Host of THE SERMON argues that while salvation is by grace, believers must obey the law as a grateful response, rejecting legalism and antinomianism. He asserts lust begins in the heart, citing Matthew 5 to condemn both wandering eyes and provocative dress, referencing Jezebel and Matthew Henry. The speaker critiques modern equality efforts, claiming inherent disparities make forced equality harmful, while urging men toward strength and women toward a quiet spirit. Ultimately, he insists that fearing hell's judgment alongside gratitude for Christ's sacrifice is essential for true purity. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Series through the gospel according to Matthew.
Our text for today will be Matthew chapter 5, verse 27 through 30.
Again, that's Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 through 30.
I'll read our text for us in its entirety.
When I finish reading the text, I'm going to say, This is the word of the Lord, at which point I would appreciate very much if you would respond by saying, Thanks be to God.
One final time, our text for today is Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 through 30.
The Bible says this.
You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.
For it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated.
We'll go ahead and dive right in.
By way of introduction, I've written the following.
This is really a continuation of the last three weeks now as we've been in the Sermon on the Mount.
That's Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7.
And what Jesus is ultimately doing here is he's helping his disciples and all those who are listening to this sermon for them to properly understand the law of God and the way in which the law of God functions in the life of.
The Danger of Legalism00:15:51
Of a believer.
I've written by way of introduction the following Jesus has now finished making it abundantly clear that Moses and the prophets remained authoritative.
We saw just a couple weeks ago where Jesus said, Not one jot or tittle, not one iota of the law, not one dotted I, not one cross T, nothing from the law of God, Moses and the prophets will pass away until heaven and earth pass away.
That the word of the Lord endures forever.
The flower.
Fades, the grass withers, but the word of the Lord is immutable.
That means it remains unchanging.
So Jesus says explicitly that he did not come to abolish the law of God, but rather he came to fulfill the law.
So Jesus upholds a right understanding of the law of God.
Jesus, as the second member of the eternal Trinity, the Son of God himself, Jesus, his disposition towards God's law is simply this he loves it.
Jesus loves God's law.
So far be it for us or any Christian today, any evangelical Christian, to say that we don't love God's law, that we think that the law of God is burdensome, or that we think that the law of God is legalistic, those who would seek to follow God's law.
Legalism, as a heresy, which it is, is the attempt or the teaching of That man can achieve a right standing with God and therefore eternal salvation by his own obedience to the law.
That is legalism, and that is rightly condemned as a heresy.
For anyone to say, by your own obedience, you can merit the favor of God.
By your own meticulous observing of the law of God, you can achieve reconciliation with God, right standing with God, and eternal salvation.
To say that is legalism, and it is a false gospel.
However, to say that we are saved by grace and free grace alone, which is received by faith, And the grace of God is a gift, and the faith which lays hold of that grace is also a gift from God, and that the object, the sole object of our faith is Jesus.
That is to say, that we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, and that all of this is free and the work of God, not our own work, so that no man may boast, and yet still, having been saved freely, we should strive.
To live obedient lives to the law of God?
That's not legalism.
That's Bible.
That is biblical Christianity.
It always has been for 2,000 years.
And to think that it's not, to think that advocating for obedience to the law of God, not as a means of earning salvation, but as a means of responding in gratitude for the free salvation Christ earned for us, to advocate for obeying God's law as gratitude.
To think that that is legalism, which many evangelicals do, is simply a sign and an evidence of how far the evangelical church has fallen.
That we don't know the bare minimum, the freshman classes, the 101 Christianity basics anymore.
The average Christian has been radically deceived.
So we need, by God's grace, to do whatever we can to right the ship.
The law of God is good.
God loves his gospel and he loves.
His law.
Both.
The law doesn't save us.
The gospel saves us.
But upon being saved, God points us back to His law as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
The law shows us how to live, where to go.
It's the path, it shows us where to go.
And we traverse this path so that when we get to the end of it by obeying really, really hard, God might love us and save us.
No.
No, the start of the path is grace.
For those that God has already saved, we then are turned back to the law, not as a means of salvation, but as a path to follow, as a response, because we've already received salvation.
That's how the law of God works.
First, it's a mirror, it reveals to us God's holiness by way of consequence, our sinfulness, and therefore it shows us our massive need for a Savior.
Secondly, it's a shield.
It restrains outward deeds of lawlessness that make individual lives and families and whole societies a bad place to live.
And third, the law of God is a compass, it's a guide.
It shows us the path, how to live, not to achieve salvation, but how to respond for the free salvation we already have.
Mirror, shield, compass.
Mirror, shield, compass.
Mirror, oh wow, God's really holy.
I'm not.
I need Jesus.
Shield, wow, the world is a bad place.
And when the law of God is legislated righteously and upheld, it restrains evil of the heart so that people don't outwardly commit heinous acts so that it's a safer and better place to live.
Mirror, shield, compass, where to go?
Where to go to gain salvation?
Now, where to go as a response of gratitude for salvation?
That's the law of God in its three uses.
Jesus has made it abundantly clear that Moses and the prophets remain authoritative for all people and especially his disciples.
He is now proceeding to expound upon the law of God.
Christ's primary principle was to show that the law did not only prohibit external actions, speech, and behavior, those outward actions.
But the first use of the law of God was to address the heart.
Jesus demonstrates in the Sermon on the Mount and in our text today this overarching principle that he hasn't come to abolish the law and that the law applies inwardly as well as outwardly.
