Sex, Lust, Marriage, and Adultery

Thank you for braving the frost and cold this morning here in Raleigh Durham. Real quick, just wanted to echo something Pastor JD made you aware of last week and simply just want to encourage you over the next couple of weeks to get out and vote, okay? As Christians we are called to be salt and light in literally all areas of God's creation and that includes in politics and so what we've done for you is he told you last week. We've put together some helpful resources for you over at summitchurch.com/vote that has some previous teachings from Pastor JD and others and articles and just ways to think biblically and as a follower of Jesus about this area. It also has just some really practical stuff on there like, am I registered to vote? How do I find that out? Where do I go to vote? And so it's kind of a one-stop shop for you at summitchurch.com/vote but just wanted to make you aware that maybe we have both the privilege and the responsibility so everybody get out and vote, okay? All right, Matthew chapter five, if you have your Bible, hope you do. Matthew chapter five where we're going to continue this week in our series on the sermon on the Mount. If you're new with us, we're in week three of this series where we have been looking at the most profound, the most popular sermon that Jesus Christ ever preached. And so a couple weeks ago, week one, Pastor Brian kicked us off and he showed us that according to Jesus, the blessed life begins when we come to the end of ourselves and recognize frankly just how much we all need Jesus. Last week, Pastor JD and week two showed us that why being good on the outside is simply not enough, that it's not just an outward righteousness we need. We need an inward righteousness that can only be given to us by Jesus. That Jesus cares a lot about what's happening in our hearts, not just simply what we do. And so we applied that using the example of how we might keep our hands from hurting someone while simultaneously murdering them in our hearts with anger. Well, when I looked at the verses that I got this week, Matthew chapter five, verses 27 through 32, I quickly realized it was Jesus's teaching on sex, lust, marriage and adultery.

And when I saw that that's what Pastor JD gave me, I got angry and murdered him in my heart. All right. This is my confession. So welcome to the Summit Church at all of our locations this weekend. Here's what's happening. We are going to have a giant corporate birds and bees talk together. Is that okay with you? Y'all will never see me stick to my notes closer than I am this weekend. I promise you. Now, I do want to say for those of you that brought kids in here without realizing this was the message, if you just need to slip out right now and check them into Summit kids or students, that is perfectly fine. Now would be a fantastic time to do that. Our teams are in the lobbies at all of our locations ready to help you do that. But I'm just warning you now, you've got about 90 seconds to do that before your ride home gets a whole lot more complicated. So let's go ahead and take advantage of that. But see, here's the thing, y'all, we need to talk about this, okay? We need to talk about this because the world is talking about this. We're being constantly bombarded by it, aren't we? I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't scroll through my phone or watch a hardy's commercial without somebody trying to sell me something with sex. I'm like, "Bro, I just wanted a double-bickin cheeseburger. Why do I feel like I need to repent now? What's going on?" And then we come to church or we go to small group and we don't talk about it. But see, right here in the most important sermon ever preached, Jesus brings it up. He doesn't shy away from it and so we're going to talk about it, too. Because if the church will not disciple people when it comes to sex and marriage, I promise

you the world will. And listen, we say this all the time. If you are not a follower of Jesus and you're here with us this weekend, I mean this with all sincerity. I am so glad that you are here. But the reality is I do not expect you to agree with everything that Jesus says about sex and marriage. Some of it might just sound strange to you and then other parts of it might be downright offensive to you. And I want to tell you, I get that. My wife and I both, as I've shared here before, we did not become followers of Jesus until late into college. And let's just say that our lifestyles certainly reflected that. So if at any point you feel like this is me getting up here, holding a Bible over you, banging it on the head, like it's some prideful religious righteousness that I'm holding over you to shame you, that is not at all what is happening, okay? No, this is, for those of us that call ourselves followers of Jesus, it is a reminder that we live under God's word, not over it deciding which parts we will let dictate our lives and which parts we will not. Lordship means that he has authority over every single area of our life, including our bodies and sexuality. And so that's my focus for today. The question we're going to kind of get at is how do we bring our desires under the lordship of Jesus? How can we find freedom and healing in these areas where desires are constantly pulling us away from God's design or in areas where sexual sin has left us broken or wounded? Let's see what Jesus has to say about it. Matthew chapter 5, we begin in verse 27. Jesus says this. He says, "You've heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery." Now all Jesus is doing here is he's quoting the seventh commandment. Everybody at this point would have been nodding their heads. They'd be like, "Yep, got it. I'm good. Never committed adultery. What else, Jesus? What's new? That's not new teaching." Verse 28, he says, "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent

