from Matthew chapter 5, 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 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Father in heaven is a great thing to be with the body of Christ, to sing and to confess, to pray together, to shake one another's hands and be reminded that we are not alone, to hear your word read and preached with the promise that there is the Holy Spirit who is able to illuminate these words and the hearts that we possess and to change us in ways that we never thought possible and perhaps even didn't know needed to be changed. God, when we come to these words that you preach Jesus, we know that we are all guilty. Every one of us, it's not just men, that it's women, it's not just adults but children. Our eyes, Father, are so tempted to look at things that we should not look at and to think and meditate upon thoughts that we should not have. Lord, we need you. We need you so powerfully to reveal to us the secrets that are hidden, that we might overcome the shame that the enemy would put over us and come to understand the power of your grace. Lord, would you fill this place now and would you change every one of us? If there are those even in our midst today who have yet to profess faith in Christ, would you help them to know that they are welcome here and that maybe today would be the day that they understand what grace means, what the gospel means, that you are a God who has died for his people. To you be the glory. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. I'm going to spend the next two Sundays preaching from these verses. I will add other verses next week. This morning we're going to begin by simply looking at these words that Jesus spoke. Again, he's teaching. He's trying to expand the understanding of what it really means to be righteous. The Pharisees had a particular way of trying to take the law and to create in it something that was not really meant to be. So here he takes the issue of adultery and he says 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 and his heart. There are so many ways I can approach this text and there are so many things that we need to hear and we need to respond to. I'm not going to say everything that needs to be said today or next Sunday. But I'm going to be extremely honest and encourage you to be honest in the same way. When a few people heard that I was going to be preaching on lust they kind of giggled knowing that old line that 90% of all men would say they struggle with lust and the other 10% are... Don't laugh. Don't laugh. Or lie. And the reason I say don't laugh is because it's not funny. God hates sin. He hates it so much that he sent his only son to die that his people might be rescued from it. Sin is so attractive. It's so layered in seduction. It promises his life but it's not life. Life is only in Christ. Most of us had our eyes glued to the TV at one point during the week or certainly in the paper seeing what's unfolding at Penn State University. It was interesting to hear commentators from regular news and commentators from sports channels. Speaking of these heinous acts that allegedly took place in a profane way. I heard one very well-known sportscaster say you couldn't make this stuff up. The Bible teaches us that we can. Romans 1 says that we are capable of inventing ways of doing evil. And in the area of sexual sin this is not a new problem. It is a problem that has existed since the fall and it's deep and it's dark and it's so full of shame that so many who are truly struggling with it shudder even with the reading of this text. They hope that they won't be exposed. That no one really will know what goes on behind closed doors or behind a closed mine but it impacts us all. This is not just a man's battle. It is everybody's battle. We are a body and we need to fight this together. Soon after my wife and I moved here I received a call that was incredibly devastating. A very close friend of mine had taken a trip with his wife. I'm not going to say their names though I don't think any of you know them. They had simply gone on a weekend retreat. They were going from one city to the next and as they were traveling down this highway his wife saw a billboard and the billboard simply said pornography destroys. She'd seen that billboard before. They're all over highways. But for whatever reason in this very moment she was prompted to ask her husband this question. Do you ever struggle with pornography? He wasn't ready. He was not anticipating that question. He wasn't ready for that light through her question, through that billboard to shine into his life and simply say it's over the lie and the secrecy is over. You've been caught. He couldn't speak for a few minutes. His wife knew that something deep must be wrong and at the nearest exit he pulled over and then he began to weep and confess the sin of lust, of sexual addiction. This was not a young couple, a couple that had been married for over 30 years. And he confessed to three decades of secret sexual sin. Dark, dark addiction to pornography and layers of every kind. This was not an immature man in the faith. He was an elder in a church. A church that I knew and loved well. Not only was he an elder in some ways he was the elder. The last one that anybody could have imagined would be capable of such sins. But he was. And there in their little BMW he confessed to his wife. I want you to imagine for a moment what was going on in his heart and mind. One since there was a bit of relief and caught. And in other sense the questions began to come what next. Who else must I tell? Is it possible that my wife will keep this secret with me? Is it possible that I can conquer this though I haven't been able to in three decades? All those floods of thoughts and fears and emotions coming over him. And now I want you to think of his wife. It's possible she was wishing she had never asked the question. He was specific because the Holy Spirit was moving in him with what had happened. And it wasn't just magazines and it wasn't just computers. It had moved to such a gross level of addiction that on trips to other parts of the world, he began to hire prostitutes to meet his needs, his desires. Imagine what his wife was thinking and feeling this dirty dark betrayal throughout most of their marriage. She had no idea what should she do? Who should she call? Should they turn the car around now and go back? Should she get out of the car and call a friend to come and pick her up? Should she call a lawyer or other in the church elders and say my marriage is through? What should she do? You see if he had known the first time he began to look at things that were inappropriate or to look at, that this is where it would end with the question prompted by billboard from the wife that he said he