Jesus is expounding upon this principle by beginning to offer as specific case studies certain laws.
He starts with the sixth commandment.
That's what we saw last week thou shalt not murder.
And Jesus shows how that first begins with the heart.
That it's not just outward actions that the sixth commandment prohibits, but it also prohibits murderous anger internally at the level of the heart.
Now Jesus is doing the same thing.
He's again articulating, espousing the overarching principle that the law of God is to be upheld and that the law of God applies internally as well as externally.
He did it by then showing an example the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder.
And now, today, he does it with the seventh commandment Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Notice again, I've said it several times.
I'm going to say it again this morning.
Notice again, if anything, the religious rulers of Jesus' day, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the lawyers, those religious rulers of Jesus' day were antinomians, not legalists.
Now, the reality is that, in a technical, biblical sense, they were both.
However, They certainly were not merely or only legalist.
They were at least as antinomian as they were legalistic.
What does that mean?
Antinomian, nomos, law, anti, against.
They were not legalists who overstretched God's law, but if anything, they were antinomian, those who hated God's law, and they actually shrunk God's law.
How did the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious rulers of Jesus' day shrink the law?
In terms of its application.
See, here's the thing.
On the one hand, they added new laws, the traditions of men, alongside the actual immutable law of God.
So that 10 commandments quickly became 630 something commandments.
And many of them not actually having a biblical support in Moses and the prophets.
So they added new laws, which is a form of legalism.
So, there is a sense in which they were legalists.
However, here's the thing they added more laws, but then, with all of these laws, both the man made laws and the divinely inspired laws, they limited, they shrunk the law's application.
So, they went from 10 commandments to 600 something commandments, but then, with all of these commandments, they said, you know what?
These commandments only divinely forbid the full extent of the outward behavior.
So, thou shalt not murder means you cannot kill someone who is innocent.
You can't.
Anything short of that, you're good.
Hating someone without cause, you're good.
In murderous hatred internally for that person, going around and killing them metaphorically, but still quite literally in a sense, like killing their livelihood by killing their reputation, by lying about them, slandering them, you can metaphorically, you can financially and relationally.
Through their networks, through their job, in all these ways, you can kill a man with a wrongful, unfounded, without cause, murderous hatred of the heart.
You just can't kill his physical body.
That's the Pharisees' position.
And not only would it be their position, it's literally what they did.
Why wouldn't they do that?
Well, at least one example would be with Jesus.
Remember that?
They produced false witnesses with a mock trial in the middle of the night with a kangaroo court in order to produce a false narrative that Jesus was guilty of something that he wasn't actually guilty of so that he could be killed by the Romans.
Because the Romans are the ones who physically drove the nails through his hands and feet and hung him on a cross.
Why?
Because it wasn't lawful for the Jews to do this.
And this is the perfect example.
The murder, because it is the murder, the murder of Jesus is the perfect example of the religious Jewish leaders of Jesus' day obeying, according to them, the sixth commandment of not murdering.
As far as they were concerned, they didn't murder Jesus.
But here's the deal Pilate didn't want Jesus to die.
He's still guilty.
He shouldn't have been passive.
He should have stood up and said no.
Instead, he just washed his hands.
And he does bear that guilt.
He does.
However, Pilate does not bear more guilt than the Jews.
The Jews are the ones who orchestrated the murder of Jesus.
Rome is no picnic, right?
The Romans weren't great guys.
Nobody's arguing that.
But the facts still remain that the Romans would not have killed Jesus if it hadn't been for the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day.
They orchestrated the whole thing, they hated Jesus, they had murderous anger of the heart.
And so they set the stage for someone else to physically murder Jesus.
So, murder of the heart is bad.
Right?
Really, you know, a technical, theological way of arguing a pretty simple point.
Murderous anger of the heart is bad.
And that's what Jesus is getting at in the Sermon on the Mount.
Pretty much the whole Sermon on the Mount, but especially the latter half of chapter 5 is Jesus simply showing again and again and again with specific case studies.
Sixth commandment.
Today, now, seventh commandment, and he goes on, so on and so forth, to argue what?
The religious rulers of his day, on one hand, are legalists who produce new laws that are not God's law, but on the other hand, this is what the evangelical church today misses.
They're not just legalists, they're actually also antinomian.
Ironically, the guys who are separating out a tenth of their spices, right?
They're on the salt and pepper rack, and they're cutting off, you know, drawing lines and separating, measuring it with a ruler, and separating a tenth of their salt.
To give as a tithe.
You don't typically think of those guys as being, you know, antinomian.
Think of those guys being legalists, but they were also antinomian as much as they were legalist, they were as much, and I would argue more, antinomian those who didn't just create new laws but actually hated God's law.
And how do we argue that?
It all comes down, don't miss this, brothers and sisters.
It all comes down to one realm application.
And if you haven't picked that up by now, you need to, you're a little bit behind.
The name of the game, as we look at the church in America as a whole.
And in the world as a whole, there are many things where we've gotten off the rails, many problems, many things to write.
But a big one, a common denominator, is this application.
Application.
How does God's Word actually apply in the world around us, in every sphere, and in not just spiritual, pietistic, 17th dimension ways?
But actually, practical, tangible ways.
The law of God applies.
The Pharisees of Jesus' day.
And do you see how backwards we have it?
And for the record, this was intentional.
It's not an accident.
This was intentional.
But we have it so backwards today that we look at the Pharisees and we're like, well, Jesus said the Pharisees were the bad guys.
That's true.