has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Now, before we jump straight into adultery and lust and all that kind of stuff, we need to understand the good thing before we can understand what's gone wrong with the good thing that is sex. In order to bring our desires under the lordship of Jesus, we need to first understand God's original design for sex because Jesus is assuming a whole lot of theology of sex when he approaches this topic. So just bear with me for about 10 minutes as we get a good theology of sex. And so what happens is we need to back up and understand what sex is actually for in the first place. Because how you answer that question is going to shape what you do with your desires. And see, when we talk about sex, we tend to approach sex with one of three views. Everybody tends to fall largely to one of these three camps. The first one is this. It's those that see sex as identity, sex as identity. Currently, this is not news to you. Currently, this is our culture's predominant view of sex and sexuality. The fact that your sexual desires tell you who you really are at your core. They're your ultimate identity. Therefore, to be true to yourself, you must be free to express those desires. And see, while this is the cultural norm today, historically speaking, this is both new and fairly rare. You can trace it back to philosophers like Freud and Rousseau, who pioneered the idea that I am most truly myself when I am able to express outwardly who I feel to be inwardly. And what that thinking did is it began to shift society's view of sex from an activity to an identity. From something we do to something that defines who we are. The modern version of that is very simple. Follow your heart. Be true to yourself. Do you. Therefore, whenever somebody comes along, in this case, Jesus Christ, and says, "Hey, you actually should not act on all your desires." It can feel like what they are saying is you should not be allowed to be you. Because to impose sexual boundaries on someone feels like an attack on their very identity rather than a moral judgment about a behavior that they are partaking in. And so you might have never picked up Rousseau or studied Freud, but you have heard versions of these ideas and thousands of songs and movies and conversations and shows and videos. And after a while, it starts to feel normal to the point that you're like, "Well, of course, that's how sex works." See, unless we, as the people of God, are looking at the Word of God to see what God has said about the very thing that God designed, we will end up being discipled by the world and asking sex to give us our identity, provide us with meaning and fulfillment, and tell us how to live. And that might feel to the people of God, like an obvious amen. But before we start thinking about

everybody out there, let me tell you, this gets into the church too. I hear it all the time as a pastor. Well, pastor, I know I made a promise to my wife, but I've just never felt this way about anybody. I'm in love with her. And I mean, surely God doesn't expect me to go through life unhappy, right? Doesn't God want me to be happy? After all, you said he's the one that created me, he created me with these desires, he created me with these needs. What else am I supposed to do? And listen, I don't want to downplay those feelings and those desires. Those things can be powerful, but the question we have to ask ourselves is what gets the final say in my life? My desires or God's word, because Jesus calls us to bring even our deepest desires under his authority and find our ultimate identity in him, not in our feelings and our desires. Calling him, not just Savior, but Lord, means trusting that he knows what to do with and what's best for my desires. See, that's the most popular view. spectrum. Instead of sex as identity, I'm going to stick with some eyes here. You've come to see sex as icky, okay? You've come to see sex as icky. Just by show of hands, how many of you grew up in kind of the evangelical culture of purity culture in the church? How many of you grew up in that? Okay, so a number of people. If you're unfamiliar with what purity culture is, it basically sounds like this, okay? Sex is dirty, sex is gross, sex is dangerous, so save it for the person that you love most, okay? That's essentially purity culture. And you talk about a confusing wedding present, right? Imagine spending years hearing that sex is shameful and then being expected on your wedding night just to flip a switch and feeling like your entire marriage now depends on how well you perform. Like how confusing is that? And I want to be fair, listen, purity culture had a ton of really good intentions. The ultimate goal was to protect people and honor God and save sex for the sanctity and covenant of marriage and those are really good motives. But what's happened is this thing has been teased out and we've kind of created a hedge around the law, essentially. Man, what ends up happening is that the message we actually end up receiving is that your ultimate worth is tied to your sexual history. And so if you've kept the rules, praise God, you're clean, you're a super Christian, you've done awesome. But if you haven't, man, if you slipped up, you're damaged goods. And now you need to know that because of your sin, every time when you get married, your spouse, every time you sleep together, your spouse is being forced to sleep with everybody that you slept with. You ever heard that? What happens is one person learns to pridefully look down on everybody else thinking that it's their outward actions that makes them righteous before

