Sermon Transcript

All right, go ahead and turn your Bibles to Matthew 5. We’re going to be in 5:27-30 today. Let’s see, there are no young ears in here this morning. There is, so today, today’s topic is going to be a little bit heavy. My goal is to only teach what God’s Word teaches here. I’m not going for shock jock or awe, right? I’m just here to counsel God’s people in the Word and to lead them to a path of righteousness. So with that being said, hey Kristen, so with that being said, would you guys please rise? We’re going to read Matthew 5:27-30.

“You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to 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 the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. (CSB)

This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Father, I ask right now that You would do a great thing. Father, I need You today. Your people have come to the Church and gathered. We come together because many of us are broken, if not most of us. We are all sinners. We all fall short of the glory of God, and we are at Your mercy for forgiveness, and we need to be made holy by Your power. I pray that Father, Your Church would be a beacon of light, hope, truth, world-transforming power, and that that transformation would begin within our hearts. We need You to show up today. Father, I pray that You please help everyone, including mine, everyone’s minds, to be focused on You. For a few minutes, Lord, help us to not think about our to-do list, to not think about the pressures of the world, to not think about football, to not think about other sporting events, shopping sprees, vacations, travels, but to think about You alone in Your Word. Help us to focus, and Lord, we come against all demonic powers that would seek to overthrow a successful worship service, and we ask that You would command them to leave from this place if there are any, and we pray that You would anoint this place with a hedge of protection, and I pray, Jesus, that You would please have us to have a mind that is captivated and convinced to do better with our hearts and making them holy and solely devoted to obeying You. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Main Point: We Must Fight for Holy Hearts in the Private and Public Domains

The United States benefits from the wonderful God-given right of free speech. Unfortunately, so does the porn industry. The same laws that defend free speech also shield one of the most harmful industries in our country. We thank God that U.S. Code 18 helps protect children from being involved in that industry. This same law also bans any circulation, sale, possession, or distribution of materials it labels as obscene. Did you know it’s actually illegal for obscenity in the United States of America, and yet how is it that we have it on the books that obscenity is illegal, but we have an industry that makes billions of dollars every year on obscene materials? The reason is that lawmakers and judges cannot define what obscenity is. They’re in a rock and a hard place. They started using what’s called the Miller Test, which came out of a law court judgment in the 1970s. The Miller test says that something is offensive if enough people say it is offensive and there’s no artistic value. So you can have anything be obscene so long as enough people don’t get offended by it and somebody claims that it’s artistic. And you see, when you have a problem with defining evil, evil will run rampant. And the Church must be courageous enough to face evil directly and call it out for what it is. Not only is adultery evil, but anything that encourages adultery is evil. And that is what Jesus is doing for us today. Jesus is taking what we struggle to define as evil, and He further describes it, and He does it with the word adultery.

So in our text today, what you need to understand is that Jesus begins by quoting the seventh commandment from Exodus 20: “you shall not commit adultery.” Now this commandment is given, but it seems that in first-century Israel, there was a lot of permissive understanding around this commandment. For example, one rabbinic tradition said that it was actually not considered adultery for a Jewish man to sleep with a non-Jewish female. It was only adultery if he slept with another Jewish female. That’s a problem. Like America, they also struggled to define adultery. Jesus is here to rein that in for us. Last week, we saw how Jesus did the same thing with murder:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit a murder,’ and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother has already committed murder, right? He actually says, whoever is angry with his brother will also be liable to judgment, the same judgment as a murderer (Matt 5:21-22)

So He reigns that in, and what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), He is outlining for us that all sin and violations of God’s will begin with the heart. It begins with the heart way before it begins with the hands. Now, why are we going through this today? Because we are in a series called “Who Is Jesus and What Does He Want?” Our goal is to be faithful to the command, “make disciples of all nations,” and Jesus tells us that in making disciples, we baptize them, but also teach them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us. And today, folks, we are going to faithfully teach the command not to lust or to fight for holy hearts.