And then we think, well, what are the characteristic marks of the bad guys?
The bad guys are too big on the law of God.
So, we're going to be the good guys by not caring about the law of God.
And we'll just preach a cheap grace.
We're actually doing an injustice to grace.
It minimizes the grace of God because if the law of God is puny, then the sin of man, which the law reveals, is puny, which means the gospel that covers man's sin is puny.
So, it actually is an insult to the gospel, an insult to grace and mercy of God.
But that's what modern evangelicals do.
So, we say the Pharisees were the bad guys.
What was their chief mistake?
Caring too much for the law of God.
No, the Pharisees, brothers and sisters, hated the law of God.
Grace in an Unequal World00:11:30
And although they stretched it in one sense, creating new laws, they shrunk it in the only sense that really mattered, its application.
And you can do the same thing as the church today.
We can be modern Pharisees by saying we care very much for the law of God.
Very, very much.
Meanwhile, By vocation, you're in the realm of finance and you're charging 18% interest to the poorest of the poor with credit card loans.
You're committing usury.
And it is a sin.
And you can do that even as a theonomist.
In fact, many theonomists do.
If there's any sin of choice for the theonomist, usury would probably be it.
And so you can be theonomist, which theonomy is law.
So, you can literally be the guy who claims to love law and yet be lawless.
There's a lot to learn from the Sermon on the Mount.
There's a lot to learn from the religious rulers of Jesus' day who pretended to be all about the moral code, but they rendered it all moot.
It became a moot point.
How?
How can you actually add laws, have more laws, and yet at the same time strip all the teeth of the law?
In the realm of application.
In the realm of application, the law of God doesn't really, at the end of the day, there are many laws and we care so much about it and we wear special robes and we have tassels and the law of God, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really apply.
Not in any practical sense.
That's antinomian, not just legalistic, but antinomian against law.
Okay, so Jesus is making that overarching point.
And the biggest idea that Jesus is bringing forth, if we go to his 30,000 foot Principle, get the big view, is the law of God first begins with addressing the heart.
It addresses outward speech and actions, but first it addresses inward heart at the level of thought, intent, desire, motives.
The law of God first addresses the inward man, it addresses their heart.
Sixth commandment it's not enough to just not stab someone to death.
It also is important that you don't want to stab someone to death.
Speaking of stabbing someone to death, BLM made a mistake by saying that police officers should have body cams.
They thought that that was going to hold police officers accountable, and instead, it has simply exonerated many police officers by proving that.
You know, sometimes police officers have to defend their own life because somebody is running down a hallway with a knife trying to kill them.
It is unfortunate, the world that we live in.
It is really unfortunate.
I would like to see us, as a culture, as a nation, dial back racist thoughts, racist rhetoric.
But body cans for police officers are not going to help towards that end.
I'll tell you that right now.
Because there is a disparity when it comes to crime.
Now, we can answer the question why, and I think there are a lot of good reasons for why.
A lot of good reasons for why.
And I'm very sympathetic.
But there is a disparity.
And for us to just pretend that there's not, in order to assuage our consciences of, The guilt of racism is not going to solve the problem.
The problem will only be solved when we believe our lying eyes, admit the problem right in front of our face, and then try to do something about it.
And one of the things that you do about it is you have to uphold justice.
And justice is impartial, it doesn't matter what color.
The first report with that instance that I just mentioned was.
This person of color, this minority was wrongfully oppressed.
Then you get the footage, and it looks like a Friday the 13th horror movie.
It looked like a shot out of The Shining, like someone's running down the hallway stabbing, and this guy's like, please stop, please stop, and then has to shoot in order to save his own life.
We have to be, if we love God and we love truth and we love our nation and we love our children, we have to admit what's going on.
And then we have to actually address the real world.
We can't address the pretend world that we made up.
And guess what?
The real world, here's the reality the real world is not an egalitarian world.
It's not.
The real world is not a world in which everyone is equal.
Every human being is made in the image of God and is equal in terms of eternal dignity and value.
Of course.
But not everyone is equal in temporal regard.
And not just equal outcomes, but even in terms of equal opportunity.
Guys, I don't know what to tell you, but I was not born with equal opportunity to Elon Musk.
I'm dumb.
He's smart.
Life's not fair.
I was not born with equal opportunity to play in the NBA to Michael Jordan.
It's like, well, no, Joel, it's just because he worked really hard.
He did work hard.
I don't want to steal that credit from him.
But if I had done all the same routines and clocked in the same number of hours, do you think I'd be able to beat Michael Jordan one on one in basketball?
Being 6'11, 6'9", also tends to help.
And I don't really have much control over that.
It's like, well, just practice harder.
But practice what?
Practice growing?
So we live in God's world.
We don't live in the communist world.
They want us to, but that's a made up world.
It doesn't exist.
We live in God's world.
And here's the thing about God's world God's world has hierarchy.
Not egalitarian, steamrolled, everyone's equal by making everyone the same.
Because you know that's the only way to achieve equality.
You can't actually take the bottom and raise it up.
You know this, right?
Have you learned this?
Have you experienced enough time after 2020 to realize this?
You can't raise the bottom.
There will always be, Jesus said, you will always have the poor among you.
You know why you'll always have the poor?
Because until Jesus' final physical return, you'll always have sin.
Are you saying that the poor are poor because of sin?
Yes.
Now, but here's the clarification.
I'm not saying that in every case it's because of their sin.
Sometimes it's their sin, laziness.