God while the other person learns to shamefully hide and runs away from God because they think God would never receive them as they are. And let me say this directly to the ladies of the Summit Church, because I know many of you have felt this weight specifically in this area, because purity culture was almost exclusively targeted at you. You were supposed to guard your own purity and keep guys from stumbling, to the point that some of you have actually been blamed for what somebody else did to you. And if that's you, please, please, please hear me. Somebody else's sin against you has not made you dirty or less worthy of the love of God or the love of his people. So that's kind of two wins of the spectrum. Some people view sex as identity, too much. Some people view sex as icky, too little. What we've got to do is the people of God is learn to see sex as an invitation. It's how we've got to learn to see it. Here's kind of how I would say it. Sex is an invitation within the context of marriage to express and renew your covenant love with each other before God. An invitation within the context of marriage to express and renew your covenant love with each other before God. And that before God part is important, because I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but sex was God's idea. Like it was right there in the garden. Genesis one and two, God creates everything that is. He creates Adam and Eve. He sticks them in the garden and he tells them to have sex and enjoy. Like he didn't create Adam and Eve, step away for a minute, come back and be like, what are you doing? Like, that's not what happened. But you want to know how good God is? Widely regarded as the first command in the Bible was be fruitful and multiply. Y'all, that's a Savior I can follow right there. It's a command. And now some of you are like, how do I give my life to Christ? It's crazy. No, we've got to learn to see sex as an invitation. And when I say this, there's three words I want you to know. Sex and an invitation is mutual, intimate, and pleasurable. Mutual, intimate, and pleasurable. Let's take those one by one. First, it's mutual. What I mean by mutual is that you need to know that sex is not something men need and women give. No, God designed sex for both people, men and women, husbands and wives to give and receive love, which means that both people's desires, both people's comfort, both people's enjoyment, and both people's pleasure matters. If I were kind of to give you one resource on this entire topic of marriage and sex, I'd recommend Tim and Kathy Keller's book, meaning of marriage. In one sentence, if I were to kind of sum up Tim and Kathy Keller's meaning of marriage,

they're kind of one sentence is that in marriage, you will actually experience mutual fulfillment. You'll both be fulfilled through mutual sacrifice. They're saying if both are regularly pouring themselves out for the sake of the other mutual sacrifice, then each will And so now apply this. Think about this even and especially in the bedroom. If you are seeking to serve one another, to outdo one another in showing honor, all I'm saying is try applying those Bible verses to your sex life and tell me if it gets better or worse. See when sex is truly mutual, the person you are with should matter far more than the experience you're after. It's gotta be mutual. That's our first thing. Here's our second thing. It needs to be intimate. Intimate. And I'm gonna tell you, I kinda like shudder when I say that word. 'Cause I feel like in the church, what we've done is we're really embarrassed to say the word sex out loud. So we're like, how's your intimacy going? And I'm like, oh, like it's just say the word, man. Like, because see it actually diminishes what intimacy is. What intimacy is is bringing all of who you are into a relationship. Yes, bringing your body, but also bringing your hopes and your fears and your insecurities and bringing the things

that you're embarrassed to say out loud to anybody else. It's bringing all of that to a person that you've covenanted your life with. That's intimacy. It's vulnerability at the deepest level that breeds a trust and a closeness so that when you come together physically, all you're doing is saying with your body what you've already promised with your vows and you're doing with your life. You're saying I'm giving myself fully and completely and faithfully and exclusively to you. That's why God places sex within the context of covenant marriage. One man, one woman, for life. It's because that physical giving of ourselves belongs within the commitment to give our whole lives to each other. Yes, physically, but also emotionally and spiritually and socially and economically and even legally and practically. And so sex has got to be mutual and intimate. And then third, it needs to be pleasurable, okay? And listen, your boy's not trying to get too graphic here, but pleasure was God's idea too. We got plenty of doctors at this church and they could tell you God is the one who put nerve endings where he put them. Let those who have ears here, amen? That's all I'm gonna say. And I mean, if you think about it,

God could have created babies any way he wanted to. He could have been like, all right, when you get married, what you do, you're gonna come together, do this handshake, press the belly button, boop, out pops the baby. Like that could have, instead he kind of leaned back and he was like, no, man, I'm about to put a smile on their faces. Check this out, like that's kind. And then he wrote a book about it, "Song of Songs," an entire book of the Bible celebrating the desire and delight of a husband and a wife coming together and enjoying one another through sex, most of which, by the way, has written from the wife's point of view. See, when it comes to pleasure, each person in marriage should actually be most concerned, not with getting sexual pleasure, but with giving it, where to reflect Christ to one another, even in the way we have sex or that to love one another and to serve one another and enjoy one another, even, and especially in this way. So sex is mutual, it's intimate, and it is pleasurable. But see, watch what happens when that original design that God gave gets distorted. Because the question then shifts from how can I best love you to how can I use you to get what I want? And Jesus says that little subtle shift happens in the heart far before it ever shows up in our actions.

