Matthew 5 - Lust

Anyways, Matthew chapter 5, let me kind of get you up to speed. Before I do, thank you guys for those of you who have been praying for me this week, being at home alone with my son. I love being with Jonathan, and I'm a responsible adult, so I knew I can survive five days without my wife. But just put in perspective, 10 minutes into me being alone, but Jonathan actually, a wilt was over, and he can attest.

Jonathan was sucking on a dishwasher soap container. So yeah, that kind of describes the past five days in my house. But it's okay. We made it through, so thank you guys for praying.

So for those of you who are new and are just catching up, we are in a series called Crazy Things Jesus Said. And it's actually not a new book of the Bible that we're going through. We've been in Matthew chapter 5 since September, okay? So we're just taking it slowly, but to give you an idea, the trajectory of our sermons, what we do is we like to go through books of the Bible, but we don't feel the need that we have to go through all the book of Matthew because that would probably take us like four years.

So what we do is we kind of break it up into chunks. And so we'll be having six more weeks in or five more weeks in Crazy Things Jesus Said, finishing out Matthew chapter 5, and then we'll be doing a five-week series on the Passion Week talking about the stories leading up to Jesus' death for Easter, and then right after that we're going to be doing a four-week series on relationships, coming at everything from singleness to friendships to marriage to dating, so that will be a series after that as well. So that kind of gives you a lay of the land for the next bit. But we've been in Matthew chapter 5, and what we talked about back in September is that Jesus has come to the world and he's instilling a new kingdom, that he's got new kingdom principles for those who want to follow Jesus and be his followers.

They have to follow some new principles. And so he lays that out. And the beatitudes, what we looked at in the first 12 verses was if you want to be a citizen in this new kingdom, here's some things that I expect from you. So he talks about how he expects you to be peacemakers and expects you to be merciful.

He expects you to be humble and meek. And he's got all these different things that he says, not only do I expect you to do these things if you're my followers, but I also believe, and what Jesus tells us, is that I also believe these things are going to be good for your life. It's going to help you flourish. So that series was called hashtag flourish, because when you practice sickness and being merciful and having a making peace, those things help you flourish in your life.

And so what we talked about was whether you are followed Jesus or not, that some of these principles are going to be really relatable to you. And they're going to help you in your daily life, even if you don't follow Jesus or believe his claims. But we also talked about how if you don't have a relationship with Jesus, you won't be able to fully embrace what Jesus is asking you to do. So one example of that would be the last beatitude, right?

Rejoice. Bless are you. Those who are persecuted for my namesake. If you don't have a relationship with Jesus, you can't really practice that principle, right?

But we did talk about ways that you can deal when you are being persecuted. But that just gives you an idea. And it's the same way what we're going to be seeing today and the next few weeks. What Jesus is doing, he just finished that.

We just talked about two weeks ago how Jesus came and said, I did not come to get rid of that old covenant. So everything that's in the Old Testament, I didn't come to abolish it. I came to fulfill it. And what Jesus does is then he gives a bunch of examples how he's done that, right?

And we call these antithesis is what the actual seminary word for it is. But basically it's just examples. And so he starts off saying, I'm going to show you how I come to fulfill it. Let's talk about anger.

And we talked about last week about what to do when you're angry, how to react, how to make peace, what is our responsibility as Christians when there's anger. We talked about how Jesus is more concerned that you deal with your brother. If you have something wrong with your brother or your sister, then being in the house of the Lord, he says, I'd rather you leave, go make peace and then come back. And so we talked about that last week.

And what I didn't mention, which I wanted just to recap is going to help us frame the next few weeks, is that what Jesus is offering are bigger principles. So it's not that he's just concerned about checking your attitude when it comes to anger. He's also concerned about your attitude when it comes to being rude, being prideful, being jealous, like all those different things. So what he's doing, he's using anger as a specific detail of an example, but he's giving us these larger principles of checking our attitude.

So last week, Jesus says, if you're a follower of me, you need to check your attitude. Today, what we're going to do is we're going to be looking at the next set of verses. And he's going to be giving us a specific thing to talk about, that being lust. However, there's a greater principle here, just like we saw last week, and that it's not that he's just concerned about lust, and that's the only sin he's concerned about.

The greater principle is that if you're a follower of Jesus, if you said, I believe in him, what Jesus expects you to do is fight sin in your life. And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. So if you have your Bible's Matthew, chapter 5 verse 27, down the screen if you don't have it. 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. By the way, I think the reason why he singles out men here is because I think men struggle with this a lot. However, I think in this time, you've got to remember, even though there's probably 20,000 people there, they only counted the guys. Right?