1. Coveting Eyes Fertilize Unholy Hearts (5:28b)

The first point is that covetous eyes fertilize unholy hearts. When you have eyes that covet unholy things, you are creating fertile ground for your heart to become unholy. Jesus says, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful or coveting eyes has already committed adultery,” but it begins with the eyes. When you have coveting eyes, you become like your great, great, great ancestor Eve. You see, in Genesis 3:6, it says the woman saw with her eyes that the forbidden tree was delightful and desirable. The word there is the same word that we get the word “covet” from. When you begin to covet things just because they look good, you are prone to take and eat it, which is exactly what Eve did. And as a result, she purchased her consequences. But it wasn’t just Eve. We see the same thing with David and Bathsheba. It says that David in 2 Samuel 11, he was on the roof and he saw a beautiful woman bathing. He saw, it started with his coveting eyes, and it says that he sent messengers to take her. And then he also proceeded to eat of the forbidden fruit. Started with his eyes and it led to the sin. This is why we say coveting eyes are fertile grounds for an unholy heart.

2. Your Heart Commits Sin Before Your Hand Commits Sin (5:28c)

The next point is that your heart commits sin way before your hand commits sin. Just as anger can lead to murder, lust can lead to adultery. Coveting can result in theft or an obsession with money, correct? You’re not alone in struggling with sinful thoughts; I faced this myself this week. The new iPhone was released, and as I sat there trying to prepare a sermon, I kept thinking, “Is my package here yet? Where’s the UPS truck?” Like Eve, I thought internally, “Josh, you really need to control this.” I felt very convicted because I was so excited. It’s not wrong to be happy about receiving gifts from the Lord, but we shouldn’t worship these things. I noticed that my heart was craving a material item. When we see something shiny and attractive, such coveting can sometimes lead to actions like theft.

Hatred can lead to assassination, right? The heart posture of hate leads to assassination and murder which the world saw a little over a week ago. If lust means adultery for a married person, then it means fornication or premarital sex for the unmarried. While this is a serious claim, it’s important to remember that these words come from Christ himself, not merely a man. Unfortunately, the Church has not adequately addressed the issues of lust and a seduction culture within its own community.

The problem isn’t only people who look lustfully; it’s also when individuals dress intentionally to be seductive. Both making oneself attractive and deliberately provoking temptation are sinful. John Stott wisely says,

“It is one thing to make yourself attractive. It is another to make yourself deliberately seductive. You girls know the difference, and so do men.”

I think that we have become too permissive in dress standards. For example, I often see women at the gym wearing leggings that highlight the grand canyon of their backside. I mean, it is a whole new level of revelation. And at that point, I go, “I don’t even know why you’re wearing clothes, because all you’re doing is hiding the skin, not the body beneath.”

3. Followers of Jesus Must Fight for Holy Hearts in Two Domains: Personal and Public (5:29-30)

So, what do we do? Jesus has laid down this definition of adultery, but now He turns to light a fire under our feet so that we would be motivated to fight for holy hearts. And He does this by using the literary device known as hyperbole. First, we need to understand what a hyperbole means. It is a drastic call to action. Something that is so drastic, it is meant to shock us. And Jesus does shock us. He says that if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away from you. He says if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away from you.

Now, we must not make the same mistake as Origen, a third-century early Church father. He took Jesus’ hyperbole here to the extreme, and he removed his reproductive organ and cast it away from himself. Unfortunately, Origen discovered that it’s not the body parts that cause us to sin, but the human heart. But Jesus uses hyperbole to galvanize us to fight for holy hearts. It’s meant to wake us up and see the evil that is at hand. But I don’t want you to forget that it does come from the heart. Matthew 15:18-19 says:

But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a person. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander. (CSB)

These hyperboles are meant to wake us up and make us fight for purity, to make it a priority in our lives, and that is where we now turn. Followers of Jesus must fight for holy hearts in two domains, the personal and the public.

i. In the Personal Domain, we…

A. Make No Excuses

In the personal sphere, especially for men, I want to emphasize that I recently spent three days reviewing research by clinicians, sociologists, and psychologists studying the impact of pornography on society. It’s obvious that phones are the biggest trigger for lust today — devices about this size that act as gateways to temptation, often carried in our pockets. Many justify their use with excuses like, “I need this for work,” but Jesus’ words about gouging out an eye or cutting off a hand highlight that it’s better to endure some hardship than to continue succumbing to lust. This leaves no room for excuses. We don’t need to justify device use for work or staying connected; there are tools and methods to help combat lust. If you’re struggling with porn addiction, men, please come see me. We can discuss help and use technology solutions known from my experience. Porn rewires the brain like an addiction, and tackling it isn’t easy or something to do alone. Remember, avoiding help out of embarrassment will only cost you more, as Jesus warns it’s better to sacrifice an eye or hand than to be lost forever in hell.

B. Keep Judgment in Mind

All right, so with that, we must keep in mind judgment. Keep judgment in our mind. You see, that’s the next point. The cost of sacrifice in our fight for purity is very small compared to the eternal cost of not fighting at all.

