One of the primary prohibitions concerning porn and sexual immorality is Christ’s explanation and application of the 7th Commandment (Exodus 20:14). This article comments on this passage from the Sermon on the Mount from a Messianic Christian perspective. – JBW

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by George & Baht Rivka

Friend, guard the covenant of your heart! 

Matthew 5:27-30:  “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.’ 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. (NKJV)

Every time Yeshua (Jesus) says, “You have heard it said… but I say to you,” He is not overturning Torah. He is uncovering it. He is giving us the heart of Torah — a deeper Torah, one that never lived only on tablets of stone but was always meant to be written on the lev (לֵב), the heart. The commandment said, “You shall not commit adultery.” The King says the commandment was never satisfied by restraint alone. It required a heart that never wandered in the first place.

In Hebraic thought, the lev is not merely the seat of emotion. It is the center of the person — the place of thought, desire, will, and decision. So when Yeshua locates adultery in the heart, He is not speaking poetically. He is revealing where covenant faithfulness is won or lost, long before the body ever acts.

Marriage was never merely a social arrangement. It is a holy witness, designed from the beginning to reflect faithfulness, honor, and sacred trust between a man and a woman, and beyond that, the faithfulness of God to His people. This is why lust cannot be dismissed as a small thing. God wants to train our heart to consume what it was called to honor.

This is the deeper Torah: not a lighter standard, but a fuller one. The outward law restrained the hand. The deeper Torah disciplines the desire. Lust is not love. It imagines possession without covenant, pleasure without faithfulness, intimacy without honor. It takes what God made in His image and reduces it to something to be consumed. A deeper Torah will not let that stand, because it was never only about avoiding adultery — it was about honoring covenant.

Then Yeshua speaks with prophetic severity: if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. He is not commanding mutilation. He is teaching holiness. Remove yourself from what is training your desire away from God. Do not negotiate with what is destroying you. Some things cannot be counseled into holiness — kedushah (קְדֻשָּׁה), the state of being set apart, belonging wholly to God. They must be cut off, if only metaphorically. 

This word is not meant to produce shame. Shame hides. Conviction comes into the light. Shame says, you are dirty, and you can never be clean. The Lord says, bring the hidden thing into My light, and let Me make you whole. This is not repression. It is redemption. Not the death of desire, but its purification. God does not call us to become less human. He calls us to become whole, undivided, and covenantally faithful.

The world trains people to follow every appetite. Understanding the heart of Torah trains disciples to surrender every appetite to the King. So guard what your eyes behold. Guard what your imagination rehearses. Guard what your hand reaches toward. The Father sees the hidden place, and He loves you enough to cleanse it. He is inviting you to gain what sin could never produce: a heart at rest, a desire made whole, and the blessing of walking undivided before Him.

You were not created to be ruled by hidden desire or the wandering of an undisciplined gaze. You were created for covenant faithfulness, purity of heart, and freedom under the reign of the King. This is your inheritance, not your burden. What Yeshua calls you to remove, He has already given you the power to release. You no longer have to manage it or negotiate with it. Cut off the access. Close the door. Turn away the eye. Pull back the hand — not because you are being punished, but because you are being set free. Bring the hidden place into the light, and let the King do what only He can do with it. The King is not shaming you. He is reclaiming you. What He asks you to surrender is not your life; it is the thing stealing your life. Guard the covenant of your heart, because the pure in heart shall see God, and the faithful heart will carry the beauty of the Kingdom.

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George & Baht Rivka (Baltimore, MD) 
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Devotional post – July 16,2026
Reposted with permision