Word-Keeping Through the Gospel of Grace

“Word-Keeping Through the Gospel of Grace”
Matthew 5:33-37, 7/30/06, Kevin P. Larson, Grace Church of Columbia

One of the first things that made me sure I wanted to marry Amy was when I found out she was a huge fan of The Brady Bunch. Now that may make you laugh, but it made me happy. You see, I grew up watching the Brady Bunch. No, I don’t mean that I grew up in the 70s and saw the shows when they originally aired. I mean that I saw them on reruns and on reruns and on more reruns in the 80s. When I was a kid, my parents let me watch way more TV than Hadley and Melia will ever watch, and The Brady Bunch was on TBS and WGN and every other channel looking for something to fill up time. Consequently, I think I’ve seen every episode. I almost have some shows memorized. I was raised with the Bradys.

Those of you deprived of such a childhood may not remember one key episode. Greg, their oldest son, learns a lesson on honesty and legalism. He gets excited about getting these tickets to some hip rock concert. Bobby, the youngest son, squeals on him for bad driving and his parents ground him from the car for a week. He can’t get any other friends to help him get the tickets. They’re selling out fast. He calls one friend who would like to help but is sick. Greg borrows that kid’s car, gets the tickets, and gets ready for the show. His parents, however, find out, and they’re really mad. They told him he was not to drive for a week. Greg, however, points out that, no, they didn’t tell him he couldn’t drive—they told him that he couldn’t drive their car. Those were their exact words. Mike and Carol relent and let him get off the hook. But they have a plan. They want Greg to learn what it is like to truly live with exact words.

So Greg goes on with his week. He quickly finds out how loose he is with his words and how much grace his parents have been showing him. He ends up washing the car and doing dishes at midnight one night, because he had told family members he would do that. It reaches a boiling point when he realizes that he had already promised before he had gotten the concert tickets that he would take his two brothers, Peter and Bobby, to a frog-jumping contest. He is livid, but his parents, as well as his brothers, remind him that those were his exact words. Those of you that have seen the episode will remember that Greg ended up deciding to take his date to a movie after the frog-jumping contest. His brothers forget to take the frogs out of the back seat of his car, and they jump all over his date, even hopping right in the middle of their pizza. Greg learns the hard way that loose words and legalistic thinking are not fun.



We know from Matthew 5:33-37 that the Pharisees were using words much like Greg Brady. Rather than using their words honestly, they were using them manipulatively. But unlike Greg, they didn’t learn their lesson at the end of the program.

Let us read Matthew 5:33-37 and begin with prayer.

Matthew 5:33 "Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.' 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil.

Let me begin this morning by reviewing from where we have come. Back in Matthew 5:17-20, we saw that Jesus is the one to whom the Old Testament law points, the one who is eminently qualified to interpret the law and clarify its true meaning. Jesus then speaks of those that would violate the heart of the law through their practice and encourage others to do the same through their teaching. Finally, in verse 20, Jesus says that they who do this, the Pharisees, have a righteousness that must be surpassed by those in God’s kingdom; that is because their righteousness is no true righteousness at all. It is exterior only and extremely shallow. That which is on the outside is insufficient and ultimately quite ugly.

Put in reverse order, and worded positively, the one transformed by grace is changed inwardly, given a deep righteousness of the heart. He displays this outwardly and teaches others to do the same. He follows the teachings of Jesus who is the focus of the Bible and our right guide to understanding its teachings. This is the way of the Christian, the one transformed by grace.

Matthew 5:17-20 introduces and leads into verses 21-48. In those teachings of Jesus, we see that the way of the Pharisee differs greatly from the way of the Christian. The Pharisee teaches, as we saw in verses 21-26, that committing murder with the hands is all that matters and holds anger in the heart that slips out as insults on the tongue. He also teaches, according to verses 27-30, that committing adultery with the body is all that matters and holds lust in the heart that evidences itself in roving eyes and careless hands. He also teaches, we learned last week in verses 31-32, that abandoning one’s spouse is not that big of a deal, finding even a Bible verse to support adulterous desires fed through repeated divorces. According to Jesus, the way of the Christian, the one transformed by grace, pursues reconciliation, purity, and fidelity.


In the coming weeks, we’ll see ways that Jesus corrects the teaching and practice of the Pharisees regarding personal retaliation and interaction with enemies. This morning, we’ll examine how the Pharisees dealt with oaths. Jesus says here that the Christian is to teach and live in a way consistent with one transformed inwardly by grace. That reality of salvation should affect the way that we use our words. This morning, we’ll look at “Word-Keeping through the Gospel of Grace.” First, we’ll look at the “way of the Pharisee.” Second, we’ll look at the “way of the Christian.”

First, what were the Pharisees teaching and practicing? Here, as we have seen so far, in verses 21-32, Jesus summarizes their teaching. He then follows with a condemnation of their practice of that teaching.

What was their teaching regarding oaths? Verse 33 reads, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’” This, just like last week’s passage, is not an accurate quotation of any Bible verse. Unlike last week, however, it’s not really a bad summary of what the Bible says. Listen to these verses which form the basis of what the Pharisees taught.

Exodus 20:7, in the Ten Commandments, says, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”

Numbers 30:2 says, “If a man vows a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.”

In Deuteronomy 23:21-23, God says this:

Deuteronomy 23:21 "If you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the LORD your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. 22 But if you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin. 23 You shall be careful to do what has passed your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God what you have promised with your mouth.

Finally, Leviticus 19:12 says something similar. It reads, “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.”

The Pharisees summed up those verses saying, as Jesus quotes them, in verse 33, “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’” The problem was that they were teaching that what was to be performed to the Lord was only what was sworn in the name of the Lord.
In other words, if you took an oath in his name and didn’t do it, it was a problem. If you swore in other ways and did not do it, it was not a problem.

It is as if they had taken Leviticus 19:12—“You shall not swear by my name falsely”—and emphasized certain words to their own advantage. Instead of reading it like this: “You shall not SWEAR by my name FALSELY” they read it like this: “You shall not swear BY MY NAME falsely.” As John Stott has pointed out, they shifted the emphasis from the vow itself and the need to keep it to the formula used in making it.

It’s just like Greg Brady was doing, as I began. His parents said, “You can’t DRIVE the car for a week.” Greg said, “No, you said I couldn’t drive THE CAR for a week.” It’s moving the emphasis from the POINT of the statement to the FORMULA of the statement. Like Greg, the Pharisees were manipulating words to justify their dishonesty.

We see this in the elaborate legal code built by the Pharisees around oaths. The Jews had this book of religious law called the Mishnah which contained an entire, lengthy section dealing with oaths. In this text, there was much discussion over when an oath was binding and when it was not. Scholar D.A. Carson mentions that one Rabbi taught in that book that, if you swore by Jerusalem, you were not bound, but if you swore toward Jerusalem, you were.