So the second way we gotta bring our desires under the lordship of Jesus is we've gotta confront what lust distorts. God gives us this original design, that's kind of your theology of sex, and then the first thing Jesus says we need to do is confront what lust distorts. Look at verse 27, he said you've heard that it was said, you should not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Now, a few textual notes here, not sexual, textual, okay? First, notice he says it's looks at a woman, a woman. It's not anyone who looks at another woman or another person's wife, which means that this teaching is just as much for single people as it is for married people. Also, this teaching is for both genders. I know he says any man that looks at a woman, but this whole looking and lusting and adultery thing goes both ways. Ladies, you're not exempt from this. Then notice he says that anyone who looks at a woman, here it is, with lustful intent. The Greek, the original language literally says, "Anyone who looks at a woman in order to lust after her." What Jesus is describing here is looking at another person for the purpose of feeding your inner, sensual and sexual appetites

as a substitute for the covenantal act of sex. I can't say it any better than the great C.S. He said, "We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say of a lustful man that he wants a woman. Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude for her five minutes after fruition." Y'all lust is the desire to be physically one with someone you are not personally one with. Actually makes us break the 10th commandment, coveting as well, and want something that's not mine. It's making someone else into an object to use. And so the question we got to ask is that if lust turns a person into an object to use, what does it look like to honor that person instead? And I want to make this real practical and kind of bring this down into two places where I think we really often get this wrong. The first one is this, you need to know that according to Jesus, noticing that someone is attractive is not the same thing as lusting after them. Contrary to what you've been told, the looking is not the problem. It's looking with lustful intent, that is, looking in order to feed a sinful desire. And see, I say that because so many of you grew up hearing, "Bounce your eyes, bounce your eyes, bounce your eyes," right? But the goal is not to get through life afraid to look somebody in the face. The goal should be by the power of the Holy Spirit to learn to see a person, look them in the eyes, somebody that is made in the image of God who is worthy of love and honor and respect. Which means that if you struggle with that, then you need to take responsibility of that and get help. That's a self-control problem that you and the Holy Spirit need to deal with because

self-control is a fruit of the Spirit and he can help you learn to see people as image bears to love instead of just reducing them to objects to use or temptations to avoid. But actually dehumanizes somebody when you can't look them in the eye. That's what Jesus is teaching. That purity is not just about outward behavior, it's about a heart change. He's saying we can follow all the outward rules and still be full of lust and pride and selfishness. Jesus is saying it is perfectly normal for you to arrive at your wedding night of virgin and virgin and still have a heart that is satiated with lust. When we talk about purity, we've got to mean more than just did you cross the line like it's some pass/fail test. Well did you look at porn? Nope. Did you sleep with a girlfriend boyfriend? Nope. Did you break the rules? Nope. Praise God. You're an awesome Christian. Clean before God. That's just our actions. He knows that if he can change our hearts then our actions will inevitably follow. That's the first thing we need to clear up. Here's the second thing that we need to clear up. Man this one's crazy because some of you were taught this. You ever heard this well? You know men just have needs. So wives, man if God gave that man to you, you better meet those needs because you know he might go looking to fulfill those needs somewhere else. For what it's worth also has another lie embedded which is the lie that men are always the one that wants sex more because there's plenty of marriages where the wife actually

has a higher sex drive than the husband. But I mean when it comes to that kind of freight man can we just stop and think about what we're saying here? We have just made a wife responsible for her husband's faithfulness. Think about that absurdity. And so husbands let me talk directly to you from it. If you choose pornography or adultery that choice belongs to you and you alone regardless of what is or is not happening in your marriage bed. You do not get to put that on your wife and if you have you need to repent of that and you need to ask for her forgiveness. Now yes husbands and wives should both be concerned about one another sexual desires and sexual needs and all that kind of stuff first Corinthians 7 but man marriage vows never gives you permission to pressure or guilt or coerce or force your spouse into sex. Your wife is not an object for you to use for your sexual satisfaction. She is a person that God has given to you that you have promised to love not somebody that is responsible for keeping you from sin. Now wives I can't get off the hook that easy okay same goes for you like if you're feeding some fantasy or cultivating a relationship that you know is crossing the line your husband's shortcomings do not excuse that what I'm getting at is that each of us is responsible for our own faithfulness to Jesus into our spouse and so however lust manifests itself in your life you cannot put that sin on somebody else. What we've got to ask is what am I allowing into my life that keeps feeding these lustful desires. [BLANK_AUDIO] Jesus tells us what to do with those next. So the third way that we bring our desires under the lordship of Jesus is man, we gotta cut off whatever feeds our sin. You gotta cut it off. It's exactly what Jesus says to do, verse 29.

