Purity in the Kingdom
Kingdom Living April 27, 2025 Matthew 5:27-30 Notes
Today, Jesus takes us into one of the most personal and challenging areas of life—our sexual purity. In a world flooded with temptation, sensuality, and distorted views of love, Jesus speaks with clarity and authority. He doesn’t lower the bar. He raises it to the level of the heart!
Let’s be honest, no one escapes this struggle untouched. Lust isn’t just a temptation we battle out there in the world. It’s a battle in here, in our hearts. If we’re going to live as faithful citizens of God’s Kingdom, if we’re going to live counter to the world’s culture as salt and light, we need more than just a pursuit of outward obedience, trying to keep ourselves pure through self-effort. We need transformation of the heart! In our text today, Jesus exposes the root of our problem and calls us to radical, grace-filled purity.
In the gospel of Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus confronted His hearers with the deeper intent of the Law, exposing the seriousness of lust as adultery of the heart, and calling them to a life of sexual purity as true citizens of God’s kingdom.
Audio
Good morning, church. It’s 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. 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 counter-culture. 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 counter-culture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.” So, that's what we're talking about.
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. 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, were offered an opportunity to pick up this little booklet. It’s 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. Then, He offers how He interprets it as the Son of God. 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. Let's be honest, no one escapes this struggle untouched.
We live in a culture today that is permeated by sexuality and innuendo. Lust isn't just a temptation we battle in the world, it's also a battle of the heart. It's something we battle on the inside. 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. This is more than a pursuit of external behavior.
It's more than just outward effort, but it requires a transformation of the heart. We need a new heart from the Lord Jesus to empower us to have this purity of heart that He calls us to. Today, in this little section of the text, He exposes the root problem of our hearts. 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. He called them to a sexual purity in their lifestyles as kingdom citizens. I believe today that we can pursue this, that we can answer this calling that Jesus calls us to purity. 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. Matthew 5:27-30 (ESV) 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 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.
30 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.
1. We can ask God to clean and renew our hearts.
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 and He names the hands. 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.
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. It 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.’ 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.” So, we're all born with this heart attitude that the Bible calls sin.
So, it's what precedes and 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; we lust after things. We lust after the “forbidden fruit.” We lust after things.
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 the right things belong. 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. It's to be carried out within the married life of a husband and a wife and 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. 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 the last time He says, “You've heard it said, thou shalt not murder.” You shall not murder, which is the sixth commandment of the ten. Then He says, “But I say,” and remember that 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.
So, they would 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 that He is the word made flesh. He's coming down from the mountain with the real, right, correct interpretation of the law.
He says, “You've heard it said…” He's on the seventh commandment now, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” “But I say…” Do you see what He's doing? There's six of these. This is the second one in the Sermon on the Mount where He's saying that 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.’ So, He's nailing that down and He says it with His own authority. He's not quoting somebody else's authority.
He says, 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Remember that last time I told you that this is the emphatic use in the Greek of the word “I?” What do I mean by “emphatic use?” It means that He emphasizes “I.” You could have interpreted it like this. “I, I say.”
”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 theWord made flesh.” He's the one behind the whole word. He says that 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; something you want more than God designed for you to want it. The thing about lust is that it can never be satisfied. It can never be satisfied, because when you engage it, it always wants more. 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, ‘It sounds like you got a “man sermon” right here, Pastor Gary.
I think we can check out, because it says “his” heart. It doesn't say, “her” heart. It doesn't say “our” heart. It says “his” heart in verse 28, so we know about those men.’ Ladies, don't check out. Adultery always “takes two to tango,” right? It takes two to commit adultery.
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, so I think we all have hearts that lust.
Lust is when we desire something over much; over past what God designed us to desire it. It's always “forbidden fruit.” That thing that 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. We want to do the opposite of what God says. Now, when we think about adultery, “You shall not commit adultery.”
That’s the seventh commandment. You might think of the commandments like they're chapter headings for where God's word is going, because there are 618 laws in the first five books, in the Torah, in the Decalogue, in the books of Moses that he brought down, okay, from Mount Sinai, there's 618 of them
under the header. Let's call number seven God's “top ten.” Adultery is a chapter heading for all the types of sexual sins that the book later lists. If you read through it, you'll begin to see these categories: certainly adultery, which is unlawful intercourse with another person's spouse other than your own. That's adultery.
Under that, I think it includes all sexual sin, which, for instance, would be fornication, which is sex with someone who's not your spouse. If you're single, that's having sex with someone you're not married to. Incest is
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… I could go on. God's Word outlines these, but you might consider them all under that category of adultery.
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 heart, for the one who is looking at pornography. It's really hard to get away from pornography today. It used to be you had to go somewhere and buy a magazine.
Now, you carry it around in your pocket. It's called your “smartphone.” Young men and young women are being enslaved by wrong imagery of what God really intended for sexuality. It's “shipwrecking” many young people today with this imagery.
He says that it starts in the heart. You have a lustful intent, an “over passion,” literally. The Greek word is “epithumeō.”
“epi” means “over,” like epicenter. We use it like that, but it intensifies with “thumeō.” “thumeō”means to boil, to boil over, to have this lustful intent that you lose control. It's an “over desire.”
When He talks about the heart, I've already said it's about the attitude, but for the Jewish mind, the heart was the center of the will. 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 in Ezekiel 36:26-27 (NLT) 26 “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. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.”
