Hey friends, our scripturing tonight is taken from Matthew 527 through 30, this word has the power to change you, here now God's will to test. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 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 and 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 and that your whole body go into hell. The grass withers and the flowers today, but the word of God will change forever. Let's pray. So you just thank you for today and yesterday and tomorrow, thank you that you are the same today, yesterday and tomorrow. Thank you for our US and time to come and rest from homework and test and projects. Just be together. Pray that you would give us eyes and ears to learn and hear tonight from West and help us to hold these things in the heart. Good evening. It's good to be with you all tonight. If you've been with us this semester, you will know that we've been going through the ceremony on the mountain together. We've been looking at different passages each week. And what we have seen is in every different case we've seen our need for Jesus' perfect righteousness. And one of the benefits, but also the challenges of preaching through an extended passage of Scripture, is that there are hard sections that you have to deal with. And this is one of those sections. This is a tough, tough section of Scripture, but I think it will in the end be encouraging to you. The focus, as we're going to see again, is on the heart. It's not just on external behavior, but it's on the heart underneath and behind that behavior. Let me make a few comments before we dive in together. I just want to remind you that sex is a good thing. Sex is a good thing. It's been designed by God to be enjoyed within the context of marriage. It's not dirty. It's not unclean. It's not gross. It's meant to be a wonderful gift to us, but here's the thing. We as a culture have perverted sexuality in so many different ways using it as a way to distract us at times from our boredom and at times from our loneliness, or to make us feel loved and accepted. I want to think about lots of where lots of us are tonight in regards to sexuality. We approach a passage like this. Some of us have done acts of sexual sin that as we think about, as we think back on, we have a lot of regret and shame over as we think about those things. It's left us feeling dirty. Some of us have done the same things in our minds even though we did not do them physically. We've done them in our minds which makes us equally as guilty. Then there's others of us who have used our sexuality to manipulate other people to gain their attention somehow through our sexuality. Some of us have created a romantic fantasy world in which other people exist to worship us sexually speaking. Then there are those of us who are self-righteously proud of what we haven't done. We use that as a way to boast both before God and also before other people forgetting that all the righteousness that we have is righteousness that Jesus has given to us. Really, this passage, even though it's tough, it deals with all of us in lots of different categories. Now, I want to say this before we dive in. I've said this before a year or two ago, but I want to emphasize this again. Pastors, including me, are not immune to struggles like this. I want to say that very clearly to you because I don't want you to think for a second that as we go through a passage like this, that I'm somehow above you and I'm preaching down to you. That's not the case at all. We are not immune to struggles like this and all of us in this room, every single one of us in different ways are sexual centers. We're all sexual centers and what we're going to see in this passage is our need for the perfect righteousness of Jesus but also the provision of his righteousness that he gives us as well. Before we dive in with that being said, let's pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help us tonight. Father, I pray that by your spirit that you would help us, that you would take this word and you would apply it to our hearts and to our lives that you would help us to understand it and to embrace it. I pray that you would encourage us, that you would challenge us, that you would convict us for necessary. But don't let us leave this room tonight, Father, without seeing clearly the beauty and the righteousness of Jesus that is offered to us in the gospel. We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake. I'm in. Okay, I want you to look with me. There's a couple things in this passage I want you to see. You're going to have to bear with me tonight. I've got that congestion thing going on that all of y'all have had over the last week. So just bear with me here. There's a couple of things I want you to see in this passage. In the first is this. I want you to look with me at the anatomy of lust. I thought I'd call it that. Look at verses 27 and 28 with me. It says this. You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So as we think about the anatomy of lust, what we're reminded of is that adultery is not just cheating on your spouse. That's not necessarily what adultery fully is. Notice though that Jesus does not say