Transcript

Good morning, church. Good to see all of you here this morning. We're in part five of our series, Kingdom Living. We're going through the Sermon on the Mount. It's been called the greatest sermon that's ever been preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived.

We've been going verse by verse through this. We took a little break last week for Easter Sunday. But we're in part five of this series and it's a description by King Jesus of what it looks like to live in his kingdom as faithful, true kingdom citizens. And it describes a culture that's radically different than the world's culture. In fact, John Stott wrote about the Sermon on the Mount, describing it like this.

He says the Sermon on the Mount is the most complete description anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian counterculture. Here is a Christian value system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, lifestyle and network of relationships, all of which are totally at odds with those of the non Christian world. And this Christian counterculture is the life of the Kingdom of God. A fully human life, indeed, but lived out under the divine rule. And so that's what we're talking about.

And I just wanted to remind us of that because we did take a little break for Easter, but we are in part five today. Jesus is announcing a new way of life for those who call him King. People ask, where is the kingdom of heaven? Where is the kingdom of God? It's wherever Christ is king.

If you've called Christ King of your heart, of your life, then the kingdom has come to you. And the kingdom is breaking out all over the world as people say yes to Jesus, as they surrender their lives to King Jesus. And so this is not a list of laws and rules on how to get saved, how to get in the kingdom. It's not that. It's a description instead of those who have already come into the kingdom calling Jesus king because there is no earning of salvation.

Christ has earned it. But having received him, he empowers us to live this kingdom lifestyle that we're talking about. Now, I hope you as you came in, that you were offered an opportunity to pick up this little booklet. Just a way of keeping up with all the lessons. This is a 16 week series and we want to give you a place where you could keep them all in one place, because we're going very carefully, verse by verse in this great sermon and through these three chapters in Matthew.

Now today we'll be picking up at verse 27, and we're in that section of the Sermon on the Mount. Where Jesus is saying, you've heard it said, but I say he talks about certain commandments that the Pharisees were interpreting. And then he offers how he interprets it as the Son of God. And today he's bringing up the topic of sexual purity, of what it looks like for kingdom citizens to live purity, to live as those that are pure in heart in the kingdom of heaven. And let's be honest, no one escapes this struggle untouched.

We live in a culture today that is permeated by sexuality and innuendo. And so lust isn't just a temptation we battle in the world, however, it's also a battle of the heart. It's something we battle on the inside. And if we're going to live as faithful citizens of God's kingdom, we have to recognize this, especially if we want to live as salt and light in this world, that Jesus is calling us to sexual purity in our lives. And this is more than a pursuit of external behavior.

It's more than just outward effort. But it requires a transformation of the heart that we need a new heart from the Lord Jesus to empower us to have this purity of heart that he calls us to. And he today, in this little section of the text, he exposes the root problem of our hearts. And he calls us to radical grace filled purity of heart. In Matthew 5, 27, 30, he confronted his hearers with the deeper intent of the law.

He exposed the seriousness of lust as adultery of the heart. And he called them to a sexual purity in their lifestyles as kingdom citizens. And I believe today that we can pursue this, that we can answer this calling that Jesus calls us to purity. And as we look at the text, I think we'll see three key areas where Jesus is calling us to live sexually pure lives as his kingdom citizens. So let's dig in.

We're in chapter five, verse 27 and following. You've 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 God's word. Amen. We're looking for three key areas on answering Christ's call to sexual purity.

Here's the first. We can ask God to clean and renew our hearts. We can ask God to clean and renew our hearts. I want you to notice that Jesus names three areas. He names the heart.

He names the eyes. He names the hands. And these are clearly metaphors that Jesus is using. So it's important for us, when we interpret Scripture, to unpack the metaphors and to get at, if you will, the heart of what Jesus is saying. But he begins with the heart.

And I think what he begins with here is the heart attitude. In fact, you could put in your notes that when he's talking about the heart, he's talking about your attitude. Because an attitude always precedes an action. And so sin is not just the action of sin, but it's the attitude that sin begins with. It's an attitude of rebellion against God that's really the heart of sin.

It's this attitude of saying, I want my way rather than your way. I want to do it myself. And you've heard me say this before, but one of the first complete sentences that my firstborn ever said was, I do it myself. I do it myself. And so we're all born with this heart attitude that the Bible calls sin.

