Best. Sermon. Ever.: Lust and Love

As your disciples came and asked their savior, they asked Jesus, teach us how to pray. We pray that our church would be a praying community, not a self-trusting community, but a church that's quick to go to you. We pray that the prayer ministry that happens on Sunday mornings would become the engine room of our church and not something extra but something essential. Lord, we pray this all in the name of our Savior Jesus, amen.

We're going to turn our attention to Matthew chapter five. We're going through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' famous sermon. We're calling this series "Best Sermon Ever," not because it's the best sermon you've ever heard, but because it's about Jesus' sermon. So we're going to read out loud as is our tradition from Matthew chapter five, verses 27 through 37. Let's lift our voices and read God's word together.

You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Now if your right eye is causing you to sin, tear it out and throw it away from you, for it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand is causing you to sin, cut it off and throw it away from you, for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Now it was said, "Whoever sends his wife away is to give her a certificate of divorce." But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except for the reason of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. — Matthew 5:27-32

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

The Lullaby Effect

You ever heard of the lullaby effect? Remember the lullaby that maybe many of you grew up hearing or even have sung this to a child: "Rock-a-bye baby in the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come cradle, baby, and all." Remember that? I just want you to visualize that scene for a second, what we're actually singing to children. We're singing that there's a mom who's tired and has a little baby who doesn't want to go to sleep and she comes up with the idea of getting a basket and a blanket and wrapping up the baby and going out in the backyard. And it just so happens there's a really tall ladder up against the tallest tree in the yard and she thinks it's a great idea to take the baby in the basket and put it at the top of the tree. And she comes back down, she turns around to go back inside, and here's the sickening thud. That's what we sing to our children.

I mean, if any of y'all have ever sung this—I've sung this song to children before—I haven't really thought about it. I think that's a great analogy with what many Christians do with Scripture. We're not even sure we really hear it anymore. If I don't know about you, some of you grew up in the church, and you hear a passage like this and I'm not sure we really hear it. Maybe you hear it in such a way that it just sort of brings up a general feeling of shame and guilt. And that's because in the Christian community, one of the strongest messages people have heard over and over again is: sex is bad, it's shameful, it's dirty, it's something that polite people don't talk about. In some families, this is never mentioned and it sends a signal that the parents probably didn't intend, but something along the lines of: we can't talk about this. Sex is bad.

Now, I can promise you that the rest of our culture, modern secular people, when they hear this passage, they are like, "This is Rock-a-bye baby people. Do you have any idea what you're singing? This is about self-mutilation and hell and sex. Congratulations by the way for coming on the self-mutilation, sex, and hell Sunday. Well done, y'all." Jesus sounds dangerous, even immoral to people. That's because in our culture, the message isn't "sex is bad," it's "sex is everything." And the only sin—if there is any sin around sex—the only sin is saying that sex is sinful in any way. Our culture believes that as long as nobody gets hurt and as long as there's consent, why would we condemn anything related to that?

And so it is really hard for either Christians who've grown up hearing this or secular people to hear what Jesus says in this message. I want to ask this: can you help me and really listen to both what Jesus says in this passage and what he doesn't say? Because I'm afraid that both Christians in general and the secular culture are both missing the power and the beauty and the glory of what Christ is actually offering us. Let me just say this: Jesus always gives words of life. He always brings a message of hope and transformation and grace and power. And so I really want us to hear what lies beyond the lullaby.

Here's my outline. If you take notes, I want to talk about the heaven of sex, the hell of sex, the healing of sex, and finally some helpful advice. Four H's—like some of y'all in high school, four H, right, you ag nerds? No? Okay, none of y'all. First service had them all. So four H's, let's talk about this.

Before we do, I want to give a warning because this whole section where Jesus is teaching—"you've heard it said, but I say"—He's going over the Ten Commandments, and He gives a little warning at the beginning of them that we really need to hear right here in verse 20.

Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, unless it's beyond that, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 5:20

In other words, there is a way to hear this whole passage like a Pharisee. There's a way we interpret this like a Pharisee. Now what were the Pharisees guilty of? They were guilty of splitting hairs with Jesus. They were guilty of not hearing something and actually heaping heavy burdens onto people that God did not intend. They were guilty of taking God's word and making it so doable in such a way that it kind of worked for them. So the danger for us is hearing this this morning as a Pharisee.

The Heaven of Sex

Let's talk about this. First, the heaven of sex. And this is kind of a review for our church if you've been around, so I'm going quick. This passage does reference the heaven of sex. Now that might sound really strange—all this language about hell, about self mutilation. But this is actually what's behind this: Jesus is upholding this biblical picture that sex is glorious. It's good. It's a good gift that God's given us.

Let me show you this. First, think about Jesus's teaching here on lust. The word that Jesus uses for lust is not a sex word. He could have chosen a word that had to do with sexual desire or the sex act. He chooses a word that means over-desire—literally in Greek, epithumia. It's a word that is borrowed from the language of idolatry. Coveting is an over-desire. Jesus even uses the word when he says:

I greatly desire to eat the Passover meal with you, my disciples. — Luke 22:15

Listen to what Jesus is not saying. Jesus is not saying sexual desires are bad, or wrong, or that sex is dirty. That was a joke. Jesus is not saying any of those things. He's saying there's a good place, a good context for sexual desire, and there's a bad or wrong context for sexual desire. This tells us something profound. Your desires—you are made as a sexual being, and that is good.

God came up with—I'm going to be explicit—the penis, the orgasm, the clitoris. He did. These were his idea. God designed this. When he looks and pronounces over creation, "Good, good, good, good, good," and when he comes to people, He says "very good." He doesn't say "but except for those dirty parts." No, He means it: good.

We are spiritual sexual beings. We're not animals, and we're not angels. If you grew up in the church, you may have heard we're supposed to be like angels—where angels are disembodied spirits, like we're supposed to be disembodied spirits who don't have any parts. And our culture says the opposite: "You're an animal. You just have basic instincts you have to obey." And both of those are loser positions. They are less from what God tells us and has designed us for.

God has made sex for a context. This is what's in view in Jesus's teaching on adultery. Define what is adultery: adultery is when a person who's married has sex with somebody they're not married to, right? So what is Jesus again saying? He's underscoring that there is a proper context for sex. Sex is for a marriage between one man and one woman in a covenant relationship.

It shouldn't surprise us that sex should have a context. All powerful things have a proper context and an improper context. Electricity—you want it in the socket when you stick the blender plug into the wall. You don't want it striking a tree and that falling on your house. You want fire in the fireplace. You don't want it in the den. You want water in the creek bed at Crabtree Creek. You don't want it in the road on Wake Forest Road by Mommy Norris. Some of y'all know what I'm talking about. You have floods every time. No civil engineers have figured that one out yet.

Sex is heaven because it's meant for a place of celebration, of building intimacy, of expressing delight in a covenant marriage between a husband and a wife. It's beautiful and powerful and heaven in that context. So people say things like, "Well, wouldn't God want me to be fulfilled and filled in this way?" If that's the case, why would Jesus teach this?

We wanna edit the Bible all the time and make things that make sense to us be what Jesus says to us. And remember who we're talking about. I mean, what's always the right answer in church? Jesus, right? Jesus is always the right answer. You know, I want you to think about Jesus. Here is Jesus, the most human, the most complete human being who's ever lived, the most fulfilled, the most fully realized human being, and Jesus never had sex. So we can't say like, you must have this in order to be a flourishing person. We got to x that out. That's not true. So there is a heaven to sexuality, but there's also a hell to sexuality.

Understanding Lust

Let's talk about the hell of sexual sin. There's a way this is what the Christian our culture doesn't believe, but there's a way it can be both sinful and destructive. So let me define this again. What is lust? Let's listen to what Jesus says and what He really doesn't say, because there's been a lot of bad teaching in the church around this.