I think that's why he uses the term him. He's directing it to him. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. But 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. Throw it away for it. It's better that you lose one of your members and that of your whole body go in to hell. So let's look at this first kind of phrase here verse 27, 28.

You've heard that I was said, you should not commit adultery, but I say to you. That's that transition. That's the example. You've heard it was said like this.

This is how I'm showing you how it's been fulfilled. You have heard it said, but I say to you. And he says this. He says that your intentions can be just as damaging.

Your intentions can be just as damaging. We all know that the actual, they're considered your intentions just as damaging as the act itself. We all know that adultery, right? The act of adultery cheating on your spouse is something that is sinful and not good.

And there's ramifications to that. But in the same way, there's ramifications for your intentions as well. I was thinking this week about it. I've known in just my short 10 years in ministry, I've known at least four couples that have broken apart, have gotten divorced because of this issue of adultery.

And in each one, I remember speaking with them, I hear phrases like this, well, I wasn't meaning to it. It just happened, right? I didn't plan for this to happen. You have all these common phrases that you hear.

And yet, in every single one, you can always boil it down to an intention. One in particular was a really sad story. He was a wife who cheated on her husband. And it was really sad left her husband.

And they both worked on our worship team at our church. It was just really, really devastating a moment. And I remember, she was like, I didn't mean for it to happen. Well, we just said, well, how did that relationship start with this guy?

And it was, well, I worked with him. And I started with lunch business dates, right? And then I moved to dinner business dates. And then it moved to, well, we just want to be really good friends, right?

I can just confide in him a little bit, right? And then as soon as you see this intention that was moving away from something that was, you know, you're worked together. That's okay. But you saw the shift moving and you saw their intentions starting to not be godly.

But guess what happens? They didn't stop it and they ended up committing adultery and breaking apart that family. Guys, over and over and over again, I guarantee you that it's not just with the adult, remember, bigger picture, 10,000 foot picture here is that Jesus is saying, you need to fight sin. Whatever that is for you, whatever is the sin that is captivating you, that is keeping you from growing in your relationship with Jesus, whatever that is, Jesus is saying you need to look at where your intentions are.

Because that's where you're going to find when you're starting to go off the edges and your intentions. Every sin has an intention that gets you there, all right? And so we need to be thinking about that when we approach this subject. But I also wanted to talk about intentions for a second because I read a really interesting article this past week on pornography.

I was doing some research on adultery, trying to look up some statistics, that kind of stuff. And it was crazy. I came past one that said when you talk about guys who watch pornography or spouses where one watches pornography, and then you look at just guys who don't watch pornography, but they fantasize about other women, other wives, those kind of things. What you notice in the statistics is that there's no difference when it comes to that spouse saying that they find their other spouse less satisfying.

Just think about that. Just guys who just fantasize about other women, right? Husbands who fantasize about other women, they see their wife less attractive. All he did was fantasize and intention, right?

Like there's this thing that we have created in our society that we think that it's just that act is the bad thing. When Jesus says no, there is a root of the problem and you have to guard your intentions. You have to deal with your intentions. I think I mentioned this once or twice, but back in the day when I was in middle school, and that's a guy, at least in my school, that's when you started watching pornography, you started looking at all this different stuff.

What they said is in that generation that I come from, it has warped men's minds so badly that now when they come to a marriage, they don't see sex as a personal emotional encounter with their bride. Because we have been so desensitized. I think it's just for women too. I'm just speaking from my experience.

I think when we come from this culture, what we have done is say that sex in that whole realm, it doesn't really matter, and it's not personal in any way. When Jesus says no, the reason why lust is really important here, you need to watch your intentions because it will destroy your marriage bed. It will destroy that relationship. Because I can think of a million examples with other different things that people struggle with that is just as damaging.

What we need to do is not just say, you shouldn't do this, we shouldn't do that. We need to say why are you doing this? As a middle schooler, actually a high schooler was a couple of years, when I was 17, I finally told, I want to live for Jesus, I don't want to struggle with pornography anymore. I started doing this Christian counseling through scripture, started working with psychologists to ask these questions.

So why do you go to this? And it really turned out, the reason why I went to pornography was because I wanted comfort in my life. I had a rough family life, parents fighting all the time, I wanted to escape, it was escapism, and I went to pornography. If I just said don't do this, and I put up all this stuff to make sure I didn't look at porn, but I never got to the real issue and that I was looking for comfort in my life, when things were uncomfortable, I would have never been able to solve the root issue of the problem.