C. Remember That Only a New Heart Will Make It Possible (Deuteronomy 30:6)

The next point is we can do everything we want in our power, but if all we ever do is fight from the flesh, you’re gonna fail every time. Just like any addict, you cannot get clean from drugs without the power of God. I couldn’t get free of my addiction to pornography when I was a teenager until Jesus stepped in, and He took my heart of stone out and He gave me a heart of flesh. I couldn’t get rid of cursing in my life, my mouth was filthy until Jesus came in and gave me a new mouth. I couldn’t get clean from alcohol or my desire for alcohol or tobacco until Jesus stepped in, and He gave me pure desires to fight for purity in every area of my life. This is the desire of Christians. You see, in the beginning of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, He begins with, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matt 5:6). We may not currently possess the righteousness we seek, but unlike non-believers, we desire it and are actively striving for it. The good news is that the second half of that verse says, “for they shall be satisfied.” We hunger and thirst for righteousness in our lives now, but there will come a time when it is actually given to us. The Word says that when Jesus comes back, we will be made exactly like Christ, fully righteous and holy, and we will no longer be in our sin or have a sin nature (Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:53; 1 John 3:2). That lights me up. I am so excited that there will be a day when I will no longer struggle with any kind of thought, but in the meantime, we must remember that only a new heart makes it possible. Our fight for purity is only made possible by a new heart. Matthew 5:6 and 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” are drawing on the Old Testament promise of the New Covenant, which we talked about plenty over the last few weeks. In Deuteronomy 30:6 it says:

The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love him with all your heart and all your soul so that you will live. (CSB)

Loving God means you will follow His commands, and you will love Him through obedience (John 14:15).

D. Confess Our Sins and Seek Accountability

Now, what do we do in our flesh? Now that we know that we need the new heart, if God has given you the new heart, that does not mean that you sit idly by, but you do make efforts, and those efforts are, confess your sin and seek accountability. 1 John 1:9 says:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (CSB)

We are so scared to confess our sin because we are scared of being judged and cast aside by fellow believers. But remember, if you confess your sin and a believer just makes fun of you, that person’s We often hesitate to confess our sins out of fear of judgment and rejection by other believers. However, remember that if a fellow believer mocks you after your confession, that person is likely not a true believer. A genuine follower of Christ understands that they are also inherently sinful and wicked, and they have received God’s forgiveness. So if somebody makes fun of you because you confess your sin, I wouldn’t worry about it. In fact, I would probably pray for them. Most Christians who are born again, that is, filled with the Spirit of God, will rejoice when you come and admit that you have messed up and need help.

II. In the Public Domain, We…

A. Fight for Holy Hearts Because We Are Called to See Our Earthly Kingdom Flourish (Jeremiah 29:7)

So that is what we do in the private domain. In the public domain, the next point in your bulletin, we fight for holy hearts because we are called to see our earthly kingdom flourish. I’m going to say that again. We fight for holy hearts in America because we are called, as God’s people, to see the kingdom that we live in on earth flourish. This idea comes from Jeremiah 29:7:

Pursue the well-being of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the LORD on its behalf, for when it thrives, you will thrive.” (CSB)

Christians, the Church thrives when our city that we live in thrives. We are called to seek the flourishing of the city that we live in as exiles, because yes, the Word does say that we as Christians live as exiles (Heb 11:13-16). I’m about to admit and confess some things to you that I really needed to turn from. And this all happened very recently. When I became a Christian, I recall attending church and finding it difficult because many of the Christians I met appeared to suggest that Jesus was a registered Republican. The idea was that you can’t be an American unless you’re a Christian, and if you’re American, you must be a Christian, and there’s no room for any in-between. And I had a problem with that. The feeling I got from many Christians was that when we enter heaven, we’re going to expect to see the American flag hanging on a pole at the pearly gates. That gave me a really bad taste in my mouth. It encouraged me to separate any kind of political endeavors as a Christian.

I would like to listen to some political podcasts, but I wouldn’t talk about it out in public. And my motivation for that was that I had never seen it done well until I saw Charlie Kirk quote this verse from Jeremiah 29:7. He said, “I am not a Christian nationalist.” His goal was not to make Christianity the official religion of America. And let me tell you, folks, we don’t want that. You know why? Because you don’t want some public school teacher telling your kids what the Bible officially says. You want to be the ones to teach your children and your grandchildren what Jesus said. So you don’t want America to become officially Christian, trust me. And I don’t either. However, what Charlie Kirk helped me see was that Jeremiah 29:7 explicitly calls American Christians to fight for the flourishing of America. And that helped me to see that as Christians, we must be willing to speak out when there are evils in our lives. When political topics are directly related to morals relevant to the Bible, we should discuss them.

