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Well, happy Sunday, Rock Point. How are we doing? Man, it is always good to get to be with you. If I have not had the chance to meet you, my name is Daniel. I'm the teaching pastor here.
And, again, we are in the middle of a series called greatest of all time looking at Jesus' sermon on the mounts. And we tried to get it out to the masses before today, but if somehow you made it into the seats with no idea what we're talking about. Today, we're gonna be in Matthew chapter five where Jesus is going to talk about lust and adultery. Okay. So we're going to have a mature conversation of how lust and adultery are impacting our culture today. But if you're here and you're just like, hey, it's just not we just don't wanna listen to it right now. We got young kids or whatever the reason is. I I fully understand. I wanna give you an out in just a second. I'm gonna pray. And while I pray, you can walk out judgment free. No big deal. Get yourself a coffee. Go have a great rest of your Sunday. We'll see you next week. But once I say amen,
you're committing to buckle in for the entire duration of the ride. Okay? So again, my 11 year old and my 14 year old were here in service last night. Everything I'm saying to you, I said in front of them. So I'm not gonna speak crudely or anything, but I do wanna have a real conversation
about what's happening because this is something we just can't put our head in the sand and act like isn't happening. Amen?
Let me pray for us and then we'll jump in Matthew five. Father, God, we ask Lord right now for the Holy Spirit to just invade this place. God, would you speak through one person, but speak specifically and individually to everybody in this room. And Lord, I know with a topic like this that God, there's going to be a lot of people that are wrestling through this.
And Lord, I pray for all of those that are sitting in this room that would identify with this struggle of lust and pornography and adultery and all that stuff, that God, there would be no condemnation for those people because the scriptures are clear. For those of us who are in Christ, there is no condemnation.
God, your job and your goal is not to heap condemnation on us, but to allow us to be convicted, to draw us nearer to the free grace and the free gift that we find in Jesus. And so God, would you nudge us closer to that, but not allow the enemy to heap condemnation on top of our heads. In Jesus' name, all God's people said,
amen. Again, think about it this week, like how do you open and tell like a funny story that leads into like pornography adultery. And so I'm just like, I don't have that story, you know?
But I was thinking about it when I was, I don't know, 10 or 11 years old, I used to go to this baseball clinic where we would do like one on one instruction with these old pros and we would do pitching and then we would go and sit and wait and then we would do hitting and then we would do some infield work stuff. And when you were in between stations, you would go and sit in this little office that was like this dungy, like nasty office and most of the coaches
were like current college players that were 18, 19, 20 years old. And I remember I was sitting there in between stations at, I don't know, ten or eleven. And this guy was like, hey, here's something to keep you occupied until you move on to batting. And he throws us a magazine that was like a playboy or something like that. And it was the first time I ever saw
a naked image of a girl on a screen. And at 10 or 11 years old, I didn't know why it was appealing, but there was something about it that was like, I don't know why, but I just I liked this. You know? And the funny part is that almost 36 years old, can I remember exactly where I was and exactly what it was that I was looking at? Well, then fast forward a few years,
and AOL came out. Anybody remember the beautiful AOL dial up Internet? Come on, somebody. You had to make a public announcement to your house. Like, is anybody making a phone call because I need the Internet or your mom would make a call and disconnect you and hop online and do AIM with your friends. Like it was the good old days. But when the Internet came out, it was the first time that we had pretty easy access to view images online. And my friend whose parents were like the cool parents that got Internet quicker, right? He was able to find naked pictures of girls online and obviously invited his friends over to come participate in it with him. And so we're all sitting there looking at it and his dad comes in and we can hear him coming and we're like, dude, move on to it, like get to another page. But the internet was so slow back then, we couldn't change it in time for his dad to not catch us. And so his dad walks in and catches us and calls my mom and tells her what happened. I get dragged to the church and have to go to confession and tell the priest about it. And all that to say the part that's really interesting. Again, sitting right there, I could tell you exactly what it was that we were looking at.
Why? It was almost twenty years ago. There's something about sexual sin that just impacts us differently. It leaves an impression on us like no other sin that's there. And the reality is is that I know that my experience isn't unique.
Most of us sitting in this room have had a similar experience at some point in our journey as well. And the hard reality of the world that we live in today is we are in the middle of a really grand experiment, right? We are now reaping
what culture has been sowing for about sixty years. Okay? In the sixties, culturally, we made a decision that the ethic when it came to sexuality was going to ultimately be consent.
We were going to agree that consent was needed, but besides consent, there was nothing else needed to participate in sex. And what was ushered in was this sexual revolution where it was like go after it, have fun, it's this incredible thing, but nobody stopped to ask the question, did the sexual revolution usher in freedom or did usher in a slavery that we just aren't aware of?
