Well, you know, we're involved in a study of the Ten Commandments.
We're going through them one at a time. And today we've arrived at Commandment number seven, which simply says Exodus 20, verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. Now, this looks very simple and straightforward on the surface, but really there's a lot more here in this commandment than meets the eye. And we want to talk about this today in what I believe is one of the most relevant topics in our world for you and me to be talking about. Now, to really understand what God is saying in Commandment number seven, there are four questions we need to ask and answer.
Question number one is this. How does God feel about sex? Well, to put it simply, God is totally in favor of sex. I mean, don't forget, God is the one who invented sex. I mean, God told Adam and Eve in the garden, be fruitful and multiply.
And friends, there's only one way in the world to do that. Now, God could have made the human race to procreate any way He'd wanted to make us to procreate. I mean, He could have made us like amoebas where we just kind of go, and there's two of us.
You know, there goes Renee again. But He didn't make it this way. God created sex. And I want to make sure we understand that sex is not just something that God tolerates, because it produces children. To the contrary, sex is something that pleases God when a husband and a wife are doing it.
Proverbs chapter five, verse 18. The Bible says, May you rejoice in the wife of your youth. May her breasts satisfy you at all times. May you ever be intoxicated, literally drunk in her physical, sexual love. You see, the common view is that when it comes to sex, God is a cosmic killjoy.
But my friends, nothing could be farther from the truth. In Proverbs five here, God is talking about a husband and a wife having an active sexual life of vibrant sexual life. And God makes it clear that this is pleasing to him. This comes as a great shock to many people in our world that God is in favor of sex. This comes as a great shock to many church going people in our world that God is in favor of sex.
But it's true. Listen, if you have a child, don't you ever tell your child that sex is dirty, that sex is is unclean, that sex is impure or that sex is bad and displeasing to God? Because they'll believe you, my friend, and you will lay a curse on them that they will spend much of their adult life trying to get over. You tell them that sex is beautiful, that sex is holy, that sex is a good thing, that sex is pleasing to God. God is all for sex, you tell them, so long as we use it inside the boundary that God created for it.
And what is that boundary? Well, that's what Commandment number seven begins by telling us. Commandment seven makes it clear that that boundary is marriage. Now, all of this leads us to a second question because there's more here in Commandment number seven than just that. The second question is, how did the Lord Jesus tell us that we were to interpret this commandment number seven?
Well, in Matthew chapter five, Jesus said, You've heard it was said, You shall not commit adultery. That sounds familiar. Yes. Hello. We just talked about that for five minutes. Yeah.
OK. All right. Now, now, look, Jesus said, But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust with lust in his heart and let me say anyone that looks at a man with lust in her heart has already committed adultery with this person in their heart. Here we find the Lord Jesus explaining to us the full intent of Commandment number seven.
God's full intent of Commandment number seven goes way beyond the letter of the law. In God's mind, Commandment number seven, you shall not commit adultery is not limited just to the physical act of adultery, but rather it also applies to the state of mind and to the attitude of heart. It applies to the lust and the sensuality that lies behind the act of adultery and behind every other act of unbiblical sexual behavior. You see, sexual sin, my friends, is an act of the heart a long time before it's an act of the body. And this is why Jesus said Matthew 15, 19, for out of the heart, Jesus says, comes adultery and sexual immorality. Listen, when a man looks at a woman who is not his wife, whether it's at the office or on the metro or at school, whether it's in a magazine or on the Internet or on HBO or Cinemax or Showtime or Pay-Per-View or on the adult channels in a hotel room. And when a man has lustful thoughts and sexual fantasies about this woman, as far as God is concerned, my friends, that man is just as guilty of violating Commandment number seven, just as guilty of sexual sin, as if he'd been in bed with this woman and actually done with her everything he was imagining.
And ladies, when a woman looks at a man who is not her husband and begins to fantasize what it would be like to be hugged by this man, to be held in his arms, to be listened to by him, to be cared for by him, to be loved and caressed by him instead of her insensitive, boring, unromantic husband. Listen, as far as God is concerned, that woman is as guilty of violating Commandment number seven and committing sexual sin as if she'd actually gone off and slept with that man. The point is that as followers of Jesus Christ, God is not just calling us to a life of outward sexual obedience. God is calling us to a life of inward sexual purity. And that leads us to our third question, and that is, well, why is this such a big deal with God? I mean, why is sexual purity so important that God seems to pound on it in the Bible so much?