And so it's what precedes. And so Jesus gets at the heart of the matter. He says it starts with the heart and that we've got a problem in our heart, that we lust after things. We lust after the forbidden fruit. We lust after things.

And I want you to hear this. God is not trying to make you miserable. He's not trying to steal your joy. What he's doing is he's helping you understand where right things belong. So he gives us a desire for intimacy.

He gives us a desire for love. He gives us a desire for sexuality. But he has a right place for it to be carried out. And it's to be carried out within the life, the married life of a husband and a wife. So there's great freedom there.

But outside of that, he says it will cause you pain and trouble, and it even puts your eternal soul at risk. That's what he's saying here. And he says it very powerfully and very convincingly. He doesn't play around. He begins just as he did last time.

We were talking with this antithesis kind of language where he says, you've heard. But I say, remember last time he says, you've heard it said, thou shalt not murder, right? You shall not murder, which is the sixth commandment of the ten. Then he says, But I say, and Remember earlier he had said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. Well, apparently the scribes and the Pharisees were trying to make the law something you could achieve through your own self effort.

And so they would kind of limit it just to the action. But Jesus is now doing again, if you will recognize, the law came down from Mount Sinai via Moses, right? Now here comes the second Moses, if you will, the one who really is the originator of the Word. Because John says he is the word made flesh. And he's coming down from the mountain with the real, right, correct interpretation of the law.

And he says, you've heard it said. And he's on the seventh commandment now, thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say, you see what he's doing? And there's six of these. And this is the second one in the Sermon on the Mount where he's saying, this is what the law says and this is how you've been interpreting it, but you've been getting it wrong.

It really starts with the heart. That's where it really starts. It starts with the attitude of rebellion that's in your heart that says, I want to do it my way rather than God's way. And so he's nailing that down and he says it with his own authority. He's not quoting somebody else's authority.

He says, you've heard it said, you should not commit adultery. But I say to you, remember last time I told you this is the emphatic use in the Greek of the word I. What do I mean by emphatic use? It means he emphasizes I so that you could have interpreted it like this. I, I say like that.

I, I say, how does he have such authority? He's the Son of God, as I said a moment ago, as the Gospel of John says, he's the word made flesh, he's the one behind the whole word. And he says, you've been misunderstanding. It's not just about the external action, it's about the attitude of the heart. It's not just adultery, it's lust that is the precursor.

It's the attitude behind adultery. It's lust. Now what is lust? You could interpret it like this. It's an over desire.

It's the idea of something being over much is something you want more than God designed for you to want it. And the thing about lust is it can never be satiated, it can never be satisfied, because when you engage it, it always wants more. And so he's warning us here about this. Now, we could look at it and say, well, it sounds like this is for the men. The ladies could be sitting here right now saying, sounds like you got a man sermon right here, Pastor Gary.

Like, I think we can check out, because it says his heart doesn't say, her heart doesn't say, our heart says his heart in verse 28. So we know about those men ladies, but ladies don't check out. Adultery always takes two to tango, right? Takes two to commit adultery. And.

And I think Jesus is addressing it to probably a predominantly male audience. I'm not sure. But it was just the pattern of the Scriptures to speak in this way. I think it includes ladies. And so I think we all have hearts that lust.

And lust is when we desire something over much over past what God designed us to desire it. And it's always forbidden fruit. That thing that he said, no, this is not good for you. This is against my will for you. Now, mothers, you know this.

All you have to do is to tell your child, to tell your toddler, don't touch it. It's hot. It will burn you. To activate within the child the heart rebellion that says I must touch it. Now, they didn't even know they wanted to touch it until you said, don't touch it.

The minute you said, don't touch it, it activated that rebellious heart that we're all born with. The Bible says that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, that we're born apart from God in rebellion. We were born with Adam's nature, with the sin nature. And so we want to do the opposite of what God says. Now, when we think about adultery, you shall not commit adultery.

I said that it's the seventh commandment. You might think of the commandments like this. In a way, they're kind of like chapter headings for where God's word is going. Because there are 618 laws in, in the first five books, in the Torah, in, in. In the Decalogue, in the books of Moses that he brought down, okay, from Mount Sinai, there's 618 of them.