He said, "If your right eye causes you to sin, "tear it out and throw it away. "For it's better that you lose one of your members "than your whole body be thrown into hell." Verse 30, "If your right hand causes you to sin, "cut it off and throw it away. "For it's better that you lose one of your members "that your whole body goes into hell." And those are some vivid images and strong words from Jesus. He's saying that whatever it costs you to cut off your sin, it'll actually end up costing you more to try and keep it. Puritan Thomas Watson said, "What fools are they "who for a drop of pleasure drink a sea of wrath?" James 1, verses 14 and 15, explains this progression in our life really practically. James says that each person is tempted when he is Lord and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when his conceive gives birth to sin. Sin when it's fully grown brings forth death. You see that progression? He's saying there's a sinful desire that emanates from all of our hearts. And if you don't cut it off, that desire is gonna lead to sin. And in sin, if you refuse to confess and cut that off, it's ultimately gonna lead to death. See what happens is we end up trying to fool ourselves saying, "Well, I'm just looking and I'm just imagining "and I'm just watching and I'm just reading." But James tells us to look at where that road leads

and Jesus says, "Cut it off." Y'all, lust is like an escalator. All you're doing an escalator, right? You take one step, but you gotta know that escalator, even though all you did was take one step, that thing's gonna take you somewhere. That's what lust does. You think all you're doing is taking one step, but that lust is gonna take you somewhere that leads to sin and death. And so Jesus says, "You gotta cut it off." The early church father, Origin, struggled so much in this area that he took Jesus' words literally and painfully and castrated himself. Please don't do that, okay? Please don't do that. It's not what Jesus is telling you to do. That's his whole point. He's saying, "You can remove every part of your body "and still have a heart full of lust." That's his whole point. But at the same time, y'all, let's not soften his command just 'cause it isn't literal. Jesus is calling us to a radical, decisive action, saying that whatever is leading you into sin, you've gotta cut it off, throw it away, and get rid of it. And so what does this look like? I mean, really practically, you wake up tomorrow, what does this look like to fight sexual sin? First, let's use Jesus' language here.

First, you gotta cut it off. And in order to cut it off, you've gotta start by being specific about what it is for you. And for a lot of you, dare I say, the majority of you, it is pornography. And when I say porn, this isn't just a conversation for men. Neither do you, should you think, well, that's just watching videos. 'Cause you wanna know what the fastest-growing genre of books is today? Romance novels. Basically, porn under the guise of book clubs. Listen, just 'cause it's in a book and not on a screen doesn't put it outside the lordship of Jesus. Whatever it is for you, we should all be asking the question, based on what I'm consuming, what is this cultivating in my heart? God, Proverbs 4.23 says that we are to guard our hearts above all else, for it is the source of life. Everything we do flows from it. So the question is, what are you feeding your heart? What do you need to cut off? And see, if it's your phone where this keeps happening, then, man, you need to change how you use your phone. You need to not take it in your bedroom, charge it outside of your room. You need to delete the app or get off that social platform

or delete that person's number, because you know what happens every single time you text that person. You need to unfollow the account, or maybe you need to get proactive and use a blocking or accountability software, like Covenant Eyes or AngelVid. The point is, you gotta stop giving yourself such easy access to the very area that you're asking God to help you to escape. Maybe some of you need to do the really smart thing and get a dumb phone, okay? But again, don't think just screens, because lust doesn't always require a screen. Lust can be that fantasy that you keep replaying in your head. Lust can be that flirting that you keep doing with that coworker that you say you're just being friendly with, 'cause you know they just understand me so well and they think I'm funny. Lust could be those private texts or DMs that you would be utterly embarrassed and ashamed if your spouse read. Let me ask, if you and your spouse switched phones for a day, would you still be together tomorrow? First Corinthians 6, 18 says we are not to fight this, we are to flee sexual immorality. Flea, don't even get in the ring with it. If you take one step on that escalator, you take one step in that ring,

