Last Sunday Pastor James had Matthew 5:21-26, which is anger and murder. My assigned text this morning is Matthew 5:27-30, which is lust and adultery. Nothing says Merry Christmas quite like it. I don't know what is on your Christmas list, but I doubt this was on it.
Parents, fair warning: this is a PG-13 sermon. Don't blame me. Jesus said it. The series is called Jesus Said What?, and by the end you may be saying Pastor Kent said what? — so I will be circumspect, because the preacher's job is to read the text faithfully and to read the room.
Before we start, a rubric from my best seminary professor, Dr. Richard Pratt. Any passage of Scripture was written by an author to an audience with one thing in mind. So: one original meaning, many legitimate summaries, countless applications. The first task is always to get at that original meaning. What follows is a summary, and then some applications — and I trust you will make many more of your own.
The source of sin
God made us sexual creatures in Genesis 1 and 2 — before we were sinful. Sex is God's idea and God's good gift, and that is not incidental. It was not invented by Hollywood or Madison Avenue or by anyone who uses it to sell things and acts as though they thought of it. They took God's good creation and twisted it, warped it, vandalized it, presented it in a way he never intended.
That is what lust is. Like every sin, it is a legitimate desire illegitimately twisted, illegitimately pursued — and then savored and nurtured until it becomes an obsession. Calvin said our nature is a factory of idol makers, and that factory never shuts down.
The commandment itself — you shall not commit adultery — was given to Israel to safeguard marriage, in a world where a woman was chattel and a man could divorce his wife over any flimsy thing, including how she cooked. God says: not among my people. Your wives bear my image as much as you do.
But how effective is an external rule? About as effective as any external rule. That is legalism, and legalism is a dead heresy. Do not expect a dead heresy to be much use against a living, breathing sin.
Think of law and grace as two doctors. One diagnoses; the other treats. The law diagnoses the problem; grace heals it. You cannot get the law to do both. It did not work for their forebears, it was not working for the people on that hillside, and it is not working for us.
Following Jesus is not fundamentally about rules. It is a matter of the heart, where he transforms us from the inside out and replaces our sinful desires with better and higher ones.
Where to look, and where not to
If you do not want to end up in the wrong place, stop looking in that direction. Look long enough and you will want to take the first step down that path, and the first step is always the one that leads to the second.
And this is not only about sexual lust; the word covers far more ground. If you are an alcoholic, do not go into a liquor store. If you gamble, stay off the betting app. If you are a bookaholic, do not wander into the Miami Book Fair. I know whereof I speak.
I do not talk about this as an outsider. My wife is an intelligent, strong, capable woman, and I knew all that before we married — and if you think that is the only reason I married her, you are mistaken. We have four children, and we did not buy them at a baby store. I speak as a fellow struggler. The best thing you can do is not open that door at all.
If I had a surefire cure I would be a wealthy man. I don't. But nobody ever quit an addiction by announcing he was quitting; ask God for a higher and holier calling than the thing you are chasing.
Martin Luther said you cannot stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can certainly stop them building a nest in your hair.
The seriousness of sin
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out. Yes, he is exaggerating to make a point, and nobody should take that literally. But look at the size of the exaggeration, and then look at how our culture treats this — as a joke, everybody's doing it, what's wrong with you if you're not.
I can give you the statistics. I can tell you the stories: the marriages ruined, the families ruined, the pastors I have known who flamed out of their pulpits over an obsession with pornography. It is not funny. It is a cancer, and it gets into the soul. And the only cure for that, or for any other obsession, is the blood of Christ. There is no other cure.
If you are struggling with it, please get help. No judgment — that is not our role.
The solution for sin
There are other kinds of lust, and it is Christmas, so let me ask what is on your list. There are more than fifty thousand self-storage facilities in this country. Most of us need to get rid of things, not add more.
I once heard a preacher open by saying, ladies and gentlemen, I have a confession. I have been unfaithful. Long pause. Every eye in the room. Oh — don't worry. Not to my wife. Just to Jesus. Then he named everything he had been chasing instead of holiness. Career. Money. Prestige. Stuff.
By all means buy presents — and men, when your wife says she doesn't really need anything, she is lying. But most of us could trim the list and invest the difference in something that lasts. Howard Hendricks used to say three things last forever: God, the word of God, and the souls of men. Spend your life on one of those three and the investment goes on forever.
Sin is the cancer; the blood of Christ is the cure. And as the Puritan Richard Sibbes put it, there is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in us.
So what is your deepest desire this Christmas? I hope and pray it is to be closer to Jesus and more like him — and to invite everyone in your circle along on that quest.