Well, that's a great question, and I'm going to give you three reasons why. Number one, because as Christians, we are only as powerful for God as we are pure. Listen to what God said, Deuteronomy 23. He said, when you're encamped against your enemies, keep away from everything impure for the Lord will move in your camp to protect you and deliver you from your enemies. But your camp must be holy so that he will not see anything indecent among you and as a result, be forced to turn away from you. Friend, this was the very problem that old Samson had. Samson had enormous spiritual potential, but God was never able to get him to the place where that full spiritual potential was reached because Samson couldn't stay sexually pure market down, sexual purity and spiritual power, spiritual power in our families, spiritual power with our relatives, spiritual power at the church and serving Christ everywhere we go.
These two things are blood brothers. I love what Robert Murray McShane said. He said, great preacher in the 1830s in Scotland, he wrote a friend and he said, and I quote, how diligently the cavalry officer keeps his saber clean.
Every stain he rubs off with the greatest of care. Remember, you are God's sword, his instrument, a chosen vessel to bear his name. McShane continues in great measure, according to the purity of the instrument will be the success. It is not great talents that God blesses. If that were simply true, God would have blessed Samson. It is not great talents that God blesses, but great likeness to Jesus, especially in this area of moral purity. And he concluded by saying a holy Christian is an awful weapon in the hand of God.
Friends, as followers of Christ, if we're serious about being an awful weapon in the hand of God, if we're serious about seeing the power of God active and flowing in our life, then we have got to be serious about sexual purity. And this is why my prayer over the years has become and is today, Lord Jesus, do not let me become a dirty old man. Don't let me become a dirty old man, Lord. I'm 58, almost 59.
I think that qualifies as an old man. The other day I was driving back from the Eastern Shore. I'd gone over to see my son, John, play a college baseball game.
We were driving back together. We stopped at Wendy's. We went in and we stood in line.
A young lady behind the counter, John ordered first. And then the lady, a young lady turned to me and she said, before I ordered, she said, are you a senior? I said, excuse me? She said, well, we have special discounts for seniors. I said, well, I don't know.
How old do you have to be to qualify to be a senior? She thought for a minute and said, sir, I don't want to hurt your feelings. I'll just give you the discount.
That's a true story. So I think I'm an old man, but I don't want to be a dirty old man. And let me tell you something, if you're a young man, you don't want to be a dirty young man. You don't want to be a dirty old woman or a dirty young woman because the power of Christ on our life depends on a passion for purity in our life. Number two, the second reason why this is so important is because as Christians, the authenticity of our witness hinges on this. First Peter, chapter two, verse 11, I urge you, Peter says, to abstain from fleshly lusts that wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent, particularly in this area, Peter says, before unbelievers that they may see your good deeds and glorify God. Friends, our world is far too sophisticated to tolerate anything from us as followers of Christ, except truly authentic behavior. And when we listen to dirty jokes around the water cooler men and we laugh with all the other men, when men let other men make lewd comments about women to us and we voice no objections, when other men see us staring at women as they walk by, ladies, when other women see us making comments about some man's behind, or when we sit with women at lunch and we talk about sexually loaded topics, we absolutely destroy our platform for sharing Christ with those people.
Finally, number three, why is this important? Because number three, sexual sin brings people into bondage. And that's true of Christians, just like it's true of non-Christians. Second Peter, chapter two, Peter said, these are people who indulge the flesh in all of its corrupt lust and have eyes full of adultery.
Who's he talking about? Well, in our world, the Hugh Hefner's of our world, the Howard Stearns of our world, watch what he says, while they promise people freedom, they themselves are slaves of depravity for whatever has mastery over a person by this, that person is enslaved. Listen, the enslaving power of sexual sin is phenomenal. And sexual sin is a cruel taskmaster. It is a vicious taskmaster driving people into deeper and deeper depravity until they lose all balance in their life. This is why Proverbs six says that he that commits sexual sin destroys his own soul. This is why in Hosea four 11, the Bible says that sexual sin eats away at the heart.
