The title of this message is just as well, there's really no title. We're dealing with sexual immorality. This is the seventh commandment, part two. This is the seventh commandment, and this is part two. We're going through all ten of the commandments. We've been doing it for some time now. And last week, I want to give a little bit of review of what we talked about last week. That was our first on the seventh commandment. The seventh commandment is you shall not commit adultery. Simply, you shall not commit adultery. And last time, in way of review, I gave a quote from John Piper, and we based a lot of it on these two things that he brought out. The most foundational thing to see from the Bible about marriage is that it is God's doing. And the most ultimate thing to see from the Bible about marriage is that it is for God's glory. These are the two points I have to make. Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. Most ultimately, marriage is the display of God. Marriage is God's doing and marriage is God's display. It's his doing. God made Eve and brought her to Adam we saw last time. He made her and he walked her down the aisle in the garden and brought her and presented her to Adam as her father would walk a daughter down the aisle. Proverbs 19 verse 14 says, A prudent wife is from the Lord. A prudent wife is from the Lord. God gives you the wife to the husband. God gave Eve to Adam. It's the doing of God. God is the one that does it. When there's a covenantal marriage, it's God's doing. Mark 10, verse 8 and 9 says, "...the two shall become one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no one Let no man separate. It is God who joins us together in marriage. It's God's doing. That's what makes adultery such a heinous sin, because it's not just a sin, as we'll see later. It's not just a sin against your wife or your husband. It's a sin against God, because marriage is a covenant that's done by God. It's God's doing. It's God who joins husband and wife together. It's His doing. It's also His display. What we talked about last time, Ephesians chapter 5 verse 31 says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The great mystery about marriage is that it's not about your marriage. The great mystery about marriage is that it's about Christ and the church. Marriage is more about Christ and the church than it is about you and your wife or you and your husband. In other words, the covenant involved in leaving your mother and father and holding fast to a spouse and becoming one flesh is a picture. It's a portrayal of the covenant between God and his church, between Christ and the church. Marriage exists primarily to display the covenant keeping love between Christ and his church. That's the primary reason for marriage, to display the covenant-keeping love that Christ has for his people. Marriage is more about Christ than it is about you. The seventh commandment is more about the church than it is about the family. The commandment is more about Christ than it is You husbands, and it's more about the church than it is you wives. It's the display of God's covenantal love. That's what marriage is all about. And that's why this commandment is so serious. That's why this commandment is such a violation of the very character and nature of God. Because it's a display of the character and nature of God. Marriage is how God displays his love, his faithfulness, and his character. We also looked at the idea of federal headship last time. Christ loved the church federally. In other words, he loved it covenantally. Federal just means covenantal. He loved the church federally. At the heart of this covenant relationship is the issue of responsibility. When there's a genuine federal headship, the head is representative, as the representative, assumes the responsibility for the condition of the members of the covenant body. So, as a federal head, the covenant federal head assumes responsibility for all the members of the covenant body. Paul said, Love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. He took on that responsibility to the point where he gave his life for his bride. We husbands, as federal heads of our households, must take responsibility and not pass the blame. We're to love our wives like Christ loves the church. We've looked at Adam and Eve and how he didn't take responsibility. He just sat there and said nothing. And he actually did just the opposite. He basically set his wife up, in a sense, because he wanted her to try it first. He was the one that God told not to eat the fruit. God told him that before he was even made. So the only way she knew it was because he told it to her. Adam told it to Eve. But they knew about it, and he sat there and said nothing. And if you look at the text, it appears that he was right there because she turned and gave it to Adam after he used her as a guinea pig. And she was indeed deceived. He was in sin. It was he that was the federal head. So when he sinned, when they both sinned, even though Eve sinned first, God went directly to Adam because he knew Adam was the federal head of the house. It was his responsibility and he was the one to blame. What makes adultery so wrong is that it portrays God as unfaithful, unloving, and impure. That's the bottom line. That's what's so wrong about adultery. It portrays God. We're to display God in our marriage. And when adultery portrays Him as unfaithful, it shows Him to be unloving and it shows Him to be impure. You preach about God to everyone with your marriage without saying a word. Your marriage is an epistle that everyone reads, and it's an epistle that talks about and declares the gospel, the love of God. And if