And in this country, I would argue most of the time it's their sin, laziness.
But I would never say of the poor in North Korea, you know, those North Koreans are just not working hard enough.
Now, you can be poor also because of other people's sin.
But here's the deal at the end of the day, Whether it's your sin or another's, poverty can always be traced to sin.
Poverty is simply lack.
And the only reason there's a lack is not because God failed in his role of provision, but because man failed in our role of living upright lives according to his law.
To say that poverty doesn't track back in one way or another to sin is ultimately to indict God as having failed, that God has done something wrong.
But not all people are equally rich, not all people are equally poor, not all people are equally strong, not all people are equally intelligent, not everyone has the same IQ.
And so, then, what is the Christian obligation?
To make everyone equal by making everyone the same?
You can't bring up certain people on the bottom, so what you have to do is strip people at the top.
You're producing too much.
And so, we're going to have to tie your hands behind your back.
The only way to get equality is to go down to the lowest common denominator.
It's never to go up.
That's what you have to do.
Equality is a recipe for universal mediocrity.
And America is striving hard.
Do you know that in the last two generations, for the first time in American history, IQ is going down, lifespan is going down.
That we have millennials are the first generation in American history that, on average, financially will make less than their parents in terms of real wealth.
It's like, oh, yeah, but we had.
17% interest rates in the 70s.
Yeah, on your $35,000 house.
Shut up.
I don't want to hear it.
I'm sorry.
No, the actual real wages of a percentage of the average income today to buy a house is astronomically higher than it was before.
So, at every level lifespan, IQ, financially everything is going down.
How?
Why?
Equality.
That's why.
If you love your neighbor, hate equality.
If you love your neighbor, hate equality.
And not tying the most gifted people's hands behind their back, you know what that does for even those on the bottom of the totem pole?
It allows that person to soar and to thrive in such a way that they're able to boost the welfare, not state welfare, but the benevolence, the benefit of.
The whole, everybody, creating new job opportunities, creating new resources, bringing down certain costs lower and lower to where it becomes affordable for more impoverished people.
But you have to embrace the world as it is.
You can't live in never, never, ever land with Peter Pan.
You have to look at the real world, look at disparities, look at inequality, and then say, like Francis Schaefer did once upon, how then shall we live?
This is God's world.
Maybe it's not the world that people want, but it is God's world.
This is the way that it works.
Embracing the Real World00:15:01
This is the way that it is.
Now, how can I live as a hardworking, wise, and also generous individual?
Did you know that generosity, or maybe I should say it like this gratitude, will always produce more generosity than guilt?
Guilting everybody will not ultimately lend towards generosity the way that gratitude will.
And the position, the disposition that we should have towards our fathers who built this country is a position of gratitude.
They're fallen men, fallible men, but they were also better men, better than us.
We should be grateful for what they've done.
We should work hard for the good of our posterity, our children, just as they did.
And by God's grace, as we're able to accumulate wealth, And resources and these things, and lay up an inheritance for our children's children, as the Bible says, then with the excess, we can also be generous to our neighbors, and the world becomes a better place.
The law of God applies.
It applies.
It applies financially, economically, politically, culturally.
It applies judicially, legislatively.
The law of God applies.
Don't be a Pharisee.
That's the point.
The Pharisees are those who want to ultimately shrink the law of God by defanging it, by stripping it of its power.
On one hand, it's like a magic trick.
It's sleight of hand.
Look, we've added even more laws.
We care very much for the law of God.
And then with the other hand, you take away the whole point of God's law, its application.
And how do you do this?
By taking away the application of God's law at the realm of the heart.
Thou shalt not murder now only means that you cannot physically, literally kill with your hand an innocent man.
But what does that allow for if you limit the law that narrow in its application?
Well, it allows for the Jews to kill Jesus because they never lifted a hand to do it.
But we all know wait a second, you still did it.
You produced false witnesses, you rigged the courts, and you pressured Pilate, who was up for reelection in your jurisdiction, you pressured him in order to get his goonies, the Roman centurions, to do something.
That later on, not years later, but just the next day, one of those Romans says, I think we messed up.
Surely this was the Son of God.
The law of God is useless if we limit its application.
And one of its chief realms of application is the heart.
Matthew Henry says this, getting to the seventh commandment now.
We have here an exposition of the seventh commandment given us by the same hand that made the law, Jesus, God.
And therefore, he's fittest to be interpreter of it.
The command is here laid down Thou shalt not commit adultery, which includes a prohibition of all other acts of uncleanness and the desire of them.
We'll get to that in a moment.
Concupiscence is the theological word.
But the Pharisees, in their expositions of this command, made it to extend no further than the act of adultery, suggesting that if the iniquity was only regarded in the heart and went no further, then God could not hear it.
That God would not regard it, the iniquity, the sin.
So if you have an adulterous heart, if you're sinning with lust in the heart, the Pharisees would insist that God had no regard for sin at the level of the heart.
He couldn't see it, he couldn't hear it, he did not regard it.
And therefore they thought it enough to be able to say that they were not adulterers, which is what they said in Luke chapter 18, verse 11.
Continuing, one more quote from Matthew Henry.
We are here taught that there is such a thing as heart adultery, adulterous thoughts and dispositions, which never proceed to the act of adultery or fornication, and perhaps the defilement which these give to the soul.
This command, the seventh commandment, forbids not only the acts of fornication and adultery, but all appetites.
There it is again desire, appetite, affection, want.
All appetites to them, all lusting after the forbidden object.