The key point was that if you swore by God’s name, you were definitely bound to keep your oath. However, if you swore by other things, whether or not they were binding or not was uncertain. What happened was the Pharisees taught others to use oaths in deceitful, manipulative ways.

This was their practice, as well. They would swear by things we see in this passage at hand—by “heaven,” by the “earth,” by “Jerusalem,” or by their “head,” and not keep their vows, because either they didn’t call specifically on God’s name or they were a loophole in their cute little oath-word-game. They would say, “I wasn’t bound to keep that. Didn’t you hear my exact words?”

As you can see, this was quite child-like. They had this complex system of swearing where no one was exactly sure, except the initiated, what the rules were and what would actually be kept. It’s like it is on the playground. What is the difference between swearing and “pinky swearing” and “swearing on a stack of Bibles?” Do you have to say, “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a million needles in my eye?” Did they have their fingers crossed behind their backs? Did they double or triple swear? Were they really being honest? Who really knows?!

The problem is that the Pharisees were not using oaths, as designed, to guard truthfulness, but for the opposite: to practice deceit. The Pharisees were proud of their oath-keeping, but they had violated the heart of the law because of their wicked hearts, by teaching and modeling oath-breaking. They had used oaths to aid them in wickedness rather than in righteousness. They had again lowered the standard of the law to something manageable, had lived up to it, and had taken pride in it—all the while their hearts were full of wickedness. They lived up to what they thought was the letter of the law, but they totally missed the spirit of the law.

Oaths were given to encourage veracity and gravity when making agreements. Regarding veracity, people swore to ensure that they would tell the truth. Regarding gravity, people swore to ensure that they would see the seriousness of what they were doing. They were standing before the God of truth. He was their witness. So they had better keep their word.

You should be able to see how today’s passage relates to last week’s now. You have all heard, “I Joe, take you, Judy, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy will.” When couples marry, they make vows. They gather in God’s presence and the presence of others to share this promise. Friends and family are called to witness the vows and hold them accountable to keeping them. But, more importantly, God is called to witness the vows and hold them accountable for their oaths. The oaths express the gravity of what is taking place.

But they also encourage, once again, veracity. Those that ignorantly say, “Why can’t we just have our own vows in our apartment? Why do we need a church and a minister and all these other people?” are misguided. We don’t just have weddings to take pictures and have great warm and fuzzy feelings. It’s not just about sharing the love. It’s about protecting from sin. It’s about the wickedness deep within the bride and the groom. They’re sinners. They wouldn’t stick together if they didn’t make these vows. It’s hard enough when they do. But the vows are taken to ensure they’ll be true to their word. Hebrews 6:16 says, “For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation.” You see there both aspects: gravity—someone greater is present, and veracity—people are bound to the truth.

Oaths were given as a concession to sinful hearts that have a tendency to lie. We don’t naturally stay committed to one another. We don’t by our fallen nature do what we say we’re going to do. As John Stott puts it, “Swearing is really a pathetic confession of our dishonesty.”
Oaths were being used by the Pharisees to promote deceit, but originally they were used to promote truth. God set up marriage as one man and one woman for one lifetime, but hearts became hard from sin, and divorce got out of control, and Moses gave legislation to curtail it.

In the same way, God’s original desire, it seems, was for people of truth with no need for oaths. But due to the fall and the resulting hardness of heart, people got good at lying, and God provided for oath-taking to curtail it.

The Pharisees used God’s word on divorce to justify an improper use of divorce. And, as we’re seeing this morning, they used God’s word on oaths to justify an improper use of oaths. They were being used to obscure truth rather than protect truth. They didn’t see that they needed oaths, because they were poor, needy sinners. They were proud of the fact that they kept their vows, all the while they were using those vows to evade the truth. Their hearts were dark.

What does Jesus, then, say about the way of the Christian? Jesus says three things here that I want you to notice this morning. Listen again to Matthew 5:34-36.

Matthew 5:34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

First, Christ tells us not to swear by any of those things because everything still comes back to God. Swearing by “heaven” is still swearing to God, because it’s his “throne.” Swearing by the “earth” is still swearing to God, because it’s His “footstool.” Swearing by “Jerusalem” is swearing by God’s city, and therefore to God. Lastly, he says that swearing by one’s “head” or one’s life is swearing in God’s name because He is the creator and sovereign over life. How can we put our life on the line when God rules over our life? We can’t change the color of the hair on our head, much less control whether or not we live tomorrow or die.

Jesus’s point is that oaths sworn by other things than God are still binding because, first, God is still present and still will hold men accountable for their oaths. If you’re not calling on God as a witness, He is still there as a witness. And, secondly, the objects or places sworn by belong to God. God rules over the things you’re swearing by. One couldn’t get around God with such evasive oaths. God is omnipresent. He is sovereign.

Jesus makes this same point over in Matthew 23. Listen to verses 16-22.



Matthew 23:16 "Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.' 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, 'If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.' 19 You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. 22 And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

Here Jesus is making a statement about the absurdity of their oath-taking. He points out how ridiculous the distinctions they are making really are. But he ends by making the same point of our text for today. Whatever you swear by, you’re still really making an oath to God because He is everywhere present and everywhere ruling. Christians are to be careful making promises. God hears.

Second, Christ states that oaths should be unnecessary for the child of God in daily conversation. He calls us to not only keep our oaths, but to be the type of people who don’t need to take oaths in order to be believed. Jesus says, in verse 37, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’” A simple “yes” or “no” will suffice. He doesn’t want us to couch our everyday speech with a constant “I swear” and “I promise.” He wants us to be men and women of credibility and integrity. He wants our hearts to be transformed so that they pour out truth rather than falsehood.

Man one could walk into his boss’s office and be requested to do a task. He could answer, “You have my word. I promise I’ll do it. I swear. Don’t doubt me a minute.” Man two could walk in and simply say, “Sure” and walk out. God wants us to be like the second man. There should be no need for babbling oaths. We are the children of God.

You may have heard the fable about the “boy that cried wolf.” The boy ran in, I think to his parents’ house, but I can’t remember, crying, “Wolf! Wolf!” He did that over and over until no one believed him when a wolf really came. Those transformed by grace are not the type of people that need to say, “I double-pinky swear by my Grandma’s grave that there’s a wolf out there.” Yes or no must be enough.

Swearing is needed by those that don’t keep their word. Only dishonest, unreliable people need to fight for their credibility through vows. God wants us to be people whose simple words “yes” or “no” are believed by all we come in contact with.

