Lust Tackled by the Gospel of Grace

Lust Tackled by the Gospel of Grace
Matthew 5:27-30, 7/14/06, Kevin P. Larson, Grace Church of Columbia

Matthew 5:27 "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.

Men here at Grace Church of Columbia are strongly encouraged to install a program called “x3 watch” on their computers. This software emails an accountability partner every month or so any questionable websites visited. It’s a super program, and I think it has benefited each of us tremendously.

Recently, the leaders of the ministry that produce the software, called XXXchurch, attended and set up a booth at L.A.’s “Erotica Expo,” which is billed as the world’s largest pornography trade show. They handed out hundreds of copies of The Message paraphrase of the Bible that were emblazoned on the front with “Jesus Loves Porn Stars.” Now, I want to mention this again at the end of today’s sermon, but right now I want to say that this expresses at its heart a desire that the church needs to have—a desire to take lust and pornography and immorality in our culture head-on. We need that kind of zeal. We need that type of commitment. We, as the church, must do something.

Let me begin explaining why there is a need for such measures. Most of these will seem obvious to you, but they need to be said, regardless.

First, lust and pornography that incites it is rampant in our culture. If we take Merriam-Webster’s definition of the term “pornography,” that it is the “depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement,” then we don’t just see it in America, we live in it.

If we use the terms of the porn culture, referring to soft-core or hard-core porn, we swim in an ocean of soft-core pornography. The media provides a constant barrage of lust to us daily. Turn on your TV at night and you will see countless shows about sex—reality shows about Playboy bunnies, documentaries about breast implants, and game shows about people “hooking up.” Stand in the checkout line at Moser’s and you see countless magazines covered with provocative pictures and headlined with sayings that make you blush. We’re bombarded with sexual immorality today in America. Most people, however, don’t even notice it. If you ask a fish what it’s like to live in water, he would say, “What’s water?” This is where we live.

Last April, in the Los Angeles Times, a reporter named Shawn Huber interviewed teenage boys on the subject. One 16-year old boy is quoted as saying, “Pornography is just a part of the culture now. It’s almost like it’s not even, like porn.” One 18-year old said, “Porn is just another form of entertainment now.” Gilbert Herdt, who directs the National Sexuality Resource Center in San Francisco, is quoted as saying this in the article: “What we once called porn is just mainstream sex now, and what we think of as pornography has shrunk to a tiny, tiny area. We’ve expanded the envelope of normative sex so much that there’s not much room for ‘porn’ anymore.” Again, we swim in this.

If we speak of hard-core pornography, millions and millions of men and women are accessing it today regularly on the internet. What experts call the “Triple-A Engine”—accessibility, anonymity, and affordability—is reeling people in right and left. Believe it or not, now the pornography industry makes over 10 billion a year—more than Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Football league combined! Apparently there are over 200 new porn sites uploaded to the web a day! So more and more people are delving into the hard-core.

Second, therefore, most people, but men in particular, have been exposed significantly to pornography that has fed and increased their lust. The fact that men are naturally visually stimulated has been exacerbated and further twisted by their osmosis of a pornographic culture and their penetration into an evil world of internet porn. I often tell young people today that I can’t imagine the thought of growing up in a culture when, beginning at puberty, you’re one click away from pornography. It makes me feel old, but it makes me glad that I am.

Third, women have therefore been more and more objectified by men in particular, and society in general. This has led to an all-around disrespect for women and higher incidences of violence toward females. Despite this, women have by and large embraced this:
· Passively, they have succumbed to status as a sex object by focusing on externals or by accepting casual sex as necessary to obtain affection from men. I have mentioned this before, but Amy once told me about how, in a conversation with her fellow nurses at her hospital in Louisville, she found out that almost all of them had breast implants and also took antidepressants. The ubiquity of cosmetic surgery and the infatuation with physical fitness demonstrates women have given up. This never-ending race to have the perfect body to attract the perfect man who then dumps you when he gets bored would put anybody on Prozac.
· Actively, women have embraced attitudes and actions previously characterized by the wickedest of men.
I mentioned several weeks ago an article in Rolling Stone discussing the culture of sex at Duke University, one of our nation’s most prominent universities. This article interviews women almost exclusively and it is shocking. Here is the attitude I’m talking about. Writes, Janet Reitman, the author:

Today's female college students are the impressionable middle-schoolers of the late 1990s -- the ones who made Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera icons of sexy, powerful young-womanhood. Now, these girls, too, can have sex -- with whomever they choose and whenever they might want it, in a number of ways, without even thinking about what it all means. And they do, says a sophomore I'll call Naomi, ''Sometimes, girls will be like, 'I'm just _______ and I want to have sex,' '' she says. ''I think you'd be a lot more pressed to find that attitude a little longer ago.''

