Plucking out your eye.John Farley
Pastor-Teacher Sunday, November 11, 2018 Plucking out your eye
www.basictraining.org Basic Training Bible Ministries is led by Gene Cunningham with his wife Nan as his support and companion. Their mission includes evangelism and the training of pastors and workers in remote regions of the world. The have established Bible schools in Africa, India and Papua New Guinea. They also conduct missions training camps in North America and Australia to train others to do the same. Mat 5:27-30
Hyperbole. A figure of speech in which [extreme] exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in "I'm starving to death".
Mat 23:24 Jesus uses physical imagery to discuss spiritual matters.
Luk 18:24-27 Mat 18:21-22 Mat 5:29 He has a serious point to make, so He wants to make it memorable. Sin is deadly.
Kill him Sin kills. Rom 5:12 Do you know that it is actually worse in a sense for a believer to sin than for an unbeliever? Because the unbeliever is a slave to sin. The believer died to sin. Sin is no longer master over him. By the Spirit he can put to death the deeds of the body. Paul delivers the same message in Colossians 3:5. With one huge difference: he is writing to saints who are in Christ. Paul uses a different figure of speech: a metaphor. Col 3:5-8 Aorist active imperative The Greek verb nekroo literally means to put to death. So here nekroo means to deaden, subdue, deprive of force or vigor; to destroy the strength of, to make inoperative. The Greek word for members, melos, means a limb or a part of the body. However, here it is used as a metaphor for sinful characteristics and behavior. The members are not body parts but “parts” - lusts and behaviors - of the flesh: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness (greed)… as well as anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk. In the Bible, the “flesh” is the manifestation of sin in the members of our body. The flesh produces lusts or temptations. Jam 1:13-15 How do we “put to death” sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness (greed)? Col 3:8 The Greek verb here means to take off or strip off clothing. Tear it off and throw it from you.
So we are to take off these attitudes and behaviors and put distance between them and us. We cannot defeat the flesh on our own. We must rely on the Spirit to provide the power to do so.
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