Third, Jesus teaches that such swearing results from evil. Jesus says here, according to the ESV, “Anything more than this comes from evil.” If you open up an NIV, it reads, “Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”
It says “evil” versus “evil one.” The reason for this is that the construction in the original language could be taken either way. This dishonesty characterized by such oaths either flows from the evil from within our hearts, or it flows from the evil one himself, Satan. Listen to John 8:43-45.

John 8:43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

Why do we, in an unbelieving state, manipulate with our words? It’s because, as Jesus says, “[our] will is to do [our] father’s desires.” Our hearts want to do what our father wants to do. He is “a liar and the father of lies.” This manipulative oath-taking of the Pharisees, and any dishonesty, comes not from God but from His enemy, the devil. This is why unbelievers lie and don’t care unless they get caught. This is why we as believers lie, as well. We succumb to the temptation of our enemy. We give in to remaining sin within.

The book of James has much in common with the Sermon on the Mount. In James 5:12, it reads, “But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your "yes" be yes and your "no" be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” Not only does this dishonesty flow from evil. It also leads to the fate of those evil. It leads to “condemnation” or eternal judgment.

Now a couple of questions result from this teaching. First, some would say, does this not mean that we should never take any oaths at all? Should we take oaths in a courtroom? What if we run for public office? Are we defying our Lord? The historic movement called the Anabaptists, as well as the modern-day Quakers refuse to take oaths of any sort.

First, godly saints in the Old Testament used oaths and were approved by God. If there is any key, godly figure of the Old Testament, it’s Abraham. In Genesis 14:22-23, Abraham confirmed promises to Sodom’s king with an oath. He said,

Genesis 14:22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, "I have lifted my hand to the LORD, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, 23 that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, 'I have made Abram rich.'

Just a few pages over, in Genesis 21, Abraham gives an oath to Abimelech. Abimelech said,

Genesis 21:23 Now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendants or with my posterity, but as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned." 24 And Abraham said, "I will swear."
In Genesis 24:1-4, Abraham, when he sent his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac, made him promise under oath.

Genesis 24:1 Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years. And the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things. 2 And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had, "Put your hand under my thigh, 3 that I may make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, 4 but will go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac."

Abraham is an example of one in the Jewish Scriptures who on solemn occasions called on God to witness to and hold parties accountable to an agreement. We also know, of course, that the passages we began with this morning allowed for oaths, only stipulating that one not break them, taking God’s name in vain.

Second, godly saints in the New Testament also made vows. If there’s one key character of the New Testament, other than Jesus, it’s Paul. In 2 Corinthians 1:23, he wrote, “But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.” Over in Galatians 1:20, Paul writes, “In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!” Paul used oaths, and he is a key model of godliness for Christians.

Third, Jesus even spoke under oath. In Matthew 26:63-64, the high priest Caiaphas said to him,

Matthew 26:63 "I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." 64 Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Jesus had the opportunity to refuse speaking under oath, but He didn’t. Jesus didn’t say, “I swear,” but it was understood that he was speaking under oath before God.

Fourth, God the Father, throughout Scripture, uses oaths. He, of course, doesn’t use them to establish truthfulness or gain credibility. He uses them to build faith in us. A beautiful example of this is found in God’s covenant promise to Abraham in Genesis 22. It reads, in verses 15-18, like this:

Genesis 22:15 And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven 16 and said, "By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, 18 and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice."

In Hebrews 6, what Brandon read earlier, this same oath is mentioned. Hear once again verses 13-18.

Hebrews 6:13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, 14 saying, "Surely I will bless you and multiply you." 15 And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. 16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

Again, verses 17-18 say that the purpose of His oath was to make it clear to us the “unchangeable character of his purpose.” He wanted us to believe it. And it says that through His oath we might “have strong encouragement.” God wanted us to trust His promises in our hearts.

Note also here verse 16 again. The writer of Hebrews assumes that oaths take place and makes no negative statement regarding them. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament affirm oath-taking through explicit teaching, as well by clear example.

So, the point here isn’t that if my friend Richard Hicks becomes a judge that he shouldn’t take an oath of office. It’s that, for him, as well as for us, oaths shouldn’t be a necessary part of our everyday speech.

It seems interesting to me that one could focus on Jesus’s negativity toward oaths here and miss the point just like the Pharisees. One could have a mouth that never says, “I swear,” but still overflows with dishonesty. So, no, I don’t think Jesus is condemning all oath-taking here.

Second, some would ask, what’s the big deal about honesty? Why should we be so concerned? Let me argue that it’s related closely to what we believe about God and what we believe about the gospel.

God, we know from the Bible is a God of truth. Isaiah 65:16, itself a passage affirming the taking of vows, says, “So that he who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth, and he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from my eyes.” The Father is called the “God of truth.” In addition, the apostle John repeatedly refers to the Spirit as the “Spirit of truth.” Twice in his gospel, in 15:26, as well as 16:13, the apostle, quoting Jesus and speaking of His sending of the Spirit, calls the Holy Spirit the “Spirit of truth.”
Of course, a familiar passage to many of you will be another text in John, in chapter 14 and verse 6. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

We worship a triune God who is truth. Made in the image of God, we were also made to image truth. Now, living in a fallen world, as believers we are being restored to that image. 2 Corinthians 3:18 speaks of us “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” We are being made once again to bear His image rightly. And one way we display Him is by being people of truthfulness.

Rather than look like our previous father, the devil, the father of lies, we are now called to look like our heavenly Father, the Father of the truth. Anytime we as human beings in general, as well as redeemed humans in particular, lie or deceive, we tell a lie about God’s nature. God is not a liar. We, as His children, can mislead those around us about what our Father is really like.

The gospel is a gospel of truth. The Bible speaks of becoming a Christian numerous times as “coming to a knowledge of the truth.” A couple of good examples are in 1 Timothy 2:4 when Paul says that God desires “all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth,” as well as 2 Timothy 2:25, where Paul speaks of God granting unbelievers “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.”

Once we embrace the truth of the gospel, we begin living in truth. We walk in a way consistent with that truth, and obviously, one way we do that is by being truthful people. This connection is made in Ephesians 4. Let’s read together verses 17-25.

Ephesians 4:17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!- 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

Now notice what that passage teaches. We were taught, as verse 21 puts it, the truth “in Jesus.” We are therefore, to put off the old self and to put on the new, and one key way we do this, as verse 25 states, is by putting away “falsehood” and speaking “truth with [our] neighbor.” Why are we to do this? Because “we are members with one another.” We are one body, the church.
If the key way that we display the fact that we have come into a love relationship with God is by loving our brothers and sisters, then being dishonest is the exact opposite of that. It is a very unloving thing to do.

