One of the remarkable things from this morning, when we were listening to the young men give their testimonies, I think it was Alex, he quoted from Timothy and he quoted the scripture where the Apostle Paul wrote, let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. And I loved what he had to say because he was recounting the war that was going on inside of him as he was wrestling with where he stands with Christ. And today, we're going to enter in into perhaps one of the most difficult parts of the Sermon on the Mount. I'd ask you, if you can, please open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. And we're going to be reading on the Lord's word specific to adultery. And I'm going to start actually just in verse 20, and then we'll skip to 27 and read down to 30 and then we'll pray. It says in Matthew chapter 5 verse 20, for I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Verse 27, you have heard that it was said to those of old you shall not commit adultery but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. Let's pray. Father, we come before you here in the only name given under heaven whereby we can be saved. Lord, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. And Lord, those words that the Apostle Paul penned are in my mind. Let every man who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Lord, I pray that we would be instructed and helped and guided this afternoon by your word. Oh Lord, speak to us. I pray that you would even throw up a roadblock to any man or woman going down the path to destruction. And Lord, that you would rescue with your word. We ask you in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, if we remember as we go through the Sermon on the Mount, the first part of the sermon has to do with the Beatitudes, so beautiful. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The first part of the Sermon on the Mount doesn't have any instructions at all. It's simply a statement and a declaration of who you are as a result of the mercy of God. In other words, Jesus, is your savior. Praise God for that. He makes you an entirely new man. He gives you a new power with a new heart, and it's wonderful. You know, miraculously, you, people that were fishermen, tax collectors, harlot, drunkard, sinner, he says, you are the salt of the earth, and you're the light of the world. It's amazing to think of what he's done to transform And the only thing that you can account for, like we saw today with the Apostle Paul, how else can you account for such transformation except it's the divine power unleashed on a soul? But the second part, where we've come to now, is not only is Jesus our Savior, but he's also a Lord. He's our Lord. And that's what this whole second section of the Sermon on the Mount has to do with. And of course, we saw previously how the Lord affirms the law. He doesn't do away with the law. In fact, he says that even down to the jots and tittles, the little strokes, that everything will be fulfilled. It's not going anywhere. And then he makes this unbelievable statement, really the most shocking statement, as I said last week. It's really the hinge point of the rest of the chapter. In other words, if you don't understand this one verse, you're not going to understand the rest, and that's where we started. He says, for I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds or goes beyond the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. And I tried to explain this a couple sermons ago and what that really means. It's not so much that you've got to try harder and do better and make sure you just beat them out in this foot race to righteousness. But what's he really saying? He's saying that unless your religion, your religion is of an entirely different quality and substance, categorically, he says, you will forever remain outside the walls of God's kingdom. You've got to have a totally different kind of religion than they did. And so what does he do? The rest of the chapter, after he makes that statement, he's expanding on this theme. He opens up with these six different antitheses that he says, hey, there's two religions on offer, theirs and mine. And he goes on to explain the differences. In his second illustration, he moves from murder, which we dealt with last time, and now he's gonna be dealing with the seventh commandment, which is adultery. And I mentioned last time that this isn't really a contrast at all between Moses and Jesus. No, it's not Moses said this, but I'm clarifying, no. But what we're seeing here is it's a between, what the word of God has always intended and meant, and what these men, the Pharisees and scribes, had diluted it and made it to become. This kind of command that was, it generated a superficial righteousness in men, where you obey the letter and not so much the spirit. But of course, what we're finding is that very type of religion, the superficial righteousness, it's an affront to the living God. And so Jesus says in verse 27, he says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. And so, of course, the reasoning was, well, did you commit physical adultery? No. Well, congratulations. You've mastered the letter of the law. That was kind of the teaching of the day. You know, these scribes and these Pharisees, they saw the law as almost like these rungs in a ladder that you are able to climb up and enter into God's good graces. But because of the actual true nature of the law, what did they have to do? They had to trim and cut out the heart of the law. Because who can keep God's perfect standard of righteousness? Well, to do that, they had to make it doable, and they lost the whole purpose of the law. Because what does the Bible tell us the purpose of the law is? It's to reveal who we really are, our inability. It's to press us and to force us to look outside of ourselves for an alien righteousness that comes from God himself. That's really the