And under the header, let's call number seven, God's top ten. Number seven. Adultery is a chapter heading for all the types of sexual sins that the book later lists. And if you read through it, you'll begin to see these categories. Certainly adultery, unlawful intercourse with another person's spouse other than your own, that's adultery.

But under that, I think it includes all sexual sin, which, for instance, would Be like this fornication, which is sex with someone who's not your spouse. When you're. You're. You're single, okay, that's having sex with someone you're not married to. Incest.

That's with a family member. And it gets very specific when you read the scripture about what he means by that. Homosexuality is a sexual sin. Prostitution, bestiality, rape, gender dysphoria and confusion, pornography. And I could go on, and God's Word outlines these, but you might consider them all under that category of adultery.

And it's important to recognize that, because what Jesus is really calling us to is what he opened up with in the Beatitudes when he says to us, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. He's calling us to purity of heart when he says, you shall not commit adultery. He's also talking about adultery of the harp for the one who is looking at pornography. And it's really hard to get away from pornography today. It used to be you had to go somewhere and buy a magazine or.

But now you carry it around your pocket. It's called your smartphone. It's just right there. And so young men and young women are being enslaved by wrong imagery of what God really intended for sexuality. And so it's shipwrecking many young people today with this imagery.

And he says, it starts in the heart. You have a lustful intent, an over passion. Literally. The Greek word is epithumeo. Epithumeo.

EPI means like over, like epicenter. We use it like that, but it intensifies thumeo. And thumeo means to boil. And so it's like to boil over, to have this lustful intent that you lose control. It's an over desire.

And when he talks about the heart, I've already said it's about the attitude, but it's really. For the Jewish mind, the heart was the center of the will. Like the. Like the place where you drive the car. It's the driver's seat of your life.

What we need is a new heart. What we need is a transformed heart. This is why the prophet Ezekiel prophesied this. He spoke of a day when the Messiah would come and the Lord would give us a new heart. He said, and I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.

I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart, and I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations. And so instead of Having this outward law that's on stone tablets that really just produces stone hearts. He will write his law on our hearts in this new, transformed heart that has a new want to. A new desire that I want to love God. And I want to love others as I love myself.

And when I lust after someone or something, I'm treating them like an object of my selfish desire, rather than loving them truly. As brothers and sisters, as mothers and fathers, as sons and daughters. To think of them like that is a new way. Give me a new heart to think about it. And the thing about the law is the law cannot enable you to keep it.

If you're driving down the interstate and you see a law that's written on a sign. It's on a metal sign. It says, speed limit 70. There's nothing there in the sign that engages your right foot. The sign says, speed limit.

Speed limit 70. And your right foot automatically slows down. No, it's not how it works. It has to go through your heart. Your eyes see it.

Your heart goes, I don't want to. I like to go 78. Because somebody told me if you go eight over, they won't pull you.

I've been pulled before. And I said, somebody try telling that to the. To the trooper. Somebody tell me if you go eight over. I don't know who told you that.

Drivers and registration. You know, driver's license and registration, please. Well, here's what I'm saying is the speed limit sign. The law does not empower you to keep it. The law doesn't have the power to do that.

It has the power to condemn you so that when the blue light's coming, you know, then you get the condemnation, Right? What we need is a new heart. We need a new willpower. And when David committed adultery with a woman named Bathsheba, he thought he got away with it. Because here's the thing about adultery.

Here's the thing about lust. Whenever you're going to have a wedding, you have it in the daytime. And you send out invitations. In fact, you send them out in advance and send them a card that says save the date. And when you get married, you send out invitations.

You want everybody to bear witness. But when you're committing adultery, you do it in the dark, and you do it in the secret. And the only way people find out is through the rumor mill. See, we know it's sin. That's why we do it in the dark.

And the flesh behaves in the dark. And the broken attitude of the heart is engaged in the darkness. And so David had committed sin. He thought he got away with it. He did it in secret, he thought.

But God saw it. And he sent the prophet Nathan to go and say, God saw what you did. And David repented. It cost him a lot, but he repented. And he wrote this Psalm, Psalm 51, as his, I guess his prayer to God written down his prayer of repentance.