That’s for sure. One of the things Reitman tries to show in the article is the irony that, in an age of perhaps the highest opportunity for women, those same women are degrading themselves sexually. Duke has some of the best and brightest women in America and they’re excelling academically during the day and are being degraded sexually at night. Times have changed.

Fourth, the result is a society that has confused, perverted, and idolized sexual activity. This is a culture of lust. We live in a messed up place. When I say confused, I speak of Adriana Lima, an adult model Mark Driscoll mentions on his blog. Lima is Catholic, pro-life, plans to wait until marriage for sex, and has appeared numerous times naked for teenage boys to lust over. Writes Driscoll:

Having been raised as a Catholic boy, I can sadly say that I think I understand how she got to this weird point of being the naked porn fantasy of men across the world while simultaneously being devoutly committed to sexual chastity before marriage. It seems that she only sees sins of commission and does not understand sins of omission. This explains why she is proud of not committing the sin of fornication (sex before marriage, for anyone to whom that is a new f-word). And it also explains why she does not see her sin of omitting her clothes from her body as a sin. Apparently, she does not see lust as a sin but does see sex as a sin, which is the kind of theological reasoning one would expect from a supermodel.

Confusion is right. When I speak of perverted, an example would be HBO’s newest series Big Love which glamorizes polygamy. When I speak of idolized, I think of porn filmmaker Ron Jeremy coming to Mizzou for a debate and hundreds come, not to protest, but to cheer him on. We are in a sexually messed-up world. Friday night, Amy and I were watching a Dateline NBC program talking about internet sex predators. Dateline’s team posed on the internet as young girls or boys in major cities, as well as in the country, and tried to get men to come to a house for sex with them. What happened was shocking. They came and came and came to the door. There were probably 250 men that got their face on national TV for walking into a house expecting to have sex with a youngster they had met on the internet. At one house, so many men came that the police didn’t have the manpower to arrest them all!

Separated from the wedding covenant, from the committed companionship God designed, from the childbearing sex is supposed to entail, sex is now everything, while it simultaneously means nothing. We live in a culture of sexual confusion. But lest we get too upset, let us remember that Jesus and the apostles ministered in the Greco-Roman world where, if you went to worship a god, you more than likely did it with sex. Everything was a go in Rome, and it is that way now here in America. It’s no wonder why if you question gay marriage that people look at you with a blank stare. Most have no category in their head for the question. If you’re a fish, it’s hard to see many distinctions in the water.

Fifth, this culture of lust has impacted the church. Our churches are filled with people shaped by it. To say anything else would be ridiculously naïve.
· In our worship times are men and women who are absorbed in lust and porn and don’t care.
· In our gatherings are men and women who struggle with lust and porn and want to get free.
· In our meetings are men who struggle with guilt from past and present sexual sin; we also have women who experience the same, but also those who have been hurt by husbands enslaved to lust.
· In our midst are men who are trying to or need to reprogram their minds to see women with God’s eyes; we also have women who are trying to or need to go against the culture and cultivate their interior over their exterior.
Lust and pornography and immorality are rampant in churches across America. The question is, “what are we going to do?” Are we going to take it “head on” as a church or are we going to pretend like it doesn’t exist? Are we going to be proactive or reactive? Are we going to just react when things get out of hand? Or are we going to take it “head on” with the hearts of the leaders of XXXchurch? How will we respond? Here in Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus gives us teaching about how to view lust, as well as how to fight it. Will we listen?

Remember that, in Matthew 5:17-20, we saw that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law. All of it pointed to Him. It was all about Christ. Therefore, He makes it clear that if anybody has the authority to teach what the law really means, it’s Him. Last week, Scott explained that the Pharisees who taught God’s commandment not to murder were filled with anger in their hearts and insults in their mouths. Jesus said, “If you’re angry and you insult, you’re going to be judged.” Jesus proclaimed the full extent of the commandment not to murder. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:20, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Here, in Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus shows how far the command not to commit adultery extends. It, as well, goes to the heart, a place where the righteousness of the Pharisees never touched.

What was the teaching of the Pharisees? They taught the seventh commandment, which says, “You shall not commit adultery,” and were proud of the way they kept it. But, just as the Pharisees thought that they were O.K. as long as the knife blade stopped right before it slit somebody’s throat, so they thought that if they stopped right before they had sex with someone not their wife, they were obedient. They had a “you can look, but you can’t touch” view of the commandment. Therefore, they had a very narrow definition of sexual sin and a very broad definition of sexual purity. They had drawn the lines so that they perfectly enclosed their behavior. And they were proud. They had not slept with another woman. They had not committed adultery.

