Sermon Transcript:

We return this morning to our journey together through the Gospel of Matthew. You may recall we are looking at what is called the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is teaching His disciples the proper understanding of the law of God. He began with the beatitudes, describing what a righteous person was like. He said they are poor in spirit, pure in heart, and they hunger and thirst for righteousness. They are merciful and compassionate, seeking peace, and they suffer faithfully for the sake of the truth.

Jesus then explains that these things require more than an external righteousness, they require a righteous heart. He begins correcting the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees who taught the law as if it were a way to earn righteousness. Jesus shows that the law, properly understood, is not to exalt man, but it exposes sin and drives us to God for mercy. This is why Jesus says that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Theirs was an external obedience, but their hearts were far from God.

Last time, pastor Chris unpacked Jesus’ teaching about anger, that a person filled with hatred or contempt is guilty of murder before God, even if they never commit an act of outward violence. In our passage today, Jesus will make a similar point about lust and adultery. Jesus is giving us the true interpretation of the law, which causes us to despair of our own strength and to run to the cross. We are forgiven and justified by grace through faith and we shall also walk in sanctification by grace through faith. Our main point in the message today is

Since Jesus alone saves us from the destruction of sin, we must fight urgently for purity in His power.

It is interesting that when Jesus turns His attention to interpreting the law, He doesn’t begin with the first commandment, which is to have no other Gods other than Yahweh. Instead, Jesus begins with the sixth commandment about murder and then proceeds to the seventh commandment about adultery. I suspect he does this for two reasons. 

First, most people likely have not committed murder or adultery and so these are two laws that we may think we have kept if we are looking at them only from an external perspective. But also, once we understand that these commands also forbid ungodly anger and lust, then it is clear that nobody is righteous before the law. We may be self-deceived about our love for God, but virtually nobody can claim to be perfect with regard to anger and lust. 

Perhaps Jesus skips the first few commandments because we would be incapable of believing how far short we fall in them if He did not first show us how far short we are of even the easier commands for a person to keep. 1 John 4:20 says,

20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

What Jesus exposes in the Sermon on the Mount is that we are not by nature righteous. We are wicked and for wicked people to act holy on the outside while being evil on the inside does not impress God, it merely adds the sins of pride and hypocrisy to an already guilty soul. Jesus is showing us that what we need is a righteousness that doesn’t come from us and that is exactly what He offers to those who believe. When we receive Jesus as our Savior, we receive His perfect sinlessness as our official record before the law. His perfection is credited to us because we are united to Him.

We pick up in verse 27,

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.

The act of adultery is a horrendous sin, and Jesus is applying this command, as He did with murder, to include our desires and intentions. Jesus is showing us that lust is simply a less developed form of adultery. It is like when we strike a match. That tiny flame seems harmless but if it continues to be fed it will grow stronger and destroy everything in its path. The flame on the matchstick and the flames of a wildfire are different in scale, but not in nature. Jesus says lustful intent and the act of adultery are the same way. One is the spark, the other the inferno, but both are made of the same deadly fire. Holiness requires us to not only be physically pure but mentally pure. 

When we say that Jesus kept the law perfectly, we mean that He never even had an impure thought or desire. As sinners the thing that often keeps us from pursuing more wickedness is a fear of punishment. We may desire things that are wrong but our self-love causes us to avoid the penalties, meaning even our obedience apart from Christ comes from an idolatrous love. But Jesus never had a desire to do anything wicked, not for fear of punishment, but because He loved God and loved what is good.

Before being  born again, we did not have that kind of love, but having died with Christ and been born again, we have been raised with Him to walk in newness of life. We have been given a new nature. We still struggle with sin until His work in us is complete, but we are no longer enslaved by it. We are being transformed by the renewing of our minds so that where we used to be controlled by our sin, we can now fight against it by the power of the Spirit of Christ who has already overcome it.

