Simple Faith

Guest (Male): Sexual sin and acceptance of sexual sin are both creeping into every aspect of life, even in the church. Here's Pastor Bill Henry.

Bill Henry: It's a weird thing so many of us today—it's like they've embraced it in the church. They welcome in lustfulness and sins of sexuality into the church, into the pulpits now. That ought not to be within the church of God. When we have lust, it is something we should be ashamed of, not something we coddle. It's not something we ignore.

It is something to be ashamed of, to repent from, and it is contrary to the teachings of the word of God and a life of holiness that pleases the Lord.

Guest (Male): An interesting experiment revealed that a male butterfly may ignore a living female butterfly of his own species in favor of a painted cardboard imitation. If the cardboard one is bigger than he is and bigger than any female butterfly, he'll go to the cardboard imitation. Needless to say, the butterflies aren't alone in this area.

Lust, adultery, and fornication are all ages-old problems for the human race. While sex is God-given, it must also be God-governed, as we're going to see today on Simple Faith. Pastor Bill Henry continues his study in the great Sermon on the Mount by looking at Matthew 5, verses 27 and 28.

Bill Henry: 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. Last week, as I said a moment ago, we looked at the problem, and the problem basically is lust. Jesus was talking about adultery.

Before this, he talked about anger and how anger basically led to murder. When we are angry with someone in our hearts and continue in that anger, it becomes sin, just as murdering somebody is sin. It's the same here with lust as we looked at last week. When we look at someone with lust in our hearts, as to lust after them, Jesus says we are basically committing spiritual adultery with them.

As these come together, we need to remember something. As we continue our verse-by-verse study through this Sermon on the Mount, you're probably going to hear me say this a hundred times—we've already said it a hundred times—but God is not simply after our outward actions. We need to remember this: he is after our hearts.

Christianity is not simply a list of do's and don'ts, things to do and not to do. It's about being in a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we are in that relationship and we're in love with God because we're returning his love, then that's going to affect our outward appearance. It's going to affect our words; it's going to affect our actions.

That's what Jesus is basically teaching here. Again, he's after our hearts. He wants us to love him. Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5 says, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength."

Then in Leviticus 19:18, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord." In Matthew chapter 22, verse 40, Jesus says, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." The Pharisees, as you'll remember, had lost this. They forgot about loving God. They forgot about loving their neighbors and just got into all the do's and the don'ts.

Jesus again is dealing with principles here. This morning, as we continue, he's going to be talking once again about lust and basically, how do we overcome lust in our lives as Christians? I cut this into two parts on purpose because lust is such a wicked thing that is just so enveloped our world today.

I had someone who was doing some work in Taiwan not too long ago, and they said they came back and it was the same exact thing. Everybody's just obsessed with lust and with sex, and that's basically the world that you and I are living in. How do we battle against that? Just to be reminded last week, what did Jesus say about this?

As Jesus was saying about lust, looking and lusting after someone, as we looked in the Greek, we came down to this: to be continually and intensely looking at, thinking about another with longing, lusting, and coveting. If you'll remember, this wasn't a lust that is a good and healthy thing that is in a marriage.

When you look at your husband or your wife and you're sexually attracted to them and you enjoy sex inside of marriage, it's a beautiful thing and how God designed it to be. No, this is something slightly different. This has a coveting effect to it, almost something that you can never get. It's almost like when people are sleeping together before they get married; they're fornicating.

Then they get married and all of a sudden, they don't want to have sex at all—one or the other, or both. It's because there's that element of coveting in there. That's the sin. When we look at someone continually or we think about someone continually that's not our spouse with this longing and lusting, Jesus said we've already committed adultery within our hearts.

You'll remember, just to briefly synopsize, we spoke about David the king and with Bathsheba and how it all started with a look as he fell into sin. He saw her over on the roof. He should have turned away at that moment, but he didn't. He continued, and just by looking over there, he started to lust, and then that led to sin after sin after sin.

We can fall into those same traps, especially within this world when we're continually and constantly bombarded with sex and lust and everything. We have to be careful as we look around us. Maybe it's a friend or a coworker; don't lust after them. The husband of a wife or the wife of a husband of a friend or a family member, don't lust after them.

