It Starts in the Heart, pt II (Matt 5:27-30)

It Starts in the Heart, pt. II

Matthew 5:27-30

            We are continuing our journey through the Sermon on the Mount, where we have the nerve to ask, “Can anyone live out the Sermon on the Mount in today’s world?” The Sermon on the Mount is:

            -Jesus’ longest, sustained teaching

            -Three chapters long

            -109 verses

            -2400+ words give or take.

We are finished looking at the first 26 verses and are now moving into, what I personally feel is the hardest teaching in the Bible.

            There may be a few people out there who may be like me. I was an athlete through college and into my post-graduate studies. I have gone through many hard workouts from 7^th grade when I started to run through Seminary where I trained with other college programs. I never seemed to mind the hard workouts. Sometimes, I even looked forward to them because I knew they were going to do two things: 1) Challenge me—if the coach wasn’t challenging me with the workouts then it meant he didn’t believe in me; 2) Make me a stronger runner—which is why I trained so hard in the first place. I remember in HS doing 32 repeat 400’s at race pace for a 5K, on the track, which I always found boring. That’s eight miles for anyone doing the math. I had an epiphany that day. An epiphany is a sudden insight into something. I thought, “If I die and go to hell, I don’t want to run repeat 400’s for all of eternity. Maybe I should get right with God.” I remember running speed workouts in the dead of summer, all by myself. I remember working outside in sub-freezing temperatures on Christmas break until it was too cold to work and then went home and ran for 10-15 miles. I wanted to be the best and working hard was something that I looked forward to.

            But when I hear a preacher say, “This is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do,” I don’t look forward to it. It’s one thing to endure a workout. It’s something completely different to endure a trial. A workout has a beginning and an end. The trials that God allows you to go through have a beginning, but you may not know when it started. And it has an end, but you may not see it in this lifetime. But the worse part about it is the fact that you can’t get away from yourself. If you mess up a play, or can’t finish a workout, you may feel bad about it for a few minutes but eventually shake it off and move on. But if God has you going through a spiritual workout and you mess up, good luck sleeping that night. There have been times when I messed up a spiritual challenge and God took me to the woodshed. Is there anyone else here, that messed something up in their spiritual walk, maybe you were the only person that knew about it, and God took you to the cleaners? If He has, then that is a good thing. Proverbs 3:11-12 says,

My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline
       and do not resent his rebuke,

¹² because the LORD disciplines those he loves,
       as a father ^[a] the son he delights in.

We are going to talk about something today that will make a lot of you feel like failures. Maybe God has rebuked you. Let not your heart be troubled! God rebukes the ones He loves.          

Last week we studied what I believe to be one of the hardest teachings in the Bible, which was Jesus’ teaching that it was not enough not to murder someone, because even if you hated a person you were in danger of facing the same punishment as if you did murder them. This passage is very similar. Matthew 5:27-30, “You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' ²⁸But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ³⁰And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”

            This passage, just like last week’s, is designed to show you as a failure. No one can perfectly fulfill Jesus’ commandment. Everyone who listened to Jesus teach this passage that day who were feeling pretty good about themselves and their righteousness, suddenly felt pretty bad about themselves. Once again Jesus was saying, “It’s not enough to just not commit adultery. You have to take it to the next level. If you even look at someone with impure thoughts, you’ve already committed adultery with her in your heart. On a side note, there was a scientific study that showed the chemicals released in the brain after viewing pornography were the same chemicals released after having sex. So Jesus was scientifically and spiritually correct when He said, “You’ve already committed adultery in your heart.” According to your brain, you had sex with that person. The Greek word for “heart” is kardia, which means not only the organ, but it also stood for the center of man’s entire mental and moral activities.

