A Better Way Than Lust

For it is written, the two will become one flesh.

He's quoting Genesis 2 there. He's telling you what sex actually does. It unites two in a covenant relationship. It is by definition a covenant activity. It's covenant producing. It's covenant making. It's designed to enforce and strengthen the marriage covenant that is supposed to be exclusively between a husband and a wife, which is why it's so dangerous outside of that marriage, in either fornication or adultery. God's design is that it's meant to enforce and strengthen and be celebrated within a marriage greatly, but exclusively. Because of what it does, we treat it like it's a mere recreational, casual activity in our culture. God's word says it is covenant binding. It is covenant making. It produces a loving unity by its design. That's why adultery is out of bounds. To protect those who are participating in such an activity, to make sure they're actually in the covenant and prioritizing that covenant. This is why Hebrews says to honor the marriage bed. It's not because sex is dangerous or gross, it's because it's powerful in what it does. It's powerful for the good, and it's powerful for the destruction. To make sure, the Bible has an entire book on a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, the Song of Solomon. Go and look at Proverbs 5. God makes these things that are important so clear for us, so we can see that What he's prohibiting in adultery, it has a design that it should be celebrated greatly but exclusively only within a marriage. It is a covenantal activity that is meant for only a husband and a wife. Let's pause here. Jesus has given us, and he's restated and affirmed, I believe, the law you should not commit adultery. Now the law has an ability, the law is, is able to show us our sin. As we consider adultery and we consider the guilt of breaking that law, our mind is God is the creator and author of covenants. He is a sovereign, merciful God who has pursued a people who are unfaithful. The Bible likens us all to whores. I realize that's not what we want to hear, but in terms of how God is faithful to pursue a people who are constantly unfaithful, it helps us see how incredibly merciful he is, how sovereign he is in his grace. His grace is sufficient to forgive us and restore us. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, you have been bought by his blood. Which means we belong to him. That's why I read books like Hosea. Helps us to see he is faithful when we're unfaithful. He is true and righteous and pure. And he invites us to himself to be united with him. And this is the most amazing thing. When the holy righteous God invites us to be united with him, we don't defile him. He purifies us. When He invites us to be united with Him, He cleanses us, He forgives us, He renews us. Do not believe the lie that God cannot forgive you. Do not believe the lie that God cannot heal you. Do not believe the lie that God cannot restore you and your marriage. as sure as Christ is risen, which is the main focus of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6. If he's risen, he forgives, he restores, he's healed. He heals you. And in case you're weak in believing that, let's just make sure, church, we're saying this together. He is risen. That was not strong enough. He is risen! If we believe that, if he's risen, he forgives, he heals, he restores. The gospel tells us Christ has come to die, he's risen again, and we can be forgiven and restored. Wisdom says we pursue God's ways, we pursue his covenant, the way he is prescribed. If you're not married, that means wait and pursue with purity. If you're married, practice and pursue with purity. The second standard isn't just the activity, the action, the outward expression of adultery, but verse 28, he's going a step further, just as he He went from murder to anger and now we're seeing it's adultery to lustful desires. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Here we see the second standard is our internal desires. Now, this one is gonna be challenging for us all in another way. You've committed adultery in your heart if you've looked at someone lustfully. There's a couple ways in which you want to keep going back to the blessings, the beatitudes in the beginning of chapter five. Here, it's blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who recognize there's not just a lacking internally, But there's a wickedness and a twistedness, and I must believe in the righteousness of God to be saved. We also need to go back and remember, your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. Look at chapter five, verse 20. This is the first setup.

Your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees to enter the kingdom of heaven.