However, we’ll see next week that their liberal practice of divorce and remarriage, often letting go a wife because she burned their breakfast, had made them commit physical adultery over and over again. So they were guilty of adultery as they interpreted it. Jesus, however, says that they’re guilty of even how He interprets it. And for that, they were in trouble. Jesus takes it deeper.

Jesus teaches three things I want you to notice. First, He tells us of the extent of committing adultery. Second, He speaks of the urgency of fighting lust. Third, He tells us of the danger of ignoring lust.

First, let’s consider the extent of adultery. Jesus says, in verses 27 and 28, "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.” Now some would say that here lust equals adultery. Scott again taught us well about murder and anger last week. You, I’m sure, would rather me hate you or call you a moron than shoot you. In the same way, Amy would rather I look at a woman wrongly than have sexual relations with her. So the idea that a “sin is a sin” is not exactly true. Different sins have different consequences. Some affect us and others around us more than other sins. They are not equal in a sense. However, they are equal in another sense. Both violate commandments of God and leave one liable of judgment.

Notice what Jesus doesn’t teach here. He doesn’t say, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent commits adultery with her in His heart.” He says that whoever does that has already committed adultery. Thinking about last week’s passage, by the time we call someone a name and berate him, we’ve long ago hated him in our heart and broken the heart of the commandment not to murder. Here, the lustful look is not the adultery. It is an expression of a sinful desire in the heart. Think of our heart like a drug dog sniffing around for cocaine at an airport. We have a sinful desire in our heart that looks around and looks around and looks around for something to satisfy that lust.
So the lustful look is an expression of an adulterous desire. The desire is the problem. That’s what Jesus means when he says that one “has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

So the problem, much like with murder, is a problem of the heart. When Jesus said that we must surpass the scribes and Pharisees in terms of righteousness, that’s what He meant. We must surpass them by not just being pure on the outside, but also being pure on the inside. If we want to enter the kingdom, we must be different on the interior.

Sin is primarily a matter of desire. Sure, we do things outwardly, but they are expressions of what is going on inwardly. Jesus teaches this elsewhere, in Matthew 12:34-35. He says,

Matthew 12:34 You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

Bad actions come out of bad hearts. And the Pharisees were doing bad actions. Not only were they really committing adultery ironically through marriage, like I mentioned, but their eyes and hands were committing lust. Just as the anger and insults were coming out last week, so we see lustful looks coming out this week. But, if we’re not careful, we can take the Pharisees’ legalism in a different direction. We can say, “Hey, I’ll just not look. I won’t touch. I won’t tell my friend, ‘Hey, look at her,” and I’ll be o.k. But it’s the wicked desire in the heart that is the problem.

That desire, as with the Pharisees, often comes out with us. It comes out with lustful actions. It comes out by clicking on websites or watching raunchy TV programs or staring at an attractive person of the opposite sex. But, as Scott pointed out last week, what keeps us often from going straight to adultery is the fear of being caught, the concern with losing the family, the thought of getting exposed as an ungodly person. This no doubt was what was stopping the Pharisees. And it sadly is what often stops us. We are more wicked than we will admit.

What is Jesus teaching? He’s saying the desire to commit adultery is what brings judgment, not simply the act itself. I think back to my teenage years as an unbeliever. If I could have looked at pornography every day on the internet, I would have. If I could have slept with the pretty girls at school, I would have. I didn’t have opportunity, because I grew up in the eighties, and because I was a geek and couldn’t get the girls. But I was a wicked, depraved sinner deserving of judgment. I committed adultery in my heart.
Jesus teaches authoritatively as the one to whom the law pointed, that such desires break God’s command and merit judgment.

Now, some of you might be thinking, “How could you have committed adultery while single?” We have many singles here. You could be thinking, “This passage is talking to married people.” We have many women here. You could be thinking, “This passage is talking to men alone.” But, if you think such things, you’re resorting to the same goofiness practiced by the Pharisees. You draw a box with the passage that makes you fit and you look in the mirror and think you’re ok.

Single men, the seventh commandment, at its surface only, certainly prohibited having sex with anybody that was not your wife. It included fornication. Jesus here forbids having sexual desires for anybody not your wife. It includes desires for fornication. So, this most certainly applies to you.