Think of the gospel. God revealed Himself to us. He did it in His word. He has done it in His creation. He revealed Himself ultimately in His Son. He gave us the gospel. He lovingly revealed Himself to us, and He revealed to us truth. Therefore, if we reveal false things about our self or about the world, it is an incredibly unloving thing to do.

Why do we speak truthfully? God is truth. We worship Him as truth, and we image His truthful character to the world. If we don’t speak honestly, we lie about who our Father is. And in the gospel, God revealed truth about Him in love. As we extend the gospel, we love our brothers and neighbors by speaking truth. By not keeping our word, we spread lies about the transforming work of the gospel.

Third, you might ask, how do I respond to this text? The Pharisee, again, dumbs down the demands for honesty and keeps those lowered standards, being prideful of His accomplishment. The pagan or irreligious person, at worst, disregards God’s commands and lies freely, only experiencing guilt when caught. At best, he strives to live as an honest person in his own strength and for his own glory. What is the right response?

It’s important to remember that the God of truth demands perfect truth, and no less. In Psalm 51:6, David teaches us that God delights in “truth in the inward being.” In addition, Psalm 15:1-2 teaches this: “O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart.” Psalm 24:3-5 adds even more. Writes the Psalmist:

Psalm 24:3 Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. 5 He will receive blessing from the LORD and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

God requires us to have “truth in the inward being.” Only a person who “speaks truth in his heart” and “does not swear deceitfully” can ascend the hill of the LORD in worship. In other words, to be with God, we have to be word-keepers.

But who among us never lies? Who among us never deceives? We are fallen sinners, each of us, who dishonor God and keep ourselves from the “hill of the Lord” through our disobedience.





How can we ascend that hill? Both the Pharisee and the pagan answer, “By my own effort!” But the Christian answers, “By the effort of the Son.” Jesus, who again calls Himself the “truth” in John 14:6 is also spoken of in 1 Peter 2:22 as the one who “committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.” Jesus never sinned, and He certainly never deceived. And he went to the cross, dying for people that struggle with word-keeping.

Our only hope is to run to Him in faith, pleading for His righteous life of honesty to be applied to us. Our only hope is that His sacrificial death for dishonest people would be applied to us. In faith, we cry out to Him. His life and death are given to us, and we stand as sinners declared righteous by His grace before the Father. We can “ascend the hill” through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Now, as Hebrews 4:16 puts it, we can “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.” Because of Jesus, we can worship the Father. That is the gospel.

Although God has declared us as righteous, seeing us as holy thanks to Christ’s life and death, we still look at ourselves and see much unrighteousness. We have been justified, but we have not been fully sanctified. We look in the mirror and don’t see someone who acts consistently like Jesus. We must ask the Father to work that righteousness in us. That is our only hope of having hearts of good, not evil, of being people who don’t need oaths, of being people that speak to others conscious of God’s omnipresence. We need to ask ourselves tough questions, searching our hearts, praying that the Father would sanctify us by His Spirit. Christian, let me leave you with some questions this morning:

Do you frequently make commitments to serve at church or otherwise and “drop the ball”?

Do you often make promises you know you can’t keep in order to make a good showing for yourself?

Do you sometimes say you’re going to be somewhere and fail to show up?

Do you frequently renege on commitments, calling back to cancel?

Do you often fudge on details in order to make a point?

Do you ever exaggerate stories to get a good audience?

Do you ever say things like, “we ought to have dinner sometime,” and have no intention of doing it?

Do you ever catch yourself bending the truth and then bending it again to cover yourself?



Do you manipulate others through excessive, dishonest flattery?

Do you fail to provide an authentic portrait of yourself to others in order to impress them or protect pride?

Do you often get around the truth by appealing to your “exact words?”

Do “yes” and “no” suffice in your daily conversation or do you constantly have to adorn your sentences with “I swear” or “I promise” or “believe me!?”

Do we “say what we mean” and “mean what we say?”

Or do we often act too much like the world around us? The Tribune again had a story this week about the Vertical Group investments scandal. Columbian Mike Trom was cheated out of $175,000 by a man he thought was his best friend, Nate Reuter. Reuter and his friend Daryl Brown swindled people all over America out of millions of dollars. Trom went hunting with his next-door neighbor Reuter, but he found out later that his best friend was really hunting for his bank account. Brothers and sisters, this is the way of the world. Will we live as people transformed by grace?

The Jewish sect known as the Essenes was known for their honesty. The Jewish historian Josephus spoke of them like this:

They are eminent for fidelity and are the ministers of peace. Whatsoever they say is also firmer than an oath. But swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury, for they say that he who cannot be believed without (swearing by God) is already condemned.

The Essenes had their faults, the chief being that they didn’t embrace Jesus as the Messiah. But they also hid in the caves around the Red Sea, calling themselves “sons of light,” while keeping it under a basket. Let us have the honesty they exemplified, and take it public, and make it all about what Jesus has done.

Daniel Webster once said, “There is nothing as powerful as truth and often nothing as strange.” In an age when honesty is seen as “not that big of a deal,” let us be strange. Let us be a dynamic counter-culture in Columbia that uses its words honestly, and therefore, lovingly. Let us be transformed people in our conversations with others, attracting lost people to Jesus.

All of life, as the Reformers put it, is lived coram deo, or “before the face of God.” We live in the presence of God, under the authority of God, for the glory of God. He hears our every word. Let us live in a way consistent with that truth, showing a dying world that the God of the universe is near.

Divorce Defeated by the Gospel of Grace

Divorce Defeated by the Gospel of Grace
Matthew 5:31-32, 7/23/06, Kevin P. Larson, Grace Church of Columbia

Last week, I began and ended with the question, “What as a church are we going to do about lust?” I argued that lust and immorality and pornography are rampant in the culture and in the church, and we must act.

This week, the subject matter doesn’t get any easier. What will we do about divorce? I could spend a bunch of time quoting statistics to you today, but I won’t. You have all heard that as many as 50% of marriages end in divorce. Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating once said it was easier to get out of a marriage today than it is a Tupperware contract. And you have also likely heard that, in conservative, evangelical churches, divorce is at least just as common or is perhaps even more common. What will we do about divorce?

Last week, we looked at Matthew 5:27-30 dealing with lust and adultery. We saw that the Pharisees were proud that they were not committing adultery, but they were simultaneously filled with lustful desires for women not their wives. Jesus teaches that there is more to sin than just external actions. One who desires in his heart one who is not is wife is guilty of breaking the heart of the commandment against adultery. Therefore, Jesus commands us to take drastic measures to fight lust. Otherwise, we will experience judgment, the just condemnation for all of those that disregard God’s law.