So when it comes to whatever sin you're going through, if it's pornography, if it's lust, if it's a substance issue, whatever it is, we have to ask the question, why are you going to this thing to begin with? If it's serial relationships where you just keep on getting in relationships with all sorts of people that are bad for you and not going to encourage you in a relationship with Jesus, the question, the thing is, I mean, yeah, you shouldn't date them, but that's not where we end it. We should ask the question, why? Do you feel validated?

Are you trying to feel validated in another person? Because Jesus says, and scripture tells us that you have all the value and worth, and that even if you never married anybody or had no relationships except for your relationship with Jesus, scripture tells us you should still be ultimately satisfied. And so that's what he starts to share with us here is that you have to look at the intentions that he was going deeper down, and then he says this, verse 29, he says, if you're right, I call you to send tear it out and throw it away. That seems pretty drastic, right?

He says, build measures into your life. That's the point there, right? You need to do something. Yeah, you need to check your attitudes, but you actually have to do some things if you want to overcome sin in your life.

John Owen called it the mortification of sin, the murdering, the killing of sin in your life. It's an active thing. It's not passive. So here's the deal.

I wish my parents never put, let me have a laptop in my room growing up. That is something physical that my parents could do and say, you are not having a laptop or a TV in your room. That would help me out a bunch. Now, it doesn't get to the real issue of my heart, but it certainly does help, right?

It's examining your heart, examining your faith, examining what's going on, and it is building measures in your life. It's building barrails. One of the things that we do here as a church is that our elder team, we team preach, and so every week we get together and we go over the sermon together because I am infinitely incapable of doing, of having all the right things to say at the right times. I really believe the Lord uses the body of believers to do that.

And so this week we're going out and getting together and he says, you know, it reminds me of a barrail on the side of a road. If you're going to go off the edge, something that's going to be really damaging to you, it's not that you just put a guardrail up there and you have to hit it, right? In order to get past a guardrail, you have to physically move beyond it. So either you plow right through or maybe you're trying to get over to the edge and you climb over with one foot, but you do something that you physically have to remember and think to yourself, if I go past this, it's because I'm willingly choosing sin over my relationship with God.

I'm willingly disobeying. So for me as a pastor, as a husband here's what I do, we're going to stick with the theme of adultery here and lust because it's just fitting. So here's the deal. I do not cultivate deep personal relationships with other women.

Like I have a lot of you are my friends, right? We hang out, but I'm never going to take you to lunch by yourself, right? Like I'm never going to take you to dinner, right? I'm never going to have you over when my wife's not over.

Why? Because as a man, I don't want to, I think someone told me this the other day, they were offended because she's like, well, you're going to miss out on a good relationship. She said, why are you so concerned about what other people are going to think about you? And I told her, it's not about what other people are going to think about me.

It's because I don't trust myself. Listen, we are more sinful and more rebellious than we think. And when you come to the moment where you think you've got to handle on sin and that you're better than it, that's the moment that Satan's going to attack and is going to tempt you. And guess what?

If you think you're almighty and awesome and you think you've got what it takes to overcome sin by yourself, you're going to fail every single time. I love this quote by Tim Keller. It says, we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dare believe. But I love this yet at the very same time we are more loved and more accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dare hoped.

We have to remember that when it comes to sin, we need to make sure that we don't think that we're better than being duped. We can get duped a lot. We can be put in situations. We can be tempted.

But we have to remember one that there's a Jesus, there's a God who loves us, who appreciates us and who cares for us more than we ever hoped. But we also have to remember that we do not have what it takes to defeat sin by ourselves. So we need to make sure we build these guardrails because it's not because of what we care about what other people say. We build guardrails to make sure that we, me, I, don't go past it.

That's why we build guardrails. Now there's a difference between what the Jewish people did, right? The Jews back in Jesus' time, they built all these different boundaries around these laws and the Old Testament, right? We're not talking about being legalistic.

They were assumed to be. What we're talking about is common sense boundaries that will help you fight sin in your life. And here's what I say. Some people have told me that because I won't be in another room.

I won't be in, you know, by myself with a woman outside of my bride. I'm a mom, you know, I'll be with my mom or my sister. But some people say, well, that's really drastic. That's a really drastic position to take.

And here's what I would just say. You'll never regret taking drastic measures in your life if it means you are living a life worthy of the calling. I guarantee you the moment when you stop taking drastic measures, that's when things aren't getting difficult. I bet you if I had that couple that I just told you about that broke up, I'm sure he wished his wife would have taken drastic measures to guard their marriage.

I'm sure she, however, she wasn't remorseful. She ended up moving out and living with that guy. But some of the other couples I know, they wish they would have built more drastic measures to guard their marriage. You will never regret taking a drastic measure.