But here's a key verse, verse 10. Create me a clean heart, O God, renew a right spirit in me. Oh, he was broken. Lord, I need you, just need you to get out the Brillo pad. I mean, get down in there and dig it out.

Get it out of me.

Clean my heart. You ever pray that prayer, Lord, clean me up. I don't care where you're at today. I don't care that if the word is causing you now to reflect on your own sinfulness. The Word doesn't leave you there.

The word invites you to come to Jesus and say, clean me up. Because only he can clean the heart. Only he can see the heart. Only he can clean the heart. The thing that I'm seeing that's so worrisome in our world today, I talked about the smartphones, but the fact that we give the smartphones, we're giving smartphones to 8 year olds.

We got middle schoolers taking smartphones. And the thing about this, and you might think, well, it's convenient, okay? But smartphones are not smart.

They just pipe in whatever the world's dishing out. And one of the things that's causing, one of the chief causes that we're seeing among young, teenage girls, preteens and young girls, is more problems with dysphoria, gender dysphoria, because they see all this stuff, right? And they begin to engage material that they're not mature enough to engage, and it begins to confuse them. It's also leading to suicidal ideation among young people, a great increase. Because what will happen is they'll show a picture of themselves on Instagram, they'll take a selfie or something, and then someone else will share it, and then they'll get shamed for it.

And then they'll feel like, oh, my secrets are out and now I must die, I can't face it. So they're facing all these things. And so parents, if you're giving your children these, because first of all, they tell you, everyone's got one. That's one of the things that I used to say to my parents about whatever I wanted. And if you're doing it without really checking in on Them without putting limitations on them.

You have just given them a gateway to the world. Everything that the world, every piece of garbage just gets piped in right there. And there's young men today that are becoming addicted to porn that's beyond belief of being how far away from God it is. I mean, used to young men had to go buy a magazine and we talked about a fold out that they would look at. Well, now it just gushes out of your phone into your eyes and it's destroying young Christian men and young Christian women that believe in Jesus.

But they're entangling their hearts like weeds in their hearts. And speaking of weeds, hard shift here. Sure is hard to grow grass in Williston, North Carolina. I'm not from here. I moved down here from the Appalachians of Virginia when I moved from Roanoke, Virginia.

It's called the Star City. Up there in the Blue Ridge, you could buy Kentucky 31 and throw it on your concrete driveway and grow grass. Like easy growing grass. I got down here. I've been working at this 30, almost 40 years.

It's like a science and an art and you still lose. So here's a picture of my yard.

Not. Not really. I'm doing better. I've been working at it a long time. But here's what I've noticed.

If I don't work at it constantly, I don't have to work at that happening. This happens on its own. The soil just grows weeds. When I'm out working and I'm digging up one of those pieces of crabgrass, or I'm trying to spray it with something, or I'm trying to get rid of it, I'll often talk to God about Adam. I'll say, lord, when I get to heaven, I'm going to have a talk with Adam about that whole thing about how it's going to produce, you know, thorns and thistles and the earth is not going to by the sweat of your brow.

And I'll be like, that's the curse of sin right there. I'm digging it. There's another curse of sin right over there. Like it comes upon its own. It's hard to grow grass in Wilson.

You have to work and cultivate and do all kind of things to the soil. And the soil is like your heart.

And you have to put good things in there and you have to put God's word in there and you have to pray and you have to have the disciplines of really getting before the Lord to sow good seed. But you don't have to plant weeds man, they're just in there and they just come up and I need a new heart. I need a clean heart. Don't you need a clean heart? Lord, come and clean my heart out.

Get these unholy desires out of me and give me a new desire, a new spirit. Where's your thought life taking you? It's easy to grow weeds. They grow on your own. Where's your thought?

Are you nurturing hidden desires that, left unchecked, will shape your actions? Are the TV shows you watch or the books you read or the social feeds that you follow causing you to be discontent as a single person? So that you feel like, why wait for marriage? Or as a married person, I feel like there's something better for me out there. Maybe this man that's speaking nice to me at work, maybe.

And so you're discontent with your marriage. Are you feeding romantic fantasies about what you watch and read and look at? Are you allowing the weeds to come up? Emotional affairs often start in the mind. God gave us this gift called imagination.