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.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. 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 metal sign and it says, “Speed Limit 70,” there's nothing there in the sign that engages your right foot. The sign says,
”Speed Limit 70,” and your right foot automatically slows down. No, it's not how that works. It has to go through your heart. Your eyes see it,
but your heart thinks, I don't want to. I like to go 78. Somebody told me if you go eight over, they won't pull you.
I've been pulled before. Try telling that to the trooper, ‘Somebody told me if you go eight over…’ ‘I don't know who told you that,
but driver's license and registration, please.’ 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, then you get the condemnation. What we need is a new heart. We need a new willpower. When David committed adultery with a woman named Bathsheba, he thought he got away with it. 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.” 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 secret. 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.
The flesh behaves in the dark and the broken attitude of the heart is engaged in the darkness. So, David had committed sin. He thought that he got away with it. He did it in secret,
but God saw it. God sent the prophet, Nathan, to go and say to David, ‘God saw what you did’ and David repented. It cost him a lot, but he repented. He wrote this Psalm, Psalm 51, as his prayer to God, his prayer of repentance.
Psalm 51:10 (ESV) “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Oh, he was broken. Lord, I need You; I just need You to get out the Brillo pad. Get down in there and dig it out.
Get it out of me.
Clean my heart. Have you ever prayed that prayer, ‘Lord, clean me up?’ I don't care where you're at today. I don't care that 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, and I talked about smartphones, but the fact that we're giving smartphones to 8 year olds.
We have middle schoolers taking smartphones. You might think, Well, it's convenient, okay? But smartphones are not smart.
They just pipe in whatever the world's dishing out. 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? 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; there is 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. Then, they'll get shamed for it.
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. So parents, 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. 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. Every piece of garbage just gets piped in right there. There's young men today that are becoming addicted to porn that's beyond belief of how far away from God it is. I mean, young men used to go buy a magazine and had 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.
It is entangling their hearts like weeds. Speaking of weeds (hard shift here), it sure is hard to grow grass in Wilson, North Carolina. I'm not from here. I moved down here from the Appalachians of Virginia; I moved from Roanoke, Virginia.
It's called the Star City, up there in the Blue Ridge. You could buy Kentucky 31 grass seed and throw it on your concrete driveway and grow grass. It was easy growing grass. I got down here. I've been working at this thirty, almost 40 years.
It's like a science, an art and you still lose. So, here's a picture of my yard.
Not really. I'm doing better. I've been working at it for 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 (pic of crabgrass). 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, 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 thorns and thistles and we have to work by the sweat of our brow.’
That's the curse of sin right there. There's another curse of sin right over there; it comes upon its own. It's hard to grow grass in Wilson.
You have to work, cultivate and do all kinds of things to the soil. The soil is like your heart;
you have to put good things in there, you have to put God's word in there, you have to pray and you have to have the discipline of really getting before the Lord to sow good seed. But, you don't have to plant weeds;they're just in there and they just come up. I need a new heart. I need a clean heart. Don't you need a clean heart? Lord, come and clean my heart out
and get these unholy desires out of me and give me a new desire and a new spirit. Where's your thought life taking you? It's easy to grow weeds. They grow on their own. Where are your thoughts?
Are you nurturing hidden desires that, left unchecked, will shape your actions? Are the TV shows you watch, 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, do you feel like there's something better for me out there? Maybe, it’s this man that's speaking nice to me at work.
You're discontent with your marriage. Are you feeding romantic fantasies about what you watch, 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 animals have imagination. We can imagine things that don't even exist yet. We can imagine things that are good, and we can imagine things that are evil. Ask yourself, What am I really craving? Intimacy?
Control?
Where do your thoughts drift on your own? What emotional states make you vulnerable to lust?
Is it loneliness? Is it fatigue? What makes you more vulnerable? Is it boredom? Is it, 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.” It starts with the heart.
2. We can look to God to help guard our eyes.
Now, we're coming to verse 29. We see that we can look to God to help guard our eyes. It goes from the heart to the eyes. If the heart represents an attitude, the eyes represent what allures, what tempts and what attracts. As Shakespeare said, “The eyes are 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 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 say, ‘I didn't hear that,” but I bet the people on that mount that day, when Jesus said that, I bet the men and the women
said, ‘No one ever taught like this man.’ He does what's called a “lesser to greater” comparison. He says, “For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” He says that this whole sin problem we have, this whole lust problem that starts in the heart, is triggered by the eyes.
The eyes see things in the world and then an over desire “weed” 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 will affect me forever, the way I respond. Some of the early believers in the first couple of centuries were trying to take God's Word as literally as possible. 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. 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.
Here we are in the culture today; we are immersed, we are bathed in a constant flow of advertising and through every TV show. Sexuality is 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 to guard your eyes
if something causes you to sin. In other words, it causes you to literally 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; He is ascended 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, authority
or importance. So, 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 and throw it away. Don't play with it. Don't just walk up to the edge of the cliff. No, put guardrails up and stay way back.
He said that it would be better for you to get rid of something worldly that you love. You know, this TV show I watch, I'm into 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 just really need this. It helps me keep in touch and helps me. I really need this smartphone.
What will it take? How serious would you get about getting rid of something and throwing it away if every time you took hold of it, it caused you to sin?
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, so that we're to live a life of modesty and of purity.