Ladies, single or married, this applies to you, as well. Yes, men are naturally more visually stimulated. But women are naturally more emotional. They may not look at a man on the street and have a sexual fantasy right there. But the danger is that a woman may look at another man, see how he cares for his wife and family or people in general, see how he loves the Lord and may lust for Him in her own, feminine way. You’re more likely to get online, not to look at pictures, but rather to chat back and forth with another man, attaching your heart to another. Writes Charles Mylander, in his book, The Christ-Centered Marriage,

Both men and women lust, they just happen to lust in different ways. Let me contrast the ways... Men tend to lust impulsively. That is, they see a woman, they see a picture, they see something that prompts them to lust. Women tend to lust selectively. They locate someone who's special in their mind and they become preoccupied with that special person. Men tend to lust through their eyes the things that they see. Women tend to lust through their ears the things that they hear. How they long for the compliments to come. The affirmation to be given. Even a meaningful conversation in which a man really listens to them and if that isn't experienced through their husband, quite often that leaves them vulnerable to experience that temptation through what other people say to them. Men tend to lust for physical pleasure. Have physical fantasies. Women tend to lust for the emotional pleasure.

Women, this applies to you, as well. You can have a sinful heart that is expressed in longing for someone else’s man or someone who isn’t yours yet. You can lust in your own way. But, again, as I already said, times have changed. And I fear many women lust like men today.

Jesus’s teaching applies to all of us here. In a society that is getting softer on adultery, Jesus gives us a more stringent command. Today, when preachers or politicians commit adultery, it’s just a speed bump along the way. It’s just seen as a minor mistake.
It even is sadly seen as a way that such a person can identify with the average person. I remember this was argued by some on Clinton’s behalf. But I have even heard of it in the church.

Not too long ago, a church here in town was considering a man who had come out of an adulterous affair. It came out of the mouth of a friend of mine something like, “Well, he can sure understand people that have gone through that.” As society and the church are less serious about adultery, Jesus again takes it deeper. Even the desire to commit adultery merits judgment. In our culture, the physical act isn’t that big of a deal. Jesus says it is, and beyond that, the sinful desire is even a bigger deal.

Let us turn to the urgency of fighting lust. Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” Now this has been taken literally in history. The church father Origen castrated himself based on this text. He found out, I’m sure, after doing the deed, that his lust didn’t go away. This isn’t meant to be taken literally, but figuratively. It is Jesus using hyperbole to make his point. Our Lord is telling us to take drastic measures to deal with our sin. He is saying, “Do whatever it takes to deal with lust.” So here he’s talking about mortification, putting sin to death, rather than mutilation.

Now you might ask, “Why does Jesus speak of the eye and the hand here?” First, the use of the eye is obvious. The eye expresses and fuels lustful desire. Some have said that the hand is used to emphasize that adultery involves theft. It is taking something that is not yours, either in deed or thought.

Second, others have said that the hand refers to masturbation. Now that probably isn’t a word that you’re comfortable with me saying anywhere, much less church, but let me tell you something: if we don’t talk about it here, we’re going to learn about it out there. Do I want Hadley to hear that word from me, in hopefully a godly and thoughtful way, or by junior high boys, in a crass, immoral way? That’s an easy decision for me. Jesus could be saying here that, if your hand fuels your lust through masturbation, cut it off!

Third, in Matthew 18:8-9, Jesus returns to this idea. Listen:

Matthew 18:8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

Notice that Jesus adds “foot” in this text. Some have therefore argued that the eye refers to what we might see, the hand refers to what we might touch, and the feet refer to where we might go.

To what do “eye” and “hand” and “foot” refer? I’m not sure. The point is to deal drastically, violently, and immediately with whatever causes us to stumble.
Regarding our eyes, this must include:
· Not allowing ourselves to take second gazes and fantasize about those we encounter of the opposite sex.
· Not allowing ourselves to watch late night smut on TV.
· Not allowing ourselves to look at certain websites, rent certain videos, read certain magazines or take in certain books.
Now some would say that I’m being legalistic here. I’m not. I haven’t given you any specific rules. We must guard ourselves, however. We have to be proactive about fighting lust and adultery. We have to guard our eyes. As Job says, in Job 31:1, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how could I then gaze at a virgin?”

For believers, some things should be undoubtedly off-limits. Other things, however, might lie in the area of gray. Some people can watch certain R-rated movies, while others can’t, for example. Rules aren’t the answer, or we’re back where the Pharisees were. We’d be where my former Mormon neighbors were—not watching R rated movies, but watching all kinds of PG-13 ones, and lusting just as much as the next guy. Each of us, in our own way, needs to make a covenant with our eyes. By and large, however, our approach to fighting lust with our eyes should look pretty similar. For example, I can’t see in this culture, how any Christian parent could grant unfettered access to the television and internet to those he loves. Every TV should have certain things blocked. Every computer should have blocking software of some sort. Otherwise, we’re simply being naïve and risky.