This week, we look at Matthew 5:31-32. This passage is grammatically connected to our previous passage by a Greek “and” that isn’t reflected in your translation. But it’s also thematically attached to our last passage. The Pharisees were proud that they weren’t committing physical adultery, but they were lusting. And the Pharisees were divorcing. Their liberal views on divorce and marriage were making them commit physical adultery over and over again. But they didn’t get it. Jesus’ teachings here are pointed partially at them, but they are primarily here to teach his disciples and those that would become such, what it means to be a child of the kingdom.

Let’s read the passage and begin in prayer.

ESV Matthew 5:31 "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

This morning, we’ll be looking at what a passage in the Bible teaches about divorce and remarriage, but first, let’s look the whole Bible teaches about marriage. I’ll give you ten points as we begin.

First, marriage was instituted at the beginning. In Genesis 2, Eve is created from Adam, and she is immediately called his wife. Marriage is seen as good and right. In fact, after God repeatedly said in chapter 1 that his creation of the world was “good,” we see the Lord say, in verse 18 of chapter 2, “It is not good that a man should be alone.” Something wasn’t right. Therefore, God created Eve, and, in the process, created the institution of marriage. Made at the very beginning, marriage is seen as something good and right.

Second, marriage was designed, at the beginning, to be a permanent union between a man and a woman, where each left their mother and father, committed their loyalty and exclusivity to each other, and became one flesh—not just meaning that they had sexual relations, but that they formed a new family unit. Marriage was to be one man with one woman for one lifetime. As Genesis 2:24 reads, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Third, marriage is seen biblically as a covenant. Malachi 2:14 states, “But you say, "Why does he not?" Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” A covenant refers to a man and a woman coming together, formally committing themselves to one another through solemn vows, publicly agreeing to certain stipulations, calling upon God as the chief witness. It is more than a contract. It is for life, and it is before God.

Fourth, marriages therefore are rightly formed in public ceremonies where human witnesses are present and the Divine Witness is called upon. Weddings publicly recognize that a man and woman are leaving, cleaving, and becoming one flesh. This is why private ceremonies are pointless and secular ceremonies are meaningless. When one breaks his or her vows, he sins against his spouse, against the community of faith, and ultimately against God. Proverbs 2:17 speaks of an adulteress “who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.” Weddings are not simply about the couple or about their commitment with God. It’s also about a community that stands there to encourage them in, and hold them accountable to, keeping their vows.

Fifth, the man was created by God to serve as the head of the family, with the wife lovingly following his lead. 1 Corinthians 11:3 states, “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” This headship is rooted in the Trinity. As God the Father is the head of His Son, Jesus, so is the husband the head, or authority, over his wife.

Sixth, this headship includes, along with guiding his family, protecting and providing. 1 Timothy 5:8 reads, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” The man bears the ultimate responsibility for his wife and children. Not following Adam’s example, he is called to keep His wife and children from harm.

Seventh, this headship was distorted by the fall. Right after their tragic mistake, God says, in Genesis 3:16, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” In other words, the divinely instituted authority of the husband, as well as the submission of the wife to that leadership, were distorted by the great sin. Now she would “desire” to rule over her husband. His “rule” would be distorted by wrong desires. Always intended to rule, His authority would now degenerate into harsh, unloving authoritarianism.

Eighth, divorce that resulted from sin angers the Lord. States Malachi 2:16, "For I hate divorce," says the LORD, the God of Israel, "and him who covers his garment with wrong," says the LORD of hosts. "So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously."

Ninth, the marriage relationship is seen biblically as a picture of God’s covenantal love with His people. Listen to Ephesians 5, beginning verse 22.

ESV Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Marriage is meant to proclaim something about God—about how He loves those who are His and how those that are His love Him back.

Tenth, we also know that the death of a spouse ends the covenant. This is taught in Romans 7, as well as 1 Corinthians 7. The widow of a deceased person can rightfully be remarried.

So there are a few opening thoughts about marriage. Much more could be said. Let’s turn, however, to today’s passage. First, what were the Pharisees teaching about marriage?

Jesus quotes them in Matthew 5:31. It reads, "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' Based on everything I just said, you might ask, “Where on earth did the Pharisees get such an idea?” Their teaching was a messed up understanding of Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Let’s read that to get to what they were teaching.

ESV Deuteronomy 24:1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.

What had happened was that the Pharisees had taken this Old Testament passage and used it to justify all sorts of divorce. We can see that from another key passage in Matthew dealing with divorce, chapter 19, and verses 3-12. Keep your finger in Deuteronomy 24 and turn there.

ESV Matthew 19:3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" 4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." 7 They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?" 8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery." 10 The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." 11 But he said to them, "Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it."

Notice two things in the two questions the Pharisees ask Jesus. First, they say, in verse 3, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” What had happened is the Jews of Christ’s day had focused on the phrase in Deuteronomy 24:1 “some indecency in her.” Two schools of thought existed in that day—the Shammai school and the Hillel school. The Shammai guys were the conservatives. The Hillel guys were the liberals. Shammai taught that “indecency” referred to some kind of serious sexual sin. Hillel taught that it referred to any blemish a man might see in his wife.

For example, it’s commonly stated that Jewish men in that day would divorce their wives for simply burning a meal. Like it says in Matthew 5, they would “give her a certificate for divorce,” and she would be over. The well-known Jewish historian, Josephus, a Pharisee, as well as a divorcé, said divorces could be obtained “for any causes whatsoever.”

Apparently, “indecency” could be claimed if the woman just looked unappealing compared to another woman. So, the Jews in Jesus’s day were going through marriages right and left, and they wanted to know from Jesus, “Are you with the conservatives or the liberals?”

Secondly, they say, in verse 7, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” Now, look at Deuteronomy 24:1 again, and you’ll quickly see that it says nothing of the kind. It says, "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house,” and it goes on. There are all of these “ifs,” but there is never a command. Basically, the Pharisees had taken Moses’s teaching, had turned it into a command, and had turned it into a command to divorce your wife if she cooked your eggs scrambled, when you asked for over-easy. This was the teaching of the Pharisees.

We’ll discuss in just a bit what Moses was teaching, but what we should understand now is that the Pharisees were walking around smugly, proud of the fact that they had never committed adultery, when they were going through wives like they were toilet paper. They had this view of adultery that made committing that sin more about stealing someone else’s wife than dishonoring the one you had. So If a Pharisee got sick of his wife, no matter if it was for gross sexual sin or for just having bed head, all he had to do was file a little paperwork, and she was gone. And, even better still, that Pharisee had his own proof-text from the Bible that propped up his actions. There he was, proud of the fact that he hadn’t committed adultery, while his heart was wicked to the core, and he had committed adultery numerous times.

