Who Is An Adulterer?

If you would find your Bibles in Matthew chapter 5, we're going to read verse 27 down to verse number 30. Matthew 5, 27 through verse number 30. And when you find your place, if you would honor God's Word as we stand and read, the Bible tells us in Matthew 5 verse 27. And ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. Father, we thank you for your word today. Lord, this is heaven's truth for earth. We live in a world that is searching for reality and for truth, and we pray that we would be bold and loving and stand and proclaim the word of God. We pray today that you would do a work in our hearts, work on the inside, that it's a joy to hear the testimonies throughout the week of reconciliation happening in families and homes and those who received the word of God last Sunday and applied that and you brought healing from such things, revivals come forth. And I pray that you would do a reviving work today. God, sanctify us on the inside, make of clean people. May Lighthouse be a church that shines bright for the glory of God. We pray if anyone today doesn't know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, that today they might humble themselves, repent and trust in Christ.

We ask it in Jesus name and God's people said, men, you may be seated. As you look across the world, you see some problems. I think you see the reality that things don't seem like they can continue to go on like they are forever. A lot of problems and struggles and fightings and divisions in the world. There is one thing that I believe is the most destructive thing that's going on in the world and in our country, and it is the sexual immorality that has become rampant in our culture. It was in the 1960s that the sexual revolution happened here in America. When that which was confined to the sanctity of marriage, that which was given by God and designed for marriage was opened and torn apart as this culture broke away from the biblical norm. Sex was no longer bound to the realms of a loving marriage, but to the lustful flings of people. What God designed to bless a married couple with to produce children and find joy in one another was now used to abuse and fill this culture up with sin and sexual sin. And with the passing of Roe vs. Wade in 1973, you could now have sex with no consequence.

And one reason the abortion debate is so hotly debated is because people don't want to have consequences for their sexual freedoms. The United States, I don't know if you know this, is the largest producer and exporter of pornographic material in the world. We are the most perverse, sexually perverse nation. When I had a missionary friend who was down in Iraq years ago, he said it was the pornography was so incredibly rampant that you'd walk down the streets and it's just on normal TVs on the streets that you'd be hiding your kids from this stuff is just everywhere.

And he said, what I found, he said, was all of it's being pumped into Iraq from the United States. The United States is permeating the world with pornography. Worldwide pornography is reported to rake in anywhere from $57 to $100 billion annually. In the United States, we make more money in this country off pornography than we do Major League Baseball, the NFL, and the NBA combined.

It produces more income than CBS, NBC, and ABC combined. And the effects have been that where money was once the leading cause of divorce, forever it seems, it's no longer the case. Money has been bumped out of the number one position, and the leading cause of divorce today is adultery, sexual immorality, infidelity. Today in America, people are now defined by their sexual preference. Either you're straight, you're lesbian, you're homosexual, and then they have all these other names and titles that have been given out. You're now defined by what your sex preference is. The sexual revolution of the 1960s then turned into the homosexual revolution that we've seen in the last 20 years.

And now we're in a freefall in this country. If you're not familiar with the scriptures, you would find that Romans 1 gives a clear description of what happens to a nation that abandons God. When a nation turns away from God, the Bible says the first thing that happens according to Romans 1 is that nation will go through a sexual revolution. It's exactly what happened in 1960. It says the second thing in Romans chapter 1 that happens is there'll be a homosexual revolution. Men with men, women with women, they will begin to create a homosexual revolution in a culture.

That's exactly what's happened in the last 20 years. And the third thing that happens in a nation when God has totally abandoned that nation because of their sin and their rejection of God is God gives them over to what's known as a reprobate mind, a conscience that doesn't function anymore. If you ever want to know what a reprobate mind is, it's when you look at a nation and they allow people like drag queens to go into libraries and teach little kids stories in their X-rated garb. That's when you know the reprobate mind has landed in a nation.

And there's about 500 other things I could say, but I don't want to pollute our ears with the vileness of the reprobate. Where God had in his grace suppressed man's sinfulness, you know the reason that we're not as bad as we could be is a general grace of God. He keeps us from crossing lines. He suppressed, there's something in man, the conscience of God placed in us that lets us know there's some things that are just right and wrong. I don't have to believe in God to believe that there's some bound of morality. That's why in no culture murders a virtue, no culture adultery is a virtue. It's not virtuous anywhere.

Well, where did they get that from? That came from God, according to Romans 2 verse 14 and 15, has written his law on the heart of man. Animals don't feel that way. Animals don't care about adultery, right? Dogs don't say, you know what, I've made a commitment to you. You know, litter last year, you know, I think we really need to work out these problems. They're animals, right?

How dare you call my dog an animal? Friends, it is a it is a tragedy to see the moral unraveling of our nation. There's really no limits. Those born from 1997 to 2003, 20 percent of that entire generation identifies as LGBTQ. You know, you know, if if a nation just gives over to homosexuality, it would literally wipe out the entire nation.