you're not faithful in your marriage, then you're portraying a wrong gospel. You're preaching a false gospel by your marriage. We must display God's love, we must display his purity, and we must display his faithfulness in our covenant Okay, remember that the Ten Commandments are all about honor. I don't think I gave this last time. I did the commandment before, I think. All the commandments we've seen all deal with honor. They all deal with honoring God. Every commandment. And we're going to go each commandment as we've gone through. I showed that. And here's how that works. We see how to honor God as God, says you shall have no other gods before me. We learn how to honor God as God. That's the first commandment. The second one The second commandment, we see how to honor God's image. It says, you shall not make for yourself a carved image. We learn how to honor God's image. The third commandment, we see how to honor God's name. You shall not take the Lord thy God's name in vain. So when we do take on the name of God, when we do covenantally join to God, and we're unfaithful, we take his name in vain. In the fourth commandment, we see how to honor God's day. Honor God's day. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And on the fifth commandment, we see how to honor God's representative authority. The fifth commandment, we learn how to honor the representative authority given by God. In the sixth commandment, we see how to honor God's image bearers. The reason the commandment is you shall not murder is because We are made in the image of God. We're honoring God's image bearers. And then finally, on the seventh commandment, what we're dealing with now, we see how to honor God's love, His purity, and His faithfulness. All these commandments deal with honoring God. All the commands are about honoring God, and they're also covenantal as well. Each one is covenantal. The commandments are stipulations of the covenant. That's what the commandments are. They're stipulations of the covenant. Now, in this commandment, we're going to be looking, like I said, at sexual immorality. But I don't want you to get confused to think that sex is immorality. Okay? That there's a difference. That we're dealing with sexual immorality, but that doesn't mean sex is immorality. We're only talking about outside of the covenant of marriage. Justin Taylor wrote this, Scripture has a lot to say about sex because Scripture has a lot to say about everything. So rather than searching the Bible only for the word, a more productive strategy would be to reach or search the Bible for the term all things. So you go through the Bible and he gives a whole list of where all things is used, that phrase, and he applies it to the marriage bed. Maybe I should say Eros instead. That would be easier on the ears. Okay, Eros. That's the Greek word for what we're talking about. That kind of love. And then, so if you look through the Bible, it says Eros is created by God. In Colossians 1.6 it says, By him all things were created. It says Eros continues to exist by the will of Christ. Colossians 1.17, In him all things hold together. Eros is caused by God. Ephesians 1.1 says, He works all things according to the counsel of His will. Eros is subject to Christ. Ephesians 1.22, He put all things under His feet. Christ is making Eros new. Revelation 21.5, behold, I am making all things new. Eros is good. Everything that was created by God is good. Eros is lawful in the context of marriage. 1 Corinthians 10.23. He goes on and on, but you look at the phrase, all things, you see it over and over again. It applies to all things. It's all about God and he makes all things new and it's all under his authority. We're not going to see how it's evil. It's not an evil thing. We must be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that it is evil. We're only warned in scripture about sexual immorality, not the immorality of sex. Many people see the dangers and temptations and the seriousness of sexual immorality, so they go to drastic measures in order to resist it, to the point of maybe even castration or celibacy. I mean, it's been done over and over again in the past. But obviously, we shouldn't go to that extreme, usually. Hebrews 13, verse 4 says, Let marriage be held in honor among all. And let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." So let the marriage bed be held in honor among all. Held in honor. The marriage bed should be honored. It should be held in honor. Not seen as a bad thing. We need to honor the marriage bed. Let it be held in honor. The marriage is a good thing. The marriage bed is a good thing. The answer to sexual immorality is not celibacy, it's covenant. It's the marriage covenant. That is the answer. God wants his people in the world, but not of it. And the marriage bed was created by God to be enjoyed within the context of marriage. Anyone who promotes abstinence from marriage on the basis that all sexual expression is evil, according to 1 Timothy 4, 1 through 3, is, quote, devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons. So, it's pretty strong on people that are trying to make a case for that. We see this clearly in the letter Paul wrote to the Church of Corinth. Now, the Church of Corinth was a very vile church. It was very sexually immoral. It was famous for that. And back in the Greco-Roman days with the Greece and Rome, it was hard to get famous for being immoral. We're reading through some of the Greek and the Roman literature. And there was a lot of immoralities. So for Corinth to become known for their immorality is pretty immoral. You know, they had a serious problem because everyone was immoral back then. But