I don't think the animals have imagination. We can imagine things that don't even exist yet. And we can imagine things that are good, and we can imagine things that are evil. Ask yourself, what am I really craving? Intimacy?

Control?

Validation? Is there something missing in my life? And so where do your thoughts drift? On your own? What emotional states make you vulnerable to lust?

Is it loneliness? Is it fatigue? Makes you more vulnerable? Is it boredom? Is it a, you know, I deserve this kind of way of thinking?

What makes you vulnerable? Have you asked God to purify your heart? Would you pray like David today? Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Starts with the heart.

And now we're coming to verse 29. And we see that we can look to God to help guard our eyes. So it goes from the heart to the eyes. If the heart represents an attitude, the eyes represent what allures, what tempts, what attracts. As Shakespeare said, the eyes are the.

The windows to the soul. The eyes represent that which is visually stimulating and stirs up the weeds in our heart. Unless we've been asking God to pluck them out and to replace them with good seed. Jesus doesn't play here. He's using hyperbole.

Do you know that word? It means to overstate a thing in order to make a point. He says this verse 29. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

I didn't hear a single person in the room just now go. I didn't hear that. But I bet the people on that mount that day when Jesus said that, I bet the women went like that. I bet the men went.

No one ever taught like this man. What does he talk? He goes and he does what's called a lesser to greater comparison. He says it's better to lose one member of your body than that your whole body be thrown into hell. He says that this whole sin problem that we have, this whole lust problem that starts in the heart and is triggered by the eyes.

The eyes see things in the world and then an over desire. Weed there says, I want this even though it's not mine. I want it now, even though it's not time. He says that this has eternal consequence. This.

This will affect me forever, the way I respond. And some of the early believers in the first couple of centuries, they were trying to take God's Word as literally as possible. And I think that's a good thing on the face of it. You have to understand when you're reading something that's using hyperbole. Some of them took it too far.

There was a church father named Origen who took it too far and emasculated himself, thinking he would rid himself of lust. And he found out it didn't work because lust is not about the members of your body, it's about your heart. So I think if Jesus meant this literally, we would all be blind and handless and we would still lust. So that's my key here of understanding. He doesn't mean it literally.

He's using hyperbole here. He's overstating it in order to get our attention. Don't play with this. You're playing with dynamite. You're playing with fire.

And here we are in the culture today, and we are immersed. We are bathed in constant flow through advertising, through every TV show, sexuality, constantly coming our way through the eye gate, through the ear gate, everywhere. But we are called as kingdom, citizens to a counterculture, to a life of purity. This is his calling to us. So he says, guard your eyes.

If something causes you to sin, in other words, it causes you to literally to stumble.

He says, don't play with it. Pluck it out and throw it away. Notice, he says right eye, and then later he says right hand.

We talk about how Jesus has ascended. Where's Jesus at? Where is he ascended to? To the right hand of the Father. Whenever in Hebrew culture, when you say something is at the right hand or at the right, we're saying it's the position of primacy or authority.

Or importance. And so he says, no matter how much you love a thing, no matter how important it is, no matter how much you desire it, if it's not from God, if it's causing you to sin, pluck it out, throw it away. Don't play with it. Don't just walk up to the edge of the cliff and go, I just. No, you put guardrails up and you stay way back.

He said it'd be better for you to get rid of something worldly that you love. You know, this TV show I watch, I'm in this TV series, and it's got nudity in it and it's got some bad language, but it's a great storyline.

It's my favorite show on tv.

I love. I just really need this. It helps me keep in touch and helps me. I really need this smartphone. But you've got.

What will it take? How serious would you get about getting rid of something and throwing it away if it. Every time you took hold of it, it caused you to sin?

You know, I don't know how serious. See, here's the thing. Do we look any different than the world, or do we look just like the world? Church, come on. He's calling us to be kingdom citizens and so that we're to live a life of modesty and of purity.

I'm Facebook friends with a lot of you. I especially like being, you know, having Instagram followers from the young people, young ladies. I love you. What's with the kissy photos? Who you kissing?

Who you trying to be sexy for? What is that? What is that? Like that. What are these things we're doing?