Because they are dependent upon those who are not homosexual to procreate. Without that, if I was an atheist, I would say that's the way you destroy a nation. As an atheist, I would understand that that doesn't make any that would destroy a group, because they would then depend upon people that would have a different morality or a mindset than them for that entity to exist. We destroy the whole thing. But we embrace that now, we we celebrate that.

I don't know, some of you I'm sure have, if you're historians, I've spent some time studying like ancient Babylon, ancient Rome. What caused the great nations of our history to fall when they trumped the world? It was their sexual perversion. They died from within.

They decayed from the inside. And that's what's happening now. Do you know among young people today, they believe almost twice as many young people today believe that littering is a more a greater moral crime, a greater immorality than looking at pornographic things? Leaving a piece of paper on the floor is a greater crime morally than not allowing pornography in your life.

That's where we're at today. I've had people in our church that I've gone through marriage counseling with. I remember one couple I sat down with and the man looked at me and said, there's nothing wrong looking at pornography. Nothing.

Why would there be? I had a guy one time, I sat down, I had to spend 30 minutes going through the Bible just showing him that sleeping with somebody that you're not married to is wrong. He's like, there's no way that could be wrong. He said, my whole life I've been living like this, sleeping around with whoever. He said, how on earth could that be wrong? I said, the Bible tells you, he's like, where's that at? That's showing verses. He's like, what does even fornication mean?

I mean, he's pulling up Google. Friends, that's where the culture is at now. If you're in an older generation, I'm kind of getting there, I'm 41 years old now, but yeah, over the hill, I feel the slide, right? But there are things that were in the moral fabric of a culture that says there's just things you don't do. There's societal norms that if you begin to violate that, you begin to disrupt. If you want to destroy a culture, disrupt the family.

Throw over the family. And so, White House, God has called us to be lights in a world that has drifted into the dark. Matthew 5 16 says, let your light so shine before men that they would see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

And Satan is a liar. This world has bought the lie that life without God is more satisfying. Is our world more satisfied now than it used to be? Is it more fulfilled now? Are kids happier?

Are families more excited about the brokenness that's going on throughout the country? Satan is a liar that eating the forbidden fruit is where it's at. Living outside the boundaries that God has given is what will fulfill you. One of the greatest lies the enemy tells people is if you do things that God tells you to do, you will miss out. You will be bored to death.

You will have no fun. The Christian life is the dull, the boring, the empty life. And nowhere does this seem to be more prevalent than the area of sex. And I know somebody's here thinking, I can't believe the pastor said that three letter word in church. But you need to hear this. Let me give you some facts about intimacy.

You prefer that word. Five facts about sex. First of all, studies have shown that those who abstain from sexual intercourse before marriage report the highest levels of sexual satisfaction in marriage. All the studies have shown that if you abstain from sex until you get married, your enjoyment of intimacy during marriage is higher than anyone else's. So if you want to have a great marriage intimately for 50 years, 60 years, that's what you do.

You save yourself for that. And listen, sex is God's idea. God created this. He didn't look down to earth and say, what on earth is Adam and Eve doing romping around?

Get them guys out of the garden. I mean, this is not how it happened. It wasn't Adam and Eve's idea. God created this. You know, procreation could have happened like pollination or something.

You know, sneeze on your wife and she gets pregnant, you know. But that's not how God designed it. God designed it in a way that could bring such physical satisfaction to a couple and that produces a child. He created this as a gift.

And when you work the design of God, it brings the greatest satisfaction. This Wednesday will be 20 years of marriage for me and my wife. Enjoying marriage. And I can tell you, it just gets better. It just gets better. It's fantastic.

It's like, how could I get better? Life is just wonderful. God is good.

And I say that because young ears, you need to know that. That's the truth. I've counseled people for 20 years in different marriage situations. And I can tell you, the people who've dealt with infidelity always deal with a lack of trust. People who've slept around always struggle with trust.

They always struggle with staying clean, staying pure. There's always these issues that seem to come up. Secondly, those who cohabitate or live together before marriage, studies have shown are 50% higher divorce rate than those who do not. So if you want to have a divorce, cohabitate before you get married.

You have a 50% chance higher that you'll get a divorce. I remember I did construction before I got in the ministry. I remember one of the guys I work with, he's talking to me about the Bible and stuff. And he says, yeah, I think, though, that I'm living with my girlfriend and we're going to move in together. And I said, you can't do that. He said, why? What's wrong with that?

Because it's a sin. And I shared with him the Word of God. And he said, man, that's the only way you can find out if it'll work. And I told him, I shared with him some of these things years ago, and he had no idea.

People think, you know what? Just make sense. Live together, see if it works, and then maybe you'll sign the agreement. Thirdly, those who abstain from sexual intercourse before marriage have the highest rates of fidelity in marriage.

If you can stay pure before marriage, you can stay pure after marriage. If you want to, I can say, all these years, hundreds and hundreds of counseling situations, when somebody comes from a broken relationship, you know the number one issue they have? Number one, every single time. I'll tell them, I say, there's a five-letter word we're going to talk about here in a little bit that is the number one issue you guys have, and they say it's trust, isn't it? It's like you struggle with trust in your relationship. You know why you struggle with trust? Because trust got broken. When trust gets broken, it affects you. And you bring the baggage of the past into the present. Is this true?