There's a book that I'm gonna reference at several points in this sermon by Sheila Gregoire called The Great Sex Rescue and I highly committed to you. I've been listening to it on audio, I finished it, it's really, really helpful. This is what she says about this passage:

Jesus does not say looking is lusting. Noticing is not lusting. It doesn't say that everyone who sees a woman has committed adultery with her in his heart. It says that a man who looks at a woman with lust for her has committed adultery in his heart. Seeing is not wrong. You can't help but seeing if your eyes are open. Sexual attraction is not lust. It's possible to notice that someone is very good looking and then do nothing else with that information. The temptation to lust can seem insurmountable because we've conflated it with attraction. That's not what Jesus says.

Lust is looking at her for your sexual gratification. That's what crosses the line. Lust is looking for a specific purpose to ogle another person and fantasize about them.

Now here's a Bradford, Pastor Bradford spicy take this morning too. This is not just a male issue. Now Jesus is teaching this and his example is a man looking at a woman with lustful thoughts. Does that mean that women have no sexual desires? Or they never struggle with lust? I don't think so. Women are pictured in Scripture over and over again as actually having sexual desires, also a gift. So yes, there's research that shows men are more visually stimulated than women, but not all men, and not all women. And if we just equate this is just a guy's issue, we actually do two bad things. We say if you're a man, you don't struggle with this, you must not be a real man. And we say to women, if you're a woman and you are visually stimulated, there's something wrong with you.

So let me define it again. Lust is to take with your eyes, or with your actions, that which is not yours by covenant and consent, both covenant and consent to take with your eyes or your actions that which is not yours by covenant and consent.

The Language of Hell

Did you notice the language of hell in this passage? Remember what Jesus says:

If your eye causes it makes you stumble, tear it out, throw it away. If it's better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, then your whole body be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it away from you. It's better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go to hell.

Why is he talking about hell? Why is he talking about hell? It's easy to miss the point of this passage. It's easy to hear this and go like, wow, Jesus is into self mutilation. In fact, if you think that the early church father Origen heard this and said, literally, this is what Jesus must want me to do. He lived from 185 to February and he castrated himself in response to this passage. The early church was like, woah, woah, woah. Jesus is always talking about the heart, about the inside, not about the outside. So in March, the Council of Nicaea, we say the Nicaean Creed all the time, they outlawed from the church. They said, no more self mutilation in response to this passage.

Jesus is talking about urgency with regard to sin. He's not talking about this specific application, cut your body. And I just want to say this as your pastor this morning, self mutilation cutting, that's a very common thing going on in our culture right now. And if you struggle with that, we want to help you. That's not good for you. It's self destructive. That's not what Jesus prescribes and we wanna offer and come alongside you and help. And we have people in our church, counselors, women, men who can help you and walk alongside you in that.

So if self mutilation is not what is intended here. Why is Jesus talking about hell? The word he uses for hell here is from the Hebrew. It's the word Gehenna. Say Gehenna. Good. You're on it this morning. Gehenna. Gehenna comes from the Hebrew.

Jesus is speaking in Aramaic and He's teaching about hell using a visual image that they would identify with. Gehenna was that region around Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built really high up on a mountain on a hill, and the south and west parts of the city was a region called Gehenna. It functioned as the trash dump for Jerusalem. People would take their trash there and pour it out, and there was fire that was burning in that area as people still do burning their trash in the country.

Several years ago, I went with one of our international partners, Sunika, and we went to this region in Nicaragua. They do work in small villages providing clean water and discipleship. So we went to this one village that was built on the edge of a garbage dump, and I will never forget what that was like. They were building a community center and a soccer field for the kids in that community, and it backed right up against a low wall. On the other side of that was the garbage dump. There was gray thick smoke that would come across that would burn your eyes and the smell of the rot from that was unbelievable.