whole purpose, that you would abandon any hopes that maybe if I'm just good enough, or if I do enough, or I sacrifice enough, or whatever it is, that I can attain heaven by my own righteousness. Every other religion in the world says you can do that. Christianity is the only one in the world that says no. you have no hope of attaining your own righteousness. And so Jesus is about to explain what this law has always intended to convey and communicate. And I want to just take us back to last time. I tried to paint a bit of an illustration from the Old Testament, where you had Nehemiah after 12 years. He comes back to Jerusalem, and he finds that Tobiah has been set up in the courts of the Lord, in the very temple precincts The man who had been the enemy of God unrepentantly is now set up in the very house of God. And so Nehemiah, he goes in, and if you know anything about Nehemiah, this is not uncharacteristic. He grabs Tobiah and all his stuff and throws it out into the streets. And I want to say that Jesus is doing the same thing. He's taking the false religion that the Pharisees, the scribes had set up. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, he's throwing their stuff out into the street. And last time we met murder's mother. Do you remember that? We met murder's mother, which was anger. Well, today we're going to meet adultery's mother, which is lust. He goes way upstream to our very thought life, and this is what he says. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery. with her in his heart." Again, notice the authority. As I said last time, all the prophets, they say, thus saith the Lord. But here's the Lord Jesus Christ saying, I say unto you. No one has ever spoken like this man before. But I want to say with reverence, forget admiring his authority just for a moment here. And I want to ask you a question. Is there a man here who doesn't feel suddenly pinned to the wall? when you hear this declaration of our Lord as he makes his statement. You know, the sermon on Haman, it contains some of the Lord's most challenging teaching, but this, this is something else altogether. I read one commentator, and all he could say on this verse, he says, if we do not feel unclean at this moment, God have mercy on us. What does he say? He says, whoever. not simply married men, but this spans really all of humanity. I would even say it includes women. Whoever breaches this commandment looks at a woman to lust for her or looks at a man, you could say, to lust for him. Well, this, again, it changes everything that now even my thought life is below his gaze. You know, from the mere physical, to the secrets of my heart and even the movement of my eye is something that God cares about. This is foreign to every other religion. It was also foreign to the scribes and the Pharisees. And you know that word, it says whoever looks, that word looks, it doesn't just simply mean see. A man could be walking down the street and see a beautiful woman and know she's beautiful without lusting for her. That is possible. But this is something more than that. This is where seeing then turns into gazing. And you could search your own heart. It goes into more of a lust-filled stare. You know, it's feeding of this inner sensual appetite. It's this desire for and this craving for. The word is actually positively used too sometimes where it says where you know when David says how he he longs for the courts of the Lord it's the same word when you look back in the Septuagint that he says here this there's something going on inside that no one else can see and you know God hates this particular sin for two reasons number one I think God hates this particular sin because it goes against his character as one who is faithful God is faithful But secondly, like murder, it attacks the very image of God in man. It turns man into something that he wasn't. It turns a woman into something she wasn't really intended to be at all. And so here's the challenge, if we really are going to be honest here, that we live in a time where looking at a woman to lust for her is one of the most booming industries in the United States of America. John MacArthur. a strong warning to all who would desire to live godly in Christ. And this is what he says. He says, although sexual temptations have been strong since man's fall, our day of permissiveness and perversion has brought an increase in those destructive influences that no society in history has ever seen before. Ours is a day of unbridled indulgence in sexual passion. People propagate, promote, and exploit it through the most powerful and pervasive media ever known to man. It seems to be almost uninterrupted theme of our society's entertainment. And so I don't want to brush over this, brothers and sisters. I want to talk to us a little bit about the dark magic, let's call it, the soul-destroying power of pornography. And, you know, This is probably the most pervasive thing that really is taking place in our society. You know, how are we able to comprehend the pornography industry in the United States of America? Did you know that it rakes in $25 billion, with a B, dollars per year? That's three times more than Hollywood. America's most popular sport is the NFL, but it has to bow before the industrial complex that is pornography. $25 billion. I have a dollar bill here. I wanted to bring this up. Here's $1. And if I were to take this $1 and put it here, just stack it up, and then put as many as I could to fill this three-foot space of this pulpit, you know how many dollars that would be? $9,000. $9,000, and boys, think what you could buy with $9,000. But what is $25 billion? How much pulpit space would it take up? Do you know that if we were to try to quantify this, you would have to drive, get in your car, and drive from Wake Forest and then pass Colorado, go into Denver past five miles, and then you would finally reach the end of $25 billion bills stacked upright or side by side. Think about that. Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri. We did this in the fall. I never thought I'd get through Kansas. Finally, you get through Kansas, and you enter into Colorado, and then you still got a ways to go till you reach Denver. And then you've got to go five miles past Denver. That's what this industry is doing here in the United States of America. That's our nation at the present time. Of course, it's winked at. It's an area of acceptable compromise. It's a rite of passage. It's impossible to escape, you know? But what about the church, the Bride of Christ? What about the Lord's bride that he purchased with his own blood. Is it possible, here's a good question, that debates that are raging about which is the right confession, you know, and the merits of expositional preaching, I'm gonna stand against heresy, things that are all necessary, but at the end of the day, when you look at the final analysis, do you not wonder if at the end of the day that this poison is more a detriment to the church of Jesus Christ in all of those things, perhaps put together. So the question is, how are we doing? How are we doing as men and even as women now? It's not beyond the pale. I want to talk to us about the satanic plan that the devil has put in play to render men, Christian men specifically, utterly useless. So how much of that 25 billion do you think are Christian dollars? If you take a look at the stats, well, it's impossible to tell in a church like ours, but just looking more broadly at the Barna Group, you know what they've concluded is that there's virtually no difference in the monthly pornography use of non-Christian men, 65%, versus Christian men, 64%. There's a 1% better, I guess, for Christian men than it is for men who don't even pretend to be Christians. Take that in for a second. You look at a group of 100 men in a church, and 64 of them are slaves to pornography. And it's worse with younger men than it is with older men. And Barna goes on to share, he says this, that porn users often experience lower mental health and overall well-being, along with feelings of guilt, shame, and isolation. You know, when you're shredded by this sin on the inside, how motivated are you going to be to tell men, Jesus came to set you free? Think about that. You just become this hollow shell over time. And hey, I'm speaking to you just as a man to men, so am I exalting myself? God forbid. Please don't think that. But in another study, Dr. Perry This man, he did a study of 3,000 Christians over six years. And guess what his conclusions were? He had two conclusions at the end of it all. Listen to this. One, if you want Christians to be less committed to praying, going to church, and reading their Bible, and wanted them to doubt more, just get them to watch porn. Number two, more porn equals less service. The more frequently someone uses pornography, the less likely they are to serve in their congregation. Well, of course. But as bad as the consequences are, it's not simply that the church becomes weaker as men yield to sin. Let's not fall into the snare of the Pharisees. What was their sin? The Pharisees had made all the consequences, just like we saw in murder. When you murder someone, don't do that because you'll be brought before the council, the actual civil authorities. The same thing with adultery. They had reduced it to the mere act, which might bring the death penalty. But let's not fall into the trap of, let's just look at the physical calamity that this brings. No, it turns out that men's very souls are at stake. Rather than raising his voice, rather than exclamation marks, rather than bolding, italicizing, and putting all the marks he can on his words, he shouts in another way. The Lord himself does something that he doesn't do anywhere else. in the Sermon on the Mount, very much in line with being a Hebrew teacher, what does he do? It's the only place where he repeats himself, says the same thing twice. You know, there are all sorts of rescue plans, you can get software, there's all sorts of advice, but here is the Lord's rescue plan as it pertains to this particular law. And we'll get to that in a second, but what's the most common command in the entire Bible? You kids probably know, right? Fear not. But here's a place the Lord wants you to fear. He says, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. For it is more profitable for you than one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And I'll be honest with you, you know, I even talked to Trent about this. My great temptation, even as I'm preaching this to you, is to almost be like the Pharisees. And what do I mean by that? I wanna take the edges off a little bit. I wanna rush in with, But don't worry, grace, you know, Jesus paid it all. And your sins, past, present, future, are all forgiven. But what I recognize here, and I say also to Trent, you can clean up the pieces after I'm finished. But what I also notice here, you know, Christ doesn't do that. Who loves you more than Jesus? Who is more pastoral than the Lord? And it seems like he wants men to feel the weight of this. You know, Proverbs says it like this, whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding. He who does it destroys his own soul. So Christian, is this an area of acceptable compromise? Hear this for a second. By its very nature, this particular sin demands increased territory, fewer limitations, and more captives. It begins invading career, family, health, and reputation. Now the person finds that what could have been a brief skirmish, if it had been attended to earlier, has become full-blown war. And so what I'm saying to us here is pornography, It takes Christian men out of the game. Can we just say that as plainly as can be said? It traps you in your own brokenness, and over time it just squeezes the life out of you so that you become useless. You