Yeah, it's true. Because any time you come out of one marriage, you go to the second, you go to the third, you're going to carry that stuff with you, and you're going to struggle trusting. Sometimes children have struggles trusting people because their parents broke their trust.

Now, they're struggling trusting a lot of different things. Number four, the introduction of sex in a dating relationship almost always ushers in the breakup of that relationship. I was a youth pastor for five years, dealt with hundreds of teens, and me and my wife would always know when somebody started getting too far along physically because they started fighting all the time. Once that started up in a teen relationship, it's like, yeah, well, they crossed the line physically. It just always happened that way, literally. I mean, just every time.

You sit down and talk with them. You know, how are you guys doing in the area of purity? Well, you know, we, yeah. So what happened since then? Well, we've been fighting all the time, yeah, because sin separates.

You think your plan is better than God's? And then number five, sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, can remain dormant for up to a decade or more and passed on to people throughout life. You know 25% of people in colleges have an STD. You know there's 374 million new STDs each year just permeating the cultures of the world.

New infections, I should say. Young people, save yourself for marriage. You know, the world defines love with the word lust. They think lust means love. They have no comprehension of what love means. The difference is love waits where lust demands it now. Love is like paying with cash. Lust is like putting it on credit. Love seeks to honor God and bless the other person. Lust only wants to fulfill its own desires. Love will serve the other person while lust will use the other person. You ever been in a relationship, somebody gets intimate with you and then they don't want nothing left to do with you? That's called being lusted. They're treated in a way like somebody would treat a piece of food.

It's a wicked process. It's a lust, sinful thing. So, ladies, if a guy ever says, hey, baby, I love you.

Give me your smoochy, smoochy. He tries to put the moves on you, say, oh, you must want to serve me then. You must want me to be right with God.

You must want to honor the Lord Jesus Christ in this relationship. And you start talking like that, he'll be out the door, buddy. Like, don't be bringing that stuff up. You just killed the mood. Amen. And all the women said, amen, keep them guys off of you, all right? And vice versa.

It goes both ways. If you've messed up today and you've crossed the line, devote to be pure today. Say from today forward, I'm going to be a virgin. I'm going to be clean before God until marriage.

Commit to that. Today, our Lord teaches adultery, teaches on adultery and shows that adultery is not simply something external to us, but it's an issue of the heart. And so verse 27, he says this. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shall not commit adultery.

So here we see the command to follow. Whereas the sixth commandment in the Bible has to do with the sanctity of life, do not kill. The seventh commandment has to do with the sanctity of marriage and purity. And God says, do not commit adultery. Now, how does God feel about fornication, which is, adultery is having sexual intercourse with somebody who is married and they're sleeping with somebody and having intimacy with somebody that they're not married to. Where fornication is somebody having sexual intimacy that's not married to anyone.

And it could be two people unmarried. And Ephesians 5-3 says, but fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not once be named among you as become a saints. It should never be true of a Christian that they're sleeping around ever, even in a committed relationship until marriage. Adultery is an extremely serious sin to God, so much so it landed in God's top 10 category. And the severity of this sin is seen by the consequence that God gave it in the Old Testament. According to Leviticus 20 verse 10, it says, the man that commits adultery with another man's wife, even he that commits adultery with his neighbor's wife and the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. God put the death penalty on the people who committed adultery during the Old Testament. Do you think that cleaned up adultery in this society?

Do you think that cleaned a culture up from that? Deuteronomy 22 says the same thing. Do you know, I was studying, even in ancient Egypt, in pagan Egypt, they were against adultery. They would have the death, even in Egypt, they had the death penalty for people who committed adultery in Egypt. The Hittites did the same thing. The ancient Hittites, they put to death people who committed adultery.

These are pagan groups. The seriousness of the sin of adultery is highlighted by our Lord's teaching also in verse 31 through 32 of this chapter where he talks about it. It is the one ground for divorce.

It's one of the grounds for divorce is continual infidelity in marriage. And so Paul taught also that sexual sin is a unique and destructive sin against a person's own body. 1 Corinthians 6, 18 says, flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. The word fornication is porneia in the Greek. It's where we get our English word pornography from, and it literally can be translated as sexual intercourse, illicit sexual intercourse, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, all of those things. And God declares here that illicit sex outside the bounds of marriage is a violation against your own body.

It's destructive to your own soul. Proverbs 6, 32 says, but whoso commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding, he that doeth it destroys his own soul. In the Bible, it uses adultery as a metaphor of people being unfaithful to God. Do you remember the Old Testament book of Hosea? God said, Hosea, I want you to go marry a woman of harlotry.

Marry this adulterer named Gomer, and he took Gomer and married her. She ends up leaving him, going back into prostitution. And God tells Hosea in chapter 3 to go back and buy her out of prostitution, and he does. Did you imagine?