they were not. In fact, there was a phrase called to Corinthianize. That meant you were made sexually immoral. They had a word for it even. But anyways, Paul, when he was writing to the church of Corinth, he wrote this, now concerning the matters about which you wrote, it is good for a man to have sexual relations with a woman. But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devout yourselves to prayer, but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." See, if Paul can talk about it, I can too. It's not a right or a privilege within marriage, it's an obligation. That's what he's saying there. It's an obligation. Many marriages have been destroyed because either the husband or the wife comes into the marriage thinking it's still dirty, it's still filthy, it's still rotten. It's a sin. But within the context of the marriage, it's honorable. It's a sin to neglect one another. Let's try this again. We did this with the last commandment. I said, if you could pick anybody to preach a sermon on this commandment, who would you pick? Right, good, you did better this time. These heretics, some of them said me last time. No they didn't. Okay, Jesus did in fact preach a sermon where he dealt with this subject on adultery. So who better to go to than to see how he expounded, how he did a little tiny expository message on this subject, on this commandment. So turn to Matthew chapter 5. We're going to go back to the Sermon on the Mount. We dealt with this earlier on the sixth commandment on murder, but Jesus also deals with the seventh commandment. Matthew 5, verse 27, it says, ìYou have heard that it was said, ìYou shall not commit adultery.î But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.î If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one eye, one of your members, than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 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 your whole body go into hell. The real problem in adultery is a heart problem. Adultery is in the heart. That's where the source of the problem. People who consider themselves good people, and most people do. Yeah, I'm a good person. Everyone, most people consider themselves good people. Those kind of people, decent people, do not like the way Jesus applies the law of God. They don't like that. They like to be proud that they've never committed adultery. But Jesus takes everybody down. He takes everybody down by explaining the original intent of the law. It was a matter of the heart. It was a heart affair, you could say. God's law goes beyond outward piety. He desires truth in the inward parts. Is it wrong to look at a pretty girl for the guys or a handsome guy for the girls? Is that wrong, to just look at a pretty girl? Of course not. We would have a hard time living through life, if that was the case. Every time you met someone who was pretty, you know, you're like, oh, hi, nice to meet you. Where are you? OK, well, I got to go now. I don't think that's what Jesus was saying. Just everyone who's pretty or handsome, you don't look at them. There's a difference between looking and lusting. There's a difference between looking and lusting. But if you're looking long enough, it will turn to lust. There's a difference between looking and lusting, and your conscience knows the difference. God has written his law on your heart, and you know when you're violating this commandment. The way Jesus applies the law turns every man into an adulterer. His teaching is very plain. It's very clear. Jesus said in Luke 16, 15, You are of those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts, for what is exalted among them is an abomination in the sight of God. That should put the fear of God in us, that he sees your heart. God sees your heart, and he requires purity of heart. We need to have the fear of God. We'll talk about that a little bit later. He sees the adultery that your deceitful heart has deceived you into thinking was not adultery. Remember, your heart is desperately wicked, deceptive. You're deceiving you. Your heart will deceive you into thinking you're not breaking this commandment. You're just following your heart like everyone is told to do all the time. But your heart will deceive you. It will make you think that you're not in violation. But Jesus made it very clear. If you look upon a woman to lust after her, you've committed ulteriority in your heart. The source of sin is sins. The source of, sorry I said that backwards, the source of sins is sin. It's sin that we have that causes us to sin. Sins flow out of the heart that's in sin. In the Hebrew, the word is no adultery, just like in no murder. There's only two words in the Hebrew for the commandment, you shall not commit adultery. It's basically no adultery, just like we saw it said no murder. That's what it's saying, no adultery. There can be no adultery in your heart, no adultery in your actions or in your thoughts, in your attitude, in your heart. Inner adultery is no less a sin than outer adultery. Jesus takes this so serious that he goes so far as to say that self-mutilation, basically, would be better than to commit this crime. But the problem is that self-mutilation does not get to the source of sin. It would only treat the symptoms. It would only treat the symptoms. Paul made it clear that asceticism is not effective against sin. Asceticism is the doctrine that a person can attain to a higher spiritual and more moral state by practicing extreme self-denial and self-mortification. And Paul made it very clear that asceticism, that rigorous self-denial, that extreme abstinence, is not effective against sin. Colossians 2 verse 23 says, ìThese have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.