In Matthew 5:20 again, Jesus said, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus, here, as in his other teachings, exposes the error of the Pharisees and takes the issue from external so-called obedience to internal, true righteousness. He also explains, here and in Matthew 19, as the one to whom the law points, how they had wrongly interpreted Moses.

Jesus says, “But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Notice two things Jesus says here.

First, divorce leads to adultery. Now, folks, this isn’t rocket science, but it’s as simple as this: just because you have a piece of paper that says you’re divorced that doesn’t make you divorced. If you have something from the government that says your marriage has ended, that doesn’t change the fact that God says marriage is for one man and one woman for one lifetime. So, those Pharisees then, and those of us now, that dump our wife and get remarried, as Jesus says, it “makes her commit adultery.” In Jesus’s day, way more than today, a woman had to get married to survive. She had to have a man. It’s as if Jesus is assuming she will remarry. Today, it’s still very likely a woman will remarry, if not for other, social reasons. Regardless, if you send her away, you cause her to commit adultery, because she’s still married, in God’s eyes, to you.

Jesus also says here, “Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Not only is that woman committing adultery by getting remarried, but the man who marries her is committing adultery. Why? He’s marrying someone else’s wife. In God’s eyes the two are still married.

Over in Matthew 19, in verse 9, Jesus words it slightly differently. He says, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” Of course, the initiator is guilty, as well. The point is simple. The covenant vows are still binding. People can get divorced, but they’re still married. People who get divorced and remarried sin by committing adultery, and they cause others to sin, as well.

Second, Jesus says divorce is permitted for sexual unfaithfulness. Notice here what has been called the “exception clause”—“except on the ground of sexual immorality.” What does He mean by this? There are a number of things people have argued here. First, some have said it refers to fornication—premarital sexual activity. This is how the King James Version of the Bible translates it. But this seems too narrow. The Greek word used here is porneia, which as you can see is the root of the word “pornography” and seems broader than that. Second, some have said it refers to adultery alone. But there is another word in Greek that means adultery, the word moicheia. Jesus chooses not to use that word. Third, some have said it refers to a broader range of sexual sins, and I think that is right. But, for married people, it primarily has to do with unfaithfulness to one’s spouse in a gross, physical way.

In the Old Testament, adultery brought stoning. Deuteronomy 22:22 says, "If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.” In Jesus’s day, living in the Roman Empire, the Jews didn’t follow the stoning laws. But it’s almost as if Jesus here is saying that, if your spouse is sexually unfaithful, you can act as if the man or woman is dead. In all other cases, divorce and remarriage amounts to adultery, but when the spouse has been sexually unfaithful, the victim can divorce and remarry without sin. The marriage covenant has been broken already.

Let me make two simple statements about that, before going on. First, we must keep in mind that Jesus doesn’t command divorce in that situation. In Matthew 19:8, in response to the Pharisees labeling of Moses’s words as a command, Jesus says, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.” He changes the language from that of command, to permission. Jesus is saying here in Matthew 5:32 that the victim isn’t bound to the marriage, but he doesn’t come near to commanding them to get a divorce. If we use that sort of logic, we’re imitating exactly what the Pharisees were doing. They looked at a passage of Scripture that spoke of allowing divorce and tried to turn it into a command to fuel their sin.

In fact, if we look at the Sermon on the Mount, we see a pattern of seeking reconciliation, even with our enemies, and that certainly should include a husband who cheated on you.

If we look even broader, in the entire Bible, we see God remaining faithful to His people despite their great unfaithfulness. This is what the book of Hosea is about. God tells Hosea to pursue an unfaithful harlot just to make a point—He pursues His people even when they’re not true to Him. Rather than look for a loophole to “get out,” it seems as if we should “trade up” as Christians and seek to model God’s radical covenantal love for His people in marriage. As the church father Chrystostom said, “For he that is meek, and a peacemaker, and poor in spirit, and merciful, how shall he cast out his wife? He that is used to reconcile others, how shall he be at variance with her that is his own?”

Second, we can’t dwell on what “sexual immorality” means and desperately try to see if it applies to us. Then, we’re just like the Pharisees again. Just like they were debating like crazy about the word “indecency” in Deuteronomy 24, we can debate about our word here in Matthew. We can focus on what can get us out of a marriage. Jesus focuses on having a heart that wants to stay in. So, we can’t turn this into a command, and we can’t turn it into a “catch all” term to justify our divorces. Otherwise, we’re missing the fact that Jesus is telling us to surpass the Pharisees, not just look like them.
What, then, was Moses teaching in Deuteronomy? Let’s look at it again.

ESV Deuteronomy 24:1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.

What we see here is Moses recognizing divorce is happening and giving regulations to it. You see all these “ifs” here: if a man finds indecency and gives her a certificate and sends her away, and if she marries another man, and if that man divorces her and kicks her out or dies, then the first husband can’t take her back. What you have here is God, through Moses, protecting women from hasty, jerky husbands. A man had to get a certificate. He could never marry the same woman again. So he’d better be honest about any indecency, and he had better be sure that he really wants to divorce her.

Remember, Jesus says, in Matthew 19:8, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” What you don’t see in Deuteronomy 24 is an endorsement of divorce, and certainly not a command, but a concession by God to regulate the practice, in order to protect His people. His people were hard-hearted fools, divorcing against His will, so He gave Moses regulations to protect them.

It’s as if you walk onto the playground, see some kids fighting, and you say, “If you’re going to fight, fight, but no punching the head, and no hitting below the belt.” You’re not telling them to fight. You’re not telling them it’s ok to fight. You’re just giving them rules so that no one is seriously hurt.

What was “indecency?” We’re not really sure. Again, adultery brought stoning, not divorce, so we’re not certain. Likely it was some sort of terrible sexual sin that stopped short of physical adultery. The point is not to supply an “out” to marriage. The point of the passage is to restrict divorce, protecting God’s people.

That is what Moses does in Deuteronomy 24. But, as Sinclair Ferguson puts it, “A passage intended to regulate man’s rebellion against God’s purpose in marriage was distorted to provide an excuse for divorce… The hard hearts that this law was meant to restrain used it to their own ends.”


Jesus teaches that divorce results in adultery. He, like us, was preaching in an era where divorce was rampant, proclaiming its evils. But Jesus was speaking to people that had twisted God’s words to say that the Lord had commanded divorce and divorce for any reason. Jesus says, “No!” Divorce results in adultery, except in one case—when marital unfaithfulness dissolves the covenant, giving freedom to the victim.

Biblically, we know of one other situation where divorce and remarriage is allowed. Look at 1 Corinthians 7:12-15.