Your wife leaves you to go into prostitution, and then you've got to pay money to men to have her back? And what God was saying is, this is what my people do to me when they get into sin. It was a physical, tangible example of that. Let me ask, when is the last time you recognized that willfully allowing sin in your life is like committing adultery against God? It is defiling the purity of your relationship with God with the harlot of sin. And every day, the temptress of sin comes. The lustful, sinful things assault the faithfulness of God's people. And you and I need to understand that sin grieves God. Ephesians 4-30 says, Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby we're sealed into the day of redemption.

So we see here the command that is given. Then in verse 28, we see the heart of the issue that Jesus gives. In verse 28, he says, But I say unto you, this is Christ's authority now coming onto the scene. Jesus is not contradicting the word of God as given in the Old Testament in the seventh command, but what he's doing is clarifying it. Where verse 27 gave the letter of the law, Jesus is giving the spirit of the law, the heartbeat of it.

And so he says, But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her committed adultery, with her already in his heart. You need to understand that in Jesus' day, the scribes and Pharisees who were the religious leaders had externalized their sin. They made everything external. They didn't internalize it.

They saw only the externals being the issue. But Jesus came along and says, You're just looking at the fruit of sin. I'm going to show you where the root of sin is. It's not just bad on the outside.

The corruption starts on the inside. And Jesus is showing them that that's where they need to be cleaned up at. The problem with the scribes and Pharisees is they had externalized sin, and so therefore they externalized salvation. Because sin was only external, salvation was only external. But Jesus didn't say that blessed are the pure in hands. He said blessed are the pure in heart, right?

Salvation is on the inside. And so he says, But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her. Now, what does that mean?

It's important for you to understand what he's saying here. The word looketh is from the Greek word blepo, and it means to have a voluntary observation, taking notice of someone or something. And it's used in the present tense in the Greek here.

That's why the eth is there. It's a continual action. It's not an accidental glance. It's a continual looking. It's a glance that literally turns into a gaze. And it says the motive is seen in the next statement that whosoever continually looks upon her, and it says to lust after her. The word lust is a word epithumeo, epa meaning upon, and thumeo meaning passion. It literally is the idea of you set your passion upon something or someone. Now, that word epithumeo is actually a neutral word. It's not actually bad or good.

It's just neutral. Like, you can have a passion for something that's good, and you can have a passion for something that's bad. Epithumeo is actually used in Psalm 119 verse 40 in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And it says, I have longed after thy precepts. I've set my passion upon the precepts or the word of God. Quicken me according thy righteousness. But here, Jesus uses it in the negative sense, longing for something that's sinful.

Warren Wiersbe says and explains it like this. The look that Jesus mentioned was not a casual glance, but a constant stare with the purpose of lusting. It is possible for a man to glance at a beautiful woman and know that she's beautiful, but not lust after her. The man Jesus described looked at the woman for the purpose of feeding his inner sensual appetites as a substitute for the act. It was not accidental.

It was planned. And so, listen, just because you see someone who may be attractive, that's not the sin. It's when you gaze upon them for the sole purpose of fulfilling some lustful craving that you have on the inside. You look with lust.

You look for the purpose of satisfying an inward lustful craving. That is where the sin is. And Jesus says here, when you do that, you commit adultery. The word commit adultery means that you violate this sexual sin, which adultery is committing sexual intercourse with somebody that you're not married to. So adultery is the focus of this passage.

It's even more so a broader view, because he says whosoever, not just the married person, and uses the word woman there. So this is a broad category because the word adultery can also refer to sexual sin outside of marriage as well. And so Jesus, notice where he says the issue is that's being committed. It's not physically done.

It hasn't happened. The person hasn't physically done anything with the person, but they've done it already, he says, in their heart. He says they've committed adultery with her in the statement already in his heart. The sin has happened there. It is not lustful looking that causes the sin in the heart, but the sin in the heart that causes the lustful looking. You need to understand that the lustful looking is but the expression of the heart that is already immoral and adulterous. The seeds of that sin are embedded on the inside and it gives fruit to that lustful gaze. If you struggle with looking with lust, the problem is not outside of you, in other words. The problem is inside. Now Jesus is saying that lustful desire on the inside is as bad as committing the act on the outside.

I would have to say no. I don't think Jesus is saying that lust on the inside equals the same criminal stance of sin on the outside because in the Old Testament, people were not put to death for hate or lust, but they were put to death for murder and adultery. So God, by his own standards, elevated that. But what he is saying is that when you have that on the inside, spiritually speaking, you are as guilty as someone who committed the physical act, spiritually speaking. And so the priority of the heart is throughout the Bible. There's 750 references to the heart in the Bible, and it speaks of the heart as the source of all that directs us. In Matthew 15a, Jesus tells us that he sees beyond the externals of a person and sees the inside. He says in Matthew 15a, This people draw nigh unto me with their mouth and honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. You know, you can have all the things right on the outside, but if your inside is not right, that's what God cares about. Luke 645, Jesus said, A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil. And so Jesus taught that the heart is where sin originates. And it's critical that we understand the heart is the issue when it comes to the behavior of our life. We live in a day when they want to do behavioral modification.