Because the truth is, is they say that today a 13 year old boy will see more naked images of women in one year of his teenage existence than his grandfather would have seen in his entire life because of the access to it. It's everywhere.
We live in Babylon and culture is saying, have at it, do whatever you want. It's amazing. This is a path towards liberation. But my argument is that the data is not saying that we as humans are flourishing and we are free. It's that we have become enslaved and we don't realize it. And maybe this guy 2,000
ago sitting on a hillside teaching a bunch of Jews had much more insight into how to flourish as a human than culture does today. And I know you know the data. I know you've seen it. I don't think anybody here is saying, hey, this isn't an issue. But when you really look at where we sit today culturally,
the pervasiveness of pornography in our culture today, it is absolutely
mind blowing. And the question that has to be asked is what is it doing to us? Is it making us into the people that we want to be? Is it producing things inside of our kids that we're going to be excited about? Is it going to produce things in them that lead to flourishing and thriving marriages
in homes where there's safety for people? Or is it going to produce an unintended consequence of enslavement? Look at some of the data. Again, could spend two hours walking through this, but I just wanna show a couple of these to kind of prove my point. Here's where we sit today culturally. Dollars 3,000
is spent on porn every single seconds on the internet. Every second. Think about it forever. 30% of all data transferred across the internet is now porn related. Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.
Here's where it starts to get alarming. 90% of teens when surveyed, 96% of young adults would say that they're either encouraging, accepting,
or neutral when talking about porn. It's not that big of a deal. Everybody's doing it. It's everywhere we become desensitized to it. It really isn't that big of a deal. Participate in it. Do what you wanna do. 64% of young people actively seek out pornography weekly or even more often.
First exposure to pornography among this study is 12 years old on average. I've seen some that say that most boys will see by the time they're eight years old. Within the church, sixty four percent of people who responded to saying, yes, I would identify as Christian also said that they watch porn at least once a month.
Pornhub ranks in the top 10 visited sites globally with over 42,000,000,000 visits per year. And now this is where the data starts to get really concerning. Again, can go really far down the rabbit hole, but it says that fifty percent of people engaging in online pornographic interactions admitted to losing interest in sexual intercourse.
See, here's what nobody stopped to ask is what is this doing to us? Did the sexual revolution usher in freedom or unintended bondage?
I would argue that the data is showing us that we are not a free people, that we've become enslaved and we don't even realize it. And the reality is is it is wreaking havoc in our homes and our marriages, and it is shaping the way that people date today.
It is changing the way that we connect to each other, and it is creating a paradigm as a dad of a 14 year old girl that makes me very nervous to watch how she engages with boys when she starts to date.
The question we have to ask is what is this doing to us? And I think the question almost more importantly is why is it so prolific?
Is it just because it's like, it's it's a sexual thing. We're just sexual beings. It's really not that big of a deal. I would argue that the reason that we reach for it, the reason that it is everywhere because we're living inside of Babylon, we're living in a pagan culture,
but we also have been designed from the very beginning for connection. God built us with intimacy inside of our souls. We've been designed to be connected to our heavenly father and to other people. But what has happened is that intimacy,
that desire for connection has been warped and deformed over years. And what we're now living in is the perversion that we've accepted as connection without even asking the question, what is this doing to us?
Because we've got to remember that people, you and I, we are the pinnacle of God's creation. We are the penultimate of what God designed. And what we have done is we've taken the ultimate thing that God designed and we've reduced it down to an object for my gratification.
And I would argue that almost everything that we're seeing today culturally, human trafficking at rates we've never seen before. The fact that there's more people enslaved today than there have ever been at any point in human history, child pornography at rates we've never seen before,
all of it, I would argue, is fueled because of people who don't realize the power of what it is they're taking in their eyes. Because we're not waging war with lust that it has become this thing that slowly over time, it leads to things that you would go, I would never end up there.
But sit with the people that end up there. And they'll go back and they'll tell you, here's most often how it began. Here's how it started. Here's what I wanna try to convince you of over these next few moments. I think Jesus is going to address in Matthew chapter five.
Is it everything that we're taking in, it's doing something to us. It is shaping us and it is forming us either more into the image of God or it is starting to deform us. The big idea, if you will, is we have to understand that what we consume,
what we allow in, it will form you or it will deform you. And what I believe has happened is that over time, this whole thing has begun to absolutely deform us culturally. We've allowed standards to be set for ourselves that are beyond things we ever should have deemed acceptable for us as people.