ESV 1 Corinthians 7:12 To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. 13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

Believers are to remain faithfully married to unbelieving spouses who keep their vows. However, in verse 15, the word for “separates” frequently was used for divorce and likely means that here. If an unbeliever leaves a Christian and divorces him or her, that believer is no longer bound or “enslaved” and may remarry.

So, Jesus says divorce is not permitted and results in adultery. But, what, you may ask is the big deal about divorce and adultery? Primarily, it tells falsehoods about God in two ways.

First, it lies about His creation. We see this in Matthew 19:4-6. Let us look at those verses once again.

ESV Matthew 19:4 He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."

Jesus says, as I began with this morning, that God made one man and one woman to leave, cleave, and become one flesh for a lifetime. Divorce, just like homosexuality or polygamy or cohabitating without marriage, tells a lie about how God designed the family, the fundamental building block of society.

Second, it lies about redemption. Again, Ephesians 5:32 says, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”
Again, as I began this morning, marriages are a human picture of the relationship of our Lord with His people. Luke and Ann and I are reading Douglas Wilson’s book, Reforming Marriage. In that book, Wilson writes,

In this passage in Ephesians, Paul tells us that husbands, in their role as head, provide a picture of Christ and the church. Every marriage, everywhere in the world, is a picture of Christ and the church. Because of sin and rebellion, many of these pictures are slanderous lies concerning Christ. But a husband can never stop talking about Christ and church. If he is obedient to God, he is preaching the truth; if he does not love his wife, he is speaking apostasy and lies—but he is always talking. If he deserts his wife, he is saying that this is the way Christ deserts His bride—a lie. If he is harsh with his wife and strikes her, he is saying that Christ is harsh with the church—another lie. If he sleeps with another woman, he is an adulterer and a blasphemer as well. How could Christ love someone other than His own Bride? It is astonishing how, for a few moments of pleasure, faithless men can bring themselves to slander the faithfulness of Christ in such a way (Wilson, 25).

So divorce and adultery lie about God. We can talk and talk about the harm and hurt divorce brings to men, women, and their families. But the primary problem is that it tells a lie about God and His nature. Marriage is a covenant primarily because God has worked to redeem His creation through a covenant.

God’s good creation was marred greatly by the fall. But God did not abandon that which He made. He committed Himself to His creation through covenants—those with Abraham, David, and ultimately the New Covenant. Each of these covenants found their fulfillment in Christ, the One who lived, died, and rose again to redeem His people, the Church, as well as all His creation.

So, not only was marriage part of the shalom of creation—“the way things ought to be” as theologian Cornelius Plantinga puts it. But marriage paints a picture of the way that shalom is restored—through the covenant faithfulness of Christ to His creation. God made one man and woman to covenant together in faithfulness. God covenanted Himself with His creation in faithfulness.

When we divorce and remarry we lie about the “way things ought to be,” as well as the way God ensures that things will one day be the “way things ought to be,” through His covenantal faithfulness to that which He has made. It lies about creation and redemption.

The issue is again about the heart. Are we like the Pharisees, dirty on the inside, desiring adultery, and displaying that through our pursuit of divorce? Or are we broken, humble people touched by the gospel, who are clean on the inside, who deeply want to honor God by loving our spouses as He calls us to do?

I want to conclude this morning by looking at our response to this passage of Scripture in two ways. It should first humble us and draw us to the gospel. Again, as I’ve been pushing throughout this series, two thieves stand on each side of the gospel that we must avoid.

First, we must avoid the thief of relativism or irreligion. This is the way of the pagan. This would look at this passage and say, “Who cares?” This is the attitude of our culture. This says, “I’m no longer happy or fulfilled with her.” I want out. I don’t care what God thinks. That attitude, as you know, leads to divine judgment.

Second, we must avoid the thief of legalism or religion. This is the way of the Pharisee. This could have several forms. We could look at the fact that we haven’t been divorced, look in the mirror, and be proud of our goodness. Close to that form, we could dumb down Christ’s commands, keep those, and be proud. This is what Jesus is condemning in today’s text. Or we could be a Pharisee in the opposite direction. Rather than boasting in our goodness, we could beat ourselves up for our failings. This is just the same pride wrapped in different clothing. We still see keeping Jesus’s commands as contingent upon our obedience.

Both “thieves” must be avoided that sit on each side of the gospel. Rather, we must look at Jesus’s demands and be broken. We must be “poor in Spirit,” seeing in ourselves no ability to keep Christ’s demands. Marriage is hard. God’s expectations are high. Our only hope is to fall down before Him, claiming Christ’s work on our behalf. We need the gospel. Are we people that look for loopholes in what God has said or do we deeply desire to obey Him from the heart? That is what the gospel produces in people.

It is only His covenant faithfulness to us that enables us to keep a covenant with another human being. We need His righteousness worked in us. We need new hearts. Only through His Spirit can we be faithful to a spouse.
We need the gospel. By falling down in need of the gospel, we glorify God, and not self. We humble self and exalt Christ.

Second, it should motivate us to live out the gospel. I’ll speak to those among us that are married first. As people who have embraced the gospel, we are called to extend it to others, and that certainly starts with our spouses. We see this in Ephesians 5. We see husbands loving their wives as Christ loves the church.
We see wives submitting to and respecting their husbands as the church does to Christ. We see husbands, who get most of the teaching in this passage, being called to sacrifice for her, sanctify her, nourish her, and cherish her.
What we see here is our experience of the gospel produce an extension of the gospel to others—the church in general, and our spouses, in particular.

So, if we want to keep our wedding vows, it will be due to Christ’s work in us, but Christ’s work in us looks like this: we are more and more gripped by Christ’s love for us in the gospel and then more and more share that love with our spouses.

Let me speak to single people for a minute. We have many singles here. How does this message apply to you? First of all, I want you to embrace the cumulative effect of expositional preaching and not get frustrated when a particular sermon doesn’t apply to your situation at one particular moment. John Piper says that he preaches God’s sovereignty week after week so that, when you’re on your death bed, dying of cancer, he doesn’t have to. In the same way, being exposed to texts like this one shapes you over time into a person that, when married, can, by God’s grace, keep your vows.

And most of you will be married, I’m sure. So this will shape your thinking now for something that you’ll experience later. But, right now, what can you do to ensure that later on, when you are married, that you can honor God by remaining faithful to your spouse? Let me suggest a few things.