This is the beginning of the sin, lust conceiving.
Now, I want to give you guys, real quick, I'll do my best to briefly exegete, but a string of cross references to make a whole biblical argument.
So, we're going to do a lot of Bible real quick.
James 1, verse 14 through 15 says this.
There it is.
What James is saying is that there is actually a process of To sin, a progression, I should say.
What is the biblical progression of sin?
The Bible tells us it begins in the heart with desire.
Desire is like desire eventually conceives and gives birth to sin.
So, desire is like sin in utero, but it's still sin.
It's still sin at the level of desire, and it needs to be combated.
It needs to be mortified before it conceives to sin.
So, at the beginning, sinful desire, which is a sin in and of itself.
Desire conceives and gives birth to sinful actions.
Speech and actions, word and deed.
And then, if these go unchecked, eventually that sin will bring forth death in a spiritual sense, but also quite literally in a physical sense.
Sin, unchecked, unrestrained by any mechanism whatsoever, eventually does bring forth literal death.
It does.
It brings forth murderers, it brings forth anarchy, it brings forth lawless men who kill lots of people.
And this has happened throughout human history, time and time again.
Sin unchecked, its ultimate end is that people die, that people's lives are on the line.
Okay, now Romans chapter 13, verse 12 through 14 says this The night is far gone, the day is at hand.
So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its, there's the word again, desires.
So here, and John Owen famously, he wrote on this in The Mortification of Sin, which is one of his famous books.
He also preached whole volumes, whole sermons on this one concept.
And the concept is this make no provision for the flesh.
And here's the idea allowing provision for the flesh.
Doesn't just allow opportunity for sin, but allowing provision for the flesh is already a sin.
This is what the church has argued down through the ages for 2,000 years of church history.
The doctrine of concupiscence, which gets to the base origin, the lowest level, the beginning of sin.
When does something become sin?
What is sin?
Is it only sin when it comes out of our mouth in word?
Is it only sin when it comes out of our hands and feet in the realm of deed and actions?
Or is there a way to sin even at the level of desire?
And the church, in exegeting texts like these, Romans 13, 12 through 14, says, Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
Or texts like James chapter 1, 14 through 15.
What is the source of temptation?
If we were to back up just a little bit in verse 13, it says, Let no man, when he is tempted, say, I'm being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted, nor does he tempt others.
Now, why is that?
Real quick.
Why is that?
The preceding verse for this verse on temptation.
Well, because James knew that people in his day, and also sadly, a bunch of idiots today on Twitter as well, would argue that Calvinism and a high view of the sovereignty of God somehow indict God as being morally culpable for the sins of men.
James is basically just making a theological argument and hedging against stupid Arminians.
That's what he's doing.
God bless James.
It's good work.
Good work on James' part.
Because that's what you will hear again and again, and that's what James and the apostles heard again and again.
Read Romans chapter 3.
This is what Paul hears.
Again, Paul says, We are being slanderously said of.
Why not do evil so that God might bring about good?
Their condemnation is just and deserved.
What is Paul saying?
He's saying, There are people 2,000 years ago who thought that this was a good line, and 2,000 years later, nothing has changed.
They still think it's brilliant.
It's cute that they think that.
But they do.
They think that the line is this if God is sovereign over all things, then when people sin, you must be responsible rather than the people.
That's not what the Bible teaches.
Now, the Bible also does not teach that people are robots and that they have no human agency whatsoever.
Here's the deal when it comes to moral culpability, people are free.
This is the line of argumentation.
You cannot be morally culpable unless you are freely making the choice that you're making.
But then the question becomes this what constitutes freedom?
There is the view of libertarian free will.
Libertarian free will ultimately asserts, and this is where the midwits come in libertarian free will ultimately asserts that you cannot freely make any decision unless there is a viable alternative.
So, unless you are capable of choosing something else and there's another choice that could be chosen, then you cannot be held morally responsible for the choice that you made.
There has to be a viable alternative.
That's not what the Bible teaches.
The Bible doesn't teach that the linchpin for moral culpability, why we're held responsible, the Bible does not teach that the linchpin for moral culpability is libertarian free will, an alternative choice.
Instead, what the Bible teaches is that the key ingredient that makes man morally culpable for his sin is not that he could do otherwise, but that he is doing precisely what he wants.
The key ingredient is not alternative choices, libertarian free will, the key ingredient is desire.
And that's what the root of sin is desire.
That's where temptation begins in its origin desire.
Meaning that you are freely doing whatever it is that you happen to be doing, so long as what you're doing is the thing you want to do.
It does not matter at the end of the day if you were able to do otherwise.
All that matters is that you're doing what you want.
And because you are doing precisely what you want, you are morally responsible for that which you are doing.
You are guilty for doing sinful things because sin is, at that given moment, your chief desire.
You may be a Christian in your heart of hearts, you delight in the law of God.
This is Romans 7.
But you find this law at work within the members of your being that when you want to do good, evil is right there present, so that the good that you want to do, this you cannot carry out.
But why?
Because in the moment of sin, although you want to do good, you want sin more.
At any moment, you and I are only ever doing that which we want to do most.
That's all our lives are.
Our life is simply 85 years of a compilation of your strongest desire at any given moment, winning out.
That's your life.
So, I don't like that that represents me.
That's not really who I am.
Yes, it is.
Everything you have ever done is precisely who you are.
You have only ever done.
Exactly what you wanted to do.
And that's why you're responsible for it.