And you know what? This is a major problem in our world today. Not just among non-Christians, friends. In a survey, I got this from Enough is Enough. From a survey done by Market Wire August 2006, they found that 50%, I'm quoting now, of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women admit being addicted to pornography. 60% of the women who answered the survey admitted to having significant struggles with lust and 40% of them admitted to being involved in sexual sin in the past year. In a survey by the Zogby International Group, one out of every six women, including Christians, admitted struggling with an addiction to pornography primarily on the internet or by video. Listen, some of us here know about the incredible addicting power of sexual sin.
And this is why God is so fanatical about telling us to stay away from it. Now all of that leads us to question number four. And you know question number four. Everybody knows this question. So are you ready? Are you ready? Nice and loud. Here we go. One, two, three.
Yeah. You say, Lon, so what? Say, all right, I got what you're trying to tell me.
How could I miss it? But so help me, Lon. I mean, how do I stay away from sexual sin? What are the steps I can take to keep myself free?
Well, I've got four suggestions for you. Number one, want to stay free of sexual sin? Then number one, stay away from those places and things that tempt us. I mean, the place to try to resist breaking your diet is not standing in the buffet line. You understand?
You got no business being in the buffet line if you're on a diet. The best place to resist sin and temptation is by staying far away from it, not over by the dessert table. Proverbs chapter five, talking about a woman who represents sexual temptation, the Bible says, keep to a path far from her house and do not go past her door. What does this mean practically?
I can go from preaching to meddling now. What does this mean practically? Well, it means don't go over your girlfriend's house and don't go over your boyfriend's house late at night when the roommate's not there and watch romantic movies cuddling on the couch. What it means is men don't stay up late all by yourself at night watching late night television. Ladies, don't go out and have coffee or have lunch with some man at your office that you feel attracted to. And don't justify it by saying we're just friends.
Listen, when a married woman is out with another man and she justifies it by saying we're just friends, she's already over the line, my friend. Disable the adult channels the minute you walk in to the hotel room. This is a practice I've learned to do.
The minute I walk in, I put my suitcase down, I pick the remote up, I turn the television on, I hit the menu button and I hit 99, which is usually how you do it for two reasons. Number one, because I want a record in the computer that I couldn't have watched those movies no matter what anybody says. And number two, because it's easier to resist temptation at two o'clock in the afternoon than it is two o'clock in the morning. Don't hang out with people who have potty mouths and potty brains and are going to say the wrong things and are going to lead your mind to the wrong places.
Have your computer in a public place in your house so everybody is knowing where everybody's going on that computer and get a filter for that thing that has a password that you don't even know so you can't take it off in a moment of weakness. Folks, the easiest way to put a fire out is never let it get started. Number two, watch, men this is for you, watch where you let your eyes go. I love what Job said, he said, I've made a covenant with my eyes, Job 31.1, not to look lustfully at a woman. Listen, gentlemen, when you look at a woman, look her in the eyes. It is impossible to lust after what we refuse to look at. And ladies, could I please say to you that you could do a big favor to all of us Christian men by watching what you wear. Some of the things that I've seen Christian women wear, I mean, Lord have mercy on some of the stuff I've seen women wear.
I mean, we're struggling bad enough with this, help us out, will you? And be modest in the way you dress, please. Number three, want to stay free of sexual sin, then control what you let into your mind. The Bible says 1 Corinthians 15, 33, bad company corrupts good character. My maid Coralee Goodman, African American lady who basically raised me, she had a paraphrase for this verse. She used to say, sleep with dogs long enough and you'll get fleas. And what she meant is, if we hang around with the wrong things enough, sooner or later, it'll rub off on us.
And this is particularly true when it comes to sexual things. You know, it's not like you and I today have to go looking for pornography, those days are over. When I was in college, if you wanted pornography, you had to go to the back room of a barbershop or the back room of a pool hall to get it. It's not like that anymore, friends. It comes looking for you now on your computer, into your mail slot, onto your television.
Marketers have changed the world. So now we're defending ourselves from pornography. And so what this means is if we really want to guard our mind, we have to be extremely proactive about this. Listen, I believe that no follower of Jesus Christ who is serious about sexual purity in their life, no follower of Christ has any business subscribing to HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, or the movie channel and letting that crud come into your house. I believe if you're serious and I am about sexual purity, we ladies have no business reading Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle or Seventeen magazine.