î This extreme, rigorous self-denial, self-forbidding yourself anything. is not effective. It's not getting to the heart, to the cause. Treating the symptom is of no value to stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Everyone can become so easily proud that they have never committed adultery when at the same time they have their eyes full of adultery. Like it says in 2 Peter 2.14. People can become proud that they haven't broken this one. They're like, okay, this commandment, this one I haven't broken. I can rest easy, but Christ makes it clear we've all broken this commandment. You can be outwardly clean and confident, while inwardly you are corrupt and culpable. You can be as clean as a brand-new coffin, a brand-new coffin, and then full of putrefying flesh. That's just the way it is. Jesus taught his disciples that mere abstinence from the physical act was not enough. There must be inward purity. You can be faithful on the outside and unfaithful on the inside, and that's where God sees it. That's where he looks. E. Stanley Jones wrote, if you think or act adultery, you do not satisfy the sex urge, you pour oil on a fire to quench it. You pour oil on a fire to quench it. Sin begins in the heart and mind, and if we nourish it, we eventually commit the actual act. The only kind of righteousness that God accepts is purity of heart. He has to have purity of heart because he is pure. He has to have heart faithfulness because he is faithful. Without the purity, the outward life makes no difference at all. God's omniscient evaluation happens in the heart. God is omniscient. He evaluates us at the heart level. He judges the source and origin of sin, not its manifestation or lack of manifestation. Proverbs 23, 7 says, As a person thinks within himself, so is he. That's how God sees it. He looks at what you think, your thoughts, your heart. That's who you really are. That's what's really going on. We can fool each other, but we can't fool God. The sixth commandment protects the dignity of life. The sixth commandment we talked about, thou shalt not murder, protects the dignity of life. The seventh commandment protects the dignity of marriage. They're both protecting these things that God gave us as blessings. When people gossip, get angry and insult and hate, they're murderers. When people lust sexually outside of marriage, they are adulterers. Anger and lust are two of the strongest and most powerful influences we have, anger and lust. And that's what Jesus came against on the Mount. That's what he attacked because they are very powerful influences on all of us. Everyone has given in one time or another to either or both of these sins. We're guilty before a just and holy God. Thank God for the righteousness of Christ. Thank God that we can go before the throne of God covered by the blood of Christ. Again, the law draws us to Christ, it always brings us to Christ because we see our filthiness, we see that we sin. Just like we saw that we are a bunch of mass murderers in the last commandment, we are also a bunch of perverted adulterers. We're also a bunch of perverted sexually immoral adulterers. And Jesus tries to make that clear. Don't fool yourself, he says. Whenever someone's looked at a woman with lust, he's committed adultery already. One of the things we've got to beware of is the trap of thinking that you have lusted, but it was a long time ago. I've had a problem with lust, but that was in my past. Well, here's the deal with that. Every sin you ever commit is always in your past. Right? All sin is in your past. That's just a lame excuse. When you go before the court or judge in courtroom today, you say, yeah, I murdered that lady, but that was a long time ago. I'm really good now. I haven't done that for a long time. In fact, I walk ladies across the street all the time now. So I'm going to leave now. It just doesn't work. God, you can't use that as an excuse. Okay, Jesus warned us that this sin is so serious that if it were possible to avoid it by self-mutilation, it would be worth it. But what member of our body causes us to commit the sin? What produces sin in us? What then must be cut off? It's the heart. The heart is the fallen thing that causes all sin. That's what needs to be cut off. That's what needs to be replaced and we need to be given a new heart. That old heart is the thing that got in the way. The solution is regeneration and circumcision of heart. That's the key. That's the good news of the gospel. We're not born again because we've repented and believed. We have repented and believed because we are born again. Because God gave us a new birth. If our old heart was not dead and capable of repentance and belief, then we would not need a new one. Someone who has a heart that works doesn't need a new heart. We need to be regenerated. We have a dead, filthy, vile heart and we are in need of a transplant. If our theology causes us to believe that we do not need a new heart, then we will think and believe that we will just need to keep on improving, keep on improving the old one, doing repairs, doing fixer-upper work. The answer is not a ten-step program, it's regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the only answer. That's the only solution. 