I'm Facebook friends with a lot of you. What's up with the “kissy” photos? Who are you kissing?
Who are you trying to be sexy for? What is that? What are these things we're doing?
What are we advertising? I sometimes see a husband post a photo of his wife, and he will say, ‘Here's my hot wife.’ Well, keep your hot wife to yourself, bro.
Do you know what “hot” means? It means sexy. She's yours. Keep that at home.
I've gone from preaching to meddling.
I need to back off. Let's be different. Let's behave differently.
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 thinks, They're not like us. We become attractive; they want what we have. 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.
He's trying to set you free from sin. He says that eternity's at risk. Wouldn't it be better to lose that one thing that you love? 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. Mark 9:44-48 (KJV) “Where their 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,1 John 2:16 (ESV) “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”
If you think about what really got poor Eve, there's Eve in the garden, and it says that she looked at the fruit and she saw that it looked good. It always looks good. The forbidden fruit always looks good. It looked good
and so in her heart, there was already a thing that she was starting to feel, because she heard the temptation of the evil one who said, “Did God really say…” that's where it always begins. It begins with questioning God's word. “Did God really mean that? Did God really say?”
Then she sees that it looks good. It moves from the heart, to the eyes, to the hands that reach for it.
I want to be like Job. Men and women, especially young men and young women, Job 31:1 (NIV) “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.” 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.’ Well, you knew when you did this; that part you could have 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. If 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 ladies don't miss a thing. They see that. You're at the beach, you're sitting there in your beach chair.You might have gotten up early and had a quiet time; you talked to Jesus. You're sitting there and you might be reading something from the Bible. You’re sitting under your beach umbrella and here comes somebody wearing something.
Well, not wearing much of anything, let's just be honest. They come walking along. You look up and you see her. Out of the corner of your eye, first of all, you start feeling a burning sensation on this side of your face. Your wife, she ain't looking over there because she already saw her way down there. She's looking at you to see what you're gonna do.
So, if you're smart, you just go back to your book; you just go right back to your book. 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.
Wherever there's a weak point of access in your network, in your laptop or in your smartphone, it can compromise the entire system. That's why firewalls exist; they have computer firewalls. What we need is “spiritual firewalls.”
Something that would guard our eyes. An alarm that says, ‘You got to stop looking at that.” 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 are triggered visually. Sometimes, with ladies, what I hear is that it is the ears. It’s some guy at work. Your husband hasn't been saying nice things to you lately. He's just working, you know, and it's just the drudgery of being married and you are just
“going through the motions.” But, there's a guy at work who's saying nice things in your ears. So, an emotional kind of affair starts like that; it turns into text messages. So, sometimes it's the ears for ladies. 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.
3. We can rely on God for power to discipline our 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 eyes to hands, from attitude to allurement to action. Now, it's that which takes action.
Lust unchecked leads to sinful action. Jesus says to be radical. He uses parallel advice here to what he said to the eyes. He says, 30 “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.”
So now, He's moved to action, it's better to cut it off. It says in the book of Romans 6:12-14 (ESV) 12 “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 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. 14 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.
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 Aron Ralston, went hiking alone down at the Utah's Bluejohn Canyon. He was an experienced climber. As he climbed over a boulder, the boulder shifted. This boulder probably weighed 1,000 pounds. It shifted and trapped his right arm and it pinned it there.
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, took a dull pocket knife and amputated his arm below the elbow. The operation took him over an hour.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;
it was better to live missing his right arm and live than to keep his 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. You're thinking, ‘Well, maybe he'll change.’ No, he won't.
He'll get worse after you get married. He'll be more of the same. Cut it off, throw it away. Break off the relationship. Ask God to give you a godly man.
Ask God the same way, men; the 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. You can 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, 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 and 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 of 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. You don't have to wallow in 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 in Jesus' name. Amen.’
Audio
So thankful you're here today. I'm so thankful to be continuing our sermon series this morning with you. And this has been a really a good time so far in this series we've called Kingdom Living. We're in part five of it. We took a little break last week for Easter to celebrate the resurrection together.
Now, I know some of you are newer here, that is. Okay, go back and check out the last four. We're going through the Sermon on the Mount together as a church. And we're in part five of this. And you've come if it's your first time on a pretty challenging week, I'll just go ahead and admit that I've entitled this sermon Purity in the Kingdom.
And so this is going to be quite a message. But this is where Jesus went next in his sermon series on the Mount. And so we're continuing this series from the greatest sermon perhaps ever preached by certainly the greatest preacher, much more than that, the Savior of the world. And so John Stott, when writing on this, he said 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 towards 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. So Jesus is here announcing a new way of life, a counterculture, if you will, that's going to take devotion to him and not just, not just hard work or following rules, no, a heart that is molded and given over to Christ Jesus. And so that is going to be the heart of our message today. Now, some of you who are new, we've got these that we've been giving out over the last few weeks. You can follow along in here, take notes in here.
We were kind of hoping this would be something that you could keep if the Lord kind of shows you some things as we go through this long series together in the Sermon on the Mount, I wanted perhaps there to be something that you could come back to if you feel the Lord moving you as we go through this sermon series. But Jesus here is taking on one of the most personal. This is going to be kind of intimate today, certainly challenging, one of the most challenging areas in your life, your purity. And we have to admit something that our world is absolutely flooded with temptation, with sensuality, distorted views of love. You can just pick up your phone and find anything you want of some of the most tempting things you can imagine.