don't look at a woman. What he says is don't look at a woman lustfully or your translation might say don't look at a woman with lustful intent. So what does that mean? Well, appreciating someone's beauty thinking someone is physically attractive is not a bad thing. Wanting to have sex is not a wrong desire in and of itself. It's actually a good God given desire. But lust is basically desiring something so bad that you will do anything to get it. That's what lust is. It can be sexual as we're talking about in this passage. It can also be mental. It can be emotional. It can be even relational. You can lust for all kinds of things. You can lust after a new job, after a type of friendship that somebody else has and you perhaps don't have. And later in life, you will lust after things like the perfect marriage that one of your friends supposedly has. Or a certain kind of house or certain kind of car or certain kind of kids or a certain kind of job that pays more than the job that you have. The reason that I say this is because I want you to see that lust is really a broad category. We can lust after tons of different things. It doesn't just have to be sexual lust even though that's what's being dealt with here in this passage. Now I want you to take note of something. There's a pastor named Tim Keller, some of you may have heard of him. And if you haven't, you need to. Tim Keller says here that the word that's used here that's translated in your Bible as lustful or with lustful intent. That word that's translated there is a word that usually and interestingly refers to greed. Okay, I think this is pretty interesting. Now of course, as you think about greed, there's nothing wrong with having money. There's nothing wrong with making a lot of money. But I want you to think about greed for a second. What makes greed? Well, first of all, it's selfish. Greed is wanting money so that you can have it for selfish reasons. It's not, hey, I want to take a money so that I can give a lot of money away to missions and then to RUF and things like that. I want to have a ton of money for me, right? So greed is selfish. Secondly, greed is addicting. It's the feeling that you must have it. Okay, that you will cut corners to get it. You will lie. You will cheat. You will turn into a workaholic. You will do whatever you got to do. You will run over people to get it. Okay, you will do whatever you have to do to attain that thing. And then third, greed involves fantasy. Right? Usually fantasize about the things that you had a certain amount of money, the things you would get, the things you would buy, the things you would have, and so forth. That's kind of the idea with greed. But here's the point. Jesus is saying here in this passage that it is possible to have the same type of attitude that you have towards greed towards sexuality. Very interesting. Okay, think about this for a second. He's talking about when we think about sex selfishly, not as a way to serve the other person but as a way to consume them, using them to get your needs met. Okay, and that's one reason why, by the way, sex outside of marriage is so destructive, both for you and for them because it's using the other person to get your needs met instead of serving them. Okay, secondly, it can become an addiction. And you've got to have more and more of it to keep the hunger satisfied. And that becomes the basis then for your relationship, which causes all kinds of problems. Okay, and then lastly, if we have the same type of attitude towards sexuality that we can have towards greed, it's the idea that involves fantasy. Okay, which does great damage, not just to you, but to the other people as well. Okay, so clearly, this is not God's design. This is not God's created intention as it were for sexuality. Okay, so with that in mind, the second thing I want you to see in this passage is in verses 29 through 30. And I want you to see the importance of fighting sexual sin. Look at 29 with me. 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 to throw your whole body, or then 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 to lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell. Okay, so Jesus here is not missing words, right? He's being very clear. But what's he saying? Okay, he says it's better to cut off your hand and tear out your eye, right, than to not fight against sin. What does he mean? Well, he's not speaking literally, but what he is saying is take costly action towards take drastic action against sin. In other words, in effect, when you see sin in your life, and in this case he's talking about sexual sin, you must be ferociously committed to letting that sin be destroyed. Because if you don't, then that sin will in turn destroy you. See what he's saying here? That's where Jesus is going. He's saying you have to be committed to letting it be destroyed. In other words, you're in a fight for your life. Take strategic and decisive action against sin because the sexual sin in your life is not just a bad habit, okay? It actually will enslave you. That's what Jesus is saying here. Now, think about this for a second. We often try to justify sexual sin in all kinds of ways, right? We