While in this life, we are in a spiritual battle and have an enemy who seeks our destruction. If he cannot keep us from heaven, he will try to destroy our testimony, steal our assurance, and limit our ministry. We know that we have victory through faith in Christ, but we must work out that faith. To walk in faith is to live in the reality of freedom from sin not just theoretically, but progressively. That just means that as we mature in the faith we become more like Jesus.

It is also important to keep in mind that there is a difference between temptation and sin. Jesus was tempted in every way and He never sinned. Temptation will come, but by the power of Christ, we can resist temptation. Jesus is not saying that temptation is adultery, He is talking about entertaining lustful thoughts. As Martin Luther said, 

“Temptations, of course, cannot be avoided, but because we cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we should let them nest in our hair.”

One who “looks” is not someone who simply recognizes the attractiveness of another man or woman. To look in the way Jesus is using the term is to intentionally pursue indecent thoughts. To look with lustful intent, means looking with the purpose of satisfying lustful desires or to produce them in another person. The commentaries are full of explanations attempting to detail what this is and isn’t, but we don’t need to be Greek scholars to understand what Jesus is saying. He is saying to fantasize about someone other than our spouse sexually or to entice them to do the same is adultery.

In this we see the holiness of God and the extent to which sin corrupts how we experience the world. I am not sure I have ever met an adult who can claim innocence by this standard and yet this is what should be normal. This is what we were created to be. We underestimate the seriousness of our sinful condition but Jesus is showing us the truth about our hearts. We accept these kinds of sins as a normal part of life, but Jesus says they are very serious. He says,

 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.

Jesus is not suggesting that we actually cut off our hands or pluck out our eyes. The source of the sin is not in the eye but the heart. We should not, however, assume that His point about it being better to lose a member than to go to hell is an exaggeration. Rather than take the edge off what He says, we should recognize that He is speaking with tremendous urgency. His point is that we should take drastic measures to not put ourselves in situations that will draw us into sin because that ends in eternal judgment. 

The right eye and the right hand were considered the strongest and most valuable. To lose them wasn’t just painful, it could mean losing your livelihood, your ability to work, your ability to provide for yourself or your family. It was a devastating loss in the eyes of the world. And yet Jesus says that holiness is worth it. Spiritual purity is more valuable than your greatest earthly treasures. No sacrifice is too great if it keeps us from sin that leads to destruction. As evangelist Ray Comfort said,

“God is sympathetic to our weaknesses, but not to our sin. He forbids only that which will kill us, and He has made a way for us to escape…” 

In the death and resurrection of Jesus God has made a way for us to escape. The reason Jesus wants us to understand the depth of our sinful condition is not to condemn us, but so that we will run to Him for salvation. We were hopelessly lost, which is why Jesus Christ, the Son of God, left heaven and came to live as one of us. He lived a perfect life and died a perfect death under the law for us. He came to live and die as our substitute. Our sins were placed on Him and He was crucified on a cross in our place. He died and then rose again, proving the sins of everyone who accepts Him as their savior have been paid for. 

He did not die just to take away the penalty of sin, but also to give us new life. Believers no longer battle in the flesh, but in the Spirit with His power and that brings us to a vital point: we must understand Jesus' words here in the full context of the Sermon on the Mount.

We must not misunderstand Jesus to be saying that we can achieve victory over lust by trying harder in the flesh. His urgent warning about sin and His instruction to pluck out our eye or cut off our hand should not be misunderstood as though taking some external action can make us righteous. That would be to think like a pharisee as if the law could address our sin. The entire purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to show the hopelessness of that approach. 

To enter the kingdom of heaven our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and pharisees. That means it must be an inner righteousness that comes from a renewed heart, not by trying harder to keep certain rules. The essence of the sinful heart is that it loves itself more than anything else. That is what leads it to satisfy itself with lustful thoughts. That is also what causes it to value eyes and hands more than holiness. A holy desire that cares more about spiritual wholeness than physical wholeness only comes from a work of transforming grace by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says we must exercise self control, but the self control He is talking about is not the fleshly self-control of the pharisees. It is not the kind of self-control the world talks about, as if better education, better training, or better disciplines can remove the effects of sin or empower us to overcome them. The self-control Jesus is talking about is a gift given to those who are born again. Galatians 5:23 lists self-control as a fruit of the Spirit.