Matthew chapter five, here's how Jesus addresses this issue in verse 27. He says, you've heard the commandment that says, you must not commit adultery. But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Here's what Jesus does. He does it six times in the sermon on the mount. He tells a group of Jews who have the law, they have the old testament. He says, you have heard it said this, but I tell you this. He says, you've heard it said that you shouldn't commit adultery. Right? Well, what is Jesus quoting? He's quoting the 10 commandments. Commandment number seven, thou shall not commit adultery. So he's a culture of people sitting there listening to him thinking that they're doing pretty good because they're not technically having an affair. And Jesus is saying is that, yeah, the problem is is you've forgotten the tenth commandment. The tenth commandment says that thou shall not covet. And if you put those two things together, you begin to realize what is fueling
the rampant adultery thing. The thing that leads to adultery eventually is this thing called coveting or lust. He says, if you've even looked at a woman with lust in your heart, you've already begun the path that is going to lead to adultery if you don't stop it. Remember in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve, they started to look at the one tree, God told them, don't eat from that tree. I'm telling you it's not gonna produce life. It is going to take from you. It's going to kill you. It's going to destroy you. What was the very first thing that they did? The Bible tells us that they looked at it and the apple, the fruit was pleasing to the eye.
And eventually what you look at becomes what you consume. And what you consume ultimately becomes the thing that defines who you are. And what Jesus is saying is that it's a much bigger deal than you realize what it is that you're looking at. You have to understand that this is something that's going to lead somewhere. The picture for me that I see when Jesus does the six times where he says, you've heard it said this, but I'm telling you this is the real thing.
Don't try to fight and wage war against not committing adultery. That is going to be the natural byproduct of this thing here. I see this picture of like an iceberg. Okay? If you've ever seen an iceberg, you've seen an image that's something like this.
There's this little thing on the surface that we see. It's the little thing that is able to be seen by the human eye. And for us, we can go, well, adultery isn't that big of a deal. We'll do the exact same thing that the Jews sitting here in Matthew five are doing. Well, I I don't commit adultery, so it's not that big of a deal. But Jesus says there's a thing beneath the thing that all of us in this room are guilty of.
That all of us do if we're honest, and the truth is, is if you don't kill it, eventually it's going to kill you. The thing that's beneath the thing is this thing called lust. As somebody who walks with people who have made the decision, one spouse has made the decision,
I'm going to have an affair. They end up having an affair on their spouse. I'm telling you, I have conversations with them and go help me understand how did you get there. Not once was it like, man, I just woke up and had a really bad Tuesday. Like, I just walked into the office. I forgot coffee that day. I tripped and I fell. And next thing you know, was sleeping with my secretary like wild day, you know?
It never happens that way. But what how does it start? It starts with one small decision. It starts with some unmet expectation inside of the relationship where frustration and bitterness breeds and we, instead of dealing with it, we allow it to just sit in our heart.
Well, then something happens and we're not connecting an intimacy inside of our marriage. And so we just go, well, I've got needs. And so you go and you meet that need by yourself.
And all of a sudden you go, oh, I can do this by myself. And you just start to not need your spouse for certain things. And you allow that to happen for a few months. And then eventually you start to go, man, this girl at the office, she sees me. If this guy actually responds to me, he's caring, he actually is interested in what I'm doing. He's not just using me as an object. He cares about my feelings and all of a sudden an emotional connection begins to be born. And what happens slowly over time is eventually you will make a decision that you will later go, how did I get here? It starts with a really small thing that Jesus says like lust. And again, I know what's hard is for us to go, well, I would never commit adultery.
There's a documentary that's going around right now on Netflix that again, it's pretty interesting to listen to and to watch. It's a documentary about a website called Ashley Madison. Now I know you've never heard of it. You have no idea what it is. Okay, you're Christians.
Ashley Madison is a website that was created for married people that were looking for other married people to have an affair with.
I don't want to necessarily divorce my wife, but I would like to have some extra fun on the side. Ashley Madison was built to meet that need. It became famous because some hackers hacked the website and released all the user data and made for some very awkward dinner conversations, right?
Here's what's really wild. That website has been restored. Today, they have over 70,000,000 registered users. And every year, Ashley Madison releases the top 20 registered cities on their database. I wanna show you the top 20 registered cities from 2023.
Okay? Here's a picture of all of them. If you're from Jersey City, just know you're number one. You guys are winning. But look at number 10, Scottsdale, Arizona.
Number 14, Gilbert, Arizona. Number 15, Chandler, Arizona. Come on Queen Creek, baby. We didn't make the list. Let's go. You Gilbert people are wilding out. We need you to go to the 11:00 service. Alright? Us holy people are here.
It is mind blowing to me to think this is here. This is in our backyard. This is what our neighbors. This is what our friends. This is what our communities are dealing with. We do not get the luxury of just saying this isn't affecting us. It is. And I'm telling you right now, if this is in your home, if it is starting to be there, it is going to be a king cobra that's seeking to destroy every single part of your life. You have to do something with it. You have to begin to address it because if not, it's going to do something
to you. Now, here's what Jesus will do ultimate. I think what Jesus is doing ultimately that the Bible talks about multiple times in the scripture.