do this all the time in many different ways. But what we don't realize is that it will do damage to us. It will actually enslave you, okay? It will actually choke out life and joy and freedom. And Jesus wants you to understand not just that something is wrong, but why? And what it does to you and the effect that it has on you, okay? For example, have you ever thought about why pornography and things like masturbation is destructive? Both to you and to other people. Let's just take it being wrong for a second. I want to put that on the shelf because I want you to think with me about why it's destructive. I think this will help us, okay? The reason that it's destructive is because it kills your desire for real people, okay? It kills your desire for real human beings with real skin blemishes and imperfections, real tears, pain, personalities, preferences, idiosyncrasies. Pornography kills those things in you. Secondly, it distorts gender and beauty. And this is both for men and women, okay? It distorts gender. Now, think about this. You can't compete with those images, right? You can't compete with those scenes and movies. You can't compete with those characters of whatever those things are saying a man or woman should be. And so as a result, we end up giving ourselves over to things like eating disorders, insecurity, fears, addictions, all kinds of things because we feel like we'll never measure up. Another thing it does is that it kills your willingness to enter a real relationship. When you train yourself to view relationships this way, you become far less willing to get into and by the way to stay in real relationships. When you train your mind and your heart to think in this way, it keeps you from investing yourself fully and wholly into real relationships with real people. It just does. That's the effect that it has on you. Okay, so if that's true, then what can I do practically to fight against things like sexual sin? Okay, here's some ideas. This might mean, or this does mean, that for a number of you, you need to get a porn blocker for your computer and your phone tonight. When we leave here, you need to go do that. And you need to give the password to your roommate or somebody that will be able to be involved in your life and to understand where you're at and the struggle with these things. You need to avoid certain places of temptation with your girlfriend or boyfriend, for example, staying over for the night. Okay, now look guys, I get it. I understand the desire. Okay, but what you're really longing for is marriage. It's just not time yet. Okay, and it's you're putting yourself in a place of great temptation. Now, another idea is to avoid certain movies, TV shows, websites, et cetera that are especially tempting for you. And then I would say also, tell your close trusted friends about your struggle. Tell your friends about your addiction and seek grace driven, Christ centered accountability. I'm not talking about guys that are going to look at you or ladies that are going to look at you and say, well, you messed up. I guess you can't be in our group anymore. Okay, that's not an accountability group. That is a self-righteous group. Okay, what I'm talking about is a group of people who will love you enough to ask you hard questions. But when you confess into them that they will say, let me remind you of Jesus. Let me walk with you through the struggle. Okay, that's what you need. That's what we all need. Okay, I want to tell you a quick story about Lucy. Okay, Lucy is our pet goldfish at the Simmons House. Lucy resides in my oldest daughter's room and she resides in a bowl that's about this big, a glass bowl. And Lucy has a relatively boring life. All she does is she just swims around and around and around. That's all she does all day. Some end with the exception of eating and going to the bathroom. Okay, but I used to feel pretty bad for Lucy until I realized until I learned that goldfish only have a memory of about six seconds. Okay, so to Lucy every time she comes around the bowl, every time she sees, oh, that's Emily. That's West. That's Emily's bed. That's the window. That's, oh, that's Emily. That's West. That's like every time she goes around the bowl. Okay, so I felt so bad for Lucy until I learned about goldfish and their memory. Okay, here's the point. Okay, Lucy, follow me here. Lucy could demand freedom. Lucy could say, you know what? I am so sick and tired, Emily, of you as an eight year old making me stay in this glass bowl. And in fact, I don't want to do it anymore. I want to live out there on that dresser. Lucy could do that and she could jump out and she could demand her freedom. But here's the point. When you live outside of your design, it's going to do damage to you. Okay, when you live outside of your design, it's going to do damage because freedom is found in living according to your God-given design. That's the heart behind a lot that goes on in this passage. Is Jesus is saying, look, you've got to understand the way that you're made because it affects the way that you approach things even like sexuality. Here's a question for you. Have you ever thought about why sex is so powerful? Have you ever thought