And Jesus here speaks with clarity and authority. That's as applicable today as ever before. He doesn't lower the bar. He raises it to the level of the heart. And so I pray today that you can be honest on this subject with yourself, that no one, good news, none of us have escaped this conversation untouched.
This is a conversation that has probably been something you've interacted with maybe a lot in your life. Lust, in fact, isn't just a temptation we battle out there in the world. No, the temptation, the battle is right here. The battle goes on here constantly. And so here, if we're going to be living as faithful citizens in God's kingdom, we're going to have to live a counterculture as salt and light, as Jesus has already explained.
And this is going to take more than just some kind of willpower, some kind of obedience. It's bigger than that. It's going to take a transformation of the heart. So I've been praying for you all week about this, that you would feel a sense of heart change as Jesus exposes this root problem here. We're in the book of Matthew.
If you've got your Bibles with you, we're going to be in Matthew, chapter 5, verse 27 through verse 30. And here, Jesus, he's truly confronting the listener. He's confronting us and exposing the seriousness of lust as adultery of the heart. And he's calling them first, and now us to a life of purity as God's kingdom citizens. So I think we'll see the text, give three key areas to answer Christ's call to purity as kingdom citizens.
So let's dig into this. Y'all are so thankful right now that you came to church today. You're like, man, this is my first some of your first Sunday. If you come back, praise God. You know, after what you're about to to hear from Christ Jesus.
Matthew 5:27. It 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 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. If you can say this, God bless the reading of his word. Amen. Amen to that.
This is a tough one. In fact, I imagine you're thinking, I don't really want to cut my eye out or cut my arm off. This is some serious stuff. And that's the point. Christ is trying to inspire you not to just dabble with this topic.
He wants you to take it seriously. And so he gives you some very serious instruction. So here's the first, the first truth, the first key area to answering Christ's call to sexual purity. It's this first. We can ask God to clean and renew our hearts.
This is where he begins. He begins with the heart. And that's going to be true for you and I. No matter what. It begins with the heart.
The first key area is your attitude of rebellion, that Christ Jesus begins with the heart for a reason. Because this is truly where sin begins. Lust is not simply a physical act. It is an internal rebellion against the dignity that God has given you, the design that God has for love. In fact, lust reduces people to objects.
It elevates this self gratification over God's glory. And so this is this thing that Jesus is not interested in better behavior. This is good news. Some of this might be really challenging to you today, but I want you to hear this. Here's the good news.
Christ Jesus isn't interested in better behavior. He is interested in your heart, which will inspire better behavior. But you have to understand something. You will eventually fail. You will eventually break down.
If it's just a matter of the will. You already know this in almost every other avenue of your life. If you tried to diet, if you didn't have a heart change, if you didn't have a good plan, if you tried to get physically fit. Most of us have failed here time and time again where we could not retain a habit for very long. And the same is going to be true in the life of purity in your life.
That this is going to be really hard if you're just trying to will it know. Christ desires a move of the heart first. So he begins in verse 27 by saying you have heard it said. Now he's here quoting the seventh Commandment. This is the commandment, you shall not commit adultery.
He's going to quote a lot of the commandments as we continue in the Sermon on the Mount. But here, the reason he says you have heard it said is because I don't want you to forget this. He's already said you have to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Scribes, you have to have a greater righteousness, which may have been troubling to hear. You might have thought, well, these were men, these were people of God that were really serious about their faith. The problem is they were only serious externally.
They weren't changed internally. So Jesus is saying very carefully, you've heard it said, don't do this thing externally. But let me tell you something, the internal stuff is worse. It's the root, the real problem. The reason that you do the external is because of what's going on in here.
This is the battle. So he says, you've heard it said, don't commit adultery, this unlawful act. And he's certainly talking about, I believe he's lumping in, as Paul lumps in, this whole category of adultery, which can include fornication, prostitution and pornography, and a whole lump of stuff. And he goes on in verse 28 to say, but I say, this is going to be the way Jesus does this whole part of the Sermon on the Mount. He says, ego, this is fun to say.
Y'all can take this home. This will make you sound real smart. Ego lego. You like that Greek? That's good Greek.
Makes me think of Pan or waffles, kind of. But anyway, ego lego, which literally means but I say, or I, I say. He's again using this emphatic eye to say, hey, you've been hearing this. I know you've been taught this commandment. And now the Pharisees are telling you, hey, don't do this stuff externally.
I say, if you're looking inappropriately at people, if here he's got it in the masculine tense. And we have to admit something. Men in the room, I'm going to call you out. We have to admit something. This is a more common issue for the man, that we have a wandering eye.
But it's not only men. And certainly I would say it takes two to commit adultery. It takes two. And here he says, though if you look with lustful intent, you've already committed it in your heart. This would have been really hard to hear.
This would have been big news. You may have heard this text before, so it's not too surprising, but it might be news to you today that you might would approach the throne room of God and say, hey, I didn't do any of the bad stuff. The Ten Commandments, I didn't kill anybody. I didn't commit adultery. I didn't steal.
I can't even say that. When I was about six years old, I stole a pack of gum and my parents made Me walk right back in there and give it back. So I already broke that one a long time ago. But Jesus is saying, hey, look, you've also already committed murder. We just talked about this last week.