People come out of addiction programs or they come out of jail and they get put in addiction programs, and they're forced to go through two months or six weeks or six months or whatever of some kind of a sobriety teaching and study. Because they're under the coercion of that, then they'll line up. But once they get out of that, they fall right back in their addiction. You know why? Because there's no change on the inside.

You have to change on the inside for there to be a change on the outside. We have some people in our church that have been down some of the darkest roads in drug addiction and abuse. And just as far as it can get and been set free by the power of God that got a hold of their heart. If you struggle with lust, with addiction, with anger, with whatever it is, it's not outside of you that's the issue. You're not the victim. You're the criminal. You're the problem.

And until you recognize that, you'll never change. You have somebody say, Oh, I blame my dad. I blame my mom. Blame this person.

Quit blaming everybody. Recognize that you need to get your life in line with the truth of God. And if that upsets you and you think you're a victim because of what I said, you'll never get out of it.

You'll live the way you've lived for the rest of your life. And we won't feel sorry for you because God needs to chasing you more to wake you out of your slumber. You need to see it. I get exhausted sometimes when people waive the victim card all the time in our culture. People beat up their mom. Oh, it's not my fault.

Really? Put that kid in jail, man. God is the one who gives us a new heart. He's the one who changes us. Listen, I could never change my heart. I was a bad kid growing up, man. I was like the kid who had to move school districts because I was getting in so many fights. I fought the same kid seven times in one summer.

Seven times. I thought, let's throw down again, baby. You know, you looked at me wrong.

Let's go again. I mean, we just fight every other day. I mean, we go to get in trouble all the time. And, you know, the problem wasn't all outside of me. It was me. And when I got saved, I mean, God so revolutionized my heart that I remember kids. I was just I was a lot of trouble and kids would come up and I was that vile kid talking bad and all this stuff. And I was popular because I was like six. I was this hyped in the eighth grade and big into sports.

And so kids would come up and start talking dirty and stuff. And I'm like, man, I don't want to listen to that. I don't talk like that anymore.

They're like, what on earth? You're Josh Bevin. My name used to mean something different. And it wasn't me that I couldn't change myself. It was God that did that. He changed me. He gave me a new heart. So you've been perfect since you kidding me? None of us have been perfect sense, but he's been perfecting me. I'm no longer the man I used to be.

I know that for sure. All his grace. Ezekiel thirty six, twenty five. The Bible says, then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, from all your idols. Will God says, I cleanse you and a new heart also will I give you in a new spirit? Well, I put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and we'll give you a heart of flesh. God gives us new hearts. Let me ask you, friend, what does your heart look like before God this morning? Is your heart clean and pure?

Do you think on what is pure and lovely and true? As Philippians four eight says, or does your mind wander into sinful desire, you think on sin and dwell on it, your mind and eyes wonder. You know, God examines our hearts.

He knows what's going on. Jeremiah 17 10. God says, I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings.

When God looks upon our hearts, what does he see? And thirdly, the last thought we'll have is the seriousness of sexual sin. You would ask the question, like, how big of a deal is sexual sin to Jesus?

Like you went to the culture, you said, Is there anything wrong? Is there is there such a thing as sexual sin? People say, Yeah, if you force someone to do something against their will, but outside of that, if it's consensual, then there's really no problem. And so that's the way the culture would see it. But but how does God see the seriousness of sexual sin? Well, he says in verse twenty nine, if thy right hand, the right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it's profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee.

For it's profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not thy whole body should be cast into hell. I would have to ask the question, Is there anything more offensive and stern? Is there any any way Jesus could have been more severe about how he felt about it? Just consider for a moment. Could he have said anything more intense than that? Would anybody have said, Oh, this is Jesus's first major sermon.

Get the kids. Let's all gather round. You know, Jesus up on the Sermon on the Mount.

He's going to preach to us and he gets up there and he's like, If you commit adultery, you know, and you look upon a woman with lust in your heart, you committed adultery already. And if your eye causes you to fend, rip it out. And they're like, Ah, cover the ears.

You know, I mean, this is heavy stuff. Rip your eye out. Cut your hand off. Is this mutilation?

This sounds crazy. What is Jesus saying here? Well, the Lord's reference to the eye in hand probably has to do because men struggle with the lust of the eye, where women would struggle more lust of the touch. But why the right hand in the right eye? Well, in the Jewish culture, the right eye was spoken of as the most precious faculty of a man. The right eye in the right hand was your best ability and your skill. So among the culture, everybody knew that. Like you would say, you know, give him right eye, your right hand, a fellowship like this.

It was like your best faculty, your best skill set. Jesus isn't talking about literally cutting your hand off, you're pulling your eye out, because if you tore your right eye out, guess what you would have? Your left. And your left would double up on what your right could no longer do. And if you removed both eyes, you would still struggle with your heart. And so Jesus just said in verse 28, it's an issue of the heart. It's not an issue of the flesh. He's not telling us physically to do this. What is Jesus saying here? The point Jesus is making is this.