So that made me go on a research binge. Here’s why we fight for holy hearts in our earthly kingdom. (Political involvement should be done from the position of helping our society, not condemning it.) And here’s how we know that pornography is going to stop our nation from flourishing. This is what the research data says.

• Porn use has a strong correlation with other crimes like prostitution, cyberbullying, committing cyber fraud, and engaging in cyber theft, and even criminal assault, and not just against adults, but against children as well. The data says these crimes are associated with a high frequency of use with pornography. That point alone tells you that we’ve got a public health crisis.
• Porn destroys the brain. Users not only exhibit the same brain patterns as hard drug addicts, they are more likely to struggle with other drugs as well, like alcoholism.
• Studies show that there is less gray matter in the brain for high-frequency porn users. The regions of your brain associated with reward and motivation have reduced activity. Consuming pornography leads to a physical decrease in these areas. It is altering your physical anatomy. I think that’s a good reason to say to Congress, our legislators, and our local community meetings, we need to protect our people from this industry because it is a problem, and it stops our society from flourishing.
• It also hampers our young people’s ability to set long-term goals. It disables the brain regions responsible for planning and pursuing such objectives.
• It actually encourages fathers to be absent because studies show that fathers who use pornography are less likely to be child-centered in marriage, and they are also less likely to commit to marriage to begin with. So if fatherlessness is one of the greatest problems in our country today (for example, 80% of Americans grew up without a father in the home), then so is that which contributes to fatherless homes, and that being pornography. And the other problem in America is that we have declining birth rates. Studies show that porn users are less likely to commit to marriage and have children.

This past weekend, I was awakened to a harsh reality. While I knew that porn damages marriages, I didn’t fully grasp how deeply it erodes our country’s moral fabric. Moreover, it is directly linked to human trafficking, actively encouraging it. People are kidnapped specifically to be filmed. I believe this is a battle the Church must actively fight.

B. Vote with Dollars and Clicks

So how do we wage that war in the public domain? When you see indecency or obscenity in public, speak up, call it out. Do not be afraid to look at evil in the eye and say this is not good. And if you have to call the authorities, whether you think the authorities are going to do something about it or not, you call them and you let them know this guy has an obscene bumper sticker and he’s not taking it off. And if the police don’t take action, call the local news station. And if that doesn’t happen, do anything, then start a petition and go to your local hearings, your municipal hearings. There are things that we can do to help fight this evil that is pervading our country.

I’m really, really proud of my brother. His wife was at the library this week, and they were advertising a raunchy book club. The local library was advertising that they were now going to be having a book club for women just to talk about the dirty novels that they were reading, like 50 Shades of Grey and whatnot. And normally, he was like me; he would have just nodded, batted an eye and said, “Yep, that’s the world being evil, right? Jesus said the world’s going to get worse before it gets better” and would have just let it roll off our backs like water on a duck.

But he didn’t this time because of Charlie Kirk. He wrote a letter and encouraged the library to remove the book club, citing facts and statistics to show why it’s not beneficial to society. He argued that it’s detrimental to the moral fabric, harmful to our children, and damaging to marriages. And then he called other pastors in the area, and I think he got like eight signatures. He did this in 24 hours. Praise the Lord. This guy is 34 years old. How wonderful is that? That is God’s people being the salt and the light of the earth that we are called to be. So Church, let’s fight in the public domain for pure hearts in our country, not just privately or personally, but also publicly.

How else can we achieve this? I cannot stress it enough. The beauty of a free country is that we can participate not only by voting with our dollars but also with our clicks. If you’re using streaming services and see a show that appears questionable, do some research first. For example, my family uses pluggedin.com to check every show before watching, and if we forget, we often regret it. We also avoid clicking on content with nudity, not out of moral superiority or Puritanism, but because companies track what gets clicked. If you don’t click it, it signals to them that there’s an issue. If the church can help people realize the dangers of pornography—whether it’s nudity or scenes designed to arouse—they will understand it’s harmful. So, avoid scenes meant to incite sexual arousal; abstain from clicking or watching. This isn’t just about avoiding temptation but also about sending a message for cleaner content. For instance, Disney recently released “Lilo and Stitch,” a live-action movie without any woke elements, which did very well. I encourage you to see it because it shows Disney that people want wholesome, family-friendly films, and they will listen. We can urge our nation to make better choices—not to condemn but to help others thrive. We love non-Christians enough to show them they can flourish without certain harmful content, and while they do that, we can also share the gospel—the best way to truly flourish is through Jesus. We can do both.