Because you wanted it, you desired it.
And that's what the Bible teaches.
Human agency and freedom, yes.
But not a libertarian freedom in the way that the modern philosophers would like to think.
No.
The absolute sovereignty of God and his meticulous sovereignty over every single molecule in the universe and the absolute moral human agency and freedom of individual people, the Bible teaches.
That both of these things are simultaneously true.
God is in control, and you are free, in the sense free enough, to remain morally responsible for the things that you do.
God is in control, and you are also responsible.
Well, that's a paradox.
No, that's what we would call in philosophical terms an apparent paradox.
That is something that appears to be, it seems like a paradox, but there is no scriptural or logical contradiction.
And in those times when we're tempted to think that there is a contradiction, verses elsewhere in the scripture prove to be incredibly helpful, such as, Let God be true and every man a liar.
Or, Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
Guarding Against Lustful Eyes00:06:32
Does the clay have the right to say to the potter, Why did you make me like this?
The Bible sees well ahead of time, it predicts this common objection.
And it addresses this common objection.
Sin begins at the level of desire, and you and I are morally responsible for every sin we've ever committed, and at the same time, God is sovereign over all of it.
All of this is biblically true.
So make no provision for the flesh.
Fight sin before it's fully conceived, and certainly before it grows up and springs forth to death.
Fight sin inwardly.
Fight sin at the heart.
Fight sin at the realm of desire, making no provision for the flesh.
Genesis 3 6 now.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and, catch this, a delight to the eyes, the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired, there it is, to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was there with her, and he ate.
Going on, 2 Peter 2, verse 14.
They have eyes, there it is.
So, there's a threefold temptation in the garden.
1 John addresses the same thing it's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
All three of those were present in the garden with Eve on that fateful day.
She saw the fruit, and it looked pleasing to the eyes, lust of the eyes.
Also, she was convinced that it would be good to the taste, it would taste good, it would satisfy.
So, it's the lust of the flesh, and it was useful for making one wise, exalting oneself, the boastful pride of life.
All three, and this is what John.
In his first epistle, he defines the three characteristics of one word, namely worldliness.
What is it to be worldly?
To work a job at a big company?
No, not necessarily.
To live in town, in a subdivision, next to other people?
Does that make you worldly?
Not inherently.
You need to be careful.
But no, to be worldly, according to scripture, according namely to 1 John, John says this there are three key characteristics.
It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
And all three of those characteristics, those types of temptations, were present in the garden with man's original fall into sin.
Eve saw the fruit.
She's like, That looks tasty, lust of the flesh.
She also saw the fruit and said, That looks pretty, looks shiny.
I don't know what the fruit looked like.
Nowhere in Scripture does it say it was an apple.
We always imagine an apple.
This is an antediluvian world, pre flood, before sin has entered the world.
This piece of fruit, it could have had glitter.
I don't know.
It could have been shiny.
It could have been.
Shooting off lights and glowed in the dark, and I mean, it was obviously a tempting piece of fruit, and not just because it made one wise, but it apparently tasted good and it looked good.
So, the lust of the eyes is present right there in the garden.
Genesis 3, verse 6.
Now, look back to adultery, seventh commandment, second Peter, verses 2, chapter 2, verse 14.
They have, speaking of the wicked, eyes full of adultery.
What does that mean?
Because you would think, but they have bodies, flesh.
That engages in adultery.
But no, it's beyond just that.
They have eyes.
At the level of sight, at the level of temptation, there is a way of having not just adulterous hands, but adulterous eyes.
Adulterous eyes.
And those eyes, if they go unchecked without fighting diligently, vigilantly to make no provision for the flesh, those adulterous eyes will quickly, quickly continue to feed and grow an adulterous heart.
And that adulterous heart, fueled by those adulterous eyes, will eventually land you in a situation with adulterous hands.
This is the way that sin progresses.
Desire, when conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when fully grown, brings forth death.
Sin works at multiple levels of the heart, and one is the eyes.
And elsewhere in Scripture, 2 Peter 2, verse 14, adultery is specifically named as one of those.
Propensities of the eyes, eyes full of adultery.
Now, on the flip side, as a counter, what does Job say?
Chapter 31, verses 1 through 4 I have made a covenant with my eyes.
How then could I gaze at a virgin?
What would be my portion from God above and my heritage from the Almighty on high?
Is not calamity for the unrighteous and disaster for the workers of iniquity?
Does not He see my ways and number all my steps?
Men and women, but C.A., we're not, it's not this universal egalitarianism.
Guess what?
We're all different, and men and women, especially, are different.
Women, you need to guard your eyes.
Men, you need to guard your eyes a hundred times more.
You are not the same as your wife.
You're not.
You are different.
You are different.
When I'm kind to my wife, She wants to be romantic and intimate with me.
My wife could not be kind to me at all, but she could just be getting ready for bed, and that's enough.
We are not the same.
We have children, but I feel that was pretty good, right?
But that's enough, and that's the difference.
There are other differences, of course, but that is one of the differences.
So, women, sure, but men, certainly.
Making a covenant with your eyes is guarding the windows of the soul, the intake, the door that allows adultery to come in and fill the heart that later would conceive sin and come out in action.
Rejecting the Prosperity Gospel00:03:36
And that action, if unchecked, eventually will bring forth spiritual death.
If it's ongoing unrepentant sin, spiritual death, you will go to hell.
That's how our chapter or our text ends.
I'm going to get there in a moment.
It literally ends warning about hell.