36 verse 26 and 27 says, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. If we have a problem with the law of God, we might need to be crying out to God for a new heart. If we're members of the covenant, believers in Christ, we need to confess our sins and repent. Our new hearts give us the ability to look to Him. Our new hearts give the ability to look to Him for all righteousness, not for our own righteousness, but look to Him for all our righteousness. True purity is only found in Christ. It is Christ who is faithful. It is Christ who is pure. It is Christ who loves. And true faithfulness, true purity is only going to be found in Him. Sin brings darkness and God's law brings light. Sexual sin darkens sexually. Even though our culture is saturated in it, it doesn't mean that we rightly understand it. Our culture has sunk into the darkness of sexual immorality and we are confused on these issues. We are in darkness and have replaced God's gift with sexual immorality and ignorance. People have replaced the gift of God, the beautiful honorable gift of God and replaced it with filthy, dishonorable, cheap replacement of sexual immorality. If you don't understand the original intent of this command, which Christ reminded us of, the original intent was heart purity. If you don't understand the original intent, then you won't understand the importance of your thoughts or your feelings in these areas. Your thoughts and your feelings are important because of what Christ said. When it comes to sexual immorality, it's not just the action, it's the attention. It's not just the doing, it's the dreaming. It's not just the deed, it's the desire behind the deed. It's not just fornication, it's fantasy. It's not just carnality, it's the craving. It's not just adultery, it's the anticipation. Those are all what Christ was saying. It's all adultery. It's all included under the umbrella of adultery. God judges more than your mask and your motions. He judges what's inside. He looks at the heart. A sanctified sex life begins with the inner desires. Jesus singled out the eye and the hand, because seeing and feeling are usually the first steps toward this sin. Seeing and feeling. The answer to lust and passion is not celibacy, it's covenantal marriage. Paul told the singles in 1 Corinthians 7, he said, if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. He said to the singles of the church, he said, if you have a problem here, it's better to marry than to burn with passion, because that's the answer. That's the biblical solution, is the original intention of God was to have the marriage covenant. Martin Luther seemed to agree with that. He said, whoever finds himself unsuited to the celibate life should cede to it right away that he has something to do and to work at. Then let him strike out in God's name and get married. A young man should marry at the age of 20 at the latest. A young woman at 15 to 18. That's when they are still in good health and best suited for marriage. I thought that was kind of interesting. I think what he was doing there is, and Paul also, is You know, our problem is, we've got this whole idea of extended adolescence. It just keeps on extending on and on. Everyone wants to remain in this quote-unquote adolescent stage, and I think that's what he was, you know, warning against. In the middle of a biblical warning against adultery, husbands are told this, Proverbs 5, verse 18 through 19. Proverbs 5, 18 through 19, says, Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A lovely dear, a graceful doe, let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love." Amen? It's a gift of God. The Song of Solomon is devoted to the beauty and wonder of marital love. God has designed and blessed this within the marriage covenant. The problem is that permissiveness and perversion fills our culture. It's been replaced with permissiveness and perversion. Temptation is everywhere you look. It's so easy to lust in our culture because our culture's grown so addicted to it. It's everywhere. Like I said last time, you can't go to church without passing a seductive billboard sign. You can't go to the grocery store without seeing semi-pornographic materials in the magazines right when you check out line. It's everywhere. sexual sin is pleasurable at first, but only for a moment. Just like most sins, there's a reason people commit them. There's momentary pleasure. It's like a little kid who's holding a stick of dynamite and it's lit. He's like, ooh, that's so neat. Look at the sparkles. You know, the longer you hold on to it and look at it and you're fascinated by this light, it's going to destroy you. It's going to blow up in your face. That's how sin is. If you hold on to the dynamite like sin, it will destroy you. James 1 verse 14 through 15. It says, But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. You hold on to that dynamite long enough, it will bring forth death. It will bring forth destruction. I want to talk about this problem with pornography today. And it's just on many levels. It's not just the real best of its, there's all kinds of levels of it and it's everywhere and it's easily accessible and we have teenagers in this room that are getting old enough to where this needs to be something that needs to be addressed and it needs to be dealt with biblically. Jesus said, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Take that to heart. He's already committed adultery with her in his heart. Looking at pornography is adultery. Jesus made that very clear. Adultery is not an innocent little sin. It's a big sin. God's law portrays adultery as one of the most despicable and heinous sins there are. It's a death penalty. Adultery is the death penalty. It's worthy of death. The New Testament is even clearer than that. It says, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor feminine, nor homosexuals will inherit the kingdom of God. Adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's serious. This is a serious sin, a serious crime. And adultery is, as Jesus said, also when you look with lust. Job understood the seriousness of this sin when he said, ìI have made a covenant with my eyes, how then could I gaze at a virgin?