How we fight against ending up in a place where we commit adultery is we don't fight with the fruit. We don't address the fruit of the issue. We have to go to the root. Okay. And what the root is for you and I is our heart.
This is a problem of the heart more than it is a problem of the flesh. Okay. We have to begin to address what is going on inside of our heart. Here's what Proverbs reminds us. Proverbs chapter four verse 23 says that above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows
from it. Out of the abundance of your heart, your mouth will speak. The actions that you take are a byproduct. The things that you do are a byproduct of the reality of what is in your heart. And sometimes we will be tempted when we do something that we don't want to do or we didn't like what we did will go, oh, that just wasn't me. The scriptures would disagree with you. The scriptures would say maybe that really is who you actually are even though you don't like it, but the opportunity is you can deal with it. You can do something about it. Jesus will plainly tell us in Matthew chapter 15
that from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. All of the issues come from the heart.
So our opportunity is to address what's going on in our hearts more than it is just to address what's happening with our hands. Okay? We have to address what's going on in here. A couple caveats before I go into what I think Jesus is saying.
I wanna tell you what Jesus is not saying. And this is sometimes where we butcher this message as the church.
Is what we think what Jesus is saying is that, okay, sex is bad and God is anti sex. That is not the message at all. Jesus is very much pro sex. God is very much pro sex. What I wanted to do just to make some of you incredibly uncomfortable
is just read entire chapters from the book of Song of Songs. Okay? If you have never read it before, there's a reason that boys that were growing up Jewish couldn't even read it until they were 13 years old because it is spicy
language. It is like a newly married man exploring his wife's body. And he's like, what, there's parts of our body that God designed that have no functional purpose other than pleasure? And God's like, yep, I gave you that man, you're welcome, right?
Think about it, God could have, God could have made procreation happen in a handshake but he didn't do that. Why? Because he's a good father who gives good gifts to his children, right? I
don't mean to be tongue in cheek about it but I think we as the church, we've been so resistant and hesitant to talk about this. We've allowed the world to take the greatest gift that God has given us. It's a beautiful gift. It's a gift to be stewarded. It's a gift to be protected.
Song of Solomon's will ultimately marital sex relationships like this beautiful garden to be explored in your new marriage, to be explored as a couple, to walk through, to experience together, to journey together, the beauty, the magnitude of it all. But he talks about it being a walled in garden.
It's a garden, yes, to be explored, but it's a garden that has protection built into it. It's a garden that has safeguards built in place of it because God is not anti sex. God is anti shame. God is anti condemnation.
He is anti guilt, which is exactly what happens every single time you take the gift that God has given us and you take it out of the context for which God created it. The thing that is supposed to be life giving all of a sudden becomes life taking.
And the gift of a little baby that God produces inside of a loving marital relationship all of a sudden isn't a gift to be enjoyed, it's a burden to be taken care of. It's a thing to get rid of. See, and as a church, we've been afraid to talk about it thinking that somehow, like sex is taboo. No. Sex is a beautiful gift,
but it's one that has to be stewarded and protected. The best illustration is always that of fire.
Fire can be an incredible gift. If you put it inside your fireplace in the middle of winter, it can keep your family warm and alive. You put it on your stove, you can cook food, it can provide sustenance, it can be life giving, but you take that same thing and you put it in the middle of your living room, less awesome in the middle of your living room. Right?
Less leading to flourishing. Why? Because it was created for a specific context. God is not anti sex. The Bible is not anti sex. Jesus is also he's not saying that looking at somebody and seeing and realizing that they're attractive
is sin. K? That's just part of our human experiences. We look at like, okay, that's a good looking person. Amazing. But what happens is is oftentimes we go to another place. We go to a deeper place with it. We allow temptation to lead to sin, and that sin will ultimately lead to death. Here's
what James tells us. This is the progression that we have to be careful of. James reminds us in James chapter one verse 14 that temptation, it comes from our heart, our own desires. They will entice us and drag us away.
These desires will give birth to sinful action and when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. Here's what James says. Here's a progression. You're gonna be tempted. If you give into the temptation, you don't wage war with it. Eventually, that temptation will lead to you sinning.
And that sin, if you don't stop it there, you don't wage war with it there, if you don't kill that sin, that sin will kill you. It will lead to death. See, the bible tells us in Hebrews that Jesus, though tempted in every way, he never sinned. It shows us that it's possible through the power of the holy spirit
to be tempted but not have to fall into sin. It shows us this is where the opportunity is. So then the question is, what is Jesus really saying? What does it mean to look at a person with lust in your heart? If you read the same verse that we just read again in the English Standard Version, the ESV,
there's a word that they use that they translate one of the other Greek words that I think gives us the context that we need to really understand this verse. Matthew chapter five verse 28 in the ESV says, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intents
has already committed adultery with her in his heart. See, in ESB, we get an extra word there. Says, if you're looking at a woman with lustful intent, that's the sin that we have to kill. That's the thing that we have to avoid that will eventually lead us down a path that will lead to death.