loved, that he said he would be faithful only to her. He never would have kept looking. If he had known this is where it would go, he would not have kept looking but he couldn't see that far. You see, sin is so deceptive. The lie is so great and it's in so many layers. How did he get there? How did he get there? And then how did he get out? He got there because sin and particularly sexual sin is a common problem for God's people. Plus for men is something women that perhaps you can't really fully understand. You don't understand the incredible physical response to physical beauty real or perceived. A man's mind can see in just a glance so many things so fast and it can go into certain thought patterns so quickly that you may be completely unaware of. The body of God's creation. Man or woman is beautiful. It's glorious created in the image of God and from the fall forward, mankind has been addicted to this sin pattern of great sexual sin. I'm not going to read all of the passages that I could read this morning to make my case. But I'm just going to mention a few. If you go back to Genesis 19, there we have what's called God's rescue of Lot. Listen as I read. The two angels came to Sodom in the evening and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth and said, My Lord, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way. They said, No, we will spend the night in the town square, but he pressed them strongly. So they turned aside to him and entered into his house. And he made them a feast and baked on love and bread and they ate. Now listen to what happens. But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house. And they called to Lot where are the men who came to you tonight, bring them out to us that we may know them. Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him and said, I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. The last man was there. Young and old alike, desires that are evil were filling their hearts. So Lot begs do not act so wickedly. And then he says, what's truly unbelievable, behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, stand back. This fellow came to Sojourn and he has become the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them. Then they pressed hard against the man Lot and drew near to break the door down. But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out, groping at the door. Sin, sexual sin, of great perverse nature is not new to our time. It's in the earliest parts of the Bible. It continues through the Bible. Read Leviticus 18 and see the prescription of what is allowed and not allowed in sexual relations. And then go to 2 Samuel 11 and there see a king standing on his roof when all kings go to battle. And as David is there he looks across and sees this beautiful woman bathing and he desires her. And David sent an inquired about this woman and one said, is not it Bathsheba, the daughter of Alim, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? So David sent messengers and took her and she came to him and he lay with her. And she returned to her house and the woman conceived. And she sent and told David, I am pregnant. Sin of this perverse nature of a man desiring something. That is not his and then taking it for his own. And then seeking in secrecy to cover up the sin is not new. It's not just in the Old Testament. It's layered in the New Testament as well. Read Paul's letter to the Corinthians or his opening words in Romans where he speaks of how we invent ways of doing evil. So this man I'm speaking of on this journey from one city to another where his wife said do you struggle with pornography? How did he get there? He did not resist a temptation that is common to man. Common to man throughout scripture, not an excuse, but it's a fierce temptation. It is a great temptation that causes people to take their eyes off of the things that they should be looking at and then begin to lust after and covet the things that they should not. It is not new to this generation. But here's something that is new. In 2001, there were 74,000 pornographic websites that you could pursue. And 2003, the number grew to 1,300,000. And 2007, the number grew to 420,000,000 sites. That you could go in secrecy to pursue this lust. The industry is 97 billion dollars annually worldwide. 90% of eight-year-olds to 16-year-olds have said that they have viewed online porn. The reason it's a problem is because it feels good. It looks good. We're attracted to it. We want to see it. And then, like many addiction, it grows in terms of its appetite and says, I want more. I was in fifth grade when my neighborhood friend Pat introduced me to his next door neighbor's garage. Boxes of magazines, which my eyes should never have seen. Images like a sharpie marker written on the brain. I didn't even know what was happening in my body physiologically at that young age, but I knew I liked it. And I thank God that the computer wasn't there. But I fear deeply that for my own children it is. This is a huge industry because of this deeply sinful appetite that we have. And as dangerous as those statistics are, there is a greater danger for people like us in this body. And it's this. That we actually can be seduced into believing it's not really that serious. It's not that big of a problem. Here's what I mean. Pornography and lust and adultery is the common plot for most of what you watch on TV. I will never forget, and I certainly won't say our name, and if she's here this morning she's going to be embarrassed. But I will never forget before we were leaving about six or seven years ago for a Florida trip. When one of the mothers of the students was talking about her new handheld device, this iPad, when iPad, I touched whatever it was, and she said I get to put all my programs on there. She goes, I got desiring our desperate housewives recording for tomorrow night. And I thought if she has no shame telling a pastor that something is deeply wrong. And right now if you're saying, well Mark, is it really wrong? Yes. Yes. And so is the office. And so is the majority of sitcoms that you allow to come in because the word of God says, there must not be among you even a hint, even a hint, even I hint of sexual immorality. But we let hints invade us constantly, not really considering what we confessed early. Earlier that the enemy roams around like a roaring lion seeking to devour you. We must fight with great fierceness this battle together. Ladies, it's not just a man's problem. You lost too. In fact, you made lust for lust. Without you knowing it, that may be the motivation that you have when you go and purchase certain clothes. The world is telling you, this is what you need to look like in order to be attractive. Well, if you are seeking to be attractive in a way that