What are we advertising? I sometimes see on Facebook, I'll see a husband have a photo of his wife, and they go, here's my hot wife. Well, keep your hot wife to yourself, bro.

Like, do you know what hot means? Means sexy. Like, she's yours. Keep that at home.

I've gone from preaching to meddling.

I need to back off. Probably church. Let's be different. Let's look different. Let's behave different.

We're called to modesty in our dress and our behavior, and we're to look different so that the world looks at us and goes, they're not like us. And we become attractive to those that. That want what we have. Because God's not saying no to these things because he's trying to limit your joy. He's saying no to these things because they'll destroy your joy and they'll enslave you.

And he's trying to Set you free from sin. And he says, eternity's at risk. He says, because wouldn't it be better to lose that one thing that you love? That's that risk, right thing that. Wouldn't it be better to pluck that out and throw it away than to go to hell, Than to have you, your whole self thrown into hell.

The Greek word there for hell is actually from the Hebrew word gehenna, which is the valley of Hinnom, which was a dump in the south part of Jerusalem where they would carry carcasses and their trash, where the. The worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Jesus says in another place. He's not playing here. The desires of the eyes are not from the Father.

Here's what John says in his first epistle. First John, chapter two. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the Father. It's from this world.

And if you think what really got poor Eve, There's Eve in the garden, and it says, she looked at the fruit and she saw that it looked good. It always looks good. The forbidden fruit always. It looked good. It looked good.

And so in her heart, there was already a thing that she was starting to feel like. Well, because she heard the temptation of the evil one who said, did God really say? And that's where it always begins, questioning God's word. Did God really mean that? Did God really say.

And then we see it looks good. And so it moves from the heart to the eyes to the hands that reaches for it.

I want to be like Job. Men and women, especially young men and young women, I made a covenant with my eyes. He says, I made an agreement with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. Now I've heard men say, well, I couldn't help it. She walked right in front of me.

I was already looking that way when she walked by. And I didn't know. Well, you knew when you did this, you knew that. That part. That part controlled.

Okay, so this idea of looking with lustful intent has the idea not of the first accidental look, but of the long glance, of the long following look. Like that. And so if. If, yeah, she crosses your line of sight and she starts going that way, turn away. Especially if your wife's sitting next to you or your girlfriend.

Because those. Those ladies, they don't miss a thing. They see what you're. They see that, you know, this married man, you know, that if you're at the beach, you're sitting there in your beach chairs, and you might have got up early, you had a quiet time, you talked to Jesus. You're sitting there, you might be reading something from the Bible, sitting under your beach umbrella, and here comes somebody wearing something.

Well, not wearing much anything, let's just be honest. And they come walking along, and you look up and you see her. And out of the corner of your eye, well, first of all, you start feeling a burning sensation on this side of your face. And your wife, she ain't looking over there because she already saw her way down there. And she's looking at you to see what you gonna do.

So if you're smart, you just go back to your book right there. Just go right back to your book like that. That's what he means by looking. It's that long look. Make a covenant with your eyes that you won't take that long look.

That you'll take your eyes away. That you'll take your eyes away from those things that trigger you. You know, in computers we have something that's important that we call cyber security. People are always trying to steal your id. Steal, Steal things.

And. And so wherever there's a weak point of access in your network or in your laptop, in your smartphone, it can compromise the entire system. And that's why firewalls exist. They have computer firewalls. And what we need is spiritual firewalls.

Something that would guard our eyes. That just kind of goes off. An alarm that says, you got to stop looking at that. Or for ladies, I wonder if this is true. Ladies, you'll have to think about this.

Maybe it's not the eyes, because I know guys, I know that we're triggered visually, but sometimes with ladies, what I hear, it's. It's ears, that it's some. Some guy at work, you know, Your husband hasn't been saying nice things to you lately. He's just working, you know, and it's just the drudgery of. Of being married and you just.

Of going through the motions. But there's a guy at work who's saying nice things in your ears. And so an emotional kind of affair starts like that that turns into text messages like that. And so sometimes it's ears for ladies, I've noticed. Sometimes be careful.

Get your spiritual firewalls up. What needs to go? A late night habit. Sitting up past looking at stuff when nobody can catch you. An unhealthy friendship don't negotiate with sin Eliminate what's poisoning your soul Ask Jesus to help you pull up the weeds out of your heart.