The work of the Holy Spirit does not eliminate the need to resist temptation, it enables it. While we were dead in sin there was no struggle, but now being made alive, the spirit strives against the sinful desires of the flesh. The apostle Paul says in Galatians 5:16–17,

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

The life of faith is a call to put on the full armor of God and to resist the devil. We see this throughout the New Testament. For example the apostle Paul is writing to believers when he says in Romans 8:12–13,

12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

If we live according to the flesh, we will die. We are to put to death the deeds of the body, but notice that we do not do this in our own power, but by the Spirit. Jesus has already shown us that it is impossible for us to overcome our fleshly passions in our own strength. God calls us to do this work by the power of the Spirit that indwells all true believers. 

We cannot overcome lust by simply trying harder to be more disciplined. What usually happens when we do that is we may have some period of peace while the devil waits us out. Then he strikes while we are weak or tired and we fall into sin. This is followed by a flood of shame and guilt and we start the cycle all over again, promising God that we will try harder. But that will never work because it is an attempt to use the flesh to overthrow the flesh. We cannot fight sin with the law, only the gospel will kill it.

To put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit means to weaken the desires of the flesh by replacing them with the desires of the Spirit. It is to grow to love the pleasures of Jesus more than the pleasures of the flesh. It’s to be transformed by the truth, recognizing the promises of sin are all lies, and instead choosing the promises of Christ. It’s to know Him, to trust Him, to believe that what we have in Him is infinitely better than anything sin can offer. When temptation comes, we resist it not by sheer willpower but by being filled with the truth and fueled by the love of Christ.

But listen, if we try to do this on the fly, we will fail. We need to be regularly filled with the promises of God, storing up His word in our hearts so that we are satisfied in Christ long before the temptation ever comes. We need to be in regular conversation with God in prayer seeking His guidance. The war isn’t won in the moment of temptation; it’s won in the quiet mornings of worship, in the daily meditations on Scripture, in the prayerful delight in the goodness of our Savior. We won't choose Christ over sin unless we see Him as more desirable, more beautiful, and more satisfying than anything the world can offer. 

Proverbs 4:23 says,

23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

We must protect our hearts, brothers and sisters. The blood of Christ is sufficient to overcome the assaults of the enemy. God promises that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. The more filled we are with joy in Christ, the less attractive sin is. Every temptation is an attempt by the devil to get us to trade a promise of God for something less. The pleasures of lust are fleeting, but the pleasures of God are everlasting.

Second, as Jesus tells us, taking practical precautions is not legalistic, it is wise. We should recognize and avoid situations that will lead us into temptation. I recall a story of a little boy named Billy who kept climbing up on the counter and eating from the cookie jar so his mom moved the cookies into the pantry. One day, as she was busy around the house she thought it was a little too quiet and so she called out “Billy, where are you?” “In the pantry,” he replied. She asked, “what are you doing in the pantry?” to which Billy replied, “resisting temptation.”

Friends, the pantry isn’t the place to try and resist temptation. Like Joseph in the Old Testament, we should flee from temptation. We should actively guard against it. Sin often enters through the doors we leave open. It is not foolish to avoid dangerous situations. Pride goes before a fall. As Voddie Baucham pointed out,

“The wisest man in the Bible fell into sexual sin, the strongest man in the Bible fell to sexual sin, and the godliest man in the Bible fell to sexual sin. For me to think I’m above falling into this sin is to think that I’m wiser than Solomon, stronger than Samson, and godlier than King David.”

If we try to overcome lust in our own strength and wisdom we are going to fail. We are not as wise, strong, or good as these men were, but as Garrett Kell points out, 

“Jesus is stronger than Samson, wiser than Solomon, and more devoted than David — and in him, we find help.”