I believe this is an important statement and clarity for our standards for sexual morality, because the Pharisees seem to want to just say they're righteous externally while harboring and entertaining things internally. Remember, Jesus calls them whitewashed walls. They have an external appearance of righteousness, but they don't have an internal righteousness. Here, Jesus is making it very clear. You are liable for adultery because of the sinful thoughts and desires that you entertain in your heart. This is important for a few reasons. I've met a few Christians that have claimed they've gone years without sinning. And when you ask the question, like, what does that mean? It does just mean they're recognizing I've not acted out in anger according to what they think would be appropriate or inappropriate, I've not done The, the worst of sins, or they just keep comparing themselves to other Christians who they think sin more than they do. No, it behavior is not enough. External action. Isn't what Christ has come to save us for only it. We we've, we've been called to love the Lord, our God with all our hearts. That that means the kinds of things that we meditate upon the light in. entertain, treasure. They're meant for the glory of God, and they also can corrupt us. They're liable. So entertaining thoughts of another person, not your spouse, in a sexual way is committing adultery in the heart. Jesus wants to make sure we're always understanding the inside-out relationship. We live from inside out. The anger bursts forth into murder and insults. The lust bursts forth into adultery. We must understand how we protect our hearts is significant. What we are putting in our hearts is significant. We too often think the problem is out there and the solution's inside, whereas the Bible tells us the exact opposite. The problem is in here and the solution comes from above. In Matthew 15, Jesus will make it even more clear that what comes from within is what corrupts us. Jesus comes from out so that we can love the Lord our God with all our heart. But let's be very clear. If a man looks at a woman with lustful intent, he has committed adultery within his heart. There's the intentionality of letting a thought and a desire linger, to entertain it. Now he is speaking of a specific gender. It's if anyone looks at a woman. Now I believe women can be guilty of this sin too. We need to make sure we have a hermeneutic of recognizing when it says brothers, we can expand that and think about every human being. Here it's that gender specific. But it's how we look at someone. And it's how we look at them and how we meditate upon them in our heart. Well, what kinds of looks? What are we looking for? What kind of desires are we feeding with our eyes? When we see someone and we're attracted by something we desire, how do our internal thoughts process who that person is and what we think of them? The word here for the desire really could be coveting. wanting the wrong person for the wrong reason in the wrong way. What God tells us, we should seek the right person the right way according to his word. Here he elevates the sinful desires, a sinful entertaining of thoughts as adultery in the heart. Letting lust linger in your heart is destructive and dangerous, Christian. He's making it clear that you actually are liable for adultery within your own desires that you entertain, even after acting upon them. Let's make a significant distinction between lust and love. Here, what we would call those desires, the lustful intent, let's just say we lust and love. Love is whenever there is a promise-making covenant where you're drawing near to them to delight in them. Love is giving yourself over to them to enjoy them. Lust is seeking to satisfy your own desires by using another person for your enjoyment. Do you hear the difference? Love is giving yourself over to enjoy them. Lust is using them for your own enjoyment. God has given us the ability to lean towards others, to pursue marriage and giving yourself over to enjoy another and become one with them. Lust is taking all those good gifts and just making it about me and selfishness. God's good design is better. It's what we're designed for. What we see and hold fast to shapes our hearts, our desires, and our directions. Can I remind you what happened in the garden? Innocent and good, Adam and Eve, saw God's tree with their eyes, and they saw that it would be good for food, and they decided that it would be delightful, and so they rejected God's rules and insisting on their own. Now remember what Satan promised them. If you eat it, you'll see better. If you do this, if you take what you think sees good and is the delight, you'll see better. You'll see like God. And he was telling a partial truth, because when they rebelled against God and took the fruit, their eyes were opened, but they did not like what they saw. They felt shame. They felt shame for the way they saw each other. They lost innocence and purity. They lost the way to see another in goodness according to God's way. We have to see here the connection between the eyes and the heart. There's an incredible connection between the eyes and the heart. What we see and delight in is either moving us towards God or sin. If I could remind us of another one of the Beatitudes, Matthew 5a.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see, see God.