I'm telling you, you will never regret it. So I don't care if people call it drastic. I don't care if people think why you're crazy on having that position. But I do it because I love my wife and I do it because I don't trust myself and I do it because I love God and I want to live a worthy life of the calling that God has given me.

All right. So here's how you fight sin in more particular first. Talk about when sent it first you need to examine your faith. Look at this and verse, both those verses can say the same thing.

But it says 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 of your whole body going to help. What it's asking you to do here is value analysis of your body. Do you notice that there? He's saying you should value your whole entire body as a whole than just one member if it means you won't go to hell.

So here's what I think the writer is asking is portraying. He's showing us that there's an importance to examining our faith, examining our bodies, examining our spiritual walks with God. He's asking us to take a spiritual analysis of our sin of our life to see if there's anything that would show us that we were not saved because of Jesus and because of his sacrifice. We are saved.

You don't have to worry about going to hell. That's not why you should put your faith in Jesus. You should put your faith in Jesus because you have a relationship with God. But what he's telling us here is this, that a life that is unrelenting in their sin, that has habitual sin, that doesn't have remorse is a sign that you do not have a genuine profession of faith.

He's saying you need to look at your life, you need to look at your faith, you need to look at your spiritual walk with Jesus and see does that thing in my life give me a red flag whether or not I truly believe in the message of Jesus or not. This is what, first Corinthians, second Corinthians, chapter 13, 5 says, examine yourselves, examine yourselves to whether you are in the faith. We examine ourselves. And I'll just make a caveat here.

We examine ourselves and we look but ultimately we need to be trusting what Jesus is going to do. Flipping tells us that he who begun a good work and you will see it to completion. We fight sin in our lives by examining to see if there's things in our lives. We do it by building guardrails and all that kind of stuff, building boundaries.

We also do it by believing that Jesus actually has the power to save us by believing that he has taken our sin for all time. It's that reminder that we have in our life that allows us to keep growing in a relationship with God. How do I battle sin? Three step process, examine your life, build measures into your life, believe in the promises of Jesus and just keep on repeating it over and over and over.

Now here's some other practical things, limit your interaction. If you are tempted in some way, limit your interaction with it and if all else fails, do the last thing and cut it off. Break your ties. That's what tells us in the text.

Now here's a common, here's the most common pushback I get when I say just cut it off. Normally, and I'm just going to use it. This is an example, normally it's in the shape of a woman who likes a particular guy and that guy isn't in love with Jesus and is not going to help her relationship with God growing. Normally this is a situation.

What she'll tell me is something like this. Well, if I break off all my ties to him, then he's not going to know any other Christians or if I break off my ties to him, I don't want to ruin that particular relationship. Or if I break off my ties to him, how am I going to help him and his spiritual walk with God? In my experience, I know that there are some, but I haven't met a couple where that girl ended up starting dating that guy, that guy came to know Jesus and he's a flourishing Christian today.

Normally it's the opposite that happens. Normally, now I'm sure there's probably exceptions, but normally what ends up happening is he's not supportive of the relationship that she has with Jesus. He's not wanting to help her grow in the relationship that she has. And normally her relationship with Jesus begins to crumble because of that influence.

And it's simple, I mean it's simple logic. It is easier, right? To pull something down than it is to pull something up. That's just logic.

And it's the same way with relationships. It's the exact same way. So build measures, build cut off ties, build guard rails. And here's just something I was thinking about this week.

That your spiritual growth will never exceed your spiritual obedience to God. If you want to grow in your relationship with God, there is going to be some obedience that he requires from you. Your spiritual growth will never exceed your spiritual obedience to him. I've been trying to decide which illustration to close with.

One, I know my wife would not approve of. And so I'm apt to do it since she's not here. But I'll start with the other one and see if it leads in, if not. When I was in seminary, I remember being in a preaching class.

We had in this preaching class, we watched this probably 35-minute sermon. And I can attest that it was probably the greatest sermon I've ever listened to. The guy was dynamic. He was a good communicator.

His point, you can understand. He exalted Jesus when he was describing. It was the most amazing sermon I've ever heard. And at the end of the video, our professor said, okay, I want you to just shout out things that you enjoyed about his sermon.

And we filled a whole entire blackboard. A whole entire blackboard with, let's make me sound old. I'm not. It was dry erase board.

A whole entire dry erase board with positive things that this unbelievable preacher did in a sermon. When we got done filling this board, our professor got a red marker and he wrote, disqualified across the whole entire board. That was hitting for me to know that you can have the best communication style. You can have the best preacher.

You can be the best leader of a church. And he let a really strong, vibrant church. And you can still be disqualified from the calling God's giving you. You can still sin.