Have you had anger in your heart for people unjustly? Have you called them empty head? Well, that's for most of you. That would be very light. You've done worse for most of you.
Now he's saying, have you looked lustfully at someone? Have you desired them but not acted on it? Well, my goodness, now what do I do when I enter the throne room of God? This is why the mercy and grace of Christ Jesus, the gospel, is so important, because he's letting us know something. We have a broken heart.
We have a heart that's far from God. And the reason that we constantly struggle is because we have a constant battle of the heart. This is where Jesus begins this section of Scripture. He says, you've already committed adultery in your heart. In your heart.
Not literally the pumping activity. This is often in scripture used, and we still use it this way. This is common as, like the center of one's life. Like, this denotes what it means to be you, your heart, your soul, if you will. Now, Ezekiel, he prophesied of a day that God would give his people a new heart and a new spirit.
See, from very ancient times, people have known that it's a heart problem. Ezekiel writes, I will give of the Lord, 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. This is what happens in Christ Jesus, is that you've been made new, that you have a new heart that now responds. So that when you hear a message like this, your initial gut reaction might be, oh, man, I'm in big trouble.
I don't know what to do with this. I may even want to run from this idea of what Christ is saying. But the heart that God has given you, the heart that has repented and come to faith, now says, all right, but not my will, but yours be done. I recognize I have an issue. God, cleanse me.
It leads us to where David is often in the Psalms. This is a common theme of David. He says in Psalm 51, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. This is a prayer for you, my friend, a prayer that I would recommend to you to pray often, probably daily, when you've taken the second, third, fourth glance, create in me a clean heart. Oh God, help me.
Give me peace in the moment. Now I gotta admit something, that it's really hard to create a clean heart on your own. Apart from God. It is really hard to do this. I would lump this into the same category of what it's like to try to have a nice yard.
All right, some of you are going to think this is a crazy illustration. Just come with me for a second. The sin of Adam is terrible. All right? Weeds and thistles and all that is a legit problem.
Especially in eastern North Carolina where we grow red clay. I mean, this place is impossible to grow anything. And you can pop up this image. This is kind of what I have throughout my yard. I've always called this crabgrass, but I think it might have a better name.
This stuff will grow on your concrete and it doesn't need watering. It'll survive drought. It is amazing what it can do. But you try to dig all that up and plant grass, you will work your fingers to the bone and it never ends, never ends. If you want a nice yard, just know it is a full time job for the rest of your life.
Thank you, Adam and Eve so much for the sweat of my brow. The thing is, in your heart. Jesus uses this same comparison, so don't think I'm crazy. He talks about the soil as being like the heart and that so many of us are trying to approach this topic from a hard surface, a rock kind of heart that can't receive the grace of God. Some of us are like we're on a path well traveled.
But it just. The birds come and they eat it up. And some of us, we grow it quickly, but it's all willpower. Like, this is me church. I just want to say, don't feel bad.
I'm the guy that I'll take an idea and I'll take off running with it, but it never roots quite. And so then I find myself running until I'm just running in one spot and go, oh well, I failed again. The soil is such a good illustration of the heart that it takes first us coming to Christ, saying, I am just, I'm not enough, I'm a mess. I've done all of the things that you're talking about here in the Sermon on the Mount. I don't feel like I'm salt and light.
Instead I've accused and murdered my brother. I've looked lustfully, he's not done. He's got a lot more. We're going to be here for a while. You know what it does to me and I hope and pray it does to you.
It drives me on my knees before him saying, create in me a clean heart. I need you, Lord Jesus, I hope this is encouraging to you that you don't reach some position in your life. Oh, he's a pastor. Just so you know, I have. I feel like as much attack today and temptation today as I ever have.
I don't know that sometimes I think the Lord will protect you sometimes from things, but often there's just you're inundated with temptation. And for all of us we have to pray as David created me. Now, I want to give you a couple of thoughts about this. I would say this is an area where I've considered some rich application for you. I would start with this heart topic.
What is your thought life like? Where do your thoughts most often take you? Are you nurturing some kind of hidden ideas that if you leave them unchecked long enough, they'll shape some kind of future action? Are you watching TV shows, books? Are you on social media and following things and watching things that constantly make you feel discontent with your singleness or your marriage or they draw you to lust?
Are you feeding into some romantic fantasies? I actually got on this week and just asked Google, hey, how do women fall into lust? Because I'm not, I don't know if you've noticed, I'm not one. I understand very well how men fall into this, but how do women. And almost everything was talking about this idea of an emotional affair, that it begins with some kind of discontentment with your relationship or maybe your singleness.
And then eventually you fall into what this is called an emotional affair. And it starts here and here. But it really starts with this craving that you don't have fulfilled in Christ Jesus. Now that's true for men and women alike. This is where we have one thing in common, that there's a craving that is God given, perhaps, but we're not going to him for it.
We're going everywhere else. A craving for intimacy. Did you know that Christ Jesus, that God himself made you for himself, that this intimacy thing that you so desire is good and it's part of your. Of who you are, but you're supposed to find it in him. In fact, you can meet the most wonderful woman, the most kind and gentle and wonderful man and they will not fulfill this lack of intimacy because they can't.
Because it's a God sized desire, this control that some of you may be Craving that comes with saying, all right, I'm out of control. I trust in you. This validation that you want, that comes from the father. So what we do is we end up putting our heart on things that are temporary rather than the eternal. What emotional states?