What we look at, what we delight in, has a direct correspondence to our relation with God. What we're allowing ourselves to be entertained by, what we're allowing to be pushed upon us as if normal and good, but perverse and against God, it has a direct relationship with God. We should long to see God. That is the ultimate glorious calling, to see Him. Blessed are the pure in heart. That puts in perspective why adultery in the heart is so dangerous. So corrupting. Christian, what are you pursuing to see? What do you allow your eyes to see and your heart to delight in? Just as though last week, we should not praise God with the same lips and tongue with which we curse man. You cannot see the glory of God with the same eyes you're focusing on with smut and filth. These two things do not go together. The lust he's speaking of is seeking to take something and someone that God has created good in his own image, that he has declared his own image bearer, and seeking to distort them for your own purposes. Coveting someone else, not seeing them for who they are, well, this is where we have to start battling temptation by seeing them for who God says they are. As you see someone and you're tempted towards these lustful desires, one of the first things you should think about is that's someone made in God's image. Thinking of them in that way is out of bounds. That's someone else's son or daughter. Thinking of them in this way is out of bounds. That's probably somebody else's wife or husband. Thinking about them in this way is out of bounds. If a believer, that's your sister in Christ, thinking about them sexually is out of bounds unless they're your spouse. We have to start thinking in biblical categories. We have to start thinking about each other in biblical categories. Image bearers, united with Christ. We cannot easily understand how to hate somebody and insult them and murder them, that's dehumanizing. To sexualize someone is dehumanizing. I said a few weeks ago that whatever the most recent wave of feminism is, I hate it because it clearly hates women. I'm not a big fan of the previous wave either. because it pushed women away from the family and pushed them towards sexual empowerment. It rode the wave of feminism. Whatever that wave that Barbie led that said you should be more worried about the way you look than being a faithful spouse, that one is also dangerous, pushing women into immodesty. And let me just be an equal hater of all things, bad. Whatever form of patriarchy that says men, it's okay to be promiscuous, it's okay to say something like boys be boys, that's a stupid thing to say. Grow up and be men. Grow up and take responsibility for your heart, your mind, your actions. I'm studying Titus with some young men and I, I keep reminding them, and they remind me, you know, the only thing that Paul tells Titus to tell young men, be self-controlled. Just focus on that one thing, guys. Be self-controlled. Be careful what you let into your eyes and into your heart. Be self-controlled. Take care of your heart and your mind so that you grow up to be able to be ready to be responsible for another. You are responsible for what you entertain in your own mind and in your own life. Men, you're responsible. Take responsibility over having control on what you meditate upon. Don't let filth linger. Here's your choice. You can look at filth or you can see God. You can delight in your Creator and Savior, or you can pretend somehow that that sin is going to be satisfying this time around. And C.S. Lewis says,

you can have a mud pie on the shore, or you can rejoice greatly in God.

You have control over what you entertain. Ladies, there was a movement back in the 90s. Now, I am mostly very positive about the 90s, but to show you that I'm objectively declaring the 90s was the greatest decade, I'll be critical. Something they call purity culture, I remember it. I was an atheist at the time. I just remember thinking it was silly for the wrong reasons. I understood the purity culture and the problem of the purity culture. It said something to women like, You need to make sure you dress a certain way to not make your brother stumble. I get why that's not helpful. That's why I just told them all they're responsible for the way they think of you. They're responsible for the way they think of you. They are responsible for their own thoughts. But I do want to give you a challenge. I want you to think about why you dress and how you dress. And is it to get the wrong kind of attention, or are you thinking, Coram Deo, I want to dress a certain way before the face of God. I want to make sure I am dressing in a way that my heavenly father, and as a father who cares a lot about how his children dresses, your heavenly father cares about how you dress. This is supposed to be one of those older women, younger women things. I'm wanting to give us some conversations to have at Matcom. The OGs are getting together this afternoon. Y'all please think of the ways y'all are gonna come alongside. One of the problems with the church is that it's not intergenerational and that's why we haven't been able to pass down good wisdom. We need God's instruction and we need wisdom to apply it. Y'all please think about how we can think about this better in younger generations. Verses 29 and 30. Two standards have been set, adultery and sinful desires. Now he gives us two declarations, and they're incredible warnings.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