C. Pray That God Would Raise Up Fighters

And then the last thing that I want to encourage us is, Church, we need to pray. We need to pray that adultery, porn, lust, and human trafficking end in this nation. I don’t know how it can be done from a purely human perspective, other than through prayer. When Roe v. Wade was enacted in 1973, the Church was hardly aware—very few Christians at that time recognized how terrible abortion was. Few worked to make others aware of its evil. One example was Francis Schaeffer, who worked hard to open the Church’s eyes to the evil of abortion. He emphasized that what is inside the mother is already a human being, and since all humans bear the image of God, terminating a pregnancy is ending a life, which is the definition of murder.

If you have undergone one, or you know someone who has, this isn’t me condemning you from the pulpit. There is forgiveness for everything in Jesus. My point, however, is that, Church, it took 49 years to get the Supreme Court to overturn the awful ruling that was Roe v. Wade. Do you know how many Christians went to jail just because they were protesting outside of a Planned Parenthood? The amount of effort that it took to change the country on this one topic took 49 years. A lot of pain, a lot of prayer, a lot of donations, and a lot of work.

Church, if we can adopt a 50-year outlook on abolishing the porn industry, I know that we can get it done. But it’s going to take a lot of prayer. So Church, will you rally with me in prayer and fight for a new level of holiness in America? And will you also, as we encourage our nation, our Church, and our fellow Church members to strive for holiness, remind them that there is forgiveness in Jesus?

Perhaps you do not know about this forgiveness. Let me tell you the greatest news ever told. Humanity has been addicted to this thing we call sin from the very beginning when our ancestors decided to first disobey God and walk away from Him. Since then, a desire to disobey God has affected our entire DNA. As a result, we see people struggling with sexual problems, sins, addiction, and even sickness. The Bible says that these are the results of sin entering the world. Conditions like MS, schizophrenia, and depression are all consequences of sin. If God allowed this to continue, we would just drive creation into oblivion, and there would be no hope.

But the God who created us loved us so much that He would not let us stay there. You see, God cannot be with sin because He is holy. That means He is set apart and He is transcendent from all forms of darkness. In our societies, since the beginning in the garden when we fell, we have been addicted to darkness, and therefore we have put ourselves in a position that shuns God’s presence. There had to be punishment for the things we did wrong because God is just. He doesn’t just let people go free without there being punishment. Not one person here says they would be happy if a judge just looked at a criminal who said, “I’m sorry, judge, I won’t do it again.” And that judge just says, “Fine, you can go.” No person would be satisfied with that kind of judge. So God says, “I want to forgive you, pull you out of your darkness, and I also want to be just and punish sin.” So what does He do? He says, “I’ll be punished for you.”

God came in the form of a man named Jesus in the first century, in Israel, and He was born of a virgin. He lived a perfect, sinless life, thereby fulfilling all the standards of holiness. And then when He died on the cross, there was a great exchange. He took our sin, and we took His righteousness. And so God declared that anyone who is in Jesus, who proclaims that Jesus is Lord and believes that He died and He paid for your sins and that there is no more condemnation on you if you believe these things, then you are declared righteous in God’s eyes and you have eternal life. John 3:16 says:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

And folks, that is what I desire for you. So, as we fight for a greater degree of purity in our lives, remember it cannot be done outside of Jesus. And when we come to each other and we confess sin and we ask for help, we remind them of that truth. You can stand in a beautiful place of forgiveness.

Father, I thank You so much that You have opened the door for us to see that there is forgiveness in the world because of Christ. And I pray that You help us, especially men who struggle with lust. I pray that we would reach out to each other for help, confess our struggles, and fight for a new level of holy hearts. And I pray, Lord, that You please wake up the Church in the country to the evil effects that the porn industry has on marriages, society, men, our brains, and that You would purge it from this land. Please, Lord, do not let us be satisfied with letting it continue to plague us. But I pray that You would wake up Christians to the evils that are in this industry in the same way You woke us up to the evils of the abortion industry. Please, Father, protect us from the evil one and help us to withstand all forms of persecution. In Jesus’ name, amen.