First, become a person, by God’s grace, that can stay married. In other words, as I’ve already mentioned, grow in your understanding of, and love for, the gospel, and begin extending it with others. One of the best things you can do is to covenant yourself with a church in membership and begin dying to self and loving sacrificially those in your local body. Lose the tough guy, Lone Ranger approach to the world. Give yourself to Christ’s local expression of the church. Marry Christ’s church “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part.” There is a reason why local congregations have used church covenants, as we do here. We’re called to marry the church, not just to date her. If you begin loving God’s people in this radical, counter-cultural fashion, you’ll find yourself better prepared to marry a person. You’ve already been married to a bunch of people.
Second, date like one who plans to get married and stay married. It is so easy for us to act like our surrounding culture acts when it comes to dating. We date someone until we get bored, where it loses its magic, and then we move on. We date someone until things get a bit difficult, when there are points of disagreement, and we bail and move on.

It’s no wonder why, after doing that over and over again, it’s easy to fall back into that in marriage, covenant ceremony or not. Only date with the intention to marry. Only date someone you’d consider marrying. And resolve not to jump from person to person when things get boring or hard.

It doesn’t mean you should stick with someone you’re not compatible with or meant to be with. Simply, remain humble and open to God’s instruction. Maybe you’re just fighting the loving, sacrificial commitment that is necessary for marriage.

Third, cultivate in your life biblical masculinity and femininity. Whether you’re dating someone or you’re frustrated that you’re not, read the biblical picture of what a husband or wife looks like and imitate it. Men, allow God to shape you into someone that can be a head of a home, who can love your wife as Christ loves His church, who can protect and provide and guide a family. Women, let God make you into a biblical woman, not a woman the world celebrates. Cultivate the “gentle and quiet spirit” 1 Peter 3:4 talks about. Make yourself one who can submit to a man. Become a lady who can build a home and can nurture godly children. It’s better to work to become that type of person, by God’s grace, now rather than later. Spend time with husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, that display some of the qualities you long for. Learn from them.

I’ve addressed singles and marrieds. Lastly, I want to address us as a church as a whole. What should our response be to this passage?

First, we must proclaim God’s truth about divorce and remarriage in love. We must unapologetically teach what Jesus says here and must see it practiced in the life of our church. In other words, we’ll call divorce a sin. We won’t perform unbiblical marriages. We won’t tolerate compromise. On the other hand, in our culture, we will undoubtedly minister to many here who have been divorced and are genuinely repentant. We must share love with those who have been hurt and affected by divorce. We must have truth and love.

Second, and related, we must “close the front door” and “open the back door” on this issue. I used that type of language last week, which comes from Mark Dever. When admitting members, we must exercise great care, only welcoming those that display God’s Spirit by valuing and protecting their marriages.
In addition, we shouldn’t allow those to join who have unbiblical divorces and are resisting reconciliation. We have to be cautious when opening the “front door” of the church. We can’t compromise our stance on divorce when it comes to admitting members.

Regarding the “back door,” we must discipline those who divorce and remarry without biblical grounds. I’ve heard enough horror stories about a man who cheats on his wife, marries another, and then takes his place on the pew just behind her in the same church. This must not be!
We must deal with such sins as a church, removing unrepentant divorcés and adulterers, if necessary, from church membership. This is for God’s glory, for the purity and witness of the church, and for the wellbeing of the offender.

We must boldly deal with the problem of divorce in our churches. Why do they say that divorce is now more common inside the evangelical church? Yes, it’s partially because we have imbibed the teachings of our culture and have succumbed to a “no fault” divorce mentality. But, it probably has more to do with the fact that the church won’t deal with the issue at her front door or back door. We allow people to join that have unbiblically divorced and show no repentance. We don’t remove people from our midst when they secure unbiblical divorces. It’s no wonder that our churches are filled with people that are divorced. Grace Church, we must be different.

We must take this issue seriously. Several years ago, a high-profile radio preacher separated from his wife. He promised at the time that, if his marriage was ever divorced, he would step down from his pastorate. The marriage ended some time later, and he took back his promise and said that he had decided to be “faithful to God’s call.”

Justifying the church’s actions, their administrative pastor stated this to an applauding congregation. He said, “It is my biblical, spiritual, and personal conviction that God has positioned Dr. So and So in a place where his personal pain has validated his ability to minister to all of us.”

As well-known radio commentator Chuck Colson put it, “In other words, the pastor’s divorce enables him to be a BETTER shepherd of his flock?” Colson called the pastor to keep his promise and step down from the pulpit.

Brothers and sisters, I need God’s grace to keep my wedding vows. I’m not above this type of sin, as none of us are. But this just shows the ridiculous way the church has begun to view divorce and remarriage. It’s no wonder we’re such a mess when it comes to marriage.

Third, we must practice “preventative medicine” as a church regarding this issue. We must be actively involved in each other’s lives, enabling us all to keep our marital vows. This is why our gender prayer groups are so important. We can challenge and encourage one another in this area day by day so that the big problems will by and large be avoided.



Fourth, as a church, we must again strive to become a dynamic counter-culture in Columbia. We are called to be a “city on a hill.” We can be that city within a city by showing the beauty of marriage in a nation where the divine institution is increasingly not valued. Our solution isn’t to picket and yell and kick and scream when people don’t celebrate marriage in our culture. The solution is for us to display, as a church, what marriage looks like, what commitment looks like, what families look like, what godly husbands and fathers and wives and mothers look like, what difference the gospel makes in the nitty-gritty details of life—like marriage. Because, if the gospel doesn’t help in the realm of marriage, it’s not worth much. If, by God’s grace, we can shine on this issue, Columbia will notice.

Brothers and sisters, let us become people, by God’s grace, and for His glory, that will bring honor to Him among the world by keeping our covenant vows. Let us not look for loop-holes to get out of marriages and still be proud of ourselves. If tragic circumstances arise, let us look at them on a case-by-case basis. But let us default to the idea that God intended, in creation, for marriage to be permanent. Let us remember that nothing images God more than being patient with wayward, stubborn sinners. That is what we have received in the gospel. Let us extend it to others, especially our spouses.

Jesus said, in Matthew 19:6, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” He who has ears, let him hear.

Die for Baptism?

My friend Eric Schumacher posts his sermon of the week here. He gives some great thoughts about the meaning and importance of baptism.

9 Marks Newsletter: 2 Great Articles

9 Marks Ministries just sent out their monthly newsletter. Check out these two key articles:

"Praying Beyond Health Concerns" by David Powlison

"Separating Insiders and Outsiders" by Mike McKinley

Dever on Evangelism

Check out Baptist Press's coverage of Mark Dever's address to pastors at the recent convention.

Christians and the Creation

Dr. Russell Moore once again stood in for Dr. Mohler on "The Albert Mohler Program" the other day. On this broadcast, Dr. Moore talks about how Christians should relate to God's creation. Should they follow the ways of many conservatives and say goodbye to green? Or should they become pagan earth worshippers like many liberals? Listen here.

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.