You need to be so drastic. You need to see sexual sin is so evil and so wicked that you need to be willing to take whatever steps are necessary to remove it from your life. The right eye in the right hand being the severity of that, that you would remove that from your life, that you would go to whatever extent to get rid of that sexual sin, that you would take whatever steps are necessary to bring it to an end, that you cannot continue in that sin. In the Old Testament, the consequence was physical death. In the New Testament, Jesus said it's eternal death. He said, your soul is being threatened with hell right now. Hell awaits the guilty. Let me ask you, would you go to hell for pornography? Would you say, you know, I want to look at pornography, so I'm going to go to hell for that. I would be willing to go to hell for that. Would you be willing to go to hell for that? Would you be willing to go to hell for adultery, fornication?

Is it really that good? Is it really that valuable to you? What do you value more, sexual lust or your soul? What do you value more, being right with God or being fulfilled in the flesh? Our Lord's words could not be more clear and severe that nothing in our life is so valuable that you should not remove it to keep yourself out of sexual sin. Friend, do you see sexual sin, lust and sinful thoughts and longings this way? Have you allowed a godless Babylonian culture to define what purity should be?

Well, I think it's okay if, is that based upon the Bible or what you thought? Because I can tell you what you thought. How old are you?

20, 30, 40, 60, 70? Oh, you've lived a vapor length amount of time so far and you're going to base truth on yourself. You don't even know where you left your keys, right? You may not want to base on your eternal soul on what you think. You can't even fix your physical illness.

Why would you think you can fix your spiritual illness? This is, you talk about somebody who's living in the dark. And the word here, he says, if thy right hand offend thee or thy right eye offend thee, the word offend thee is a Greek word, scandalizo, and it's where we get the word scandalized from. Scandalous, and it was a word used to set a bait trap when you were trying to trap an animal. And the idea was that you wanted to lure them in with what was enticing so that you could destroy them, you could take their life. And so the Bible says if anything in your hand or your eye, if anything basically in your life is tempting you into sin, you need to have a radical amputation and a removal of that from your life. So as you examine your life, is there anything, any person that's tripping you up? I had a guy one time, was in our church, and he said, man, I have a lady who lives across the street, and man, we're struggling, and he said, what should I do? I said, move. Get away from that. If I lived across the street from a bar and I was an alcoholic, I would move. Get away from that situation.

She comes knocking on your door. Get out of there, man. You know, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 9, this is what Paul said. He says, know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? He says, unrighteousness will not inherit the kingdom of God. And he says this, be not deceived.

And he begins to list people that are not going to heaven. He says, fornicators, those are people who just sleep around. Idolatures, they put things before God. Adulters, those are people who sleep with people that are married, that are not married, so forth.

Affeminate is literally the word for homosexual. Abusers of themself with mankind. Thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners. You know, alcoholism is not a disease, it's a sin. And so he says in verse 11, and such were some of you, but you're washed, you're sanctified, you're justified by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of our God. God cleanses, and you say, well, they didn't deal with sexual sin back then like we do today.

Are you kidding me? Have you ever read about the city of Corinth? It was a seaman's paradise. They had a thousand temple prostitutes that would descend upon the nightlife of the city in Corinth. They lived on a metropolis. And all the people believed that if you slept with these prostitutes, you were sleeping with that pagan goddess Diana. Their worship services were sexual vileness. Like that was how they worshiped their gods. They created gods of sex and drugs and alcohol.

God, Bacchus, Bacchanalian feces, drunken orgies they had. They created gods that look like themselves, and that's what man does. We make a god that looks just like us.

That's the insanity of mankind. The Bible says God makes man in his image. We say, no, we make God in our image. We're the creator now. We're the sovereign now. It's our kingdom.

It's our glory now. Really? That may work for you in your life here, but one day you will come to an end. You can't even sustain your physical life. Why do you think you can stand up before an eternal God and justify yourself? What a delusion.

What a blindness. What a self-injured thought pattern. Sin must be dealt with at the level of seriousness that God speaks of. Let me ask you, do you have anything in your life that you need to remove? If you have a job where somebody is tempting you every day, every week, you're feeling sexual temptations, move jobs. Get out of there. Believe me, that's better than staying in a job that you could lose your marriage over.

Well, I've been working all my life. Then ask God to open up another door, and I think he probably will bless your decision. Get out of there.

Well, why don't they leave? What are you more worried about, your money or your righteous standing before God? I'll tell you, friends, lust takes down giant killers. David was slain. David slew a giant, but he got slain by lust.

Solomon was destroyed by lust. Lust is a destroyer. Who can control lust? Who can control it? Who can feed that animal and control it?

No one. No one can control covetousness, gluttony, lust. We are self-destructive entities. We eat ourself to death, we drink ourself to death, we drug ourself to death, we sex ourself to death, we spend ourself to death.

If we have no controls on our life, we destroy ourself. God comes along and says, there's boundaries for this, and we're like, how dare you say there's boundaries? And God says, really? So you want to live without boundaries.