But also, it can bring forth physical death.
How many diseases that bring forth literal death ultimately stem from adulterous lifestyles?
We can pretend that's not a thing.
Like, oh, there's an epidemic, and like, oh, what do you have to do to make sure that you and your kids and family are safe?
Just live completely normal lives and maybe don't visit San Francisco.
Why San Francisco?
I don't get it.
Yeah, it turns out living like a degenerate heathen has temporal consequences as well as eternal consequences.
And God gives us His law to say that same statement in the positive direction.
God gives us His law not only for eternal blessing, but also blessings in this life as well.
Obedience to God's law brings forth blessing.
It does.
Not as a prosperity gospel.
But for the record, here's the deal you've got to get this.
The prosperity gospel never taught that obedience to God's law would make you a millionaire.
Did you know that?
Prosperity preachers don't care about God's law, they break it all the time.
No, prosperity gospel, which is a heresy, it never taught obedience to the law of God would bring temporal earthly blessing.
That's not the prosperity gospel.
The prosperity gospel said you can actually live however you want, you don't need to obey God's law at all.
You just need to believe faith.
Faith, name it and claim it.
Right, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, tap your ruby slippers three times and say, There's no place like a Ferrari, there's no place like a Ferrari, no place like a Ferrari.
And if you believe hard enough and you manifest strong enough, then God will function as a genie in a bottle and do exactly what you command.
God works for you.
And you just name it and claim.
That's the prosperity gospel.
What the Bible teaches, though, see, and here's the problem anti prosperity guys, which is good to be an anti prosperity guy because it's a heresy, but we went too far, didn't we?
So, what we started saying is, you know what, there's no quid pro quo whatsoever in the entire Bible.
It's like, really?
Like, there's never a principle in the Bible, ever?
Ever?
That says that walking in faith and in obedience to the Lord and loving Him and living in fidelity to Him, that that never produces any earthly blessings, ever?
Like, go home and feel free, take 50 years.
Grab your Bible and take 50 years and try to make me that argument.
You can't.
Of course, obedience to God's law brings blessing.
Not always, not as a guarantee.
You can obey God and get hit by a truck.
God is sovereign.
But ordinarily, lives of obedience bring forth more temporal blessing in this life than not, than lives of rebellion.
Ordinarily, Lives of obedience to God's law bring forth more temporal, not only eternal, that too, but also temporal blessing than lives of utter rebellion.
Quiet Beauty Over Loud Charm00:06:40
Okay.
Now to speak to women for just a moment.
This is a quote.
Believe it or not, I didn't make it up, but I did select it.
It's pretty good.
Men sin, but devils tempt.
Quote Matthew Henry, quote Joel Webb.
It's like a Michael Scott kind of thing, if you know what I'm talking about.
Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott.
Here we go.
This forbids also the using of the seventh commandment.
So it forbids lust at the level of the heart, it forbids wandering eyes for men, for women too, but especially men.
But it also, if it forbids the wandering eyes of men, then it certainly also forbids women dressing and behaving in such a way that would attract the eyes of men.
So, two way street.
Okay?
So, this forbids also the using of any other of our senses to stir up lust.
If ensnaring looks are forbidden fruit, then much more unclean discourses.
He's talking about flirtatious conversation with someone who is not your spouse.
And wanton dalliances, that is, a casual romantic relationship with someone who is not your spouse, the fuel and bellows of this hellish fire.
And if looking be lust, they who dress and deck and expose themselves with design to be looked at and lusted after, like Jezebel, who painted her face and tired her head and looked out at the window, not to see what she could see, but rather to be seen.
And to tempt, then those who do that, if lusting be sin, then those who are stirring up lust are no less guilty.
And then Matthew Henry says, Men sin, but devils tempt to sin.
Matthew Henry, there you have it.
He called every woman a devil.
No, I'm joking.
He did not call every woman a devil.
Instead, he lovingly and pastorally warned every woman not to behave like a devil.
Don't act like a devil.
That's what he's saying.
If I was to sum up, I've done this before, and we're going to land the plane.
Biblically, looking at all the different texts specifically to men and all the different texts specifically to women.
For men, the Bible seems to say this.
If we were to sum it up into two words, one word for men, one word for women.
For men, the word that men should avoid at all costs, with every single breath and every fiber of their being, the thing that they should avoid in a single word, if you're a man, is this.
Weakness.
Don't be weak.
The full thrust of Scripture is on strength for men.
Be strong.
Spiritually strong.
Physically strong.
In every way, be strong.
Strong for the Lord and strong for your wife and strong for your children.
So if there's one word that a man should avoid that would be the antithesis of what the Bible says as it speaks to men, it would be weakness.
If there were one word that women should avoid that's the antithesis of what a woman should be as the Bible speaks to women, the word would be this loud.
For men, don't be weak.
For women, don't be loud.
A woman, now you might say, well, wait a second, strength for men, to state it in the positive, and beauty for women.
Doesn't the Bible?
Yes.
And the opposite of strength is weakness.
So I see how you got there, Joel, but the opposite of beauty is ugliness.
You could say ugly is the one word for women to avoid.
However, I think that it's helpful so that people don't miss the point to define ugly in biblical terms.
And we can do that by looking at the opposite.
Of how the Bible defines beauty for women in biblical terms.
1 Peter chapter 3 says this, Do not seek imperishable beauty that fades, right?
Beauty is deceptive, or charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting.