Regarding our hands, we must not touch ourselves or others in ways that incite lust.
· We must see inappropriate sexual touching of ourselves as sinful. We must recognize masturbation as an unnatural, sinful, and inherently selfish expression of sexuality against God’s design. What was designed for two in the context of marriage can’t be practiced in a godly manner by just one. And that practice almost always is an expression of lust and encourages lust.
· We must see inappropriate touching of others in dating relationships as sinful. We could have the same attitude as the Pharisees. “We can do anything but sex, and we’re O.K.” But that inappropriate touching and “making out” expresses lust and encourages lust.
Again, I’m not promoting legalism. I didn’t tell you how long to kiss or what to do on dates. I’m arguing that we must be proactive and aggressive in how we fight lust. And if cutting off our hands means anything, it surely applies to touching ourselves and others in inappropriate sexual ways.

Regarding our feet, we shouldn’t go to places that cause us to sin.
· We obviously should not frequent strip clubs or adult video houses or the like.
· But we should also avoid going to places where people are there to “hook up” and where people are clad in garments specifically designed to incite lust.
We must do whatever we can to make sure our feet don’t cause us to desire sin.

The first explanation of hands and feet helps, I think. The 10th commandment condemns coveting. We’re not just commanded not to steal. We’re commanded not to covet what others have. In the same way, Jesus takes this command deeper, as if to say, don’t just not commit adultery, but don’t desire adultery. Don’t covet what is not yours. So being aggressive about lust means not putting ourselves in a position to desire something sexually that isn’t rightly ours.

The point again is not to walk around with gouged out eyes or stubs for arms. The point is that we’re to deal drastically with sin. I remember one time in my house in Springfield, when I was living with three other guys that I was cooking some morels on the stove. I guess I put in too much oil and turned up the stove too high or something. The pan burst into flames. I didn’t know what to do, so I noticed the window was open. I jerked the screen up and threw the frying pan out the window onto the driveway. I hated, of course, to part with those mushrooms. Those of you have hunted them will know that they’re hard to find, and they’re very valuable. But if I didn’t do that, I would burn up myself and the house, as well. I had to take drastic measures.

Some would say, “Kevin, this doesn’t deal with the heart that you’re saying has to be pure. This is only dealing with the exterior.” Yes, our primary strategy has to be to love Jesus and love His people enough that lust loses power over us. But, we have to start with where we’re at.

Lustful looks not only naturally flow from a dirty heart, but they also create a dirty heart. As one once said, “Sow a thought and reap an act. Sow an act and reap a habit. Sow a habit and reap a character. Sow a character and reap a destiny.” As Jesus says elsewhere, in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6:22, the “eye is the lamp of the body.” If the eyes of our hearts fix themselves on light, our hearts will be light. If they fix themselves on dark things, our hearts will be dark. Simply put, if we don’t fight on the exterior level, our interior will soon be dirty. As my old professor and elder, Bruce Ware, puts it, we fight right now for what we want to be like five years from now.
Sure, we have a positive strategy. We fight fire with fire. We seek the Lord, a greater desire, to push out the lesser desires. But we also have a negative strategy. We take drastic measures to deal with whatever is causing our hearts to sin.

If you walk out to a garden full of weeds, you could stand there and beat yourself up, saying, “Man, I’m an idiot. I should have kept those weeds from growing in there.” You could do that forever. Or you could get in and pull the weeds. If you don’t you won’t see any fruit. They’ll choke it up. We have to start wherever we’re at. We have to do whatever it takes. We have to, as Proverbs 4:23 puts it, “Keep [our] heart[s] with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.”

Brothers and sisters, this can’t be done without pain. Just like you can’t cut off your hand or gouge out your eye without pain and blood and tears, so you can’t fight off adultery without having withdrawal and agony and suffering. But we must do it.

Brothers and sisters, this can’t be done alone. We need others to encourage us to desire Christ. We need others to tell us to fight sin. We need a body of believers to encourage us in this direction. This is why we strongly encourage, and may at some point require, gender-specific groups here at Grace Church, where there is accountability and prayer for our struggles against sin. We can’t do this alone.

I think of the famous “office linebacker” video that circulated the internet several years ago. If you don’t remember it, a company hired this ex-football player to come in and tackle people who were not doing their jobs. It’s pretty hilarious. We need each other to function in that way for us. We need people to come up and drill us and ring our bell when we are being stupid. We need someone to be standing in our ears screaming, “Cut it off! Gouge it out!” We are sinful and stubborn. We need help.