reasons to be alone together. Stop living together. This whole, well, we're living together. If you are living together, you are having sex. In what world are you not having sex? You might keep trying not to, but you're going to end up doing it. What are you holding on to that Jesus is telling you to cut off and throw away? It's the first thing. You've got to cut it off. Here's the second thing, man. You need to confess it. You need to confess it. 1 John 1 8 9 verse 8, if you're sitting there, you're like, I have nothing to confess in this area. Why do I need to do this? What Jesus says is that or what God says through John and 1 John says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is actually not in us. But then praise God in verse 9, he says that if we confess our sin to God, he is faithful and just not just to forgive us of our sin, but to cleanse us from all in righteousness. So first, you need to confess it to God. And then second, you need to confess to somebody else. James 516 says, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. That you may be healed. You need to find a mature believer or a mature friend or a pastor or somebody like that and just say, hey, this is what's happening. This is what's going on in my life. This is what I'm involved in. This is what I've been hiding. This is where I need help. This is where I'm hurting. Can you help me? And I know that thought is scary. I've actually been praying in a lot of ways, mostly for those of you that need to confess. Because I know right now what the enemy is trying to do is say, hey, if you confess that, it might cost you your reputation. It might cost you that relationship. It might even cost you financially. It might cause harm to your family. And so it's better just to bury it. Keep that yourself. Don't confess it. Listen, you will never have victory in this area of your life if you are trying to fight it alone. Keeping this to yourself, I promise you it'll cost you even more in the long run than it will to keep it hidden. It's going to eat you alive from the inside out and not just that. It's actually going to be affecting your relationships, whether you know it or not. You've got to cut it off. You've got to confess it. And then lastly, most importantly, you need to cling to Jesus. Later on in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul reminds believers that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit that we were bought with a price. In other words, he's saying, if you belong to Jesus, your body belongs to Jesus and his spirit, whose first name is holy, by the way, lives inside of you. You've been given the resources to deal with this thing, not because you're so powerful or strong or disciplined, but because the Spirit now lives in you and you're not facing this alone. And so when those sinful desires begin to rise up, you bring those things to Jesus. You open your Bible and you call

to him in prayer and you call your accountability partner and you put your phone down, you leave the room, you go in a walk, you throw the book away. And even if you fall again, when you fail again, you don't hide again because you can confess and repent and receive his forgiveness. And you need to get help in figuring out why and how this keeps happening to you. And let me tell you, sometimes what it takes in order to figure out where all this is stemming from is a qualified counselor to help you figure that out. This is where we talk about our G4 groups all the time, our G4 groups, our focus groups around helping you overcome some type of addiction in your life. We have groups for men's purity and women's purity. Maybe you need to join one of those groups and just get alongside and lock arms with other brothers and sisters dealing with the same thing that you are. What do you need to cut off today? Who's one person you need to tell? What would cutting it off, tearing it out, throwing it away look like for you today? So Jesus kind of sets up this whole thing around sex and lust and then watch where he takes this next because he's shown us how lust undermines faithfulness in our hearts. Now what he's about to do is confront how some people use divorce to justify breaking their promises. And even if you're single, let me say stay with me because what Jesus is doing, he's teaching all of us, that faithful love means more than following what we feel, that if we truly been transformed by the blood of Jesus from the inside out, it will change how we treat others as the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount. And so what happens when what I want in a moment conflicts with what I've promised for a lifetime? You want to bring that onto the lordship of Jesus? What you've got to do is let your covenant lead your desires. You've got to let your covenant that you've made lead your desires. Like in verse 31, Jesus says it was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. All right, some context here. In Jesus' day, the debate over divorce was as hot as it is today. And the debate was over specifically what gave a man grounds to divorce his wife. Because in those days, it was only an Israelite man that could initiate that it left some women. And so what Jesus does is he begins by essentially quoting Deuteronomy chapter 24 verses 1 through 4, which basically say that if a man, and I quote, "find something indecent in his wife," then he can write her a certificate of divorce. And it was that phrase, if a man finds something indecent in his wife that created a split between kind of the conservative school of thinking, which said that divorce was only allowable in the cases of an adultery, from the more liberal schools, which basically said that divorce was allowed for