would gain you the affirmation, the complements of others, and a way that's lustful, then are you not lusting after lust? You must be careful with the way you dress. You must give thought to it because your father and your brother and other women may even look at you with envy and lust. It's a serious issue, but the world seeks to teach us that it's not. There's no big deal that when you walk through the mall, pornography isn't every window nearly. Even if it's selling things that aren't sexual in nature, like all kinds of stuff. It's everywhere. And what we see walking down the mall would easily 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago have been seen as completely inappropriate and shameful. I'm going to tell you that's not going to go away. It's not. It's going to be present and we must seek to fight. How did my friend get there? It got so bad because primarily as the sin pattern developed, the shame began to consume. The shame that I can't believe I'm doing what I'm doing. And no one else would be able to believe what I'm doing either, so I can't let anyone know. And that is the enemy's lie. I will be rejected. I will lose my marriage. I will no longer be able to serve in my church. And so what happens is he began to essentially live a different life. And on the other side he was this perverted, dark sinful man who was engaged in acts that he should never have been engaged in. And on the other side to compensate for this really dark and ugly side, he began to become really religious, to look really righteous, to keep people at a distance because they thought he would never stumble. And I'm convinced that there are people looking at me right now who are just like him. Maybe not in the same exact way but certainly in the lust of the eye and the lust of the heart. You're most like him in your shame and in your unwillingness to say, I'm caught. I am done with it. The life has been shown and I can't do anything more about it. If you right now are struggling with lust and I don't mean you're like this mean at that level. I mean you frequently look at things you shouldn't look at including not just computer screens but joggers, people in a restaurant, people even in church. If that is in you, you need help, you need help. Enemy wants you to believe you can contain a secret that you can conquer this sin, you cannot, and you know you cannot. So what is it that keeps you from coming forward and saying, I need help or saying to your wife perhaps even this afternoon or to your husband, I need help. Is it not shame? Is it not the thought that if people really knew it would cost me everything? Is that not it? Well let me tell you, shame is really nothing more than pride. Shame actually keeps you from the very thing that you need most. And that is to see yourself rightly that you are poor in spirit. The very first of the Beatitudes, DA Carson says it this way. Honesty before God in these matters may bring us the poverty of spirit which our triumphs never will. And prompt us to cry with the hymn writer, one thing I of the Lord desire for all my ways has darkened been. Be it by earthquake, wind or fire. Lord make me clean. Lord make me clean. And it wasn't by a simple earthquake, wind or fire that the Lord has done that. He did it by sending his son to die for you. The violence defender, how did my friend get out by God's grace? If you don't take anything else, hear that. He got out by God's grace. By God's grace a sign was put on a highway that a wife saw that prompted a question at a moment when he really was not on guard. And the Holy Spirit moved into his life and said, your God. And as he was caught, guess what? He was caught. He was embraced by his Savior who said, yes, you're as dirty as hell. You are sick. You are awful. And I have caught you. And the one to whom I point you to, Jesus died for this dirty, heinous sin. I and I alone can clean you. You can't clean yourself up. And there are men and there are women and are midst this very moment who are hiding, hiding any longer. To God. Pray and tell him what you're struggling with. Listen to his word Psalm 25. Read it today. I'm going to be preaching from him next Sunday. But don't stop there. Go and tell someone else. Tell your spouse. Tell your sonny school leader. Tell your BSF small group. Tell brothers and sisters that you walk with that this is happening in your life. If you are unwilling to do that, then you have truly not come to that level of brokenness you need. Talk to someone. Send an email to one of the pastors or elders. And if you're an elder like my friend was and you think nobody could accept you because of your status, you need to tell me now. We have a group. That's one of the most powerful ministries in our church that you know very little about intentionally. It meets in room 124 on Wednesday nights. It's for men only. We certainly could start one for women. Whose struggle was sexual sin. Everything that's shared in that room is confidential. You don't share who's in the group. But if you know that you need to be there, then you need to be there. 124 this Wednesday, 7 o'clock. If the thought of going there feels too hard, too scary, too public right now, then tell someone else. You must come out from under the shame. And only the love of Christ. Only the Redeemer's affection in zeal for you will bring you to that place. Only the power that he possesses can give you the power that you need to come out from under that bond. And he does it. My friend is now an elder reinstated once again in that church I so love. His marriage is in a place he and his wife never thought possible. His adult daughters, who upon hearing the news, he feared would reject him and run in shame. Embrace their daddy with the grace of God that in his own disconnected way he had taught them about. God rescues people who are as messed up as you and me. And my friend, that is what salvation needs. It is a divine rescue. If you are unwilling to go to him and confess, then you have not yet known the power of that rescue.
Take yourself this sin to the cross and know of this Redeemer's love. We all need him. We all need him. And we need the gift he has given us in his Holy Spirit and in each other. He is a high normal, high and no, Jesus, you did not die on the cross that we might live in secrecy. You know all things. You know the hearts in the sanctuary right now that are deeply afraid because the enemy is speaking and saying, don't listen, don't act. There will cost you everything. Indeed, Lord, it will. And that is the victory because it cost you your life, Jesus, that we might have life in you. So Holy Spirit, buy your grace, fill this place and help us to come to you believing deeply that there we find our salvation in you. And you alone. And Jesus' name, amen.