You hear the parallelism. If your eye, your hand, your right eye, your right hand, the most significant, the ones understood to be identified with strength, if they're causing you to sin, tear it out, cut it off. because you try to protect that most important, significant thing, it could cost you an eternity in hell. Now, I wanna be clear that this imagery is extreme, but it isn't unlike Jesus at all. Your salt, eat my flesh, cut out your eye. Jesus has a way of speaking in this way. I don't believe he is telling us to truly, you are salt, as in your whole makeup has been changed. I don't believe you're supposed to cut out your eye or cut off your hand. I believe he's referring to whatever it is that's so important that you would keep on practicing that sin. Repent. Get rid of whatever it is that rightly is causing you to practice sin. Notice the judgment. It's better to lose whatever you think is gaining you life than for your whole person to suffer forever in hell. There is a real judgment for sin. And we like to make excuses, and I'm going to just excuse this one practice, this one thing, this one aspect of my life. I'm gonna protect it. Jesus is saying, you will gain your life by losing it. You will lose your eternal life. There is no eternal life if you're going to protect this sin. Cut it out. It's destroying you. Now, I wanna give some categories here. If you're a Christian, you must confess you've sinned and Jesus is your only Savior. Every Christian sins. Every human sins. There's a difference between sinning and then practicing sin. First John makes this very clear. If a believer says he has no sin, he's a liar. But if you keep on practicing sin, you're also denying Christ. I believe what he's referring to of cutting off your eye, cutting off your hand, that's referring to those sinful practices that are practiced. And you know what happens when you practice something. You get better at it. We pretend to think we have sin under control. We pretend, we think, we have it in its own place. Oh, what a high calling. Cut out sin. Remove sin from your equation. Well, what Paul says, mortify it, put it to death, put off sin. Well, you put off sin so you can put on Christ. You put off the practice of sin so you can put on Christ. Draw near to him. The book of Hebrews tells us there's these things that Hebrews calls entangling sins. We call these things addictive, I think. And you know the prescription for entangling sins. When you need to cut off something, look up to Jesus through the right hand of the Father. The cure is not to try to untie your own knot, you can't. The cure is not accountability, that's only gonna make your knot confusing. When you're entangled, when you recognize that the heart has become perverse and twisted and dangerous and destructive, there's one cure. Look up to Jesus, who died to forgive you, who sends his Holy Spirit to actually indwell your heart to start untying it. And praise God, you should have other Christians who are gonna come alongside you and help you think through this. Not just for accountability, but to really untangle and unknot the heart. It's better to put off whatever sin we're practicing in our hearts, in our minds, than to recognize there's a real judgment and there's a hell to pay for refusing God in his grace. There is a just and holy God. That is why there is a hell. He will judge every sin perfectly. And the only way we can be forgiven is by believing in Jesus Christ, who alone can forgive us and restore us. Jesus declares here, though, with great clarity and urgency, cut out whatever that sin is. that you're practicing in your heart or with your hands, your body. The warning is repent so that you can draw closer to Christ. Will you pray with me? Father, we come before you, the giver of every good and perfect gift. Lord, as we Meditate upon your law and Jesus' instruction for us from this law. We thank you that we can see what is good. I pray, Lord, we would see how good your prohibitions are. We thank you that you have not withheld any good thing from us. You've given us your own son. Lord, may we hear these prohibitions. May you especially bless the young people to hear these prohibitions. Protect them from that dangerous lie. To think, let's see how close we can get to it without getting burned. Lord, may we flee sexual morality. May we run to Christ, our faithful bridegroom. May we know how to encourage each other to cling to him, to trust him, to obey him. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.