            How many of you have ever watched Wipeout? How many of you watch it because you like watching highly successful members of society race through the obstacle course with cat-like reflexes and amazing precision? How many of you watch it because you like to watch “good’uns” face planting into immovable objects? That’s what I watch it for, that and the witty and sarcastic commentary. I’m old school. I watched that show on Spike TV when it was the Japanese game show with the English over-dubbing. I like watching the people fail. The worse they fail, the harder I laugh. I have to muffle my laughter or Rebekah with think I’m a mean person. And I can’t be alone in this because they show 50 minutes of people face planting and 1 minute of people succeeding.

I like watching them fail because I don’t know them. If it was a loved one or someone I knew, I would be cheering for them and praying that they would make it through the obstacle course unharmed and with the fastest time. That’s the same way God is with us. He loves us and believe it or not, wants to see us win, not face plant into the Big Balls. He loves us, He gives us direction and guidance. It is like if the contestants each had a coach that was willing to train them on how to get through the obstacle course. That’s what He wants to do for us.

            Proverbs 5:21 describes God’s desire to be our coach in this obstacle course we call life. It says, “For a man’s way is in full view of the LORD, and He examines all his paths.” God can see our entire journey and knows which steps we should take and which steps we should avoid. If we think about Wipeout, it is like He has all of our jumps timed out for us. All we have to do is listen to Him. But that’s the problem. Two verses later in 5:23 it reads, “He shall die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray.” We are too prideful to listen to Him, and we suffer for it.

            In this passage, Proverbs 5, Solomon, the wisest man to ever walk the face of the earth, was trying to pass his wisdom down to his sons about the dangers of adultery. Let’s look at what he advises.

 ¹ My son, pay attention to my wisdom,
       listen well to my words of insight,

 ² that you may maintain discretion
       and your lips may preserve knowledge.

 ³ For the lips of an adulteress drip honey,
       and her speech is smoother than oil;

 ⁴ but in the end she is bitter as gall,
       sharp as a double-edged sword.

 ⁵ Her feet go down to death;
       her steps lead straight to the grave. ^[a]

 ⁶ She gives no thought to the way of life;
       her paths are crooked, but she knows it not.

 ⁷ Now then, my sons, listen to me;
       do not turn aside from what I say.

 ⁸ Keep to a path far from her,
       do not go near the door of her house,

 ⁹ lest you give your best strength to others
       and your years to one who is cruel,

 ¹⁰ lest strangers feast on your wealth
       and your toil enrich another man's house.

 ¹¹ At the end of your life you will groan,
       when your flesh and body are spent.

 ¹² You will say, "How I hated discipline!
       How my heart spurned correction!

 ¹³ I would not obey my teachers
       or listen to my instructors.

 ¹⁴ I have come to the brink of utter ruin
       in the midst of the whole assembly."

 ¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
       running water from your own well.

 ¹⁶ Should your springs overflow in the streets,
       your streams of water in the public squares?

 ¹⁷ Let them be yours alone,
       never to be shared with strangers.

 ¹⁸ May your fountain be blessed,
       and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.

 ¹⁹ A loving doe, a graceful deer—
       may her breasts satisfy you always,
       may you ever be captivated by her love.

 ²⁰ Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress?
       Why embrace the bosom of another man's wife?

 ²¹ For a man's ways are in full view of the LORD,
       and he examines all his paths.

 ²² The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him;
       the cords of his sin hold him fast.

 ²³ He will die for lack of discipline,
       led astray by his own great folly.

            Solomon’s teaching is pretty wise and pretty powerful even today. Have you ever seen a road sign that warned against a curvy road ahead? This is what Solomon is doing for his sons, and is what God is doing for us, too. It’s like He’s saying, “There is some trouble up ahead. You need to slow down to prepare for it.” I’m telling you there is some trouble up ahead and you need to slow down to prepare for it.