You want to see what that looks like? What if I've committed adultery? Sometimes people say, you know, what if I commit adultery? First of all, if you have done that in your life, you're probably under some weight of conviction right now, which is always a good thing to know that there's conviction because God loves you, but recognize it as a sin. If you have not already, make sure that you've gotten before God and repented of that. Repentance means, God, I agree with you about this sin, no longer wanted in my life. Just know this, God will forgive you.

God will restore your walk with Him. In John 8, you have the story of the woman who was caught in the very act of adultery. They brought her before Jesus, and they were going to stone her to death, and Jesus says, whoever has the first, no sin, let him cast the first stone.

And when he looked around, everybody left. And Jesus says, woman, where are your accusers? And she says, no one condemns me, Lord. And Jesus could have condemned her, but he says, neither do I. And Jesus extends forgiveness and mercy, and he says, go and sin no more.

Don't do that anymore. Aren't you thankful for the grace of God? Jesus didn't say I've come to destroy you, I've come to bring salvation to the world.

You know, God's plans for us are much better than we could ever think for ourself. If you're struggling with sin, you need to sit down and write out everything it will take from you. What would happen if I commit adultery? How much would your testimony be destroyed, your walk with God, your soul, your relationships, your family?

What would your grandkids and your children think? Sexual sin is loving self over God, it's loving sin over righteousness, it's destructive, it's disloyal. It lacks integrity, it's filthy and sinful and evil, it destroys lives, it breaks hearts, it tears apart families, it ruins marriages. Let me give you some keys to having sexual victory, victory over sexual sin. First of all, in relation to your relation with God, get honest with God, see sin as he sees it. Don't justify sin, repent of it, fear God. The Bible says, by the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. Secondly, in relation to sin, radically remove it from your life. Do whatever is necessary to remove the sin, whatever is necessary.

I've had professional people in our city who had to go down to get rid of their iPhone, get rid of that technology and just get a flip phone because they said they can't handle it. They're ruining their marriage, their life, destroying them. In relation to others, flee lust. The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 2, 22, flee also youthful lust.

Joseph fled away from Pharaoh's wife. In relationship to yourself, seek accountability. If in any of this today, you say you have been through adultery, I've been through this, we need counseling. If you need counseling in any of this, come and let us know.

We have people who can do that and help you with that. But you need accountability. You need counseling. You need some kind of accountability if you struggle with sexual perversion of any kind. You need someone to hold you accountable. Proverbs 27, 17 says, iron sharpens iron so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. Commit to being a person of integrity.

Let me say a couple last things and we'll be done. Let me let me speak to married couples for just a moment. There was a study done in 2017. That showed that 15 percent of men and 27 percent of women say that they've not been sexually intimate with their spouse over the entire last year. 15 percent of men and 27 percent of women that are married not being intimate with their spouse. You need to understand that that is a huge problem.

That is a huge problem. You need to love one another and serve one another in the area of intimacy. When you're married, it's not intimacy is not self-serving. It's better to give than to receive. I don't want to get too graphic, but you need to understand that when you seek to fulfill your spouse, you will be fulfilled. When you seek to minister to them in the area of intimacy, you will be ministered to. But if you are selfish, if you are all about you, you don't care about their needs. I can tell you nobody wants to be married to you in that area.

There's no man or woman. It doesn't matter how strong, how good looking, how whatever you are, you will be a turnoff. You will be a they will not want to be a part of you. Intimacy is a ministering to others, and as you do that, you minister yourself. But you need to understand it is not something that is to be held against your spouse. Well, I'm not going to do that until you put the trim up.

You don't have a headache, 365 days of the year. The Bible tells us in First Corinthians seven, nevertheless, to avoid fornication, to avoid sexual sin, let every man have his own wife and every woman to have their own husband. Let me say this also, young people, if you struggle with with just desire, you say, God, take away all desire. Don't pray that that's not what God wants you to do. He wants you to put down your Nintendo game systems, begin to pursue God and move toward marriage.

Be the man or woman of God God's called you to be. And those desires are natural desires that should move you toward desiring to have a relationship and move toward marriage. And so he says in verse three, let the husband render unto the wife do benevolence or affection, and likewise also the wife and the husband. And he goes on to say, if you don't do that, if you don't fulfill each other physically, you're going to open the door for Satan inside of your marriage. I know it's not a huge percentage, but if there's 15 to 27 or 30 percent of people that that's going on with, listen, that is not good. Don't be sleeping in other rooms from each other. That's not good. Stay in the same bed.

And let me say this, I will just keep going. Do not let your children sleep in your room with you. And all God's people said, and maybe all the husbands, Amen. Get them kids out of the bedroom. My kids did not sleep in our bedroom outside of the maybe the first one for a few weeks or the second one, maybe a couple of weeks and a half.

That is done. Not because I didn't love my kids. It's just that it was better for them and us. I remember one couple I was counseling. I said, you know, you live in a two bedroom. Where's your where's your kids sleep?

And they said one of them at the foot of the bed. It's like move them in the kitchen if it's necessary. Get them out of there.