Someone we simply see all the time, perhaps while shopping or at school, at events, or even here at church, we can begin to lust after people. This can be someone who is real or fictitious. This can be a character in a movie, a book, a video game. This could be an anime character. Anime is really big right now.

It could be pornography or other such things. Again, we start to long for them, wishing they were ours, and there's something about them that just interests us. It's lust that we're lusting after them. Jesus again says we've committed adultery, and we need again to be careful because these things all come through different ways today.

Movies, television shows, TikTok reels, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or X, books, emails, messages on Instagram or Facebook, subscription entertainment services, video games—I would add anime to that—many commercials today, billboard signs, music, politics, even in our education. It's just sex and sex and sex and lust.

They're trying to get you to lust after these people so you'll watch this television show, so you'll buy this product, so you'll follow them on TikTok because then they get money and they get power and they get fame. Here's the thing: they don't care what those seeds of lust they're planting in your brain and in your heart, what the outcome of that is.

They don't care. Remember, the Bible says, "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked. Whatever a man shall sow, that he shall reap." If we're sowing to the flesh, we're going to reap the whirlwind, the Bible says. We need to be careful of these things that we're letting people sow into our brains.

Look again at our text, verse 29: "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 that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell."

Pluck that eye out, cut off that right hand. Today, I brought a nice-sized knife so we can come up here one at a time and we can gouge out the eyes. No, no, no! I'm going to reiterate, like we said last week, Jesus is not speaking literally. Why do we say that? Because sometimes in our zeal to please the Lord, we can take scriptures out of context.

Some early church fathers actually did that. This one fellow—I can't find his name again—but he literally was lusting after women, so he gouged his eyes out. Guess what he told his followers? "I'm still lusting. I don't see them, but I'm still lusting." It didn't work. In the early church, a lot of people decided, "Well, we're lusting after women here in town, so let's go up to this monastery where there's no women at all so we won't lust after any."

Sadly, a lot of them just ended up lusting after themselves. It's just a sad and wicked thing the flesh can be. When we look on the outside, we're missing the point completely. Jesus again is doing spiritual heart surgery on us, and we need to remember this has nothing to do with our physical bodies.

Another proof of that is that our bodies are all going to be changed. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, it says this corruptible must put on incorruptible. We will receive these new bodies. Even if you cut your hand off, it doesn't make sense; you're not going to enter into heaven with one hand. You're getting a new body.

By the way, praise the Lord! How awesome is that? I cannot wait. You younger folk out there are going, "Hey, I like my body; it's pretty good." Notice at the end of both 29 and verse 30, it says this: "For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body be cast into hell."

Here we see a warning. Here we see a warning that if we continue to coddle our lust, if we continue to grow in our lustfulness and basically commit adultery in our hearts, however it might come, we are basically on the wide road that leads to destruction, that leads to hell, and not on that narrow path that leads to heaven.

As we continue in this Sermon on the Mount, you're going to see the crescendo as we come into chapter 7, and Jesus warns about that very thing. He says that narrow path is hard. It's the hard way. This morning, we're talking about some hard things. We are going to have to cut some things out of our life spiritually.

We're going to have to gouge some things out of our lives to get rid of lust. Lust is not an outer problem; it comes inside. It's a sin of our hearts. We need to understand something today because of this wicked culture that we're living in, this wicked world, that lust is not okay.

It's a weird thing so many of us today—it's like they've embraced it in the church. They welcome in lustfulness and sins of sexuality into the church, into the pulpits now. That ought not to be within the church of God. When we have lust, it is something we should be ashamed of, not something we coddle. It's not something we ignore.

It is something to be ashamed of, to repent from, and it is contrary to the teachings of the word of God and a life of holiness that pleases the Lord. The more we remain in that darkness of lust, it just tears us down; it brings you further and further into that darkness.

Sadly, so many today, instead of fleeing these sins, embrace these sins. We think, "Oh, it's no big deal. It doesn't matter if I lust. If I looked at some pornography every day, it's no big deal." It's a huge deal. If I look at others on TikTok every day and I'm lusting after them, if I look at anime and I'm lusting after them, one thing after another—that's a huge deal.