This one's a good one. This helped me this week. What emotional states make you vulnerable? Are you the most vulnerable when you're lonely? Are you the most vulnerable when you're bored?
When you're angry, you fill in the blank. What causes you to be at your most vulnerable state? I do a lot of things dumb when I'm bored. I've noticed I'll overeat when I'm bored. That's just.
You might think that's just a basic thing, but that's one of many weird things that I might get into when I'm bored. This is what gets teenagers in so much trouble, Boredom. And when you live in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, there's a lot of chance to get bored. But know where you're vulnerable. Have you asked God?
Purify my heart. Create in me a clean heart. Show me where I'm weak so that I can come to you in those moments. Don't just fight this battle. Oh, I'm going to walk right into that place where I know I'm in big trouble.
Well, that's foolish. I'm going to keep doing the thing that I've always done that gets me in trouble, but I'm going to do it better this time. That is literally the definition of madness. Do you know where you're vulnerable? Ask God created me a clean heart.
Here's the second key. We can look to God to help guard our eyes. We're asking him to clean our hearts now. We're asking him to guard our eyes. The eyes represent the temptation, the things.
This eye gate is really the entry point into our lives. He uses something. I promise you, Church, this is hyperbole here. He says, if your eye leads you to sin, rip it out. I can tell you right now, he's meant that in such a way that you would hear it go, whoa, hold up, Jesus.
What he's saying is, don't play with it. Cut this behavior out. Stop it. This isn't one of those stay and fight moments, though. This is where Paul says, flee from the sexual immorality.
He says, Jesus is saying, cut your right eye. Notice this. This isn't accidental. You may have stumbled right over this. He says, when your right eye causes.
When your right hand causes. Why? Well, the right side. Sorry, left handies. In the room.
This is not meant to be offensive to you. Just know in ancient culture, even in, even in Islam nowadays, even in certain places you go, the left hand is considered. Well, for one, a hand that you wipe with. It's kind of a foul hand. And so the right hand is meant to show you a place of honor, a place of authority.
This is like the thing you do from your heart. And so he says, when your right eye sins, you're in big trouble. It's one thing for you to just kind of accidentally with that left eye, you know. This is what he's on about. He's saying, now you are purposefully from a place of authority chosen to look and it causes you to sin.
He says, cut it out, tear it out and throw it away. That is, not only put it out of your life, but throw it.
Some of you have been playing with sin a whole long time. Alright, this message. I'm so excited that you're here today. You're like, man, I can't believe it. Some of us have been dabbling with this.
We stopped it for a little while. Yeah, I probably shouldn't be looking there. I. I probably shouldn't be talking to her like that. I probably shouldn't be spending so much time texting that man that isn't my husband.
Some of us have been playing around here. Oh, I won't do it. I'll never do it. No. Jesus says, cut it out and throw it as far as you can.
Cut it out. Stop it. Why? Because it would be better for you to cut off that relationship. It would be better for you to stop doing that thing that you're doing that comforts you.
I have to, like, I'll tell you, Church, I'll just let you in a little bit on me. I can tell you when I'm most vulnerable. It's late at night when the rest of the family's already in bed. I'm the most vulnerable. I might get bored at a time like that and eat a bunch of stuff.
Right? So that's not good anyway. But that'll be the time where I've scrolled something on social media that I may have not intended, but I saw it, or I've watched a show that I shouldn't be watching, or that's my most vulnerable moment. And here's what's crazy. I will look at that time and go, but I need it.
I need a time where I can decompress.
And that's kind of true. I do need time to get my heart right. But I'M doing the opposite of that. Then I'm feeding something I don't want to feed, both physically and spiritually.
I've even forgotten at times what it looks like to decompress. Truly, some of us are confused on this. We think rest is the act of doing nothing. It's not.
Rest is time well spent with the Savior. Rest even might be doing something that you feel is at the heart of your purpose that gives you life. That might be rest.
I admit this, that times when I try to decompress are actually times where I compound sin in my life. I'm saying to you, and now saying to myself, what Jesus is saying is don't just, all right, you know, I'm not going to do that very often. He's saying, stop it. Quit playing around there. You're vulnerable in that moment.
Stop having those conversations. Stop spending time late at night. What are you doing anyway? Half the time I'm up till 1am and I got to get up at 6. I'm going to be tired.
But I need time. I don't even love myself when I do stuff like that. What is wrong with me? But you're right there. You're right there with me on something.
Jesus says it'd be better to lose it than for your whole body to suffer. In fact, here he's using this illustration of gehenna, the word here in verse 29 and 30. For hell is the word gehenna, which is a physical place where they dump trash, where they put decomposing things. And it goes on to mean hell or a place of torment. DA Carson, when writing on this, I love how he puts it.
He says we are to deal drastically with sin. We must not pamper it, flirt with it, enjoy nibbling a little bit around the edges. We are to hate it, crush it, dig it out. Sin leads to hell. And that is the ultimate reason why sin must be taken seriously.
Now for the nonbeliever, that's fact. Sin leads to a place apart from God forever. For the Christian, it leads to a hell on earth. You might not believe me. I would encourage you to listen to this.
That when you live a life apart from God's blessing, you are living hell on earth. That when you make the decision what God's best for me, that's whatever, I don't care. I'm going to do what I want. I'm going to follow my temptations. I'm going to follow whatever the flesh in my life.