On July 20, 1993, Donald Wyman was clearing land in Pennsylvania as part of his work for a mining company. In the process, a tree rolled onto his shin causing a severe break and pinning Wyman to the ground. He cried for help for an hour but no one came. He concluded that the only way to save his life would be to cut off his leg. So he made a tourniquet out of his shoe string and tightened it with a wrench. Then he took his pocket knife and cut through the skin, muscle, and bone just below the knee and freed himself from the tree. He crawled thirty yards to a bulldozer, drove a quarter-mile to his truck, then maneuvered the standard transmission with his good leg and a hand until he reached a farmer’s house one-and-a-half miles away.
Of course, his leg was bleeding profusely. Farmer John Huber Jr. helped him get to a hospital where his life was spared. Mr. Wyman knew that if he didn’t cut off his leg, he was going to die. The same applies for us, if we don’t fight sin, it will kill us. Will we do what it takes?

Let me turn to the final aspect of Jesus’s teaching. He tells us the danger of ignoring lust. Jesus says, after speaking of cutting out the eye and cutting off the hand, “It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” Jesus says, if we don’t fight adultery in the heart, we’ll go to hell. I’ll come back to that, but first let me say something about the doctrine of salvation and something about the doctrine of the church.

First, we can be in danger of shielding ourselves from texts like these through a foolish understanding of “eternal security.” When I speak of eternal security, I mean the idea that we may have walked an aisle or prayed a prayer or been immersed in the water, and we can’t lose our salvation, no matter what we do, so this passage doesn’t apply us.

Historically this doctrine has been called the “perseverance of the saints.” Put most simply, it means that true believers, those who have truly trusted in Christ, persist in trusting Him and fighting sin. They persevere because they are preserved by God. As Jesus says, in Matthew 24:13, “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” True believers persevere.

So, you may ask, do I believe that Christians can lose their salvation? No. But what does salvation look like? You may ask, do I believe “once saved, always saved?” Yes. But what does it mean to be “once saved?” Salvation means not just being saved from the penalty of sin, but also the power of sin. True believers desire holiness and see sin as less and less a part of their lives because of God’s work in them. God not only saves. He also sanctifies.

Therefore, if any of us are not growing in holiness, or are not desiring to do so, with sexual sin in particular, and all sin in general, we are in danger of eternal judgment. One in that situation should have no security whatsoever. Eternal security, by that definition, is a lie from hell that sends people to hell.

Second, we must guard the front door of the church and open up the back door of the church as we deal with this issue. Let me give you an example. Last weekend, Amy and I were at a family birthday party. One of the people at the party was a lady who was a member of Amy’s brother’s church. Amy was about to feed Melia, and we grabbed this child seat with a tray where we could feed her more easily. Well, that lady got really upset, and made some really rude remark that Amy could hear like, “I was going to feed her in that seat, but she took it.” Now, she could have been having a bad day; we all are sinners. But, in talking to Amy’s brother Jon, I didn’t get that idea. She was simply not evidencing the love of Christ that demonstrates salvation. She should not have been welcomed as a member of that church, and she should be brought under discipline by that church for her behavior. She shouldn’t have gotten in the front door. She should have been shown the back door.

As Baptists, we hold to regenerate church membership. This means that we strive, by God’s grace, as much as we are able, to only allow authentic believers, those who have been born again, into the membership of this church. This doesn’t mean members will be perfect. It just means that they will desire to fight sin and pursue God.

With the lust issue, we must make sure that entering members are fighting lust, and we must deal with those that aren’t. Because those that don’t gouge out their eyes and cut off their hands are going to hell. And the point of regenerate church membership is to have people as members of your church that are not going to hell. For God’s glory, for the church’s purity and witness, and for the good of the one stumbling, we must deal as a church aggressively with sexual sin, as well as all sin.

So, the point is twofold. Don’t presume you’re saved if you’re not fighting sin. You shouldn’t feel secure. And, this church expects you to fight sinful desires and plans to help you to do so. We assume you don’t want to lust. You assume we will come tackle you when you do.

What does Jesus say here? First, He says that, if we don’t deal drastically with adulterous desires, they will take us to hell. Second, He says it’s better to lose nonessential parts of us that cause us to sin than lose it all. This is a reminder for us to keep sexuality in perspective. We were made with sexuality. We were made to be united with a member of the opposite gender in marriage. We were made to experience sex in its right context.