î Job made a covenant with his eyes and he included blessings and cursings in that covenant. He says, ìIf Iím not faithful to this covenant with my eyes, let this and this and this happen to me.î Thatís in Job. I didnít write the reference down. Especially men need to make a covenant with our eyes and we need to realize that there are blessings and cursings involved in that covenant. Our eyes can bless us and our eyes can curse us. God gave us our eyes as a gift and we can't abuse that gift. We can't abuse that gift that God has given. Okay, I want to read part of an article written by Michael Pearl about pornography. And it's a little intense, and I took out some of it. And I can give it to you fathers, too, because it might be good to go over it with our sons, at least. But this is quite long. I only took some of it out. But I just want to read, because I think he gives a good picture of how bad it is, how much of a crime against a holy and just God this sin is. So I'm just going to read what he says here. It's a letter he wrote to fathers. He says, now I'm speaking to you fathers. If you isolate yourself in a room and indulge in pornography, you are not sick, you are evil. You are having intercourse with a computer or with the pages of a publication. In effect, you are having an erotic experience with the editor, probably another man, while you are fantasizing with the commercially produced image. Know that there are thousands of others engaged with you in the same image at the same time as you. You are part of a disgusting group of perverts all piled on the same image together and somewhere there is a sexually dysfunctional editor enjoying the extent of his powers. You are not over sex, you are not even sex, you are alone. Don't tell me that you are getting yourself primed for your wife. It's the priming that draws you back again and again, not the conclusion. You are a pervert, a real man is bigger than his member. He is big enough to say no to his passions. A man whose passions are stimulated to the point of being all-consuming is not a man of great prowess. He is a man whose soul has shrunk until God created us with a sexual drive, but he also gave us a steering wheel and a brake to direct and control our drives. If you can't control yours, it is not the statement of the strength of your drive, but of the weakness of your soul. You are wasting away to the level of an alley cat. Adam fell, but you are falling even further. You are plunging your soul into eternal destruction, moving as far away from your God as you can get. You are lost and helpless by choice. You do not deserve sympathy or understanding. You deserve condemnation and scorn. You are not a victim. You are a perpetrator. You justify your addiction by pointing to the many who have fallen as you have, but you are condemned by the many who have not fallen and by the many who were once where you are, but have since repented and been restored to normalcy. While you justify yourself, your own conscience condemns you. You sneak around like a thief as you lie and deceive. Your whole life is dedicated to the dragon. Your body is being consumed as your soul is being digested. You are having communion with the devil. bowing in worship of the flesh. You are a disciple of evil. You have chosen to be part of a group that defiles their own flesh, that worships and serves the creature more than the Creator, whose God is their belly, whose glory is their shame. Very few ever return from the pit in which you are sinking. The problem is that you are more addicted today than you were one year ago. You will continue to fade into the shadows of debauchery until you are one with the evil on which you feed. You are on the road of no return, and every day you are less likely to reverse your course. The lust you have created is never satisfied. It is an itch with no scratch, only more itch. Pornographic satisfaction is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, always just out of reach. The lust of pornography draws a man ever deeper into the dark tunnel of promise until he discovers he has missed life and love. Pornography destroys your ability to make love and replace it with a cunning wit to use and abuse. You stink of self. You do not deserve a woman. He goes on and on, but I think it's good because he just makes it very clear, and he calls a sin a sin. He shows you exactly what is happening there. It's a much longer article, and I can give it for any of you who want it. Again, Galatians 5, 19-21 says that those who commit sexual immorality, and the word for sexual immorality in the Bible is pornea. It's the word where we get the word pornography. Galatians 5, 19-21 says that those who commit sexual immorality will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is not a petty little sin. This is a serious sin. We are going to talk more about this next week, but I want to close with a little bit of application. There are solutions in the Bible. As Paul told the church at Corinth, Quote in 1 Corinthians 10, no temptation has overtaken you that has not come to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide a way of escape. We have that promise. God will always provide the way of escape. Many times we don't want the escape. The door is wide open, the escape route is right there and we don't want to go out that escape route. We pray the Lord's Prayer, deliver us not into temptation, and we deliver ourselves to temptation all the time. We're walking into temptation, praying, leave me not into temptation. That's hypocrisy. The first thing