Jesus is taking that image and saying, this Gehenna is what I want you to understand in relationship to sexual sin. Now why would he be doing that? He's saying sexual sin is like a garbage dump. That's how we're thinking.

Now remember what I said before. Time out for everybody. There's a way to think like a Pharisee about the passage we're just reading. There's a way to think like this and go, "Jesus didn't mention homosexual sin, homosexual sex—that must be okay. He didn't mention premarital sex, that must be okay." That's hair splitting. Again, that's thinking like a Pharisee. Jesus is teaching here isn't meant to cover all the diverse ways that we can sin sexually. It's to warn us of the danger and urgency of dealing with sexual sin and the hell it can bring.

How Hell Works with Sexual Sin

Here's how the hell stuff works out with sexual sin. When you sin against another person sexually—by using pornography, by undressing them in your mind—you are treating them like they are trash. They're on the garbage dump. You're not treating them like somebody made in God's image. You're not treating them like a whole person who's got ideas and thoughts and creativity and gifts and a mom and a dad and maybe some kids. You're treating them like one aspect of who they are. They're a body and you're throwing them on the garbage dump.

And you're doing something to yourself at the same time. You are expanding the internal garbage dump inside of you because you're treating yourself like you're not a person made in God's image that He prizes and knows.

This is what happens. When somebody devalues and degrades humans, Jesus bows up. You know what bowing up is? He gets super visceral in this passage. He gets super intense. Do you feel the intensity coming off of this? This is because Jesus is warning in the strongest of terms. It is hellish and destructive to treat yourself—image bearer—or other image bearers like garbage.

The English comedian and actor Russell Brand released a video the last couple of years that I really appreciate. It's basically him just talking about what's the fallout of the sexual revolution in his own life and the life of his friends. And he says this: "Pornography is not an issue because it shows us too much, but because it shows us too little."

Now I don't usually expect English actors to be speaking truth about pornography. But pornography is not an issue because it shows us too much, but because it shows us too little. It shows us one dimension to a person. They are a body. That's all you're seeing and it's contextless and it's nameless and it's dehumanizing.

This is why no one can say, "Hey, it doesn't matter. Nobody gets hurt." The one person already getting hurt is the person viewing that.

Jesus Knows the Power of Sexual Sin

Remember who is warning us about the hell of sexual sin besides Russell Brand? Who is warning us? Jesus, right? And a lot of people like, "Yeah, Jesus. What does Jesus know about sexual sin? I mean, he never struggled, did he? He never had a sexual encounter, sexual relation. But how would he know?"

C. S. Lewis has a great answer to that. He said, "You know, which person knows the power of a wave at beach? The person who tries to stand still as the wave hits them, or the person who rides it in. It's only in resisting that you know the power of something."

So again, who knows the power of an offensive line? The one playing on offense with the offensive line or the defensive line who's trying to hold against the tide. Who knows the power of sexual sin? The one who gives into it very easily or the one who was like us in every way as Hebrews said and yet did not sin. The one who is tempted in every way as we are.

Yet was without sin — Hebrews 4:15

Jesus knows and this is why He alone could speak to us.

The Healing of Sex

Point three, the healing of sex and I'm using that phrase very intentionally, the healing of sex. I'm not talking about Marvin Gaye's song. Hey, some of y'all got that. Thank you for that. I'm talking about the power of God to work redemption in this area of our lives that so needs it.

Now, I want to be really clear. There are two ways of addressing this and both are problematic. One is the kind of progressive church orientation to this which is like, hey, real freedom in this area is found by just saying, I shouldn't feel guilty. This is natural. It's okay. My shame is just a relic of generations past. Jesus just wants me to be happy. And that's certainly what is peddled as freedom right now.

