“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.” — Matthew 5:27-28
“The statistics are staggering. Nine out of 10 boys and six out of 10 girls are exposed to pornography before the age of 18. The first exposure to porn for men is 12 years old, on average. Sixty-eight percent of young adult men watch it at least once a week. The list goes on and on. Porn is ravaging our culture. And the accessibility of it is beyond scary.” — Relevant Magazine (August 2015)
TEXT: Matthew 5:27-30
Q: How does God heal us in the area of “lust?”
- God’s Design (v. 27-28) — “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you…
“In their view they and their pupils kept the seventh commandment, provided that they avoided the act of adultery itself. They thus gave a conveniently narrow definition of sexual sin and a conveniently broad definition of sexual purity. But Jesus taught differently.” — John Stott
Genesis 2:23-25…
v. 23…(Permanency)
“Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
v. 24…(Sacrifice)
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
v. 25…(Vulnerability)
“And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
- Our Distortion (v. 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…”
- “This is not a prohibition of the normal attraction which exists between men and women, but of the deep seated lust which consumes and devours…” — D.A. Carson
- “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” — Genesis 1:27
- Drastic Measures (v. 29-30)
“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”
“Jesus doesn’t only reference hell, he describes it in great detail. He says it is a place of eternal torment (Luke 16:23), of unquenchable fire (Mark 9:43), where the worm does not die (Mark 9:48), where people will gnash their teeth in anguish and regret (Matt. 13:42), and from which there is no return, even to warn loved ones (Luke 16:19–31). He calls hell a place of “outer darkness” (Matt. 25:30), comparing it to “Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28), which was a trash dump outside the walls of Jerusalem where rubbish was burned and maggots abounded. Jesus talks about hell more than he talks about heaven, and describes it more vividly. There’s no denying that Jesus knew, believed, and warned against the absolute reality of hell.” — Leslie Schmucker
“Gehenna gets at the idea that hell is a place of unquenchable thirst and unfulfilled longing.” — Tim Keller
“The command to get rid of troublesome eyes, hands and feet is an example of our Lord’s dramatic figures of speech. What he was advocating was not a literal physical self-maiming, but a ruthless self denial. Not mutilation but ‘mortification’ or ‘taking up the cross’ to follow Christ means to reject sinful practices so resolutely that we die to them or put them to death.” — John Stott
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”
— Colossians 3:2-5
- Who is your first love?
- Would you let Jesus do surgery?
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” — John 8:1-11