But a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
1 Peter 3 says, Don't concern yourself, don't obsess, overly obsess about outward beauty that is perishable, but rather the imperishable beauty of the heart.
And then it goes further to define that inward beauty, and it says, Which is pleasing in the sight of God.
So, what is the inward, true, Imperishable beauty of the heart that God calls objectively beautiful, that God sees.
It is this a quiet, see, there's the opposite of loud, quiet and gentle spirit.
There is a way for a woman to talk in her speech loudly.
There is a way for a woman in her life with her deeds and actions to behave and live loudly.
And everything in our culture today, women.
They want you to be men.
Be aggressive.
Be aggressive.
If you're a young man and you're looking for good advice on how to be masculine, just look at what our culture writes for women.
The advice that our culture everywhere gives to women is great advice for men.
Be more domineering.
Be more assertive.
Be more confident.
Be more this.
Be more that.
What it's saying is be loud.
Be loud.
But what God's word says is be quiet.
You can live quietly.
You can speak with a quiet way.
This doesn't mean that women don't talk.
There's a way of talking and asking questions and being a social butterfly and yet, at the same time, not having a loud spirit.
The last thing that I want to get to as it pertains to the seventh commandment, our text today, is this.
There is a way not only of living loudly, talking loudly, but also dressing loudly.
Loud dress, loud apparel.
Like a golden ring in the snout of a pig, so too it is with a woman who is not modest.
There's a way of dressing loudly, a way that Jezebel painted her face and said, Look at me!
Look at me!
She is being loud.
But the Bible says that men should be strong, not weak.
Women should be beautiful, not ugly.
And beauty is defined as the imperishable beauty of the heart, which is quiet and gentle.
Not loud.
Fear God, Not Man00:05:37
Okay, last thing, don't go to hell.
Here we go.
Matthew Henry says this that such looks and such dalliances are so very dangerous and destructive to the soul that it is better to lose the eye and the hand that thus offend than to give way to the sin and perish eternally in it.
Such pretenses as these will scarcely be overcome by reason.
That's key.
Will scarcely be overcome by reason.
And therefore, must be argued against with the terrors of the Lord.
This is so, so important, guys.
With the terrors of the Lord.
And so they are here argued against.
Elsewhere in the gospel, according to Matthew, Matthew chapter 10, verse 28, Jesus says this Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.
Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Here's the idea I remember once upon a time I was a gospel centered man.
And to be fair, in the technical, biblical, theological sense, in an objective sense, I'm still a gospel centered man.
But what I refuse to be is a gospel myoptic man, a gospel exclusivist man.
The Bible does not just talk about the gospel, what God has done for us through Christ Jesus.
It also talks about the law, what God demands and requires of his people.
And for that matter, the moral obligation to God of all people.
And what the Bible does is this the Bible pushes us towards righteousness, both with promises of glory and with threats of terror.
The Bible does both.
Here's a gospel-centered mechanism, and it's biblical, it's faithful, and it's perfectly legitimate.
We should use it and think of it and hide this in our hearts.
1 Corinthians chapter 6.
You were bought with a price.
Your body is not your own.
You were bought with a price.
Therefore, honor God with your bodies.
What is the indicative, the mechanism for motivation to live a pure life with your body?
Your body is not your own.
You were bought with a price.
Jesus died.
To purchase not only your soul, but your whole being.
Jesus died for you.
Therefore, live a pure life.
Amen.
That's good motivation.
And also, not as a substitute, not either or, but both and.
Jesus died for you.
He cleansed not only soul, but also body.
Therefore, live righteous, upstanding lives.
Amen.
Good motivation.
Here's another one.
If you don't, God will throw you in hell.
That's also thoroughly biblical.
That's a great motivation.
When Jesus is trying to help people not fear man, he could have said this the opinions of man and living for the praise of man, the opinions of man.
Jesus could have said this don't care about what men think.
Your Father in heaven loves you, and his opinion matters more.
And that would be theologically true, and that's a great motivation.
But that's not the argument he makes.
Instead, he says this well, there's some temporal reasons to fear man.
They can beat you with sticks and kill you.
But that's it.
After that, they can do no more.
But here's the deal probably shouldn't fear man because God loves you and his opinion outweighs him, right?
Yes.
And also, God can kill you and cast your soul into hell.
Really, Jesus?
That's the sermon?
That's the motivation?
Don't be a slave to the opinions of man because God can kill you like man but then also send you to hell?
Uh huh.
That's the sermon.
Let's pray.
Gospel centered folks don't know what to do with Jesus' sermons.
They want to center on Jesus, just not his preaching.
They want to preach sermons about Jesus where they condemn every sermon that Jesus preached.
Isn't that a little weird?
Let's not do that.
Live pure lives because Jesus died for you to purchase your soul and also your body.
He loves you, He really does.
And He's worthy.
Of your purity and live pure lives because if you don't and you continue in that sin unrepentant, then you will go to hell.
Both are true.
God will not be mocked, man will reap what he sows.
If you are living in sexual impurity and you are not confessing that sin and you are not seeking to mortify it at the level of the heart desire, making a covenant with your eyes, and as a woman, trying not to dress loudly.
Not to behave like a devil that tempts or a man that sins.
If you're not working against this, you will fall.
But if you're not learning to hate the sin, confessing the sin, and striving to repent of the sin, imperfectly, albeit, but striving, then you need to hear two things.
One, you should do better as a response of gratitude because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He died on a tree, bled, and died for you.
And you should do better because hell is hot and Jesus promised you would go there.