Our world is really confused about this because just because something feels right to you means it must be okay. That's what we hear all the time, but I want you to think about this. This is like trying to cure a hangover by drinking more alcohol the next morning. A couple of y'all maybe had that experience before, right? What does drinking more alcohol do to a hangover? Well, it makes the pain go away, doesn't it? But are you any more suited to drive a car at that moment? Should you be making life decisions in that moment? No. We know that doing that is not providing a way forward from freedom. It may feel okay, but it doesn't give life.

On the other end of that is what has been the conservative Bible believing churches who have taught sin management. It's come in a lot of different forms and these are not bad things. But let me just remind you of what they look like. Hey, put software on your computer, have an accountability group. I've seen people put rubber bands on their wrist when they feel tempted, snap it so it hurts. Take a cold shower, go for a run.

Jesus in His teaching on Matthew 5 here calls us to urgency about this, but He does not say, hey, welcome to a lifelong unwinnable war, where you will always struggle and there's no repentance and no progress and no change. Some of the gospel about this that the conservative church has taught has been a false gospel of the Pharisee because it has robbed us of any hope.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the purity church movement in this country, especially the book Every Man's Battle, has taught us that sexual sin is a male issue, and it's just to be managed. Steve Arterburn and Fred Stoeker had the book Every Man's Battle and taught that what is every man's battle? It's lust. And it's one that every man struggles with it. Every man is tempted by it. Nobody's ever going to make any progress in this. You've got to work really hard to overcome it, and as such, the expectation is that every Christian couple, every man should be in the business of sin management, and it's done a lot of damage to men, and has done a lot of damage to women.

The message of sin management has damaged men. It's made men be in this place of hyper vigilance and fear around women and it's hurt the community of Christ. Sheila Gregoire writes this: "Not being able to look at a woman treats all women as threats rather than people." What do you do with a threat? You neutralize a threat.

The irony is by equating looking with lust, noticing with lust, attraction with lust, we've boiled women down to their bodies. Whether a man is avoiding her completely or lusting after her, it's created among men this hyper vigilance—this like, can't even look. I can't even have friendships with women for fear that I'm just going to fall off the cliff. It's really hurt the church.

It's hurt women as well. For women, this message of Every Man's Battle has put a huge sin management burden on wives in particular. It's bred all kinds of mistrust in marriages that wives need to be hyper vigilant about the wandering eyes of their husbands. The statistics on the amount of anxiety right now in marriages and lack of sexual satisfaction around marriages where this message was taken in is unbelievable because it's created this idea of like, can never trust him. I've always got to be watching out.

There's also been a message that if he struggles with lust, it must be that she isn't performing in the bedroom. Yikes. Are you serious? No, that's what we've told women. If he's struggling, it must be her fault.

Does Jesus say in this passage that anybody else's sexual sin is somebody else's responsibility? Does He? No. It's your own responsibility.

So listen, our men and women, our husbands and wives are being asked to accept something that's actually part of the kingdom of darkness—that there will never be anybody repenting, there'll never be anybody changing, that the blood of Christ isn't sufficient to deal with this, the Spirit of God living inside of you doesn't help you. This is all up to you. That is not true.

I mean, there are people who deal with ongoing sin struggles, but that is every male in the world and every woman in the world in these categories—and those categories are false and arbitrary. Jesus is inviting us in this passage to something different. Why would He say this otherwise? He's inviting us to healing, to hope, to forgiveness, to change. Not a lifetime of sin management.

Remember Jesus crucified for you? Remember Jesus crucified on Golgotha, right outside the city limits of Jerusalem, not that far from Gehenna. Do you remember Jesus who did not have an internal trash heap, and yet His body was thrown on the trash heap. He was treated like garbage. He was stripped naked and crucified for us. And He rose again—not just as a sweet story, and not just as a sweet story about forgiveness, but the power of God for the absolute changing of the universe happened with His resurrection.