So you can look at somebody and go, okay, that's an attractive person. If that was a sin, none of us could ever work out in a public gym. Right? But
it's another thing to then go move your workout so that you can be the creepy guy staring at the girl that's doing the workout the whole time. That's where the line starts to get crossed. It's when you go back for the second look and you begin to turn the pinnacle of God's creation into an object of your gratification.
See, that's the core problem with humans. The core issue with you and I, here's what Jesus is trying to address. Our natural propensity is we will take these objects that we're supposed to love and we will just settle for lust, but we will take these people, we will turn them into objects for gratification.
If you're taking notes, write it down this way. An unhealthy heart turns love into lust and human beings into objects for gratification. We take what God told us to love and we use it. And then we make the mistake of taking the things that God has told us to use and those are the things that we love.
We take the gifts that God is saying, these are talents I've given you. This is money. These are resources.
Use those things. Leverage those things to build my kingdom, and those are the things that we fall in love with. And the thing that we're supposed to fall in love with, those are the things that we use. That is the core problem. But I think all of this is proving
the need for something greater, the desire that we all have for something more. GK Chesterton says it this way. He's got a quote that I wanna share with you. He says that a man who rings the bell at the brothel unconsciously does so seeking God.
See the whole thing, this whole prevalent issue, it proves to me one thing, that this world will not satisfy you. The problem is is you can go down this rabbit hole as far as you want and it's going to continue to lead you to needing more and being less satisfied with it once you get there.
So the question becomes, what do we really do? If we go, okay, sure. We can begin to agree that we need to not do these things and it's not leading to life. What do we practically
do about it? This is where I love Jesus. He's now going to go. Here's what we do. Okay? This is the issue we gotta fight with. Don't let it destroy your marriage. Don't let it destroy your life. Here's how to fight against it. Look at what Jesus says here in the very next verse in verse 29.
Here's the solution. If your eye, even your good eye causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away.
It is better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your hand, even your strong hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body to be thrown into hell. So here's what we're gonna do. After service, we're gonna have an eye gouging ceremony to my right and a hand cutting ceremony to my left. Okay? If it's your eye, we're gonna gouge it out here. And if it like, this is what's always funny to me when I like hear guys were like, I read the Bible literally. It's like, do you bro? Because you have both eyes in both hands.
You've never at any point looked at somebody with lust in your heart. Like, come on, we don't read the Bible literally. We read the Bible intelligently. Jesus was not saying, here's the solution.
Cut your eye out. Cut your hand off. Right? Because if this could be solved by just cutting off parts of our body, there's one specific part of the body he leaves off the list that I'm like, I think this would help more than the eye. Cause you can still lust with one eye. You're like, man, I'm good at it. You know what I mean?
Jesus is using hyperbole. He's painting a picture that you have to be willing to take drastic measure. Yes. But you will never solve the problem of lust with just purely physical actions. You have to address your heart. And here's what I know.
I have walked with couples that are walking through literally being in the middle of the grips of a porn addiction. And I'm telling you, as somebody who can speak for the people that are walking through it,
I'm telling you right now, if they could just go, Hey, if I just cut off my hand, that would solve this and this would go away and I'll never have to have this conversation and look at my have my spouse look at me that way again, I would do it. I would make that exchange.
He says it's better to cut off your hand than to be thrown into hell. And the truth is is walking through this,
it literally is like being in hell. It is torture and it is torment and it is something that is agonizing that you feel like you'll never get out of. And that's exactly what the enemy wants you. He wants you to believe that this is who you are, this is who you'll forever be. This is just your existence and you need to settle into it. And I'm here to tell you that the gospel of Jesus says that our best days are still in front of us because the grave is empty, that we have the ability to have access to a power from heaven that transforms and not just forgives our sin, but it actually begins to give us the power to overcome it. But you have to be willing to wage war with it and take drastic
action. So here's what I think we need to do. We If sit here and we go, okay, I see myself in here somewhere. Either I'm at the very beginning of this progression and I don't wanna see it continue to grow or right now you find yourself in the middle of the throws of this thing. There's four things that I would encourage you to do. Four ways that I think you and I that the Bible teaches us. This is how we wage war against lust. This is how we win the war. Though we might lose some battles in the process, we can win the war. The first thing we have to do is we have to be willing to admit our own brokenness.
We have to raise our hand and admit where we are. See, the hard part is is we are incredibly prideful as humans, and that pride will make you wanna hide your weaknesses.