            Jesus said if we look at a woman with lust, we have already committed adultery in our hearts. So is the problem with looking, or with lusting? The problem is with lusting, but looking leads to lusting. According to scientific studies, a person using pornography can get addicted to those same chemicals that we spoke about earlier, and that addiction is even harder to break than the addiction to heroin. If all of you had access to heroin on a minute by minute basis throughout your day, I would be shouting warnings against the dangers of heroin all day every day to you. But you do have access to pornography anywhere and everywhere. People may feel pornography is a victimless pursuit but it is not. It destroys lives. It destroys the lives of people producing it, using it, as well as the innocent family members of the person engaged in it. And it all begins with lust. Jesus said it would have been better if we would have just gouged our eye out. After the service today, we will have an eye gouging ceremony for anyone who wants to participate.

            What separates pornography from drugs, alcohol, and tobacco addiction is that when you see an image, that image, good, positive, or neutral, is in your brain forever. That isn’t necessarily the case with the other three. So when you’re sitting in math class and your brain recalls an image you’ve seen at some point in your life, you now have to deal with it. Last week I told you that you can’t help if a bird lands on your head but you don’t have to let it build a nest in your hair. The same holds true for these thoughts, too. Think about something else. It’s as easy and as hard as that.

Secondly, you can be watching TV, minding your own business and a seductive commercial comes on. You didn’t ask for it. You weren’t seeking it. But there it is and you have to deal with it. Imagine a recovering alcoholic watching a ball game, and then a person jumps out of the television, and slams a beer down their throat. They weren’t asking for it. They weren’t seeking it. So what do you do when that tempting vision comes on the TV, or you see an ad in a magazine, or a billboard? You look away, and as for me and my family we won’t spend our money on their businesses until they get a marketing representative with some moral fiber.

             There are several things that make pornography wrong. 1) It glamorizes sin. 2) It causes the person using it to lust, (which is sin) and then moves them further and further down a path of destruction as they have to seek out different ways to maintain that chemical high. 3). Pornography reduces human beings to sexual items to be bought, sold, used and discarded.

 Johnny Hunt, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said about pornography, “If you look at something that isn’t real, as if it was real, it makes what is real appear not real.” In other words, let’s say you never seen what a horse looks like and so with my limited drawing abilities I draw a picture of a horse and show you. You may look at my picture all day, everyday, in fact the longer you look at my picture the more convinced you are that my horse must be an exact copy of what a real horse looks like. The problem is when you get around to actually seeing what a real horse looks like you’ll have trouble believing it to be real because all you have to compare it with is my picture. What do you think a lifetime of looking at pornography will do to you when you do eventually get married? Will it affect your relationship with your spouse? Yes, because you will be comparing what is real to what isn’t real. Now imagine inserting pornography into a young person’s mind that doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not real. The earlier a young person is exposed to pornography the more normal they are going to think it is. They are going to think it’s as normal as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

So what if you have been looking at what is not real as if it was real, what do you do now? The first thing you have to do is stop! You are dealing with a sin issue and a chemical addiction, so it will take more than will power and behavior modification. You are going to need God’s help to get you through this. Anyone who has decided to quit and failed. Decided to quit again and failed will tell you it takes more than will power.

Here are some practical suggestions to help you:

1) First and foremost, you need to pray to God, confess your sins (Confess means to agree with God. Can you agree with God on how He feels about pornography?) and ask for His forgiveness. 1 John 1:9

2)  You need to find someone that you can trust that will hold you accountable in your attempt to walk free from your addiction. This includes your parents. You were man or woman enough to get into pornography. Will you be man or woman enough to come clean?

3)  Serious behavior modification. Don’t get on the internet when there is no one else around. Don’t go to certain websites or watch television programs that might trigger something in you. Change your friends. Change the music you listen to.  Everything that you put into your brain is there forever. You can’t get rid of it, but you can dilute it. Water it down so it won’t be as poisonous.

4) Detox your brain. You have to change your thoughts or they’ll destroy your attempts.

            Whether you personally struggle with pornography or not, you will be affected by it at some point in your life. It is a sin problem and there is only one cure for a sin problem, and that is Jesus Christ….