anything indecent, and I quote, "something like burning the toast for breakfast." Well, to no surprise, just like it is today, that liberal interpretation was far more popular. So what was happening is you have all these men initiating divorces and divorcing their wives for all sorts of illegitimate and unbiblical reasons. And it's here that Jesus steps into this debate and makes it abundantly clear where he stands. Look at verse 32. He says, "But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the grounds of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery and whoever marries a divorce woman commits adultery." What Jesus is doing is he stepping up, putting a stake in the ground and saying no to this any cause, any reason divorce that was so popular. He's saying, "I don't want to be married anymore due to irreconcilable differences. Does not give you permission to break the covenant you made." That's why he uses such strong language for adultery. He's saying a man can't simply divorce his wife because he wants somebody else and assume the paperwork makes it right in the eyes of God. Now, Jesus prohibits divorce because it violates God's original design for marriage. One man, one woman, for life. He's protecting God's original, beautiful design for the sanctity of marriage. He's saying, "Hey, marriage is far more than just this. I'll stay as long as you make me happy kind of contractual agreement." No, you promised to love this person faithfully, even when keeping that promise gets hard. The great German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, used to teach that the covenant you made at the altar is meant to sustain your love through the seasons when feelings can't carry it. And so at this point, I know the question everybody's asking, "Okay, pastor, well, then is divorce ever permissible?" What I want to tell you is yes. There are biblical grounds for divorce. Historically, there are two, adultery and abandonment. Right here, Matthew 5, verse 32, Jesus repeats it again in Matthew chapter 19, verse 9. Jesus says, "No divorce except for adultery." In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, the apostle Paul is going to kind of add on to that. And he says, "If your unbelieving spouse abandons you, you have grounds for divorce because it's as if they have broken the covenant of marriage." And just a note, so you know this, we understand here at the Summit Church, abuse as a form of abandonment of the marriage covenant too. And so if you're being abused, getting to safety and seeking help, you need to know is not a failure to honor your marriage covenant. But even with those allowances, what Jesus is doing is he's raising the bar. He's saying permission to divorce doesn't mean divorce is always required or should even be the

first path that you try to take. Now that when there's genuine repentance, where there's actual safety by the power of the Holy Spirit, not just forgiveness, but reconciliation and restoration may be possible. Now I've seen it over and over again in some of the messiest situations you could ever imagine. And so here's how we view divorce here at the Summit Church. We view it kind of like an amputation. But if you think about what happens if you hurt your leg? You hurt your leg, you're going to kind of, you know, Google, chat GPT, what did I do? Maybe go to the doctor, take some medicine, maybe do some PT, some stretching. If it remains really bad, maybe you've got to have surgery, maybe get a second opinion on the whole thing, maybe even another surgery. But see, you only amputate your leg if it is the absolute last resort. Amputation is yes, sometimes necessary, but it is always incredibly serious. What Jesus is saying is that divorce is not something you should ever want to do, but something that in extreme cases you actually might have to do. And let me be very clear, if this is where you find yourself today, we actually want to help you navigate that. I'll try to figure that out alone. We want to put community around you and wise counsel and counsel you by the Word of God and with qualified counselors to help you figure out those things because y'all, all of these things, they are so incredibly heavy and hard. If you're somebody that's experienced divorce, whether… whether you were somebody that desperately wanted to fight for the marriage, but the other person didn't want to. We know that's painful. And again, just like we have G4 groups for sexual purity, we have groups for divorce care as well. So if you find yourself lonely and hurting and angry and confused and frustrated, man, I'd really encourage you to go to one of those groups. Likewise, man, if you're here and you're somebody that in light of all this who is just flooded with thoughts of, you know, feelings of shame and regret when it all comes to this, man's sex and marriage and divorce.

If there's a voice in your head right now telling you, hey, see, this is why you were unlovable. This is why you don't belong here. This is why you will never fit in a church. This is why God would never accept you. I want to tell you that voice does not belong to God. That is not how Jesus sees you and that is not how the Summit Church sees you. No matter what your past looks like, promiscuity or pornography or addiction or sexual immorality or divorce, no matter how you've been wounded, no matter how you've wounded others, no matter how you have wounded yourself, I want to tell you the blood of Jesus speaks a better word over your life. That shame and confusion and disgrace are never the final page of your story. That nobody is too far gone, no situation is too far gone or too far away to experience the freedom and healing and wholeness that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And listen, if you are somebody or somebody sinned against you, I also want you to hear it again. Know that their sin did not make you dirty. You don't need to repent for what somebody did to you. You deserve the same care and same freedom and same healing and same love. And I want to tell you Jesus is the one who can give it to you. And you also want to know something? Because what I know when a message like this

is you got the enemy chirping in you, you're the only one dealing with this, spotlights on you, everybody's looking at you, your spouse is staring at you right now, everybody knows, I want to tell you another secret, you're not alone. I mean, if we were being honest, I made you raise your hands, who among us would be totally free from sexual sin or lust? Nobody, no, we all need Jesus to change our hearts because that's the thing, no amount of amputation will ever be enough unless our hearts change. And the heart is the one thing that we can't change on our own. And so if you want to defeat this, you want to have freedom from this, you want to have healing from this, you want to bring your entire life, your thoughts and your actions and your motives and your behaviors and your words and your bodies and your sexuality and your heart. And you want to bring it all under the lordship of Jesus, most importantly of all, you have to receive the very thing that only Jesus can give. There's no amount of works based righteousness, there's no amount of discipline that is gonna help you overcome this. You can delete the app, you can end the relationship, you can cut out the hand, you can cut out the eye