It will make you pretend like they're not there, but this is a message for somebody else, so what you're dealing with really isn't that big of a deal, that you have it under control, and you will be tempted to not admit your own brokenness and it will keep you enslaved.
It's exactly what the enemy wants you to believe. He wants you to believe you're the exception to the rule. You can do this on your own. And what the scriptures are abundantly clear is here's how we wage war with these things is we take what's in the dark and we bring it to the light. And we take what's in secret and we bring it out in front so that it can be dealt with. And there's two things we do with it. We raise our hand and say, look, I've made a mistake. I've fallen short. I've settled for something that is second best to God's standard for me. We bring it before God so he can forgive us for it. So he can deal with it and we can be set free from it. We have to confess it before God so that he can forgive us. Remember the Garden Of Eden when he went and asked them, Adam and Eve, where are you? He wasn't asking them because he didn't know. He was wanting them to admit how far they had gone, how far they had fallen so that he could begin the process of restoring them. You and I find forgiveness from our sin by confessing it to God, but there's another step we have to do. There's another thing the scriptures tell us that we have to do if we want to find not just forgiveness, but healing.
See, healing doesn't come when we confess our sins to God because we're still able to hide from the people around us. Where healing begins to happen is when we're able to take the darkest parts of us, the parts that we're the most ashamed of that all of us have, bring them into the light and have another human
accept us in spite of our brokenness, to love us in spite of our depravity. That's where healing begins to happen. Remember what James said? James tell us that here's what we have to do as we admit our brokenness. We have to confess our sins to each other and pray for each other so that we can be healed.
The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Forgiveness. Forgiveness is found as we confess to God, but healing comes as we confess to somebody. Friend, you've gotta tell somebody. You've gotta admit to somebody where you are.
It could be somebody in your small group. It could be a friend. It could be a coworker. It could be a pastor. It could be somebody.
At some point, if you're married and you are in the throes of this struggle, you do need to bring your spouse into it. You you do need to reconcile what's happening there. And and truthfully, this is how real intimacy is born inside of a marriage. This is how real connection is forged. I know it's scary. I know it's daunting.
And maybe you don't start there. Maybe your spouse isn't the first person you tell because it's just too hard. But eventually you need to have that conversation, but you gotta start somewhere.
I try to make this as literally easy as possible. There's a form even on our website. If you go to Rock Point. Io, you click on my sermon notes. The very bottom of it, had our team this week build out a form that you can even fill out anonymously.
If for you, the first step is just filling out an anonymous form and saying, hey, I'm coming out of hiding and I'm telling somebody, You can do that. You you can start there. You can even go look. I I love for a pastoral team to follow-up with me and our team will come alongside of you and help you begin to break free of the chains that you found yourself enslaved into. You can't win this war alone. You have to admit your own brokenness. But here's now the second thing that you have to begin to do. You have to actually
be willing to flee from sexual immorality. You have to make a decision that this isn't where you're gonna live. This isn't where you're going to stay. K. First Corinthians chapter six says this when it comes to winning the war with lust. It says, run from sexual sin.
No other sin so easily and clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in you and was given to you by God. You do not belong to yourself for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
See, yes, sin is all the same in that it all separates us from God. But sexual sin is in a league of its own. It affects us totally differently. It affects the very core of who we are.
And when the scriptures talk about fighting other sins, it talks about how we can put on the armor of God and how we can wage war against it. When it comes to sexual sin, it's like, dude, get some good Nikes, lace them up and run out of the house. Right? Like, this is how you fight it. You run-in the other direction. You don't entertain it. You don't stay close to it. You do everything you can to make sure it has no ability to get to you. It's the picture in the book of Genesis of Potiphar's house with Joseph who's in there and Potiphar's wife is convinced she's gonna sleep with him. And she literally grabs ahold of him and he runs out of the house buck naked because he's like, I am not going to stay here. I can't engage in this. I don't have the willpower. So I have to run out of the house. What it means for you and I is we have to be willing to take drastic measures. I had a conversation with a guy last night in the lobby and he said something that was so profound to me. He says, I know that I'm now the weirdo because for me, I couldn't have a smartphone. It was just too tempting. Didn't matter what software I put onto it, I would get around it. So I had to get rid of my smartphone and go back to a dumb phone. But he said, I would rather have a dumb phone than a divorce.
And I said, man, that's a word for somebody. I'm like, let's make a comeback of Motorola razors 2024. Like, come on somebody. Bringing it back, snake in the bathroom. Right? At some point, I know it sounds crazy to get rid of an iPhone.
But what would you rather do? Have your whole body be thrown into hell or get rid of your smartphone? For some of us, we've got to get the accountability groups, put the software on the screens. We've got to be willing to do what it takes to know ourselves enough to be honest to go, here's how I flee from this. Because here's what we can't help. We can't help that we were born into this time in culture. We can't help that we were born into this time in history where this thing is everywhere, but we can
impact how much it's going to affect us and our families. The way that Martin Luther said it is you might not be able to stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from making a nest in your hair.