The standard Jesus teaches is radical but the amazing thing about grace is that God will provide what He requires. There is help and victory even over lust that can be found in Jesus Christ. The world desperately needs healing and hope, especially with regard to sexual sin. Things that would have been unspeakable not too long ago are now piped directly into our homes and there is a brothel available in every pocket. Mainstream entertainment is a cesspool of indecency. We are drowning in a sea of media designed to arouse lustful impulses aimed not only at young men, but everyone, including children. 

We have become so numb to it that we tune it out and often do not even realize how offensive these things are to God. Just to put things in perspective, let’s just look at the most explicit examples. Market research estimates for 2024 put the global porn industry at $287 billion. That makes porn larger than the video game industry, twice as big as the movie industry, and 9 times bigger than the music industry. If all the money generated by pornography were a single country’s economy, it would be the 45th largest economy in the world.

The research shows nearly 70% of Americans occasionally consume pornography, including around half of professing Christians. In the US the average age of first exposure to sexually explicit images is between 9 and 13 years old. It is impossible for us to live in this context and not be affected by it. Trust me, it is almost certain that some brother or sister you know is struggling with this. Too often churches have been reluctant or embarrassed to address it, but it shouldn’t be that way. We have the only answer that can provide ultimate deliverance and healing.

If you are struggling with sexual sin, I want you to know that you are not alone, and there is power for deliverance in Jesus Christ. Find a brother or sister of your own gender that is mature and you trust and talk with them about. Ask them to pray for you and to check in on you. The devil grows his fruit in the dark, but the truth is there has never been a secret act of lust. God sees everything and the first step in freedom is being open about where we struggle so we can encourage and pray for each other and point each other to the glorious treasures we have through Jesus Christ.

This is good advice for all of us as we disciple one another. We don’t want to wait until we fall to be praying for each other. The pastors here recognize that this is one of the favorite areas the enemy loves to attack leaders and we hold each other accountable, but we ask for all of you to be praying for us even as we pray for you.

Ultimately, it is by the grace of God alone that we are delivered. Christ has won the victory, and because of Him, we live in confident hope that a day is coming when He will return, raise us with Him, and sin will be no more. Until then, we know He walks with us and we can resist temptation in His power. Hebrews 4:14–16 says,

14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

I want you to see three things in this passage. First, Jesus knows what it is to be tempted as a human being. Our representative is sympathetic to our weaknesses. He understands how difficult this battle is. Second, He was victorious in this very battle. He was tempted but was without sin. We can trust Him that He knows how to achieve victory. He has ultimate credibility when He tells us how we should approach this. Three, He offers to help us. He calls us to come to Him in prayer, that we should find mercy and grace in our time of need. 

When we come to Jesus in our weakness, He does not scold us, He welcomes us. Like the father of the prodigal son, He runs to meet us, embraces us, and clothes us with the robes of His righteousness. When we come repenting, He responds with rejoicing. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance. And every time we draw near to Him, it is the Father's joy to receive us

So brothers and sisters, we admit our need for help and we call out to our savior knowing He is with us. We can rejoice that our salvation is secure because Jesus died for our sins and has been raised for us. We know that by faith, we have died with Him and have been raised with Him and the life we now lead, we lead through the power of His Spirit within us.

This doesn’t make us lax with regard to sin, quite the opposite. It strengthens us to fight with confidence. Jesus will complete the good work He began in us. His blood has purchased our holiness, and since He loved us enough to die for us while we were still sinners, we can be absolutely certain He will never abandon us. We fight temptation and lust knowing that there will be no pleasure greater than to see Him as He is and to be made like Him!

May each of us therefore draw near to the throne of grace every day seeking His strength and His power to walk as Jesus walked. May each of us look to things above rather than things here below for our pleasures as we are renewed day by day by His grace. Let us remember therefore that we don’t fight for victory, but from victory. Christ has already won the battle. Our hands may tremble, our knees may weaken, but His hold on us is unshakable. Let us walk with hope, for the King who saved us is the King who will carry us safely home.

And so, with hearts full of hope, let us end where all true hope ends: with the glory of God, as expressed in the words of Jude 24-25. May this be our praise, the prayer of our heart, and our greatest pleasure now and forever. 

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.