You will find emptiness, vanity, brokenness. You'll ruin relationships. You'll feel a lack of peace. I think Jesus is talking about two possibilities here. The desires of the eyes are not often from the Father.
First, John, chapter two. It says, for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. I wonder, church, can you make a covenant with God about your eyes? What you look at Job did this. Job 31, he writes, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman.
Have you made covenants with God now? It's been a little while since I went bowling. Anybody been bowling recently? It's been a minute. I'm decent at it.
I'll just say that I don't need the rails. I'm okay. I can close most of my frames. I'm going to get some strikes and spares, but I'll leave a few open. We're going to probably not crack 200.
Some of you are better perhaps than me, but I can at least say, I don't need the rails. You can always tell the people that are there to either just annoy everybody else. I'm kidding. I know that's not why you came, but some people are like, oh my gosh, he just threw his ball in my lane, like, and just blew my whole frame. But I'm not saying, you know, you go have fun, you go make a mess.
But you can always tell the rookies because they put the rails up and they just literally, my kids would do this. They would just see how many times they could get it to ping pong and then get a strike. Like, what in the world is going on here? And I'm trying to good form, you know, get the form right. You can always tell the rookies.
But I can tell you this, none of us are pros when it comes to life. Some of you have made the decision at some point in your life, I don't need the rails. I don't need the rails. You're lying to yourself. None of us are pros at this.
We all need the rails, which means we make a covenant with God. Job makes a covenant. He says with my eyes. I would say he probably went a step further. I would say to you, it takes another step.
God, I commit to you what I look at. I make a covenant with my heart to you, that I will walk with you and I will go where you sin, and I won't look at things that you don't intend. And that is going to now take some Side rails. Because tomorrow I got to go bowling and tomorrow I'm going to find out there's a whole lot of crazy stuff that's going to throw me in the gutters. And I can make the decision, hey, you know what?
But I'm a pro. I've been doing life. I'm about to hit 40, y'all. I know what I'm doing. I know this.
I know myself well enough to know I can get in a big old mess, put the rails up, stay out of the ditches. So here's some more very good healthy application for you on guarding your eyes. What needs to go? What do you have to cut out? Maybe there's an app on your phone right now that you, if you would just be honest for a moment, would say, this has led me to do nothing good.
This has only been a place of either distraction, lust, just mind numbing. I don't know, you think about that. Maybe there's a certain thing you're doing, a certain app that's wasting a late night habit. Maybe there's an unhealthy friendship. Every time I hang out with such and such, I get into a mess.
We go out partying, we get in trouble. There's always something going wrong. And I know the Christian answer will be, hey, but you know, we're supposed to love people and we're supposed to contend for the gospel. Are you doing that when you hang out with this person or are you just going astray? What if they know that you're a believer and you're doing all the dumb stuff they do?
Is that a good witness? Maybe I would argue with you, my friend. Maybe you need a season of healing before you come back to that friend or that set of friends. And you can come at a point of healed and set free.
Don't negotiate with sin. There's something poisoning your soul. Tear it out, throw it away. Maybe it's time to unfollow somebody that's constantly stirring up insecurity and jealousy and obsession with your appearance with some kind of romantic fantasy. It could be a friendship that started good, but now it's getting flirtatious.
Cut it out. Is your phone your quiet escape where you slip into these places? I would say that's the most dangerous thing that's ever been invented. It's also incredible. We've got computers in our pockets that are stronger than what I grew up with.
I mean, believe it or not, I grew up with the dial up, right? Some of you were even previous to that. I get it, but I mean you couldn't get into. You had to actually go and purchase things to look at. And none of us were doing that.
You know, I'm a pastor's kid. I wasn't about to do that, right? But I'd go over a friend's house and they'd have quicker Internet and be like, boy, that was the time. Now we've got this powerful device that is faster than anything ever right here.
Your eyes are the window to your soul. What you look at eventually influences what you long for. What you look at eventually influences what you long for. What you let in will either stir your affections for God or distort your view of people relationships. So set up some guardrails.
Here's the third key area. Key truth. We can rely on God for power to discipline our hands. Some of you are already past this point. The heart has been in trouble, the eyes have been in trouble.
And these are things you can give over to the Lord for his. For his grace and his mercy, and that he will set you free in these areas. But perhaps it starts here for you, that it's already led you to action, your hands. He uses the hands here purposefully because this is the thing that denotes action. And again he says right hand.
So it's a purposeful kind of action. You didn't accidentally do this thing. You have been into this for a while. He says it would be better if you cut it off. The word here he uses encopto, which is most often used to cut down a tree.
He says, if your strong hand causes you to sin, cut it out, cut it off. What is he on about here? This is the idea that the things in which you get into the actions, these things will eventually lead your heart, your eyes, all of it will be led astray. Paul writes to the Roman Church in chapter six. He says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.
Do not present your members to sin as instruments of 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. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. Therefore your bodies, my friends, are meant to be instruments of reconciliation, of grace, of the Gospel. And if they're constantly in the mud, they're not going to be clean enough to do any of that operation. He says, give this over to God too.
Trust that he will give you the power to discipline your hands. Now, I heard this story this week. I Was looking, I'll admit, I was hunting for something to illustrate this point. And I came across this one. It's a little bit graphic.