We might not be able to impact and change the culture that we were born into, but we can make a decision to affect how much this thing is going to impact our homes and we have to take drastic action to flee from it. Here's the third thing that I would encourage you to do if you're going to win the war against lust, you have to fight for healthy intimacy.
You have to cultivate healthy intimacy inside of your relationships.
This is for single people it's also for married people. If you're single, you need to cultivate healthy intimacy. Places where you're known, friends where they really love you and know who you are and they know your weaknesses and you're you're fighting for intimacy. But for those of us in this room who are married, we have to understand that the scriptures are very clear that the greatest gift that God has given us inside of marriage
is the gift of intimacy.
And we have to fight for it because it's one of the tools that we have to actually wage war against the lust in the culture that's all around us. For some of you, I'm about to give you your life verse right here. Okay? Here's what the scriptures tell us about cultivating intimacy. First Corinthians chapter seven
verse three. It says, the husband should fulfill his wife's sexual needs and the wife should fulfill her husband's needs. Let's close in prayer. Jesus, we thank you. God, we pray that our wives would remember that verse. Here's where you're like, I'm getting that tattooed on me, bro. Like, that's that's my verse.
The wife gives authority over to her body to her husband and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Do not deprive each other of sexual relations unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. But afterward you should come together again. Why? Here's the why. So that Satan won't be able to tempt you because of your lack of self control.
He says healthy intimacy inside of your marriages is one of the greatest tools that you have to wage war with the lust that will be so natural inside of your heart. But here's what's hard.
The enemy has a very simple plan when it comes to our sexuality. Here it is. While you're dating, he's gonna do absolutely everything he can to get you to have sex with that person before you're married. The moment you get married, the plan changes.
And now he's gonna do everything he can to get you to not have sex with your spouse.
That is the that is the enemy's plan for sexuality in all of our lives. See, I thought the fight for purity was something I only had to do until I got married. I was like, now I'm married. I don't have to fight for purity anymore. It's a lie. Purity is something you have to fight for for the rest of your life. It just changes when you get married.
Healthy intimacy inside of a marriage does not just accidentally happen. It is something you have to be intentional to pursue. It is something you have to be intentional to cultivate and run after. And here's what I wanna say for some of us who are sitting here and if we're honest, if we look at our marriage and we're truthful,
there really isn't consistent intimacy that's happening outside of some type of season where there's health things happening or some other extenuating circumstances.
That is an alarm bell going off saying something is wrong. I heard a pastor at a pastor's conference say at one time, he says, if you're not sleeping with your spouse, somebody will.
And the reality is is the bedroom, it's not the ultimate. It's not the end all be all, but it is a great microcosm of your relationship in general. It's two people whose ultimate goal is to bring pleasure to the other person. And at some point, we have to ask the question if regular intimacy is not happening, what's wrong? What is going on? Because it's one of the greatest gifts that God has given us. Again, is not ultimate. It is not the end all be all, but it is incredible gift that God has given us in a tool that we have to wage war against the lust that we will all be so tempted to fall into. If it's not happening in your marriage, you need to raise your hand and say, we need to get help. We need to address this because it's difficult and it's hard to get there, but you can get there. Okay. Here's the last thing. Fourth thing. If we're gonna win this war,
the final thing that the scriptures teach us is we have to be willing to wage war with our flesh. And this is one of those things that sounds very like churchy, but let me explain what I mean. If you go read the book of Romans, the book of Romans is essentially Paul,
him building kind of a case for Jesus. It's his manifesto of why Jesus is the greatest person in the world and why he's the savior that the old testament talked about. He's the messiah that was prophesied and how he's come for the Jews and he's come for you and I, the gentiles.
And then he goes in and he talks about what happens when we give our life to Jesus. He says, we don't earn it. We we are given a free gift that is by grace that we receive. And he says, then what happens is the spirit of God comes and dwells inside of you. And that spirit begins to wage war with the old person that you were. Right? Why do we go through baptism? Because it's a symbolic representation of the old person dying and the new person coming to life. But the truth is that old person's still there. That old person still is gonna wanna come alive and he's gonna wanna try to pull you back into your carnal fleshly nature. And what Paul says is there will be moments in the battle that's happening inside of your soul between flesh and spirit
where you're gonna lose some battles. And Paul will say in Romans seven, why do I sit in messages like this? Why do I hear messages where I know what God's standard is, but I walk out of the door of church and I don't know how to do it. But then the things that I don't wanna do, those are the things that I keep doing. And he says, what a wretched person that I must be. And he concludes Romans seven saying, I just must be a terrible person. And then he goes to Romans eight.