were enlisted as a soldier in the kingdom of God, but now you're sidelined. It is the power to murder your soul. That's what is being said here. Solomon, he was so careful, he ended up falling But at one point, he was so careful that his sons know the danger of sexual immorality. And I wanted you to hear the pleading in his writing. Look what he says. He says, now, therefore, listen to me. Oh, my children, pay attention to the words of my mouth. Do not set your heart to turn aside to her ways. Do not stray into her paths. For she has cast down many wounded. And all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death. You know, oftentimes when I'm evangelizing and talking to people, I've, depending who it is, I'll just, you know, in the course of the conversation, I'll just throw out a question. Hey, how much would you sell your eye for, one of your eyes? You've got two. How much would you sell your eye for? And the person looks at me like, is this guy crazy? I said, what if I gave you a million dollars Would you sell me one of your eyes, even your left eye, whatever is not your strong eye? Well, no, no. Why would I sell one? Okay, okay. What if I give you $10 million for both your eyes? Well, what would I do with $10 million if I lost my very sight? And the person says, no, I would never do that. Well, what about your soul that has infinitely more value? than both of your eyes? Do you put a higher premium on your eyes than you put on your soul?" It's a good question to ask. You know, so disastrous is this sin that the Lord, he brings two things into the equation. He talks about these great remedies in our fight against this particular sin. One of them is violence. It's what the men of old used to call mortification. John Owen wrote a whole book on that. But then he uses another device, and he brings eternity into this whole thing as well. He says, by way of violence, he says, pluck it out. Cut it off. And don't just leave it on the ground, but take it and cast it from you. I mean, is there a more violent set of words that comes out of the Lord's mouth? You know, there was a man, his name was David Robinson. He was an MVP, most valuable player for the San Antonio Spurs. He played like in the early 2000s, excellent basketball player. But he was also a Christian man. And if you know anything about the NBA, it's not exactly known for Christianity, even back then. And what was always a marvel to people was that this man was able to live consistently as a Christian over a decade of playing in the NBA, he was a husband, and every single day, he was set in the midst of physical opportunity for adultery. He had women throwing themselves at him on a daily basis. He's seven foot tall, his shoulders are probably as broad as this, as this pulpit here. But apparently, the whole thing he became known for was rudely, brushing women off when they came and they tried to seduce him. And he was interviewed by a magazine and there was an article written called The Trials of David. And the question kept coming up, how is it that you can live in integrity with such temptation over years and years? And when asked to comment on his rude practice, you know what he said? If any woman is going to get hurt feelings, it's not going to be my wife. This man, he was violent in his approach to what he must do to survive and not succumb to these temptations. But here's the thing. We live in 2025 now, and you may not be being stalked by physical women, but you're being stalked every day on the internet. Stalked with algorithms that are smarter than you and maybe even know your habits and your likes and dislikes better than you. Do you have the same view, this holy violence, that you're going to stand against the wiles of the adversary? You know, again, Scott and Trent, they said this is the year of practical religion. I don't know if there's anything more practical. You could say, well, God can't expect me. Come on now, brother. God can't expect me to get rid of my smartphone. You know, I know a young man who right before he was tempted, he was tempted to get involved, go on something online. He took a hammer. and smashed his own phone. Violence. Pluck out your eye, not just your eye, pluck out your right eye. That's more significant. Not just cut off your hand, but your right hand, and then take it and throw it as far as you can from you. You know, your response to the Lord's command, the extent that you're willing to go, It's really indicative of where you stand with the Lord, isn't it? And what you value most. And what Jesus is saying here, he says, brother, sister, you can't serve two gods at once. There's a difference between the man, of course, we know this, and I wanna make this clear, between a man who falls into sin, he repents, he takes drastic action, and he hates it. and the man who coddles himself in the habit. There's a difference. And your reluctance to part with your harem of imaginary brides puts you in graver danger than you imagine. You know, remember Lot? What the Bible describes happening to Lot, it says Lot lingered. And I have a question today. Will any man linger today? We heard one of the testimonies today. That hurts. You'd hear a sermon. Ugh. But then he'd wait a day. And go on. Lot lingered. He tried to stave off what the angels were actually saying to him. But what do they do? They come back to him. They say, Lot, escape for your life. And this is no different. Escape for your life. You see, Jesus goes on not only to talk about violence, but he talks about eternity. This is what the Pharisees and the scribes were unwilling to bring. into the equation, but not Jesus. He says, you're in danger of your whole body being cast into hell. The Lord, he's bringing this into the picture for a reason. You know, the comparison is very, very simple. Far better to amputate your right hand than your soul. Yes, there are temporal consequences, depression and family life. and