This is what we read in Romans chapter five:

For if by the transgression of the one, Adam, death reigned through the one, Adam. Much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. — Romans 5:17

Jesus is now on the throne. The law of sin and death—the power of that has been canceled over us. This is why Romans six says:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? By no means. — Romans 6:1-2

Hell no is what it says in the Greek, actually. We sing this song in our church, don't we? He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free. Or should we actually be singing, "He sometimes breaks some sin patterns and he sets a couple people free," because that's what we believe in this area? And it's dangerous.

Romans six goes on to say:

Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead. — Romans 6:12-13

Don't we believe in the cross, people? Yes. Thank you. Don't we believe in the resurrection? And don't we believe in the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit poured into you?

Colossians chapter three, verse five, therefore says:

Put to death what is in you, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, which is idolatry. — Colossians 3:5

See, there's the progression of Romans. Romans five: God calls His people to lay hold of the forgiveness for sin. Romans six: the breaking of the power of sin. Romans eight: looking for the full eradication of all sin. In Romans seven—which is the in-between where we're struggling, we're still in this world, dealing with our sinful desires—but we're looking to the cross and we're looking to the Spirit. Isn't this the gospel we believe? Yes, it is. We can have hope. We need to fight for hope in this area, people.

Three E's: Practical Applications

A couple of helpful applications I want to pass on by way of closing. So I'm going long. First: Engage. Engage your own story. There's a Christian counselor named Jay Stringer who's come out with a book called Unwanted. It's a really helpful resource for people who have been dealing with this cycle of repenting and failing, repenting and failing, repenting and failing. He calls us the church to say, "Maybe instead of just going through the same rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, we actually should ask some questions."

He says this is his unique contribution: the things that tempt you, the particular things that tempt you, probably aren't random. They probably come out of your story—either experiences of sin in the past or experiences of being sinned against in the past. It might be helpful to be curious about that and take that to a counselor and say, "Hey, can you help me look back at my past and understand why this is a continual problem for me? Is there something from my past—either sin or suffering, sin or being sinned against—that actually has formed this in my life?" Getting curious about that. I highly recommend his book: Jay Stringer's Unwanted.

Second: Engage your community. And here's the part that may sound cray cray, especially members of the opposite sex. This is exactly the opposite of maybe what came out of the purity culture movement. Sheila Gregoire writes this: "Defeating lust isn't about limiting a man's encounters with women or a woman's encounters with men, but empowering all of us to see one another as whole people, sons and daughters of Christ. The key to defeating lust is not to avoid looking at a woman. It is actually to see her. When you are with a woman, engage her in conversation."

Instead of bouncing your eyes away, look her in the eyes. Ask her opinion about different topics. Don't live a gender segregated life. Identify women in your life from whom you can learn, whether it is advice about parenting, work, or finances. People leverage the body of Christ. We're not here for a show on Sundays. We're a spiritual community, a living breathing organism of the Holy Spirit on the pathway to glory together. Such a gift.

Engage Your Heart and Worship

Finally, engage your heart and worship. Remember how I said that Jesus' word for lust is not a sex word. It's a worship word. It's a word about idolatry, over desires. One of the reasons, one of the things that happens in worship when we come into this space on Sundays—not automatic, but one of the opportunities God gives us—is to bring ourselves and our disordered desires and our disordered loves and all the stuff inside of us that's out of whack, and He puts it back in the right order.

You know, it's all kind of like if you picture a solar system, it's all put in the right orbit around the sun. We come together and we sing these songs of worship, we're giving our hearts an opportunity for our hearts that have been desiring all these things, over desiring, to say, Jesus, He's what I really want. This life with him, this freedom and joy and hope and grace, that's what I really want. It's an opportunity for us to engage our hearts and everything to be put in the right place.

So let's do that together. Let me lead us in prayer and then let's worship.

Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. And this is a hard teaching for us. And there's not a person here that's not affected by living in a sexualized culture, that's not felt some sense of stain and scarring. I pray this morning, Lord, that you would give us hope that you really do offer a gospel of healing and wholeness, not a gospel of try harder. Father, we pray that you would focus our hearts, our hopes on Jesus. We pray this in His name, amen.