Jesus is saying here you're committing adultery in our hearts. Some will say, "Well, wait a minute, that's under grace, Pastor Bill. So under grace, it's okay if I lust. It's okay if I fornicate because I'll just confess my sins; it's no big deal." It's a huge deal. Jude, by the way, covers this very thing.

In Jude verse 4, he says this: "For certain people have crept in unnoticed, just as if they were sneaking in by a side door. They are ungodly persons whose condemnation was predicted long ago, for they distort the grace of our God into decadence and immoral freedom, viewing it as an opportunity to do whatever they want, and deny and disown our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."

We cannot use God's grace as an excuse to coddle our sin, whether that's lust, whether that's anger, whether that's gossip, whether that's getting drunk all the time, any of these things. We cannot coddle them. This morning, we're specifically talking about lust. Remember, David is a perfect example of this.

He didn't repent of his sin like when he looked over lustfully at Bathsheba. If he would have stopped it right there—but no, he went down burning in a fire in his lust, that flame of lust that he let burn, and it burned down his whole family. You'll remember an old saying probably you've heard by Ralph Waldo Emerson; it says this:

"Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an action and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny." If you and I continue in lustfulness in our lives and we continue to wink at it—pornography or stuff in books or other things, television, movies—it's a huge deal because lust is sin.

When lust turns into sin, it doesn't just come out of nowhere. Lust starts with that second look. You can't help the first look. David couldn't help but look over, and there's Bathsheba; she's naked, she's taking a bath. He couldn't help that first look, but he could help the either staring or the second glance, the third glance.

Sometimes you and I can't help that first look of things, something that we see, whether it be a webpage that comes up, a TikTok video, a reel, or an Instagram something else. We can't help sometimes that first look, but we sure can stop that second and third look. Amen? Amen! And we need to do that, and we can do that by the power of the Spirit of God.

It can start in that soap opera or that our favorite movie star or musician or a book or an author, maybe someone else here you become enamored with in your life, just somebody else that you're not married to. These are sins. Jesus likens it unto adultery. Remember this: a fire always starts with a spark. Always.

James said it this way in James 1:13 through 15: "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own passions and enticed." That's that moment. "Oh, look at that video. Oh, look at that."

Verse 15: "Then, when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death." This is how serious the sin of lust is. We cannot coddle it anymore. So that's one of the first things we need to do to battle against lust is to recognize it.

Right when you see something that's going to trigger you—because some of the same things might trigger some of us, other things might trigger others—right when you see that, just as you think something, you're tempted to let that seed have in your brain, just in your hearts, and not kick it out, don't do it!

Don't let that thought in there; don't let that seed be planted. You instead take that thought captive right away. No, that thought's coming in—boom! Lord Jesus, I bring it to you. I bring it and I lay it at the foot of your cross. By your grace, by your Spirit, and by your strength, I'm going to leave it there.

We might have to do this a hundred times a day, different things coming at us. Amen? A hundred times a day, but do it a hundred times a day then! Some people will say, "Well, I can't do that, Pastor Bill. I have ADHD. I have ABCD or RDW. I have this or that. I can't do it." You've been deceived.

If you've been born again of the Spirit of God, you can take your thoughts captive. I don't care how much ADHD you have or other things. By the grace of God, you can. How do I know this? 2 Corinthians 10:3 through 6: "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds." Do you believe that? We try to fight these things. "I'm going to turn it off. I'm just going to say no to drugs." No, that's not the thing. The weapons we have, we don't use our flesh; we use the Spirit of God and the weapons that he has given to us.

Notice that they tear down these strongholds. Verse 5: "casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." We need to come to that place where it's like, if God says it, who am I to doubt it?

So many of us, "Oh, well, that's just the Bible. Stop throwing the Bible at me." Well, first of all, I'm a pastor. That's what I should be doing. And if you're a Christian, by the way, that's what you should be doing too. But here's the thing: we need to be those who understand that because the scripture tells us to do something, guess what? We can do it.

God's not going to tell us to do something that we can't do by the power of his Spirit. We can't do it in our own flesh; we're not meant to because, again, our weapons of warfare are not carnal. They're not fleshly. Let me say this: we need to be those who understand that God's word is true and not believe the lies of our own minds, the lies of the enemy, or even the lies of the world and even, sadly, some within the church today.

Some will say, "It's okay. This is just who you are." No, this is who I was by the grace of God.