Get him out of there. You need to be able to enjoy your marriage, enjoy one another. And if you have little kids, learn to put them to bed by eight o'clock so mom and dad can have some time alone. I'm just talking about intimacy. I'm talking about sitting on the couch with your arm around your spouse, being able to have a conversation, sharing your heart, sharing your thoughts one with another, enjoying life together without the interruption of children stressing you out. That's essential because, you know, the best thing I can give my kids is my healthy marriage. It's the greatest thing I can give them.

They know mom and dad love each other. I don't kiss my wife right in front of them. I'll kiss her in front of you. I don't care. I get a kiss or anytime I want. I'm married.

It's fantastic. My kids are like, Dad, you gross this out. I'm like, go in the other room then. Hey, man, I'm paying the bills around here.

Get out of here. It's you know, it's it's a blessing to be married and being in love. It's a joy to be able to trust your spouse. It's a blessing not to have to think about all the other partners that they've. It's a blessing. You want to move toward that if you're young. Listen, you need to move toward that. If you if you've crossed some of those lines, God can bless and heal. And he can do miracles that are so beautiful and wonderful and awesome.

I can tell you, friends, God's plan is better than the world's. I can tell you that. Believe me, we live in a culture today that thinks it's a credit card way of sex.

I'll buy it now and I'll worry about the payment later. Well, you're racking up some big debts and it will destroy your life. I've had grown men come into my office, tattooed, covered their body. Guys that you would not want to see on the streets.

Come into my office and say, Josh, I have curled up in balls, crying my eyes out because I cannot clean my mind up. Every moment I see a woman, it's only sexual perversion that floods my mind. I'm a slave. Some of the toughest, meanest guys you could ever met just totally consumed their mind and they're a slave.

It's destroyed them. I can tell you guys you need to radically amputate some things from your life. Freedom is not being able to do what you want to do. It's being able to do what you know you're supposed to do. The Bible tells us we need to put off the old man, renew our minds and put on the new man. Let me ask you this, what sin is so valuable in your life that you would choose it over God? Whatever it is today, why don't you cast it aside and say, God, I choose you over my sin. You know, that's what repentance says. Repentance is saying, God, I want you more than my sin. You know, when I look at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, you know what the cross says?

Jesus says, I want you enough to die for your sin and repentance is saying, God, I want you more than my sin. And today God's proven his love for us and repentance just proves our love for the Lord. Today, what is your heart? What's on your heart today? My prayer is that we would all have the prayer of Psalms 139, 23 and 40 says, search me. Oh, God, know my heart. Try me. Know my thoughts and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. That God searched me.

Is there anything on the inside that I need to get cleaned up? Maybe husband and wives need to come and say, you know what? Our marriage is good, but we just want to come and ask God to protect us. Maybe you're dating. Maybe we got several couples that are moving toward marriage.

Maybe you just want to come and say, God, keep us pure, keep us clean. I know that's not an easy season. I was only engaged six months. You say, why not longer? Because I didn't want to be engaged longer than six months. People say, I'm going to be engaged for three years.

No, you're not. Not my advice. I'd rather you guys get married and get right. You know, enjoy marriage, enjoy life. The average person gets married at 27. How on earth do you stay pure until you're 27?

Does that even make sense? It's not about getting your career, getting everything set up in your entire life and then getting married. Realize the value of marriage.

Marriage is precious. The grace of life, the Bible says. And I want to lift up an exalt today and say it is holy. It is wonderful.

It is beautiful. And let's sanctify what God has sanctified. Amen.

And let's all stand this morning. Heads bowed, knives closed, the altars open. Maybe you just want to come and spend a moment in prayer. Maybe God spoke in your heart.

Maybe there's a burden on your heart, whatever it is, you're welcome to come. If you're here today and you were to stand before God and God said, Why should I let you into heaven? You say, I don't know what I would say. If God said, Why should I let you into heaven?

You say, I don't have an answer for that. Well, I'll be standing down front. We have men and women on the front over here. And all you do is have to come forward and say, you know, I'd like to talk to somebody about that because I don't want to die and be separated from God in hell. I'd sure like to know how to get to heaven. And we'll have a pure lady, we'll have a lady sit down in a room right off the sanctuary. And if you're a man, we'll have a man sit down and talk with you. And they'll just show you from the Bible what the Bible says.

And they'll answer any questions you have and you can make that decision today. Don't leave here today not knowing where your eternity will be. Father, we just thank you today for your word.

We thank you for its truths. God, we thank you for purity and righteousness. God, help the men of this church to love their wives. Help the women of this church to love their husbands. It has grieved me to see over these last several years, the last five divorces that have happened in the church at Lighthouse have been from women leaving their husbands for another man. That God, you would protect these women, that you would protect these men.

That sexual sin assaults both parties. That if there is anything in anyone's life here today, it would be radically removed, moving jobs, moving homes, doing whatever is necessary to be right with God. Bring purity and holiness and righteousness. God, we want to be right with you. Be glorified in how we not only listen to this message, but how we respond in our hearts. In Jesus' name, Amen.