Watch what goes into our mind. We have no business listening to shock jocks like Howard Stern and Elliott in the Morning. We have no business going to R-rated movies with nudity and strong sexual content in it. And I've gone so far as to call DirecTV years ago and tell them to disable all the pay-per-view channels on my account so that they cannot be ordered by the remote or any other way. And the lady said, well, the only way I can do that is by putting a password on it, you know, a security code. I said, well, do it. And I said, don't tell me the number. She said, what do you mean don't tell you the number?
If you don't tell you the number, then you can't disable it to order anything. And I said, that's the whole point. What's wrong with you?
Have you listened to a word? I said, that's the whole point. I don't want to know the number. And I don't to this day. When my family says, can't we watch Shrek on pay-per-view?
I go, no, you can watch it, go up to Blockbuster and rent it and bring it home. But I'm not finding out that number. Folks, we've got to watch what goes into our brain and we've got to defend ourselves. And you say, well, Lon, I can handle some of this stuff without it affecting me. Well, I'm sorry, my friend, but God doesn't agree with you. The Bible says, Proverbs 6 2, can a man take fire in his bosom and not be burned? Can a man walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? I mean, you ask Samson whether he could defend himself from some of this.
Ask David whether he could sit on the roof all day and watch Bathsheba naked on the roof next door without it having an effect on him. Listen, friends, they thought they could play around with sexual sin and not get burned. And if they got burned, they will get burned. We dare not fill our mind with sexual impurity.
It will eat us alive. Instead, we should be filling our mind with the Word of God. This is why David said, Thy word I have hidden in my heart, Psalm 119, so that I might not sin against thee. A heart that is full of the Word of God is a heart that has a built-in filter against sexual impurity. And when we look at women or men, women, and we see them through the eyes of Christ, we see them as holy people for whom Christ died on the cross instead of sexual objects, it changes and fortifies our ability to resist seeing them in a way that is lustful and displeasing to God.
Finally, suggestion number four is we need to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit for victory and not our own power. I love what Jesus said. He said, Whoever commits sin becomes the slave of sin.
But well, here's the good news. If the Son of Man set you free, you shall be free indeed. Listen, when I came to Jesus Christ in 1971, sexual sin had its claws so deep in me that only the power of Jesus alone could have pulled those claws out.
And he did. But you know what I learned? I learned that that's not just a one-time event, Jesus keeping us free.
That has got to be a moment by moment, every single day event. Sexual sin is far too powerful and strong for me to beat it in my own strength, for you to beat it in your own strength. Only by the power of Christ can we hope to prevail. And the problem is so many of us, we don't use the greatest weapon we've got, which is the power of the Holy Spirit. We walk out of the house and say, I'm not going to lust, I'm not going to lust, I'm not going to lust. And we try to do this in the energy of our own flesh. It cannot happen.
You can't win that way. Friends, when we walk out the house, we need to pray and say, Lord Jesus, help me today. Help me, Lord. Help me keep my eyes and my mind and my thoughts and my imagination and my lusts where they belong. Help me, Lord, to pour cold water on my lusts. Lord, help me to have self-control. Lord, help me to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ today. Lord, short circuit today, short circuit my sinful flesh with all of its desires. And I don't know about you, but I walk around all day seeing certain people pass me by and go, Lord Jesus, help me, help me, Lord Jesus, help me, help me, Lord, help me. I try not to say it out loud so people don't think I'm crazy. But every once in a while somebody walks by, I've got to say it out loud. Lord, help me, help me, Lord, help me, help me, help me.
Lord, Lord, help me, help me, help me. You know what? The Lord does help when we ask Him to, when we depend on Him to. And if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, listen, my friend, one of the great things you get when you trust Christ as your Savior is you don't just get heaven. You do get that. You don't just get eternal life and forgiveness of sins. You do get that. But you also get the Holy Spirit and His power living inside of us, available to help us live above our own destructive passions. And if you don't have that power in your life, my friend, you need that power in your life or you will self-destruct. We all will.
I trust you'll think about that. Well, let's conclude. Robert Murray McShane said a holy Christian is an awful weapon in the hand of God. And you say, but Lon, we can never be perfectly holy. I can't be.
You can't be. You're right, friends. God knows we can't be perfect in this area.
But you know what? We can be passionate in this area. We can be passionate about sexual purity in our lives. We can be passionate about pursuing personal holiness in every facet of our life. And this is what commandment number seven is calling you and me to.