is that we need to be motivated by fear, by the fear of God. Fear of God is a good thing. That's why I read that letter. That's why I'm reading these warnings. The fear of God motivates us. to good works. There's an interesting proverb in the Bible, it says in Proverbs 22, verse 14, it says, The mouth of a forbidden woman is a deep pit. He with whom the Lord is angry will fall into it. God is angry with him who has fallen into this sin, this trap. God is angry. Even though it's so easy for us to hide our sin, especially today when we have electronic access, we have easy access, it's easy for us to hide our sin from each other. It's very easy. But you cannot hide from God. You cannot hide from God. God is angry with adultery in any form. Joseph understood this principle when he resisted the temptation and seduction of Potiphar's wife. What did he say? He said, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Genesis 39 verse 9. Joseph said, how can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Matthew Henry gives a few points on this passage. I want to give them to you real quick. He said first, first he considers who he was that was tempted. He says, I can do, how can I do this great thing? I, he's talking about him, he says, others may perhaps take their liberty, but I cannot. I that am an Israelite in covenant with God that professes religion and relation to him, it is next to impossible for me to do so. He said, how can I, how can I do this great wickedness? Second, what the sin was to which he was tempted. This great wickedness. Joseph knew it was a great wickedness. It was a huge wickedness, not a little wickedness. And he goes on, others might look look upon it as a smaller matter, a peccadillo, a trick of youth. But Joseph had another idea of it. In general, when any time we are tempted to sin, we must consider the great wickedness there is in it. Let sin appear as sin, as Romans 7.13 says. Let sin appear as sin. Call it by its own name and never go back to lessen it. Particularly, let the sin of uncleanness always be looked upon as great wickedness, as an exceedingly sinful sin that wars against the soul as much as any other. And thirdly, against whom he was tempted to sin, he was tempted to sin against God. It was primarily a sin against God. Not only how shall I do it and sin against my master, my mistress, myself, my own body and my soul, but against God. God is a witness against every sexual sin. Malachi 3, 5 says, Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be swift witness against the adulterers. God is a witness against the adulterers. And guess what? God sees everything. God is all omniscient and God is omnipresent. And you can't hide behind your computer with God. You can't hide under a magazine with God. He is omnipresent and you need to have the fear of God, because this is a great wickedness. It's a great wickedness. We need more fear of God. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. The second thing to motivate us against this is to remember our baptism and our salvation. Remember our baptism and our salvation. Again, 1 Corinthians 6 says that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. Turn to Proverbs 9. Let's look at this real quick. Proverbs 9. Proverbs 9, verse 13. It says, ìThe woman, Folly, is loud. She is seductive and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house. She takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet, and the bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol." It says, her guests are in the depths of Sheol, or hell. You don't want to go there You don't want to go there if you're grateful for your salvation. That's not a place you want to go. You cannot simultaneously want salvation of God and at the same time desire to remain in sin from which God saved you. You can't have both. You've got to either be thankful and grateful and honoring of God and thankful for the salvation or you can want to go into the sin from which He did save you. We must remind ourselves constantly that God hates sin and that sin is what caused his only begotten son to be crushed under his wrath. Adultery is a sin worthy of death. He who will betray his wife will betray anyone and anything. God hates adultery. The other thing we must do to fight temptation of sexual immorality is not to walk in the flesh, but rather to walk in the spirit. Turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. Finally then, brethren, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to live and to please God just as you are doing, that you do so much more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgresses and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives His Holy Spirit to you." God has given His Holy Spirit to us for that process of sanctification. And he says, don't act like the Gentiles. They don't know God. You know better. You know God. You're taking God, the relationship, the covenant you have with God, the faithfulness of God, the love of God, the purity of God, God is everything, and you know Him, and you're giving it up for this. And that's what he's saying. The Gentiles do that, but they don't know God. You do know Him. The problem is not outside ourselves, in the trashy magazines or in the X-rated movies or in the filth on the Internet or with the girls sunbathing next door. The problem is not outside of ourselves. The problem is within, even with us believers. The problem with pornography is not pornography. It's the heart. It's the heart. Doug Wilson put it this way. Some professing Christian men use various kinds of porn and defend it. Others oppose porn but use it anyway, kicking themselves every time afterwards. Others