, but I got the sense that he was kind of showing off just a little, you know? Like maybe that prayer would have sounded a whole lot different if nobody else was listening besides God.
And that is the point. It is not about praying in public or church that is the real issue. The question is, who are you praying for? Praying on a street corner or in a restaurant today will have a radically different effect on your popularity than it did in Jesus’ day. Praying in church may or may not do the same. It may be that a person really has a hard time praying in front of a group of people and feels really insecure about that. This verse is not an excuse to avoid it. This is more about the person who wants to pray to demonstrate how holy they are. And for those of us who regularly pray in front of large groups of people, it is a real reminder that we need to make sure we remember who we are doing it for.
WORRY:
When Jesus talks about worry, He is helping us to see the world with the right priorities. When he says don’t worry about food or clothing or those kinds of things, it is because those things aren’t ultimately the most important things in our lives. God and your relationship with him is ultimately the most important thing, so seek after that first and foremost.
Now I refer back to the earlier discussion of body parts once again. Does that mean you throw all caution to the wind and don’t try to earn a living because feeding your family isn’t important? Absolutely not. The Bible has some harsh words in other places for people who don’t take care of their own. Truthfully, these things are necessities and when the money is in short supply at the end (or middle, or beginning) of the month, we tend to worry more about them.
The problem comes when we worry so much about them as if it is entirely up to us to provide them. Look what Jesus says, “your Heavenly Father knows that you need them.” Sometimes worry crowds out our ability to pray. Sometimes we get so focused on ourselves (which is really what worry is) that we forget to pray and rely on not just our own ability to provide but on God’s as well.
Thank you! That helped clear up a lot for me. I guess my challenge to over come on this bible challenge is to decipher the exaggeration to prove a point & what the real meaning is.
That question and that answer is why I like this church, et al.