Tear it out and throw it away. Maybe it's time to unfollow that person who stirs up your obsessions. Maybe it's time to stop flirting with sin, even if it feels innocent. It's crossing boundaries in your heart. It's time to step back.

Your eyes are the windows to your soul. What you look at eventually influences what you long for. What you look at eventually influences what you long for. This leads to our third one, to our hands. We've talked about heart, we've talked about eyes, now we're talking about hands.

We can rely on God for power to discipline our hands. We're in verse 30. The third key area is our hands. Jesus moves from heart to eye to hand, from attitude to allurement to action. Now it's that which takes action.

Lust unchecked leads to sinful action. Jesus says, be radical. And he uses parallel advice here to what he said to the eye. He says, if your right hand there that we're right again causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away. It's better to lose one of your members, then your whole body go into hell.

So now he's moved to action, it's better to cut it off. It says in the book of Romans, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. So present your hands for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. We're under grace, so we're fully forgiven.

And then we walk out that forgiveness by continually walking in grace to empower our hands, our actions to follow our hearts which have been renewed in Jesus. Jesus says, don't play with it. If there's an action in your life, if there's something you're pursuing or doing that's continually causing you to fall into temptation, cut it off, throw it out. Don't play with it, get rid of it. Perhaps you remember this story.

Back in 2003, experienced climber and outdoorsman Aaron Ralston went hiking alone down at the Utah's Blue John Canyon. He was an experienced climber. As he climbed over a boulder, the boulder shifted. This Boulder probably weighed 1,000 pounds. And it shifted and trapped his arm, trapped his right arm and it pinned it there.

And for five days he tried to move back and forth on the boulder to get his arm loose, but to no avail. Finally, on the fifth day, having fruitlessly tried to budge his arm loose, he broke the bones in his forearm and took a dull pocket knife and cut off amputating his arm below the elbow. The operation took him over an hour. He related then he rappelled down a 60 foot cliff to get off the cliff face and walked over five miles to get help. Here's what Aaron decided after five days of meditating on it.

Better to live missing my right arm and live than to keep my right arm and die. He made a decision. It took him a while to think about it and then it took great courage to do it. Are you in a relationship right now and you're saying, but I love him. You're not married.

He's not God's man for you. You know it in your heart. The Bible warns against being unequally yoked single person. And you're thinking, well, maybe he'll change. No, he won't.

He'll get worse after you get married. He'll be more the same. Cut it off, throw it away. Break off the relationship. Ask God to give you a godly man.

Ask for same way men, same thing. What are you doing? Come on. Yeah, but they seem like the right one. No, they're not.

No, they're not. He's warning us here about affairs of the heart. He wants us to have Jesus first place in our heart. Jesus exaggerates here for effect. Sin left unchecked will destroy your life.

It will grow until it owns you. But in Christ, freedom is possible. This isn't just a call to purity, it's a call to freedom. It isn't Jesus trying to rob you of joy, it's him trying to set you free. It isn't about legalism, it's about loyalty to King Jesus.

It isn't just pardon for our sin, but it's power over sin. Look at your heart. Look at your eyes. Consider your hands. Run to Jesus.

He died not only to forgive your lust, but to give you a new heart and power over it so that you can live free lives of purity in Jesus and surrender to the one who calls you to this counter cultural lifestyle. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you that as God's people we submit to the King's word and Lord. Even though some of us are here today and we came in far from God today, many of us have said, I want to call Jesus King.

Is that you, my friend? I want to come to Jesus. I come in saying I repent of my sin. I confess that I have sinned and I believe that Jesus died on the cross for me, that he was raised from the grave, that he lives today. I believe that.

Come and live in me Jesus. By your spirit I surrender my life to you and I want you to be the Lord, the Savior, the King of my life. If you're praying that prayer faith, believing he'll save you, others are here and you're a Christ follower. But you've stumbled into an affair or an addiction to pornography or some other sexual struggle and you're ashamed. But you don't have to wallow and hurt and shame and be enslaved to it right now.

Confess it to Jesus. Say forgive me. I know you've already forgiven me. I confess it to you. Clean me up and set me free.

Lord, create in me a clean heart, a pure heart. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.