oppose it, don't use it, but really wish they could. Their virtue is really more of a matter of cowardice than anything else. What has someone at church found out? So we should see immediately that the problem of lust and the resultant problem are not really that simple. One of the more important lessons for us to learn is that while the occasions for sin are external and out there, the real problem is with our lust within. Some people never commit these sexual sins, but it's not because Their heart is pure and they have a love for Christ. It's because they don't want to get caught, because they're too scared. What will people think if they see or find out? The problem is one of the heart. If you don't get it right at the heart level, then you don't get it. Jesus said, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. He said the word looks. That's the word blepo in Greek. It's a present participle and refers to the continuous process of looking. In this usage, the idea is not that of an incidental or involuntary glance, but an intentional and repeating gazing. You know, that's the word look at a woman. It's not just an accidental glance, it's an intentional repeated gazing. And the word lust that he uses there refers, is speaking of intentional looking with the purpose of lusting. He said, to love. He said, whoever looks at a woman with lustful intent, looks at a woman with lustful intent, has already committed adultery. So he's talking about those who intentionally type in the web address or buy the magazines or watch the movie. It's those who intentionally do that, not an accidental glance. One more quote here from John MacArthur. He said, looking at a woman lustfully does not cause a man to commit adultery in his thoughts. He already has committed adultery in his heart. It is not lustful looking that causes the sin in the heart, but the sin in the heart that causes the lustful looking. The lustful looking is but the expression of a heart that is already immoral and adulterous. The heart is the soil where the seeds of sin are embedded and begin to grow. Jesus is not speaking about unavoidable and unintentional exposure to temptation. That's not what he's warning us against. We are never commanded to not be tempted, we're just commanded to resist the temptation and flee from it. David was not at fault for seeing Bathsheba bathing. He could not have helped noticing her because she was in plain view as he walked on the palace roof. His sin was dwelling on the site and the willingly giving into the temptation. Before I want to close, I want to say a little something to the women, too, because the last two weeks have been pretty hard on the men. But this is a problem, even though Jesus said when a man looks at a woman with lust, it's also a problem for women. Lust is not just a man problem. And part of the problem is that men like to lust and women like to be lusted after. Men like to lust and women like to be lusted after. A.W. Pink talked about this, he said, How great then must be the guilt of the great majority of modern missus who deliberately seek to arouse the sexual passion of young men, and how much greater still is the guilt of most of their mothers for allowing them to become lascivious temptresses. It's not just a man problem. Women have a lust problem, just like men, that just manifests itself in the other direction. It takes two to tango. I've got one more quote from John McCarthy. I thought that last one was the last one, and then I'll close. He says, just as the adulterous heart plans to expose itself by less satisfying situations, The godly heart plans to avoid them whenever possible and to flee from them when unavoidable. Just as the adulterous heart panders to itself in advance, so the godly heart protects itself in advance. Praying with the psalmist, turn away my eyes from looking at vanity and revive me in thy ways. Establish thy word to thy servant as that which produces reverence for thee. Psalms 119. Pause our attempt to flee from youthful lusts and to cultivate a pure heart. We have to remember that we make all these, we and our sin and our fallenness, we make all these provisions for the flesh. We need to do the opposite for walking in what's right and walking in faithfulness and walking in purity and plan that out just as well as men plan their sin out. We've got a lot more to talk about in this. There's so much more, and we're going to talk about it more next week. And there's other things we're going to deal with also, like dating and that kind of thing. So, let's just close in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank You, God, for Your grace. We thank You for Your forgiveness and Your mercy. We have fallen so many times and we have broken your laws and we just thank you that you have made it possible for us to be covered by your son's blood so that we can approach your throne without condemnation. That we can trust in your righteousness and not our own. That we can look to you and keep our eyes on you. We just ask God that you magnify yourself in our eyes on a continual basis. Help us to always be looking to you and not to sin. We love you and we know that there's nothing greater than you, there's nothing better than you, and there's no pleasure outside of you that is even close. And we just thank you, God, for all that you bless us with, all the gifts within marriage that we do have, even the gifts of pleasure. We thank you, God, that you didn't need to give us these things, but you did in your mercy. and help us to show our gratitude with our minds and our hearts being pure and focused on you. In your son's name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.