and some of you need to do those things today, but at the most fundamental level, you and I are utterly unable to change the very thing that keeps reaching out for all of these sinful things. We are unable to change our own hearts. See, friends, that's the beauty of the gospel. What we can never do for ourselves, God did for us in Christ. He promised it all the way back in Ezekiel chapter 36. Look what he says. He says, I'll sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols, I will clean you. Verse 26, here it is. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Y'all, that's what we need right there. A new heart, a new spirit within us, not just forgiveness for what we've done, praise God, we get that, but we also get power to begin to live differently. You ever seen a restaurant with one of those signs that says under new management? You know what I'm talking about? I don't know if you ever thought about it like this.

That's a pretty honest sign, isn't it? 'Cause essentially what that's communicating is, hey, like, we know it was really bad before, wasn't it? But please give us another chance. See, that sign doesn't mean everything inside is gonna get fixed overnight. But what that sign is communicating is that somebody else is in charge now and that's gonna change what's happening inside. That's what Jesus is ultimately talking about today. Then when you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus Christ rose to the glory of God. that when you belong to Jesus, your desires don't get to run the place anymore. Because Jesus is Lord. And when you invite him in, it comes with a whole slew of amazing promises. Romans chapter 8 verse 1, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Some of you have been sentencing yourself for years because of your sexual past, but if you are in Christ, what God says is that there is now no condemnation. Yeah, you might still be living with the consequences of your sin, but in Christ, you are no longer living under the condemnation of it. In fact, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 says that if you are in Christ, you are a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come, which means your sexual sin and your divorce and that horrible season or that horrible decision. If you are in Christ, none of that gets to define you anymore because you are is to the point that God says in Isaiah 1, 18, that though your sins are like scarlet, I don't care what you brought in here, they shall be white as snow because I will apply the blood of Jesus to them. And there is way more grace and way more mercy in him than there is sin in your past. And so we confess, we call upon his mercy and we are cleansed by his blood. Some of you today need to confess what you've done. Some of you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, need to find healing for what's been done to you. Some of you, it's both must. I want to be honest with you, there might be a very long road of healing ahead of you, hard conversations, consequences, but healing and freedom.

And you can walk forward with your head held high because that's who God is. He's the lifter of our heads, knowing that in Christ, you're forgiven, you're loved, you're not alone. He has put his Holy Spirit inside of you. He sent his Son as a demonstration of how much he loves you, you can be healed, you can be free. You can't change your past, but what we can do is bring our whole selves to the Savior who already knows everything about us and still welcomes us with open arms. Good news are the gospels that Jesus makes all things new, that you can receive grace and be made new. So in a moment, that's what we're going to do. This altar at all of our locations is going to be open. Maybe you need to come pray, maybe you need to come confess, maybe you need to repent, maybe you just need to grab your spouse and come pray over your marriage, maybe you need to pray over your singleness. Whatever it is in a moment, when the worship teams come, we're going to have prayer teams on either side, if they'll be available to help you do that, if you want to pray. But see, we started by asking, how do we bring all of our desires under the lordship of Christ? Well, this is where it begins, just bringing ourselves to him. And so Father, whatever that looks like today, I pray for the person that needs to repent. I pray for the person that needs to find healing. I pray for the couple that needs to find restoration. I pray for the divorcee that needs to find wholeness again. God, I pray that they know when they come, when they confess, when they lay whatever it is before you, that the image that they have in their head is not a father with his arms crossed, ready to give a lecture. And no, the image that they would have is a father who's running after them, arms open wide, ready to receive them. God, I pray for the marriages of the summit church. I pray for their faithfulness to one another. I pray for their faithfulness to you. God, I pray for their faithfulness to modeling what a Christ-like marriage looks like to their kids. God, I pray for their sex lives. God, now pray for the singles of the summit church. For those that so desperately want to be married, God, I pray that they would find the love they are so desiring in somebody else in your loving arms first and foremost. God, I pray for their purity. I pray that we all would have hearts of flesh that we've received from you. God, help us to love one another well by the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray we ask in Jesus' name in all God's people said. Amen. You