You can still mess up your life because you didn't build the guardrails in your life. You didn't take the proper precautions. You didn't look at your intentions. And so I'm hoping it's encouragement to know that pastors we get to mess up too, right?

We mess up. And as pastors, we struggle just as much as everybody else. We're no better than anybody else. But I think what we can take from this man's example is just knowing that there's value in fighting sin.

There's value in making sure our relationship with God is strong. And again, it's going to result in flourishing. If you're fighting sin in your life, you're going to flourish. You're fighting lust in your life.

Guess what? You're going to find more satisfaction in your marriage. You're going to find your spouse. Even that more beautiful.

There are positive results from fighting sin. But I think the best one is knowing that we value God more than value in sin. And so I'm going to do it. I'm going to use that last illustration just because I know Amber wouldn't want me to.

So I'm going to do it anyways. So she'd be fine. She'd be fine. Sometimes at the end of the day when we look at our sin and this word will close, we believe that our sin is better and more valuable than Jesus and having relationship with God is.

That's why you see people going into relationships because they want to feel loved and they want to feel appreciated. They want their identity to be met. And they don't realize that their identity is already in Christ in God. And that's where they can find the full satisfaction.

So it really has to come down to the value in God less and valuing our sin more. And oftentimes we don't like how God may put things in our life to keep us from sinning. And so I say that because we think that, okay, I want to stop sinning, but that means that I'm going to have no conflict that's going to happen when I decide to make that happen. And the reality is normally when you stop doing something that you're not supposed to be doing, there is conflict that comes about.

And even that conflict can come from the Lord. So here's an example I thought about this week. So I'm thinking about this. So imagine there's this really cute little bird and this bird's flying south for winter but left a little bit later.

And he starts to fly south, but it's really cold and there's a lot of icy rain and the temptation and the struggles are coming. And he's flapping his wings as hard as he can. But after a while, he's getting tired. He can't go on.

And then his wings start to freeze. And as they start to freeze, he's no longer able to flap his wings and he ends up in a field. He gets there and he thinks to himself, wow, I've ended up in this field. I'm on rock bottom.

God, what are you even doing? How are you going to help me out of this? This day could not get any worse. Now, as this little bird says that a cow walks by and takes a poop all over the bird.

Just dumps right on top of him. This is why my wife is lying. She doesn't want me to see poop on stage. But it takes a poop right on the bird.

And the bird's like, are you cooting me? No, he's angry at this. And after a while though, you see that the cows poop, the manure started to heat up its wings and the birds started to get a little bit more traction. And then as soon as it started getting traction, it noticed that its leg had gotten stuck and a cat walks by, this little tiny bird, cat walks by and digs up the dirt around the bird so the bird could take off.

And before the bird could do it, the cat ate it. Tell your neighbor he's going somewhere with this. I'm going somewhere with this. And here's the moral of the story.

Sometimes the people who dump on you are not your enemies and sometimes the people who dig you out are not your friends. And I think about that sometimes we think that the easy way, the thing that's helping us out, we think that's God but it's really Satan. It's really Satan getting ready to gobble us up. And we don't like how God's handling the situation and we think what he's doing is making a more mess in our life, like the cow, making a more mess in our life than actually needs to be.

And actually he's just trying to soften us up to be able to fly again. I don't know if it was bad in illustration but I won't let that. Anyways, so with that, what we like to do at Mercy Hill is just offer a time of just reflection. You see what Jesus has done for us is that he has radically changed how people thought.

He's going to a people who thought, oh I just won't commit adultery on my wife but I'll look at everybody else. He says, no, no, no, no, it's harder if you want to be in my relationship with me. It is harder to live the Christian faith than it is to live the Old Testament faith even with all 600 of your rules because now I'm going to look at the intentions of your heart. And what he's doing is he's trying to give this principle that we not only check our attitudes like last week but we need to check our faith, we need to check our sin in our life and we need to fight sin.

If you want to be a follower of Jesus, you want to grow really if you want to grow in your relationship, you need to fight sin, you need to build barriers, you need to say God whatever you want to come into my life to help me to do this, I'm going to take it even if I think it's going to make a mess of my life because I value my relationship with you more than my relationship with sin. So let's pray. Lord, we just thank you for allowing us just to be here. Father, I don't know the situations or different sins that we have represented in this room, struggles.

The Lord, I do know this. I know that you sent your son Jesus to die for that sin. You sent Jesus that we could actually live a life that is blameless and holy in front of you. Lord, let's just remember how valuable you are.

That's how we remember that we should value you more and that even if we had everything that we ever wanted but didn't have a relationship with you, we would have nothing in life would help us to have you in our lives. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.