It's calling us to a passion for personal holiness in our life, not just on the outside, but on the inside. Now, you might say, well, you know, Lon, all that you've said is good. But I got to tell you, in my case, this is a little bit like shutting the barn door after the horse is already out. I mean, I've already messed up so badly in this area that I'm way past hope. I mean, it's too late for me.
Oh, no, my friends, you listen here. It is never too late, gentlemen. It is never too late, ladies, for you to reclaim your integrity and take control of your life for God. It is never too late for you to repent and return to God.
It is never too late for you to make a clean break from sexual sin and for you to become passionate about personal holiness in your life. And if you need to do that, it's going to take some radical steps, possibly. God will help you. But most of us who are in trouble don't need Band-Aids. We need radical surgery. And that's going to take some courage. We need to go home and say to our boyfriend or our girlfriend, I'm sorry, you're moving around. This is done.
We're through. You need to call up DirecTV or cable or whatever and say I want you to cancel HBO, cancel Cinemax, and I want you to disable my pay-per-view. And don't tell me the code. Some of us need to throw magazines out and throw videos out and put controls on our computer. You know, there's a new computer system, I've got it written down here, called covenanteyes.com that will allow us to every, if you put it on your computer, every place you go on your computer, it will send a copy of that site to whatever friends you've listed.
So they get to see where you go. And that leads me to my last comment. My last comment is if you've got trouble with sexual sin in your life, you need to find someone, we all need someone, that we can be accountable to who can ask us the hard questions and we need to bring that sin into the light. See, friends, sin thrives in darkness.
It cannot survive in the light of exposure. This is what Jesus said. Listen, Jesus said, chapter 3 of John, He said, and this is the verdict, that light has come into the world but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, Jesus said, and will not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed but whoever lives by the truth comes into the light. If we're serious about personal holiness in our life, then we've got to bring sexual sin out into the light. We've got to talk to our small group leader about it or talk to a friend about it or we've got to go see a counselor or we've got to go see a pastor or whatever, a parent, but we've got to bring it in the light because sin can't live in the light. It lives in the darkness, friends, in the secret recesses and you've got to flush it out of that if you want victory. It's going to take courage to get free. But you know what? Jesus is standing there to help you, my friend, and He will. You know, I've been through this.
I told you about my background and you know what I found? I mean, I did some really rotten things before I came to Christ, including forcing my girlfriend to have an abortion, my child, that she didn't want. I mean, my life, I felt like a locust plague had gone through my life when I came to Christ, particularly in this area. But there's a wonderful verse of Scripture I latched onto and I've held onto for 37 years almost. Here's what it says. It says when we come back to Jesus, Joel 2.25, God will restore to us the years the locust of Eden.
He will. He's done that for me and, my friend, He'll do that for you if you've got the passion and the courage enough to step into the light and let God and let us help you get free. Now you say, well, Lon, how do I do that? Well, if you need counseling help, we've got a counseling center that would love to assist you in getting the claws of sexual sin out of your life. And also, the number's on the screen.
You call us this week. And also, I can recommend the website for Enough is Enough. They have wonderful resources if that's where you want to start at www.enough.org.
Wonderful resources to help people who are dealing with sexual addiction and sexual brokenness. But friends, this is what commandment number seven is all about. I told you there was more here than met the eye. And this is where you and I need to grapple with this issue. Let's pray together. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I want to give you a moment if you need to repent, if you need to return to God, if you need to make a commitment to bring this into the light and to get free. I want to give you a moment to talk to God about that.
And you tell Him what you're willing to do and you ask for His help and for His courage. Here's your moment. Lord Jesus, I believe we've talked today about one of the most relevant and problematic issues in our modern world. This culture is sexually overdosed.
And it is a dangerous culture in that regard. And Father, I can't help but believe that virtually every one of us here struggle in some form or fashion with sexual purity. So speak to our hearts, Lord. And for those of us who have made a commitment to sexual purity in our life, Lord, give us the strength and give us the strategies we need to consistently live the way you ask us to live with inner sexual purity. And Lord, for the folks here today who are in bondage, for the people here today who need help desperately, I pray God that you would reassure them that if the Son of Man sets them free, they will be free indeed, that there is freedom by the power of Christ. And I pray that they would bring that sin out into the light where it can't live and they would call our counseling center or go see their small group leader or find someone to hold them accountable, Lord Jesus. Lord, set us free, that we can be an awful weapon in the hand of God here in Washington. And change our lives because we were here today. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said, Amen. Amen.