about why that we, even as a culture, are so obsessed, so consumed with sexuality? Have you ever thought about that? Well, the reason is because sex holds out the possibility of being known. Okay, it's not just physically, but at the heart level being completely vulnerable, naked, nothing to hide behind at the same time, not being rejected. But instead being deeply loved and enjoyed. We all want that, right? Why do we want that? The reason we desire that is because God created that desire in you to want that. Okay, and so sex as a picture says, I know you and I love you. That's what sex says, and that's why for a lot of us we want it more than anything else. In fact, incidentally, the Hebrew word for sex is the word that means to know. Okay, because it means knowing someone at the core of who they are. So our hearts desperately want to be both fully known and fully loved, which brings us to the third thing that I want you to see. And it's this, here again, the good news of Jesus. Because folks, Jesus is the only one that can satisfy this desire of our hearts to be both fully known and fully loved. Okay, think about this with me. Jesus knows you fully and completely. He knows everything about you down to the deepest parts of who you are. He knows that you're a sinner. And that's why he had to die for you. He knows that I'm a sinner. And at the same time, he loves you. And that's why he was glad to die for you. Okay, so he both fully knows you and fully loves you. So because of Jesus, please hear me here. No sexual sin is too big to be forgiven. Okay, now some of y'all actually probably most of you when we come to a topic like this, there's a huge part of you that just shrinks back in shame and in guilt. Look, I get it. Okay, this week, as I was preparing this, I told a couple of people, I felt accusations from Satan all week long. As I studied this passage, and you know what I was hearing in my head and in my heart from Satan was, well, who are you to preach on a passage like this? Who are you? You're no better. Who are you to preach on something like this? And if it wasn't for Jesus, there's no way I could preach to you on a passage like this. But that's why I'm so thankful because of the forgiveness that's offered in Christ. There is no sexual sin that is too big to be forgiven. That's what you have to remember. Okay, and because of Jesus's perfect obedience and righteousness, if you are trusting in Jesus alone for your salvation, you can stand before God completely cleansed, completely forgiven, and completely free from your past. Okay, completely and totally. That's what the gospel offers to you is complete and total freedom. Even in the area of sexuality, please hear me. That's so important that you understand that. Okay, so what do you do? I would encourage you to take your sexual brokenness to the cross of Jesus where you can experience the comfort and the peace that enables you to continually say no to sexual sin. And at the same time, pray that the Holy Spirit would help you in the struggle and reach out to other people, support each other in the struggle. Okay, folks, there is a day coming when Jesus returns when he will make all things new and all of the sin that resides in my heart and in your heart will be completely eradicated. It will be gone. Even in the area of sexual sin, all of that sin will be gone. That day is coming. Our hearts and our lives will be changed forever in a moment. But until then, if you're a sexual center, just like the one who preaches, I would encourage you to quit looking to your shame, quit looking to your guilt, quit looking to try to be better and all these things to make you right with God. That's exhausting. It's never going to work. Instead, what Jesus is saying is look to him. Look to Jesus alone, amidst your sexual sin and be saved. Experience and embrace his perfect righteousness that's being offered to you in the gospel and find grace and mercy there. That's what's being given. That's what Jesus is offering to us tonight. Let's pray. Father, I confess that this week, there was not much in me that wanted to preach this passage. And part of it was because of Satan and his accusations. And part of it is because this is hard. It's hard to talk about things like this. But yet, there is so much hope and joy even amidst these words that are hard because you call us to quit looking to ourselves and quit looking within ourselves to try and find righteousness. It's hard to look to Jesus to rest in him, to find in him alone grace and peace that is offered to us in the gospel. Father, I pray for the many folks in this room who feel trapped in certain kinds of sexual sin. I pray that you would free them from that even tonight. I pray that you would give them a sense of hope if they've been hopeless. I pray that you would help them to reach out to other people, even amidst the shame and not knowing whether they should share. I pray that you would draw near to them. You would release them from the bonds, the enslavement of sexual sin. Help them to see Jesus. God, we pray that you would do this in our hearts for your namesake and for our good. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.