But sexuality is not all that comprises our identity. No matter what people say today, sex is not everything. We will die without food, but we won’t die without sex. We can live without it. How much better is it to lose completely or put off indefinitely this aspect of our humanity than to lose it all—to have our whole body thrown into hell! You can live without an eye or a hand. Cut them off!

Jesus says here that those who give into lust completely and unrepentantly will be judged for their sin. They will go to hell and experience conscious, eternal torment.

And let me add this, yes, you will experience judgment after this life, but who knows if you won’t experience judgment in this life? Your sin could be the beginning of a downward spiral. Who knows if clicking on that site will one day lead to you losing a family that you now don’t even have? Who knows if you won’t open up the door of a house and find TV cameras in your face asking, “Sir, you are on Dateline NBC. Why are you here soliciting sex from a 13-year old?”

Now, how will we respond to this teaching? On one hand, we could say, “I’ll try harder.” I’ll lust less and seek God more. I’ll conquer this. You respond like a Pharisee. This, as we’ve discussed, either leads to despair for inevitably failing or pride for redrawing the lines so that you accomplish it.

On the other hand, you could say, “Ah, forget it,” and indulge yourself. You could reason that you can’t meet these demands, so why not “eat, drink, and be merry?” But that response, just like the Pharisaical response, sends you to hell. Both see the problem as one to be solved in our own strength.

You could respond by seeing your great spiritual poverty, seeing that you’re “poor in Spirit” as Matthew 5:3 says. Who has not and does not break Jesus’s teaching regarding this commandment? You understand that you’ll never be able to do this alone. You cry out to God pleading the merits of Jesus’s totally righteous life and His sacrificial death. You know you need that life and death and resurrection given to you. You plead for the Spirit to work it in you. You recognize that you can only obey this command in God’s strength.

Matthew 5:27-30 brings us to the gospel once again, as Scott’s text last week did. How can we live up to Jesus’s command never to lust or never to be angry? We can’t. We need heart transplants. We need His grace. This should drive us to our knees.

Before we move on, and conclude, let me make two practical, related comments. First, single men who are here today, seek a wife. God was in it, and I’m incredibly thankful for Amy, but I waited until I was 29 to marry. Most of you shouldn’t be 28 and single. If you find yourself fighting lust, perhaps it’s because people 50 years ago married about 10 years earlier than you are right now. Your body wasn’t designed to be single for that long. Now I know many of you are genuinely seeking a wife and haven’t found her yet. But most men today won’t commit to a woman. They dilly-dally around, looking for Miss Perfect when they’re far from perfect. There are godly women all around them, but they’re putting off manhood, and they’re selfishly looking for the woman that will meet their needs. As Michael Lawrence, an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, recently put it, they test drive their girlfriend for several years and then try to return her to the lot and start over. And they wonder why they struggle with lust!
As Douglas Wilson put it in his book Reforming Marriage, God has given us protection against sexual immorality. It’s called sexual activity. If you don’t want to lust, get a wife and have sex with her.

Speaking of that, ladies, when you marry a man, strive to meet his sexual needs. As 1 Corinthians 7:5 puts it, “Do not deprive each other.” Women’s needs are more emotional, as we’ve seen. This is no excuse for men to be insensitive jerks. But wives, your husbands shouldn’t lust. Your sexual relationship with him protects him from that. It’s that simple.

Second, ladies, don’t incite lust. One thing we’re going to tackle and not be afraid of in this church is modesty. You all should know the difference between seeking to be attractive and seeking to be seductive. I’ll never forget standing up on the platform at my previous church, playing in the worship band, seeing repeatedly, week after week, this young teenager dressed like she was straight out of a rap video. Grace Church of Columbia will not tolerate such a thing. We will not ignore this issue of modest attire.

Interestingly, right before the cross-reference for today’s text, in Matthew 18, just before it talks about maiming ourselves, it says, in verse 6, “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Verse 7 says, “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom temptation comes!” Jesus isn’t just talking about not causing children to sin here. He’s saying we’re all to be like little children in our faith. He’s talking about causing any believer to sin. And then he goes on to say, whoever causes a believer to sin will be judged greatly by Him. He then turns to our passage about gouging out eyes and cutting off hands.

A clear application from the text, because of its context, is that those who incite sexual sin will be judged. Oh, the judgment of all the girls involved in pornography out there! And oh, the judgment of those who, by not using discretion in their dress, cause brothers to stumble! Listen to this quote by an old dead guy, A.W. Pink:

If lustful looking is so grievous a sin, then those who dress and expose themselves with the desire to be looked at and lusted after...are not less but perhaps more guilty. In this matter it is not only too often the case that men sin but women tempt them to do so. How great then must be the guilt of the great majority of modern misses who deliberately seek to arouse the sexual passions of young men. And how much greater still is the guilt of most of their mothers for allowing them to become lascivious temptresses.