all these other things, but there are much, much graver consequences than just the temporal. Remember Joseph, when he was tempted and grabbed? He says, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? He had a view. He was looking at things in an entirely different way. And this is what Jesus is saying, that in his kingdom, my citizens, my citizens have an eye on that day. that governs their behavior today, in the day that they're living in. And oftentimes, I don't know about you, but I think we could all relate to this, that the passing pleasures of sin, they kind of cast like a thick mist on eternity. We know it's come, we believe it, but the pleasures of sin, they can kind of mystify you a little bit here. It's very, very dangerous, and Jesus is doing simply, he's clearing the mist. He wants you to see that there's an eternity that's rushing upon us. And so in relation to the sin that has to do with pleasure, the Lord wants us to see eternity. And in his holy war, the Christian, he makes a decision. It is better, it's far better to be cripples today than to be whole and hellbound on that day. That's what the Christian decides. And so there's these two great remedies the Lord's employing. He wants violence. He doesn't say anything about software. Violence and a view to eternity that are going to be your weapons in this war against this sin that affects every single man that's beneath this roof. And I'm guessing women more than we even think or know. Well there's one more I want to just point to that's a very helpful weapon. You know yesterday I was walking with my kids out in the woods. And I'm just looking around, and I'm seeing how beautiful things are, even though there's no leaves around. And I'm thinking to myself, I didn't even say anything to them, but there's so much beauty in God's world. And I started thinking, you know, what a deception that I would be so captivated by things that aren't beautiful and forsake the things that are most beautiful. There's things, God has made everything beautiful. His creation is astounding. And most beautiful of all, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the sin bearer, the one who takes our sins. Remember what I said the last time? Martin Luther, when I look at myself, I do not know how I can be saved. When I look at Christ, I do not see how I can be lost. I want you to keep that in mind if you're under a sense of, woe is me. It's a good feeling sometimes. We need it. But here's what I also want to say and remind you, that there is a master that is stronger than this one that can redeem you, who can take you out and wash you clean, make you whiter than snow. Though your sins be as what? Scarlet, the most impossible stain to get out, he can wash you and make you whiter than snow as though it never was. And so here's the question, what will you do with the Lord's instruction, seeing that we serve and we live in the world of an actual living savior. He bears your sins. He gives you power over sin. Did you ever wonder what Jesus meant when he said, you are the salt of the earth? This is what he's referring to, that you're living according to a higher standard than the man who's unregenerate. Any unregenerate man cannot commit adultery. There's plenty of them, physically. But this is a whole other ballgame that's governing my thoughts, the movement of my eyes, the motions, of my heart, I need a stronger medicine than just discipline. I need the living God to save me and to deliver me. And so, in a way, this sermon, when I was 20 years old, I read this sermon. I wasn't a Christian. But I came to this part of the Sermon on the Mount, and if anything was a dagger to me, it was this one. And it ended up converting me. And this sermon, is the most evangelistic in that sense. Why? Because it casts men. Any hope you had of squeaking in and being good enough, it all evaporates in the light of the righteousness of God. And even as a believer, what does it do? It casts me. Maybe it casts you. Oh, Lord, keep me. Let any man who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. It should fill you with fear if you're dabbling and playing around with this kind of stuff And so you're confronted, will I turn or will I continue? That's really the question. But think about this, that he would carry our filth on that cross, drinking it all down. That should astound us. Even this to the dregs, one man taking the sins of all his people on himself for the love that he bore towards us. You can be free from this thing and turning to Christ, you can find yourself justified and being filled with his spirit. And I just want to end with one more thing. You know, there's something, we exalt justification, don't we? But do you know there's something more beautiful, more powerful than justification? This is what John Owen says. The greatest privilege that the gospel offers is adoption. We saw that this morning with Paul, but we also saw it with two of our new brothers. Justification removes guilt and punishment. But adoption establishes us as sons and daughters of the Almighty God. You're a son and a daughter. Live for him. Let's pray. Lord, you know me and you know each one of us, Lord. None of us are hidden from your sight. It is a fearful thing, Lord, to speak your word and to know that, oh, Lord, I stand in great need of your help. But Lord, I'm grateful for your kindness to me, to my brothers and sisters. Lord, my prayer today is that if any are bound in this gall of wickedness and evil, oh Lord, that you would come to set the captives free. Do a mighty work, oh Lord, and keep those of us, Lord, who have escaped, that we would not fall back or be tempted, oh Lord, but that we would stand firm and live for you joyfully that we would behold the things that are truly beautiful and revel in those things, Lord, and exalt you in the way that we live. Help us, oh God, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.