You may have heard of this, but in 2003 there was this climber named Aaron Ralston. You can pop his image up for me. Excuse me. He went hiking in Utah. And you could probably tell by the image something went wrong.
As he was climbing over a boulder, the boulder shifted and it pinned his arm against a canyon. And for five days he tried fruitlessly to budge this 800 pound rock. Eventually, he decided to break the bones in his forearm and amputate his arm. There was no one there, no one to find him. This was like some scary movie kind of stuff to me.
But apparently with a pocket knife he managed this. The operation took him over an hour. Once free, he rappailed down a 60 foot cliff and walked five miles before finding help. Now, the dude, first of all is pretty impressive. That is some manly stuff.
However, he came to a conclusion that some of us have never come to that. The only way for me to live is to cut this off. He had to eventually come to the conclusion, I'm never escaping this. I'm going to have to chop it to get free. I think this is the heart of the lesson for you today, is that there's something in your life that's far from God, where your heart is not given over to him.
And you might even say, hey, you know, there's so many areas in my life that I've given Christ lordship. But I say this a lot around here. I heard this growing up. Either Jesus is Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. And if there's certain things you're saying, I just don't want to give him that.
I'm just not ready to turn that over. That's the very place that is robbing you of true life. That is the very place where an 800 pound rock is holding you in place. You're trying to walk with God, you're trying to run, you're trying to do what he's called you to do. At some point you've got to cut.
Does Jesus literally mean cut this right arm? No. Does he literally mean you've got to cut out this behavior? Yes. Stop dabbling with it.
Oh, it's an addiction. It's something over here. You know, I drink sometimes. You know, sometimes I just let my mouth just run and I say things that, you know, some people would go, that's not very Christ like. Yeah, but you know, I can't get free.
At some point, you've got to make the decision. This thing I'm doing late at night, this stuff I'm doing with my friends. I've got to make an incision. I hope you can hear this today and not run from it. I hope you can hear it and not say, you know.
This is a religion of rules and of obedience and just. No, that's not what Christ is on about here. He wants you to know what it means to have true life, real peace, real joy, to have purpose in this life that you've been made for. But when you're stuck here, you can't run. He isn't exaggerating merely for effect.
Sin left unchecked, grows until it owns you. In Christ, freedom is possible. Do you believe that today, Church? In Christ Jesus, freedom is possible. He isn't telling you to literally maim yourself.
He's calling you to act decisively. Sinful habits don't die with good intentions. I'll do better tomorrow. No, you won't. They don't change with good intentions.
They change with intentional action. Boy, this sermon is just really personal. And he's telling me to change a lot. I don't know if I like this church. Whoop de do.
I'm just. Christ has come before all these people and now across 2,000 years, to tell you there's something holding you back. And if you would just stop it, you could live free. You can be mad at me if you want. Sinful habits die with intentional action, not good intentions.
Your body follows the leadership of your will. And your will has to be surrendered to the Holy Spirit of God. So what? Let me ask you, Church. What action, what habit, what secret needs to be cut off?
Rely on God's grace to take bold steps. Remove yourself from tempting environments, ungodly relationships. Seek help. For God not only forgives, he empowers church. Let's close now, together in prayer.
Heavenly Father, I ask that you would first pour out your grace to your people. That I recognize. There's some people in the room today that are not familiar with our church. And maybe this is a very uncomfortable conversation to be having with some new folks. God, I pray there's a reason that they showed up today, that there was something they needed to hear from you today.
In this. In this word. I believe, as your word says, that it never returns void. That there's something in this for each and every one of us. I know for my own sake, Lord, I have plenty to repent for.
I'm so sorry, Lord. For the Times I waste. For the times that I have a wandering eye, for the times that I know better and just do the very thing or get in the very place where I'm vulnerable. God, forgive me of that. I'm asking, as David asks, God, would you create in me a clean heart?
I want to represent you well. I don't just want the peace and the joy that you promised in the Holy Spirit. I do want that, God, but I want to represent you well. I want to be your hands and feet. And I recognize when I'm stuck in this sinful boulder.
I can't do that, God. I repent of those things, the lust of my heart, the brokenness in my life. God, I'm praying for your church today, for the guest and the attender and the member. God, that you would so encourage them in this moment that you don't say these things to leave us stuck. You say them so that we would turn to you with all of our heart, so that we would look at something like this and go, I can't do this on my own.
Lord Jesus, save me and guide me. Now that's the right move, friend. I recognize that some of you in the room may have never given your life to Jesus at all. This whole thing seems far fetched because the power of God is not in you. You have not yet said yes to Jesus and the gospel in your life.
If that's you and you feel the Lord calling you today, don't wait any longer. Pray simply with me. As Romans 10 says, if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. If you desire that today you feel the Lord leading you there, pray with me simply. Jesus, I believe you are Lord of my life.
I believe that you died on the cross for my sin. This broken behavior that we've talked so much about today, I believe you died for it and have freed me forever from it. And God, I believe that you raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Dear friend, if you prayed that with me, welcome to the family of God. I'm thankful for you today and I'm praying right along with you.
We're all praying as one church. Lord, help us and guide us. Create in us a clean heart devoted to you and then help us to take intentional actions to rid ourselves of things that are distractions, broken relationships, things that are leading us back to sin. God, heal us in these very areas. Bring them to mind so that we can cut them off.
We pray all of these things in Jesus name. Amen.