So, ladies, be careful what you wear. Some of you swim so much in the ocean of our culture that you may not even notice that what you’re wearing is seductive. Others of you have been knowingly wearing something on the edge. Either way, repent and listen to the admonishing words of other sisters in Christ. Help each other in this regard, so that men don’t have to awkwardly step in and say something.

How awful to go to hell because you never could commit to a godly woman and lived in lust! How awful to send people to hell because of what you wore!

Let me speak to those who might be unbelievers this morning. Why should you care? Why should you not engage in lust? If a fear of hell won’t affect you, let me offer something else. You were made for something better. As C.S. Lewis put it, you are making mudpies in the slum when you could be making sandcastles by the sea. Our sexuality is designed to show the intimacy between Christ and His Church. But you are making an idol out of the metaphor. You’re not seeing where the metaphor points. You’re taking something beautiful and making it something very ugly. Your head is in the toilet. You’re drinking the toilet water of lust and you don’t know any better.

Believer, why should you care? Why not lust? First, don’t go back to the toilet. Experience sex in its right context, as a beautiful thing. See where the metaphor points. Don’t let lust separate you from Christ. Don’t settle for sin instead of the Savior. Listen to what Hebrews 11:24-26 says about Moses:

Hebrews 11:24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

Don’t take the “fleeting pleasures of sin.” Look ahead to a greater reward.

Second, believer, consider this issue more broadly as the church of the living God. As we saw in Matthew 5:13-16, we are called to be a “city on a hill.” We are to be a vibrant counter-culture that displays a right view of sex to the world. Sex is not bad. It’s beautiful. It is not something to be feared, as some traditional churches do. We must discuss it. It is not something to be idolized, as secular society has done. We must keep it in perspective. Sex for us is something to be grasped and seen in light of the gospel. What we need to do is demonstrate, as the people of God, what sex looks like through the gospel grid. We must display what it looks like, in all its glory, when in its right context.

If we do this—if we distance ourselves from our culture by showing what God says about sex AND distance ourselves from traditional churches by reveling in what God says about sex, unbelievers will see and notice. Sex isn’t bad. It’s great. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful. It is one of God’s great gifts.
It is only bad when we separate it from the context of marriage that was created to image the relationship between Christ and His church. When it no longer is seen as being a metaphor for the intimate worship between Christ and His church, it becomes something we worship itself. Everything is turned on its head. It means everything. It is an idol. Yet it means nothing. It is separated from Christ.

Believer, let this passage drive you to the gospel time and time again. God will not settle for anything less. He is holy. He will justly judge, so repent. Come to Christ.

Church, let us, regarding this issue, be a beacon of the gospel to those around us. Let us be a city within a city that knows what to do with this part of life called sex. God desires to show His light through us, drawing men and women to Himself.

In closing, let me return to my opening statement about XXXchurch. Albert Mohler and others have rightly commended them for their faith. He writes in his daily blog, “I do not doubt the evangelistic sincerity of those who lead this ministry. Furthermore, I am quite certain that middle class evangelicals are far too risk-averse in evangelistic outreach to those outside our comfort zones. This is to our shame.” But he then goes on to say that “this is a question of judgment, principle, and strategy -- not a question of motivation.” Yes, Jesus loves porn stars. Yes, we should minister to them. Yes, we should take pornography head on. But is it wise for a couple of men to set up a booth in a porn convention? Can two men be in that environment and not sin? I know I couldn’t. Who here could not, no matter how much fasting or prayer or other preparation you made?

Yes, we want to take lust on with the ferocity of the “office linebacker.” But we need to be constantly cognizant of our weakness. Lust is powerful. It is dangerous. We’re not a muscle-bound stud on this issue. We can’t go into this naïve. We want to take on lust full-barrel, with guns loaded. But we can’t charge an army with a squirt gun. As Tim Keller puts it, "We are more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe.” We must guard ourselves, brothers and sisters, not just as individuals, but as a body. But he also states that simultaneously, "We are more accepted and loved than we ever dared hope." God is at work in us, as well. Let us have confidence in Him, but let that be a humble confidence.

Grace Church, lust is out of control in America. It is harming the church of Christ. What will we do? How will we respond? We can’t have a bunch of men with their heads down, defeated from lust, trying to lead our families and our church. We can’t have men afraid to deal with these issues in a godly manner. The glory of God, the purity of the church, and her witness to the world are all at stake.