And he remembers that you and I in Christ are not just what we do. We are who God says that we are. And he says, I'm not what I do. I am who God says that I am and there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ. I'm a new creation.
I might not live like it. I might not act like it every day, but I'm gonna believe by faith that I'm a new creation. I'm gonna live into that. I'm gonna wage war with the flesh that's there and I know it's there and I know it's trying to pull me in all the time, but I'm gonna figure out how to fight and feed not my flesh but my spirit. Look what he says in Romans eight verse 13.
He says, for if you live according to that flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. See, the enemy wants you to believe that what you struggle with today is gonna be who you are forever.
What he doesn't want you to know is that inside of you is the same spirit that rose Jesus from the grave. It is a spirit that the scripture says can make you more than a conqueror.
You do not have to succumb to just the temptations that you feel. You can begin to not just have the penalty of your sin paid for, but you can begin to destroy the power that that sin has over you. That's what the spirit of God in you wants to do. It's your responsibility to engage in the fight. It is your responsibility to begin to lean into it and not just give up and feel like this is just who I am forever and begin to spend time with God in prayer. Begin to spend time with God in worship. Read scriptures not because it's some religious duty you have to do, but understanding this is how I feed my spirit and this spirit is the only chance I have of destroying my flesh. And if I let my flesh take control, it's gonna destroy every part of my life.
At the end of the day, all of this stuff, how do we really do this? How do we become people who consume things that form us more into the image of God and not things that just deform us? You can't just white knuckle it. It's what makes this thing kind of hard is you can't just get your way through it by trying and striving more.
You gotta fall in love with God. You know why the greatest commandment is to love God with all your mind, your soul and all your strengths? Because the only way that you'll walk away from the little gods that you've been worshiping, the little gods like pornography and money and stuff and possessions,
the little gods that serve some part of you, the only way you'll ever walk away from those is to fall in love with a better God. To fall in love with the God of the universe who made you, who has a better plan for your life than what you settled into.
And it's as you fall in love with him, he will change not just what you do, but he will begin to change what you desire to do. That's the goal. I close by just telling you a really silly illustration for me that I think of when this whole thing comes up. When I was a new Christian, 19, 20 years old, I mean, came into the church a knucklehead, like bottom feeder of the bottom feeders. But one of the last things I was real really still struggling with as a new Christian and a new believer
is I still smoke cigarettes
and I just could not for the life of me get rid of the habit. I tried the patches, I tried the gum, I did all the stuff and I hated it. I didn't wanna do it. I knew God was challenging me to walk away from it, but it just had a grip on me. It was literally, I was addicted to it. And didn't matter what I tried, I felt like I couldn't get victory in it. And then the crazy part is this one day in church during the standing greet, I turned around and I saw this girl who sent me a Myspace friend request later that afternoon.
Myspace, come on. I went on a date with this girl, Ashley. I called my mom that night and I said, mom, I met the girl that I'm gonna marry.
But then our second date, was like, how do I tell this girl that I like smoke cigarettes? And I'm like puffing a cigarette right before I walk on stage and talk to these high school kids and like, I just don't know how to explain it. And all of a sudden,
as my heart, the affections of my heart move not from cigarettes, but to my wife, my future wife, all of a sudden I had enough motivation and these cigarettes that had so much control over me, all of a sudden had no power any longer. And all of a sudden I found myself. I was like, man, it's been three or four weeks since I've smoked a cigarette. And it wasn't because I tried a different patch or I white knuckled it or I did meditation in the morning. What I had changed was the motivation
and the intention of what my heart was longing for.
And I think that's what the scriptures tell us. As we learn to fall deeper in love with God and see him for who he is, the God that loves us in spite of us, the God that's not mad at us, who's beckoning us to come to him. And as we allow the affections of our heart to be one to him, he will change not just what we do, but what we desire to do. And we can begin to walk as new creations who are no longer bound,
but can walk in freedom. Amen. Let me pray for you, father. God, I know that sitting in this room are people who find themselves at different places in this progression of temptation and sin and death. And God, I know that there's marriages that are struggling right now because of this thing.
And God, I just pray that you would give us courage this week to have some hard conversations. That God in grace, in love, you would draw these things from darkness to light and you would allow us to begin to deal with them. Because father, nothing will change if nothing changes. God, give us the courage and the boldness
to be willing to pursue you, to fall in love with who you are so that we can walk in the freedom that is extended through the cross. It is for freedom that you have come so that we can be set free. And this world offers nothing but bondage, nothing but slavery.
Father, help us fall more in love with the reality of who Jesus is, so that we can have not just what we want to do change, but what we end up ultimately doing. Father, I thank you for the grace that is extended to us through the cross. We receive it through faith. In the name of Jesus, all God's people said, amen.
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